by Dita Kraus
Three hours later, we arrived at Osaka. Like Tokyo, Osaka didn’t seem remarkable: skyscrapers, just like in any other metropolis.
But hold on! I thought. There was a beautiful castle surrounded by a park. It stood on a high hill, and each of its five floors had a green roof with corners pointing upward like fingers.
Next was a festive dinner. The food was traditional Japanese, and it came in tiny bowls, each containing two or three bites, beautifully disguised as flowers or leaves, in pink, yellow, green, red, or black. Things that looked like sweets were in reality sour pickles, the tea tasted like soup, and noodles turned out to be thin strips of radish. The meal was full of surprises, and I tried to use the chopsticks, to the hilarity of the company.
There were speeches of welcome, and I was asked many questions, of course. Like many times before and many times since, people there had an incorrect conception of what a ghetto was like; most didn’t know what happened afterward. I tried my best to elucidate, explaining that the children whose pictures were exhibited didn’t know what was going to happen to them, and their drawings were not acts of heroism. They were kids just being kids. At the same time, I was careful not to minimize the horror of their situation. My audience was filled with very attentive listeners.
Next morning we slept in due to exhaustion from the previous day and were rushed to Saty Shopping Center in Izumi City. On the second floor was the hall where our exhibition was being displayed. In the foyer were rows of chairs and a piano. On the walls were four large frames with photographs of Helga Hošková, Raja Žádníková, Willy Groag, and me, with samples of our paintings and explanations in Japanese. The main hall contained the exhibition itself, and I had to pose under my picture for the press photographers. The next day, the photos appeared in several newspapers.
Next there was a press conference. There were questions and answers for several hours, with translations back and forth. Later the audience was replaced by people who had visited the exhibition in the past. Their faces expressed deep concern and attention; some were wiping away tears.
Exhausted, our little company then went to have coffee downstairs. Suddenly we were joined by a red-faced schoolgirl. Michiko explained that she had been so impressed by the ghetto children’s drawings that she wanted to meet me. Her name was Yuriko, and she had come running all the way from school with her satchel. She was so excited that she burst into tears. I offered to show her my family photos if she stopped crying.
In the evening we experienced one of the highlights of our visit to Japan. A member of the committee lived in a traditional house, and we were invited for dinner. I felt as if we were in a scene from a film. We left our shoes under the three wooden stairs and stepped onto fine mats. The rooms were small, with thin sliding doors, and contained only a few pieces of furniture. In the center of the main room there was a low, round table; the cedarwood ceiling was believed to be one thousand years old. Anděla and I sat with our legs stretched under the table, while the natives sat cross-legged. We were offered a truly traditional meal: sukiyaki, green tea, and many things that were cooked in the middle of the table in a large dish. A number of women in beautiful kimonos served us. Some were members of the family; others just neighbors. The atmosphere was serene, with a lot of bowing and smiling.
Alongside the house was a mini garden with cropped trees and shrubs and stepping-stones, and above all, the full moon hung in the sky like a lantern.
On Thursday we visited a very unusual museum. It contained the paintings of Mr. and Mrs. Maruki, who were in Hiroshima immediately after the atomic bomb. They helped bury the dead and were themselves exposed to radiation. Mr. Maruki continued to paint even into his nineties. There were four huge canvases in black and white at the museum, each depicting one of the four catastrophes of our century: Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Okinawa, and Nanking. They made a strong impact, and I was glad when we moved to the other room, where there were more cheerful pictures.
Someone told Michiko that the old couple would like to meet us. We were very excited; it was a great honor.
The Maruki house stood opposite the museum, and there was a kind of wooden stage in front of the entrance. We were invited to sit there on pillows, and Mr. and Mrs. Maruki joined us. The husband sat with his legs on the floor, but the old lady sat on her heels, Japanese fashion. Her face was like a porcelain doll’s, with lively, shining eyes.
Mr. Maruki was sitting somewhat hunched and didn’t seem to be listening. He didn’t speak to us. We felt we must drink some orange juice and taste the cookies, which were brought out by a bowing and smiling relative or servant. Soon we were saying goodbye; I also bowed from the waist down, Japanese-style. As we were walking to the car, I heard a bell pealing. When I turned around, I saw a most wonderful sight. Mr. Maruki was standing on his bowed legs, with his white beard and dark glasses partly hiding his bluish singed face, and slowly pulling the rope of a small bell, which was hanging over the door of the museum. It was his way of saying farewell. I was so deeply touched that I cried.
* * *
Another lovely encounter later occurred at Saitama Prefecture. Of course, first there was the official part, the reception and the showing of the building and explaining of its function. But afterward we were invited to a meal around a very long low table. The mood was set by the host’s advice: “You had better stretch your legs under the table; we know that you—chair-sitting people—have difficulty sitting on your heels.” The food was Japanese, and I tried my best once more to use the chopsticks. The tastiest item was the crabmeat, which was served in the crab’s shell. (Jews aren’t allowed to eat this, but I don’t keep kosher.)
