Mosaic

by Diane Armstrong

  ‘When Ukrainians dug up the ruins of the house, they found my father’s charred pistol and his radio receiver, and handed them in to the Gestapo in Hoszcza. The Gestapo came to arrest me. I was tortured in Rowno jail. The Nazis wanted to know who my father was in contact with. My answer was always the same. I don’t know. I was sent to prison in Graz. At the end of 1943 I escaped from the prison to Yugoslavia and fought with a partisan group led by Marshal Tito.

  ‘In the summer of 1944, a gang of Ukrainian thugs murdered my grandfather. They choked him to death with a rope. I don’t know to this day where they buried him. Five of these bandits who murdered my family came from our village but I didn’t denounce them to the Russian court.

  ‘I have forgiven the murderers. Let God judge them.’

  When Mr Dziekonski finishes his harrowing family history, we sit in silence, as if struck on the head by a mallet. My mouth is dry, Marek is staring into space and shakes his head from time to time. He looks shell-shocked.

  As far as Szczakowa is concerned, Mr Dziekonski says that in 1942 the Germans hanged about a dozen people from the trees near the Spiras’ house. They ordered the residents to watch the execution, and apparently several members of the Spira family were among them. A few days later the Germans deported all the remaining Jews of Szczakowa to an unknown destination from which very few returned.

  When we say goodbye on the footpath outside the house that was a synagogue in my great-grandfather’s time, Mr Dziekonski takes my hand and says, ‘I have a lot of sympathy for Jewish people, for all you have suffered. Don’t forget I was a witness.’

  In spite of the horror of Mr Dziekonski’s story, I feel uplifted by his dignity and forgiving spirit. For centuries this country has been a battleground whose fields, watered by more blood than rain, have nurtured ancient hatreds. Jews have not had a monopoly on suffering, grief and loss.

  Before we drive away, I look back at the leafy street where the synagogue and mikveh stood, just a short stroll from the house on Parkowa Street. If I close my eyes, I can see a dapper white-haired gentleman in top hat and patent leather shoes like mirrors, striding ahead of his wife in a flowered hat with feathers, her long full skirt rustling as she tries to keep up with him as they walk to the synagogue on Kilinskiego Street for the marriage of their daughter Lieba to Daniel Baldinger. In this forgotten country town, I’ve found important pieces of the mosaic.

  CHAPTER 43

  Outside Krakow’s Jagellonian University, students have set up makeshift book stalls against the buttresses jutting out onto the pavement. As Marek and I walk along these crooked streets which have been crammed with shops, workrooms and guilds since the Middle Ages, I crane my neck to look at carved reliefs, weathered oak gates, and stone archways, as wide-eyed as a child who has just stepped into the pages of a well-loved storybook.

  The Glowny Rynek is a Renaissance square few cities in the world can equal. Dizzy with remembrance of things past, I hardly notice the swarthy gypsies and their tousled children whose wheedling voices beg for coins. Under those long arcades of the medieval cloth hall, the Sukiennice, I used to trot beside my mother so many years ago, licking ice cream flattened between two crisp wafers. In between the vivid flower stalls, children are chasing pigeons which swoop down to pick up crumbs and fly away. Horse doroskys with worn upholstery clop across the square while their drivers scan passers-by looking for tourists. Beneath the memorial to Poland’s great poet Adam Mickiewicz, young girls and boys in jeans are lolling on the steps, arguing heatedly about the political situation.

  High above the square, a tiny window opens in the tower of the Mariacki Church and the bugler blows his cornet. For an instant the high-pitched sound pierces the air. I know that it will stop abruptly, leaving the unfinished note quivering in the summer air, but when it does, I still feel cheated. It’s as though some promise hasn’t been fulfilled.

  At the far end of the square, Marek and I sit at a round table outside the Wierzynek Restaurant, a former nobleman’s villa where my parents once celebrated special occasions. Its walls are still adorned with statues, suits of armour, emblems and trophies, and while we sip our coffee, obsequious waiters in tails weave among the tables with silver platters.

