The Street Sweeper

by Elliot Perlman

  Within minutes Adam was in a dimly lit basement with some boxes filled with the files and papers of an academic psychologist who had worked there some fifty to sixty years earlier. Alone, Adam started to question the sense of the expedition. Not knowing exactly what to do next, he took out a pen and notebook and started jotting down whatever random facts of interest he could find while at the same time trying to shut out the voice in his head, his own voice, telling him in sharp and shrill bursts that he was a charlatan.

  So … It wasn’t until 1939 that Armour College and Lewis University merged to become the Illinois Institute of Technology or, as everyone seemed to call it, IIT.

  Adam had heard of Armour. An important Chicago figure or family, yes, but who was Armour, exactly, again? Then he read that Armour College was the bequest of Chicago’s Armour meat slaughtering, processing and packing dynasty. The Lewis money came from real estate back in one of Chicago’s booms.

  Henry Border had been there from at least the time of the merger in 1939 in what was then the Department of Psychology and Philosophy. Before 1939 he had taught part time at Lewis, whose students were working class and/or immigrants, mostly men who, for various reasons no document of the time would make specific, were unable to get into the University of Chicago or Northwestern. Border himself, though, got his PhD from Northwestern some time in the 1930s. Adam read that he was a ‘student of Wundt’. Who the hell was Wundt? Wundt, he discovered, was the ‘father of experimental psychology’. That sounded impressive. What was Wundt’s student doing teaching workers and immigrants part time at a nascent mid-western university? And how deep was the interest in psychology, experimental or otherwise, of the no doubt numerous workers and immigrants enrolled there as students? But Border could have been Wundt’s ‘student’ only in the sense of following Wundt’s methods or belonging to some Wundt-inspired school of thought because Wundt’s famous proto-typical experimental psychology laboratory was in Germany, in Leipzig. Furthermore, Wundt died in 1920 so Border can have been his student only in the way he was also a ‘student’ of Francis Bacon who died in the seventeenth century. What an embarrassing waste of time this could be.

  ‘You’re such an idiot,’ Adam whispered to himself. ‘The only saving grace here is that no one can see you wasting your time like this.’

  *

  ‘I fell asleep in their second floor what was not yet finished,’ Mr Mandelbrot continued. ‘The cold came in through the missing windows but I was exhausted and fell asleep very quickly. The next thing what I knew was the SA man standing over me in the dark. I didn’t know where I was. It was morning but the sun was not yet up. He looked down at me and said good morning. He had come to wake me before the civilian workers came to start work on the second floor where I had slept. He told me I had to go. If I made it through the day I could come back there. I said good morning to him.

  ‘I went down the ladder and away from the house into the streets. I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe I should go back to the ghetto. My parents, my family, didn’t know where I was but I heard and then saw the work detail from the ghetto being led from the streets of the ghetto on the way to work. I hid and watched them go past under guard, none of them talking or they could be struck. I looked at them and saw what I must have looked like the day before this. What should I do?

  ‘I spent that day hiding in the streets around the ghetto wondering what should I do. At night when the sun was gone and when I knew the civilian workers would be gone, I went back to the house of the SA man and his wife. Had I done the right thing? I didn’t know. Every day I didn’t know what was the right thing to do from one minute to another minute, but if you were still alive it means it was the right thing to do. But you only knew when the minute had passed and then you had no time to relax; you had to think of the next minute. I heard that they had started taking the Jews of Dabrowa Gornicza to a ghetto in Sosnowiec. Perhaps my family had already gone or would go the next day. Should I go to try to find them? Were they still all together? Maybe it was too late to find them in Dabrowa Gornicza. Would I be killed just trying to get back into the ghetto? I stayed like this upstairs in the house of the SA man every night for five or maybe six weeks until one day the SA man and his wife invited me to supper.

  ‘They sat me down at a table in their kitchen. He was on my right side, she was on my left. I was in the middle of them. The table, I remember, had a white lace tablecloth. There was more food on the table than I had seen since the war started. Chicken, cabbage, everything was there. They told me I should eat. I wanted to eat everything on the table but I started off slowly so that they would start to eat and not see how hungry I was. In the ghetto I was hungry every minute. I could see them looking at each other, the man and the wife. They kept looking like they had something they wanted to tell me and then he said it. The second floor would be finished very soon and this night was going to be my last night there. After this dinner the wife couldn’t look at me.

  ‘By now they had definitely begun the process of collecting the people what were at the ghetto at Dabrowa Gornicza to take them all what were still alive to Sosnowiec, those who had not died of starvation or of some disease. I thought that if my family was still alive they would be now probably in the ghetto at Sosnowiec. You can say it, Sosnowiec. Mr Lamont, you say it.’

  ‘Sos-nov-ietz.’

  ‘I could not stay any more at night in the second floor of this Volksdeutsche SA man and his wife and I decided to go to Sosnowiec. So I began this journey to Sosnowiec. Through my father and the butchery business what he had and my own dealings I knew a lot of farmers and a lot of the people around from the villages what were in the area. There were many places I could go where the people, Poles –’ ‘Not Jewish?’

