If Benny’s going, so am I. I’ll tell Ma that Rivka invited me to go with her to visit her cousin on Crawford Street or something, but really, I’ll go to the Beach. I’m going to wear the pants and the hat and go on the streetcar. I borrowed some money from Benny to pay the fare. He doesn’t know about it, of course, but I’ll pay him back some day for sure. Once I’m there at the beach I can find Benny and see if I can keep him away from the fighting.
I am still scared, but I have to do it. I have to.
August 8
It was just awful at the beach. There were all sorts of goyishe boys marching up and down the boardwalk wearing the little swastika badges. Some of then even had swastikas painted on their shirts, and there were even goyishe girls with swastikas pinned on their bathing suits. Once I saw two bunches of them meet, and they all said “Hail” and stuck their arms out just like the Nazis in Germany do — I saw them do it in the Movietone news.
There were also gangs of Jewish boys, and a lot of them had maple leaves painted on their shirts. Benny says they wanted to show they were just Canadians like everyone else. The Jews and the goyim were jostling each other and calling each other names as they passed on the boardwalk, and once I saw a big group of Jews surround a couple of goyim and tear their shirts off and then run away and hide behind a house across the street. I just tried to look invisible.
It took me a while but I finally found Benny. He and a few other boys were just about to rip a shirt off a goy, and I ran up and yelled at him to stop before he got killed or something and the goy got away. Benny was really angry at me for being there. He told me to go home, but I refused unless he came with me, and he wouldn’t.
We were arguing right there on the boardwalk when we heard singing and shouting. It was a bunch of men coming along the boardwalk, wearing big swastikas on their shirts and humming “Home on the Range.” They didn’t sing the words about Gentiles being free to roam, but we all knew what they meant. When Benny heard what they were humming, he got even angrier than he was already, and he rushed over and grabbed one of the shirts and ripped it right off and ran away with it. The goyim saw me standing there and they looked like they wanted to kill me and I was so scared I couldn’t even make myself run. Luckily, a couple of policemen showed up and
Later
I had to stop writing because Ma sent me to Koslov’s to get some salt. She’s making pickles today and the summer kitchen is so, so hot. Where was I? Oh yes, the policemen.
The policemen ordered the goyim to take the swastikas off, and a crowd of Jews gathered around and started shouting, “Take them off, take them off.” But the goyim refused. One of them told the police it was a free country and they weren’t doing anything wrong and if they were then the police should arrest them, but the police didn’t. More and more Jews were gathering around us and everyone was shouting. The policemen looked worried, and one of them told the goyim they should be more reasonable, because their actions were threatening the safety of women and children, and there was no point having a riot over some lousy shirts. Finally, they agreed. I don’t know if the police talked them into it or they were just scared of the crowd. One of them shouted that they’d do it, but just for the sake of the women and children. Then they took the swastikas off and went away and things got a little calmer.
That was when Benny came back. He said he was hiding behind the boathouse. He was worried about me, he said, but he figured that he’d better not show himself and that I was safe as long as the policemen were there. But he said that maybe we should go home after all. I was so glad I almost hugged him.
We were walking up to Queen Street to get the streetcar when a car stopped and a man asked Benny where he was going and told us to get in, because it was too dangerous for us to be walking by ourselves in that neighbourhood. I didn’t want to because the car was full of strange men, but Benny said it was okay. The men in the car were Al Kaufman and some of the Up-town Gang. Benny told me later. They didn’t look like hoboes at all. At least they were a lot cleaner than Cousin Yankl or those men in the park.
We got in with the men and drove down Queen, and then we stopped in front of a store a few blocks later — the Black and White Confectionery. Al Kaufman and the other men got out and told Benny and me to stay in the car, and they were walking toward the store when some men came out. It was the men who were humming “Home on the Range” on the boardwalk! Benny hunkered down in the car so they couldn’t see him. Later, Al Kaufman told us that two of those men were Mackay and Ganter. They are the leaders of the Swastika Gang and the Black and White is their headquarters.
