The Collaborator

by Diane Armstrong

  From her mother Eva she knew that her grandmother was widowed soon after Eva was born, and she never remarried, so she had no grandfather. Marika had probably put all her energy into bringing up her daughter on her own, and rebuilding her life in a new country. Annika’s father, whom she adored, hadn’t been an exemplary role model. He was a gambler who took up with his nineteen-year-old secretary and deserted her mother when Annika was ten, leaving her mother with debts and lifelong bitterness. Annika was devastated when her father abandoned them, and couldn’t rid herself of the conviction that she had somehow been to blame for his desertion and her mother’s unhappiness.

  Her thoughts turn to her frustrating conversation with her grandmother about the Spielberg project. She longs to know what Marika had gone through during the Holocaust, and how those experiences have shaped her life, but most of all, she wishes that her grandmother felt close enough to entrust her with her story.

  Tired now, she goes back to bed, but a moment later she sits up. She doesn’t need to rely on Marika to find out more about the Holocaust. Now that she has time on her hands, she can do some research on her own to gain an insight into her grandmother’s story. And suddenly she knows what her first step will be.

  CHAPTER TWO

  2005

  An ambulance streaks past, siren blaring, and Annika jumps aside. She watches it turn sharp right towards St Vincent’s Hospital, almost colliding with an oncoming car that fails to stop, and she hopes that the unfortunate soul inside will make it in time. She is crossing Forbes Street, near the sandstone buildings that once formed the old Darlinghurst jail, but now houses an art school.

  Annika is reflecting on what life would have been like for the prisoners there a hundred years ago when she reaches the Sydney Jewish Museum on the corner of Darlinghurst Road, and steps into the foyer. After a perfunctory glance inside her Kate Spade handbag, a remnant of her editorial days when having a designer bag was almost as important as having a laptop, the security guard waves her through. Past the honour roll of Jews who died in two world wars, she enters the hall and looks around. This is her first visit, but that’s not surprising: religion has never played a large part in her life. Her parents didn’t belong to a synagogue, and as a child she didn’t go to Sunday school. From conversations she overheard while growing up, she suspected that for years after arriving in Australia, her grandmother had pretended she wasn’t Jewish, and she had enrolled Annika’s mother in Church of England scripture classes at school. Even after Eva discovered that her mother was Jewish, which meant that she was Jewish as well, she sent Annika to an Anglican private school, and encouraged her to cultivate Christian friends. It seemed that being Jewish was something you needed to conceal.

  Annika had never missed having a religious upbringing, but now, standing in front of a display of a family sitting around a Passover table with its white cloth, matzos and candelabra, she is acutely aware of her ignorance. She knows nothing of the rituals and beliefs that have sustained Jews for thousands of years, and is disconnected from her heritage. In the small museum shop across the hall, she surveys the books on the shelves, the hand-painted Passover plates, silver candelabra and Star of David pendants. A tiny woman with a hunched back and frizzy red hair comes towards her with a smile.

  ‘My name is Kitty. I’m a volunteer guide. This is your first visit?’

  Annika nods, and Kitty goes on, ‘I think for most people it feels a bit strange to be here for the first time,’ she says. ‘They often say they have intended to come for a long time, but sometimes I can see they are wishing they had not come. It is understandable. This place can be confronting, and some of the exhibits are upsetting, so they feel uncomfortable and do not know how to react. They wonder if it is okay to ask questions, and if they are expected to feel responsible in some way for what happened.’

  Annika has an urge to say that she is Jewish, but feels ashamed that she probably knows less about the history and traditions of the Jews than even the non-Jewish visitors. She remains silent, and when she looks down, she is shocked to see the numbers tattooed on Kitty’s forearm. Kitty follows her gaze.

