Eli's Promise

by Ronald H. Balson

  “Lucya, I’d like to introduce my brother, Louis Rosen. I brought him over to look at the broken statue.”

  Her lower lip protruded sorrowfully. “She used to be so beautiful, the grandest figure in the church. But now she breaks my heart.”

  Eli nodded in concurrence. “Louis knows art and I’d like him to take a look, if that’s all right.”

  “Sure.”

  Lucya stood to the side and watched them. Louis and Eli were a study in contrasts, like black-and-white keys on a piano. Where Eli was stocky and powerful, Louis’s body was thin and smooth. Eli’s face was ruddy, a working man’s face. Louis, in his black suit and wide-brimmed hat, had a gentle, pasty white complexion beneath his bushy beard. Eli was rough and to the point. Louis was contemplative and patient. The Rosen brothers—contrasts to be sure, but put them together and they produced sweet music on the same keyboard.

  Louis bent over the broken sculpture and softly ran his index finger over the severed edges. He gently lifted the fragments, deliberating how and if they could be reassembled. Finally, he looked up and nodded. “I can do the restoration. It will take time, but this lovely work can and should be restored. This is a priceless piece.”

  “I’m afraid we have no funds for repairs at the present time,” Lucya said. “We’ve spent all of our money on the church reconstruction.”

  “So I understand,” Louis said. “When may I begin?”

  “But I said…”

  Louis smiled and gently waved her off. “Please, allow me the privilege of working on this precious piece of religious art. Let’s preserve it. Especially now, at a time when religion is under assault.”

  Brushing away a tear, Lucya said, “May God bless you for your generosity. I don’t know what to say, Mr. Rosen.”

  “Just say ‘You may begin right away.’ We don’t want to lose any of these broken pieces. I am eager to start.”

  “Our church doors are always open. You may begin whenever you like.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, when Eli returned home, Esther met him at the door. “We have a houseguest,” she said quietly. “My sister is here.”

  “From Warsaw?”

  Esther nodded, held her finger to her lips and whispered, “She’s in pretty bad shape.”

  Eli walked into the living room where Klara was seated on the couch. Her hair was disarranged, and her clothes were soiled and frayed. Eli knew Klara to be a stylish dresser; he had never seen her in such a state. She held a handkerchief bunched up in her fist. Eli sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Klara, did you come alone?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Are Milosz and Bonita all right?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Warsaw is one hundred and seventy kilometers away,” Eli said. “How did you get here?”

  Klara began to cry and her body trembled. “I’m sorry,” was all she could say.

  Esther gently took her hand and led her from the room, “Come, Klara, let’s get you into a hot bath.”

  After dinner, after Izaak had been put to bed, Esther, Eli and Klara sat in the kitchen and found time to talk. “Things are so much worse in Warsaw,” Klara said. “There are random shootings. Cruel attacks. I swear, the Nazis do it for sport. It is their amusement. And they snatch people off the street, and no one knows where they’re taken.”

  Eli raised his eyebrows. “That sounds worse than here.”

  Esther said, “No, Eli, it’s not worse. You’re in the brickyard all day. You don’t know. I see what happens on the street. I hear what other women tell me at the clinic. It’s the ORPO, the German Order Police. They go into homes, into cellars, looking for Jews to send to labor sites. They boast that they’re on a ‘Jew hunt.’”

  “Maximilian told me that the SS is gathering workers for the labor sites, like the one they’re building on Lipowa Street,” Eli said.

  “Gathering?” Esther scoffed. “Maximilian called it gathering? Like the Portuguese slave hunters gathered Africans in the seventeenth century? That kind of gathering?”

  Eli sheepishly looked at his wife. “I’m afraid so.” Shifting his attention, he said, “What happened to Milosz and Bonita, Klara?”

  She swallowed hard. “A week ago, Bonnie went missing. She didn’t come home from her job at the pharmacy where she worked after school. They said she never showed up at work. I was hysterical. We knew the Nazis were grabbing young girls off the street, and Bonnie is fifteen. Milosz and I went looking. The baker told us that he saw her talking to two young uniformed soldiers as she was walking to the pharmacy. The baker recognized one as Helmut Grausburt, a man who frequents his bakery. He said he saw them walk away. Milosz ran off to find them.”

