Jewels and Ashes (22 page)

The window to the left overlooked the inner courtyard. It was a world in itself, a miniature village stirring with constant activity. Within it stood a bakery, a dyer's workshop and the Polish caretaker's hut. He was an irritable man who worked hardest on Saturdays, as the ‘Shabbes Goy', attending to odd jobs and manual work — thereby enabling the Orthodox to observe their day of rest. The dyer spread furs and leather on the cobblestones to dry, and their acrid smell permeated the neighbourhood. Wagons entered by an arched gateway with supplies of flour and pelts. Peasants hawked potatoes and firewood, their wives delivered dairy products, and their children played between horses, merchants, and drying skins.

The window to the right was father's favourite. It overlooked the Biale which meandered just metres away. A strip of wild grass and shrubs threaded between the building and the river. Nearby there was a field in which stonemasons shaped tombstones from blocks of granite. Ulitza Kupietzka continued on over the river across a bridge, supported by columns between which birds often congregated. As he stood by the window father would sometimes hear the notes of a piano drifting from a nearby apartment. The pianist was the daughter of a wealthy balabos, the proud owner of factories and property. She had once been in love with father's eldest brother, Zachariah, but he had ignored her. Besides, he had long since disappeared in the Red empire with the theatrical troupe Sniegov and Dubrolov, and the girl next door had become a spinster who harboured romantic illusions of a pure love that would rescue her from loneliness and boredom.

Every year, on the first day of Rosh Hashonah, late in the afternoon, a crowd of Hasidim would gather by the banks of the Biale. They would stand in the field facing the river, between slabs of granite and half-completed tombstones, fringed shawls draped over their heads and shoulders. Chanting and swaying, they cast their sins into the Biale waters. Throughout the 1920s and well into the next decade, father would observe this ritual from the window, and he would remain long after, until the new moon rose towards its zenith and cast a thin glow over the rooftops of Kupietzka.

Itzchok Malamud has been described as reserved, a quiet man, somewhat withdrawn. When the February Aktions began, he was living with his wife and child at Kupietzka 29. During the previous year he had fled the town of Slonim, a witness to the murder of his parents in massacres that had wiped out thousands of Slonimer Jews. After hiding in the forests he had smuggled himself into Bialystok ghetto. He obtained work in one of its factories and had become a brooding participant in the early-morning meetings conducted there by resistance leaders. When the February Aktions drew near, he had obtained bottles of sulphuric acid distributed by members of the factory cells.

In the early hours of February 5, Nazi police rushed into the corridors of Kupietzka 29 and ordered the residents outside. Malamud responded by hurling acid into the eyes of one of the officers. Severely burnt and blinded, the officer fired into the crowd and succeeded in killing one of his cohorts.

The body was carried to the Judenrat offices and placed on Efraim Barasz's desk. After conferring with Gestapo boss Heimbach and SS envoy Ginter, Gustav Friedl ordered the Judenrat to deliver Malamud or face severe reprisals.

Father remembers Prager's garden as a vacant block, with gnarled fruit trees, weeds and ivies — formerly the walled grounds of a wealthy merchant. Nearby stood the Neivelt house of prayer. Father had attended cheder with the son of the cantor, and they often played together in the neighbourhood.

Soon after the ghetto was erected, Prager's garden became the site of a market. Residents gathered to barter: an overcoat for bread, a bar of soap for butter. Children would steal over the ghetto fences to smuggle in whatever they could to augment their parents' meagre stocks. When Nazi patrols happened to be in the area the dealers would scatter, leaving behind their paltry goods, their sole means of survival.

At two in the afternoon of February 5, over one hundred hostages were herded from the courtyard at Kupietzka 29, marched to Prager's garden, lined up against the wall of the Neivelt prayer-house and shot, in reprisal for Malamud's deed.

Father recalls the exact moment when Raizner described the shooting. Raizner had paused and faltered, unable to continue his account. His face had paled; and, when at last he resumed, his voice had fallen to a whisper. On the evening of February 5, 1943, Raizner had seen the shallow graves, the protruding hands and feet, the arms stretching upwards — the last movements of those who were still alive. Among those murdered in Prager's garden were my grandparents Bishke and Sheine.