  ‘This is why I became a guide here,’ she says. ‘When I was liberated, I was so desperate to remove those numbers that if I had had a razor blade, I would have cut them out. I could not bear to look at them. Physical pain would have been a relief from the rage I felt whenever I looked at that reminder of the past they stamped on my body. When we were liberated, I weighed 35 kilos, I had no hair and no teeth, but I still had that loathsome tattoo. The nun who nursed me in the hospital said, “Don’t think of it as a stigma, but as stigmata. It’s not a sign of victimhood, but a sign of victory.” That made me even more angry. What did she know? How could she possibly understand?’

  Annika is overwhelmed by the woman’s story and by her candour. This is the first time she has met a Holocaust survivor who has told her such a personal experience.

  ‘For my first few years in Australia, I wore long sleeves so no-one would see the numbers,’ Kitty continues. ‘But when I heard that the Jewish Museum was looking for Holocaust survivors to become volunteer guides, I remembered what the nun told me, and I decided it was time to get over my embarrassment and use the tattoo to show people what prejudice and racism can lead to.’

  ‘Was it hard for you to show the tattoo?’ Annika asks.

  ‘At first it was very hard. You see, I was only fifteen when I was liberated, but in time I realised that the numbers were superficial. I could cover them up and never see them, but what was carved on my memory was far more indelible.’

  Annika gazes at the older woman with admiration. ‘Do you have time to guide me around the museum?’ she asks.

  ‘I would like to,’ Kitty replies.

  They pause beside the list of Jewish convicts transported to the new colony. Annika is surprised to learn that there were several Jews on the First Fleet. One was there for stealing a handkerchief, another for stealing a loaf of bread. One sounded like Dickens’s character Fagin. After surveying the recreation of a street from 1840s Sydney Town, with sound effects of horse carriages rumbling over cobblestones, they move on to the replica of a traditional Sabbath table, complete with prayer book, candles and sacramental wine, and again Annika feels a stab of regret for the closeness and connection she has missed.

  They are about to go upstairs to see the Holocaust exhibits when a clatter of school shoes and the hubbub of young voices resounds through the museum.

  ‘Our first school group of the day,’ Kitty says, and gives a mischievous smile. ‘I’m glad it’s Ervin’s turn this morning.’

  ‘Do you find it hard to talk about your experiences?’ Annika asks.

  Kitty reflects for a moment. ‘You know, I’ve been a guide here for fifteen years, but I still get churned up whenever I face a new group. You never know what they’ve been told or what their attitudes are. I worry in case they won’t believe me, or say the Holocaust never happened.’ She glances in the direction of the students. ‘Shall we go and listen to Ervin’s story?’

  They stand at the back of the group while the chattering students throw their backpacks on the floor and rifle through them for notepads and pens. The sound of their voices grows louder, and their teacher, a harassed-looking young woman, repeatedly urges them to show respect in a voice that doesn’t expect to be obeyed.

  It’s Ervin’s stillness that eventually gains their attention. A tall man with thin strands of grey hair combed carefully across his skull, he introduces himself in a soft voice that reminds Annika of Peter Lorre’s hoarse whisper in Casablanca. She watches as he unrolls a map of Europe and points to the city where he was born.

  Kitty whispers, ‘Most of them have probably never heard of Hungary, let alone Budapest. Some have probably never heard of the Holocaust. Thank God for teachers who bring their pupils here.’

  Ervin has a friendly manner. He doesn’t talk down to the students or lecture them, but draws them in with humorous stories about his
childhood pranks. Annika listens with growing interest to his account of life in pre-war Hungary, and wonders if her grandmother’s experiences were similar. When he asks, ‘Do any of you have a pet?’ almost all the students nod and wave their hands in the air.

  He tells them about his little dog Lili, which did clever tricks and followed him everywhere, even to school. Then they stop smiling when he describes the day he was forced to leave Lili behind, and he and his parents were moved to a horrible place where hundreds of other families were crowded into a filthy space without food or water, simply because they were Jews.

  ‘I had to leave Lili all alone in our flat, and I could still hear her crying while we were being herded along the street,’ he says.

