by Lily Brett
“Okay, I will buy just a couple of the chocolates now,” Edek said as though Ruth had insisted on the purchase.
They went into the store. Ruth was impressed by the chocolates. They really did look like first-class chocolates, she thought, and then wondered what distinguished first-class chocolates from their lesser cousins. Was it their luster, their sheen, their color, their density, their shapes? She didn’t know. Probably all of those things.
Edek asked for a pound of the chocolate-coated prunes. The woman behind the counter smiled coyly at him. Lots of Polish women used coy expressions. Ruth didn’t understand why. Was it to hide their intrinsic harshness? Edek smiled back at the woman. “Wedel’s is a very beautiful chocolate,” he said to the woman.
“Tell her in Polish,” Ruth said. “She’ll understand it better.”
“Oy, cholera,” Edek said, and hit himself in the head. He repeated his praise of Wedel’s products in Polish. The woman beamed.
Edek was eating his third chocolate by the time they entered the covered market in the square. At first glance the vendors appeared to be selling the usual tourist trinkets and souvenirs. Carved wooden artifacts seemed to be the most popular item on sale. There were shelves and shelves of carved wooden figures in every stall. There were carved wooden peasants. Men in knee-length lederhosen, with braces attached, and hats. Some of the carved peasants wore vests. All of the peasants had drooping mustaches, and they were all holding a beer mug.
There were wooden Father Christmases. Roly-poly red-and-white Father Christmases with big beards and cheerful expressions. And then there were the carvings of Jews. Jews wearing the long black coats and broad hats of Orthodox Jews. White tefillin, Jewish prayer shawls, were draped down the front of the coats. All of the Jews had long beards and even longer noses. Noses that in many cases continued down past the mouths. Enormous, hooked noses that ended in a sharp point.
Ruth was shocked. She had never seen anything like this. Some of the carved Jews were pointing to their head. Was this supposed to signify Jews’
cleverness? Or was that too kind an interpretation? Was it supposed to sig-T O O M A N Y M E N
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nify Jews’ cunning? All of the ornamental Jews looked worried. All of their features sagged and bent in a downward spiral. Their beards hung below their waist. Their large eyes drooped with weighty lids. Their foreheads were furrowed. Were these Jews exhausted from counting their money?
These carved Jews definitely weren’t happy.
Ruth wondered who was supposed to buy these Jewish mementos. No Jew would. The market was full of tourists. Would tourists buy the carvings as souvenirs? Souvenirs of what? Of Kraków? The Jews were part of Kraków’s past. A past they were glad to get rid of. Poland had got rid of its Jews, and had now turned them into knickknacks, Ruth thought. Bric-à-
brac. Fodder for a tourist industry.
Ruth was appalled. She looked to see if Edek was as bothered as she was. Edek was examining a packet of playing cards. Ruth looked at the stall next to where Edek was standing. This stall had a range of Jews cast in china as well as a selection of carved wooden Jews. The wooden Jews were Jewish musicians. There must be a big market for faux Jews, Ruth thought.
The carved Jewish musicians were, like the Orthodox Jews in the neighboring stall, decked out in black. But with different outfits and different hats. The musicians wore shorter jackets and hats that looked more like bowler hats. These Jews were dark-haired as opposed to their gray-haired, more religious brethren. The black-haired Jews looked as miserable as their Orthodox brothers. Their features were even more pronounced, more ridiculous, more exaggerated, more caricatured. Their brows were slanted and heavily underlined in black paint. Their eyes were ringed in thick, black strokes. All of this black gave the musicians an air of malevolence most musicians did not possess. The musicians didn’t look healthy, either.
Their skin was painted a dark, jaundiced ocher. Their noses hung down to their black beards. Each musician carried a cello or a violin or a flute.
Expressions of extreme misery were carved into their faces.
Ruth was stunned. There were hundreds and hundreds of these Jews as trinkets. How could they have this ugliness in the middle of such a beautiful old square? Several vendors had tried to interest Ruth in a sale. They had picked up a wooden Jew or two and waved them at her. Ruth wanted to get behind the stands and knock every one of these faux Jews over. She felt furious.
