The Woman from Hamburg

by Hanna Krall

  Blatt’s cousin, Dawid Klein, lived in Berlin before the war. He survived Auschwitz and returned to Berlin. He found new tenants living in his apartment.

  “There’s no need to get upset,” they said. “Everything is where you left it.”

  Indeed, he found absolutely everything exactly where he had left it before the war.

  He married their blond daughter. She was the war widow of an SS officer. Blatt’s cousin raised their son. When his wife fell in love with a younger man, Blatt’s cousin died of a heart attack. (I phoned their daughter in Berlin. Her husband picked up the phone. I said that I wanted to talk about Dawid Klein, who was an Auschwitz survivor. I heard him call out to Dawid Klein’s daughter, “Was your father an Auschwitz survivor?”)

  Staszek Szmajzner, a jeweler from Sobibor, emigrated to Rio. True, he did not marry an Aryan woman; instead, he married a Miss Brazil. They got divorced. Staszek went to the jungle and wrote a book about Sobibor. When he finished it, he died of a heart attack.

  Hersz Cukierman, the son of a cook from Sobibor, went to Germany. His Aryan wife left him and Cukierman hanged himself.

  And so forth.

  Blatt is still writing his book.

  We were traveling east.

  Blatt wanted to ascertain if Marcin B. had returned to the village of Przylesie.

  3

  We passed former Jewish towns: Garwolin, Łopiennik, Krasnystaw, Izbica. The stucco on them was yellowed, with dirty streaks. The wooden, one-story bungalows were sinking into the ground. We wondered if anyone lived in them. Probably yes, because there were pots of pelargonia in the windows, wrapped in crimped white tissue paper. Wads of cotton were spread out on some of the windowsills. Silvery “angel hair,” left there, no doubt, since Christmas, sparkled on the cotton. Men wearing gray quilted jackets were drinking beer outside the entryway. Apparently there were no unoccupied seats inside. Chunks of wall stuck up in empty lots among the houses. Grass was growing out of the smashed bricks. The little towns had flabby faces; they were deprived of muscle, deformed—either by exhaustion or by fear.

  In Izbica, Blatt wanted to show me a couple of things. We began with Stokowa Street. Generations of Blatts had lived there, including Aunt Marie Rojtensztajn, who heard everything through the wall. “Tojwełe,” she would say, “admit it, your father gives you nonkosher food to eat. You’ll go to hell, Tojwełe.”

  He was so terrified of hell that he ran a fever.

  “You’re only eight years old,” his aunt comforted him. “After you are bar mitzvah, God will forgive you everything.”

  He calculated that he could sin for five more years. Unfortunately, the war began before his bar mitzvah; God forgave him nothing.

  We looked around the market square. Idełe used to stand in the center, banging on a drum. He read out the declarations that the authorities posted. He banged his drum for the last time in September 1939, and announced that they were to cover their windows to protect them from bombs. He died in Bełżec.

  Itinerant musicians used to play in the market square; they sold the words to the latest hit songs for five groschen. Tojwełe bought “Madagascar”—“Hey, Madagascar, steamy land, black, Africa …”

  The fanciest house on the market square belonged to Juda Pomp, a dealer in sheet metal. He installed a flush toilet in his home, the first in Izbica. Everyone came to check it out; an inside toilet, and it doesn’t stink!

  We finally finished with the market square and moved on to the side streets. We came upon the house of crazy Ryfka “What Time Is It?” “Ryfka, what time is it?” the children called out to her. She would answer precisely and she never made a mistake. An old Jew, ugly and rich, arrived from America. He looked Ryfka over. He learned that she was the daughter of a deceased rabbi. He told her to comb her hair and they got married. The inhabitants of Izbica had to admit that after the wedding Ryfka turned out to be a nice-looking woman without a trace of madness. She bore a child. They all died in Sobibor.

  Nearby lived a Captain Dr. Lind. What was his first name? What brand of car he owned is known: an Opel. But then, it was the only car in Izbica. On the first of September 1939 the doctor’s wife cleaned the house, changed the linens and—what Tojwełe’s mother, Fajga Blatt, admired even more—placed a clean tablecloth on the table. Then the doctor donned his uniform and they got into the Opel. The doctor died at Katyń; where his wife died is not known.