  The students are very quiet now, and some of the girls are wiping their eyes.

  ‘I was the same age as you when we were in the ghetto,’ he says. In a hushed voice he tells them about the terrible day when his parents and little brother were taken away. ‘I never saw them again,’ he says, and his eyes glisten with tears. Then he describes brutal labour camps and concentration camps, where taking care of others helped him to keep going. But he doesn’t dwell on the horror, the hunger or the suffering.

  Annika wonders if her grandmother went through a similar experience, and reflects that she will probably never know.

  ‘But whatever happened, I never gave up hope,’ Ervin is saying. ‘And in the end I survived because one man in Budapest risked his life to save me and hundreds of others.’

  Annika thinks he’s about to tell them about Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat she has read about, but to her surprise he names someone she has never heard of: a Jew called Miklós Nagy who, during the Nazi bloodbath that almost killed the last remaining Jewish community in Europe, by some miracle managed to organise a train that took about fifteen hundred Hungarian Jews to Switzerland and safety under the noses of the Nazis.

  ‘Miklós Nagy didn’t just save one thousand five hundred people, he saved over a hundred thousand lives, and he saves many more every year.’

  The students look puzzled, they look at each other, and a boy with hair that flops over his forehead calls out, ‘How come?’ Another calls out, ‘That doesn’t even make sense.’

  Ervin nods. ‘You’re right, so I’ll explain. If it wasn’t for Miklós Nagy I wouldn’t be here, and my children and grandchildren wouldn’t be here, and in future years, their children and grandchildren, and that goes for every one of the people he saved. I’m not very good at maths, but I think that would eventually add up to over a hundred thousand people. And all because one man had the courage to do something that seemed impossible. So never give up hope, look after each other, and never forget that even one person can make a huge difference.’

  The students applaud Ervin but when he asks if they have any questions, they are silent. He is the first person they have ever met who has lived through an event that they have heard about in their history lessons and they are overwhelmed, as much by his story as by his positive personality.

  Annika marvels at his attitude and willingness to reopen his wounds by sharing his story, and compares them to her grandmother’s silence, which she no longer regards as an indication of strength. She is musing about that when a freckled girl with one thick plait down her back asks, ‘Do you hate the Germans for what they did?’

  ‘That’s a very good question,’ Ervin says. ‘I don’t hate the Germans, but I do hate what some of them did during the Holocaust.’

  Now they all have a question to ask. Did he ever find his little dog? What happened to his little brother? Were the cruel Nazis in charge of the camps ever tried for war crimes? The teacher keeps urging them to collect their things so they can leave, but she can’t tear them away.

  ‘We have an interesting new exhibition, perhaps you’d like to see it,’ Kitty says, and asks Ervin if he has seen it. He looks pale and drained after his session. ‘First I will go to the cafeteria and have my daily indulgence, a strong cappuccino,’ he says. ‘Then I will join you.’

  Upstairs, Annika is looking at Liberation 1945, a collection of photographs that covers the walls of the exhibition space. She shudders at the images of skeletal bodies that no longer look human, heaped together in grotesque piles on the site of the Bergen-Belsen camp. The caption underneath states that the photographer, who entered the camp with the British army, became famous, and was later called the Frank Hurley of the Second World War. But he paid a high price for his fame.

  ‘These images were to haunt him day and night for the rest of his life,’ Kitty says. Annika can feel her stomach folding in on itself, and fears that they will haunt her too.

  Other images depict celebratory scenes in Paris, Amsterdam and Prague, but Annika is surprised to see several photos that were taken in a Swiss town she has never heard of, St Margarethen.

  She frowns. ‘Wasn’t Switzerland neutral during the war?’

  Before Kitty can reply, she hears a hoarse whisper behind her.

  ‘I can explain this to our visitor,’ Ervin says.