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L I L Y B R E T T
Edek had caught up to her. She asked him what he felt about the carved wooden figures. He didn’t seem bothered. Ruth assumed that next to the pogroms and beatings and stone throwings of Polish life that Edek and his family had been accustomed to, these figurines seemed harmless. “I hate them,” she said to Edek. A man offered Ruth and Edek a carved violinist.
Ruth wanted to spit at the man. They walked through the rest of the market. They were offered more renderings of Jews. Not one vendor offered them a Father Christmas.
Outside the market, vendors were already barbecuing kielbasa and roasting potatoes. They must be preparing for lunch, Ruth thought. The kielbasa smelled good. For years she hadn’t been able to eat meat. Hadn’t been able to refer to it as anything other than cooked flesh. Which it clearly was. The term “cooked flesh” was upsetting to most people, so Ruth tried to keep it to herself. Lately she had been trying to eat meat again. But it hadn’t been easy. Meat still seemed fleshy to her. She was surprised that the barbecued kielbasa smelled so appetizing.
Edek had walked ahead of her and was watching several men turn lengths of kielbasa over a large outdoor grill. “Looks good, doesn’t it?” she said to Edek.
“Very good,” he said.
“Do you want one?” she said. She was sure he was going to say no. It was still early. Not quite time for lunch.
“Maybe just a small one,” Edek said. He ordered a kielbasa sandwich.
The kielbasa that was handed to Edek was the length of an average garden hose. It came ensconced in a very long bread roll. Ruth thought the sandwich must measure at least two feet. Edek had to sit down on a bench.
This was not the sort of sandwich you could eat standing up.
A nearby stall was selling candy. Ruth walked over and looked at the candy. It was the same candy you saw anywhere else in the world. They had fruit jellies, boiled sweets, mints, and licorice allsorts. Ruth hadn’t seen any licorice allsorts for years. Licorice allsorts were not an American thing. She wanted some licorice allsorts. This stall was self-service. She picked up a bag and chose a number of the fattest most multiple-layered allsorts she could find. She felt excited at the prospect of the allsorts. She hoped they were good.
She walked back and sat beside Edek. She took out an allsort. Edek T O O M A N Y M E N
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looked at the allsort. He was halfway through his sandwich and his mouth was ringed with the orange tinge of tomato sauce. “Why do you eat such rubbish?” he said to Ruth. “It’s better than the rubbish you eat,” was what she wanted to say. Instead she said nothing. She ate the allsort. It was very good. The filling was soft, not stiff. The licorice was still pliable. She finished the rest of the bag. She didn’t care if she was regressing. Acting out a childhood in which she had turned to sweets when she was disturbed. The licorice allsorts calmed her. She felt the most peaceful she had felt since arriving in Poland.
Edek looked at her eating the last of the allsorts. “They’ve calmed me,”
Ruth said. This didn’t deflect Edek’s criticism. “This black stuff columned you?” he said. “Are you crazy?”
“Let’s walk, Dad,” she said. Edek had finished his kielbasa sandwich.
He patted his stomach.
“Maybe it was too much for me,” he said. He looked as though he was uncomfortably full.
“Let’s walk it off,” she said. “I’ve got some Mylanta if you need it.”
“You will need the Mylanta a
fter that black stuff,” Edek said. “Not me.”
“Let’s walk,” Ruth said.
They walked past a large sandwich board on the street, outside a travel agency. The sandwich board was almost in the middle of the footpath.
SIGHTSEEING, in large red capital letters, was painted across the top of the board. Underneath the heading was a list, in large painted letters, of the tours you could take. A large green dot was placed in front of each destination. “Salt Mine in Wieliczka,” was the first destination. This was followed by “Concentration Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau,” and, in brackets “[On Request Cze˛stochowa].” Underneath the option of Cze˛stochowa was “Raft Trip Down the Dunajec River.” The text on the other side of the sandwich board was identical. Ruth wondered what part of Cze˛stochowa you saw if you requested the Cze˛stochowa option, in brackets. Was it the densely populated Jewish section of Cze˛stochowa that the Germans surrounded on a bitterly cold January night in 1940? Could you visit that site and think about the Germans pulling Jews out of their homes with shouts of Juden raus? They beat and clubbed the Jews of Cze˛stochowa into lines, and assembled them in the large square.
