The Brothers of Auschwitz

by Malka Adler

  When I stood in front of the mirror with my rifle and saw protruding muscles and shoulders that filled any jacket I wore, the healthy color in my face, and heard the voice of a man, my eyes wept at this wonder, yes. And what hurt most of all was that my mother and father weren’t beside me in front of the mirror. I so wanted them and Avrum, grandfather and grandmother, all my uncles, aunts, and cousins to stand in front of the mirror, all of us together, looking at this wonder, I, Yitzhak, son of Israel and Leah, a soldier growing stronger in Eretz-Israel.

  Chapter 50

  Dov

  When you’re young it is easy to move from one place to another.

  I spent about a year in the collective village and every morning I got up and saw I was alive. I’d touch my body, my arm is in place, I have two whole legs, I have an eye. The scariest thing was not being able to open my eyes because of an infection or some other block. Finally, I’d get up. First of all I’d check my drawer. There’s bread. I always kept a slice for the next day.

  The transition to a private moshav was a great joy for me.

  I’d go to bed at night and not be able to sleep for excitement. I couldn’t believe I had money in my pocket. I’d put my hand in the pocket of my trousers, take a handful of coins and let them jingle, gling, gling, gling, until I’d fall asleep. Afterwards, I looked for pajamas with a pocket. Sometimes, in the evening after work, I’d make coin towers in the air and then, phoophoophoo, and listen to the sound of coins rolling on the table, onto the floor, mmm. A sound as tasty as ice cream. I had as many tins of food on the shelf as I wanted. I had my own motorcycle on the path outside my room. In the evening I’d sit with my Sabra – Israeli-born friends, each and every one of them great people. We laughed without a care.

  One day I realized that two years had gone by, and I found myself moving for the third time. The War of Independence had come to an end and my brother, Yitzhak, established a moshav in the Western Galilee with a group of friends from the battalion. Yitzhak had a dream about a large dairy farm with a high barn in the yard, and I had a problem being far away from my brother. I could be a five-minute journey away, a ten-minute journey from him, no more. I had to know that if there was a sudden disaster, say, someone would decide to send us on foot along the roads, we could immediately meet and walk together. I decided to move to the moshav he established, and I wasn’t happy.

  In the beginning we lived in tents. There was an old concrete surface in the place. We put tents on it. After several months the concrete sank. We dug around the concrete and deep down we found boxes. Boxes of dead bodies. Don’t know which period the bodies were from but it was clear to me that the dead always came out to meet me: Sometimes I have the dead at night, in the middle of the day, sometimes I have the dead in boxes underneath a tent. For two weeks I had a migraine from all these dead, even after we put up the tents in another place. Afterwards we moved into tin shacks and managed quite well. We had cows, horses and a tractor from the Jewish Agency. I worked outside on the tractor. My brother, Yitzhak, worked on the farm and we lived together.

  Every morning I’d get up before my brother, get into the bathroom first, stay in there for as long as I needed, then I’d make the bed, and hand wash a few of our shirts. We drank our first coffee in the communal dining room, the young women on the moshav prepared it. And then I’d make fat sandwiches for me and my brother, a large pile of fat sandwiches, and wrap each one in paper and write in pencil on the paper what was in the sandwiches, cheese, or sausage, or jam. We worked hard on my brother’s moshav, but we weren’t hungry.

  In the evening I’d shower first, but before that we’d kill bugs. We had a lot of bugs in the tin shack. We’d collect them on the floor, pour paraffin over them and burn them.

  And then I had an accident, I broke my arm. The car of a moshav member stalled in the middle of the road. He asked me to turn the crank while he pressed on the clutch. I held the crank in both hands and hit it hard. The bone broke in two places. They took me to hospital and I felt as if my brain had turned to liquid, what the hell is this with me and hospitals, and why are the bones in my poor body like matchsticks, chic. Broken, chic-chic. You need a cast, said someone in a white coat, and I felt like slapping his face, breaking down a wall, and running like a rocket to find a forest to stay in forever.

  I left the tractor and guarded with a cast on my arm, barely able to hold a rifle.