‘Do not dwell too much upon the past', father warns. He blots out disturbing dreams and prefers that which he can touch and see while wide awake. A fractured past and muddled dreams are synonymous', he claims. ‘Obliterate the crippled visions that emerge from the darkness', he stresses. When father awakens, he deliberately breaks free of the night and reminds himself: The sun rises in the east, sets in the west, and life goes on.

For eight days, except Sunday, the Aktion continued unabated, with relentless punctuality: at six in the morning the sudden roar of trucks, the gleam of steel helmets, the heavy tread of Nazi boots entering the ghetto to resume the hunt. Cramped in their hideouts, the inmates waited in terror — stifling every cough, a baby's cry, the slightest sign of life. Floorboards were ripped out, false walls smashed in, and bunkers dynamited. Jewish police were forced to go first into suspected hideouts, to act as shields against potential resisters. On the second floor of Kupietzka 10, Jews fought with iron bars, axes, and knives, before being shot and hurled through the windows. A family poured boiling water on their assailants and were executed. Feingold the madman laughed and cursed as he was beaten to death. Mothers clutched their dead babies long after they had suffocated. Many suicided before they could be taken. Others spat and swore in their captors' faces. The ghetto was engulfed by mayhem and rage.

Raphael Raizner surveyed the scene from an attic on the third storey of a garment factory. The floors were crowded with workers' families exempted from the transports. Frost and biting winds slipped through gaps in the walls. In the streets below, huddles of women and children, old men and bent grandmothers, whole families clutching each other for support, staggered by. Those who could no longer keep moving were shot on the spot, their bodies left lying in the mud. Occasionally someone would attempt to escape, only to be gunned down as he ran. Two women broke away and hurled their children through factory windows. Soldiers dashed in, retrieved the children, and dragged them back to their mothers. A woman begged to be shot and an SS man obliged. A dog scampered towards him. He picked it up, patted its back, and asked sympathetically: ‘Haven't you eaten today?'

At six the troops would retire and march from the ghetto. Some made for Kupietzka 32, the Judenrat offices, to drink and celebrate until the early hours of the morning; while outside, in the darkness, figures emerged from their hideouts. Like trembling shadows they darted about to scavenge for food, exchange information, and prepare for the next day of terror. As they searched for their loved ones they could hear in the distance the whistle of the last train fading into the night, hound for Treblinka.

I probe, press for details, seek out witnesses, scan documents. It becomes an obsession; and always at the core hover mother and father. What did they feel at the moment of revelation? Father recalls Raizner's eyes, unfocussed, remote.

‘His pauses were frequent', father tells me, ‘his silences prolonged; and within them I saw Bishke being dragged to Prager's garden, to the shrill commands of his captors. They pushed and prodded, bayonets at his shoulders. Bishke stumbled and ran, not knowing why or for what. His cheeks were hollow, his face gaunt, the eyes vague and haunted. Then I saw them at Bialystok station, on the day I left Poland. It was the first time in my life that I had kissed Bishke. Who kisses a father with a beard that itches and a face beaten hard by wind and rain? Beside him stood Sheine, wearing a blue silk dress, with a white bow over the bodice. It had been a present from my youngest sister Feigl and her husband Reuben Zak. They loved her very much, and no wonder, for in the days of their courtship she had encouraged their romance and allowed them to be free.

‘When Sheine wore the dress for the first time they had taken her out to the theatre. She looked radiant. The dress matched her blue eyes. My blue eyes come from her, as does my great love for life. She was good natured; she believed in people. Until I was ten I would sleep next to her. I was permeated by the scent of her being and awoke to her blue eyes.

‘Raizner talked. Bialystok raged. Bishke and Sheine had to dig their own graves. I saw it clearly. Then I said, enough. Pain is a luxury; sentimentality an indulgence; the lure of life far more powerful. I had to shut out the remembrance, my visions and dreams. Otherwise I would have succumbed to grief and shame.'

A reward of 25 000 marks was offered for the head of Itzchok Malamud. The Gestapo threatened to shoot thousands if he were not found within twenty-four hours. Malamud gave himself up, although there are some who claim he was betrayed by an informer.

On the morning of February 8 a gallows was erected outside Kupietzka 29. Detachments of SS men and police lined up before the execution site. Gestapo boss Heimbach pronounced the sentence, and Malamud was led to the gallows. As the rope was placed around his neck he spat in his executioner's face and screamed: ‘Criminals, you will pay! Your end is near!' His words are said to have echoed throughout the length of the street.

