"TOUR OF THE BOOK" and places it describes

“Would they have spared a Jew’s life, I used to wonder,” said Jochanan Fayner, “if they could have deprived Jews of their names too, if names could have been stolen just like Jewish homes, stores, workshops, and factories. Perhaps they might have spared some Jewish lives at least? But no, life was a common commodity, easily discarded, you always have a surplus. Whereas a name, yes, a name is something of value! Look, so-called pure Germans bore names like “unpure” Germans! So Hitler and his henchmen had to find a way to judge which Guttmann was good and which Guttmann was bad, who deserves a living space and who deserves an early grave. It is blood that matters, they concluded. Wrong blood cannot be mixed with good blood. Well, there is some wisdom to it, you may think so the first time you hear the reasoning. Add a cup of spoiled wine to a vat full of good wine and the whole stock will go sour. Wine, though, is not blood. And how much wrong blood would it take to spoil good blood? Would a single drop of blood from a finger suffice? Or would it take a cupful? To be sure, to be one hundred percent sure, to maintain real purity, the Germans decided to remove all the wrong blood so that not even a single drop would remain.”

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I see a streetcar approach and we start running to the stop. The juggernaut of iron and steel, rolling straight towards me in the dark, fills me with terror.... It carried us through the dim streets of Lodz. Finally, I saw the white bulk of the Poznanski Palace emerge on the right side. We got off, turned right and found ourselves on Ogrodowa Street.

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We leave behind us the factories and the rows of three-story brick houses, a robust reminder of the Jewish manufacturer Israel Poznanski who generously donated altars to the Christian church nearby.

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Behind the railroad tracks with its barriers, low two-story houses stand detached, neglected, barely touched by the pre-war capitalism. The street is dimly lit by occasional lamps. I try not to look ahead of me – you never know what will emerge from the cemetery nearby. If I were an adult, I would know no fear, and one of Zofia Bodler’s troubles would be off her shoulders. She won’t have to worry and to wonder about the kind of person I will become.

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The factory and the palace, originally belonging to Israel Poznanski, were the first landmarks of the Ogrodowa Street, the ancient cemetery marked its far end. What other street could boast such topography of history? Many of Poznanski’s managers and clerks, weavers, dyers, and tailors working for him, ultimately ended up at their final resting places only a mile from the factory where they had worked so diligently throughout their lives.

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On my way to kindergarten every day, I used to pass the low houses along Ogrodowa Street—those low houses were decrepit versions of the housing that Israel Poznanski had provided for his factory’s workers. Then there was a small grocery store owned by Ms. Svetsytska, and across the street, almost opposite the store and just next to the butcher’s, there was a barber shop for gentlemen ranging in ages from two up to one hundred and two. It was there, in front of the barber’s, that the neighborhood’s famed knife fight took place on a clear July evening in 1962. Even a week later, rusty stains of blood were clinging to the cobblestones.

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Right behind the industrial railroad tracks that connected the old Poznanski factory with its warehouses, there stood the pre-war school building. Just beyond the school and opposite the factory were sturdy houses of blackened brick. Separated from the street by its cast iron fence, the church area included a historic wooden church, a rectory building which actually looked more solid than the church, and a small park with a playground where lattice arbors abutted one-story kindergarten buildings.

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On hot days, even the stench of horse droppings was not as offensive as gutter sewage. Cart drivers delivering coal often chose to drive down Ogrodowa Street which was a short cut from the Towarowa Street coal store. The cart drivers would make a stop by the water hydrant right across the street from our house. They filled metal buckets with water for their horses and let them have some feed while the drivers would finish puffing on their cigarettes until the last ember expired. When the carts moved on, sparrows were lured by the pools of horse urine and evaporating balls of horse dung.

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Mr. Gratchyk poured vodka into glasses. The TV broadcast began and everyone went silent as the funeral procession started from in front of the Capitol. The gun carriage with the coffin draped with a flag was drawn by six white horses. Large crowds lined the funeral route. They were all crying. We observed in silence as racists and extremists, half- and full-blooded fascists, heralds of anti-communism, anti-Black, and anti-progressive crusades were bidding farewell to their President.

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Just beyond a side alley, there was a row of chess tables where seated men played cards and drank vodka. After leaving the park and turning left, Limanowski Street appeared with its unmistakable treeless view and twisting walkways.

