But these ironies didn’t interest Yechiel. He was more interested in what he might say to Rabbi Yehoshua Ben-Levi and the prophet Elijah. He might say that Itzik was unwittingly helping the Nazis, or he might say that Itzik was doomed, but even if true, there was a difference between the railroad camp and Treblinka. Yechiel knew the truth—not one soul of Israel—and where was there a sweeter, more innocent soul than his Itzik! No, Yechiel’s defense, if he had any, was not intellectual. Let the prophet Elijah look into his son Itzik’s innocent, suffering face— “Promise? Promise?”—and say no. Maybe others could. Yechiel could not.
Only dreams gave Yechiel hope. Rabbi Yehoshua Ben-Levi had made a mistake, but he had fasted and continued to dream. Hadn’t Rabbi Yehoshua Ben-Levi made his mistake because of his love for the Jews of Lod? And hadn’t the prophet Elijah still appeared to him? So, too, Yechiel had been unable to accept the law of the pious. If he didn’t live to see the prophet Elijah in his dreams, might he not be visited and instructed by Rabbi Yehoshua Ben-Levi? Not one soul of Israel!
An impatient, fidgety Itzik asked when they would arrive. A calm Yechiel kissed him and promised, “Soon, very soon.” Tormented by discomfort and boredom, Itzik asked what he could do. Yechiel answered, “Dream, my son, dream. We are a people of dreams. We must never surrender our ability to dream. Dreams are our hope.”
CHAPTER THIRTY - FOUR
THEY ARRIVED AT TREBLINKA. FOR FEAR OF BEING separated, Yechiel firmly clasped Itzik’s hand as the carriage door opened. It was good that he had done so, for they were greeted by screaming storm troopers, whips in hand, cursing vituperatively as their vicious dogs barked. With their tormentors in pursuit, alongside and in front of them, the Jews ran from the cattle cars and were forced to undress. Those who moved too slowly felt the slicing burn of the whips, the bludgeoning of clubs, or the tearing canine tooth.
Seeing the fear in Itzik’s blinking eyes, a naked Yechiel Katzman shouted above the bestial din, “I’m here, son. I’m here.”
When they were forced to run again and Yechiel stumbled, only the first lash fell upon his bare back, for his son interposed his great body to protect him and unflinchingly absorbed the horrors. Nude and bleeding, Yechiel arose in pained dignity, for he knew who he was; not only a name but also a father in Israel.
And the children of Israel honor the parents who love them so. Chased naked the final exhausting yards, the old father stumbles, and the child whose hand he is holding sweeps him into young powerful arms and gently carries him forward. When the heavy metal door to the gas chamber slams shut, they stand together, hand in hand among the crush of bodies. The diesels start, and the gas begins to enter, acrid and harsh. The father sees the questioning terror in his young son’s eyes, and the father says to him, “You must pray.”
Holding the father’s hand, the son begins the perfect prayer, leaping up and down like a holy frog as he had in his youth on the rebbe’s table. The boy golem doesn’t know his own strength and carries his neighbors with him, up and down. One more like this and the building would burst, but alas, there is no other Samson.
As Itzik begins to pray, Yechiel understands the source of the Krimsker Rebbe’s anger and forgives him. Unlike Yechiel and Itzik, the rebbe wasn’t privileged to die with the Jews, the souls of Israel.
The gas performs its lethal work, and Yechiel begins to fall, but he cannot, and he wonders, Is this the strength of stones? For the last sensation he has is of being pulled upward by Itzik Dribble toward—the dreams of Rabbi Yehoshua Ben-Levi, yellow butterflies, and—heaven.
SOUND WAVES
YECHIEL KATZMAN WAS WRONG ABOUT SHMUEL Mordechai Zigelboym. In his escape from the Warsaw ghetto and during his stay in London, Comrade Artur never experienced anything in a dreamlike way. Zigelboym’s escape across Europe was perilously real. In London he had hoped to find help for the threatened Jews of Poland, but instead his life there was an unremitting nightmare: no one cared about the destruction of the Jews of Poland.
By May 1943, only a small remnant of Poland’s Jews survived, and they, too, were faced with annihilation. And no one cared about them either. In a last desperate attempt to awaken the “Polish government in exile, the Polish nation, the allied governments, and the conscience of the world” into doing something to save the remaining Jews, Zigelboym committed suicide in protest against the world’s indifference.
