Triumph Over Tears

by Nava Chernoff

  “Dad?” I said, a little worried, “I will be traveling to Germany with the youth and wanted to tell you that we will be close to Hamburg. Is there anything you would like me to bring, do, or buy?” “Not really, but if you can find my brother Arye's grave, it would be good.” It was the very first time I had heard about an Uncle named Arye. I could not wait to get to my father. I was expecting a logical explanation. The drive to my fatherʼs house usually takes about four hours. I like to take a break in the middle of the three-hundred-and-fifty kilometer stretch. It is not long but with a ninety kilometer an hour limit, it sure does feel that way. My favorite view is the desert, the silhouettes of the mountains, carved out by flowing water, animal tracks in the sandy dirt, and Acacias punctuating both sides of the road. Driving in the Aravah prairie is relaxing. Often a succession of images, thoughts, sounds, and emotions pass through my mind. This particular drive sent my brain into overdrive. Did I ever hear the name Arye as my father's brother? All I remembered was that Dad had once said that he came from Hamburg. No one talked about the Second World War. It was a forbidden subject. There was no memory of talking about the past. Our lives started the day we were born. We are the family and the beginning of a tree. I never heard stories about Grandfather Karl. “All you need to know is that his name was Karl,” Dad said when I asked him about my grandfather. Grandmother Elizabeth passed away when I was two years old. I have no memory of her, either. My aunts did everything in their power to leave the war behind them, without much success I might add. Filled with curiosity, I wondered what was so important that Dad wanted me to drive all the way to Eilat. What could he not tell me over the phone. Finally, I arrived. As soon as I walked through the door, I noticed a bottle of vodka sitting on the table. “Dad, are you feeling well?” I asked. “Sit! Do not worry, I did not start yet. I was waiting for you.” Dad said. I smiled. “You know I do not drink hard drinks. Is there any beer in the refrigerator?” I asked with both relief and some worry. I realized that my father thought this was going to be a difficult spill. “Well then,” I said, “it looks like we are going to have a party. I will fix something to eat. You cannot drink this bottle with no food. You are too heavy to carry.” Dad came to the kitchen and asked me why I had left the kibbutz an hour earlier than I previously said I would. He had expected me to arrive around three o'clock. I told him I had not left early. I had left at eleven just like I said I would. “Nava, it is only two. How could you be here? How fast did you drive?” I chuckled. It is not like me to speed. I knew that road very well and my knowledge of where every police car sits and at what time was incredible. “It is a very dangerous road. You should be very careful. There are a lot of maniacs driving, especially on the prairie stretch, it is like a jungle out there.” “Fine, Dad. I will be very careful.” We set our little private party with Dad's favorite herring, chopped salad, black bread, olives, and homemade pickles.

  Nervous and ready, I said, “Tell me. I am all ears.”

  If predicting the future were in my power, I would have known to bring a tape recorder.

  Dad was going on like a machine—talking so fast it sounded like he was being chased and needed to get it all out before he was caught. I said, “Please stop.” I asked him to take a deep breath. I searched for a pen and paper in the bedroom and found a drawer of old documents that almost looked like Dad had been looking for something but could not see it. Dad was very neat. Leaving the drawer this way was not like him.

  “Ready again, can you start from the beginning? Please go slower so I can make sense of your words.”

  It was the most extended conversation I ever had with my father. My ears stretched up in the air like they did not believe what they were hearing. My eyes were wide open like it was the very first time they saw the man in front of me. “His name is Arye,” Dad began. “We were in a youth house in Blankenese, Hamburg. Just before we immigrated to Israel, Arye drowned in the pool.” It was the second time in my life that I saw my father cry. The first was when he held Yarden at his circumcision and was announced as the Godfather for my firstborn.

