by Otto Kraus
‘Read,’ said Alex Ehren again and held the card close to his face. He was angry now and he tightened his grip on the child’s arm.
‘I won’t.’
‘Today you will.’
The little boy shook his head. ‘I can’t read,’ he said in a huff. ‘You never taught me.’
It was a lie and an unfair accusation and he held the boy’s arm so tight that he winced. He had tried harder with Adam than with any other child, but even when the brat did attend a lesson his mind was on the wild things he saw at the Capo’s cubicle.
He taught him the letters and the syllables and then some short words. It was like eating sand and pebbles but Alex Ehren was perseverant and unwilling to be defeated by a small boy, however fierce and corrupted he might be.
One day something happened that broke the ice between them and afterwards they were friends at least for some time. He discovered, quite accidentally, that the boy had an extraordinary gift for poetry. His words flowed like a natural stream, a brook that cascaded from a mountain, or rather like a subterranean river that suddenly burst above ground. He didn’t have many words but what he said was bold and fresh and painted in sharp colours, sometimes terribly profane but still touched with a sensitivity of soul.
Adam Landau wasn’t an innocent child; he had lived in captivity for three years and was infected with the rot that grew on people in the ghettos and concentration camps. For much of his time he was in the company of the Capo, who had been an executioner in the ghetto, who lured women into his cubicle with soup and a piece of bread and who was depraved and evil. The boy was a small, foul-mouthed brat, inconsiderate of others and cruel when it served his survival. But at the same time he was still a child and the few mornings he spent on the Children’s Block were, like Lisa Pomnenka’s wall, a window into a world of decency. He was, Alex Ehren thought, like an evil imp with the wings of an angel, a rotten apple with a sweet core.
The Maccabees never won a citation for orderliness because even if the girls – Majda and Ina, and the twins Eva and Hanka – shushed the boys to be silent and work at their assignments, there was always one with unwashed ears, or a messy bunk, or another one reported for foul language at which Himmelblau clicked his tongue and took off a point.
Yet far more important than points for cleanliness was the competition for creativity. The best drawings and the best poems and stories were hung on the wall, where they remained until the next Wednesday, when they were replaced by the new winners. The children drew, wrote little stories and prepared plays to be performed on the platform, which Shashek, the jack-of-all-trades and master of none, had hammered together over the middle section of the chimney stack. It wasn’t the prize, a handful of crumbled cake, that mattered, but the respect a child harvested when his drawing was pinned on the honour wall. They didn’t know it because it was never spelled out, but their stories and drawings and their puppet theatre were a revolt and a mutiny against the German attempt to rob them of their humanity and reduce them to an animal existence.
And as long as they wrote stories and painted and danced, even if their art was often trivial or mediocre, they were still victorious because their artefacts were a shield against exposure to death.
Adam had to memorise his words, because, unlike other competitors, he couldn’t read from a piece of paper. At the beginning he stumbled and stuttered but towards Wednesday he recited the whole poem smoothly and almost without a mistake.
It was difficult to work with the boy, who lacked discipline and who, like a wild animal or a squirrel, was distracted by every sound and movement on the Block. Alex Ehren felt proud when the boy finally climbed on the platform and recited the poem in his high-pitched childish voice. He got stuck once or twice, and Alex Ehren had to help him with the next line, but even so the Block grew silent with the magic the poem had woven between the child and his audience. He was the smallest child who ever won the weekly poetry prize and he stepped down from the stage and walked through the Block with the bearing of a cockerel and a hero. In the following weeks he wrote more poems with Alex Ehren but he never won first prize again.
Himmelblau kept the winning poem together with other children’s stories and drawings in a cardboard box on his shelf. The poem was called ‘Green’:
A green world
With a green door
And a bird with green feathers
On a train
We ate darkness.
The smoke was my brother
Who ran backwards with the trees
A man in a shirt like blood
Cut a field
In half.
Today I am big
And have a knife
To cut my fear
In half
But also people.
