East of Time

by Jacob Rosenberg

  At this point mother gave her husband a stern look, as if to say ‘Be careful’. But my worn-out dad, who I think had already made peace with eternity, took no notice. Perhaps his intuition told him it would make no difference. So he persisted.

  ‘Look here, Szymon, I cannot tell you how I would feel in such a dilemma. But I can assure you that all those Jews who have a God in their soul and eventually march out of this ghetto alive, knowing that someone else died in their place, will walk the earth for the rest of their days with a heavy heart.’

  Dream

  I arrived in spring and stood at a crossroads near the ghetto.

  The countryside was already in bloom; the grass was a lush young green, sprinkled with brilliant yellow wildflowers. From nearby I could hear the silvery tinkle of my homely little rivulet, and the friendly greetings of birches, as I emerged from the Yiddish-speaking forest and set off along the Black Road that led to the village. I stopped for a moment beneath a royal oak, from which was suspended a huge crucifix bearing a shadowy figure. Before I could look more closely, I noticed in the distance my old friend Jaś. ‘Hey Jaś,’ I cried, ‘it’s me! Remember how we used to roast potatoes at sunset in the open field?’ But Jaś wouldn’t answer, and when I tried to take a step in his direction the road between us expanded, expanded, as if by magic, and kept expanding until Jaś vanished. So I started to walk towards the place where I had once spent my summer holidays, and on the way I passed by the old redbrick villa I remembered. On its veranda, just like years ago, two young girls in white dresses, holding each other around the waist, danced relentlessly to a tango coming from their tarnished gramophone.

  Finally I came to the farmhouse where we used to rent a room during our vacations. The war had changed nothing here. Across from the humble farmer’s cottage, its windows adorned with gaily-coloured flowerpots, a herd of black-and-white cows grazed peacefully. Rex, who had known me well, was lazing in front of his kennel, with flies buzzing about his eyes, and in the endless blue sky a white stork was searching for its nest, blown away by the autumn wind.

  Quite unexpectedly, Kazia appeared. It was five years since we had made love here; she had been fifteen then, but it was a young woman who now walked towards me with open outstretched arms, her head adorned with a wreath of cornflowers which matched her deep-set blue eyes and her golden hair lifting in the breeze. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘I knew you were coming,’ she replied. ‘I’ve been so feverish lately — come, let me share my fever with you.’

  We sneaked into the barn, where the breath of a peaceful darkness hovered, mingling with a touch of something sinister. ‘Let’s close ourselves in, like we used to,’ she suggested. We pushed against the heavy timber door until the barn was almost pitch-black, and began to undress each other. ‘This is heaven,’ she whispered a few moments later. ‘If only I could spend my whole life like this...’

  Abruptly there were footsteps outside and the barn door was thrown wide. Yes, it was Kazia’s father, the old, evercoughing, ever-cursing Antek. He stood at the door with a large pitchfork in his hand. ‘What are you doing, you little whore?’ he snarled. ‘And who is that son-of-a-bitch?’ Within minutes the whole village — man, woman, child and dog — stood around us.

  ‘It’s a Jew, a Jew!’ shouted a peasant. ‘Let’s take him to the Gestapo!’

  ‘He is not!’ Kazia cried. ‘He’s not!’

  ‘Why the Gestapo?’ said another peasant, who had a potato-nose and a moustache as big and bushy as a duster. ‘Let’s judge him ourselves. Maybe there is more than one Jew here, and if there is, there’ll be plenty of vodka for all of us.’

  This ingenious idea received general applause. I was chained to Rex, and instructed that I was to appear at first cock-crow before the magistrate at 13 Kowalska Street.

  Suddenly it was sunrise. In front of the courthouse stood a guard with a three-headed dog. ‘Room Z,’ he announced. ‘Follow the yellow line till you get there.’ Although the courthouse was a small insignificant-looking structure, its interior was enormous. I walked for hours through narrow, winding, unlit corridors, dingy passages and grey hallways. There were many doors but all were locked. Now and then a man’s rough voice urged: ‘If you walk faster, much faster, you might just get there before sunset.’ At last I reached Room Z, a scarcely noticeable little turret. Its door had no number, just a sign: SPRAWIEDLIWOŚń (Justice). It was only later that I learnt that Justice and Z carried the same meaning here. I entered.

  The courtroom, lit by candles, was packed to capacity. Behind a table covered in green sat the honourable magistrate: half man, half rooster. ‘What’s your name, loverboy?’ he scoffed. ‘And would you by any chance be Jewish?’

  ‘No, he isn’t, he isn’t!’ Kazia cried.

  ‘We’ll soon see. Drop your pants!’

  ‘Żyd, Jude — Żyd, Jude,’ chorused the whole assembly.

  ‘Have you any relatives here?’ asked the man-rooster, this time quite politely.

  ‘Yes, your honour.’

  ‘Then take me to them!’

  I led the zealous procession through my Yiddish-speaking forest, all of us holding candles to light the way. Then, stopping in front of the royal oak, breathtaking in its majesty, I pointed to the sad crucifix in its branches. ‘One of my relatives,’ I said.