  ‘Not Jews, of course not. Jews then, all Jews in Poland were in a ghetto or hiding or they were dead. These were non-Jewish Poles, Polish farmers, and I knew them but I was ashamed to see them like this. I was wearing the same clothes what I had on. They knew what was happening to the Jews; some of them were sad about it, some were happy to see it and some didn’t care so much but they liked me. I couldn’t stay with any one of them for too long because it was dangerous for them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the Nazis were killing Poles what were caught helping Jews and they made sure all the Poles knew this. I decided I would try to get into the ghetto at Sosnowiec to see if I could find my family. Maybe it was stupid but I didn’t ever know what might be clever and what might be stupid and I wanted to see my family. There was a part of Sosnowiec, a suburb, called Szrodula and the Germans moved all the Polish Christians out of Szrodula and made it a gated ghetto for the Jews of Sosnowiec and other Jews what came from around there. But by the time I got there they had already some time even a year or more earlier begun the deportations from Sosnowiec and I was told about this. The SS, you know what that is?’

  ‘I know … I’ve heard of it but –’

  ‘The SS – it stands for Schutzstaffel – was the elite armed force of the Nazi regime, an armed force on top of the regular army, and they had responsibility for the Nazi program against the Jews. From time to time the SS would order a large group of Jews from the ghetto to assemble in the town square with their families. These round-ups, what was called an Aktion, was repeated till there were no Jews left in the ghetto. Each Jew was made to pass in front of what was called a deportation commission who sent the Jew into one of four categories. You could be employed in a factory what was considered essential to the German war effort. Such a Jew would stay in the ghetto. This was one category. You could be transferred to Germany as slave labour for a labour camp. This was another category. You could be sent to another different camp or you could be in a category what they hadn’t decided about you yet. These were the four categories.

  You can imagine, Mr Lamont, that people from the one family would be split up into different categories. People would try to stay together with their family members so they would try to go
into some other category other than what was selected for them. When this happened the person trying to cross to another category would be shot on the spot in front of the family members what they were trying to join. The bodies would just lie there. These Aktions could last till midnight.’

  *

  Deep in the Galvin Library at IIT in Chicago, Adam found a reference to a psychological museum, the Chicago Psychological Museum. What was a psychological museum and what did it have to do with Border and why should Adam Zignelik, a professor of twentieth-century political history, care? There was an article from The Chicago Daily News dated 27 March 1944. Dr Henry Border was inviting the public to attend the newly established Chicago Psychological Museum to see ‘exhibits and demonstrations of psychological apparatus testing vision, hearing, taste and smell’. There was something called a driver’s clinic testing perception. It was all situated in the Lewis Gymnasium at IIT. Border had established the museum and was its curator.

  ‘Look, sweetheart, your psychologist has the instincts and the tendencies of a historian,’ he heard Diana whisper.

  ‘You’re clutching at straws,’ he replied.

  ‘No, the man was a collector. Whatever this museum was, Border recognised that the methods, the practice and research of this discipline examining human behaviour in the middle of the twentieth century deserved recording. It deserved historical documentation.’

  ‘Oh, okay. And when I die will you find someone to research me researching him to show the last desperate flailing of a soon-to-be out of work early twenty-first-century historian? You’re not helping me.’

  ‘No, I am.’

  ‘No, you’re really not. It doesn’t help to encourage me to waste my time and make a fool of myself.’

  ‘Time is something, just about the only thing, you’ve got. As for making a fool of yourself, you said it yourself before, no one can see you. Who even knows you’re here?’

  ‘That junior psych academic and the Chief Librarian, they know I’m here. He told her I was here, told me to go and see her if I had any questions.’

  ‘Do you remember their names?’

  ‘His name is Phil something. I’ve got his surname written down in my notes and her name is …’

  ‘You don’t remember her name.’

  ‘It began with an “S”. It was unusual sounding. What’s your point? I’m wasting my time.’

  ‘Keep reading. She doesn’t remember your name, doesn’t even remember you’re here. Forget about shame.’

  But the Chief Librarian clearly did remember that Adam was there because he saw her walking towards him with some papers in her hand.

  ‘Are you Dr Zignelik?’

  ‘Adam, yes.’

  ‘Phil Tolson told me I’d find you here. I’m Sahera Shukri. I’m the Dean of Libraries.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sahera, I meant to introduce myself to you earlier but I …’ Adam trailed off as they shook hands.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I’d meant to show you round the library but the day has gotten away from me. Phil said you’re a historian from Columbia.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you have an interest in Henry Border.’

  ‘Well, I might have an interest in him.’

  ‘You know, this isn’t everything we have of his. It’s all we have here in the Galvin Library but the university might have some more that’s not here yet.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, Eileen Miller, the Dean of Psychology, told me she thinks there might be more of his papers somewhere in their department but she hasn’t got around to checking if they’re all his and then sending them to us. And as you can see we haven’t really begun sorting out what she’s already sent us. No one thought there was any particular urgency to it so I’m afraid your visit finds us a little embarrassed.’