Ruth felt furious. Her anger churned her stomach. She wished she
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hadn’t eaten the allsorts. For the Polish, Jews were now statues and orna-ments and baubles. The dead ones were a boom for the tourist industry.
“Does it give you a shock to see Auschwitz advertised on a tourist billboard?” she said to Edek.
He was very quiet. “It is not very nice,” he said.
“Let’s go to Kazimierz,” Ruth said.
“How far is it?” Edek asked.
“Not far,” she said. “You want to walk or catch a taxi?”
“Let us walk a bit,” Edek said. “I do not feel so good. I think the kielbasa was a bit too much for me.” Ruth thought it was more likely that the billboard had been too much for Edek, not the kielbasa.
“I don’t feel great either,” Ruth said. “I can’t believe the Poles and the expedient way they’ve set up a little tourist industry out of dead Jews.”
“It is not so nice,” Edek said.
“They just hate Jews,” Ruth said. “It’s ingrained in them, this hatred.
Nothing that they suffered at the hands of Germans changed how they felt about Jews.”
“That is the truth,” Edek said.
“It wasn’t just in Kielce that Poles murdered Jews after the war,” Ruth said. “In Radom, Poles attacked the hospital for Jewish orphans. In Lublin, two Jews who had been beaten by Poles were tracked to the local hospital and murdered in their hospital beds. This was after the war, Dad.”
Edek looked pale. “How do you know such stuff?” he said.
“I know, I guess, because I want to know,” Ruth said.
“Do you have one of those Mylanta tablets?” Edek said.
“Yes,” she said. “I think I’ll have one, too.” They both chewed their Mylanta.
The Mylanta antacid tablets were peppermint-flavored and green. Ruth knew that she and Edek would both be left with green tongues. She contemplated offering Edek a piece of chewing gum to get rid of the green.
She decided against it. Having a green tongue suddenly didn’t feel all that abnormal.
“It is shocking,” Edek said.
“What?” she said.
“How the Poles did kill Jews after the war.”
“It really is shocking,” she said. She wondered why it felt even more T O O M A N Y M E N
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shocking than murders committed during the war. She thought it must be the realization that all the murders and the killings hadn’t made a dent in the anti-Semitism of many Poles. It hadn’t moved them. That was a sickening thought. Definitely something to be shocked about.
Ruth looked at Edek. He had been very quiet. She always felt uneasy when he was quiet. She hoped he was all right.
“Are you all right, Dad?” she said.
“I am all right,” he said. “Maybe I will take a bit more of that Mylanta stuff.”
“You’re not feeling well?” she said.
“I feel fine,” he said. “I did just eat too much.”
Ruth gave him two more Mylanta. Edek chewed the Mylanta tablets.
Was it the food that was making Edek feel sick or the country and its history? Ruth wondered. It was probably Poland, she decided. Not the kielbasa he had eaten, or his breakfast of herring and pickles and salami. Her father had always had a cast-iron constitution. Kielbasa or salami had never affected him adversely.
“When we’ve looked at Kazimierz,” Ruth said, “we’ll go back to the hotel and have a rest.”
“I do not need a rest,” Edek said. “Have you got a piece of chocolate or something?”
“I thought you weren’t feeling well,” Ruth said.
“I am all right,” he said. “But that green stuff does not taste too nice.”
“The Mylanta?” she said.
“Of course,” he said. “What other green stuff should I talk about?”
“You’re going to wash the Mylanta away with some chocolate?” Ruth said.
“The chocolate will give me a better taste what the Mylanta,” Edek said.
Ruth couldn’t come up with a reasonable argument against following Mylanta with chocolate.
“You’ve got those chocolate-covered prunes,” she said to Edek.
“Oy, that’s perfect,” he said. “I did forget about them.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the chocolates. “These chocolates are very good chocolates,” he said when he had finished the rest of the bag. Ruth was reassured. Any man who could polish off three quarters of a pound of chocolates couldn’t be all that unwell.