  ‘I could hang you on the spot for such impertinence,’ the magistrate thundered.

  ‘Sir, you can check under his cloth if you like.’

  My reply created a nervous rustle. The crowd grew visibly angry. ‘Throw him into the jaws of Cerberus!’ they screamed.

  ‘Wait, hold it.’ It was the village priest. ‘The Gestapo doesn’t accept leftovers,’ he observed. ‘Let’s lock him up in Rex’s kennel, and tomorrow, with God’s help, we’ll all be drinking vodka.’

  At midnight Kazia crept in. After an embrace and a kiss, she murmured: ‘Run for your life — run; run before it’s too late.’ Somehow I stood up and stepped out of the kennel. I ran. Shortly I reached the crossroads near the ghetto. The countryside was already in bloom; the grass was a lush young green, sprinkled with brilliant yellow wildflowers. An old man was standing there, old as time and youthful as a spark of dawn. Clad in night, he was dreaming a dream of light.

  Final Departure

  There was summer, with its flawless skies, and in the silence of dawn the thunder of heavy, distant guns. A wave of hallucinations gripped the ghetto. On sleepless nights some people watched and found Cassandra’s face in the full moon; and all day long the disheartened gazed in horror to see hope writhing like a woman in travail. O God almighty, let my tomorrow not miscarry, let life continue. Please, God, answer our prayers, for we are at the end of our tether. The answer came swiftly next daybreak, on posters that had appeared overnight:

  Upon the highest authority, the Ghetto is to be evacuated to another location.

  Each factory, together with its families, is to travel to a new workplace.

  The first transport departs 3 August 1944.

  A quota of 5000 people must be resettled daily.

  Luggage allowed: 15 to 20 kilograms maximum.

  The first transport will consist of all workers employed in clothing factory No. 1 at 45 Łagiewnicka Street, as well as those in factory No. 2 at 36 Łagiewnicka Street.

  Members of families of the abovementioned workers must attach themselves to the transport, to avoid families being torn asunder.

  Announcements of further transports will follow. Those designated to leave the Ghetto must appear at Radegast railway station not later than 7 a.m. on 3 August. The transport departs at 8 a.m.

  Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski

  Eldest of the Jews in Litzmannstadt

  I quickly contacted and met with my underground cell leader, Bono. ‘The news is not good,’ he said. ‘The first item on Radio Świt [meaning ‘Daybreak’] reports that the chimneys of Auschwitz are smoking again. We have decided not to rise up, we don’t have the means, we are a
lone.’ His voice was dulled with disenchantment. ‘Our attempt to make contact with our prewar comrades was unsuccessful. Hide as long as you can; the rest is up to fate.’

  When I imparted the bitter tidings to my parents, mother let loose an almost animal howl. ‘Don’t you dare spread such awful news! People don’t do things like this. We are going to work — hasn’t Rumkowski ordered us to depart as a family, to take our bedding, our clothing and household goods to our new dwelling-places?’

  Father stood there, a broken ruin of a man. I recalled Rumkowski’s speech two years earlier, at the first resettlement of children and the elderly. ‘It cannot be that they will tear babes from their mothers’ breasts,’ Chaim had said, ‘and drag old fathers and mothers to some unknown place. The German is without mercy, he wages a terrible war, but he will not go as far as that in cruelty.’ Next morning, however, the new day arrived with a deafening shrill:

  This part of the Ghetto is to be liquidated today. Whoever is found here after 5 p.m. will be shot.

  The area referred to — the district where my grandparents’ grandparents had been born — was connected to the other, larger part of the ghetto by the timber footbridge that passed over Zgierska Street. This unexpected announcement contradicted the earlier statement about orderly evacuation of the ghetto. Panicking, we rushed wildly across the bridge that led to the other side of the ghetto. Amid the alarm, chaos and commotion I lost my family. I stopped for a moment, then ran back, hoping to spot them somewhere in the throng that had not yet managed to negotiate the bridge. But they had been carried away from me, like matches on the current of a surging river, towards the other end of the structure — where the Germans waited, whipping people like cattle into huge trucks that drove off without delay, to deliver them to the assembly point for departure.

  I recall that sunny morning of shadows, violence, rapine and guile. The place of assembly for the condemned was firmly fenced in, so I couldn’t see if anyone from my family was still there. At the gate stood an old German. I asked him if he would permit me to investigate. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can let you in, but I can’t let you out.’ I had a coin on me: heads they’re there, tails they’re not...

  As I walked in, mother ran towards me with open arms. ‘I knew it!’ she exclaimed triumphantly to another German. ‘I told you my son would come!’

  Shortly after midday we boarded the train, but we did not depart until dusk. A hundred people were pressed into our feebly-lit wagon. It contained one small bucket for our human needs, which was quickly filled, and one barrel of water, which was quickly emptied. The heat was unbearable. Eventually the sickly light went out. Father, enveloped in darkness, stood in a corner like his own tombstone. Mother fretted over what we would do, we had no change of clothes. She didn’t know that this was her last journey. My sister Pola cradled her whining Frumetl, and my sister Ida sang to her little Chayale, about how there was once a king...