Rue des Rosiers

by Rhea Tregebov

  “Okay. I get it.”

  “Good,” she says. Does he get it? She may have made a dent or he may just be more confused. No point belabouring it. “So, if I’m a whippet, what are you? A golden retriever?” She touches his fine blond curls, trimmed short for the office. He relaxes back against the pillow, smiles.

  “I’m a mutt,” he says. English, Scottish, Irish, an Icelandic great-grandmother, he’s reeled out the Scott family tree for her. His family’s butchers, bakers and candlestick makers a match for her Old Country tinkers and tailors. “Purebred nothing. Good breeding stock.” Then he curls himself around Sarah and in what seems like seconds, he’s asleep.

  ~

  history

  the dreams got worse. She remembers the first time; she was little, she must have been four or five. Someone important was visiting from Chicago. Her mother had fussed for days, baking, cooking, tidying the already tidy house. Rose had to sleep on the folding cot between the twin beds in Sarah and Gail’s bedroom so the visitor could have Rose’s big bed. Sarah remembers playing with the brass catches on the suitcase she found on Rose’s bed – they snapped open and shut in such a satisfying way – until her mother told her to stop for goodness’ sake. Sarah watched from the doorway as the visitor and her father sat on the living room sofa and talked and talked about something, a river of names, Chaya, Moishe, Manya, Lev, Basya, Reva, Avramele. A beautiful lady, her smooth blonde hair carefully framing her face, who would slip into and out of Yiddish, not just names but shreds of stories that unspooled, soaked into the fabric of the room. Shah, Sarah’s father would say softly, his hand on the visitor’s arm, when the English words rose loud, di kinder. The children shouldn’t hear. Her father, rigid and tender; the visitor’s hands pulling at the buttons on the dusty-gold wool sofa till one came off. She held it in her palm, silent, until Sarah’s mother came into the room to tell the woman it was all right, it could be sewn right back on. Everything could be fixed.

  Who were they, Sarah asked, who were all these people with the funny names? The visitor’s hands frozen in her lap. Your family, she said. Aunts and uncles, cousins. My brothers and sister, she said, all lost, all gone. Gone where, Sarah asked. Gone. Dead. Murdered. Shah, her father said, shah, not now.

  Sarah woke that night, both sisters breathing beside her, woke from a dream of someone, something on the other side of the door of the house on Rupertsland, her house, but not her house. Someone at the door of her room that was not her room. She didn’t know what house, what room, where she was, someplace far away. Someone or thing at the door coming to take them all. She was awake but wasn’t awake. Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t move: something at the door, something pressing on her chest so that she couldn’t breathe. Something in the room with her that she almost saw, and it wanted to hurt her. To hurt her sisters, breathing beside her. And she couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything, not to save herself, not to save them.

  At last the feeling receded and when she was able to gasp, to make a sound, Rose rolled over sleepily in the cot beside her, patted her hand. It’s all right, it’s all right. Go back to sleep.

  That was the first one. The dreams, these waking nightmares, went on, intermittent but repeated, dreams that held her paralyzed, that she would wake from and not be awake. It must have been years before Sarah learned the woman from Chicago, Sosha, was a relative, a second or third cousin of Abe’s. That visit was the only time Sarah remembers hearing her family speak directly about the Holocaust, as if there were some sort of holiness around it that wasn’t supposed to be put in words. No words beyond the implied, insistent never again, never forget. But there were also the second-hand stories from friends at Hebrew school whose parents, like Sosha, weren’t lucky, weren’t born here like Sarah’s parents: Dad said he hid in a barn. For the whole war? I don’t know. He doesn’t like to talk about it. Months, I think. Maybe years. Or they killed my mother’s cousin, he was only a baby. Who killed him? Where? The Nazis, of course. I think it was in Poland. Things that happened outside of history, outside of time and place and cause and effect, that happened in the alternate universe of the Holocaust.

  There were stories too from Sarah’s teachers at Talmud Torah School, many of them survivors. And then, in grade five, from the darkened claustrophobia of the school auditorium, the sour sombre voice of the narrator of the documentary, the film she watched but didn’t allow herself to remember, though she couldn’t let go of the wavering images, the naked dead more bones than flesh, strewn like pick-up sticks. The ungainly, abject bodies of middle-aged women, also naked, the broad landscapes of their backs, the soft arcs of the folds of belly, holding on to each other, standing at the edge of a pit. Alive at the moment the photo was taken, but not for long. The lampshade made of human skin, its perverse translucence. Images that were not real, except that they were real. Images of real people and any one of them could have been related to her, any one of them could have been her, if she’d been alive back then, if she’d been there, in that place outside of place, time outside of time.

  By the time she started university, the dreams were sparse, almost forgotten. Spring of her second year at the University of Manitoba, she checked the catalogue for the September course offerings. The course description for a Twentieth Century History class tacked to the bulletin board outside the office read: Holocaust History. Destruction of the Jews of Europe. Topics include anti-Semitism, the rise of Nazism, treatment of Jews within Germany between 1933 and 1939, plans for the ‘final solution’ and their execution, life and death within the concentration camps. Lengthy readings, some of them emotionally taxing. Not recommended for freshmen.