  He taps lightly on one of the photographs taken in Switzerland. ‘In December 1944, a large group of Hungarian Jews, including me, arrived in Switzerland thanks to the man I mentioned in my talk, Miklós Nagy.’

  He points to a middle-aged man with wavy brown hair brushed back from a broad forehead, and an expression that suggests steely determination. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ Annika asks.

  Ervin sighs. ‘That was a real tragedy. But you know what they say, no good deed goes unpunished.’

  She has never heard this adage before, and is about to ask him what he means when his phone rings, and excusing himself, he walks away. She continues looking at the photographs when one of them catches her attention. In a group of people looking at the camera, one face makes her stare. She moves closer and examines it to make sure. The photo is grainy and slightly blurred, but there’s no mistaking that heart-shaped face or the deep-set dark eyes and dimpled smile.

  For once she can’t wait to talk to her grandmother. At last they will have a subject they can share and discuss, one that might inspire Marika to loosen up and talk about the past.

  *

  ‘Grandmamma, you won’t believe this,’ Annika begins when she phones Marika that evening. Her grandmother laughs happily. ‘So tell me, what happened? Do you have a job?’

  Annika swallows the retort that rises to her lips. ‘I was in the Jewish Museum today and I saw your photo!’

  ‘My photo? Impossible. I did not give them my photo.’

  ‘Not a photo you gave them, a photo that was taken of you in Switzerland in 1944.’

  ‘You must be mistaken,’ Marika says, and her voice is cold.

  ‘Grandmamma, I don’t know why you’re arguing. It’s definitely a photo of you and it was taken with the group that arrived on that train. Surely you can’t have forgotten.’

  ‘I’m telling you it must be someone else.’

  There are a thousand questions Annika wants to ask, but her grandmother’s words are a wall too high to scale, and she fights the feeling of powerlessness she always feels in the face of Marika’s determination.

  ‘Grandmamma, I’m not a child,’ she protests. ‘Why don’t you tell me something about that man, Miklós Nagy?’

  There’s a tense pause before Marika snaps, ‘Annika, I want you to drop the subject. Listen to me. I don’t want you to mention that man’s name again. Ever.’

  Annika sits by the window but she is too preoccupied to see the cobalt water of Coogee beach in the distance, or hear the fruit bats squeaking among the trees across the road. Her grandmother’s strange words keep running through her mind. She wonders if her mother knows anything about this, and decides to call her.

  But as soon as she hears Eva’s soft voice, she wonders why she bothered. Over the years, Annika could not recall one instance when her mother sided with her against a decision her grandmother had made, a course of action
she espoused, or an opinion she expressed.

  Eva has always lived in her mother’s shadow. When a girl has a powerful mother, she has two choices: submit or rebel. Reflecting on her own personality, and that of her mother, Annika decides that rebellion has skipped one generation.

  ‘Grandmamma’s reaction was so bizarre,’ she tells her mother. ‘I can’t believe what she said to me. She won’t even talk about the man who got her out of Hungary. It doesn’t make sense. I know I saw her photo with a group who were on that train, but she denies it was her. Has she ever talked to you about it?’

  ‘No, but it’s probably because she has decided not to dwell on the past. She’s always wanted to look forward.’

  Annika’s voice rises. ‘But don’t you want to know what happened to her?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Eva counters. ‘I can’t even imagine what she went through. But why would she want to relive it? She’s not unique, you know. Lots of Holocaust survivors find it painful to talk about the past.’

  ‘Well, I’ve just spent the morning at the Jewish Museum, and I’ve met Holocaust survivors who share their stories, not just with their families, but with strangers.’ Annika speaks vehemently, irritated by her mother’s passivity.

  There’s a moment’s silence, and then Eva says, ‘Well, that’s their choice. Grandmamma must have her reasons, and whatever happened in the past, it’s her life.’

  ‘But now that I’ve told you about that photograph, aren’t you curious to know what happened, and why she is so angry? You’ll ask her about it, won’t you?’