by Lily Brett
As soon as they entered the synagogue, Ruth felt calmer. She wondered
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what it was that houses of worship possessed that was so calming. An accumulation of prayer? A stockpile of godliness, goodness, goodwill? A con-fluence of altruism, benevolence, grace? Ruth knew that these things couldn’t be stockpiled, couldn’t be amassed. You couldn’t collect ephemeral qualities and make them concrete. There was no inventory of grace or virtue or piety. There was no brotherly love still present in this synagogue. Or was there? Ruth was sure she could feel something. Something around the cross-ribbed Gothic vaulting of the ceiling of the synagogue.
Something between the two narrow columns that supported the bimah.
Something in the air where the sermons were conducted.
“You know there are still seven synagogues in Kazimierz,” she said to Edek.
“That is good,” he said.
“If you can’t have the Jews,” she said, “the least you could have is their buildings.”
“I suppose so,” he said.
“Is this reminding you of too much?” she said to Edek. He nodded his head. “Does it make you think of going to synagogue with your parents?”
she said. He nodded his head again. He walked off to look at something.
It was hardly surprising that Edek and Rooshka had avoided synagogues, after the war, Ruth thought. Synagogues were too loaded, too freighted, with memories and questions. She caught up to Edek. He was upstairs on the first floor, in rooms that had been converted into a museum.
He was looking at a collection of Passover dishes. He looked sad.
“This synagogue was rebuilt in 1570 by the architect Mateo Gucci,”
Ruth said to Edek. “So Jews and Gucci have always been connected.” Edek looked blank. “Jews and Gucci?” she said again. Edek didn’t get it. She tried to explain the joke to him. The stereotype of rich, Gucci-clad Jews.
But he still didn’t get it. Ruth decided you had to know the Gucci label to think the joke was funny.
The last room of exhibits displayed photographs and documents. Photographs and documents detailing the demise of the Jews. Photographs of families with their bags and bundles on their way to the ghetto. Documents showing the progressively punitive and restrictive instructions issued by Germans to the Jews of Kraków. The instructions and orders and punishments T O O M A N Y M E N
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and restrictions and directives, which were written in German and Polish, were familiar to Edek. “We did have the same orders, in Lódz,” he said.
“You were already in the ghetto when these orders were issued in Kraków,” she said. Edek looked at her quizzically. “The Lódz Ghetto and the Warsaw Ghetto were formed before the one in Kraków.”
“You know everything,” he said.
“I wish I did,” she said.
Edek looked at a photograph of two Jews, two young boys carrying large sacks on their backs. They were in the middle of a trail of Jews on their way to the ghetto. “We was all like that,” Edek said. He shook his head. “Sometimes it does feel like it happened to somebody else,” he said. “Not to me.
Sometimes I think it was not me who was in the ghetto.” He shook his head again. Ruth could see he had tears in his eyes. “When I do see these photographs I remember that it was me. Me and Mum. I remember too much.”
Ruth felt bad. She hadn’t even thought about how he would respond to the artifacts or the photographs. “I am sorry I am upset,” Edek said. Ruth put her arm around him. “You’ve got a lot to be upset about,” she said.
Edek blew his nose. He looked embarrassed to have been crying. They left the synagogue. Ruth walked with her arm around Edek.
“I am okay,” he said, after a few minutes. “I did not mean to upset you.”
“You haven’t upset me,” she said. “What happened to you and Mum and all the other Jews is what is upsetting. Not your distress.”
“I am okay, now,” Edek said.
The tour group with the loud guide was standing outside the kosher restaurant. “Soon we will be approaching Józefa Street,” the guide was saying. Ruth looked at the tourists he was leading. They were a patched-together assortment of older Europeans. No one seemed to be under fifty. None of them looked Jewish. “Steven Spielberg filmed the scene in which the Jews were expelled from their houses in Józefa Street,” the guide said. “This was a scene which preceded the scenes of the imprisonment of the Jews.”