Al Kaufman told them he was there as a representative of Rabbi Sachs and the Up-town boys, and he wanted to know about the Swastika Club. Did they want to stir up racial prejudice? They said no, they just wanted to make the Beaches cleaner. Al said he understood — which really surprised me, but I kept my mouth shut. Al said the ones who cause most of the trouble are greenhorns from the old country who don’t know about proper manners.
I don’t know why he was being so nice, but I’m glad he was, because it seemed to work. There wasn’t a fight. They all shook hands and then Al Kaufman and the other Jews got back in the car and we headed home. Once he was back in the car, Al said he knows those guys are anti-semits and he was trying to calm things down because that’s what the rabbi wanted, but he’s going to keep an eye on them. Benny agreed. I hope they are wrong.
It’s funny, but on the boardwalk all the boys seemed to be having a good time — the goyishe boys and the Jews. Especially Benny. If it wasn’t for the swastikas and the police, it was just like they were playing street hockey or something. I hated it.
I got Al Kaufman to let me out on the corner on Nassau far away from our house, but Gert saw me anyway. She wanted me to tell her who the men were and where I was, but I refused. She said she’d tell Ma and Pa and I said maybe that wasn’t a good idea because I’m not the only one with a secret, and she got all red and stomped off. Thank goodness. But now I’m never going to be able to tell Ma and Pa about her and Chaim. What an awful day.
August 11
It’s so, so hot. Pa drove out to buy some tomatoes from the farmers yesterday and he came back with almost none. The farmers told him it’s been so hot this summer that half the tomatoes growing in the Niagara peninsula have been ruined by the sun. If there are no tomatoes for Pa to buy and bring back to the Fruit Terminal, we’ll have even less money than usual. I don’t know how we’re going to make it through next winter.
The worst thing is, I’ve used up almost all this scribbler. Where will I get the money for a new one? I suppose I could have borrowed it from Benny before I gave him his money back on Tuesday. Maybe I could ask him and he’d lend it to me anyway.
August 13
I haven’t seen Benny since he came to get his money back, but today he came around to tell me he’s been hanging out with the Up-towns. Al Kaufman figures that what he said to the Swastikas must have worked, because they had a meeting at city hall with the mayor and some rabbis and other people, and the Swastika Club agreed to change its name. They’re still going to have a club to stop people from behaving badly at the beach, but without any swastikas — and they say anyone of any religion can join. I am so, so relieved. I just wish Benny wouldn’t hang out with those tough men. Al Kaufman seems nice, I guess, but he is a hobo, and they don’t call him King of the Hoboes for nothing.
Benny came because he wanted to invite me to go with him and Harvey Tischler to a softball game up at Christie Pits tomorrow night. It’s a playoff game between the Harbord Juniors and St. Peter’s, the Catholic church at Bathurst and Bloor. Benny said that since Harvey Tischler is on the Harbord Juveniles, he knows some of the older guys on the Juniors and he wants them to win. Anyway, it’s a mostly Jewish team and Benny says we have to support our own guys and everyone is going and I have to go to, for the sake of the Jews.
I hate sports and Benny knows it. But it’s so hot in the house now, especially wh
en it starts to get dark, and Gert is hanging around me and giving me dirty looks all the time because she’s worried I’ll say something about Chaim, so I said I’d go. Benny said good, because the more of us there are then the safer it’ll be for everyone, if I know what he means. Then he winked at me. I don’t know what he means, but now I’m really worried all over again.
I forgot to ask Benny about money for the scribbler. Darn.
August 14
It’s very late, but I’m so upset, and maybe writing about it will calm me down like it did last time.
Benny came around with Harvey Tischler to get me, and Harvey nearly died laughing when he saw me in a dress for the first time. Harvey is a strange person. At least he smells a little better now than he did in the winter.
During the game, things were pretty calm for a long time. It was a pretty big crowd, and the people were yelling all kinds of things about no-good sheenies and meshuggeneh goyim to support the teams, but nobody really seemed to be very upset about anything. It was more like teasing.
