When you learn it is possible to die, for the sound of a word uttered a century ago.
This takes me deeper into the verse and leads me to another poem, which concludes:
It is not the sound of the Angelus Bell,
It is only tears ringing an alarm.
Voices stammered, fitful crying
And the night smells of chamomile.
Good-bye.
During my later reading, I realized that the translator of my father’s poems had not dealt with the title page. I wrote asking her for it, and the response, by email, arrived almost immediately.
My father’s collection had a two-word title.
Drowned Lights.
CHAPTER 6 A Violent Yellow
It was a morning like many others, except that the elusive spring sun shone in abundance on London. I have lived in Britain for the best part of two decades. That day I had followed my usual routine: taken out our lazy basset hound and feisty terrier, overseen my children’s breakfast, battled to ensure that teeth were brushed and school uniforms donned, homework packed into the unicorn-adorned backpacks.
I walked my children to their school down the sycamore- and cherry-tree-lined lanes of our neighborhood. I chatted about exams and play dates with other parents at the school gates, picked up a black coffee at the Italian café by the underground station, and wandered into the park, tugged along by our eager dogs, both straining to chase squirrels and sniff out evidence of nocturnal happenings.
On my return, I found the postman approaching our house. He greeted me and handed over a small bundle of letters. I enjoy getting old-fashioned paper letters. There is a moment of connection in receiving an object, a physical link, that is lacking in the virtual instantaneity of email. I like to hold something that someone else has touched, unsealing the envelope that they have sealed, feeling the paper, reading the words they have formed in haste or with care. There is a ritual moment of anticipation and relish, an appreciation of the tiny decisions that led to the words reaching their destination in their own way. The color of the ink, the choice of stationery. I always look for the handwritten envelopes first and leave the tedious bills and notices until the end.
There was only one handwritten envelope that day among a sheaf of everyday commercial correspondence and I recognized my cousin Madla’s even and rounded script.
At that time, I had already been researching my family history for a few years, with a view to collating an account of some sort. My early inquiries had naturally included a request of my cousin Madla for any relevant stories or papers to add to the materials I was assembling from other sources. She had already sent me the box with the letters and Lotar’s album, which her mother had kept after he had died, but she seemed to have found some more loose bits and pieces here and there in unopened desk drawers and forgotten boxes in the attic; she had mentioned in an email that she was sending them to me. Madla and her husband, a retired immunologist, are keen sailors, and she had said she would post them before embarking on one of their expeditions. I had assumed she meant more photographs or papers, but the envelope felt oddly bulky.
As I carried it up the steps to the front door, I squeezed it. It contained something other than papers, something soft. I went inside and sat down at my desk by the window and moved the computer back to make room. I opened the envelope carefully and pulled out a disk and a postcard. I knew the disk would contain scans of papers, since much of the material, in particular the older letters, was too fragile to post. The picture on the postcard was a melee of blues, ochers, and greens, an oil painting of a seashore by Edvard Munch. As I took up the card to read it, a piece of fabric fell from the envelope to the floor.
As I write, I recall that I was struck by the brutality of the color. I did not make a sound or catch my breath, but I touched the fabric, and instead of bringing it up to my desk, I felt the need to move from the chair and take it with me down to the floor. There I sat cross-legged, in the spring light that poured through the windows. I stretched out the crumpled fabric so I could read the black words that I knew were there.
Jude.
Jude.
Jude.
I counted ten stars. All in rows, and within each was printed this word in a loping black script. Two sides of the cloth were straight and the rest jagged, angled where stars had been scissored out.
The thick weave of the cloth and the dissonant color were unexpected. The fabric is thickly woven, presumably to be more durable. The color is a very dark yellow, almost orange. It is the most strident and rude shade of yellow imaginable. It made me think of the sulfur yellow of New York City cabs. Obvious, glaring. Unmissable against any background, noticeable in any light. There were two pieces of this coarse fabric in the envelope, each covered in the stars bearing the stark words. Reminiscent of the dress templates for my daughters’ paper dolls, around each star’s border were small lines showing where the user was to cut. Someone had taken the time to design this, to make sure that whoever excised them had enough fabric left around the edges to be able to stitch them on, to make it easier for the designated wearers to label themselves for identification, exclusion, deportation, and far worse.
The shade of these stars was harrowing in its undeniability, its ugliness and intensity. I held the creased cloth, the same that my grandparents, uncle, and father had held, and realized that I too would have had to cut along those dotted lines and wear a star. As would my children. I would have had to sew one of these stars above the red unicorn on each of their school jumpers.
On September 1, 1941, all Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were compelled by decree to identify themselves with such stars. A fortnight later, the first batches were distributed, and all Jews were given three days to comply with the order. They were expected to wear a star whenever they were outside their home. They were warned that failure to bear the mark could result in a fine, a beating, imprisonment, or death by shooting.
As trustee, Otto would have been tasked with handing out the stars in Libčice. He would have had to collect the money, as the stars cost a crown each. The majority of Jewish families were not allowed to work and were living in miserable conditions, but they were still made to pay for the stars.