Malamud remained hanging for forty-eight hours. In Bialystok today a small plaque indicates where the execution took place, and Kupietzka has been renamed Ulitza Malmeda.

On the morning of Saturday February 13, shocked and bewildered inmates began to emerge from hiding. Bodies lay scattered about the streets. Cows and horses stalked through the rubble. Grief-stricken men and women wandered in search of kin. Staring wildly in disbelief, mothers clung to their dead children. Work brigades collected the dead from courtyards and cellars. Winter frosts had fused the corpses. The bodies in Prager's garden were exhumed and carted to the ghetto cemetery in Zabia Square to be buried in mass graves, men and women separately, Bishke and Sheine apart.

In the afternoon rain fell and washed away the blood Zabia Square became a quagmire of churned mud and ice; and years later, when I came across poster three hundred and eighty-six, I noted the postscript that had been added: ‘February 5th to the 12th. An Aktion. 900 shot within. 10 000 sent to Treblinka'. Short. To the point. The first item of news disseminated in Bialystok after the death of Bishke, the newspaper man.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TOWARDS THE END OF WINTER, frozen lakes and rivers would crack apart and release fast-flowing ice that swept downstream. Cool breezes fanned the countryside and, on the river banks, hunchbacked willows swayed reflections in rejuvenated waters. The landscape around Bialystok seemed spellbound, poised between seasons, about to break beyond its winter dreaming.

When the nights became moderate, father would be invited by the Polish shoemakers for whom he kept books to go fishing overnight, on the outskirts of Bialystok. While they walked in the darkness owls moaned, and fireflies streaked by in showers of gold. The shoemakers fished until dawn and, as they trekked back to the city, they would meet peasants leading their oxen and horses to work. All was renewed energy, enthuses father, and he clenches his fist to stress the power of spring: a sharpened plough, a team of horses, a dew dissolving, the sun ascending, the earth ripped open to receive a scattering of seeds.

Soon after, the first herons would appear, winging their way from southern retreats, majestic in the skies, but awkward when they stumbled on their ungainly feet. To father they appeared ghostly, their claws sharp and threatening. Yet they still remind him of the scent of lilac, or ‘bird's milk' as it was called in Yiddish. It would be gathered clinging to twigs, and taken home to permeate the evening with its fragrance. As for the chestnut tree of Zwierziniec, the memory of its massive canopy in silver bloom remains startling. It hovered over a forest floor studded with wild flowers, within a resounding silence in which everything seemed slenderly balanced, imminent, about to cut loose.

On the banks of the Biale by Kupietzka bridge, within sight of the window where father once stood on Rosh Hashonah nights, the corpses of three informers hung from gallows erected by enraged mobs. They roamed the streets in search of those who had saved their own skins by leading Nazis to hideouts. When a cry of ‘traitor' was heard, crowds rushed to the scene. They would tear and claw at the suspect, and lynch him on the spot. In the ghetto hospital on Fabryczna lay the crippled and maimed. Many had lost limbs through frost-bite and exposure. A bitter thirst for vengeance mingled with despair in those first days after the February Aktion. Ghetto inmates moved about in a daze, a community bewitched by a collective fate that seemed endlessly and inevitably to be leading to oblivion.

Then slowly, with the lengthening of days, the faintest of hopes began to stir. Clandestine radios hidden in cellars transmitted the grim optimism of London and Moscow. The Reich had retreated from Stalingrad and suffered defeats in North Africa. The Red Army was advancing. Divided factions of the underground met to analyse their February shortcomings. Bitter schisms that had lingered since pre-war years were dissolved. A united front was established, led by the Zionist-inclined Mordechai Tennenbaum, with the veteran communist Daniel Moscowitz his deputy. The Judenrat expanded it factories. Thousands clamoured for jobs. The ghetto gardens came to life with spring planting and experiments to improve yields. Ghetto kitchens were restored, furtive prayer meetings held and, on April 19th, Bunim Farbstein organised a communal seder in Shmuel Cytron's house of study. Rabbis recited the Haggadah; and while Bunim spoke of freedom as the symbol of Passover, guests wept over the loss of loved ones and their desperate sense of isolation.