Happy and unhappy.
As in the letter your brother Natek sends from Öreryd on December 21, 1945, just before the Polish Jews are to be moved to Tappudden-Furudal. The all-eclipsing shadow in Natek’s life is the uncertainty about what has happened to his wife Andzia (Chana) since they were parted on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The letter is addressed to Sima Staw in Łódź.
There’s a rumor that Sima Staw has survived Auschwitz and gone back to Łódź and might be able to answer the question of whether Andzia is alive or dead. But the rumor’s false. The letter instead reaches the hands of Sima’s sister, the woman who is to be my mother, and it’s through her that I much later find it in my own hands.
In parts, it’s undeniably a desperate letter: “I implore you, tell me everything, no matter what it is. This uncertainty is draining me.” In parts, nevertheless, it’s a letter from paradise:
Sweden’s a country where there is no anti-Semitism. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s no “Jewish question” at all. The standard of living is very high. The ideal of class equality has, quite simply, been achieved. There is no unemployment and no one goes hungry. And anyone who wants to work can do so, and live well from it, and if I had my wife here, my happiness would be complete. Sima! For God’s sake, don’t let your answer tarry!
While so many answers still tarry, some of you cycle the eight kilometers to master bricklayer Manfredsson’s in Hestra to pick potatoes. This is on the morning of September 26, 1945, and the formal request for the delivery of four named individuals from Barrack F arrived two days ago from the aliens’ section of the labor exchange in Öreryd. I suspect the aliens’ section is the only section there is at the labor exchange in Öreryd. The unspoken requirement for the job of potato picking is that you know how to ride a bike, which not all of you do. Nor, it transpires, do you all know how to pick potatoes. Each of you has been promised four kronor for the work, but the plants are not pulled up properly and lots of potatoes get left in the ground and the two-wheeled barrow on which you’ve loaded the potatoes tips over and has to be reloaded. What’s more, you eat like horses and the master bricklayer has to send his children out for more food.
I learn all this much later when the story is told to me by M.Z., who was the one who had to learn to cycle overnight, but who on the other hand knew more Swedish than the rest of you and had to do most of the talking as you sat around the table at Mr. Manfredsson’s house.
It’s a fond memory, I realize, that wobbly, late-summer bike ride through the countryside of Småland to your first job since the slave camps, even if I’m not quite convinced by all the details of these memories. Especially since so much else I ask about, things that seem more important, has been forgotten.
When I ask M.Z. about the potato picking, fifty-nine years have elapsed, and only fragments of this memory are left.
So I prefer to stick to the documents, as you know, and a written record of the potato picking in Hestra is to be found at the Swedish National Archives in Stockholm, Riksarkivet, as is your application to the State Aliens Commission on September 19, 1945, for permission to travel to the aliens’ camp in Gränna to visit your cousin Helena Wiśnicka.
I can’t deny that I’m surprised to find such an application, since I’ve never heard of such a cousin before. I’m not even sure such a cousin exists. Especially not after having read your letter to Haluś of April 6, 1946, in which your trip to Gränna is revealed in another light. The letter’s written in an increasingly dejected mood; three months have passed since the postcard in Furudal and Haluś is still in Łódź, and you are still in Alingsås, and the formal barriers to your reunion seem to multiply by the day. You’ve been worrying about Haluś’s state of mind ever since she wrote in her last letter that she’d started avoiding people. You immediately interpret this to mean that she’s sitting alone with her thoughts: “You mustn’t do that Haluś! Sitting alone with your thoughts is terrible for people like us!”
And as if to share her solitude in some way, you tell her about the time when you, too, were sitting alone with your thoughts, which happened to be the time of your trip to Gränna.
It was in my early days at Öreryd, when I still had no idea of your existence. We shipwrecked people certainly don’t lack reasons to lose our spirits. If the weather was nice we tried to forget by swimming and rowing at a nearby lake, or by walking in the forest and picking mushrooms. It was much worse when the weather turned bad, it was enough to drive you mad, and there were lots of rainy days like that. I had to get away for a few days, at any cost. I had no money for travel, nobody to visit, and nowhere to go. I cut down on cigarettes (in the camp we were given 5 kronor “pocket money” that was supposed to cover cigarettes and other small expenses) and I saved up a few kronor. Then I got on a bus without any real plan and went to the nearest town, Jönköping (known for its picturesque setting and its match factories). I wasn’t really supposed to travel because I still had no passport, but I didn’t care. The town is on a huge lake, with lovely hills all around. I was so dazed by it all that I forgot who I am and how I ended up here. After I’d wandered around for a couple of hours I felt so uneasy, so foreign (I couldn’t talk to people, I only knew a few words of Swedish) that I was on the verge of going back to Öreryd that same evening. But I put the thought out of my mind when I met two Hungarian Jewish women. They told me that in Gränna, about 60 km away, there was a Polish camp, and that I could get there by car, or by boat across the lake. So I went there, thinking I might meet someone who knew something about your fate.
When I got to Gränna it turned out there wasn’t a camp there after all, instead there were women billeted at hotels and boardinghouses (Gränna is a well-known spa and tourist resort) — Polish women, at that. I didn’t even have time to look around me and see which way to go before I suddenly hear someone calling: “Dawid! Dawid! My God, who is it that I see! Dawid’s alive!” And there in front of me is Estusia (red-haired Estusia, from the post office). Her first words were: “Where’s Hala, have you had any news of her?”
What happened next is hard to describe. Girls came streaming in from all directions and looked at me like a creature from another planet. All around me I can hear voices: “Has this guy been in a concentration camp? God, how is that possible, he looks like a normal human being, ein emes jiddisch jingl.”
I was rooted to the spot and didn’t know what to do with myself or what it was all supposed to mean. But suddenly it dawned on me that these women had come to Sweden before the end of the war (through the Red Cross), and therefore hadn’t witnessed the liberation. Which served to explain why my appearance came as such a pleasant surprise to them. A few hours before they left for Sweden they’d been lined up for roll call at Ravensbrück, opposite the men (I happened to have been one of those men, or should I say walking corpses). They kept me talking until late into the night, wanting to hear every last detail of the liberation.
The next day I went back to Öreryd. Before I left I had to make a solemn promise that I would come back for Rosh Hashana [Jewish New Year] and that I would bring a few more men with me, because they were planning a traditional New Year celebration, and without men it sort of wouldn’t work because they wanted to have the prayers, too [for a Jewish act of worship you have to have a minyan, that is, a gathering of ten Jewish men].
I kept my word and took a whole gang with me to the celebration. Since then, men keep going there from Öreryd and vice versa. That way, by simply asking around, many people have found out what happened to their relatives and friends. We took our turn and organized dances and invited the girls from Gränna to them. In short, we started having a bit of a social life again. And thanks to my first escapade in Gränna, there are now six couples. They’re scattered all over Sweden. Only one of the couples lives here in Alingsås.