by Arnold Zable
The photos project action and busy-ness. They capture life returning: the fragile balance between rebirth and unbearable memory. The displaced persons camp is a republic of survivors hungry to resume living; and they are proud. There may be British troops who appear to be in control, relief workers from outside agencies and organisations, serving their needs, but the de facto republic is run by the inmates. They crave agency. They are taking control of their lives and asserting authority. They call themselves Sh’erit ha-Pletah, a biblical term, ‘the saved remnant’. They are rebuilding their lives and the lives of their people.
And we see the beginnings of the dismantling of the republic, photos of inmates at farewell parties at which, Zippy observes, ‘joy and sadness mingled’; and of inmates in the act of leaving, lugging suitcases, boarding trucks, standing on railway platforms. Waving farewell to those yet to receive the required papers. The carriages pull out of the station, departing for distant places. Bergen-Belsen is fading from sight, a smudge on a receding horizon.
Yet, there are limits. The photos don’t convey the inner turmoil: the inmates’ fear of sleep and the disturbing dreams that waited to ambush them; the hours, lying awake, waiting for the dawn to deliver them from memory and the nights of crippling aloneness.
They do not convey the alienation, the acute suspicion of outsiders, and the fits of violence and rage that could erupt at any time, triggered by a trivial remark or an official barking an order, or the panic evoked by the sight of uniformed soldiers.
They do not depict the obsessive hoarding of food by inmates fearful of renewed hunger, or the physical wounds that prevented some women from bearing children, or the emotional scars that had broken some of the inmates’ capacity for intimacy. They do not capture the cynicism of children, old before their time, their loss of trust and their suspicion.
They do not show the inmates who wandered about insane, eyes vacant, or the former slaves who panicked at the thought of labour. They do not capture the erratic shifts: the euphoria of freedom, shattered a moment later by the unbidden pain of loss and horror. And they do not portray the thirst for vengeance, brought to light in the poems and songs collected by Sami and Sonia and their comrades.
Nor do they capture the manic search for loved ones: inmates scouring Red Cross lists, and camp lists in the frantic hope of finding a familiar name; the men and women going from block to block, knocking on doors, in search of a lost son, a daughter, a wife or husband; or the dashed illusion that the person walking ahead may be, dare I believe it, a missing parent, a sibling?
And they cannot portray the endless days, the monotony, the cramped living spaces, the morbid fear of contagion and the sense of being hemmed in—hemmed in by walls and barbed-wire fences, by remembrance, and by interminable waiting. Waiting for the future. Waiting for admission into the family of nations. Waiting to be finally done with statelessness.
Sami observes in his memoirs: ‘The British officers who liberated us wear a sympathetic expression, but they are condescending. They pity us, but material assistance is slow in coming.’ There are food shortages; inmates steal from the camp to augment rations. They catch hares and trade cigarettes for food with local farmers. There is a rampant black market.
There are no-go zones, restrictions on movement. Officers’ quarters have signs warning that beyond a certain point unauthorised intruders will be arrested; there are tensions with the British military authorities who retain control of security and with members of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, who are now in charge of camp administration.
And there are times when the gates of the camp are locked and the perimeters patrolled by armed soldiers. Movement in and out of the camp is strictly regulated. Locked gates trigger panic: shortness of breath, cold sweats, uncontrollable weeping and the bitter sense that despite all that they had endured, the inmates’ ordeal is far from over.
On 29 May 1946, the gates are locked, and a twenty-four-hour curfew is imposed on the camp inmates. The Jewish Central Committee declares a general strike. Four thousand protestors mass in Freedom Square. Placards proclaim: ‘Enough of concentration camp’, ‘Away with the wire’, ‘We will not allow ourselves to be imprisoned in camp’, ‘Open the Gates of Belsen’.
Sami Feder and Rafael Olewski are two of the speakers on the podium. Their speeches voicing the inmates’ grievances are met with cries of anger. The inmates are incensed by the closure of the gates. They are outraged that they are being collectively punished for security breaches committed by other camp residents. They demand to be officially identified as Jews, and accorded the same rights as the citizens of other nations held in Bergen-Belsen.