Ruth wanted to interrupt him. She wanted to point out that these episodes he was lecturing about were not scenes in a movie, they were events in people’s lives. With a rearrangement of his words, with a shift in wording, he could refer to both Steven Spielberg’s film and to what really did take place with Kraków’s Jews.
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L I L Y B R E T T
“The Jews went from Kraków to the ghetto over a bridge,” the guide said. “That bridge can be seen in a famous scene in which the Jews are marching to the ghetto.”
“They weren’t marching,” Ruth called out. “They were walking. Soldiers march, not a whole community of people who were being forced out of their homes.”
Everyone in the group turned around to look at Ruth.
“Ruthie, what has got into you?” Edek said.
“Anger,” she said to Edek.
“I just wanted to make sure you realized you were talking about real people, real history, real suffering,” Ruth said to the guide.
“Of course, of course,” the guide said. The group was silent. The entire group was staring at Ruth.
“That’s all I have to say,” Ruth said to the guide.
“Thank God,” said Edek.
The guide continued his talk. “When Steven Spielberg filmed the walk to the ghetto,” he said, “he reversed the direction. He filmed the Jews going from the ghetto to Kazimierz.”
“He filmed the actors,” Ruth said to him, “not the Jews. Steven Spielberg was filming actors.”
Edek tugged at her sleeve. “Ruthie, please, what for are you doing this?” Edek said.
“Because it makes me angry,” she said.
“You cannot be angry about everything,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said.
Ruth could feel that she was red-faced. The group was looking at her again.
“It’s important to be respectful to those people whose lives you are talking about,” she said to the guide.
“We are talking about Kazimierz and Steven Spielberg’s film,” the guide said.
“Do not answer him,” Edek said. Ruth didn’t want to agitate Edek. She didn’t answer the guide.
“Let’s go,” Ruth said to Edek.
“So Steven Spielberg reversed the direction of the Jews marching,” the guide said to the group.
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“The Jews walking,” Ruth shouted out to the guide, as she and Edek walked off.
“What has got into you?” Edek said.
“This is not a fucking movie site,” she said.
“You do not have to use such language,” said Edek. “And in any case Steven Spielberg did make this film here.” Ruth glared at Edek.
“This was the biggest film in the history of Poland,” Ruth could hear the guide saying. “The set of the concentration camp alone cost six hundred thousand dollars to build,” he said.
“Brother!” Edek said. “Six hundred thousand dollars.”
“About a hundred times more expensive than the original,” Ruth said.
Edek laughed. Steven Spielberg and his moviemaking seemed to have restored Edek’s spirits.
“We are now going to follow in Steven Spielberg’s footsteps,” Ruth heard the guide saying.
“Dream on,” Ruth shouted, in the direction of the guide.
“Why do you tell him he should dream?” Edek said.
“ ‘Dream on’ is an expression that means, in your wildest dre
ams,” Ruth said. “The guide said he was following in Steven Spielberg’s footsteps.”
“He was doing this,” Edek said.
“ ‘Following in someone’s footsteps’ is also an expression of living up to that person’s achievements,” Ruth said.
“Now I understand,” Edek said.
Ruth thought her explanation had been as confusing as the expression that she was trying to explain. She was glad that Edek had understood.
“Ruthie, please,” Edek said. “If we should meet some more tourists, it is not necessary to talk to them.”
“Okay,” she said.
The Yiddish and Hebrew words in the windows of shops and restaurants in Szeroka Street were not a sign that there were still Jews in the area.
They were signs of commerce. Stops on the routes of groups looking for history, bored tourists, Jews searching for their roots. If you didn’t know, you could think Kazimierz was still Jewish. Ruth and Edek entered the Remuh Synagogue. This synagogue was built after the Old Synagogue, and was also known as the new synagogue. The Remuh Synagogue, a small synagogue, was the only functioning synagogue in Kraków today.
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An old man was sitting inside the front door of the synagogue. He looked very old. His clothes were shabby and he was toothless. He was wearing a yarmulke.