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During my week-long stay, I heard many stories like the story about Grandpa Michal fighting against the Bolsheviks. He was seventeen when he volunteered for military service in 1920. Commander Pilsudski was a prominent and very important family patriarch, second only to God. God continued to do fairly well but Pilsudski died in 1935 and all that Grandma and Grandpa had left were books about him. A family favorite was a compilation of photographs from Pilsudski’s funeral. In one picture, Pilsudski’s mare was walking solemnly behind the coffin and the throngs of people who had gathered along the funeral route were shedding tears, a scene reminiscent of Americans at President Kennedy’s funeral.

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When Hitler and Stalin came to grips with one another, Oberleutnant Werner was sent to the Eastern front. But first he saw to it that Grandpa Michal went as a forced laborer to Germany.... In late 1941, Grandma Natalka decided to mail Grandpa a family photo. She had new clothes tailored for the boys, and after Holy Mass on Sunday the three of them went to a professional photographer.

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The school announcements at the first assembly of the new term followed a familiar pattern of announcements: a commemoration of war dates, Nazi treacherous attacks, brutal occupation, street executions, death camps, and the fact that millions of Poles were murdered. The dates and figures were common knowledge to us all, but I was listening more attentively this year. Fascism was on the rise again, Savonchuk said warningly, Germans do not want to remember their atrocities. There are those who would like to turn back the clock, and reverse history.

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First Secretary Gomulka praised the Polish people for their heroism and willingness to shed their blood which contributed to the inception of the new Polish state and the defeat of the Nazi war machine and German imperialism. The new Polish state, according to Comrade Gomulka, lauded France when it recognized the significance of the Oder-Neisse line for Europe and judged that border to be final and unalterable. Comrade Gomulka went on to say: “This reborn and revitalized Poland... has drawn necessary conclusions from its historical experiences, the most fundamental one being to choose the road of friendship and alliance with its great eastern neighbor, the Soviet Union.”

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Dostoevsky? I had never heard or read that name before, but there it was on page one of Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, I continued to read, was married twice and had three sons. He was an abject vicious person, a drunkard and a sexual deviant, who cared nothing about his sons. He lied, seduced, and deceived his two wives. His first wife committed suicide and his second wife left him and died in poverty. Ultimately, Fyodor Karamazov died a befitting and gloomy death… He had silenced his conscience, but his lack of conscience ultimately turned on him....And it was his lack of conscience that has now become his historical frame of reference, perhaps even playing a major role in his family’s history. It was written that Dmitri Fyodorovitch, the eldest of the brothers Karamazov, arrived late for a family meeting at a monastery cell, whereupon Fyodor Pavlovitch with the help of the poet Schiller vents his hatred for his firstborn son; Fyodor Pavlovitch, I realized, embodies true evil.

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Almost running I climbed to the second story of the neighboring house.... There was no nameplate on the door. One reptile will devour the other, I said to myself, yes, Ivan Karamazov’s prediction was already engraved in my memory, so with this reptile in mind, I knocked on the door. Suddenly I became overcome by terror. I imagined Johann standing just opposite me, hidden behind the door, holding his breath not to betray his presence, and watching me. And then the door opened. There was no way out. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t escape him. Johann may not have understood much of my babble when I was spitting out in the same breath “kapo,” “Dostoevsky,” “concentration camp” followed by “monastery,” “proletarian” and “dreamer.” I think I was more coherent now because Johann stopped shaking his head, and when I finished, he said, “I wasn’t a ‘kapo’ in the camp. I worked for Sonderkommando. They assigned me to cremate bodies.”

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Jochanan Fayner said: “David was just as old as Michal is today when, along with Charoiza and Naftal he walked down one of the ramps from the train. ‘Don’t walk away,’ they warned him, ‘it’s so easy to get lost in this crowd.’ I think David was annoyed that his parents took much better care of Abramek who was clearly their favorite child. ‘Be sure no one steals our things,’ they told David. Truly, so many people found themselves deprived of their belongings in the crush! They lost warm coats, books, jars of preserves, they lost family photo albums. But ultimately nothing was to be wasted, the smallest thing would have a new owner. Do you know, I once asked Michal, if some German soldiers wore warm socks made from human hair?”

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Jochanan Fayner said: “In Auschwitz, I said to Michal, Jews from well-to-do families faced the worst fates. I mean, of course, those Jews who successfully passed the first selection procedure, who had so-called life ahead of them. Jews from rich families were not accustomed to long roll calls in freezing temperatures, the terrible food, slave labor and the company of lice. They had sensitive bodies and sensitive minds. If, let’s say, Israel Poznanski had lived long enough to face the ordeal at Auschwitz, he probably wouldn’t have lived more than two days on the meager food rations.”