  Afterwards we got separate houses and land. My home was near Yitzhak’s. We worked from morning till night and didn’t make a living. We barely had anything to eat, and then a lot of members left the moshav. My brother Yitzhak managed well. Maybe because he was good at reading numbers and he knew where luck lay. He was five steps ahead of everyone, already knowing where the luck would fall.

  My brother also married quickly. Hannah, his wife, came to visit a relative on our moshav. Yitzhak met her on the Friday. The next day, on the Sabbath, he said to me, I’m going to marry Hannah. It took him a night and half a day to decide that he and Hannah were suited. I said, all right.

  One day, three thug-like officials came to my house. They wore good jackets and shoes. I saw them approaching the yard and my heart sank. I put a slab of chocolate in my mouth, and went out towards them as if I was used to meeting Jewish thugs in my yard. They were looking for something in the yard, said something, and finally gave me a notice. I understood they wanted to throw me off the moshav because I owed money to the Jewish Agency. I had no money to pay the Agency and decided to leave the moshav.

  My brother Yitzhak remained. Yitzhak had Hannah. She washed shirts and cooked food and she made sandwiches. I could leave without worrying.

  I rented a room in Nahariya, a five-minute journey from my brother’s moshav.

  I learned to operate an excavator and mainly dug water lines. Then I became a crane operator, which I enjoyed.

  The moment I’d hear they were establishing a new town in Eretz-Israel, I’d be the first there. I felt at home in these places. I’d rent a room or live in a hotel near work and eat in restaurants. I made sure to eat four full courses every noon. Something light for the first course, a pie, or a piece of fish, or a plate of salads. Second course, soup. Main dish, meat, a thick steak, or half a chicken and mashed potatoes, or rice or noodles. For fourth course, something sweet, stewed fruit or ice cream, or strudel with nuts and coffee. When I finished the work in the new town I’d go back to Nahariya.

  When I was a crane operator, I volunteered to work in dangerous places, like the northern or southern borders. I’d sit on the digger, my head visible, knowing the Syrians or the Egyptians could shoot me. The rifles of the Syrians and the Egyptians didn’t bother me. I was willing to give up the restaurant with four courses and a good pie with rice, I ate enough. I knew that if I didn’t dig fortifications on the border there’d be an Auschwitz here.

  My brother Yitzhak told me I should marry.

  He looked very hard at me and saw that crumbs were beginning to fall on my shirt, that I went out in the evening with an unironed collar and stains that didn’t come out in the laundry I did alone. I wanted to marry Betty whom I’d met on the ship. In the meantime, I sat in the Penguin Café in Nahariya and the years went by. Betty didn’t stay in my heart and there was no one else. One year then another, and for many years I’d sit in the Penguin Café with friends every evening, listening to laughter, jokes and stories, drinking cold beers, or vodka, according to mood or the women at the table. My brother Yitzhak persisted. He’d say, listen to me, after a certain age you don’t marry, you get used to living alone and that’s a bad habit. You have to marry, this is what he said and in the meantime another ten years went by.

  My brother Yitzhak might not have understood that thoughts about family gave me sleepless nights, that I’d wake up one morning and there’d be no one beside me, because maybe they’d take everyone to some forest, or that my child would get pneumonia and die and it would make his mother sick and she’d also die, and another brother would die, and
one Sunday morning I could find myself without anything.

  Twenty years went by before I agreed to marry.

  When I met Shosh I had no intention of getting married. Shosh persuaded me, and I had Yitzhak on the other side. Finally, I married at the age of forty, and at sixty, when I wanted a rest from this life, I had daughters the age of the Twist, rock ‘n’ roll and the noise coming out of the loudspeakers.

  I married Shosh because she had laughing eyes. Because she had a joy about her. But also because she took charge of papers, identity cards, arranged things at the Office of the Interior, the rabbinate, a wedding hall, flower store, an invitation store, a photography store and a clothing store – she arranged everything, and without this – I wouldn’t have married. My wife Shosh was born in 1945 – just as I came out of hell, she was born. I left for a new life and so did she. I met her through her friend, a waitress at the Penguin Café. I didn’t believe I’d take an Iraqi woman to be my wife. You have to get used to Iraqis. They’d invite me to lunch. I’d arrive at noon, they’d serve food at five. I’d be dying of hunger by five.