Perhaps time might have slowed down in that final instant when Zigelboym pulled the trigger. When the bullet raced through its mercilessly short trajectory into the side of his head—in that thousandth or a millionth of a second—he might have felt as if he were dreaming, but even then Zigelboym would have been reminded of the few thousands of Polish Jews who still remained and the three million who had already perished—and it would only have extended the nightmare.
Although Yechiel Katzman was wrong about Zigelboym, he was right about the Krimsker Rebbe. It was precisely this point, the sharing of the people’s fate, that so inflamed his reaction to Zigelboym’s protest suicide. In addition to his accusing the Polish government in exile and the Allies of an apathy that bordered on the criminal, Zigelboym had written in his final note, “I can no longer remain when the surviving remnant of the Jewish nation in Poland, whom I represent, continues to be exterminated. My fellows in the Warsaw ghetto fell with weapons in hand in a final heroic struggle. I was not privileged to die as they did, together with them. However, I am one of them, and I belong in their mass grave.... I know what little value human life has these days, but since I was unable to effect anything with my life, perhaps by my death I shall be able to pierce the wall of apathy of those who have the means at this very late hour to rescue the few who remain alive.... My life belongs to the Jewish nation in Poland, and I, therefore, bequeath it to them.”
When after the war the rebbe learned of Zigelboym’s letter, he became positively frantic. He despised the godless Bundist for the criminal act of taking his own life. He considered making the long journey to London in order to spit on the apostate’s grave. He cursed Comrade Artur for having surrendered to despair and having aided the Haman Hitler by doing his dastardly work for him. (“It is absolutely forbidden to surrender one soul of Israel!” So much more so, one’s own!)
Initially, Zigelboym’s suicide seemed the ultimate obscenity of an indescribably obscene era. But Yechiel had guessed right. The rebbe felt that he himself had deserted the nation, and should have shared its fate. Perhaps the rebbe could have sustained his anger against himself, but he could not sustain it against Zigelboym. After all, however foolish and however futile, Zigelboym was trying to save other lives. The Krimsker Rebbe came to realize that such foolishness could be born only of madness. In the suicide letter the rebbe found definite proof that Shmuel Mordechai Zigelboym had been mentally ill and not responsible for his murderous act. In the midst of the holocaust—after the futile revolt in the Warsaw ghetto—he had addressed his appeal to, indeed he had staked his life on, “the conscience of the world.” In May 1943, only a madman could have believed in such a thing! If Zigelboym had physically escaped Treblinka, his wife and children and his poor, shattered mind had not. The Krimsker Rebbe came to recognize Zigelboym as one more victim of the Nazis.
The rebbe spent the war years in St. Louis in seclusion. Later, when the war ended and the rebbetzin learned that the people of Krimsk (or Kromsk, as it was called by its Polish masters) and almost all of European Jewry had been murdered, she feared that the rebbe would retreat from the world forever. To her astonishment, however, she was wrong. With energies that she didn’t think he possessed, the rebbe emerged from his study and took the lead in organizing communal remembrances—through prayer, programs, and memorials—of the victims of the Nazi holocaust. When the rebbetzin expressed her surprise at his activities, he explained, “The world has no conscience. The question is whether we have a memory.”
“They, the goyim, must remember, too,” she said.
The rebbe shook his head. “They ha
ve no conscience, so memory is irrelevant. If we have a memory, then we might retain our conscience.”
And the rebbe organized and attended meetings all over town. Effective leader that he was, his performance was flawed. Whenever another speaker mentioned “the six million,” the Krimsker Rebbe was sure to interrupt, calling out, “And one!” When the speaker and audience quizzically turned to him, he would inevitably explain, “Six million and one. We must not forget Shmuel Mordechai Zigelboym, may he rest in peace.” When a prominent university professor patiently pointed out that these were “round numbers,” the Krimsker Rebbe informed him, “Some numbers you don’t round off. Six million and one.”
Because of his intemperate interruptions, the rebbe was no longer invited to participate from the podium at these community events. Ironically, the role of the “representative of a world that is no more” fell to Rabbi Max, the former bootlegger. With the demise of Prohibition, Rabbi Max became the official mourner of East European Jewry, precisely because, unlike in his disastrous bootlegging days, Rabbi Max no longer gave full measure; now he did permit the numbers to be rounded off to an even six million.