  “Arye Leckner in Hamburg cemetery should not be that difficult,” I said. “How come you never mentioned Arye before?” “No need to dig in the past,” he said. “Now that I know you will be nearby, it would be nice if you could go to the grave, if it is there, and if it is possible to find it at all. Fifty years is a long time to be alone with no one to pray for you.” Father stunned me with his words. He never believed in God, or so I thought. He respected our religious neighbors. We celebrated all the holidays, but he never kept any of the mitzvahs. He continued. “Before we immigrated to Palestine, they split the children by age group: Grandmother Elizabeth and my three sisters, Rina, Tami, and Lea, stayed together. Aunt Roti was alone. I came at a different time on the Providence. We found each other well after we all arrived.” “How was it in the war?” I asked. My father looked like he was living the time again. His eyes opened wide, with a scared look in them. “Hungry,” he said. “We were hungry for years. Because I was the oldest, six years old, it was my responsibility to sneak out at night to search for leftover food and bring it home. Bread crusts and potato skins were my target, but anything edible would do.” Suddenly, I understood why my father stored food for “just in case.” He was living alone and had cupboards of preserves and a freezer stuffed to the top with meat. He did not want to go hungry ever again. “Remember, your aunts were babies, so they received the food first, then Arye, then Roti. I was last because I was the oldest at the time.”

  It was not easy for me to recap my Dad's route to becoming a survivor. He had so many blanks on the map. Dad was born in Danzig (Free City). Today it is Gdansk, Poland. Around 1945 they had to leave Danzig because the situation got worse. As a mixed family (my Grandfather was a Catholic German soldier) they were able to quietly leave the city without anyone bothering them. No one helped them, but they left them alone. When the war intensified, more Germans occupied the city. Then, the mixed families were forced out of the city, only to arrive in Berlin, then move into hiding on Amrum Island. We do not know who moved them or why. When the war was over, someone from the island sent signals saying there were survivors on the island. My family was rescued and taken to Hamburg, Germany. Although we could recognize Dad, Karl Jr., and Roti on the Blankenese photos, there is no record of them in writing. Dad was on his way to Israel on the illegal refugee ship "Providence," departing on May 10, 1948 from Marseille, France. At sea they heard of the Declaration of Independence of Israel by Ben Gurion. At sea their status changed to legal and became an immigrant ship "Providence." On May 22nd, Dad disembarked the ship without the status of refugee and would not go to British detention camps in Cyprus. As a legal immigrant, he immediately joined the Palmach and fought for his country. So many blanks to fill and still a lot of questions unanswered. I called my Aunt Roti, wanting to find out more information regarding Uncle Arye. “Are you out of your mind?” She said. “There is no brother Arye. It is all your fatherʼs imagination. He is not thinking right. Stop digging in the past.” Dad said there was an Arye; Aunt Roti said there was no Arye. Nevertheless, I was traveling to Hamburg and I had nothing to lose. In Hamburg, I was a guest of the Horst family. The day we gave our youth a day off to be with their host families, Brigit and I hit the train looking for Arye's grave. Hamburg has two Jewish cemeteries. Of course, we had to go to the wrong one first. By the time we visited the second one it was closed. My hopes were that tomorrow when we returned we would have someone to talk to, perhaps get some help, too. In 1998, the cemetery used the original notebooks from 1947, where they kept the records of the dead. I asked the gentleman for Arye Leckner who had passed away in 1946 or 1947 at maybe eight or nine years old. My hands were shaky, my heart pounded, and my thoughts raced out of control. Is it really possible that I have an Uncle Arye here? It was almost like fighting a dream, one of those dreams that you want to end and are anxious to finish. “Here,” he said, “Karl Leck
ner, nine years old, nineteen-forty-something.” He had a hard time reading the numbers and refused to let us look. “Karl” I said and went silent. Of course, this must be the name on his birth certificate, the name Arye must have come later. They probably gave them Hebrew names before they immigrated to Palestine, just like Dad and my Aunt. That was it. “My Grandfather's name is Karl Leckner. I am sure this is it. Can we see him now?” I asked. I could not wait to go out of that room and march to my uncle, to tell him about his survivor sisters and brother. The gentleman was holding a long stick. He pointed it on the wall and said, “It is here.” I looked at Brigit, puzzled. “Can you ask him for a map?” I asked her. “No maps. Try to remember the wall map,” he said. We both fixed our eyes on the wall map to try to commit it to memory. We marched to the area that we remembered, and looked for my uncle for more than an hour. The old part of the cemetery had grown wild. Some graves had trees growing right out of them, splitting the graves in half. Some of the sections were under a heavy bushy area that was not possible to reach. If my uncleʼs grave was among those graves. We would not be able to see it. With no luck, a little frustrated, we went back to the office to ask for help. “I am not helping. I am busy,” he said. I saw his sour face. It was unfortunate that he could not speak English so I could tell him what I thought of him. I looked at Brigit. “I know you do not have to be here, spending your day off in the cemetery, but do you mind if we search for it again?” “I do not mind,” she replied to me.

