In Paradise: A Novel (6 page)

T
HE WRUNG-OUT
would-be witness bearers, one hundred and forty strong, gather after supper in the small museum auditorium. Ben Lama, opening the meeting, offers the microphone at once to Father Mikal. The priest formally protests this morning’s attack on Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the revered Franciscan martyr who offered his own life in exchange for that of another prisoner, a family man, one of ten condemned to death by the SS in a random selection—

“Oh shit, here comes that ‘family man’ again!” calls Earwig, slouched graceless in his seat. The Vatican had always encouraged the belief that its martyred priest offered up his life to save some luckless Hebrew: Earwig scoffs at the absurdity of that idea. “Hell, in those first years most of the prisoners in Auschwitz I were Poles. Kolbe’s ‘family man’ was probably another Catholic who hated Jews as much as he did.”

When Father Mikal turns the other cheek, resumes his seat, Earwig’s voice pursues the novices in their retreat toward the door. “Your Polish pope installed his convent right outside the wall—that’s where Christ’s little sisters there are staying. Not your fault, girls,” he hollers after them, “but your convent has no more business in this place than you do!”

A British clergyman protests, “You say those young women are not welcome on an ecumenical retreat that promotes a healing of the faiths?”

“
Healing of the faiths?
In a fucking death camp? Never, my friend. Not ever.”

The disgruntled audience turns toward Ben Lama in hopes he might intervene, perhaps banish this agitator from their group. Sleepy-eyed Ben merely blinks once, slowly, watching Earwig settle back into his slouch. And when Ben rises, it is only to introduce the distinguished Israeli historian and teacher Professor Adina Schreier, a small waistless woman, all of a piece, whose Art Nouveau necklace of heavy orange baubles seems to pull her head down and set it forward in belligerence. Professor Schreier reminds her audience that the Shoah or Cataclysm or Catastrophe (the term “Holocaust” merely signifies a burnt offering, she instructs them) is only the most recent of the great persecutions of the Jews and may not be the last. Scapegoats have been essential to autocratic regimes throughout history, and the Roman Church—here she glances at the priest—has been the archenemy of “us Christ-killers” for nearly two thousand years: the Crusades, the Inquisitions, centuries of pogroms and murderous persecutions, culminating in the Shoah. But some of that martyrdom, she says, has been invited by Judaism itself, which in its centuries of struggle to survive without losing its spiritual integrity developed a reclusiveness that aroused suspicion and prejudice, then expedient hate.

“We Jews must recognize our provocation,” she suggests provocatively, visibly gratified, even stimulated, when the cluster of Orthodox Jews groans in disapproval.

Earwig again: “Think those nuns were ever told how Hitler’s pope sat on his holy hands while Jews by the millions were going up in smoke?”

“Much as I deplore the brutal way you talk, you’re not altogether mistaken,” Professor Schreier tells him coldly. “But that sort of inflammatory language will get us nowhere.”

Ben Lama’s raised hand cuts off Earwig’s retort: Olin is mildly relieved to see that this amiable man can be tough when he has to be, and that, for whatever reason, Earwig accepts his authority.

T
HOSE IN DISTRESS
are presently encouraged to come up onto the little stage and, using the microphone, to “bear witness” to their own experience. The neediest, most eager speakers are the Germans. (“Me-firsters even in grief, these people,” whispers Anders.) Jumping up red in the face, a young man shouts right from his place, so frantic is he to spit up his revulsion after this terrible day.

“AUSCH-vitz iss zo fockink CHERman!” he shouts, throwing his arms wide in the uselessness of his despair. What he especially detests, he says, is the obscene
effici-ence
of this death factory.

“Ja, ja!”
a woman agrees, fairly trembling in her hatred of “our German perfectionism.” What a great relief it is, she sighs, with a hopeful smile at the closed faces that surround her, to find herself with understanding people who do not regard her as “a German devil.”

Olin winces at her premature relief; hearing her speak of it, a few faces set hard and others turn away.

Close to tears, the elderly daughter of a Wehrmacht soldier killed on the Russian front confesses that at the prayer service at the Black Wall this morning, she had dared recite Kaddish in her father’s memory.

“Only this most horrible of places permits my heart to speak!” She spreads her arms, baring her heart to the hall, then repeats her countrywoman’s mistake, blurting out how grateful she feels to be here bearing witness with all of these good friends from many nations. Again, cold silence.

Several Germans are still struggling with their discovery that beloved menfolk in the family were implicated or worse in “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” One woman’s late poppa turned out to have been an SS guard in this very
Lager
. “Perhaps he was ordered to assist in unspeakable actions,” she mourns, starting to sniffle. “And always so kind he was to dogs and children.”

A no-nonsense woman from the Netherlands pounces on this cliché. “Jewish dogs, too? Jewish kids? Like our poor little Anne Frank?” Here a soft moan in honor of the young diarist’s sacred memory mixes with a groan of disapproval of the unsporting kill. And a voice says, “
Your
little Dutch girl, are you saying? Born in Frankfurt?”

The Dutch woman—big-voiced, with large squarish front teeth—demands to know why the “witness” with the SS man for a father failed to recognize the fascistic propensities of a man who lived under the same roof. How could she have loved so blindly “the kind of man who would take work in Hell”?

“No, no, orders only he obeyed!”