Lotar himself wrote later about the stars in a letter to his uncle in the U.S.:
Then came a further landmark in our lives; ignominious labeling with a yellow star. This was such a ghastly humiliation that many took their own lives rather than move amongst others differentiated and disgraced in this way. It gave every blackguard an opportunity to spit, slap or kick you. And it was as if the German SS men had found a new sport, that of throwing the Jew out of the moving tram. They would watch and laugh and wait to see whether the poor wretch would break a rib or an arm or a leg. The worse the break the louder the laugh. It was a prelude to what would come a month later in October 1941, the transports.
Apparently, the public labeling also fostered further anti-Nazi sentiment in the Protectorate. Some Czechs tipped their hats at Jews with the insignia, a sign of solidarity with the Jews and an open demonstration of defiance to the German invaders. These gestures of rebellion were sufficient to ensure that Nazis wasted no time in passing another law that any sign of deference to a Jew was henceforward considered a crime.
Initially, it struck me as strange that anyone would choose to keep this cloth. Then I realized that pieces like these had been stored in cupboards and packed in boxes and that those who survived had seldom opened them again. How could they bear to? Over seventy years on, even I, an inhabitant of a different world, could scarcely stand holding the thing.
The box that held the crumpled stars had also contained a pipe and a metal ring. Madla later told me that her father had shown them to her when she was young, but she had never seen the stars again until she found them, a few days before sending them to me.
I try repeatedly, but I cannot picture it. Not in color, not in shades of gray. Otto, Hans, Ella, and Lotar—all with their yellow
stars. I have very few photographs from this time, and although they would have had to wear them, the stars cannot be seen. They would certainly all have been forced to wear them outside their home, at work, as they traveled. Ella would have had to wear one each time she left the house in Libčice. If she had not worn it, she would have been unable to run errands and would have had to stop her riverside strolls. Lotar would have had to wear one as he walked around Prague, to his job and back.
Jews had been prohibited from leaving their place of residence since 1940, but Hans, Lotar, and Otto had obtained permits that allowed them to travel on the public transport system to work at Montana. A document issued in January 1941 is addressed to Becker, the despotic Nazi-appointed head of the family company. It is a permit, issued by the office of the senior Nazi representative for the Protectorate, the Reich Protector, allowing the Jews Otto Israel Neumann and Lotar Israel Neumann of Libčice to travel by train to work. Though these Jews must be replaced as soon as possible by Aryan workers.
Every morning beginning in September 1941, Otto and his two sons would have taken the train and the tram, and then walked in the gray commuter throng, with their strident yellow stars, the size of a fist, sewn onto their coats just above their hearts.
Otto and Lotar traveled to the Montana factory. Hans went to his job at the steelmaking plant of František Čermák. The proprietor was friendly with the Neumanns, as their businesses were near each other, and they had worked alongside each other for almost two decades. Steelwork was a crucial part of the war economy, and this prized job afforded some hope that Hans would not be sent to Lípa or elsewhere. Judging from my archive of documents and letters, it seems that Hans began to take things more seriously and that he applied himself to his job, working as many extra hours as he was allowed. An official letter on the Čermák company letterhead of April 1941 stated that he was a crucial member of the workforce and had quickly attained a managerial position despite being only twenty years old.
In the autumn of that year, Hans was instructed to deliver order letters from Čermák to another nearby factory. He walked in and met the owner’s daughter, Míla, who was working as a receptionist. A timid nineteen-year-old with curly hair and heart-shaped lips, she had Rilke’s Book of Hours open on her desk. Hans handed her the Čermák envelope and, noticing the book as well as the girl, managed to hold her gaze and muster a line by the poet: “Nearby is the country they call life.” Míla explained to her son many decades later that it was precisely at that moment that she fell in love with Hans.
Míla Svatonová in Prague, 1939
He would have been wearing a star when he walked into Míla’s office and wearing one when he met her after work. They took strolls around the streets of the industrial area, the park, cinemas, and restaurants being out of bounds to Jews. Míla loved to cycle, but Hans had been ordered to surrender his bicycle in October. A romantic atmosphere must have been elusive for the gentile girl and the Jewish young man with a yellow star on his jacket as they meandered between apartment buildings and factories. Yet Hans persevered and found flowers to bring along as frequently as he could. He spent his lunchtime breaks from work with Míla. They approached each other cautiously, and their connection germinated gradually. Many years later, Hans said to a friend that his relationship with Míla had started “at a time when anyone who indulged in the luxury of feeling emotion was a dead man.”
Amid it all, Hans also found time to spend with Zdeněk and his friends from college. Nevertheless, the constant pressure of battling with the daily commute to Libčice, holding down his crucial position at the factory, and scrabbling together the black-market supplies to support his family always took priority. There no longer was room in his life for Prankster Club meetings or writing poetry. Altering his behavior was not enough; Hans was also forced to suppress emotions. Even feeling those had become perilous.