  ‘Oh there’s no need to be embarrassed on my account. Believe me! Do you know much about Border’s work?’

  ‘No, almost nothing. By now you’d know more about him than I do. No, I guess Eileen knows more about him than anyone else here. Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘No, Phil Tolson said she’s away till tomorrow. My timing’s not great. I came out here sort of on a hunch.’

  ‘Well, I received something in the mail a little while back from a retired colleague of mine who used to work here at the library and your visit prompted me to remember it.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘My colleague’s uncle used to work at IIT back in the ‘50s and he passed away not long ago. My friend was cleaning out her uncle’s attic and she found some pages from an old IIT newsletter. I think it’s from some time in the early ‘50s. You’d have to look. This one says 1951. There’s a bit here about Border and a psychological museum and I’ve meant to add it to the pile. Your visit has prompted me to get down here. Do you want to take a look? I can leave it with you if you’ll just add it to the pile when you’re done. I’m going to have to leave soon. It was nice to meet you. Love the accent, by the way. Are you British?’

  ‘No, my mother was Australian. My father was a New Yorker. The accent comes from my mother.’

  ‘It’s very nice. Good luck, Adam. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’

  *

  ‘Like always, I didn’t know what to do. If I went to live in the ghetto I could get caught in an Aktion but I wanted to try to find my family. I had a chance of being selected to work in a local factory for the German war effort but also a chance of being selected in the other categories. I decided I would try to live outside the ghetto but I would try to survive smuggling things into and out of it. The people what were left there were always hungry. There was never enough food. Never. As people became more and more desperate to have food they were more and more willing to give up something what they had brought with them into the ghetto.’

  ‘Like a piece of clothing or something?’

  ‘Yes, clothing, a watch, a child’s toy; something like this. What I did was take these things out of the ghetto and –’

  ‘Smuggle them?’

  ‘Smuggle them, yes, out of the ghetto and sell them to the people what my father and me had known from in the country and in the villages. I could get money. I could get food and bring it back into the ghetto. This is what I did.’

  ‘And your family?’

  ‘My family? When I got to Szrodula, to the ghetto at Sosnowiec, they were not there. What I needed to be able to smuggle out urgently was some good clothes that were not too torn or too old.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because outside the ghetto I couldn’t be invisible and if people saw me they had to think I was a Pole.’

  ‘A Christian Pole?’

  ‘Yes. From what was left from Jews what were already gone I got some clothes what were in better condition than what I had from Dabrowa Gornicza which I had been wearing completely every day and even a brief case. So when someone saw me outside the ghetto they wouldn’t notice me.

  ‘I smuggled like this for some time when one day I was at a tram stop outside the ghetto.’

  ‘In Sosnowiec?’

  ‘Yes, I was in Sosnowiec. I had to go maybe four tram stops and then quite a distance on foot. I was already outside the ghetto and I was just standing there waiting for the tram. I was looking left and looking right, trying not to look to anyone, you know, suspicious. On the other side of the tram stop there was something like a small hill. Suddenly, there is a meeting of eyes, a face-to-face meeting of eyes; my eyes and the eyes of someone looking out at me from over the other side of the small hill. I knew who this was. It was the boy from Zabkowice. He was older and now he was in Sosnowiec but I knew straight away that this was the boy who had called me a Jew what I had to fight when I was younger. We looked at each other, each with probably the same memory of the past. He had seen me so there was no point looking away. I had to stare right back in his eyes hoping that the memory would frighten him away. Who knew what had happened to him in the years since I had made him quiet in front of the
other boys? He looked and thought and I looked and I thought for about two or three minutes. Then he disappeared. I thought maybe I had scared him away with my look and the memory it was meant to deliver but even so I wanted very much for the tram to come and take me away. Other people were now waiting for the tram and I thought that maybe I could blend in but within maybe five minutes a very tall well-dressed man came from behind the small hill. He had with him a huge dog and behind them both was my schoolyard colleague with the very straight hair. The man walked up to me in the middle of the crowd with his dog. He did not even look at the other people what were waiting also for the tram and, in German, he told me I was under arrest.’

  ‘Was he a soldier?’

  ‘No, he was a civilian.’

  ‘Was he a … Volksdeutsche?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Lamont, he was Volksdeutsche.’

  ‘How could he arrest you if he was a civilian?’

  ‘He was a German, I was a Jew and I had been caught outside the ghetto and without the yellow Jewish star what they made us wear. If it wasn’t for the dog I would have run. But the dog was very, very big. The tall man with the dog took me to the civilian police.’

  ‘German?’

  ‘Yes. The civilian police took me to an interrogation room to find out how long I had been out of the ghetto and especially where I had been hiding. If I had told them about the people my father and I knew what had let me stay in their barns and on their farms and properties, all these people, they would all have been killed. So I wouldn’t say who gave me shelter. They ordered me to undress to my underwear and made me get down sitting on the floor with my legs out. They got two sticks and put one between each elbow and each knee so that I was bowed in a semi-circle with my head touching the ground. Then they beat me.’