An American cantor, Rabbi Dan, attempts to mediate. Perhaps a child’s love for her loving “dad” comes more naturally than mistrust, he pleads, bestowing a gentle smile of blessing and forgiveness on the gathering. After all, weren’t there many like “this lady’s dad” who got caught up gradually in a great evil, step by fatal step—

“Goose step by goose step,” Earwig barks. “Millions of goose-stepping
Dummkopf
dads lending their big pink Christian hands to cold-blooded murder—”

“Mr. Earwig?” Ben’s admonition is pitched just above the hiss of whispers in the hall.

For many years, the German woman continues, she ran away from the story of her father, who was sent to fight on the Russian front when still a boy, scarcely sixteen. “He was victim also!” Badly wounded, he was transferred by the SS to guard duty at this
Lager
. And she’d come here to pray he had not done horrible things, “just maybe he help to hunt some Jewish, maybe put them on trains.” She clasps her hands upon her breast, imploring the silent rows to understand.

“Poor liddle SS sol-cher poy age of sixteen. He vas victim also!” calls Anders Stern with that loose grin of his, not malevolent nor intentionally unkind, simply uncouth and callous—yet it worries Olin that any sort of jibe at their expense will only further isolate these German people.

S
OME OF THE
A
MERICAN
J
EWS,
Olin supposes, have come to assuage a secret guilt; some even dare express the hope that in this place they might experience some inkling of the agonies others had endured while they prospered.

Though her family lost no one in the camps, Awful Miriam, as Anders calls an overdressed American, bemoans her “trauma” on that fateful day when her best friend was “oppressed” by the school bully: he made the “Jew-Jew girl” salute him in his soldier-father’s souvenir regalia, the swastika armband and broad black belt and high-peaked eagle cap. No teacher interfered, she mourns, and one even pretended it was all a joke when those jeering kids marched around her friend making “
Heil
Hitler” salutes!

A silence. Earwig rears around to squint at her. “That’s it, lady? Your little classmate got hurt feelings?” He closes his eyes, facing forward again. “You’re wasting our time with stupid stuff like this.”

“Excuse me?
Stupid?
It’s the principle—!”

“The
principle
?” Not bothering to look at her, Earwig waves away her witness. The
principle
, he mutters, intending to be heard, is that anti-Semites include “Jew-hating Jews” who bob their noses, change their names, turn their backs on their religion—

“Hey, wait a minute,” Olin protests. “That’s too easy.”

“He knows nothing about me!” the woman wails, glaring around her for support. Further outraged when nobody speaks up, she sits down noisily, pops right back up to announce her refusal from now on to eat or even speak with “all these Germans. These people had no right to come! They should be ashamed!”

“We
are
ashamed, madame,” Rainer says quietly. “Deeply ashamed. That is why we are here. We are scarred for life and coming here won’t heal that.”

Earwig points. “How about Ay-rabs, lady? We got one here from Palestine. You also refuse to eat with this nice Se-mite?”

The formidable Adina rises with an exasperated groan and a backhand flick of long ringed fingers that dismisses both antagonists and their whole disgraceful exchange. Ignoring Miriam as an unworthy foe, she confronts Earwig. “Yes, of course, Mr.—
Earwig
, is it?—the Arabs are a Semitic-
language
people, true. But isn’t Jewish hatred inevitable when their leaders deny that the Shoah occurred and are sworn to drive every last Israeli Jew into the sea?”

And Miriam, not to be ignored, chimes in, “And anyway—come on, people, let’s face it, okay? You’ve seen ’em yourself on the TV. They look like a
different
kind of a Semitic, right?”

“More swarthy, perhaps?” A new voice with a soft British inflection.

In the back row, the young Palestinian, long black hair tied up in a ponytail, has already risen; he is suddenly noticed, standing quiet a few moments in a room full of uneasy shifting. “Good evening,” he murmurs politely. “Greetings from Palestine.”

“Raghead! Better you should just shut up!” an American-born Israeli hollers, though begged by his wife to sit down and be quiet.

“You call them raghead, yes?” the young man continues. “Call them coward terrorist, these brave young fools with no future and no hope in life, gone crazy in the desert . . .” Here a deft pause for a twitched smile. Slowly, then, within his well-wrought isolation, he resumes his seat.

Olin exchanges a wry wince with Anders: so much for ecumenical healing and world peace.

“A pity our eloquent Muslim friend cannot speak for all his people.” Adina’s stiff smile tests the silence in the hall. “‘In God We Trust,’ you Americans say, but this man’s Allah—or our Hebrew Yahweh, for that matter—serves the purpose just as well.” Monotheism by whatever name has been the rationale for war and genocide forever. And the Unchosen, the inferior Others, are always demonized as an excuse to oppress them, isn’t that true? And with God’s blessing. “Thus”—and her accusing glance sweeps quickly past the Germans—
“Gott mit Uns.”

“Gott
mit
Uns!”
Anders whispers hoarsely. “If
Gott
vas
mit
those Nazi
Schweinhunds
, why didn’t ‘
Uns
’ win the war?”

“Nein!”
Seeing them grin, a German woman protests, “
Gott
iss not for funny business in
der
Lager
!”

“
Gott
iss not for wisecrackers!” Rainer observes, trying not to laugh.

(“I never thought Germans had much humor,” Anders comments. “The men guffaw loud enough to crack your ears but there’s no real mirth behind it—” He is checked by his roommate’s grin. “What’s so funny, Olin?”

“Sorry, but there are exceptions.” He recalls a gravestone epitaph he’d seen one day in a cemetery in Berlin.
Fifty years I have perfect health. Now this!
And Anders hoots, “Sounds more like a Jew to me.”)