Of course it was a childish poem, which had no rhyme and whose rhythm was haphazard and loose, but it was genuine and it won the first prize in spite of its cruelty and shortness. When Alex Ehren wrote down the words, his heart went out to the little boy, who remembered the green world of his distant past. He was a pest and didn’t let Alex Ehren teach arithmetic and bits of natural history, but still Alex Ehren understood why Himmelblau never raised his hand against a child, save against Foltyn, the youth assistant who hadn’t warned the teachers of the approaching Block Senior. For he couldn’t forget, not even for a moment, that the boy would never grow up, never fall in love, never sleep with a woman or look back at an accomplished life.
They would all die – the fair-haired Majda, Bubenik who drummed time on his bowl, the dark-skinned Hanka with her rag doll and the boys who fought among themselves and cheated at marbles – they all would die and not survive the end of June. It wasn’t a good poem, but in the context of their short lives it sparkled and shone like a firefly in darkness, because in some strange and inexplicable way, it carried an intimation of immortality.
Some doubted that Adam had authored the poem himself and chided Alex Ehren for his assistance.
‘Sticking your feathers into Adam’s cap,’ said Fabian when he read the poem on the wall. ‘The brat cannot read and you exhibit him as a poet. Lucky for you that Himmelblau swallowed the hoax, hook, line and sinker.’
Alex Ehren felt hurt but in the evening admitted that he had helped the boy with the spelling of difficult words like ‘feathers’ and ‘knife’ and had corrected the sentence structure.
‘You’ve always been a fool,’ said Fabian. ‘First you cheat and then you admit your sin. If you stick to a lie long enough it becomes the truth.’
He didn’t believe in what he had said, since, in spite of their starvation, none of the instructors would steal bread from a child or fellow inmate.
* * *
April began with a string of warm days and Magdalena took the kindergarten children behind the Block. They stood in the sun and followed the light with their upturned faces like a field of flowers. The children arrived at the Block early because their mothers worked additional hours at the Weberei und Flechterei, the weaving sweatshop, where they produced ammunition belts for the German army.
On the first of April the children celebrated All Fools’ Day, and there was much giggling and whispering among the pupils. They came out joking about increased bread portions, an exchange of the Czech prisoners for trucks and gold, or a sudden landing of the Americans in France, all of which, needless to say, was based on nothing but their imagination and wishful thinking.
The instructors went along with the jokes and pretended that they believed. Later in the day the grown-ups swapped roles with the children, who then conducted the lessons, organised games and even handed out the evening bread ration. One of the older children, a thin boy called Aryeh, impersonated Himmelblau and threatened everybody that he ‘will two boxes on thine ear you give’, which caused much mirth and laughter.
Yet the warm spell also liberated the germs that had lain frozen during the winter months and there was an outbreak of infectious diseases and festering wounds. Two of Beran’s childre
n contracted typhoid fever and lay in the infection ward of the Hospital Block opposite the Children’s Block. Their friends crossed the road and tapped on the wooden wall but the male nurse chased them away,
‘Sha,’ he said and waved his hands in the air. ‘Go away, you little fools. There is nothing the German doctor dislikes more than typhoid fever. He stopped visiting the hospital and wouldn’t even see his precious twins. If there’s an epidemic we’ll all go up the chimney. Sha, go back to your Block and don’t come here again.’
The awareness of the impending mutiny pervaded all their activity. Alex Ehren worked with the children, argued with his friends about politics and Palestine and in the afternoons ate his bread with Lisa Pomnenka. And yet the uprising was with him all the time, in his waking hours and in his sleep, when he visited an old relative and when he was alone or with Lisa, because the thought of the fire, the fighting and the possible escape were stronger than his love for the girl.