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Jochanan Fayner said: “I want to say, I said to Michal, that I was better prepared for Auschwitz. My family lived in a basement apartment at Poludniowa Street. The Baluty district in Lodz was mostly inhabited by poor Jewish families.... My father was a God-fearing Jew, he disdained money. He believed that a truly God-fearing Jew isn’t preoccupied with mammon.... From dawn to dusk, he studied the Holy Books. At the end of the day, he would light a kerosene lamp and just beneath his face he always kept a basin partially filled with cold water. In case he was overcome by sleep, his face would fall forward and the water would awaken him. My father thought that God would be tolerant of a few seconds of negligence.”

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Jochanan Fayner said: “The pre-war Warsaw, I said to Michal, was actually two cities. There was a Christian Warsaw and a Jewish Warsaw. It was not uncommon to see long Jewish caftans and beards on Krakowskie Przedmiescie Street, Marszalkowska Street and Jerozolimskie Avenues, but the really Jewish streets were Nalewki, Leszno, Dzika, Gesia, Pawia, Krochmalna, and Nowolipki.”

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Jochanan Fayner said: “A friend took me to a meeting where we could all spend the evening talking with the author Israel Rabon.... And where was this meeting held? It was at the Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists at 13 Tlomackie Street. That night I found out that 13 Tlomackie Street was a very special place: everyone was welcome, Jews and non-Jews, Jewish men of letters writing in Yiddish along with those writing in Hebrew and Polish. Chassids and atheists discussed their beliefs openly, no one asked whether you were the lover of poetry, theater, music or Jewish cuisine.”

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Jochanan Fayner said: “I revisited Lodz one day, I brought a lot of presents, dressed in my best suit, and took a train to Lodz on the Sabbath. I had thought I would never miss Lodz. After all, Lodz wasn’t really special – it was nothing more than a series of chimneys and abject poverty where the sun was blackened by smoke from its factories. I got off the train, looked up at the leaden skies I hated so much, breathed in the acrid air – and I felt as if my heart was pierced right through. The truth was that Lodz had become too much a part of me to ever leave my memory.”

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Jochanan Fayner said: “I can see these images so clearly as if it all happened yesterday.... And so I ask the Jewish God from the twice destroyed temple; and I ask Israel Rabon, killed by the Germans near Vilnius; I ask the poetess Miryam Ulyanover who used to read us her beautiful poems at Tłomackie Street, and who went to a gas chamber in Auschwitz along with her husband, her daughter and her infant granddaughter; and finally I ask of myself, repeating the question with the persistent Jewish stubbornness I inherited from my father: Why couldn’t Naftal, Charoiza, David and Abramek have missed the ship that took them from Haifa back to Europe? They barely made it to Haifa on time. If the dilapidated bus that took them to Haifa had arrived just several minutes later, they would have avoided the perilous fates that awaited them.”

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Jochanan Fayner said:“Everything – almost everything – they said or wrote about Auschwitz is true. These were exactly the words I used when talking to Michal. But, I added, it is impossible to say everything about Auschwitz. To fully understand what Auschwitz was all about, you really had to be there. There were weeks... when trains brought six thousand people every day. This problem – I mean the six thousand people getting off the cattle cars on the Auschwitz ramp at the same time – had to be resolved fast and efficiently on the very same day. The next day another trainload of six thousand people would arrive, the logistics to handle so many people had to be figured out – and quickly.”

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Jochanan Fayner said: “In a matter of seconds it was determined whether you would go to the left or to the right. A camp orchestra made up of prisoners would perform beautifully, while other prisoners were playing soccer on a makeshift field. Well, this can’t be such a bad place, concluded many Jews transported from Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, France, from Polish cities and towns. ‘Now you will go to the bath house,’ the SS men would say to the newcomers who were judged unfit to work. ‘After you take your showers, you will be assigned to your respective blocks and given food.’ Germans are a perfectly organized and practical people, they highly value tidiness and order; they realized they could achieve their goals sooner through deception. They probably didn’t want to expose themselves to many unpleasant scenes and potential nightmares that would interfere with their sound and restful sleep.”

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Tadeush was in the mood for recollections.... Almost the entire Baluty district was turned into a ghetto, he said.... Germans used Jews as slave labor. Everything in the ghetto – supplies, provisions, transportation – was managed like a business driven by a profit motive. The factory of slaves had to operate like clockwork. Germans made sure the horses were given feed because horses were few, and Jews could be replaced readily.