Although Lotar continued to work in Montana legally, he availed himself of a false identity card without the bold J that was a required stamp for all Jews. With the help of Zdenka, Hans, Zdeněk, and their underground contacts, they had secured a “lost” identity card. This allowed him to spend time and live with Zdenka in Prague, unhindered by the prohibitions and anti-Semitism. In the black market that rose out of the occupation, one could source foods that were scarce to all or forbidden to Jews, items that could be used as bribes or things that could just lessen the strain: sugar, coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, foreign currency, medicine, even poisons, or official documents. False documents were costly and difficult to come by, and anyone caught with them could be shot on the spot. Yet they managed.
Hans and Zdeněk and a few students from their class in technical school had obtained the necessary chemicals to erase the original details on the lost card. They met Lotar in Zdenka’s apartment and spent days testing the solvents and carefully altering the document. They inserted a picture of Lotar and used an official stamp lent by some friends with a contact in the civil service.
Experts have remarked that this forgery was superbly well executed. Now, over seventy years later, the chemical treatment is fading, and the original owner’s details seem to be reemerging. But, then, it served its purpose perfectly for the time that it was needed. Lotar’s fake identity card bore the name of Ivan Rubeš, a suitably non-Jewish friend from university who bravely gave his blessing to the scheme. Lotar knew Ivan Rubeš well. If needed he could easily recall his birthday, his hometown, and details about his family. He could pass himself off easily as his friend. It was imperative that Lotar not be seen on the street together with his friend Ivan as gendarmes or Germans could ask for identification papers at any time.
Whenever the neighbors started to ask too many questions, Zdenka and Lotar moved from one apartment to another in Zdenka’s buildings. They moved at least six times between 1940 and the beginning of 1942.
In March 1942, Governmental Decree 85 was issued to complement the Reich legal code. The second paragraph forbade any citizen of the Protectorate to enter a marriage with a person of Jewish origin. The fifth paragraph went as far as to criminalize sexual relations between Jews and citizens of non-Jewish or mixed origins. Contravention of any of these rules was deemed a crime.
Fortunately, rumors of these prohibitions reached the Neumanns a few weeks in advance. In the early part of the year, Lotar was advised by many including Pišta, his friend at the Council, that he should remarry Zdenka while there was still time. The marriage might offer a chance to avoid, or at least delay, deportation.
The fear of jeopardizing Zdenka’s property persisted, especially as access to her assets provided a much-needed lifeline for the entire family. The deadline loomed. Lotar, Zdenka, and Otto were reassured by those in the know that the risk to property owned by gentiles in mixed marriages had lessened. It appeared that the Nazi administration’s focus had shifted from expropriations to segregation and transportation. The advantages of being married seemed to outweigh the threat to their finances. Above all, Lotar and Zdenka wanted to be with each other.
So it was that on February 25, 1942, just a few weeks before mixed marriages were banned altogether, Lotar and Zdenka quietly remarried. They were now legally allowed to live together once more. However, despite the technical legality of the union, the pressure on mixed couples to separate continued to mount. There was no celebration of the marriage this time. There are no photographs of that day. Public discrimination and everyday hostility also made life difficult. Lotar often resorted to using his fake papers to avoid the abuse and to lessen the impact of prohibitions in his daily life. By then so many laws had been issued against Jews that he was not allowed to go to a tailor or a barber, drive a car or ride a bicycle, use most trams, enter Wenceslas Square, visit libraries, walk in parks, sit on benches, or go to museums, theaters, or town squares. Whenever he was with Zdenka, he avoided wearing the star if he could.
Lotar did not have a permit to leave the city limits. Nonetheless, I know from the recollections that he and Zdenka
on occasion illicitly traveled to the country house to see Ella, who was, of course, confined to Libčice. On November 11, 1941, Ella, still hoping that the U.S. visas for the family would come through, wrote to the family:
I live here completely secluded from the world, like a nun. For months now I have not gone outside the front door. I am not proud of the badge, I am too modest. But what hurts me the most is the separation. You know me, my life belongs entirely to Otto and my boys.
Lotar would not have worn the star on those trips to visit his mother, as it would have attracted attention to his illegal movement. Instead, he used the card in the name of Ivan Rubeš. His safety, even his life, depended on evading detection. Lotar’s anxiety about the perils of arrest for breach of the increasingly nightmarish mesh of laws became such that by 1941, he had secured on the black market several small vials of cyanide that could be easily broken with the teeth. A single dose could kill in seconds. To Zdenka’s dismay, Lotar began carrying two vials, one for each of them, in his jacket pocket at all times.
People in the small provincial town of Libčice knew the Neumann family. Otto and Ella had first come to Libčice in the early 1920s as a newlywed couple to work there for a few years. They had then gone to Prague to start the Montana factory but had returned some years later to buy their beloved country house. The townspeople had watched Lotar and Hans grow up. Like everyone in the Protectorate, they would have known about the directive and about the stars. The Nazis constantly reminded citizens that Jews who had left their designated residential area would be punished with death; the same penalty applied to anyone who came to their aid. This included providing them shelter or food, giving them money, or transporting them in vehicles of any sort; it was the duty of all Protectorate residents to report Jews who were committing crimes and any non-Jews who helped them. On February 28, 1941, German Radio in Prague warned that anyone seen as friendly toward a Jew would be considered an enemy of the state and punished accordingly.
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