He was more fit now than he had been a month ago, but worried about his task. He joined the children’s sport lesson behind the Block to strengthen his muscles. Sometimes he looked at the wires that ran high around the camp and wondered whether he would be strong enough to cast the heavy anchor and cause a short circuit. He found a blue-veined rock on the road and exercised with it, lifting it to his chest and lowering it to his knees. The strain left him pale and exhausted but he persevered, afraid that because of his weakness he would fail his comrades. In his mind he saw the welded hooks and pipes, but the more he thought about them the heavier the contraption grew. He would have liked to see the iron thing again, to touch it and become familiar with its weight and shape, but Felsen wouldn’t let him visit the ward. Alex Ehren didn’t speak about his task, not even with Beran or Hoch with whom he shared the bunk, but the children noticed his rock lifting and the girls whispered behind his back and giggled.
‘I know what you are doing,’ said Majda, touching the end of her ash-blonde braid. ‘We all know.’
‘Yes?’ he asked, fearing that the children had found out about the uprising.
‘You think Lisa Pomnenka will love you more if you are strong.’
There were no secrets on the Block, though certain things remained unsaid. He was relieved that they seemed unaware of the anchor and his assignment.
5.
THEY WOULD NEVER HAVE CELEBRATED Passover without Dezo Kovac. The music teacher was small and dark-skinned and his eyes were narrow and sparkling. He had been born in Slovakia, and his speech had a lilting Hungarian accent, which, together with his religion, made him different from the others. Sometimes Alex Ehren saw him pray opposite the wall, the rocking backwards and forwards, with his eyes closed and his lips forming Hebrew words.
‘No Passover for me,’ said Hynek Rind. ‘Isn’t it bad enough to be a Jew? Why rub it in?’ He pointed his finger towards the roof. ‘God?’ he asked. ‘If there was anybody up there I wouldn’t be in here.’ He looked around and laughed bitterly. ‘Or if he is up there he sure doesn’t give a damn.’
The Seder feast was a dangerous enterprise but all camp life was dangerous, thought Alex Ehren, because people died so easily. Each day there were trains with new arrivals, men and women and little children, who were beaten into rows of five and marched away. Alex Ehren watched them through the barbed-wire fence and sometimes caught wisps of their voices carried by the wind. They spoke many languages: Polish, Russian, Hungarian or even French. In his first camp days he wondered where the Germans would lodge them in the overcrowded barracks.
The transports were like rivers flowing into the sea, multitudes of human beings. Sometimes there was a train or two each day, boxcars that arrived full of people and left empty or loaded with loot. How did the Germans dispose of the excess deportees, the old, the sick who were not strong enough for labour, and the children? There were too many prisoners, endless crowds that seemed to well up from the depth of the earth, and as there were so many, he thought with horror, their life had no value. It was as if for each Jew that died there were ten others to take his place and so there was no end to the killing. And again, as always when Alex Ehren remembered his death, he gritted his teeth, and resolved that he wouldn’t die meekly.
They argued about the Passover feast for several evenings because some of the instructors shied away from the unnecessary effort, others thought about the danger and still others, like Hynek Rind, denied their Jewishness. Yet the longer they spoke the more real the idea became and with all the argument and contestation the project grew flesh and bones until all of them, some grudgingly and others with resignation, accepted the idea of the Seder night.
Dezo Kovac taught the children Passover songs, and even Fabian, who usually mocked matters holy and profane, climbed on the chimney, and when the children demanded ‘Alouette’, he shook his finger and made them sing one of the new tunes. The music teacher selected twelve children with the clearest voices and prepared with them Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’. Sometimes Himmelblau attended a rehearsal but wouldn’t join in, knowing how hopelessly out of tune he sang. It was a feverish week, and though they went about their daily tasks – washing in the morning, the games behind the Block, their reading and Marta Felix’s philosophy lessons – there was expectation in the air as if the Seder night were the most important event in their lives.
Some of the instructors bickered and others, like Felsen and his communist cabal, asked questions.
‘Why barter bread for a bone and a horseradish? Why not call it a freedom day and leave out the religious nonsense? What matters is to avoid the Germans’ attention.’
He met with men from other camps and they sat in the corner behind Shashek’s workshop and spoke of the uprising, of arms and ways to escape. The Children’s Block was the hub of the mutiny and Felsen was reluctant to arouse suspicion.