  Klara’s shoulders trembled from her sobs. “Milosz didn’t come home that night. Or the next. I went out in the morning. I asked around. I went to the baker. Someone must have seen something, heard something, but no one would say. Later that day, a Warsaw councilman told me that Milosz was dead. Somehow, deep inside I already knew. They shot him, Essie, and left him for dead in the street. In the gutter, Essie, where the horses piss. I said goodbye to him at the undertaker, my poor Milosz, shot so many times.”

  “I’m so sorry, Klara.”

  “I kept asking people about Bonnie. Everyone told me the same thing—she was probably taken. The message was conveyed to me so unemotionally, so matter of fact, like I was asking about the weather. Probably taken. That’s how things have devolved in Warsaw. They’ve all become numb.” She reached over, grabbed Esther’s arms and squeezed. “What am I supposed to do, Essie?”

  Eli brought a glass of water. “You’re safe here,” he said. “Maybe Bonnie has been assigned to a work camp and she’s unharmed. You never know.”

  “People are fleeing Warsaw. They’re running away, and everyone is so scared. I waited three more days and then I decided to come here. I said to myself, Essie would know what to do. I was able to take the bus part of the way, but German soldiers got on in Kurow, laughing and joking, and I panicked. It shook me to my bones, I swear. I jumped off the bus and walked the rest of the way.”

  Esther hugged her tightly and let her cry onto her chest. “I’m so sorry for you, Klara. I’m glad you came to me, and you’re welcome to stay with us as long as you like, but things are not very good in Lublin either.”

  “Are there shootings in the middle of the street? Do the Nazis shoot at a tzadik’s foot just to watch him dance? Do they grab him by the beard and spin him around?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  “The Nazis froze our bank accounts and took our money. They closed our synagogues, saying that Jews were dirty and would spread epidemics. They made us wear armbands and put signs on the Jewish stores, the ones that they hadn’t already closed or vandalized. Now they have issued food stamps on cards, but there’s hardly any food for us to buy. There were over three hundred thousand Jews in Warsaw before the war started. Over a hundred thousand fled, the smart ones. Then the Nazis brought in trainloads of a hundred thousand more. They arrive and there’s no place for them to live. No food to eat. The rumor is that the Nazis are going to build a ghetto in the Jewish quarter and imprison all the Jews. That’s why they’re collecting them from other towns.”

  Esther looked at Eli. “I told you.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Klara said, and she squeezed her sister’s arms. “And I don’t know where my little Bonita is.”

  “The Germans are building work camps and the Nazi command is demanding workers. Thousands of them,” Eli said. “Many Lubliners have been compelled to work in camps like Belzec and Majdan. The Germans are building a wall on the eastern front along the Russian border. They are also setting up sewing camps, and maybe that’s where they’ve taken Bonita.”

  “Everywhere I looked in Warsaw, things were in chaos,” Klara said, “but it’s different here. For you and
Esther in Lublin—it looks like nothing’s changed.”

  Esther shook her head. “No, Klara, things have definitely changed. They change every day. We are a subjugated people. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Maybe the Nazis haven’t decided what to do with Lublin yet. But they will. We live in fear of that. Be assured, life has changed for us, too.”

  “You’re still in your house. You still have your business. You have food on the table. Nobody in your family was probably taken.”

  “Thanks to Maximilian,” Esther said. “According to Eli, he’s protecting us.”

  “So far,” Eli said. “So far, that’s true.”

  * * *

  The house was quiet. Klara was asleep in the guest bedroom. Eli, his head on his pillow, his arm around Esther, stared at the ceiling. Was he was making the right decisions? Was he a fool to place any trust in a man as loathsome and spineless as Maximilian? What were his alternatives?

  Esther lifted her head. “Are you awake?”

  “I am.”

  “My sister will never return to Warsaw, you know. She’s here permanently.”