None other than Sammy Rudman had engineered the switch of rabbis. Although he felt it was an absolute necessity to replace the rebbe in order to effect the rebbe’s own program, he felt as if he had betrayed him. In choosing Rabbi Max as the replacement, Sammy had betrayed his father, too, who had never forgiven Rabbi Max and after twentysix years still refused to speak to him. Sammy, however, who had served in General Patton’s Third Army and seen at first hand the fate of his fellow Jews, insisted that they be remembered by someone who did know exactly what had been lost, and that Rabbi Max did know that. Moreover, Rabbi Max took it upon himself to say kaddish for the victims. That is, for the round number of victims. The Krimsker Rebbe himself said kaddish for Zigelboym. Indeed, he did it with such passion that Sammy suspected that even had Reb Zelig still been alive, the rebbe would not have assigned him the memorial task the way he had delegated kaddish for Tsar Nicholas II and Matti Sternweiss.
Sammy wanted to apologize for having replaced the rebbe with Rabbi Max, but he didn’t know how. When his wife suggested a party honoring the rebbe, Sammy reluctantly agreed; he wanted to do something—anything!—for the rebbe, in whose home he had done much of his growing up. What would they all do at such a party? he wondered.
Sammy accepted his mother-in-law’s offer of her lovely rose garden and began planning for a spring tea party in the rebbe’s honor. The only problem, a very significant one, was that, as Sammy told his wife Bernadette-Brina-Bunny, he didn’t think the rebbe would consent to such a celebration. Propelled by guilt and desperation, he went to seek the rebbe’s permission.
As so often since his first visit as a boy, Sammy was received by the rebbe and rebbetzin in the kitchen. Feeling foolish, he broached the idea of a garden tea party in the rebbe’s honor. The rebbetzin’s strangely bemused expression did not help his confidence. The rebbe merely nodded and said, “I don’t see why not.”
Both Sammy and the rebbetzin looked at each other in disbelief to be certain that they had heard correctly. Indeed, they had. They stared at the rebbe, who smiled politely.
“Since it is to be my party, may I be so bold as to suggest the entertainment?”
“Of course, rebbe, of course,” Sammy stammered.
“A string quartet would be acceptable, but if possible, what I would really prefer is a solo violin playing something very sweet and very romantic.”
Sammy consulted with his mother-in-law, Grandma Polly, and his wife, Bunny. To have only one violin in the garden—a sweet, romantic one at that—seemed a little too kitsch, too shmaltzy. At their urging the rebbe agreed to have a chamber group play Vivaldi with a concluding violin solo, Bach’s Chaconne in D minor from the Second Partita.
In the pleasant, sunny weather, the colorful, aromatic rose garden overflowed with guests, and the party went very well, far beyond Sammy’s highest expectations. His wife and mother-in-law were particularly pleased that at the rebbe’s request they had introduced Orthodox Judaism to Bach in their garden. They were hardly offended when the rebbe rose from his seat after the applause for the violinist had died down, thanked the musicians, then suggested that since there was a tradition of a memorial tea party in this very rose garden, this tradition should be continued. “We are, if nothing else, a traditional people,” he declared. After the rebbe’s kaddish for Zigelboym, the guests turned to sherbet and petits fours.
The kaddish for Zigelboym hardly dampened the festive spirit, but a curious exchange occurred at the end of the party when the rebbe and rebbetzin were leaving, and it was even more mystifying.
“It was a lovely party, and I am most appreciative, but I must tell you, the violin that I hear is better,” the rebbe informed his hosts.
The rebbe nodded and walked through the garden gate, leaving Grandma Polly, Bunny, and Sammy to turn to the rebbetzin for an explanation; but all the rebbetzin could provide was a smile of much appreciation and slight embarrassment. She didn’t hear the violin. Only the rebbe did, and he said that it was very sweet indeed and very romantic. Since the early spring of 1948 he had heard it often, mainly at night and always from the East—the Middle East.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALLEN HOFFMAN, award-winning author of the novels Small Worlds and Big League Dreams, and of the collection Kagan’s Superfecta and Other Stories, was born in St. Louis and received his B.A. in American History from Harvard University. He studied the Talmud in yeshivas in New York and Jerusalem, and has taught in New York City schools. He and his wife and four children now live in Jerusalem. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Bar-Ilan University.
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Copyright © 1998 Allen Hoffman. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Abbeville Press, 137 Varick Street, New York, N.Y. 10013. The text of this book was set in Minion and Chevalier. Printed and bound in the United States of America.
FIRST E-BOOK EDITION: MAY 2011
eISBN : 978-0-789-26006-2
The print edition of this book is cataloged as follows:
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Hoffman, Allen.
Two for the devil / Allen Hoffman.
p. cm.—(Small worlds : [3])
eISBN : 978-0-789-26006-2
1. Jews—Russia—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series: Hoffman, Allen. Small worlds : 3.
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Two for the Devil Page 19