“How many synagogues we got to go to?” Edek said.
“This is the last one,” Ruth said. “Do you think he’s a Jew?” she said, looking at the old man. Edek asked the old man, in Yiddish, if he was Jewish. The old man shook his head. “I am Jewish,” he said to Edek in Polish,
“but I don’t speak Yiddish.”
“He looks Polish to me,” Ruth said.
“What is wrong with you?” Edek said. He bowed to the old man.
“I read that this synagogue was used by the Germans as a storage room for rubberized sacks,” Ruth said. “The sacks were used to carry corpses.”
“I am ready to go,” Edek said.
“Can we just look at the cemetery out the back?” Ruth said.
“Okay,” Edek said. He looked glum.
A group of Israeli schoolchildren was in the cemetery. They were teenagers. About thirteen or fourteen. There were more than thirty of them. They almost filled the small cemetery. Ruth was glad to see them.
Glad to see signs of Jewish life.
“Shalom,” Edek said to several of the teenagers.
“Shalom,” they repeated. One of them, a tall, skinny redheaded boy, came over and patted Edek on the back. “Shalom,” he said.
Ruth and Edek walked around the cemetery. Ruth felt peaceful. Why did she feel so peaceful in the company of the dead? It was a strange phrase. The company of the dead. Could the dead keep you company? She took Edek’s arm. She felt bad about dragging him into synagogues and cemeteries.
The Nazis had destroyed this cemetery. They had dismantled and shattered tombstones. The cemetery was now in the process of being restored.
Pieces of tombstones too shattered to be pieced together were embedded in an internal wall. The wall contained particles of people’s names, scraps of dates, fragments of numbers and letters, and snippets of symbols. It was a strangely poetic mosaic.
Ruth stopped beside a tombstone that read that Gitel, the daughter of Moses Auerbach of Regensburg, a grandmother of the famed Rabbi Moses Isserles was buried here. Ruth felt she could feel Gitel. “I feel she had a T O O M A N Y M E N
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good life,” she said to Edek. Ruth surprised herself by saying this. She normally didn’t reveal the more unruly and irrational of her thoughts.
“She was very generous to the poor,” Edek translated from the Hebrew on the tombstone.
“Do you think it’s silly to imagine that you can feel someone’s life?”
Ruth asked Edek.
“Maybe,” he said. “And maybe not. Maybe some people can see things what other people cannot see. You did always know things what other people did not know.”
“Really?” said Ruth.
“You could see things,” Edek said. Ruth felt rattled. “You could see that Mrs. Watson next door was not happy with her husband,” Edek said. Ruth was relieved. It was perception Edek was talking about, not telepathy.
“You did tell Mum that Mr. Watson was not very nice to Mrs. Watson when you was six,” Edek said.
“When I was six?” Ruth said.
“Yes,” said Edek. She must have been a nosy, if precocious, child, Ruth thought.
“You did say that Mrs. Watson did used to have someone else who was nicer to her,” Edek said.
“What?” said Ruth.
“That is what you said,” said Edek. “And this was true. She had a first husband we did know nothing about.”
“She must have told me about it,” Ruth said.
Ruth remembered spending most of her Sunday afternoons, until she was ten or eleven, watching Mrs. Watson make apple pies. Every Sunday afternoon Mrs. Watson baked four apple pies to take to the Methodist church that night. The church, around the corner, fed the poor every Sunday night.
Ruth used to love to watch the pastry being rolled, the apples being peeled and cored. She never tired of watching Mrs. Watson pinch the sides of the filled pastry together, and then make decorative marks with a fork around the rim of the pie.
“Mrs. Watson did say she did never tell anybody about her first husband,” Edek said. “Not even her son did know.”
“She must have told me,” Ruth said.
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L I L Y B R E T T
It was possible to tell a lot about a person without being told things, specifically, anyway, Ruth thought. She remembered Mrs. Watson’s wistful, faraway expression. Ruth had known that Mrs. Watson was thinking about someone else. Someone she had loved. Someone who was no longer alive.
