The neighborhood does not change. Every evening, Uncle Antek turns on the huge radio and the inmates are counted in Auschwitz. Gershon Klima is down in the sewer. The occasional hospitalization, slightly less frequent. Twice a month is just too much at his age. Adella Greuner is still despised behind curtains. Haim Mintzer limps along Katznelson.
Sometimes outside, for a moment, the yell comes:
“Only saints were gassed?”
The world does not change, just grows old and more complicated. A scruffy beard and cracked lips. Doesn’t it ever get sick? Doesn’t it ever need help?
And Moshe? What will happen with Moshe? There he sits on the low fence.
Everything remains as it was.
Without even noticing it, we grew Old Enough. Dad started to talk with me. Cautiously laconic, only the bare facts. He told many stories — at-age-twelve-condemmed-up-against-a-wall-in-the-ghetto-a-German-SS-officer-puts-a-bullet-in-raises-his-rifle-suddenly-a-messenger-comes-with-an-order-to-stop-shooting-the-German-lowers-hisrifle-what-did-you-think-about-Dad-a-moment-before-the-shooting?I-don’t-know-I-just-thought-let-it-not-hurt. Then-in-the-camp-during-Selektion-they-sent-him-to-die-put-his-name-down-on-the-list-ofcondemmed-then-they-couldn’t-find-him-on-the-list-he-didn’t-wait-around-just-ran-to-the-ranks-of-those-chosen-to-stay-alive-and of all these stories, the most moving was a particular moment after the war. Dad tried to finish his primary school education. In the entrance exam he was required to submit an essay in Polish. The school headmaster asked him to write on “My Life Story.” And so Dad wrote his life story. When he came to get his grade, the headmaster asked him, “All this, everything you wrote in your essay…Did this really happen to you?”
Dad said, “Yes.”
The headmaster said, “Poor boy.” And caressed his head.
A simple gesture — an educator pats the head of a boy whose life has been difficult. But Dad was not a boy. He was already sixteen. The hand was caressing the head of the boy from the essay, who had already lived, who was no longer, whom no one had caressed when he was selected for death in Plaszow camp, on whom no one took pity when he was ill, when it was clearly just a matter of time before they put a bullet in him. The boy who stole food to keep his parents alive. Who was unable to keep them alive. Whose friends — all his friends from school, from the playground, from the screaming and shouting during recess — were dead. Gone. The hand caressed a subterranean boy, a non-boy. The caress was too late.
That caress had to traverse many light years and cross many firmaments to land, to settle, to show a natural motion, an educator-patting-the-head-of-a-boy-whose-life-had-been-so-difficult. Six years earlier, German educators had joined the ranks of the SS and the Gestapo. Polish educators had cooperated willingly, even when the victims were little children. Six years earlier, Dad had come to school for the first day of the third grade, and the homeroom teacher, Professor Wronewitz, had called the five Yids up to the front of the classroom to inform them that from that day onward they were no longer students at the school. He was following the orders of the Germans, who had recently occupied Poland. Just following orders. But the Germans had not ordered him to refer to the children he had been educating since the first grade as Kikes. The Germans had not ordered him to sweetly add, “Goodbye but not farewell.” Dad still remembers his smile.
A country beginning with P? The Philippines, Peru, Portugal, Pakistan. We silently agreed never to choose “Poland.” Revenge.
And Attorney Perl in the back room:
“Let us closely examine words from a command issued by Walter Von Reichenau, Commander of the Army Group South, as a spiritual guideline for the operating forces of the liquidation: ‘The soldier must fully understand the necessity of meting out severe yet fair retribution to the Jewish sub-humans.’ These words were intended to strengthen the spirits of soldiers engaged in the liquidation, and they represent an extremely prevalent frame of mind, which informed the way Jews were treated even by those who had nothing to do with the SS, such as anti-semites among the Polish civilian population, the collaborators.”
Circuitously, Attorney Perl found his way to Grandpa Yosef. A respectful friendship grew. The presence of the elderly man enriched our games of Categories. Attorney Perl observed the game, respecting its rules, amazed at the treasures of knowledge to which he was not privy.
A city beginning with M? Minatitlan. (The points go to Feiga.)
A country beginning with T? Tuvalu, the capital of which is, of course, Fongafale.
But in the back room of Attorney Perl’s store, the directions of amazement and knowledge were reversed:
— Emil Johann Puhl. Actively engaged in handling gold teeth collected in the death camps and storing them in the Reichsbank coffers. Sentenced to only five years in prison.
— Franz Rademacher. One of the greatest ‘desk-bound’ murderers, in his capacity as head of the German Foreign Office’s “Jewish Desk.” Escaped after the war to Syria, returned to Germany in 1966 and died before legal proceedings against him were concluded.
— Hauptsturmführer Hans Krüger. One of the most efficient and energetic murderers in the SS. Served as commander of a small border station in the Stanislawow district of Eastern Galicia. Although he commanded a tiny force of about twenty-five men, he managed to organize and implement the executions of some 70,000 Jews, possibly more. After the war he was not arrested at all, and was even bold enough to assimilate into public life and run for local parliament. Only in 1959 was he placed under investigation, and in 1968 sentenced to life in prison. He was released in 1986 and died two years later.
— Erich Koch, a founding member of the Nazi party. Reichskommissar of the Ukraine. Sentenced to death in 1959 for his actions, but his sentence was not implemented due to poor health. He lived on in prison until 1986.
— Alfried Krupp. Chairman of the Krupp family industrial conglomerate, which employed close to one hundred thousand forced laborers under conditions of slavery and terror. Sentenced in 1947 to twelve years in prison, but released in 1951. In 1953 he was restored to his previous position as head of Krupp industries.
— Richard Korherr, statistician. Author of the “Korherr Report,” a publication containing updated data on the number of killings and the number of Jews still populating each area throughout Europe. His work was used by Adolf Eichmann to enable the planning stages of the extermination. After the war he was investigated but never brought to trial.
Endless lists of bad Germans swarm through my memory like frenzied flies.
I asked Attorney Perl an ancient question. “Mr. Perl, were there bad Jews?”
Attorney Perl prepared for his reply. Rapped his knuckles on the empty kettle. Twirled a finger behind his ear as if pulling an imaginary side-lock. “Bad Jews…you have to understand that the Germans…they had methods. Jews…they wanted to live.”
He fell silent. A preparatory silence.
“First we must understand how far it is possible to go with the law. Where is the line from which we draw conclusions about who was good and who was bad? Up to a certain point, a person’s morality struggles and he must choose between options. After that, there is no control, you cannot judge or accuse. A person commits an act — turns in his mother, his father, his brother. And it is not his thoughts that issue the command, and not his faith that interferes. It is not the person who acts, but the molecules of his body. The molecules wish to exist, they tell the Germans, ‘There is the door, behind the oven, the bunker.’ They desire only to live, to stay together in some human form. Families turned in, friends turned in. It was not the person who betrayed, but the molecules, the corporeal level, and that cannot be judged. There was in our ghetto, in Bochnia, a family by the name of Zomer. One day the Germans caught them — an informant had told them that the Zomers, father and son, knew where other people were hiding in bunkers. I believe they were bakers and they secretly delivered bread to hiding places, so they knew everything. They were told to inform, otherwise they would be shot immediately. The son, a young man roughly your age, wanted to live and so he started to talk. The father ordered him, ‘Shut up and start undressing,’ because the Germans would not shoot people in their clothes, that would be a waste. The son obeyed. They took their clothes off. They were shot. They did not give up the bunker. And the son? Like you. He wanted to live. So where are good Jews and bad Jews? Where?”