  It’s good that I married. Good that I have a family. Don’t know what I’d have done with this life on my own.

  Chapter 51

  Yitzhak

  My dream of establishing a dairy farm almost shattered during the War of Independence.

  By chance I was saved from almost certain death.

  It was spring. I was on a Sabbath leave from the battalion. I went to my adoptive family in the collective village. I kept in touch with them. On the Sunday I was supposed to return to the battalion. I couldn’t return. There was a war. The roads were blocked and I had a fever. But, nonetheless, I intended to return. I packed my backpack but my adoptive mother refused to allow me to leave. I said, I have to, they’re waiting for me. She wiped her wet hands on her apron and said slowly, you are not going, Yitzhak, I’ve had a bad feeling all morning, and you’re staying here. Her face was red and she had a handkerchief in her sleeve. I went on packing. She stood at the door and said, wait here, don’t move, and she ran to the village doctor.

  Ultimately, I obeyed her. The convoy to the besieged Kibbutz Yechiam was blocked. We had forty-seven dead. I should have lain dead among them. I’d remained in the village and wasn’t in the convoy of the dead. I began accompanying the village supply-truck driver with my rifle. Later I became a combat soldier and fought in all the state wars. When I was young I was a machine gunner, a good one too, without dreams or nightmares. Screaming loudspeakers didn’t frighten me. Then I was a driver, a hardworking one, as long as there wasn’t a fire near me. I just had to smell smoke and my eyes smarted, or I’d get an ear infection. It was like that for years.

  I knew that if I didn’t marry after the War of Independence, I’d swell up with alcohol. We lived a sloppy life on the moshav. There was no one to take care of us. I had no clean laundry. No organized food. I’d go to Nahariya to eat. I wasted the money I earned at the moshav on alcohol. I liked to drink cognac, vodka, and I’d get drunk and talk nonsense. Sometimes I’d throw glasses, lie on the floor and kick my legs, and scream and laugh like a madman. Dov also drank. He liked whiskey, gin, Slivovitz. But Dov would drink and be silent. I made a lot of noise when I drank. At the Penguin and the Ginati Café there was a band. I liked the band. I’d stick money on the musicians’ foreheads so they wouldn’t stop playing. I stuck a lot of money. I felt they had to keep playing, or the darkness and suffocating smell would come.

  I knew, on my own, I’d be lost.

  I was twenty-one and I wanted a family. The decision to marry was quick. The moment I saw Hannah I knew she’d be my wife. She was tiny, and lovely. Hannah knew what I’d been through without our talking about it. We’d look at each other and understand everything on our own. Hannah was born in Romania in 1932. When she was seven her family was sent to the Ukraine, to Ghetto Vinoj. Her mother and three siblings. Her father remained in the labor camp. She had a hard time in the Ukraine. They’d leave the Ghetto to beg. For four years they looked for food in the streets and people would hit them. Afterwards the family returned to Rumania. They met the father. Five years after the war they emigrated to Israel.

  The day after the wedding I left Hannah and disappeared for three days. Don’t remember where I was. I think I went to look for something related to the dairy farm. I forgot to tell Hannah I had errands to take care of. I wasn’t used to having a wife at home. Hannah went to our neighbor on the moshav. He harnessed his horse and cart and they set out to look for me.

  It took me time to get used to being with a woman at home. It took me a very long time to get used to coming home late at night and finding a woman waiting for me, a tidy home and the smell of good food. It took me time to get used to waking up in the morning and finding another pillow and a woman beside me. I needed vodka and cognac to get used to seeing a clean towel, a woman’s underwear and lipstick near the mirror in the bathroom.

  After a hard day’s work, mainly after a good commercial deal, I’d go to a restaurant with friends and raise a glass to life. What I enjoyed most was the owner of the restaurant saving us the internal parts of the cow. He’d fry the meat for us and we’d toss back tots of vodka, cognac and whiskey, mmmm. A pleasure. We spent a lot of time at Tuti Levy’s café. In the end, I gave up drinking. I think because of age and responsibility. I had Hannah, there were children, we had a roof over our heads, I earned a living, it was wonderful. I didn’t want my liver spoiled by cognac. We came from nothing, we wanted to make it and we succeeded. The most important thing was that I managed to raise a family.