  “I know.”

  “God only knows where Bonita is. People who are sent away never come back. Are we next, Eli? Can we afford to sit here and wait? It’s our responsibility to protect Izaak.”

  “I think about that every day, but right now I don’t see a solution, one that would justify the risk of fleeing into the countryside, maybe directly into a battlefield. Our home, our business, our daily lives are still intact. Oppressed to be sure, but manageable. Maybe that’s how we survive. We lived through the Great War. Millions of soldiers were killed, but Lublin survived. It was never necessary to leave.”

  “I’m sorry, my husband, but that is so naïve. You cannot compare the two wars. First of all, we were children twenty years ago. What do you really know? We have little memory of that war. My uncle was a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army, and he came back injured. Secondly, there was no Hitler, no madman, no war against the Jews. Look at Lublin today, only four months into the war. It was never like this.”

  “I understand, but whether it’s Maximilian or whether the Nazis have achieved their purpose in occupying our city and have now stopped inflicting new punitive measures, Lublin seems to be in a relatively static position.”

  “Achieved their purpose? Are you wearing your armband, Eli? Do you walk down the street and avert your eyes? Have you seen the Jews being marched to the train stations by armed soldiers? Is it happening every day? Are we so simpleminded that we would put our faith in a worm like Maximilian? No, Eli, it is more than just the occupation of Lublin. It is their war against the Jews. Ask yourself, why are they doing this? What sense does it make for Germany to single out Polish Jews? We have no army. We have no weapons. We pose no threat.”

  “Because they want slave labor.”

  “It’s more than that, Eli. Far more. It’s a hatred. In Germany they have been resentful of successful Jews for years. Now the Nazi leaders have whipped their followers into a state of hatefulness that they carry everywhere they go. They make vile cartoons of us in their magazines. They write lies about us in their newspapers. They despise us. They won’t be satisfied with slave labor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think they mean to kill us.”

  “Esther…”

  “You said it yourself. They planned a reservation with five hundred thousand Jews. Klara said a hundred thousand have been brought into Warsaw and that they were building a ghetto to imprison them. Women and children, too. Do they collect children for slave labor? It doesn’t sound to me like they are building a labor force. If that was their intention, they would take healthy Catholics and Protestants as well.”

  “Esther, they’re not eliminating the Jews in Lublin. In fact, they’re bringing in more and more Jews every day. The Lublin Jewish community is larger than ever. I am still working at the brickyard every day. We’re still billing our customers. We’re still living as before.”

  “Not as before. There are areas of our city that are Juden verboten. They took your business away from you. You work for Maximilian now. The Nazis are taking away businesses all over the city. They are forcing people out of their homes and into the poorest Jewish neighborhoods. Now they force us to wear armbands. There’s only one reason for that. They will identify us, they will collect us and concentrate us and then they will eliminate us.”

  “Esther, Esther, I think you are getting carried away. What would it gain them? What possible purpose is served?”

  “Maybe to have a banner to march beneath. Maybe it unifies them.”

  “They’re at war! What could be more unifying than that? They’re unified against their enemies—Britain, France, Poland.”

  “All I know is what I see. They look at us as though we are vermin, and people exterminate vermin. Even Maximilian has assumed a superior mantle. He patronizes us. You think he will protect us? Bah. The King of Denunciation. If push comes to shove, he will turn his back on us and denounce our family as well.”

  “What would you have me do, Esther?”

  “I defer to you, Eli. I always have. But I would encourage you to think about moving. We have a child and he must grow up in a land where he is loved, not despised.”

  Eli nodded. “I can’t argue with that. It won’t be easy. We’ll have to go on foot, but we will do it. I will make plans. When the winter ends and the snow melts, we will go. I promise.”

  “Then we will wait until the snow melts. Together we will find a safe place for our son. What about your father and Louis?”

  “My father will never leave his brickyard, and he’s not strong enough to make the journey. I will talk to Louis, but I’m certain he will decline. He is deeply involved with the Judenrat. He believes that Lublin needs him to weather the occupation.”