The demonstrators march through the camp. The procession stretches for hundreds of metres. There are women wheeling babies and infants in strollers, school children and youths and camp inmates who have until now remained neutral.
Two hundred metres from the main gate, the marchers are confronted by British officers who advise them to elect a delegation to represent them. Sami Feder and Rafael Olewski are among the four men chosen to negotiate with the camp authorities. They leave the camp escorted by the officers.
An hour passes with no sign of their return. The demonstrators are restless. They inch towards the camp gate, despite the efforts of their own Jewish police to keep order. On the other side of the fence there are British soldiers dressed in riot gear, guns drawn, water cannon at the ready. The delegation returns, accompanied by the UN relief agency’s chief and the camp’s military commander. Their speeches are placatory but contain no concrete promises.
The protestors are incensed. It can be seen in the photos. The inmates are tough and alert one year after liberation. Some break from the assembled crowd and surge towards the gate. They tear at the barbed-wire fences. The soldiers drench them with water. Camp guards hurl stones and slabs of timber. A band of former partisans cut the water hoses.
The battle between the liberators and the liberated continues for twenty-five minutes. Then the protestors hack the gate open. ‘Go ahead, shoot if you dare!’ they jeer, as they swarm through, and march on the perimeter road, triumphant.
The cordon of soldiers is removed, and the curfew lifted. Some services are improved. The inmates’ movement in and out of the camp is less restricted, and a new UN administrator is appointed, one far more attuned to the inmates’ desire for autonomy. But they remain stranded, caught between countries they can no longer return to and a world reluctant to take them in. They are liberated, but they are not yet free. Still, they must wait.
On 11 June 1947, after a year of negotiations, delays, false starts and setbacks, and finally, being granted permits, the Kazet Theatre departs on its long-awaited tour of Europe. The performers’ passports are their theatre-membership cards, which bear an image of a harp flanked by the twin-masks of tragedy and comedy poised above camp barracks ringed by barbed-wire fences.
They head south on a British military train. The sun lights up the landscape of their recent suffering. Many dwellings remain in ruins. Labourers are at work, clearing rubble, rebuilding. The theatre orchestra is playing and the performers are singing. It is summer, and they are in the first flush of freedom, light headed with excitement, like children on an excursion.
In Hanover, the ensemble is given a carriage of its own. A second carriage is set aside for props, sets and costumes. The train heads west towards the Dutch border. A cursory inspection of their permits, and the performers are allowed through with an ease that leaves them elated. It is night. The carriage is a world unto itself, the performers are cocooned in their private compartments, cradled by the swaying motion.
For six years, trains had conveyed them to death, and slave labour, cattle wagons enveloped in the stench of shit and fear, urine and vomit. Children clinging to mothers and fathers. Lover to lover. Friend to stranger. Fists pounding the walls, hands clawing the boards in panic; but on this train journey, at least, the memory is set aside; and in the morning, the sun is rising over a
landscape alive with farmhouses and village paths of sunlit silver, church steeples and fields of crops nearing harvest. The countryside unfurls beneath open skies towards the horizon. Their daring venture has succeeded in ways the performers could never have believed possible.
Mid-afternoon, the train is on the outskirts of Brussels. The residents are going about their business. The streets are pervaded by a reassuring air of normality, and at the Brussels station there are delegations waiting to welcome them: Jewish community leaders, Belgian politicians, and former fighters in the Belgian underground. Colonel Lavreau, president of the Federation of Belgian Resistance Fighters and Prisoners of War in Germany, and Robert Vercauteren, president of the Association of Former Belgian Inmates of Bergen-Belsen. Monsieur Robert, members of the ensemble will call him.
Monsieur Robert walks with a limp from an injury he sustained as one of four hundred Belgian citizens incarcerated in Bergen-Belsen. Suddenly he stops. His eyes are wide open, as if arrested by an apparition. Sonia, too, has stopped in her tracks. Monsieur Robert and Sonia stare at each other.
