by Bram Presser
Regards and kisses to you,
Daša
In it there is everything: what she knew, what she didn’t. That she had survived, and Irena too. Perhaps even their father. She had caught sight of him in Auschwitz on the day she left. He was standing at the barbed wire fence, watching as she was herded towards the train. He waved goodbye, blew her a kiss—some tenderness, familiarity—in that place. Little did she know that he would soon be dead, shot in the head after he collapsed, his strength finally deserting him just as freedom was on the horizon.
Daša carried them, kept her mother and sisters alive. You say that you would give many years of your life to be able to come to see us, she wrote in another letter. What foolish things you write. We will return in a few months’ time and you would have lost years of your life. Do not worry about daddy not writing. It is sometimes not possible. And certainly, when he has the tiniest opportunity, he will write to you. She absolved her mother: I have forgotten something else. And that is, you write that you will never forgive yourself that you were so weak towards daddy and brought us up in this faith. It is fate and I’m surprised that a woman as intelligent as you can let something like this come out of her mouth. I hope it never happens again. And I promise you that we will return to your motherly embrace healthy and strong. To her sisters too, humouring them, as if she were just on holiday. My dear little golden Bumblebee.
Words: they clung to her words in their grief and fear. Smuggled words. Words that could have seen her killed, that almost did. Words I have tried to understand. I smuggle everything into the camp under SS watch. But two most of all. A name repeated, a flicker of light in this darkness.
‘Mr B.’
Those who survived wanted nothing more than to disappear, and so they sought refuge in faraway lands. Entire suburbs sprang up, designed to go unnoticed, to be passed over when the next catastrophe came along. Identical houses of dull, monotonous brick. The curtains, thick white filigree approximations of knotted lace, were usually closed. Inside, lives were refashioned through photographs and knick-knacks that told of every moment spent on Lazarus’s back. Here in Australia, they lived and they died, one by one, until only Uncle Pavel remained.
For years he lived on, cursing each new dawn that broke outside his window. He went into a nursing home when Irena needed full-time care, and stayed after she died because he saw no point in leaving. It’s comfortable enough. I eat, I sleep. I just want to be left alone. As he struggled for breath, as his eyesight failed, as his movement slowed, as his body shut down, he somehow still managed to cheat death. Listen to me, darling, he’d say to me. Don’t grow old.
His had been a different kind of survival. Born into Czech aristocracy, a scion of the Bondy empire, Pavel’s birthright proved a curse. It was his kind that was taken early, forced from their stately homes, exiled to Łódź. This was before the main transports, before Theresienstadt, when people were chosen not just because they were Jewish but because they were the worst kinds of Jews: intellectuals, aristocrats, journalists, political enemies. For Pavel, the nightmare of Łódź became a memory as he was forced from ghetto to ghetto, from camp to camp, until he found himself a Sonderkommando in the stoking house of hell, clearing gas chambers and throwing emaciated corpses into pits of fire. He was not afforded the small mercy of denial, of believing the smoke came from nearby brick factories. His premonition of death was pink and tangled, scratched and bruised, coated in blood and soot.
When it was over he returned to Prague and lived a sad imitation of the life he had once been promised. He married Irena, had a son. Those years had taught him to work, to seize opportunities. He took his young family to Israel, where he became a plumber and carpenter, then to Australia, where he chose to stay. But no matter where he ran, he could not escape the crematoria, the bodies. That was what he was left to relive, when they had all gone, when he woke up and saw the sun taunting him with another pointless day.
I tell him about Hana and the shoebox. He shakes as he holds the letters. He listens, reaches for a handkerchief. He caresses the page, his wife, in her youth. Irena, too, had written home. I am writing this in a hurry, that is why it looks as it does, but you will not be angry with me, mummy dearest, will you? What do you do all the time? Mummy, please take care of yourself. Pavel leans over the yellowing pages, his magnifying glass positioned close to his milky eye, his finger pausing on each word. Slow wheezes. The stale smell of old age. Beside some pills, his teeth.
