The Collaborator

by Diane Armstrong

  She looks at him with admiration. Then she thinks of her grandmother, and wonders if this is why Marika has shown no gratitude to the man who saved her, why she has tried to erase his memory from her life.

  Dov is studying her. ‘So how grateful are you?’

  She frowns. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘From what you’ve told me, you were given every opportunity. Your grandmother survived the Holocaust and migrated to Australia. Your mother sent you to the best school she could afford. She tried to turn you into a Christian so you’d be spared the persecution and pain her mother suffered. You were cossetted and sheltered and supported and sent to university so you could develop your intellect and have a good profession. How grateful are you for all that?’

  She feels a rush of resentment. ‘Are you trying to make me feel guilty?’

  ‘Not at all. Just trying to point out how complicated gratitude can be.’

  She doesn’t reply and they sit in silence as she plays with the cake crumbs on her plate. To defuse the tension she can feel tightening her chest, Annika says, ‘Dora mentioned something about Peace Now. What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a protest movement that criticises our government’s policy towards the Palestinians, and stands up for their rights,’ Dov says. ‘My daughter is a fervent supporter, and goes to their demonstrations. By the way, I love the neat way you skip to another subject whenever you don’t want to answer a question or pursue an idea you find uncomfortable.’

  She is about to retort when she looks up and sees that he is smiling at her, and her resentment melts away.

  He rummages in his pocket, takes out a leaflet and hands it to her. ‘My friend Nella, who you met, is involved with Peace Now. She publicises their protests. They’re always looking for new members, so if you want to know more, I’m sure she’ll be delighted to fill you in.’

  He drains his coffee, pushes away the cup, leaves a few shekels on the table and stands up. ‘I have to get back to the office. Can I give you a lift?’

  She shakes her head. She needs time to think.

  Alone at the table, she orders another coffee, and goes over their conversation. No-one has challenged her the way he does, and although she resents his words, she acknowledges that he has a point.

  Who was she to criticise people for their lack of gratitude? She hasn’t been grateful for anything. In fact she has rejected all the advantages she has been given and distanced herself from her mother and grandmother who provided them. Cassie would say she has been self-indulgent, self-pitying, and self-absorbed. And as usual, Cassie would be right.

  The wicker chair has suddenly become hard and she shifts from side to side trying to find a comfortable spot. To distract herself from her confused thoughts about Dov, she thinks about Tamar and wonders what she was thinking when she saw them leaving. Then she takes out Nella’s leaflet and scans it without absorbing the words. Until she comes to the last sentence. Then she reads it again to make sure she hasn’t misread it. For more information about our activities, call Eitan Nagy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Tel Aviv, 2005

  Cyclists whizz by on the promenade and hawkers offer fruit juice, falafels and ice cream to the sunbathers sprawled on banana chairs. Watching them from the hotel terrace, Annika dials Eitan Nagy’s number. She is still figuring out what to say, and decides it’s wiser not to mention she’s a journalist. People don’t trust reporters.

  She’s still mulling over this when a bright voice says, ‘Shalom.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she begins, ‘but I was wondering if by any chance you are related to Miklós Nagy?’

  Even as she says this, her toes curl in embarrassment. It sounds so gauche.

  There’s a pause. Then, in a voice ten degrees cooler than his greeting, he says, ‘Who is this?’

  ‘My name is Annika Barnett. I’m from Australia. I’m trying to find some information about a man called Miklós Nagy…’

  He cuts her short. ‘What is it that you want?’

  She takes a deep breath. If she doesn’t get this right, he will hang up, but from his reaction, she senses that he must be related. Otherwise he would have just said no. Perhaps she should tell the truth and hope for the best.

  ‘I know this sounds odd, but I’ve come to Israel because of Miklós Nagy. My grandmother was one of the people he rescued.’

  ‘So I suppose she travelled to Israel to testify on his behalf?’

  From his biting tone, she realises she has to rearrange the sequence of events. Telling him that her grandmother had never mentioned her rescuer, and had refused to talk about him, would antagonise him even more, and ruin her chances of meeting him.

  That would be unbearable now that she has finished reading the transcript, and she can’t wait to speak to a relative who might be able to tell her what happened after the devastating verdict of the District Court.

  ‘A guide in the Sydney Jewish Museum told me how extraordinary Mr Nagy was, and how he deserved more recognition for what he’d done, and, knowing that he had rescued my grandmother, I was intrigued. Then on my way here I stopped in Budapest where I met a man whose father was rescued on the train, so...’

  ‘So you got more intrigued. OK, you’d better come over,’ he says.

  Half an hour later, she is standing outside a solid brick apartment block in Ben-Gurion Boulevard. Up and down the street walled balconies seem to be stuck onto the corners of buildings like architectural afterthoughts. She presses a buzzer and climbs two steep staircases to Eitan Nagy’s apartment. He is already standing at the door, and surveys her with a searching gaze that makes her feel uncomfortable. There’s an energy and restlessness about him that reminds her of an English rock star she once saw performing at the Sydney Super Dome, but Eitan’s chosen stage is obviously a political one. The crushed T-shirt he wears over his faded denim jeans is emblazoned with the words: Peace Now. If not now, when?