Ruth had had a lot of experience in identifying that sort of longing. She had been exposed to so much wishful, wistful thinking.
“Mrs. Watson was married to someone who died,” Ruth said.
“You did tell Mum this,” Edek said. “Mum did ask Mrs. Watson. Poor Mrs. Watson did cry for nearly a whole day after Mum did ask her that question. She said she never did tell anyone in her whole life about this dead husband. Not her son, not her husband. She didn’t want her husband to think he was not the first man. In those days that sort of thing was important. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Ruth said. She didn’t want Edek to expand on the importance of virginity in marriage, in those days.
“Mrs. Watson’s first husband died in the war,” Ruth said.
“That is exactly what she did tell Mum.”
“She must have told me, too,” Ruth said.
Edek looked at her, in a bothered way. “You did always know what people was thinking,” he said. He shook his head. “But this about Mrs. Watson’s dead husband is not something it is easy to know from a person’s thinking,” he said.
“Mrs. Watson must have told me,” Ruth said.
“She must have told you,” Edek said. “My sister Fela was like this. She did know what people was thinking.” Edek walked in front of Ruth, still shaking his head.
Ruth was bothered. She couldn’t remember Mrs. Watson telling her.
She reassured herself. You could deduce a lot about someone without a word being spoken. Demeanor and movements and gestures and habits and expressions were very revealing. There was no need to feel bothered.
Edek’s sister Fela must have observed people carefully, too. Ruth was cheered by that thought. Cheered by that alliance.
Outside the entrance to the Jordan Jewish Bookshop and the Noah’s Ark Café, a young woman approached Edek and Ruth.
“Would you like a guided tour of the Schindler’s factory area?” the young woman said.
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“No thanks,” said Ruth.
“Why not?” said Edek.
&nbs
p; “You really want to see Schindler’s factory?” Ruth said.
“Why not?” Edek said. “It is something interesting.”
“Do you know much about the factory and its history?” Ruth asked the young woman.
“Jewish studies is one of my subjects at the University of Kraków,” the young woman said. She put out her hand. “My name is Helena.”
Ruth and Edek shook hands with Helena.
“Are you Jewish?” Ruth asked her.
“No,” she said. “But I am very sympathetic to their history.”
“What do your parents think of your studying Jewish Studies?” Ruth said.
“They are not very happy with this,” Helena said. “But they have become less unhappy. They can see that I can support myself during my studies with money that I earn as a guide.”
“So you get regular work taking these tours?” Ruth said.
“Yes, very much work,” said Helena. “There are many guides like me.
The bookshop provides its own guides. But I am cheaper.”
“Okay, we’ll do the tour,” Ruth said. “But first I need to have a cup of tea. Can we take ten minutes to go into the bookstore and the café?”
“Of course,” Helena said. “I will wait here.”
In the Noah’s Ark Café, an eighteen-inch-high carved wooden figure of an Orthodox Jew playing a cello stood on top of several of the tables. Three yarmulkes, black ones with gold trimming, were perched on top of the piano. There was Hebrew writing on the walls and a plaintive Yiddish song was playing as background music. None of the customers in the café looked Jewish.
Ruth felt sick. She was sick of Jews being reduced to caricatures and turned into artifacts. Edek sat down at one of the tables. He started to hum along to the Yiddish song. It was a lullaby. A lullaby about a mother singing her child to sleep. Sleep my small child, sleep, the mother sang.
The menu of the Noah’s Ark Café had “Jewish cheesecake” as well as an assortment of other food described as “Jewish.”
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“I think I will have a cheesecake,” Edek said. “And a cappuccino.”
“I’m not sure they do a cappuccino in a mock-Jewish café in Poland,”
Ruth said. The waitress came up to them. There was no cappuccino. Edek settled for a cup of tea. “Is this café owned by Jews?” Ruth said to the waitress.