  Chapter 52

  Dov

  My sister Sarah came to Israel after the Declaration of the State.

  She was twenty-four when she came to Israel. She came from Sweden after being in Bergen-Belsen. My brother was the first to hear about Sarah and we both wrote to her. We asked her to come to Israel. We didn’t hear from Avrum, we didn’t hear from our father, we didn’t hear from our mother. Later we heard something of father. We heard that our father was released from a labor camp, don’t remember the name, and he died because of food. Zalmanowitz told me. He said that several released prisoners slaughtered a sheep and ate too much meat. Father was one of them, can you believe it?

  My brother Yitzhak and I missed Sarah. We’d drink coffee and say, Sarah. We’d sit in the room and say, Sarah. We remembered Sarah locking us in our room because she wanted peace and quiet in the house, so she could do her homework without our bothering her. Sarah was a good student. She studied at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Ungvár. She knew how to sit at her books and notebooks. We didn’t. Sarah wanted to be a teacher or a head teacher of a school. Sarah studied at the Gymnasium for a short time and then they threw her out because of the laws against Jews. She stayed home and helped mother wash and fix the clothes of Hungarian soldiers so there’d be food.

  When we met Sarah at the Haifa Port we barely recognized her. She was smaller and thinner than we remembered. Her head came up to Yitzhak’s and my shoulders. She had a long face the color of the wall and pale lipstick on her lips. Her hair was very short and a color we didn’t recognize, black mixed with smoke. The expression in her eyes hadn’t changed, she had a questioning, steadfast look.

  Sarah looked at us and cried out, are you my little brothers? We cried a lot.

  From the Port of Haifa I took Sarah to the little moshav where I was a tractor driver. She lived with me in my room. I didn’t talk about my camps and she didn’t talk about hers. I didn’t talk about my daily routine and she didn’t tell me what hers had been. I didn’t tell her what I ate in the camps and she didn’t tell me what she ate. I saw that Sarah turned her head away when I put a slice of bread in my pocket. I also turned my head away when Sarah hid bread under a towel in a drawer.

  There were a lot of bachelors on the moshav. One of the young men really wanted Sarah. He spoke to me. Sarah refused and decided to move to Tel Aviv, where she met Mordecai who had emigrated to Israel on the sh
ip Altalena. Sarah and Mordecai married and went to live in Be’er Sheva. It was hard for them to make a living in Be’er Sheva. Four years went by and they left for Canada and from there to the United States of America. We stayed in touch and speak on the telephone. My brother Yitzhak and I didn’t travel to visit Sarah in America because we don’t travel anywhere. We know that at the end of the day we have to go home, because one doesn’t leave home. Not even to visit our sister Sarah. Not even to visit one of our children who lives far away. Sarah has visited Israel twice. I don’t know what Sarah went through during the war and she doesn’t know what we went through.

  Chapter 53

  Sarah

  Queens, New York City

  After the war, Yitzhak only returned to the village because of his cat. He looked for his large cat with its black and white fur. Yitzhak loved his cat very much, did he talk about it?

  It was the first day of Passover, 1944, I was twenty. Father returned from the synagogue and said, we have to pack, they’re sending the Jews away from the village.

  Gendarmes took us from the house.

  Until that morning, the gendarmes were like our friends because we brought them clean laundry that mother and I washed and mended for them. Some of those gendarmes liked drinking coffee in mother’s kitchen and chatting to her in Hungarian. They also agreed to exchange clothing for food because father wasn’t working. The gendarmes turned their faces away on the path and I saw they were a danger to us. Nonetheless, when we came out, I whispered to one of them, the pocket I sewed up for you, is it all right? He turned his back and pointed his rifle in the direction of the synagogue, where they immediately took me behind a curtain and ordered me to strip. They searched me for jewelry. I was twenty and had to stand naked in front of soldiers. Afterwards it was dark outside, barking dogs, and the lowing of suffering cows in the cowshed, my brothers said to the gendarmes, we have to milk the cows, let us go, we’ll come back. The nearest gendarme raised his rifle and played with the bolt.