After the meal came a long poem in Japanese. I told them I would like to hear a song, and at that, the honorable officials started clapping their hands and singing with gusto, swaying from side to side in rhythm. Then I offered a song in Hebrew: “Heveinu shalom Aleichem.” They caught the rhythm and helped by clapping hands. After this they requested a song in Czech. Anděla shook her head—she was shy—but when I started “Na tom pražském mostě,” she joined in. It was a lovely, informal feast, and it is my second-best memory from Japan.
There were other striking features of the landscape that we passed: rice paddies. Every little piece of land in Japan is cultivated; the shortage of arable land is very evident. Even a small patch between one industrial building and the next becomes a field. I had read about rice, how it is planted in water, and I had seen the bent backs and large hats of the planters in films. But I did not know that the blue of the sky is reflected in the water and that the clouds swim among the green seedlings.
Another new sight for me were the dark-green rows that looked like paint squeezed out of a tube in parallel lines, climbing up slopes or following the rounded hills. These were tea plantations. For some time the landscape consisted of small mounds entirely covered with trees, mainly bamboo. The cone-shaped hills might have been a hundred meters high and looked like a child’s drawing. Very few of the houses we saw were traditional Japanese; they stood very close together and many had blue roofs. Sometimes the passage between them was so narrow that just one person could squeeze through.
We were once more in Tokyo, with its tall corporate buildings, but the grandest of them all seemed to be the former Yasuda headquarters, where the Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Museum of Art is located. We went up by fast elevator to the forty-second floor, which was still not the top.
After a reception in the luxurious offices, we were escorted through the exhibition halls. Apart from the great European painters, two artists were the main stars of the collection: the American Grandma Moses and the famous Seiji Togo. His are large paintings, but my attention was caught by a few pencil drawings of girls’ heads. They turned out to be of one Czech and one Israeli; what a coincidence.
There are strict security measures at the fine art museum, and for good reason. It owns one of Van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings, which it purchased for a huge sum a fe
w years before my trip. I stood in front of the glorious original and was reminded of the first time I had seen the painting.
Again I remember Friedl and the lesson she taught us three girls in her tiny room. The scene comes back, how she guided us to look at those sunflowers, at the colors and the bold brushstrokes. It was Friedl who not only encouraged me to continue painting but also to appreciate art.
Saturday was the last day before our departure. A taxi took us from the hotel to Urawa, where we were to meet Michiko. It took a long time in the permanently congested traffic, but finally we arrived and on time, too.
Then followed a two-and-a-half-hour-long session. We sat with the large group of officials around tables arranged in a square. Michiko gave a lengthy introduction about the Terezín ghetto and the children’s drawings, and I thought also about how she happened to learn about them. I told my interpreter, Norie, she need not translate, as I could imagine what Michiko was describing. This made it easier for both of us.
After that, as in previous meetings, came many questions. How could the children, who knew they were going to die, paint such cheerful pictures? How is it possible that the pictures remained? To what do you attribute your own survival? What did you do to be able to smile again? Can you describe the saddest and the happiest moments you had in the ghetto?
The saddest I do know; I have told it several times before. It has become the symbol—the essence—of the grief for all I lost. It was the death of Marta Pereles, my friend and sharer of the bunk in room 23. Her father, a hunchback, continued to visit our room even when his daughter was no longer alive. We girls would fall silent, unable to look at him. He would sit by the window, quietly immersed in his sorrow.…
But it took me a while to recall a happy moment. Then I remembered the strange thing that happened soon after we arrived in Terezín: I told of the incident with the thermometer in that bare room in the Magdeburg barracks. When they looked at the thermometer and it showed I had a high temperature of 40 degrees Celcius, they crossed off our names from the transport list, and Mother and I stayed in the ghetto, which made me very happy. Even today I have no logical explanation for how it could have happened.
Later that afternoon, on our way back to Tokyo, we had a few free hours, and Michiko took advantage of them to show us her “headquarters” in Omyia City. It was in a rented flat, and I was surprised at its small size. It consisted of two rooms plus conveniences, squeezed into no more than some twenty-five square meters. We were told that this was the usual size for a family with two children. It gave me an idea of what was meant when I was told that the country was not big enough for its huge population.
Five or six female volunteers had been waiting for us with tea and cake. We sat on mats, feeling very hot. Two of the ladies stood near us with paper fans to create some ventilation. They were so sweet, those helpful ladies, that I became quite enamored of them. During our whole stay, they were always somewhere in the background, quietly taking care of our comfort and the smooth running of affairs, smiling and nodding all the time in lieu of English conversation.
The taxi arrived, which took the three of us back to Tokyo. We were on the way to the last appointment of our itinerary: the Japanese NHK television, the national channel; those that had covered us till this point were regional ones. The journey took a very long time, although it was the weekend and traffic was supposed to flow away from the city. Instead of one hour, it took two and a half hours. At a public phone booth, Michiko stopped the car to make a call to the TV station.
At eight o’clock we finally arrived, all disheveled and hungry. How am I going to talk coherently in front of the cameras in this state? I wondered. They promised us a meal immediately after the broadcast; Anděla and I had just enough time to comb our hair and powder our shining noses. The producer’s name was Mr. Toda, a good omen. (In Hebrew toda means “thanks.”) Our interviewer was a stunningly beautiful Japanese girl who spoke English like a born American. She held a sheet with prepared questions and allowed us a few minutes to go over them.