  He stands aside to usher her into a room piled with books, banners, posters, magazines and newsletters on every flat surface, including the timber floor. In the adjoining kitchen boxes and cartons are stacked on top of each other. She breathes in the familiar smell of paper and newsprint.

  Eitan picks up bundles of newsletters off the casual table, and pushes away boxes to make room for her to sit on a chair whose wicker seat is unravelling. She looks around. There are no paintings on the walls, and no photographs, nothing that might reveal the owner’s aesthetic taste. No memorabilia either. There was clearly only one thing in Eitan Nagy’s life.

  He sits on the edge of the only other chair in the room without speaking, and she doesn’t break the silence. There’s a question threatening to burst from her mouth, but she doesn’t ask it. She waits. After several minutes, he goes into an adjoining room and emerges with an old-fashioned album.

  As he flicks through it, she sees small black-and-white photographs with serrated edges stuck closely together on pages separated by sheets of crackly parchment. He turns a page towards her and points to an image of an unsmiling middle-aged man with dark-rimmed glasses. He looks like a man who is used to being in command, the kind of man who gets things done. Her heart is pounding. It’s the man she saw in the group photo in the Sydney Jewish Museum, the one taken when the train arrived in Switzerland.

  ‘That’s my grandfather, Miklós Nagy,’ Eitan is saying. ‘The man who saved your grandmother. What did she tell you about him?’

  Annika bites her lip. It’s one of those tricky questions on which so much hinges. From the way he sits forward, waiting to hear what she can tell him, she realises that he is probably as hungry for information about his grandfather as she is. She doesn’t want to lie, but telling the truth is risky.

  ‘She doesn’t like talking about the past,’ she says, relieved to find an answer. ‘That’s not unusual for Holocaust survivors. And that’s why I decided to come and find out about him for myself.’

  He nods. ‘So what do you do in Sydney, that you can a
fford the time and money to travel to the other side of the world to indulge your curiosity about a man you have never met?’

  She shrugs. ‘Not much at the moment. I’m actually out of work.’

  And she tells him about resigning from a job she found unfulfilling, and from the intent way he listens and nods from time to time, she senses that he understands her, that perhaps he too was once in a similar situation. She thinks he is probably about her age, but with men you could never tell.

  ‘A journalist, eh? Now I get it. Are you planning to write about my grandfather? There’s plenty to write about, that’s for sure. It’s time the true story was written by someone without an axe to grind.’

  ‘How come your English is so good? Is that an American accent?’

  ‘I was born in Canada. But coming back to you, how much do you know about my grandfather’s story?’

  She explains that her interest in Miklós Nagy is personal, not professional, and tells him that for the past few days, she has been reading the transcript of the trial. ‘I can’t stop thinking about the judge’s verdict. I can’t get over it. I don’t know how he could have arrived at such a preposterous judgment. It was bad enough that the defence attorney made those outrageous accusations, but then the judge just repeated them. And that shocking comment he made. The poor man saved all those people, and then he was accused of being a collaborator, of being responsible for the deaths of people he couldn’t possibly have saved.’

  She pours all this out in a torrent. The indignation pent up over several days pours out of her like water from a dam when the sluice has opened, threatening to submerge everything in its path. When she finally runs out of breath, she sits back. Obviously none of this is new to him, but he listens as if he has never heard it before.

  He is looking at her with admiration. ‘So you have actually read the entire transcript of the trial?’

  ‘Every word. I’ve never read anything that felt so immediate and so suspenseful. It got under my skin. That’s why I’ve stayed here longer than I meant to. But I just have to find out what happened next. Did Miklós Nagy manage to clear his name?’

  ‘So you don’t know what happened?’

  ‘The transcript ended with the verdict.’

  He pushes his chair away and gets up. ‘This might take a long time. I’d better make us some tea.’

  She hears him rustling packets, opening and closing cupboard doors, filling the kettle, and waits impatiently for him to come back. A few minutes later she is sipping green tea from a white mug patterned with maple leaves while she listens to his story.

  ‘After the verdict was handed down, there was so much animosity towards my grandfather in the press, and so many threats made against him, that the government was worried about his safety and they appointed two armed bodyguards to keep a twenty-four-hour surveillance on him. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice lodged an appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court. I believe they were keen to do it as soon as possible to prevent a charge of collaboration being brought against him. Apparently they couldn’t charge him with that until his appeal was heard in the higher court.’

  ‘What were the grounds for the appeal?’

  ‘The points the judge made in his verdict, basically. The appeal said that the judge had acquitted Isaiah Fleischmann on false assumptions, and that his conclusions were based on faulty criteria. That he didn’t take normal lapses of memory into account when assessing the reliability of witnesses, and as a result drew wrong conclusions about witnesses who contradicted themselves about events that happened ten years earlier. It criticised his inflexible interpretation of the situation, and ascribed that to his failure to understand the situation in Hungary in 1944.’