  “If it can be weathered.”

  Eli rolled over, wrapped his arms around his wife and pulled her close to him. He inhaled the sweet scent of her hair. He bathed in the warm softness of her body. He lifted her chin and kissed her lips. “How did I get such a wise and beautiful woman to marry me?”

  “Because I had my eyes on you, Eli Rosen, and I willed it to be so.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LUBLIN, POLAND

  APRIL 1940

  MONTH 7 OF THE NAZI OCCUPATION

  It was nippy for an April Sunday, and Izaak needed a jacket when he and Eli left the house. A smattering of daffodils and tulips had poked their heads out of Esther’s flower garden. Patches of green were replacing the winter browns. Spring had finally arrived, and Eli was making mental preparations to take the family out of Lublin and flee into the southern foothills. The snow had melted and it was time to go.

  Over the winter, life had settled into a fragile and precarious routine in occupied Lublin. No new edicts had come down in several weeks, but the cruelty of the oppressors continued unabated. Random arrests and disappearances occurred almost daily. As Klara would say, they were “probably taken.”

  Jewish families from other Polish towns were arriving by the trainload. Many were sent on to other locations, but a substantial portion was always left behind to fend for themselves in the overcrowded Jewish quarter. The Judenrat struggled to find them housing and a way to coalesce, but accommodations were scarce. The Jewish economy had all but ground to a halt.

  With Eli’s massive hand wrapped around little Izaak’s hand, they walked across town to the Church of Saint Peter the Apostle. A few days earlier, Lucya had come to the brickyard to extend an invitation to Eli and his father to attend the grand unveiling of the newly restored statue of the Blessed Virgin and the ceremony honoring Louis. Jakob had awkwardly declined, offering an excuse that there was too much work to be done at the brickyard.

  “He still has one foot in the old days when Jews and Catholics did not attend one another’s religious celebrations,” Eli whispered to Lucya. “I don’t think he’s ever been in a church. But I’ll be pleased
to attend the unveiling and support my brother’s work. I’ll bring my son, Izaak. My wife would also come, but she works at the clinic on Sundays.”

  A large crowd had gathered at the entrance to the Renaissance-styled church. Izaak, more shy than frightened, huddled close to his father. Lucya came out to welcome them, took Izaak by the hand and led them both into the church. Cookies, pazckis and Polish gingerbread were set on the refreshment table in the vestibule with tea and juice. Lucya winked and stuffed a handful of cookies into a napkin for Izaak.

  In the corner of the sanctuary, just to the right of the pulpit, the statue of the Blessed Virgin stood covered with a large white drop cloth. Louis, in his black suit and fur-trimmed black hat, stood proudly beside Father Jaworski. Right on cue, the bells began to chime, and the parishioners took their seats. Izaak and Eli were led to seats reserved for them in the front pew.

  Father Jaworski climbed the steps to the pulpit. After a few short welcoming prayers, he directed his attention to the covered statue. “She was commissioned by our church in 1787,” he said in a pleasing baritone. “It has been said by many that she radiates the spirit of the Blessed Virgin. She has welcomed pilgrims and worshippers for over one hundred fifty years. I cannot begin to count the number of brides who have knelt before her and presented their bouquets, seeking her blessings on their wedding day. Sadly, as all of us know, our lovely statue was badly injured when the Germans dropped their bombs last September. We held little hope for her recovery. Not only was it artistically challenging, but the cost of the restoration far exceeded our budget. Yet through the generosity of Rosen and Sons Construction Company, and through the tireless efforts of Louis Rosen, our Blessed Virgin has been fully repaired and restored to her original beauty.”

  Father Jaworski stepped down and took his place beside the covered statue. He reached for Louis’s hand and raised it high. “This is Louis Rosen, a talented artist to whom we owe our gratitude. He is not a member of our parish. He is not even a Catholic. He owes us nothing, yet he has worked for months, many times late into the night. And, may God bless him, he has done it all out of charity and generosity and for the love of art. He did not charge us a single zloty. He is a godsend for our parish.” Applause echoed off the ancient walls.