But alas! They were all wrong questions, based again on the mistaken presumption that the children in Terezín knew of their approaching deaths and their drawings were therefore their last expressions of heroism. But our talented interviewer assured me that she would alter the questions. She composed new ones as we were walking upstairs to the studio. Within seconds she had grasped the correct approach, and, when we were seated, the cameras and lights centered on us, she conducted the conversation with absolute professionalism.
I pulled myself together, knowing that this was the most important moment of the entire Japanese sojourn. I spoke not only of Terezín but also of Auschwitz, of the Germans’ ingenious deception at the inspection of Red Cross commission at Terezín and the rationale for the family camp, where men, women, and children were kept alive as an alibi and then exterminated in the gas chambers when they were no longer needed.…
Oh, this was exhausting! I felt the tremor of my hands and legs. In the office they gave us coffee and a two-tiered lunchbox filled with Japanese goodies and tied in a huge violet napkin.
It was over, and I felt that I had fulfilled a mission.
I noticed two other useful and polite traditions in Japan. One is the exchange of calling cards. Whenever strangers meet, they pull out their wallets and hand the other person their card. In this manner, I received thirty-one cards; on some the names are also in English, and a few of them even have a small photo of the bearer. The last night, before falling asleep after the demanding day, I tried to sum up the significance of this journey to Japan. I wondered why those childish pictures from a faraway country and a time long past should find such a wide interest and response in Japan.
Most of the people I met were young: the journalists, the executive committee, Michiko herself and her kind ladies, even the officials. They all must have been born after the war or been too young to remember it. What was it that accounted for the sympathy of the Japanese with our fate? The role that Japan played during World War II must still trouble their minds. I was asked a few times: What is your attitude toward Japan today in the light of it having been the ally of Germany?
Maybe the answer lies in the fact that both peoples were exposed to great traumas, Hiroshima and Auschwitz. As a lady from Sapporo said to me, “I can feel with you, because I am your age, and I know what suffering is. It is possible that living through catastrophe makes for brotherhood among people.”
Sunday morning at Narita International Airport, there was Michiko with all her kind ladies. Each of them had a farewell gift for us. So many gifts, so many souvenirs! We smiled; we bowed. We also shook hands. They were all so lovely, it was difficult to take leave.
They waved to us past customs, past passport control; they even found another window to wave from when we were already on the escalator.
Goodbye. Goodbye, Japan. Arigato!
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
A Nostalgic Journey
On one of my sojourns in Prague, I felt a longing to take a walk in the Old Town again. The day was windy and cool, though when the sun came out from under the bloated clouds, the weather became quite pleasant. I walked along the river and then over the centuries-old Charles Bridge with its black, weatherworn statues of suffering saints.
In Malostranské náměstí I took tram number 22, knowing that it passed the Náměstí Míru station, from which I could change to my usual number 10 or 16. As I was entering, I heard a recorded announcement that this tram was being rerouted. Several people got off and rushed toward the Metro entrance. Although I didn’t understand exactly what the loudspeaker said, I recognized the name Vinohradská street, so I stayed on the tram. Never mind, I thought, it will take longer, but I am in no hurry.
I didn’t know what a nostalgic trip into the past I was undertaking.
The tram now traveled through the district of Nusle and along the long street once called SNB Avenue. On my left was the old Koh-i-noor factory that produced the penc
ils for generations of schoolchildren in the Republic. And soon I glimpsed the little side street where Otto and I lived as a young couple. Our flat was in the last house of the unpaved alley; behind it lay the tiny gardens enclosed by wooden fences, each with a small toolshed in the corner, called Schrebergärten in German. The townspeople rented them to grow some vegetables and flowers or even a fruit tree or two. Soon after the end of the war, there was still a serious shortage of food, so the vegetable gardens were more a necessity than a hobby. Beyond them began the neighboring borough of Vinohrady with the huge barracks, where Otto did his military duty in the months before our marriage. I would see him walking home among the gardens from the window when he got leave.
The gardens are gone now; in their stead there are the impersonal apartment buildings of the Communist era, called paneláks because they were built of prefabricated panels.
Two stops farther on, the tram stopped near v Olšanech Street, where Otto’s childhood friend Mirek lived. Under the Nazi occupation, contact between Christians and Jews was strictly forbidden, but Mirek didn’t drop his Jewish friend. The two had an emotional reunion after they hadn’t seen each other for forty years. Mirek was still living in the same villa on v Olšanech Street where he was born and where he raised his own children and grandchildren.
Around the corner stood the villa of the Kraus family. There is no trace of it now, no gatekeeper’s lodge and no driveway with the proud sign over it: RICHARD KRAUS TOVÁRNA DÁMSKEHO PRÁDLA (Richard Kraus Ladies Lingerie Factory). In its place stands a five-story apartment building with two entrances.
Just opposite, on the other side of the street, lived the doctor who did the emergency surgery on my infected breast. Of course his nameplate is no longer on the house. He must have died long ago.