  The destruction of the Jews of Europe, this was a story that she wanted to know, one that belonged to her. She wanted to have a way of framing herself, of claiming more than the four words: never forget, never again. More than faded waking nightmares. If she had facts, comprehension, maybe there would be something she could do with them.

  ~

  The first day of class, September. Among the twenty or so students, a woman who looked to be somewhere in her fifties, sitting at the back of the class. She was a bit heavy, stocky more than fat, and her strong, round face was carefully made up, framed in tidy blonde curls. She was sitting very straight, in a tailored dove-grey pantsuit, her hands quiet in her lap.

  The instructor, Prof. Koenig, was a big man, tall and broad-shouldered. His hair was blond, crew-cut, his posture almost military, though there was something immediately gentle about him as well. A hint of an accent but his English was very clear as he welcomed the students to class, congratulated them on their courage for enrolling. Uneasy glances among the students at this, half-stifled laughter. He went on to explain that this was an experimental course, that Judaic Studies in conjunction with the History Department had helped sponsor him to teach it on a trial basis.

  “What is a Jew?” Prof. Koenig asked. “This is a question Jewish philosophers and thinkers have been asking themselves over the centuries on behalf of the Jewish people. The answers have been rich, nuanced, and varied. In the context of Nazi anti-Semitism, however, the question was asked to a different purpose. I believe a pertinent opening point for this course would be to examine how, in the early stages of the rise of Nazism, the answer to this question was formulated.”

  Prof. Koenig put up a colour reproduction on the overhead projector. At first it looked like a diagram of molecules, something from Sarah’s grade 12 chemistry textbook: pairs of circles that linked to other circles. Some were open, some had red crosses, some were filled or partially filled with black or grey tones. The heading at the top in German, Die Nürnberger Gesetze, The Nuremberg Laws.

  The Nuremberg Laws codified the Nazi’s anti-Semitic policies. The chart showed the pseudo-scientific method used to identify Jews. Prof. Koenig gently tapped the screen with a wooden pointer. A person who had four German grandparents was considered to be Deutschblütiger, of ‘German or kindred blood.’ A person who had three or fou
r grandparents who were Jewish was considered to be a Jude, a Jew. In between were those categorized as Mischlinge, mongrels of ‘mixed blood.’

  False science. False categories. What is a Jew?

  Criteria were further established to distinguish more finely between Jews and Mischlinge: affiliation with a Jewish religious community, marriage to another Jew, whether one’s parents were married or one was born outside of wedlock, the dates of marriage and birth. These refinements were necessary to establish racial ‘purity.’

  If you were a Jew, what kind of Jew would you be? This was what the chart wanted to establish. A true Jew, a full Jew, a half Jew of the first or the second degree? These were categories that subsumed every other thing you were. You were a Jew by blood, not belief; blood was what counted. Converting didn’t necessarily save you. Atheism didn’t save you. Jewish blood. Were you Jewish to your bones? Were you Jewish in your flesh? Under the Nuremberg laws, back in 1935, before the war had even begun, a Jew wasn’t a German citizen, a Jew couldn’t marry a non-Jew, a Jewish doctor couldn’t treat non-Jews, a Jewish lawyer couldn’t practise law. And soon, these gradations of identity would determine not just your civil rights, but whether you lived or died.

  “I’d like to continue today’s lecture with an introduction to the final solution, Nazi double-speak for the annihilation of the global Jewish population. In the six years of the war,” Prof. Koenig said, “the Nazis in fact did a remarkably effective job of approaching their goal.” His voice was tight, dry. Prof. Koenig positioned a new chart on the overhead projector. As he placed it, his hand enlarged, Sarah could see the thick gold wedding ring he wore, the faint blond hair on his knuckles.

  “We have all heard the figure, six million. But how do we interpret this loss? Let’s start with a statistical evaluation. The approximately six million killed through the programs of the final solution represented almost thirty-six percent of the global Jewish population at the time. How quickly the Nazis were achieving their objective, even though the large Jewish population in North America, which had for decades been a refuge for Jewish immigration, was not directly affected.

  “Students should also note that, despite the recovery in the years since the war, a recovery unimpeded by any systematic program of persecution, and despite the existence since 1948 of the State of Israel as a safe haven for Jews, the world Jewish population has not nearly recovered. The figures for 1970 – unfortunately, I don’t at the moment have more recent figures – show that the global Jewish population was still four million less than the pre-Holocaust population, putting it at approximately seventy-five percent of its pre-war status after a full twenty-five years of recovery. Numerically speaking, what was done in six years has not been undone in twenty-five.”

  The numbers started to dazzle Sarah. She couldn’t keep herself anchored in the lecture. Final solution. She was back in her grade 12 chemistry class, watching solutes swirl into their solvents, salt into water. When the mix was saturated – no, supersaturated – the salt started to precipitate out. Salt and water made tears, didn’t they? Or was the problem not a chemistry problem at all, was it mathematics? What were the variables, what was the unknown, what needed to be solved?