  Marek’s gentle face looks troubled. ‘When we were in Szczakowa yesterday, you looked upset when that old woman used the word “Zhidek”. Why?’ Although he’s so perceptive, he can’t understand my revulsion at this word for Jew. He doesn’t feel its contemptuous connotation. Before we realise it, we’re plunged into a discussion about anti-Semitism. He thinks it only started with Hitler during the war, so as delicately as I can, I tell him about official discrimination, university quotas and right-wing attacks on Jews in Poland throughout the 1930s. He’s shocked when I tell him about my relatives who were blackmailed or turned over to the Gestapo by fellow Poles during the war. Like most of his generation, he knows very little about the long, sad history of the Jews in Poland.

  As he listens, I compliment him on his open-mindedness. It can’t be easy to hear this painful history. He’s obviously mulling something over while we cross the small cobbled passageway beside the church because he suddenly asks, ‘How come there are Jews and Christians anyway? What’s the connection between them? When did it happen?’ I explain that Jesus was a Jew, as were his apostles and disciples who formed a new sect because most of the Jews didn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah. To validate the new religion, their followers began to vilify the old one. Marek is as fascinated as a schoolboy who has suddenly begun to grasp a complex theorem, but the incredulity on his face disturbs me. How can I expect the truth about the Jews to be told in a country where an intelligent man in his thirties has never been told that Jesus was a Jew?

  This conversation comes to mind several years later when I read a news item in a Sydney newspaper which astounds and excites me. During his Christmas message in December 1997, the Pope said, ‘Whoever meets Jesus Christ meets Judaism.’ Karol Wojtyla, who was once Bishop of Krakow and helped Jews during the Holocaust, described Judaism as Christianity’s older brother and Christianity as an offshoot of the trunk of King David. He said that it was time that the Catholic Church recognised its responsibility in fostering the anti-Semitism which had made the Holocaust possible, and urged reconciliation between Catholics and Jews. As the first step in this process Catholic bishops lit Chanukkah candles in the Vatican for the first time. One month later, as a result of his directive, special masses were held in Poland to mark the first ‘Day of Judaism’ ever held. I wonder whether Marek attended this mass, and whether he too remembered our conversation that shimmering summer afternoon in Krakow’s Glowny Rynek.

  As Marek and I turn into Florianska Street and stroll down this long cobbled street which leads to the city walls, we pass number ten where I used to live. ‘Let’s go in!’ he says and we run up the shallow stairs of the curving staircase I remember so well. A moment later he’s explaining to the woman at the door of our old flat why we’ve come, and she invites us inside.

  I stand in a large sunny room with rugs on the floor and tapestries on the wall, so different from the sparsely furnished room I remember. Just here, against this wall, stood my small iron bed where I lay ill with mumps while my father invented stories about benevolent elves who lived inside our tiled stove. I remember sitting at the window on dark winter afternoons, looking down on the red trams clanging along the street below, and reading about unwanted step-children, spoilt princesses and homeless orphans as I escaped into the comforting world of books where mysteries were always solved and people lived happily ever after. It was in that room that I found out I was Jewish.

  We wander around the old Kazimierz district where ghosts seem to hover above the marketplace and chant prayers in the recesses of old synagogues and prayer houses. There’s Plac Estery, where on market days housewives inspected carp wriggling in wooden barrels, pinched the yellow flesh of the chickens in the poultry stalls and weighed moist farm cheeses in their practised hands.
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  Instead of bustling merchants, cheeky hawkers and gimlet-eyed housewives, today Kazimierz has the orderly atmosphere of a museum. The unruly technicolour world of the past has faded into a neat pastel print. Ajzyk’s Synagogue, where a few years ago I heard those phantasmal voices, has become the headquarters of the Research Centre of Jewish History and Culture. Jewish bookshops, kosher restaurants and nightclubs have mushroomed all over this area. At night, Szeroka Street resounds with sentimental Yiddish folk tunes played by gentile musicians who strike up their fiddles loudly enough to wake my sixteenth century ancestor Nathan Nata Spira, buried in the small cemetery across the road. Kazimierz has become the theme park of a vanished people.

