Mrs. Fisher remembers her mother calling Grandfather a low-class shtetler who couldn't spend his mountain of money because he might not have enough for his potatoes. I don't understand exactly what that means, David.
Grandfather was not interested in having another child. People talked about Rimberg and his one child and thought, what must be wrong with Aida if there is only one child? Of course, another Rimberg did arrive, eventually. Mrs. Fisher says Grandfather knew before Grandma Aida did. “You're pregnant,” Mrs. Fisher remembers him spitting in the hall, looking at her hips and shaking his head.
“No!” Grandma Aida spat back. “I would know if I am with child!”
Eight months later, in late 1928, our father, Josef, was born.
This child, though, this special child, he softened Laurence up. Dad was so beautiful, light brown curly hair from the beginning (like yours, Mrs. Fisher said to me), these blue eyes like his father's (she pointed at my face, my eyes, and nodded). An angel of a child. “I was not even four years old, but I remember this change in your grandfather. Never did I see him shout at your grandmother again.” Mrs. Fisher nodded.
And then, David, there was more talk: steel, and our grandmother's purchasing of apartments and also constructing them, building her own little empire of real estate. They prospered even through the economic strife of the thirties, with trips to the ocean in summer, Knokke on the North Sea, afternoon tea with the Conservative Association Antwerp families sitting together at luxury hotels. Grandfather rose to be president of the Conservative Association and to the head of many committees at Van den Nestlei, the main synagogue, the most important in Antwerp, amid fraying nerves about what was happening in Germany.
This is when our grandfather began to commit real crimes, I think.
In January 1938 there was a meeting at the synagogue where our grandfather told everyone to calm down. Germany would not make the mistake of coming into Belgium again.
But in April of 1938 our grandfather, seemingly without reason, sent thirteen-year-old Solly to live with distant relatives in New York. Mrs. Fisher was brokenhearted. She'd believed she and Solly would grow up together, would marry, have children, walk them in carriages in the park, own a summer home in Knokke. Mrs. Fisher listened at her door as a Flemish man pulled Solly's trunk from the apartment. Solly and Grandfather stood in the hall. “Go,” Grandfather told Solly. “Don't look back. Never speak of the past. Don't think of us anymore.”
“Why would he say this if he didn't know what was coming?”Mrs. Fisher asked.
In 1939, Mrs. Fisher's father, nervous about moves Grandfather was making, sent her and her mother to Switzerland, where they stayed through the war. Mrs. Fisher's father was deported in 1942 and died in Auschwitz. Even writing that makes me sick.
In February of 1940 our father, Josef, disappeared from Antwerp. He didn't show up in school. He missed his music lessons, which he wouldn't ever do, because he was a very dedicated young pianist. When asked, Grandfather told everyone he'd sent his son to boarding school in Switzerland. In fact, people found out later, Dad was sent only a short distance away to Mechelen, to live with a liberal Catholic family whom Grandfather knew through business ties. Dad lived as a Catholic on a farm, where he survived the war.
Three months later, in May of 1940, the Germans came. Many in the community had escaped days in advance, having heard terrible stories of the treatment of Jews in Germany and in the already conquered Poland and Czechoslovakia. Of the some 50,000 Jews of Antwerp, about 25,000 remained behind, including our grandfather and grandmother.
The Germans set up an organization called the Judenrat to act as an intermediary between the Jewish community and the German leaders. Our grandfather, naturally, having done business in Germany and being fluent in German and a leader in the community, was chosen to lead the organization. Or rather, he volunteered to lead it. “He wanted to protect his business interests. Do you think he would just give away these holdings? All of the apartments your grandmother owned? No! So work with the Germans! They will reward people who cooperate.”
And for a time, the Germans were hands-off. The Judenrat communicated German decrees to the Jews, and complained to the Germans if they felt their rights were being stepped on too much. (Why should we register? Why can't we visit the parks? Why should we wear these stars?) Complaints were actually heard and dealt with in rational conversations, although, of course, the Germans implemented the policies anyway. But with each day of seeming peace, and a continued “correct” attitude on the part of the Germans, Grandfather's reputation as leader grew. “Just obey obey obey. The Germans have no problem with us as long as we obey.”
Then in April of 1941, Belgian anti-Semitic groups attacked the Jewish neighborhoods, burning businesses and homes. And the Germans did nothing to protect the Jews.
“The Germans will work with the Antwerp government to see that we are reimbursed,” Grandfather told everyone. There was no reimbursement.
In early 1942, young people, young women and men, began to be called by the Germans to go to Germany to work. People came running to the Judenrat. “What should we do?”
“Obey,” Grandfather told them. “It will be fine.”
A lucky few, David, didn't obey. A few escaped right then. The ones who obeyed . . . You can imagine the consequences.