Then Robert bursts out: ‘Madame, give me back my tin cup.’ The couple embrace and kiss, paying no heed to the circle of onlookers that has formed around them. They cannot believe they have found each other. Their reunion offers a rare glimpse of Sonia in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
In the final weeks before liberation the typhus epidemic was at its height. The sick and the dying lay on their bunks. Others wandered the camp insane with hunger. They spent their nights dreaming of food and their days in anticipation of their meagre ration of bread. They queued for the slop that passed as turnip soup and the dirty liquid that was coffee.
The most treasured possession in the camp was a tin cup or a plate, any container. Without one, there was no food. Sonia’s container was missing, perhaps lost, most likely stolen. A friend allowed her to use her cup when she was done, but by the time Sonia reached the table where the soup was distributed, the pot was often empty.
On this day, she does not have the strength to borrow the cup in time for her portion. She is consumed by hunger, and weeping. A group of male prisoners is marching by under the eye of an SS officer. One of the prisoners steps out from the ranks and runs to Sonia. ‘Madame, why are you crying?’ he asks. Too weak to talk, Sonia indicates with her hand that she has lost her cup.
Without hesitation, the prisoner unties his cup from the piece of cloth that holds up his trousers, and throws it to her. The SS officer is on him, beating him across the neck and back with his truncheon. ‘Get back into line, you stinking dog,’ he screams. The prisoners march on.
For weeks, the stranger’s generous act and his beating are on Sonia’s conscience. She wants to return the cup and thank him. She fears for his safety. She scours the camp in search of him and waits in the same spot day after day for a sight of the marching men. She will not see him again until their encounter at the Brussels station.
Monsieur Robert attends each rehearsal and performance. He showers the performers with gifts, shows them how to get around Brussels and pays for their tram tickets. He takes them on sightseeing walks and sits with them in cafes where he speaks of his hatred of those who collaborated and his raging desire to bring them to justice.
He appoints the performers honorary members of the Association of Belgium Prisoners of Bergen-Belsen at a gala ceremony, and addresses them as fellow resistors returned from battle. Colonel Lavreau is also attentive. He visits them in the hotel at any hour, and asks them if there is anything he can do, if there is anything lacking.
On 16 June, the troupe premieres at the Patria Theatre. The performance is sold out. The boxes are filled with VIPs and parliamentarians. The audience is taken by the artistry, the expressionist sets, the haunting songs and the choreography, and the fierce energy and zeal that emanates from the performers in their unflinching portrayal of their suffering.
The ensemble members are invited to banquets, feted in private homes, cafes and restaurants, and praised at celebrations. Hotel guests and people in the streets recognise them from news items and extend their welcome. Parliamentarians and the minister of justice speak of their resolve and spirit. A motion is moved that the entire ensemble be granted residents’ permits and fast-tracked to citizenship. The motion is greeted with standing applause and carried unanimously. The contrast with what the performers have known for most of their young lives is startling.
Newspaper reports sing the ensemble’s praises. They are the troubadours of Auschwitz and Belsen, sprung from the underworld; young men and women, but old in what they have endured and witnessed. They are of a lineage that reaches back to the rivers of Babylon, and the embodiment of many exiles. They are history personified, and they are the future. Critics proclaim a new era in Yiddish theatre.
Sonia Boszkowska is singled out as a performer who would grace the stage of any theatre; and Sami Feder is the acclaimed director and the go-to man for interviews. He recounts the tale of his journey through his portals of hell, and of the Kazet Theatre’s ascent from its daring beginnings to its triumph just months after liberation. He is overwhelmed by the warmth of the reception.
The performers crave that warmth, he says, but they are not here only to perform. They are duty bound to speak for those they have left behind in Bergen-Belsen and in camps throughout Germany, Austria and Italy. Two years after liberation, a quarter of a million displaced persons are still waiting. Unable to return to their ruined homes, and not yet allowed to move on, they are in purgatory, the doors to many lands locked to them.