But then the lacrosse game that was going on across the park finished and all the people who were watching it came over to see the end of the softball game. They were all goyim, and there seemed to be hundreds of them, and they all started yelling nasty things in a nasty way. One man beside me shouted, “Let’s go, boys! Let’s show these kikes who’s boss around here!” He shouted right in my ear and gave me a really nasty look. It was getting really scary.
It frightens me again just thinking about it. I have to calm down.
All during the game, there was a bunch of goyishe boys standing out by the left fielder where everyone in the crowd could see them. They were carrying a big piece of cloth, black with white markings on it, and towards the end of the game, they started to unroll it very slowly, bit by bit, while the goyim cheered and egged them on. At the end of the ninth inning, the score was tied, so the teams kept on playing, and those boys kept on rolling and unrolling their piece of cloth, just teasing, never quite showing the whole thing. After Harbord got a hit and tied the score again, the crowd booed really loudly, and that was when the boys in left field finally unrolled their cloth all the way. When it was all unrolled, it turned out to be a long black sweater coat with a white swastika sewed onto it! What a nerve!
The crowd went wild. The goyim all cheered and said “Hail Hitler.” Benny wanted to go right over and try to rip it out of their hands, but Harvey and I managed to hold him back and talk him out of it. By the time we calmed him down a little there was a whole big gang of goyim standing around the banner so Benny and the other Jewish boys couldn’t get close even if they wanted to.
The ump told everyone to calm down and he started the game again. The next Harbord boy at bat got another hit, and Harbord won the game and the crow booed even more. As soon as the game was over, the boys standing around the swastika held it up high and rushed onto the field with it, chanting, “Down with Jews! Hail Hitler!” They surrounded the Harbord team and Benny and I got pushed right into the middle of it. They were shoving and screaming and yelling and I was so scared I couldn’t even think or move or anything. Harvey and Benny tried to hold them back, and Benny shouted that there was a defenceless little girl there and they were cowards to pick on her. He meant me, and he was right. I was feeling very defenceless. Finally some of the goyim heard him and saw me and cleared a path for us. The rest of the Harbord team all huddled around me because they were outnumbered about fifty to one and about to be clobbered, and we all got up the hill and out of the park and ran away from there down Christie Street as fast as we could.
After we got to Bloor, Benny tried to talk me into walking home by myself while he went back to the park, but the other boys said there were too many goyim there and talked him out of it. But he sure was angry.
I can still feel my heart going like crazy. I bet I won’t be able to sleep.
August 15
Benny was just here and he was even madder than he was last night. Sometime last night after the game was over and everyone left, someone painted a huge swastika and the words Hail Hitler on the Willowvale Park Clubhouse in the Pits. He says it’s still there. First it was Germany, and then Balmy Beach, and now Christie Pits. It’s getting closer and closer all the time.
They painted Hail instead of Heil, just like they did at Balmy Beach, so I wondered if it might be the same people. But Benny says he thinks it was the Pit Gang just being copycats. They think they own the park, and they’re too dumb to even know they were copying a mistake.
Benny says they’re not the only ones, either. The papers say there was a swastika rally in Kitchener last night to support Hitler. Kitchener is out in the country near where Pa goes sometimes to buy cabbages and things in the fall. Benny says it’s not surprising, since a lot of German people live there. Kitchener even used to be called Berlin, just like that big city in Germany — until the Great War started and they had to change the name. Mackay, one of the men from the Swastikas that Al Kaufman talked to, went to the rally there and made a speech, and Benny says it proves he was a Nazi after all. Ganter was supposed to go too, but the papers say he never showed up.
The next game in the Harbord–St. Peter’s series is tomorrow. Benny says he’s planning to be there. A lot of Jewish boys are — not to cause trouble, just to protect the team. He told me not to come this time, because things are getting bad and it’s way too dangerous. I don’t want to go. It was so scary last night. But if we don’t go out and stand up for ourselves, it will end up being just like in Germany. I have to be there.