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L I L Y B R E T T
They were in the heart of Kazimierz now. On Szeroka Street, the main street of the Jewish quarter. Szeroka Street was more of an elongated square than a street. It was a beautiful square. The buildings still had a vivacity. It was easy to imagine the rich, full lives that must have been lived in these buildings. There were small attic windows and chimneys and tur-rets and carved doorways and arched entrances.
Kazimierz was noticeably more architecturally interesting than the areas surrounding it. The entire area, Ruth had read, was no bigger than three hundred yards by three hundred yards. A very dense center of culture and religion and learning had once been packed into this small section of Kraków. The first of several Jewish publishing companies had been set up in 1534. Works of lasting scholarship and religious teachings were printed in Kazimierz, from the fourteenth century until the time, four centuries later, when the Jews were removed and dispensed with.
“Isn’t this beautiful?” Ruth said to Edek.
Edek looked up. He looked around him. He nodded. “It is very nice,”
he said.
Ruth felt excited. This was a Jewish area that looked relatively intact.
Not dilapidated and grubby. Not all of the signs of the life that was once lived there had been crushed out of this area.
“This is so exciting,” she said to Edek.
“There are no people here,” Edek said.
Ruth knew what he was referring to. He was talking about the absence of Jews. Telling her to quiet down. Telling her that these were only buildings, not people.
There were plenty of people in Kazimierz. Several tourist coaches and private cars were parked in the square. Kazimierz was first promoted as a tourist destination in the early 1970s. The Poles realized that with seven synagogues mostly intact, and former Jewish theaters and bathhouses and an ancient Jewish cemetery, Kazimierz had revenue potential. But no one came. The Poles were not interested. And word about Kazimierz didn’t spread outside Poland. Then Steven Spielberg arrived. Overnight, everything changed. Kazimierz, which had been run-down and grubby, immediately attracted private Polish entrepreneurs. They began to restore Kazimierz.
Steven Spielbe
rg’s film Schindler’s List brought crowds of tourists to T O O M A N Y M E N
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Kazimierz. Although most of Schindler’s List took place nearby, in the Plaszów death camp, the Podgórze ghetto, and Oskar Schindler’s factory, the fact that Spielberg had filmed in Kazimierz was enough. The results of this exposure by Spielberg were evident. Three restaurants with Hebrew lettering were on one side of the square. A kosher restaurant and what was advertised as a Jewish bookshop were also on Szeroka Street. Kazimierz was on the map—in every guidebook on Poland and in endless brochures from travel agents.
When Ruth saw the tourist coaches she felt flat. Why was she here? Not to be part of a tourist circus, that was for sure. They passed a group of tourists being led by a loud-voiced Polish guide. “Steven Spielberg first came here in 1992,” the guide was saying.
“Do you think the people in that group look Jewish?” Ruth said to Edek. Edek shook his head. “They are not Jews,” he said.
“Steven Spielberg was here for thirty-six hours on his first visit,” the guide said. The group had stopped outside what Ruth recognized from the guidebooks was the Old Synagogue. “Steven Spielberg made the decision on that visit that he would direct Schindler’s List nowhere but Kraków,” the guide said.
“Did you meet Steven Spielberg?” one of the group asked.
“No, I didn’t,” the guide said. “But a very close friend of mine met him.
Spielberg spent quite a few days filming in Szeroka Street. He made the decision to film the ghetto scenes here during his second visit to Kraków in June 1992.” Nobody asked what the ghetto was, or where the real ghetto had been located.
“Let’s go in and have a look at the Old Synagogue,” Ruth said to Edek.
“It is very interesting what the man is saying about Steven Spielberg,”
Edek said. Ruth felt irritated. Couldn’t her father see how phony this whole interest in Kazimierz was?
“We didn’t come to Kazimierz to listen to stories about Steven Spielberg,” she said.
“Okay, okay,” said Edek.
“The Old Synagogue,” Ruth said to Edek, “was the religious and administrative center of the Jewish community of Kraków.”