  Flajszman the tailor sewed clothes for Tojwełe and his brother. The Flajszmans had a single room and nine children. They knocked together boards to make a bed large enough for all of them. A sewing machine stood under the window and a table stood in the middle of the room. But they ate at the table only on Shabbos; on weekdays, it served as an ironing board. The Flajszmans and their nine children died in Bełżec.

  Shochet Wajnsztajn, the ritual slaughterer. He studied Talmud all day long, and Mrs. Wajnsztajn supported their household with ice cream and soda water. She made the ice cream in a wooden barrel placed inside a container filled with salt. The sanitarian did not permit the use of cheap, unwashed salt in food preparation, and Mrs. Wajnsztajn could not afford the more expensive salt, so her sons Symcha and Jankiel kept a lookout at the door for the police. They died in Bełżec.

  The house of Mrs. Bunszpan; her surname has to be changed for obvious reasons. She had a hardware store. She had a fair-skinned daughter and a dark little boy. She told him to stay inside the house while she and her daughter went to the train station. The boy ran after them. He tried to get on the train with his mother, but Mrs. Bunszpan pushed him away.

  “Go away,” she said, “Be a good boy.” He was a good boy. He died in Bełżec. Mrs. Bunszpan and her daughter survived the war.

  “I have learned,” said Blatt, “that no one knows himself thoroughly.”

  Rojza Nasybirska’s brewery. She ran away from a transport. She entered the first house she came to. There were people sitting at the table, reading the Bible. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses. They decided that Rojza was a sign sent by God Himself. They gave her a Bible and told her to convert others. She waited out the end of the war in peace. It never entered anyone’s mind that it was a Jewish woman who was walking from village to village, converting people. After the war, she wanted to keep on converting people out of gratitude, but her cousin came and took her to the States.

  Hersz Goldberg’s lumberyard. Cut lumber was stacked neatly everywhere. When the first star appeared in the sky on Saturday and Shabbos came to an end, people drank wine from a common goblet and said to each other, “Git vokh, have a good week.” That was a signal for the young folk; the boys would head out with their girlfriends to Goldberg’s lumber. Their younger siblings followed them to see what went on in the evenings on top of the lumber. Hersz Goldberg died in Bełżec.

  A shack near the Jewish cemetery. Jankiel Blatt, Tojwełe’s father’s brother, lived there. He had two children and no job; he was a communist. When the Russians took over in September 1939, Uncle Jankiel greeted them enthusiastically. “Now there will be jobs,” he kept repeating, “now there will be justice.”

  The communists put on red armbands and showed the Russians who the Polish and Jewish bourgeoisie were, and also pointed out the soldiers returning from the September campaign. Among those arrested was Juda Pomp, the sheet metal merchant and owner of the house with the toilet. Tojwełe’s father, a former Legionnaire, threw Uncle Jankiel out of the house, shouting that he wasn’t to show himself to him ever again. Two weeks later the Russians withdrew. The Germans occupied the town. The communist Jankiel Blatt died and so did Juda Pomp, the class enemy. He would have had a much better chance in Siberia than in Sobibor, but the Russians, alas, hadn’t had enough time to send the Izbica bourgeoisie to the gulag.

  Blatt talked and talked. Izbica had had three thousand Jews, and he was still on the first hundred. Now he was getting ready to visit Małka Lerner, the butcher’s daughter; we were passing their house. Małka—erect, tall, dark, first among the well-to-do girl
s—opened the door wearing a sky-blue bathrobe. Offering him cake, she bent over slightly, revealing her décolleté. Not by accident, and not with embarrassment, but with obvious pride. She was twelve years old and she already had breasts. The cakes were sprinkled with poppy seed. Such cakes were carried around to one’s neighbors for Purim, on a plate covered with a white, hem-stitched napkin. Małka carried them round to the wealthy girls, and Estera, who was shorter, petite, with blond hair, took them to the poor girls. She wasn’t strikingly beautiful, but she would have been better looking in old age than Małka, Blatt admitted somewhat reluctantly. He seemed to be pondering whether he was being disloyal to Małka. Estera would have been thinner and with a better figure, but she did not grow old. Józek Bressler, the dentist’s son, told him in the camp that he had traveled in the same freight car with Estera and Małka. “Look,” Małka had said, “I’m fifteen, I’ve never made love to a boy and now I’ll never know what that’s like.” They both died. Józek Bressler ran away with everyone, but he was blown apart by a land mine.