He talks as he reads, tells me his story; the anger and then resignation in his voice will later wrestle against the tape recorder’s metallic hiss. When he has finished he lets out a tremendous sigh. I wait a moment, let him regain his composure. Then: Irena and Daša? They stayed together throughout. Did they lay sleepers for trains? No. They worked in fields, in laundries, then in factories. How you say? Textiles. To make warm clothes for Nazis on the Eastern front. When they were liberated, did the Russians…? They were bastards. But no, not that.
‘And Mr B?’
‘It’s been a while,’ he says, heaving himself upright. ‘There was a boy from the neighbourhood, a friend of the family. He went on the first transport, the one sent to turn the old fortress town of Terezín into the camp the Germans called Theresienstadt. I knew him only through stories: that he had watched over them, kept them safe. As for his name…you have to understand, they lost so many friends, but to me each was the same as the next. Except one. Yes…there was one in particular that stood out for no other reason than that they never said it directly to me. It would only come out when they thought I wasn’t listening. Bohuš. Maybe that was him. Maybe that’s your Mr B.’
They were electricians, carpenters and builders, plumbers, machinists and masons. Three hundred and forty-two young Jewish men chosen for their skills and sent north on 24 November 1941. Transport ‘Ak’, the Aufbaukommando. They left in good spirits, clinging confidently to what the Nazis had promised: they would be able to return home on weekends; they would receive regular food; they would enjoy greater comfort; their wages would be paid to their families back in Prague. They arrived at Bohušovice station and were marched the three kilometres to the fortress town, Terezín, where they were assigned to the dilapidated Sudeten barracks. Rubbish was strewn across the cold, damp concrete. Windows were smashed, doors hung open, screeching in the wind. They slept on the concrete floors, rationed their meagre supplies. For the most part they were confined to the stables. One man tried to send a postcard home to his girlfriend but it was intercepted and he was hanged. The Nazis brought them nothing: no food, no bedding, no word from the outside.
By the time the first civilian transport arrived six days later, the Aufbaukommando had done little to prepare for the new inmates. Confronted by a thousand bewildered faces—Transport ‘H’ consisted mostly of older men and women—they turned away in shame. Then, on 4 December, a third transport rolled into Bohušovice. Another thousand men, mostly young, mostly skilled. They, too, were assigned to the Aufbaukommando. Officially, the transport was designated ‘J’, but to those in the camp it was known as ‘Ak2’. Close behind it, almost unnoticed, was one more train from which twenty-three people disembarked, including Jakob Edelstein and the rest of what would become the Council of Elders.
By the end of that grey winter’s day, there were two and a half thousand Jews in the fortress town that would, for the next four years, be called Theresienstadt. One of them was this neighbour who might have been Bohuš.
Names cascade like dirty snow across the pages of the Theresienstadt Memorial Book. Here they lie, the reconstituted ashes of all those who were taken from their homes and dumped together on the dusty clearing beside the tracks at Bohušovice station. I look at the record of the ones who didn’t come back, whisper each name, the white noise of guttural stutters filling the desolate room. First names. Surnames. There is nobody called Bohuš.
I rush back to Pavel, ask him to think again. Who was Mr B?
‘Bohuš,’ he says, t
his time with more confidence. ‘I heard them whisper Bohuš.’
They reach out from the page, begging to be remembered. For months I try to conjure their voices, their stories, from a squall of dates and places. With each pass I eliminate some from the list, those who don’t fit Pavel’s description. This one, too old. That one, from too far afield. This one sent not to Auschwitz but another camp, maybe Riga or Dachau or Maly Trostinec. I delete them again from history, negate their brief resurrection, strip them of the lives that might have found meaning in what I write.