‘We are here to show the world that we are not helpless victims,’ says Sami. ‘We are not the leftover waste of the ghettos, and we are not beggars. We do not want to be pitied. We are human beings. We have a right to freedom.’ The theatre’s political intent, Sami affirms, is to highlight the plight of their stateless brothers and sisters.
The ensemble performs five times in Brussels to sell-out houses and standing ovations. It presents evenings of cabaret and the plays Two-hundred-thousand and The Enchanted Tailor. They stage The Redeemer, and they sing the partisan anthem at the end of each performance.
Local companies have lent them props, costumes and professional lighting. The troupe is well-rehearsed and reaching new heights in its performance. Flowers and cards await the performers in their dressing rooms. Admirers applaud them as they leave the theatre. At receptions, they wear suits and elegant dresses. They appear calm and dignified and, for the first time in years, unburdened.
Monsieur Robert is at the Brussels station to farewell them. He embraces each member. We are comrades, he says, in the ongoing struggle against fascism.
The train heads north to the port city of Antwerp, where again the troupe performs to enthusiastic audiences. Members of the ensemble stroll in the evenings by the river estuary. They take in the smell of brine and sea breezes. They are invited into private homes and are welcomed as guests aboard an ocean liner.
The land has been unlocked, and they have reached the edge of the continent. The sea is a mystery evoking infinite possibilities. They stand on the deck and inhale the heady scent of distant voyages; and they leave Antwerp elated. After twenty-one days in Belgium they are buoyed by the momentum. They are heading to Paris, London, New York and Palestine.
They arrive in Paris on 3 July and are greeted by a guard of honour and a military band playing the Marseillaise. Only later do they learn that the band was not playing for them, but for a Belgian minister who had travelled on the same train.
The troupe is driven at night from the station to a hotel by members of the Jewish community and relief agencies. Prostitutes cruise the corridors and foyer. The air is fetid and the rooms are strewn with rubbish. The troupe is shunted through the backstreets of Paris till dawn in search of better accommodation.
The early days are endless rounds of bureaucratic formalities, questions over documents and permits and, again, an infernal waiting. Paris, as they had dreamt it, is a c
ity of lights and ageing beauty, graced by legendary landmarks: the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, the Hotel de Ville and the Trocadero. But the streets are shabby, and the people harried and preoccupied. The city is gripped by political struggles, mass strikes, housing shortages and an epidemic of tuberculosis.
Refugees are crowded in cheap hotels and apartment buildings. In the third year after liberation, bread and coffee, cooking oil and sugar are still rationed. Bombed-out factories remain in ruins. On Bastille Day, the day after the theatre’s arrival, there are military parades, fireworks, dancing in the streets and a night of celebration; but the next day the gloom returns.
The Belgian dream is fast receding. The members of the ensemble are being stripped of illusions and drained of energy. Their spirits plummet. In interviews, Sami Feder speaks of his disenchantment. We need your support, he says, as do our brothers and sisters stranded in the displaced camps in Germany and elsewhere. We cannot turn our back on them. They are marooned on the sites of their persecution. With each passing day, their morale is falling, yet the world remains silent. There is desperation in Sami’s pleas. The ground is shifting beneath him.
In the last two weeks of July, the troupe performs in the Sarah Bernhardt theatre. They are finally welcomed at a community banquet. Sami Feder is hailed as the father of the troupe, and Sonia as its leading actor and co-founder. The performers are lauded for their skills and hailed as a symbol of rebirth and survival. Their fortunes appear to be changing, but within days their hopes are crushed.
France is struggling to cope with a surge of displaced persons and orphaned children. Relief agencies are overwhelmed by the concerns of Parisians returning to their expropriated businesses and properties. There is not enough money to go around. The ensemble members are just thirty among many thousands.
In Paris, the members of the troupe must fend for themselves. They are short of funds, hungry and exhausted, and reliant on welfare. They are refugees all over again, a wandering troupe in search of an audience in a vast metropolis. Sami is frantic in his efforts to save the theatre. He conducts interviews with the editors of Yiddish journals, and points to letters of invitation from overseas sponsors.