  Finally, the last house, Grandma Chana Sura’s; she was a Klein by birth, the aunt of the Berlin cousin. She wore a wig. She didn’t visit the Blatts because Tojwełe’s father, Leon Blatt, who had been given a concession to sell vodka and wines as a reward for his service in the Polish Legion, ate nonkosher food, did not observe the Sabbath, and had been excommunicated by the rabbi. Kurt Engels, the Gestapo chief, personally placed a crown of thorns made from barbed wire on his head and hung a sign around his neck: “I am Christ. Izbica is the new capital of the Jews.” He roared with laughter as Leon Blatt walked through Izbica wearing his crown. Grandma Chana Sura, Leon Blatt, his wife Fajga, and Herszel, Tojwełe’s younger brother, died in Sobibor.

  And now it’s really the last house. The remains of a house, with remnants of a wall—Mosze Blank’s tannery. After the first deportation people took shelter in it. They felt safe; they said, come what may, the Germans will always need skins. They died in Sobibor. The owner’s sons survived. The older one, Jankiel, was a student at the famous Lublin yeshiva before the war. He had his Talmud in his hiding place near Kurów and continued his studies by the light of a kerosene lamp. He barely noticed when the war ended. The younger boy, Hersz, went into business after the war. He was murdered in Lublin, by unknown assailants, on Kowalska Street.

  We turned to the southeast.

  4

  The rebellion in Sobibor, the largest uprising in the concentration camps, took place on October 14, 1943. It was led by Aleksander Peczerski, a Red Army officer and a prisoner of war. Following the uprising, the Germans liquidated the camp.

  In Sobibor there were workshops producing things for the Germans. At three thirty in the afternoon the tailors informed one of the SS that his new uniform was ready to be measured. The SS man undressed and set aside his belt with his revolver. The tailors killed him with an ax and scissors. They placed his body in a closet, covered the blood on the floor with rags, and invited the next SS man to come in. At the same time, the shoemakers were announcing that boots were ready, and the carpenters, that there was beautiful furniture to inspect. Almost all the SS who were on duty died. This played out in silence and lasted an hour and a half. At five o’clock several hundred prisoners formed a column. Peczerski shouted in Russian, “Za rodinu, za Stalina, vpered!”—“For the Fatherland, for Stalin, forward!” The people ran toward the woods. Many of them died immediately in the minefield. Tojwełe’s jacket got caught on the fence and for a moment he couldn’t extricate himself. When he started running again the field was already free of mines. The Americans made a television film called Escape from Sobibor. Blatt was a consultant. He was played by a young American actor. The actor got caught on the fence, just like Tojwełe, and, as the script dictated, he was unable to extricate himself. It seemed to Blatt that this was taking too long. He was terrified. Time was passing, and he was not escaping from Sobibor. When the actor set off across the field, Blatt started running with him. The shot had long since been completed, but Blatt kept running. They found him several hours later, covered with scratches, his eyeglasses broken, hiding in the woods.

  Karl Frenzel was an SS man who survived. He had no desire for a new uniform, boots, or furniture. After the war he was given seven life sentences. In 1984 he won the right to a new trial. The trial took place in the Hague. Blatt was a witness for the prosecution. He remembered Frenzel perfectly. When his parents, his brother, and he emerged from the freight train in Sobibor, Frenzel was conducting the selection personally and sending people to the gas chamber. A day earlier, when they were still at home, Tojwełe had drunk up all the milk that was supposed to last for several days. His mother had said, “Don’t drink so much; leave some for tomorrow.” The day after that they were standing on the ramp in Sobibor. “You see,” he told his mother, “and you wanted to save some milk for today.” Those were the last words he said to his mother. He can still hear them fifty years later. He had intended to discuss this with a psychiatrist, but it’s hard to explain certain things to American doctors. Frenzel directed women with children to go to the left, and then walked over to the men with a whip in his hand. “Tailors step forward!” he shouted. Tojwełe was short, thin, fourteen years old, and he was not a tailor. He didn’t have a chance during the selection. He looked at Frenzel’s back. He said, “I want to live.” He repeated this several times. He spoke in a whisper, but Frenzel turned around. “Komm raus, du kleine,” he called out in Tojwełe’s direction, and ordered him to join the men who were staying there. Blatt testified about this at the trial in the Hague.

  Frenzel was at liberty during his trial. During a break he asked Blatt if he could talk with him. They met in a hotel room.

  “Do you remember me?” Blatt asked.