Bedřich Altschul. Gustav Bacharach. Hugo Bacharach. Erich Bauer. Bohumil Benda. František Bergmann. Jíři Bergmann. Rudolf Bergmann. Alfred Bernath. Bruno Better. Erich Bloch. Heřmann Bloch. Pavel Bondy. Richard Brauchbar. Farkaš Braun. Kurt Brodt. František Budlovský. Emil Bustina. Bedřich Friedländer. Bedřich Gratum. Bedřich Gross. Bedřich Hoffman. Bedřich Lubik. Bedřich Meisl. Bohumil Reinisch. Bedřich Strass. Bedřich Straussler. Bedřich Weiss. Bedřich Weltsch. Rudolf Jokl. Nachman Basch. Leo Bass. Rudolf Bauer. Vilém Baum. Alexandr Bäuml. Bodhan Beck. Erich Beck. Josef Beck. Karel Beck. Louis Beck. Theodor Beck. Max Becker. Leo Beer. Mojžiš Belligrad. Bruno Berger. Ota Bergler. Alexandr Berkovic-Katz. Nathan Berkowicz. Šalamoun Bernfeld. Ludvík Bernstein. Wolf Besen. Hersch Biber. Ota Bienenfeld. David Bleicher. Heřman Bleiweiss. Gustav Bloch. Valtr Bodanský. Emil Bondy. Pavel Bondy. Kurt Brammer. Oskar Brand. Eduard Braun. Karel Braun. Otto Breslauer. Jan Breth. Julius Bretisch. Bertold Fantl. Bedřich Friedländer. Bedřich Glaser. Bedřich Goldschmidt. Bedřich Grosser. Bruno Grünstein. Bedřich Heller. Bedřich Hirsch. Bedřich Kraus. Bedřich Liepmann. Bernhard Lichtenstein. Bedřich Löwy. Bedřich Lustig. Bedřich Müller. Bedřich Pick. Bohumil Polák. Bedřich Pollack. Bedřich Pollert. Bedřich Prager. Bruno Reik. Bedřich Reitler. Bernhard Ringer. Benno Rynarzewski. Bela Salomon. Bedřich Schnabel. Bedřich Schön. Bedřich Schöpkes. Bruno Tausk. Berthold Ucko. Bedřich Wermuth. Bohumil Winter. Bedřich Zucker. Ervín Bandler. Arnošt Basch. Zdenek Basch. Otto Baum. Otto Baumgarten. Valtr Baumgarten. Viktor Bäuml. Arnošt Bazes. Alexander Beck. Pavel Beck. Jindřich Beck. Arno Behrendt. Jíři Běhal. Viktor Beneš. Adolf Berger. Bedřich Berger. Evžen Berger. Pavel Berger. Hugo Berglacz. Josef Bergmann. Bedřich Bergstein. Josef Bernstein. Jan Beutler. Arnošt Beykovský. Hugo Bienenfeld. Walter Bischitzký. Kurt Bleyer. František Bloch. Kurt Bloch. Pavel Bloch. Arnošt Blum. Simon Blumental. Rudolf Bondy. Vilém Bondy. Jindřich Boschan. Zikmund Brauch. Heřman Braun. Leopold Braun. Leo Breitler. Vilém Brik. Vilém Bruml. Kurt Brumlík. Kurt Buschbaum. Bedřich Fauska. Bedřich Feigl. Bartolomeus Friedmann. Bedřich Fritta. Bernard Gerber. Bedřich Grab. Bedřich Heller. Bedřich Holzbauer. Bedřich Jakobovič. Bedřich Kaf ka. Bedřich Kaufmann. Bedřich Klein. Bohumil Klein. Bedřich Kohn. Another Bedřich Kohn. Bedřich Kollin. Bedřich Kompert. Bedřich Kraus. Bedřich Krieger. Bedřich Küchler. Bedřich Langer. Berthold Laufer. Bedřich Löwenbach. Bernard Macner. Bedřich Mautner. Bedřich Meisl. Bernd Nathan. Bedřich Pollack. Bedřich Sachs. Bruno Schuschný. Bertold Schwarz. Bedřich Seidner. Bedřich Stein. Bohumil Steiner. Bruno Steiner. Bedřich Sternberg. Bedřich Tetzner. Bertold Wassermann. Bedřich Weiss. Bedřich Zentner.
I want to run back and show the last few names to Uncle Pavel, to see if there is a spark of recognition. Bohuš is a nickname, another code word. If only Pavel could think harder, push through the fog. They must have uttered his real name. Just once Irena must have told him everything.
I want to run back but I can’t. Pavel died yesterday. He finally beat the sun.