  Eitan’s voice becomes angrier as he continues. ‘The appeal said there were no grounds for his conclusion that my grandfather’s negotiations amounted to criminal collaboration with Nazis. As for his conclusion that he deliberately played along with the Nazis to help them exterminate the remaining Jews of Hungary, that was totally baseless. And in pronouncing that my grandfather had sold his soul to the devil, the judge was expressing his personal opinion, which he wasn’t entitled to give.’

  Annika is nodding. ‘My blood was boiling when I read that. So what happened in the Supreme Court?’

  ‘Before the appeal was heard, there was a heated debate about it in the press. Was the appeal motivated by a legitimate desire to correct injustice, or by a desperate effort to protect the ruling party? One newspaper — Haaretz, I think it was — claimed that the Supreme Court had to be given an opportunity to investigate the matter and arrive at a conclusion that was more rational and judicious than the one given by the District Court.

  ‘Moshe Sharett’s Mapai party maintained that the verdict was absurd and unjust. A man had been convicted in court without having the opportunity to defend himself, since he wasn’t the defendant in the case. He didn’t have a lawyer, so no-one could defend him. It was a miscarriage of justice, and the least the state could do was to launch an appeal. But then the right-wing Herut paper asked why Sharett’s Mapai party, which they reckoned had blood on its hands, was covering up for a collaborator and defending him, despite a decision handed down by a respected judge.’

  ‘Israeli politics is so confusing.’

  ‘It’s confusing for most of us. Parties here rarely have an outright majority, so to govern they have to form coalitions with parties that often don’t share their values.’

  ‘I’m amazed that you can remember all this,’ Annika says when he rises and offers to refill her mug.

  He gives an ironic laugh. ‘If you knew how many thousand times we went over all this with my grandmother, father and uncle.’

  ‘I wondered about that affidavit he gave for Kurt Becher while I was reading about the trial,’ she says. ‘Why do you think he wrote it?

  Eitan shrugs. ‘I’ve wondered about that too. I’ve gone over it a thousand times, looking for an explanation. He himself said in court he was grateful to Becher for his help, so maybe it was as simple as that. Or maybe it was like Stockholm Syndrome, where the hostage becomes so dependent on his captor that he comes to identify with him. Maybe it was from some misguided sense of decency, or the result of a promise he made Becher in return for his help. He might even have come to see another side of the man and form a personal connection with him. If only I could have asked him, but maybe even he didn’t understand his own motives. So we’ll never know.’

  ‘Don’t keep me in suspense about the appeal. Tell me, was it successful?’

  ‘First I have to tell you a bit more about the politics. Before the Supreme Court got to hear the appeal, there was a political crisis in the country. One of the coalition parties said that Sharett’s party had been too hasty in deciding to lodge an appeal, which made it look as if they were covering up for him. There was a no-confidence motion in the government. My grandmother reckoned that they were exploiting the Nagy affair for their own political ends, but the upshot was that Moshe Sharett had no option but to resign. The government fell.’

  Annika recalls Dov’s comment the first time she mentioned Miklós Nagy.

  ‘So you could say your grandfather was responsible for the fall of the government?’

  Eitan nods. ‘I suppose you could say that. The real issues in the election campaign were tangled up with the Nagy affair, which kept surfacing like scratches on an old record. The other parties were quick to try and capitalise on the Mapai party’s misfortune, and the issue of Sharett’s role in the arrest of Gábor Weisz came up all over again. Why didn’t he appear in Istanbul? Why didn’t he testify in court? Why did he remain silent?’

  Annika has had enough of Israeli politics. ‘Let’s cut to the chase. What was the result of the appeal?’

  ‘Fortunately the Supreme Court overturned the decision of the District Court. The majority of the judges on the appeal panel exonerated my grandfather of collaboration.’

  But from the way Eitan is looking at h
er, she senses that there is more to the story. She raises her eyebrows. ‘And?’

  He is silent. Then he says, ‘You really don’t know, do you?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Tel Aviv, August 1957

  News of the impending appeal invigorates Miklós Nagy. He spends hours discussing the possibilities with his friends as they wonder who will be appointed to the appeal panel at the Supreme Court, and how the five judges will assess the verdict of the District Court. He no longer spends his days indoors, withdrawn and brooding, and the insults of strangers no longer stop him from leaving the house. Even calls from various right-wing publications for him to be tried on charges of collaboration don’t depress him as they once did. And, unlike Judit, he isn’t concerned by occasional death threats.

  ‘Don’t take them seriously,’ he tells her. ‘It’s just hot air. Who ever heard of a murderer announcing that he’s going to kill someone? And don’t forget I’ve got two bodyguards watching over me from morning till night.’ He can’t resist adding, ‘Just as well I didn’t listen to panic merchants like Uri who advised me to move from here.’

  The Nagy appeal is now off the gossip agenda. These days everyone is discussing the current political crisis. Some of the coalition parties have moved a no-confidence motion in the Knesset and this pushes the ruling Mapai party to a knife edge. At the government office where Miklós still works, some of the clerks suspect that this motion is a cynical attempt by these groups to serve their political ambitions, while others maintain that it’s caused by their hostility to the appeal that the government has launched on his behalf.