  And it isn’t just Kazimierz. All over Krakow, as I look into the shops and read the posters, it looks as though the people have become obsessed with Jewish music, Jewish cookery and Jewish literature. Now that there are so few Jews left, everyone is bewitched by Jewish culture. As Justine puts it, it’s like our fascination with the dinosaur.

  At Aunty Slawa’s house for our farewell dinner, I’m thrilled to hear that my cousin Mario has named his second son Daniel. After his confused religious upbringing, I marvel that he feels the family bond strongly enough to call his son after his Orthodox Jewish grandfather. Slawa is delighted about this, but she thinks that giving the baby David as a second name is overdoing it. ‘It’s too Jewish,’ she says.

  It’s only recently that she has told her older grandson Tomek about his Jewish background. It happened in summer, when she took Tomek, a lively, bright-eyed ten-year-old, to a holiday camp run by the Lauder Foundation which teaches children about their Jewish heritage. ‘That’s when I told him,’ she tells me. ‘When Mario arrived to take us back to Krakow, Tomek said, “Daddy, Grandma is a bit Jewish. What about you?” Mario replied, “Well, what do you think?” Tomek thought about it for a moment and said, “So that means I am too.”’

  On Saturday morning I attend Shabbat service at the Remu Synagogue. In Sydney, I never walk to shule, but here in Krakow it seems important to do things properly. In Miodowa Street, I walk past number nineteen, the handsome corner house where my grandparents lived when they were first married and where Daniel told his apprehensive girl-bride stories from the Talmud to while away the long childless evenings. Aunty Lunia must have stood right here on the pavement as a child, watching wide-eyed as the brides, like fairy princesses, arrived in carriages drawn by horses. A few doors further on, I see graffiti scrawled on a cement wall. The words ‘Jude Raus’, ‘Jews get out!’, inside a Star of David.

  Inside the synagogue where visitors far outnumber the locals, I sit with the women behind a white net curtain that separates the sexes. This tiny congregation has no rabbi, and on the bimah, men in prayer shawls conduct the service. As their voices chant familiar Hebrew prayers and melodies, tears splash down my face. The young Dutch woman sitting beside me gives me a sympathetic look but she’s not Jewish, so how could she understand what I feel when I sit in this synagogue after all that’s happened here?

  Before leaving Krakow I visit the family memorial once again. As I walk along the silent paths, I notice that the graves have sunk lower; they sag and tilt more than ever, and the spaces in between are overgrown with long grasses and tangled vines. As my eye rests on each name, my heart aches for each of them in turn. Tusiek Selinger. Lieba and Rozia. Jerzy and Rutka. Of them I haven’t found a single trace, nor of my mother’s brother Izio, nor her sister Hania. Thanks to Justine’s influence I realise that Hania is not mentioned by name at all, only as the wife of Adolf Korner who wasn’t even related to us. I feel upset that in death this aunt whom my mother adored has been relegated to an appendage, as someone’s wife. Karola, too, is only mentioned as Stanislaw Neufeld’s wife. Only Tusiek’s remains and Daniel’s are buried in this ground. The bones and ashes of all the others lie in unmarked, unknown places.

  At the top of the memorial Daniel Baldinger’s inscription is incised in Hebrew. My grandfather was buried here before the war, in the same grave as Lieba’s own grandfather who died in 1872. One day Aunty Slawa will lie here too, next to her beloved father, as she has always wished.

  I pull out the feathery grasses that grow around the base and brush away the dead leaves. Then I place four little stones on the base of the memorial, one each for Michael, Justine, Jonathan and me, and walk away from that silent, dark path where the sun seldom shines.

  CHAPTER 44

  As the car bumps along the country road, I hardly blink for fear of missing a single detail of this landscape. I know I’ve travelled this way before, seen these tawny haystacks rolled like giant snails on stubbly fields, the cherry orchards soaking up the summer heat and the roadside shrines of suffering Christ garlanded with wild flowers. Even the sunflowers wilting in the blazing sun look familiar, as do the farmers pitching hay onto their wooden carts.