And in the summer of 1942, mass deportations began. Grandfather helped organize the movement. He called on groups of Jews to gather their belongings and meet at the train station, telling everyone it would be fine. Soon word came from Mechelen (remember Mechelen?) that a kind of transport depot had been set up there, and Jews from Brussels and Holland were being shoved into cars like cattle and hauled off to the east. It will be fine, our grandfather told everyone. It will be fine. And on August 27, 1942, there was a massive arrest, which took 70 percent of the Jews in Antwerp. Grandfather helped organize that, too, calling out from a megaphone to go peaceably. All the way into early 1943, even with horrible evidence mounting, our grandfather continued to collaborate with the Germans, continued to bring Jews to the square in front of this ornate train station in central Antwerp that has haunted me since I've been here. He stuck them on trains, and they were taken to Mechelen, put in cattle cars and hauled off to die. That's our grandfather, David. That's Laurence Rimberg.
In August of 1943, there were no Jews left, except for a few with Belgian citizenship and the members of the Judenrat. The Germans disbanded the Judenrat at that point, because, of course, there was no more need for an intermediary. The members of the Judenrat were rounded up on September 4, except—guess who? Laurence Rimberg. He had disappeared.
And here history gets hazy. Word on the street was that Grandfather had been working to get forged papers, a forged identity, for the year preceding the termination of the Judenrat. He, like Dad, was sandy-haired and could pass for a gentile easily. Our grandparents became Catholics who lived in Holland. They attended mass, so the story goes. They even became involved in social committees. But then Grandmother found Grandfather hanging from a beam in their tiny house (either hanged by his own hand, or perhaps not—there are plenty of rumors that suggest someone else did this). Shortly thereafter, our lovely grandmother Aida died. By the middle of 1944, although they didn't know it, Solly and Dad were orphans.
I've had dreams, David, of children being dragged by soldiers, dreams of our father laughing while watching the Jews be gathered. I've cowered in the corner in these dreams crying and terrified. It was our grandfather. He did this. We should be cursed.
There. You have the history.
T.
Letter 47
October 15, 2004
* * *
Dear Paul McCartney,
I'm in Julia's apartment and she's playing your music. Take a sad song and make it better. I don't know how, Paul. I don't have words. My dad is dead. All these people die. John is dead and George is dead. Linda is dead.
I've read about you riding that school bus and seeing Georg
e for the first time, him dressed like a fifties rockabilly hipster. You didn't want to talk to him, because he was only fourteen and you were older, and you rode the bus to school for weeks, aware of him, thinking about him. But you wouldn't play the fool. Eventually he sat down next to you on the bus and he said, I play guitar, and you nodded. You knew already. Then you brought him to John and the miracle happened.
And then John got divorced, and Julian, his son, was alone, so you wrote him “Hey Jules” and then turned it into “Hey Jude” and said to him don't carry the world upon your shoulders. My dad left me. I left my son. I have wanted to be dead.
My dad, when he was George's age on that school bus, tried to carry the world on his shoulders. A couple of months after you were born, in 1942, my dad tried to fix it. But it was something that couldn't really be fixed.
My beautiful friend Julia is back in the apartment someplace listening to you sing on a CD, Paul. I have to tell my brother.
T. Rimberg
Letter 48
October 15, 2004
* * *
David,
I'm sorry I left my last letter when I did. I had to stop. We are the grandkids of a monster. There is something else, though.
The howling women at the rest home didn't all hate me because of Grandfather. Some loved me because of Dad.
Dad was living on a farm with Catholics. The farm was in Mechelen (yes, that Mechelen, the same). Remember, he was sent there in 1940 when he was eleven, so he'd be saved even though the rest of Antwerp wouldn't be. From the farm where he stayed and went to school, ate and slept, Dad and his Catholic brothers (a fourteen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old) who were actual brothers and the sons of the man who took Dad in, watched the construction of the “transit depot” the Nazis set up. It was near the farm. Once it was finished and put into use, they likely heard screams floating across the green fields. They maybe could hear the pounding of cattle car floorboards, the crying of mothers and babies.
Dad and his brothers watched, and I guess they couldn't bear it. They thought they could fix it. With another friend, another child, some day in late summer in 1942, the three Catholic boys and our dad, all children, got on farm horses and descended on a train filled with Jews. They were armed with old farm rifles. I imagine they'd watched Hollywood westerns. They attacked the trains with scarves covering their faces.
David, these four boys killed the train engineer and killed the three guards on board. Dad flung open train doors, blood flowing, fire rising in his face. He freed the Jews on board, who all disappeared into the countryside. Most survived the war, including an old lady I met in the home. The fires the boys set destroyed the train, which blocked the tracks for several days so no other trains could come. During this attack, all three of Dad's friends were killed. Only Dad, our almost fourteen-year-old dad, lived. I don't know if he returned to the farm—how could he, the two sons dead? I don't know if he hid or what happened to him after that. But he survived, and so did the Jews on the train, around a hundred and fifty people. Millions died in the camps, but not this trainload. And then he came to America, and he married our mom and drove around the Midwest with a suitcase full of diamonds listening to eight-track tapes, and we're his sons. Isn't it strange?
Word got back to Antwerp. People here know what he did. If he hadn't returned to Antwerp in the late seventies, if he hadn't behaved poorly (I remember he hit you), our dad would still be considered a hero. He is a hero.