  I smiled and thanked her as we went back to the search. We knew we were in the right area but could not find it. Like an angel coming to our rescue, the gentleman appeared with a group of people. What do you know? He was helping them to find their loved ones, a group of Americans. I went to the man who looked to be in charge and explained the situation to him. I asked him if we could join the group. He looked at the cemetery keeper with hard eyes, then asked us to join them and commanded the keeper to tell us where Karl was when we got there. We made it! I looked at Karlʼs grave. It was bare, with only a little bit of gravel and some scattered wood that could have dropped in from anywhere and fallen onto it. No wonder we could not find it. There was no mark, name, or sign, so there was nothing to recognize. Looking carefully, with tears running down my cheeks, I saw what looked like something written on the pieces of wood. My love for puzzles paid off. With patience, I gathered together the wood and it said, “Karl Leckner, something 2, 10.” Later we learned that those numbers are the grave mark, section line and the number of the grave. My heart was pounding. I was so excited and shaky it was difficult for me to light the candle and say a prayer. Brigit did not know what to do, looking at me, filled with emotion. She asked to help with the matches to light the candle, but I politely refused. It was something I needed to do, for Dad and for myself. Just before we left Karl Leckner Jr., I looked down on the wood and said, “One day, I will be back with a real stone, Uncle Karl.” The little plank that they had placed on the gravel in 1947 was still there, in very small pieces, fifty years later, waiting for me to find it. It was nearly impossible to comprehend. I came back home with photos from Karlʼs grave. My father was beside himself. “You did it!” He said. “I should have known that you would!” I explained to Dad in the smallest details how we found the grave. He asked over and over again how I did it, his “stubborn girl.”

  Mission accomplished, I thought, but I did not have the chance to hold onto that thought for long.

  “Nava,” Dad said, “there are more.”

  “More what?”

  “More siblings.”

  “Where?”

  “In England.”

  Here we go again. I learned from the first time that the smallest detail could be the most important one. I wrote down every single word Dad said. After Dad finished telling me the story, I asked some questions, but to most, Dad did not have an answer. I wanted to organize the information he had just given me so that I would have a timeline in chronological order. “I have a brother named Fred and a sister named Gerda. I think Gerda is older, but I am not sure. They are both older than me, and their last name is not Leckner. My birth name is not Leckner. I cannot remember the name— Grandma gave me Leckner because she was married to Karl and he raised me. All of your aunts in Israel are Leckners. Karl was a German soldier. I have another figure in my mind but I do not know who he is. He was an officer for sure. His boots were tall and shiny and made of leather, like riding boots. The uniform he was wearing was so tightly pressed it could stand up by itself. It looked like even his hat was pressed. I do not think my birthday is my actual birthday. But I do not know what it is. Loewenthal is a name that I remember, but I am not sure about that either. It could be Mayerson or Aharonson, too. I think one of these names were my grandparents. Gerda and Fred were transported to England at the beginning of the war with lots of other kids. Your grandmother knew where they were, but burned all records. She said Fred is a British soldier and he did not want any contact with us. We never got in touch, and all my life I was dreaming about finding them. You found Karl. Do you think you can find Fred and Gerda?” Overwhelmed with my new discovery, I could not think of searching for anyone.

