“In Gross-Rosen I came to see Rothschild and Adler and Rabbi Hirsch as chaperones who knew that liberation was close, that it would take just one more little effort, a stroke of luck. And indeed, near the end of the war I was transferred from Gross-Rosen to an auxiliary camp. Then to another camp. And another. Towards their end, damn them, as if the Germans did not know what to do with me, they transferred me again and again. Finally they put me in a little camp near the Polish town of Walbrzych, which was not far from Waldenburg camp, where your father was with his father. In that camp, things were relatively comfortable. I worked at a sort of carpentry shop. It was work for work’s sake, not for death’s sake, and the foreman was an elderly German man. There was little food and I was ill, but survival was possible. I spent a month there, no more. The Russians came, the Germans fled, and I was set free. With me, everything happened simply. No last minute torture, no death march, no burning huts with inhabitants still inside, no being buried alive in a pit. I was simply set free.
“Then there was a difficult period of freedom. The world was in shambles, and I was all sickness and hunger. But we overcame. Nu, there was life, the Kadosh Baruch Hu gave life and commanded that we live, and you cannot imagine my joy when, in Bochnia, I met Feiga. But before that, in the last camp, I had another encounter, a unique one. Of all the people I met in my days, none was as important as this brief meeting.
“In our camp I found a prisoner who drew my attention for some reason. He was a sick man, lying silently on a cot, barely able to get up. He walked softly to the latrine, conversing with no one. He was fairly young, around thirty, but his face was drawn and old. For some reason I felt pity for him, as if I somehow still contained pity, and one day I went to him and gave him a piece of bread. I was deathly ill, my condition no better than his, and yet I offered him my bread. He thanked me with a limp wave of the hand and rejected my offer. He motioned with his fingers — perhaps I had a cigarette? For some reason I rushed around as if commanded by a great Admor. I searched the camp for someone who would trade food for a cigarette, and went back to the patient to give him the gift. Two real Eckstein cigarettes.
“He smoked one cigarette. Then the next one. I sat waiting at his feet for the devil knows what. But from that day we became connected. I would sit at his side, looking into his pale face as he smoked cigarettes. I noticed that he did not eat, and I tried to entreat him. But he dismissed my pleas completely. Strange, I had yet to hear his voice or learn his name, and yet I felt that I had found a friend. He too bowed his tired head, welcoming my arrival. I found myself sensing an increased desire to help, to encourage the man, to tell him about Rothschild, about Adler, about Hirsch. And indeed I began to tell him my stories, the entire past. From day to day I could see the man weakening, as if he did not want his life and was actually beckoning death to approach. I implored him to gain strength. ‘Life is holy!’ I told him.
“One day I heard from some people that the man came from the village of Kalow. I tried to engage him in conversation. ‘His honor is from Kalow, so I hear? A long way his honor has traveled. Nu, these times… In Kalow, did you happen to know the ‘Fledgling Tree,’ the Rabbi of Kalow?’
“His lips whispered, ‘I am the Rabbi of Kalow.’
“I was stunned into silence. Not just for a brief moment, but for whole days. I continued to tend to him, kneeling at his feet. What were my stories, all my worthless tales of Hirsch and Adler? Who knew what this man was engaged in during his moments of silence, in what secret and wonderful worlds the Rabbi of Kalow, the Fledgling Tree, roamed, he and none other, while I intruded on his visions with my Feiga here, and Ahasuerus there. With my idle talk I was putting spokes in the wheels of a true holy man, the Rabbi of Kalow! The author of important new interpretations of Torah that had sent shockwaves from the farthest corner of Galicia all the way to the land of Lithuania. I looked into his pale face, which now appeared clean and pure, and I was overcome. The Rabbi of Kalow!
“The next day I moved to the cot next to his. I would be quiet and would be an aid. I would save the Rabbi of Kalow from the claws of death. I would feed him, give him water, guard him. But my longing to talk, to regale him with what was in my heart, would not let go. I was quiet but full of questions — about pirates, about their mitzvahs, about the diminished questions. I wanted to ask the Rabbi of Kalow, ‘Why, why the annihilation?’
“But the Rabbi was not there to be questioned. He silently smoked the cigarettes I brought him. Once in a while he posed a question and I responded as concisely as possible, so he would understand my answer correctly without a single superfluous word. He asked about Bochnia, about my family, my engagement. Then he surprised me by saying, ‘My wife Rachel and I were not blessed with children. It was not His wish, Hashem, blessed be He.’
“I already knew this, having heard that the Rabbi of Kalow was not blessed by Hashem with offspring, and that hundreds of Jews used to come to him for fertility blessings. He was known as a curer of barrenness.
“And so we counted the days until liberation. Rumors abounded, and we could hear the Americans bombing. Echoes of cannons, rumors of Russian artillery. The prisoners were excited, the Germans anxious and tense. Only the Rabbi of Kalow was in his own world. He lay on his bed communing with other spheres. I introduced him to the other prisoners and promised he would be our savior. Here, this is the Fledgling Tree, the Rabbi of Kalow, our hope. People dismissed him with a mumble of indifference, perhaps contempt. What did they care about one more rabbi? In any case, they hinted, the pure rabbis had all been killed in the crematoria. Whoever was loyal to his people was gone now. These weary people did not understand, they missed the hidden intentions of the Rabbi of Kalow, and even if I myself did not entirely understand them, I did see their beauty, like the face of a bride through a veil.
“The Rabbi of Kalow was unaffected by the prisoners’ opinions. Like us, he was imprisoned behind fences, but his soul danced freely wherever the good Lord took him. I was his servant, I fed him soup, found him cigarettes, while he tended the plains, measured the heavens.
“One day he put his hand to his tired face as if returning from an exhausting thought, and told me, ‘When you have a son, name him Moshe.’
“‘Moshe?’
“‘Name him Moshe, and he will be the savior of Israel!’
“He turned away from me and sunk into his contemplations.
“I let him be and went to wander through the huts and latrines. I examined the fences and the buildings and the entire world. The future suddenly seemed solid and tangible. I saw Feiga and myself embracing a child. The hope for liberation that had remained in my heart through all the camp years in a shapeless, faceless form, suddenly took on a simple outline. Here was the future — not the future I had barely known how to sketch back in Ravensbrück, but a corporeal future, a future that would not be stolen from me! I was ill, hungry, and weak, but I had ceased doubting. I knew that I would live, that I would be free.
“Soon, time itself joined the flight of my souclass="underline" liberation day was approaching. The whole camp could hear the beat of freedom, the prisoners were growing anxious, trying to fortify themselves for one more day, one more hour. Only the Rabbi of Kalow remained outside the flow of time, still in his own world. He was no longer accepting the soup I brought him, he rejected bread, even cigarettes. He did not rise from his bed. He lay with his eyes open as if standing on guard, not here, but in some loftier world, and his hand weakly dismissed my words, my pleas, my attentions.