Charlie, Kara, and Sylvie are likely waking up right now, back in Minneapolis. Maybe they're having breakfast right now, or maybe watching public television. They are the grandchildren of a child-hero, the great-grandchildren of a monster. They are also my children.
David. You're my brother. I'm writing to you. I must love you.
T.
Day Nine:
Transcript 10
* * *
History shapes people. I had no history.
I don't know. Knowing the history of my grandfather might have made me darker. So sure Dad hid it. Probably thought he was protecting us from it. So he hid everything and disappeared. But secrets just leave this empty space. Knowing Dad's history might have given me courage.
No. I wasn't protected.
I'm not protecting my family now. I'm a runaway, too.
Not knowing Dad's history is no excuse.
That's enough, Barry.
Journal Entry,
October 18, 2004
* * *
Why is it a big deal? Why do I care about this business?
But I want to know. I want to know what this business was, why it was a big deal to Dad, a big enough deal that he disappeared and never came back. Mendez says it incorporated in 1980, soon after Dad turned into a ghost.
This ghost Dad was in Antwerp when I was here in 1990. We were likely close, blocks apart. We might have been in the same building.
I want to see this business.
Day Nine:
Transcript 11
* * *
It's a funny name. The business is still called Green Bay– Palanpur Blue. Dad, I know, named it after here—named it after Green Bay, Wisconsin.
I don't know. Crazy. Where does love come from? My father, war refugee, boy hero, Jewish diamond trader—he lived and died for the Green Bay Packers.
They were terrible when I was a kid. Do you remember the Packers in the seventies? A team God left behind, which I'm sure appealed to Dad. Even if God had forsaken the team, Wisconsin fans never stopped cheering. Dad loved Green Bay, never missed a game on TV. We watched together every week. He rarely said a word otherwise, but on game days he'd shout and jump off the couch: “You can score every time on these schlumps, Dickey!” Lynn Dickey was the quarterback then.
Dad was a cheesehead.
Here I am in Green Bay. No coincidence. Go Packers.
I didn't go to the firm alone. Julia was with me.
They were very nice. Warm. You know Indian warmth?
Yes, Indians from India. That's the second time you've asked. Do you think there are a bunch of Native Americans in the international diamond business?
Fair enough. I've heard the Oneida casino here is pretty rich.
I met the president. The firm is headed up by Bharat Jhavari, who is about my age. He's the son of Mr. Jhavari, who started the business with Dad in 1980. Bharat took us into the boardroom. He asked me to sit down, asked if I wanted something to drink. He wouldn't even look at Julia—she thought because she's a woman. I thought it might have something to do with her husband suing the firm. He was nice. He said they were so sorry about Dad. It was so sudden. Dad was family to them. How it must have been a shock to me, too. “You have no idea,” I said.
Bharat wanted to make sure the lawyers had taken care of me, gotten me the money. Of course, I got the money, but not from lawyers, it didn't seem. He said he'd bought Dad out last spring. It was a terrible shock . . . Bharat shook his head. And then I got really upset about Dad, again. Dad was family to these Indians, the Jhavaris, you know? But to me . . . ? And I—I had the story of his train attack . . . And I had pictures from Antwerp. Dad in front of the train station. Dad, a young kid, at the zoo looking straight in the camera, level stare, sad. Scrawled notes to me apologizing for his absence in my life . . . notes on scraps of paper that came in the package. My stomach clenched up and I said . . . “Yes. Yes. It's been a terrible shock.”
We didn't stay for long. Talked a little about the history . . . how Dad met Bharat's dad in Chicago in the late seventies. How they got the idea to export the diamond cutting to India to lower costs instead of using the Jewish cutters. That's apparently what upset the community so much—although that's not exactly giving Jews over to the Nazis, is it? It was a really good partnership. And when Dad died in June, Bharat's father came back from India and spread the remains on a field outside of Mechelen.
No. Jews don't normally get cremated.
Bharat said he wished we could have met under better circumstance
s, and he seemed sincere. Of course he was withholding something. Not everything. Just that one thing, Poland . . . which I guess is big.
I wouldn't have found out, Barry, except for the Jhavari bride. She worked there, and she was Bharat's wife. Julia and I were already at the elevator, on our way out, when she tapped me on the shoulder. A very young woman. She had a framed picture in her hand. “This is from last year,” she said. “Your father dancing with me at my wedding. Please have it.” She handed it to me, and there was Dad, elderly but healthy looking, energetic looking, tuxedoed, dancing with a beautiful Indian girl. There was Dad laughing. “Please,” the Jhavari bride said. “I very much liked your father.”
Yes, this Jhavari bride, maybe twelve hours later, gave me the information. She caught me just in time. I was about to leave.
I hadn't had a single dream since entering the nursing home, not until that night.
Letter 49
Note: Copy of letter left at Hotel
Cammerpoorte front desk. N.K. verified.
October 21, 2004
* * *
Dear Cranberry,
It's just after midnight and I'm moving.
The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg Page 16