  Now Prof. Koenig was talking about the engine of the destruction of the Jews of the Europe, the concentration camp. More double-speak: concentration camp. From the German Konzentrationslager, he explained. And Sarah was again in chemistry class: concentrate, in the case of a liquid, a substance that had the majority of the solvent removed. Orange juice without its water. A body without its blood? No, that didn’t make sense. But what did? Concentration camp. Not murder factory. Not annihilation centre. Prisons for people you meant to kill, people penned up in such numbers you needed to build a city for death. Concentrated butchery.

  Prof. Koenig was closing the blinds in the classroom, Sarah could hear the whir of the slide projector and she was pulled out of chemistry class, she was back in the Talmud Torah School auditorium, waiting for the never again, never forget images she carried in an album in her head.

  “A challenge I am faced with as your instructor is how to take what must remain incomprehensible – the wilful slaughter of millions of civilians – and help you understand the individuality of what was lost. Our method in this class will be to try to put faces to the numbers, to tell specific stories, in addition to the examination of large historical facts, the theories and numbers.

  “Many of you will be familiar with these iconic images of atrocity and, much as I don’t want to overwhelm students in the first class, we do need a visual reminder.”

  The class was silent. The lights went off and then the projector bulb turned its brightness on the room.

  At first Sarah couldn’t resolve what she was seeing into a whole, this intricate pyramidal mountain, piles of bodies like stacks of logs. A heap. Bones barely coated with flesh. A concentration camp liberated too late for everyone in this picture.

  There was another brief light in the room, someone had left. Sarah glanced at the door, saw, as the door closed on her, the back of the older woman she’d noticed earlier.

  The slide shifted, and there were living people in this photograph. Soldiers regarding the bodies below them. They were smoking cigarettes. They were in uniform and they seemed very tall, very vertical over the horizontal figures of the dead. They were wearing helmets and caps, their guns were in their holsters. It was a quiet moment. Everyone who needed to be dead was dead.

  The next photo was barely legible. A grey rectangle in a grey field, it looked like a bit of fallow land, what had grown there harrowed under, until you understood that the crop was bodies. None of them discernable as people, but that was what they must have been. Something that must have been an arm here, a head over there. The bodies were scarcely even bodies, every particle of individual identity taken from the people who died.

  Who took these photos? German soldiers, as trophies? As proof, witness? Some of the photos had to have been taken by the liberating Americans or Russians. How did it feel to them to press the shutter, take this moment away with them before it was gone?

  The projector continued clicking through its progress. Prof. Koenig said nothing, gave no captions, just kept advancing the slides. Finally paused. “I know that these images are exceptionally difficult to view. Let’s take a ten-minute break, and when we come back, I’ll go over the reading list as well as the syllabus with you.”

  Sarah sleep-walked out of the classroom to find the woman who left during the slideshow in the hallway, bent over a water fountain. The woman straightened, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, a gesture that seemed out of place with the elegance of her outfit.

  Sarah went up to her, touched her arm. “Are you all right?”

  The woman looked at her with kindness, without smiling. “Of course I am, my darling.” Sarah couldn’t quite place her accent. “I was just taken a bit by surprise and thought I would give myself a minute. I think our professor is sorting the sheep from the goats.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “I think he wants the students who cannot look at those pictures not to take the class,” the woman said, again kindly, again without smiling.

  Sarah was still touching the woman’s arm. The woman patted her hand. “I’m Helen. Helen Rosenbaum.”

  “Sarah Levine.”

  “Sarah. A good name, Sarahleh. So, what do you think of our class?”

  Sarah shook her head, looked down at the floor.

  “And what are you studying here at the university, Sarahleh?”

  “History.”

  “History. Good. Good for you.” Helen was fishing around in her purse, took out a toffee in a gold wrapper. “Candy?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “I’m a bookkeeper,” Helen said. “Tax time I’m busiest. But I figured it out so I would have time to take this one course.”

  Helen’s jacket was a bit long on her compact frame so that her small, manicured hands, a sh
ell-pink polish on the tidy nails, just peeked out of the sleeves.

  Helen looked at Sarah looking at her sleeves, then pushed up the fabric first on one arm, then the next, demonstrating two muscled, tanned forearms. “Nothing up my sleeves,” she said, turning each arm for a full view. “You were looking, no? I haven’t got the tattoo. But I lived through the war, yes.”

  Helen had been in the war. She was standing right there in front of Sarah, her straight bearing, her strong, tanned arms, alive. She had been in the war. And she was herself, still was who she was.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah said.

  “You don’t need to be sorry.” Helen gave each sleeve a tug so the jacket settled into place, then suddenly bent and picked something up. “Lucky penny,” she said. “Here, you keep it. For luck.”

  “Thanks.” Sarah slipped the penny into the pocket of her jeans.

  “You’re wondering why I’m here.” Helen’s voice made it barely a question.

  Sarah couldn’t look her in the face.

  “You’re wondering why you’re here,” Helen added.

  She was.

  “Well, Sarah, maybe we’ll figure it all out by the end of the course. We can talk more about history some other day. Time to go back into class.”

  Historic Jewish Population

  ............................................

  193516,728,000

  194511,000,000

  195011,297,000