I decided not to ask Benny for the money for a new scribbler. I know that every penny he has goes to buy food and things for his ma and his little brothers, and he never ever buys anything for himself, not even a new shirt or pants, and he could sure use those. And if he did lend me money, Molly and Hindl need things just as much as Willie and Joe do. I can do without a scribbler for a while, even if I do like writing about everything.
August 17
There are only a few pages left in the scribbler, and there’s so much to tell. I’m going to have to write really small.
Anyway, what a night! I went to the game by myself. Ma thought I was at St. Chris, but I wasn’t. When I got to the Pits, I was glad to see that someone had painted out the sign on the clubhouse roof. But there was still a big dark patch and you could tell the sign had been there, which is almost as bad.
There was a huge crowd, and it seemed to be half Jews and half goyim and it was very, very tense. As I came down the slope to the softball diamond, I heard a gang of goyishe boys out past centre field shouting, “Go, St. Peter’s! Get the Jews! Hail Hitler!” But then a bunch of big Jewish men came over to them and told them to shut up or else. I recognized one of them — it was Al Kaufman. One of the goyim kept right on shouting about Hitler, and one of the Jewish men punched him right in the face. His friends had to take him away with a bleeding nose. As they left the park, they shouted that they’d be back and the Jews better watch out.
That was when Benny noticed I was there and came over and yelled at me and told me to go home. It was just like at the beach. But this time I guess he knew he wasn’t ever going to get me to leave, because he gave up almost right away. He just got me to promise to stick close to him and be careful. I looked him right in the eye and I said, “You too, Benny,” and he gave me a dirty look and we went down the hill to find a good spot.
As we headed down to the diamond, someone gave Benny a shove and he fell down the hill and rolled right into the cage behind the batter’s box. He came up steaming mad and ready to fight. But whoever did it was gone and there was a huge crowd of goyim laughing at him. I managed to calm him down and we settled in to watch the game.
We ended up standing in a big group of Jews on the hill beside the diamond. There was a smaller bunch of about thirty goyim standing next to us, and in the second inning, they suddenly start chanting, “Hail Hitler, Hail Hitler.” The Jews in my group rushed them, and I was stan
ding in the middle of them and got dragged along even though I tried to stay where I was. And then, suddenly, everyone was carrying a weapon! I guess they all had them hidden under their shirt or up their pant legs. A lot of people were jabbing at other people with lead pipes or pieces of wood from fences.
I didn’t stop to think, I just tried to get out of there as fast as I could. I wasn’t the only one, either. I got pushed up the hill to the edge of the park by a whole big crowd. Once I got to the top I looked back and there was Benny, running after me and telling me to wait for him. He didn’t know that there was a gang of five or six goyishe boys with sticks and pipes running after him. I shouted at him to watch out, and then we both started running as fast as we could. It took us about six blocks, but we finally lost the goyim. I was completely out of breath, and I hate to admit it, but it was kind of exciting.
I need to sharpen my pencil.
Okay, it’s sharp now. I really shouldn’t be writing so much, because I really am running out of pages.
After we both got our breath back, Benny tried to talk me out of going back. But there was no way I was leaving. Sure, it was scary, but I was excited, and it was important. There had to be as many Jews there as possible so we could all protect each other. When I said that to Benny he gave me the strangest look, like he didn’t know who I was. He wasn’t the only one. What was I thinking? I must have been completely out of my head.
By the time we made it back to the park, it was already the next inning and we heard people shouting “Hail Hitler” again and we saw a bunch of the Jewish boys get surrounded and hit a few times. There was a policeman there by then, and he was trying to calm things down, and I guess he did a little. But there was only one of him and a huge crowd of people who were getting angrier with every passing minute. Things were really tense all through the rest of the game, with people shouting insults and shoving each other, and I was beginning to think maybe I shouldn’t have come back. But a few more policemen showed up and nothing really serious happened. Finally, just when it was getting dark, the St. Peter’s shortstop caught a fly ball from the last Harbord hitter and St. Peter’s won 6–5 and all the Jews booed and all the goyim cheered like crazy.
Not a Nickel to Spare Page 11