  “You are not a Leckner? I am not Leckner?” I asked my Dad. “I do not think I am. I was a little boy. But I know Karl came to my life and not me to his life. If you can find my name, maybe you can find Gerda and Fred.” “How can I find anything?” I asked. “You want me to find a needle in a haystack—Gerda and Fred in the entire United Kingdom! Are you serious? What if she got married? What if he immigrated to some other country?” With Gerda and Fredʼs information still in my mind Dad said, "One more thing, while I am telling you all of this you should know that there is one more baby that I remember on Amrum Island. I can notremember anything about him and he did not immigrate with Grandma and your aunts." When I saw my fatherʼs despair, I promised him to do my very best to find Gerda and Fred. I called my Aunt again and told her that I had found Karlʼs grave in Hamburg Germany and that Dad had asked me to look for Gerda and Fred. “Why are you doing it?” she asked. “Leave the past. Tell your father to stop dreaming. They are not coming back.” I had caught her! “So you say that there is a Gerda and a Fred?” She chuckled. “Yes, somewhere in the world.” The conversation with my Aunt Roti cheered me a little. Although she did not show signs of happiness, something in her voice was not as negative as the first time I talked to her and asked about Arye—I should say, Karl Jr. I told Roti that Dad said that Karl Jr. drowned in some pool. She replied, “I do not think so. He was sick and even though he survived the war, he could not recover.” So I had two theories. Maybe one day I would know the true reason. “Aunt Roti, would you like a photo of Karl Jr.ʼs Grave?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied blankly. It seemed to me that the looking was difficult for my aunt, not the finding.

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  FALLING APART. Living in the kibbutz was good for raising the children, having the comfort of close friends and being surrounded with support. But I still have to say that the system was not the best fit for my needs and life at that particular time. My family was outside the kibbutz. They all lived in the cities. Mom and Dad were in Eilat, and they were both sick. Mom had a long battle with cancer and Dadʼs overall health was declining. The distance between us was very difficult. I had my life. Work, two toddlers, and a marriage that was falling apart. Overwhelmed with responsibilities and life duties, I felt at times that something had to change. The first thing was our marriage. It could not continue the way it was. I felt miserable and trapped. My attempts to talk to my husband regarding our communication, raising children, household responsibilities, and sex life were failing. He knew the importance of family to me. That gave him the confidence that I would never leave him. I said to him, “One day you will lose me.” His response was to turn on the television. As insulting as it was, I continued carrying on with our life—together,
yet apart. Mom started her long recovery from cancer. But the worries and frustration from the fact that I was so far from her, and could not help as much as I wanted, did not help me mentally. Dadʼs condition worsened. He moved to Haifa, near my older sisters, thinking that would be better for him. There was a better hospital for dialysis treatment. We knew that Dad was living on borrowed time. We had no idea that his time was so short. Yarden was four years old and Shani two years old. I had my hands full. With guilt on my shoulders, I found myself in a strangerʼs arms—a lover. It was no angelic act. I knew it was wrong and had no excuse for my bad behavior. But I did not want to stop the affair. I felt loved again, more like a human and less like a robot. I knew it would have to stop, one way or another. I just did not want it to stop then. In all of the confusion and turmoil in my life, Dadʼs condition became worse than ever. It was the end. I knew it and did not want to believe it. I used to drive to visit Dad in Eilat every time he called—we called it “night shifts.” Finish working at about four o'clock, pick up the kids from kindergarten, make sure they are clean and fed, then call the person who was in charge of the car arrangements. In the kibbutz, we had no ownership of property. We shared everything including the cars. Most of the time, night drives to Eilat were not a problem. I could leave at about six or seven in the evening to get to Eilat at night, clean Dadʼs house, and make us something to eat. If he was in the hospital, I would visit him there for a few hours, then drive back home to start a new day. I returned with enough time for a shower, prepare the kids for school, and go to work. Weekends and days were more of a problem. I did not always have the opportunity to get a car. If I did, it was not for a long enough time, as I needed ten hours for a round trip. To top it off, we had to pay for it from a small budget, which made it a challenging situation. Six months before Dad passed away, he moved to Haifa, thinking that getting close to the center of the country will be better for him. My older sister lived in Haifa and the rest of us, except Ofer who was in Eilat, were closer to him. Most definitely that move made it easier to reach Dad. I could take the bus to Haifa and did not need to depend on the availability of the kibbutz cars.