  On the last day of our journey, Justine and I are on the way to Piszczac, the remote village on the eastern edge of Poland where, as a tiny girl, I spent three years during the war, years of which I remember nothing. For some reason that I don’t understand, at the very last minute something has impelled me to see this place again, so that I might recall something from the time when our life was a thread of gossamer flung across an abyss that gaped wider with each step we took.

  As we pass yet another wayside shrine, I recall the mysterious holy picture that Jonathan and Susan found at the back of the wardrobe in my mother’s flat shortly after she died. It was a black and white picture of Christ in a narrow walnut frame and on the back someone had written a dedication in a flowing old-fashioned hand. A picture of Christ is an unusual object in a Jewish home, and as I pored over the faded Polish words I wondered why my father had kept it all his life. It said something about God’s kindness and mercy shining on Henryk Boguslawski on the occasion of his name day, but I couldn’t decipher the name of the donor. Perhaps it was a gift from the priest whom my parents used to mention with affection. Looking out of the car window I sigh. Now that they are both dead, this mystery will never be solved.

  Twenty-six kilometres before Piszczac, we come to the bustling little town of Biala Podlaska. Somewhere in this square was the pharmacy where in 1943 my father tried to buy medicine for me when I was so ill that they thought I would die. Somewhere around here was the railway station where he waited for the train back to Piszczac, clutching the precious serum while German soldiers scrutinised his papers.

  Biala Podlaska is a friendly little place where women with shopping bags gossip on street corners and no-one seems to hurry. Excited by the prospect of returning to Piszczac, I haven’t given any thought to what I hope to find there. Perhaps I could visit the house where we used to live, but I don’t know the address. Since this is the administrative centre of the region, it strikes me that they may keep records of my village. If so, I may be able to find the address of Mrs Bogdanowa, our wartime landlady. Seeing the house may jump-start my memory.

  Inside the town hall I scrutinise a noticeboard listing the president, chairman, directors and office-bearers by the score. It’s midday already, and we have to drive back to Warsaw this afternoon to catch the plane back to Sydney, so I must find someone quickly, but who? Like an arrow aimed at a dartboard, my eye falls on the town president’s name. He will know where provincial records are kept.

  Up in his office, a young blonde in a crisp white blouse tells me that there are no village records in Biala Podlaska, but as I turn to leave she says casually, ‘Actually I’m from Piszczac myself.’ Elated by this revelation, I start reeling off the names of some of the villagers my parents used to mention, but she shakes her head at each one. ‘We only arrived after the war, and those people must have left.’ I’m almost at the door when she says: ‘But we did know the priest there.’

  I wheel around. ‘The one who was there during the war?’ She nods. My heart is beating faster.

  ‘The priest I know lives right here in Biala Podlaska,’ she says.

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bsp; Making a rapid calculation, I shake my head. It couldn’t possibly be the same one. ‘He’d be very old by now,’ I say.

  She grins. ‘He is!’ Pointing out of the window at a church spire, she says, ‘Ask for him at St Anne’s.’

  On the way to the church I can’t get over this succession of coincidences, and wonder what guided me to this town, this office, and this woman who seems to be directing me to the past I came to find. Questions and suppositions spin around in my mind. It couldn’t possibly be the same priest. But even if it is, at his advanced age, will he remember those times, will he remember my parents, will he remember anything?

  Then a bigger question knots my stomach. Should I tell him that we are Jewish or will the shock be too much for him at his age? I wonder whether I’ll have the courage to reveal what my parents were forced to conceal. Perhaps he’ll be angry at the deception. Maybe after all these years it’s better to leave things alone.

  A red-faced road worker digging outside the church leans on his spade as he points to a small box-like block of flats across the path. ‘The priest from St Anne’s lives on the first floor,’ he says.

  As I bolt up the dark flight of stairs, my heart is banging against the back of my throat and I press the small buzzer with trembling fingers. It’s not a priest but a motherly grey-haired woman who opens the door, and she’s shaking her head with regret. ‘I’m sorry but the priest isn’t here,’ she says. My shoulders sag with disappointment but Anna, the housekeeper, ushers Justine and me inside, clucking her tongue. ‘I’ll make you some coffee, please wait, maybe he’ll be back soon.’