I had hoped to give what they could not—gratitude, recognition, for their lives, for my own—but now there is no way of knowing who he was. I settle on a name, one that did not exist, one that can be demonstrably proven false by the simple act of running your eyes down those two lists—Transport Ak, Transport J. And so I create a boy, a neighbour called Bohuš, give him a family, friends, all of whom will disappear. This representative construct might be one or all of Jiří Bergmann, Alfred Bernath, Erich Bloch, Bedřich Gratum, Bedřich Strass, Vilém Baum, Ludvík Bernstein, Arnošt Basch, Jindřich Beck, Jan Beutler, Arnošt Beykovský, Kurt Bleyer, Leo Breitler, Vilém Bruml, Bedřich Feigl, Bedřich Holzbauer and Bedřich Sacks.
Or perhaps it is none of them. Perhaps Uncle Pavel was mistaken. He was desperate to help me, so he drew together long forgotten stories, stories that he had only half-heard and, spurred on by my insistence, my encouragement, unwittingly created a composite of his own. There was a boy, as he said, a boy who helped them in Theresienstadt, in Auschwitz, but his name is lost. Might there not have been someone else too? Someone who didn’t come along until much later, towards the very end, when they had been sold as slave labour to Kramsta-Methner und Frahne AG, a company that processed flax in a four-storey factory in Merzdorf, Upper Silesia?
The factory was situated in a village where the prisoners came into contact with the locals, as well as with other foreign workers—machinists, builders, labourers. It was from there that Daša and Irena sent the letters. Could Mr B have simply been a man who worked there too, a supervisor, a guard, a stationhand, a kindly German townsman who collected the packages sent by my great-grandmother Františka and brought them to the girls?
A man whose name was, like so many others, Bohuš.
I can find nothing more about Mr B, so I turn again to the search for my grandfather. Since the beginning I had been hoping to single out his words from the discordant noise. Those who spoke about him. Those who spoke for him. It came at last in urgent whispers, from the moulded metal tips of an antique Czech typewriter: Unfortunately it contains many inaccuracies. Each syllable tearing through the fabric of these projected memories. From the fissures an echo, what he means to say: but it also contains truth.
His description is unembellished. I was a member of that small group of Rabbis and Hebraists selected by Murmelstein, our object was to catalogue and comment on all books and manuscripts that were stolen from all over Europe.
Little is known about the Talmudkommando. In his historical overview of the camp, Murmelstein mentions it in passing. Otto Muneles wrote a brief report on the ‘book sorting work’ immediately after liberation, but it focuses on the minutiae of cataloguing and the whereabouts of the books. A more detailed, albeit clinical description, is given by H. G. Adler in his monumental study, Theresienstadt. The only insight into the human dimension of the Talmudkommando’s work comes not from one of its members, nor a historian, but a labourer, Franz Weiss. Initially given the job of converting an old barn into a workspace for the group, Weiss stayed on to cart boxes of catalogued books back to the main camp. He was able to observe the members at work and, occasionally, talk with them. Some considered him a friend.
It is likely that the order to establish a group to sort looted Jewish books came from Adolf Eichmann himself sometime in early April 1943. The Gestapo chief knew he could count on Benjamin Murmelstein to get the job done efficiently. The two had worked together in Vienna after the Anschluss, when the city’s Jews needed to be resettled in camps. For his diligence Murmelstein was rewarded with transport to Theresienstadt and given a place on the Council of Elders. To assist him in assembling the Talmudkommando, Eichmann appointed an expert from within the Nazis’ own ranks. There is some suggestion that it was SS Sturmbannführer Karl Burmester, the Gestapo library chief.
The selection process took close to three months, during which time the applicants returned to their previous work details. Meanwhile, crates of looted Jewish books started to arrive from Berlin, where, until Allied bombing forced a change in plans, Nazi experts had been sorting them for use in what was to be a representative library of Jewish thought known as the Advanced School of the Nazi Party (Hohe Schule der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). Afraid the books might be destroyed, the Nazis split up the collection and shipped it off for safer storage. Those already catalogued or deemed of lesser importance ended up in castles in Silesia and Northern Bohemia. The rest were sent to Theresienstadt.
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