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Stefan Khvedchuk... lived with his parents in a house very close to our house. Stefan came from a traditional working class Catholic family. He was dark, with black curly hair, but he didn’t have a drop of Jewish blood in his veins; he hated Jews. He would break a window in a synagogue just for fun, and took every opportunity to give a Jew a good thrashing. But one day he fell in love with a Jewish girl and his world turned upside down. He chased her like a dog chases its tail. On the day his Esther was taken to the ghetto, he pledged to go with her. Stefan’s parents got him drunk just to keep him at home.

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If only Stefan Khvedchuk had paid closer attention to what face he always saw reflected in the mirror, he might have survived the war. One should be aware of things like these. On the dressing table, I spread out four photos of my father from Grandma Natalka’s album. Mr. Bodler, I said to myself, especially after comparing my reflection in the mirror to my father’s photo with him wearing a cap similar to mine, there should be no harm in getting a blood test. I won’t be accused of having the wrong blood running through my veins!

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Suddenly, as if at the sound of a starting pistol, they all began to talk noisily. Standing nearby, I got the feeling that the whole commotion was a shouting match about geography, with some participants yelling “Siberia, Auschwitz, Monte Cassino,” and others screaming “Zion,” “Sinai” and “Madagascar.”

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The whistles sounded sharply and all of a sudden the whole place was blue with police uniforms. A police truck with barred rear windows lumbered out of a side street. From a distance, it looked like they were playing tag – the difference being that the moment a policeman caught a student protester and tagged him with a club, the roles would not reverse, the tagged “member of the Fifth Column” ended up in the police truck.

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The school assembly hall filled up quickly; students were streaming in from every door and teachers were busy keeping order.... After the students were seated, Mr. Dreychyn emerged in front of us and gazed at the sea of heads swaying before him in silent expectation. “A terrible thing has happened,” he said in a sorrowful voice. “Yuri Gagarin, the First Conqueror of Space, is dead.... He passed away in his prime,” Dreychyn continued to read from the obituary notice released by the Soviet leaders, “always a faithful son of the Communist party and the Soviet nation,” he went on. “How come the two managed to beget him?” one of the boys blurted, and fearing a teacher’s reprimand, we barely managed to suppress our laughter.

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On Monday or Tuesday, as if prompted by God only knows who, I went to Mielczarski Street after school. It had not been even a week since the Baygelman family had left. From the low-vaulted gateway, I emerged into a courtyard as gloomy as a cellar. I immediately regretted my visit – the windows in Tadek’s room had new curtains; a new family had already moved in.

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Later on the same day, I sat down to study Kafka’s drawings in the book I received from the Baygelmans. In the latter pages of the book, I found a newspaper clipping of an article from a German newspaper. The article featured a photo of Kafka and some of his drawings – of bizarre matchstick men, accompanied by his autograph in quivering letters. The five letters of his name seemed to want to take on a life of their own. Kafka’s ears, I had noticed on the first day, were thin and protruding, as vigorous as the letters in his name, as if they had realized they did not match the rest, and turning rebellious, decided to separate. The rebellious letters and matchstick men that did not match the so-called world just like Kafka’s ears stood out from the so-called whole. Or perhaps the so-called whole stood out from them? Whether I liked it or not, I saw... Jochanan Fayner, I saw Charoiza with Abramek and David, and I saw the sisters: Elli, Valli and Ottla, whose maiden name happened to be Kafka; but names, after all, were of little significance at that time.

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We were waiting for a streetcar, while the sun kept beating down on the asphalt and concrete that surrounded us. The heavy air in the sky intensified the heat. I thought: If I could only put a pencil to paper now! As usual, I started from the rear, from the tail blowing in the wind; next, penciled in the hot whiteness on the black asphalt, there began to emerge the croup, the back, the withers, the head, the fetlocks, and the whole rest of it at a gallop – here’s how a horse experiences artistic birth…. Meanwhile, we keep waiting. Mr. Fayner passed away, Tadek Baygelman was gone, and Miss Shlekhter was packed and ready to go. It would seem that I paid the lowest price of all; just by changing my address, I escaped the full effects of my affliction. So this is how things are. Now I understood once I followed Mr. Fayner’s advice and I opened my eyes. Just in time, because Josef K., I mean Franz Kafka’s K., was already being escorted by two thugs out of the city and he was approaching his destination. A window opened on the top story of a building and a glimmer of hope teased him. Perhaps Josef K. thought that someone would rescue him. Although logic is often unshakable, it can’t withstand a person who wants to live.

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Copyright © 2009 Elżbieta Gortat
Contents copyright © 2009 Grzegorz Gortat