‘The Seder night is a symbol,’ said Beran slowly. ‘The Germans have taken away our homes, our jobs and our families. We are for them like vermin, less than human beings. The only thing we have are symbols. The children will forget their bread rations in a day but they will remember the Pesach celebration as long as they live.’
‘Until death do us part,’ added Fabian. ‘How long will they live?’
‘Of course the Seder night matters,’ Beran went on, disregarding Fabian’s black remark, ‘because it is—’ he groped for a word ‘—it is a token.’
‘What token?’
‘That miracles do happen. From slavery to freedom,’ and he circled his hand over the bondage of the wooden barracks with its leaking roof, the sooty chimney, the smell of decay, and the bunch of orphaned children who stayed on the Block because they had nobody to meet in their free hour.
‘Nonsense,’ Rind exclaimed testily. ‘A token of a fairy tale. Who believes in miracles? There are no miracles in hell.’ He laughed. ‘Even on Doomsday the Old Man won’t put us back together. Part of me blown away by the wind, another part in a cake of soap and the rest washed down the Vistula into the Baltic Sea. He won’t know which part to send to heaven and which to hell. Who needs a myth?’
‘We all do,’ said Beran, ‘because without a myth I am nothing. It’s easier to die with a myth. Whatever it might be. Something greater than myself.’ He stopped, embarrassed by his own words. ‘One has to belong,’ he said. ‘It’s not much to be a Jew, but it’s all I have.’ He grinned and touched his face with his sleeve. ‘I am a part of the Jews who lived in slavery but I am also a part of those who left Egypt and became free.’
‘I refuse,’ said Hynek Rind, and his voice was loud and angry. ‘There is no link between me and the Jews of your Bible. Three thousand years among the nations. A hundred generations of fornication and rape between their blood and mine. A dog is more wolf than I am a Jew. What about the Jews who lived among the Babylonians and the Persians? What about the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Turks and the Arabs with whom we mingled? There were Petljura and Chmielnicki and the Khazars on their shaggy horses, and people and tri
bes whose names I don’t remember. We slept with all of them, either by force or of our free will, and if you want proof, look around the Block. The Hungarian Jew has the slanted eyes and cheekbones of a Mongol, the Russian Jew the broad face of a Slav and the Sephardi looks like an Arab. Like his host nation,’ said Hynek Rind, ‘only more so.’
‘It’s not the blood,’ said Himmelblau, who, at the sound of the argument, had come closer, ‘it’s the awareness.’
‘Which leaves me out,’ said Hynek Rind, ‘for I have no awareness. The Germans branded me a Jew but who says I have to comply with it? I’ve given up Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. My forefathers climbed a different mountain and my promised land lies between the Elbe and the Moldau.’
For a while nobody spoke and Hynek Rind stood in their midst with his mouth defiant and his forehead low and aggressive.
It is strange, mused Alex Ehren, that with our death barely three months away, we argue about blood and myth and religion. We quarrel about politics and moral codes and how to celebrate the Seder as if our lives depended on our decisions.
* * *
Neither could Himmelblau have managed without the help of Julius Abeles. The Wednesday competition and Lisa Pomnenka’s painted wall were of importance, but Julius Abeles supplied the goods they needed for survival. On first sight he was like everybody else, fortyish and insignificant. Once the Kitchen Capo had caught him smuggling potatoes and broke his teeth, which made him speak with a lisp. On his arrival he carried stones and as he laboured side by side with Alex Ehren, he told him about his shop in a narrow street of old Prague.
‘Sold the business.’ He snapped his fingers and grinned. ‘Left it to an assistant for a trifle. Others waited for the Germans to grab it for nothing. He’ll keep the shop until I return. Reliable fellow. Leather is a safe investment because everybody wears shoes these days.’ He looked at his muddy clogs and shook his head. ‘Well, almost everybody. The rich do, the poor don’t. The same thing there and here. It’s the money that counts. The stupid starve but the smart survive.’