  “No,” Frenzel said. “You were so young then.”

  Blatt asked why Frenzel wanted to talk with him.

  “To apologize to you,” said Frenzel. It turned out that he wanted to apologize for the 250,000 Jews who were gassed in Sobibor.

  5

  Blatt was a witness for the prosecution in a couple of other cases. Among them was the case of the Gestapo chief in Izbica, Kurt Engels. The one who had placed the crown of thorns on Blatt’s father’s head. Tojwełe used to clean his motorcycle for him. It was a magnificent machine, with a sidecar and two gleaming fenders on either side. Each fender had a skull carved into it. Engels insisted that the skulls be polished to a shine. Tojwełe cleaned them for hours on end. It was an excellent job because when he was cleaning the motorcycle no German would bother him, even during a round-up. Engels had one other Jewish boy, Mojszełe, working for him. He was from Vienna. He took care of the garden. Engels would talk with him about caring for the flowers. He was fond of him. You’re a fine boy, he used to say. You’ll be the last to die and I’ll personally shoot you so that you won’t suffer. Blatt testified during the investigation that the Gestapo officer had kept his word. After the war, Kurt Engels opened a café in Hamburg. It was called Café Engels. It was the favorite gathering place of the local Jews. The Jewish community of Hamburg used to hold their celebrations in one of its rooms. He was unmasked in the 1960s. Blatt gave sworn testimony during the investigation. At the end, he was shown fifteen men and the prosecutor asked which one was the accused. Engels smiled. He still has a gold tooth, said Blatt. When he placed that crown of thorns on my father, he laughed with that gold tooth.

  After the confrontation, Blatt went to take a look at the Café Engels. He introduced himself to the owner’s wife. Did he personally kill anyone? she asked. Did he murder children?

  The next day, the prosecutor questioned both of them, Engels and Blatt. A clerk came in; Mrs. Engels was requesting a moment to talk with her husband. She walked over to her husband, took off her wedding ring, handed it to him without a word, and left the room.

  The next morning the prosecutor phoned him. Kurt Engels had poisoned himself in his cell and Blatt wouldn’t have to come to a hearing.


  6

  All night they walked through the woods. In the morning, Peczerski took their weapons and the nine strongest people. He said they would go and scout the area and he ordered the others to wait. He left them one rifle; Staszek Szmajzner had it. He had studied to be a jeweler in the ghetto, brought his tools along to Sobibor, and made signet rings with beautiful monograms for the SS. He got hold of the rifle during the uprising. He was an excellent shot; he killed several of the guards. Peczerski asked him to stay with the people in the woods.

  Peczerski did not come back. Blatt saw him forty years later, in Rostov on the Don. Why did you leave us? he asked. As an officer, I had a duty to go to the front and continue the fight, Peczerski replied. He had found a group of Soviet partisans. He fought till the war ended. After the war, he was sent to prison. People from Sobibor sent him invitations, but he could not get a passport and never traveled abroad. He was living with his wife in a communal apartment, in a multifamily house. They occupied one room. A large tapestry, which he himself had embroidered, hung above the bed. It depicted a dog. A sheet was hanging in a corner, behind it a wash basin and toiletry articles. Our rebellion was an historic event, and you are one of the heroes of that war, said Blatt. Did they award you any decorations? Aleksander Peczerski opened the door to the hallway, looked around, shut the door, and whispered, Jews aren’t given decorations. Why did you take a look outside? asked Blatt. After all, your neighbor is a friendly woman. It’s always best to check, Peczerski whispered.

  7

  When it became apparent that Peczerski would not return, they split up into small groups. Each one set out in a different direction. Tojwełe, together with Fredek Kostman and Szmul Wajcen, set off through the woods in the direction of Izbica. The next evening they noticed a village. A light was burning in one of the windows, in the fourth house on the right. A family was seated at the kitchen table—a tall, very thin man with pale hair; a short, heavy-set woman; a girl Tojwełe’s age; and a somewhat older boy. A holy image hung above them. In it, too, people were seated at a table, but they were all men. They wore white robes, and each one had a golden halo. The halo was largest over the one who sat in the center, his index finger raised. My father, Leon Blatt, was a Legionnaire, said Tojwełe. All those people in the painting were Jews, said Szmul. Every last one of them. We have something for you to remember us by, said Fredek, and placed on the table a handful of jewels that he had taken from the sorting room in Sobibor.