The Emperor of Lies (32 page)

Three months after the
szpera
operation, as a first indication that a
glorious new age would soon be dawning, the authorities staged a big Industrial
Exhibition in which the ghetto’s various
resorty
, by then 112 in number, could put their formidable
productivity on show.

The now ‘sanitised’ children’s hospital
at 37 Łagiewnicka Street had been converted into exhibition galleries. In the
wards and consultation rooms on the ground floor there were glass display cases
and stands with examples of a range of ghetto products, and someone had put a
long banner up on the wall with the Chairman’s famous motto
UNSER EINZIGER WEG IST ARBEIT!
stencilled in
big black letters in German and Yiddish.

And all round it, a montage of
photographs from various factories:

Young women at a long bench, all at
work with flat irons and lengths of cloth. Superimposed on the pictures of the
women was a bar graph showing the continuously rising rate of production in the
tailoring workshops of the ghetto. The higher the bars on the graph went, the
more of the picture of the women was revealed, bench after bench of women, heads
bowed over their irons or their Singer machines from an angle that made them
stretch into eternity:

Trikotagenabteilung
: – Militärsektor:
42 880 Stück.
– Zivilsektor: 71 028 Stück.

Korsett- und Büstenhalterfabrik
: 34 057
Stück.

Three years of slavery, three years of
submission to a tyrannical power with no aim but the total obliteration of the
ghetto: of course that was something to celebrate.

According to the
Ghetto Chronicle
, which sent a number of its
correspondents to report on the proceedings, the exhibition opening was divided
into two parts. The official, first part consisted of ‘speeches by a series of
departmental heads’, followed by a tour of the galleries. After the tour, the
whole event moved to the House of Culture, where the programme comprised: 1) a
musical impromptu; 2) a speech by the Praeses, with presentation of medals; 3) a
banquet with a ceremonial menu specially devised for the occasion by
Frau Helena Rumkowska
. The banquet and the
performance at the House of Culture were the unofficial part of the programme.
Preparations had been in progress for weeks. Since the banquet was intended as a
mixed
event – in other words, eminent
members of the German ghetto administration or security forces might well drop
in – nothing could be left to chance.

Like the Chairman’s
Kinderhospital
and indeed all the other hospitals
in the ghetto, the House of Culture had recently had a thorough refit. The
scenery from Mr Puławer’s Ghetto Revue had been taken down and removed from the
building, and massed standards had been put up instead, one for every
resort
. On the wall behind the standards there
now hung a large portrait of the Chairman. It was the classic image that showed
a smiling Rumkowski standing with his arms full of flowers, meeting all the
happy, well-fed children of the ghetto. Next, the foyer was adorned with
garlands and flower arrangements made of rags and scrap paper from the ghetto’s
Altmaterialressort
, and the finishing touch
to the whole effect was added by the unfurling of yet another long banner:

UNSER EINZIGER
WEG . . . !

The opening of the exhibition was set
for a day in early December, a Wednesday.

It was a very cold day with a strong,
blustery wind. The sky as grey as cement, with snow being driven in fierce
flurries over the ridges of the roofs. Beneath the criss-crossing tram-wires
across Łagiewnicka Street goes a long line of
dróshkes
, their hoods opening and shutting like mouths in the
squally gusts of wind.

The bosses of the various
resort
departments are arriving.

Divisional chiefs, heads of operation,
administration, supply services. And after them it is the turn of those
representing that vague class of people which in the Ghetto Encyclopedia goes by
the title of
ghetto engineers
: factory bosses,
master mechanics, supervisors. With one hand clutching the brims of their hats,
the other the tails of their coats to stop them blowing up, they are heading in
a steady stream into the converted House of Culture, now stripped of all the
varnish of culture, and are received in the foyer beneath the streamers and
garlands by those elevated by the circumstances to the rank of important
dignitaries, men like Aron Jakubowicz and Dawid Warszawski, who have learnt that
the best way to deal with the demands of the new age is not to join the power
struggle in the ghetto (a battle they had no prospect of winning, after all) but
to behave as if it were the same as any other industrial centre, open for trade,
and where any means of satisfying your employer are permitted. Also to be found
among these, the true architects of the Ghetto Exhibition, is Dawid Gertler,
chief of police, not in uniform but sporting a big
W
(for
Wirtschaftspolizei
) on
his armband, to show his affiliation in a manner appropriate for the day.

The blare of a trumpet fanfare is heard
from the brass players at the entrance; the gentlemen of the reception committee
click their heels and straighten their backs:

The Chairman, comes a whisper from the
front edge of the crowd, has arrived; and what’s more, he’s brought his whole
family.

So here we have him. Rumkowski. Silent,
dogged, he walks slowly forward, his eyes on the floor as if his primary task
were to keep his legs under control. His wife, Mrs Regina Rumkowska, is walking
with her permanent, desperate smile and her arm in his. His Son has come, too!
And all at once there is enough collective elbow-room along the route of the
procession for everyone to see The Adopted Child, pale and surly, standing there
among all the besuited gentlemen wearing a monstrous child’s suit with broad
lapels of quilted silk and some kind of brocade shirt with a big,
eighteenth-century-style ruffle at the neck. Of all those in the company, he is
the only one who looks relatively relaxed. He stares indifferently at the
garlands on the ceiling while stuffing himself with sweets from a twist of paper
that the Chairman or some obsequious official has pressed into his hand.

Most of those present have by this time
realised something is amiss: the Praeses is far from steady on his feet, his
hand groping for a wall that is not there. Someone even says it out loud:

Isn’t that
man a bit the worse for drink?

But by then it is too late. The
trumpeters have finished their fanfare and Rumkowski is on the podium starting
the award ceremony, even though there are no medals to hand out, still less
medallists to receive them. But now a pair of strong, young female arms is
apparently holding out the tray of medals, after all. The medals lie like fish,
with all their ribbons pointing in the same direction. And Miss Dora Fuchs,
clearly concerned about her Chairman’s wayward behaviour, has pressed a sheet of
paper into his hand and is pointing first at the text and then over to the ranks
of men in suits or uniforms – all with
W
-armbands on the sleeves of their jackets – lined up with expectant
smiles on the steps down from the foyer. They are the medallists.

The Chairman nods, as if he were seeing
them for the first time.

Gentlemen,
he says indistinctly.

(Miss Fuchs makes a hushing
gesture to the audience.)

Gentlemen and ladies – brothers and sisters!

You
are all familiar with the GOOD news.

Of
87,615 Jews remaining with us today, no fewer than 75,650 are employed in
full-time production. THIS IS AN IM-PRRESS-I-I-VE ACHIEVEMENT.

There are not so many of us in the ghetto as before.

BUT
WE HAVE CARRIED OUT OUR TASK.

Those who come after us – our children and children’s children (those who
have survived!) – will rightly feel proud of these men and women who by
their hard, self-sacrificing labour have given them – given us all – the
right to a continuing existence.

I
would go so far as to say that it is these men they have to thank for their
lives.

Gentlemen
, he says again, still turned to the expectant men on the
steps. But his face bears an expression of one who to his consternation has just
forgotten what he was about to say. The girl with the medals misinterprets his
confusion as a signal to step forward with the tray again. An impatient murmur
rises from the audience, only to be interrupted by one of the trumpeters, who
can no longer contain himself but plays a long, slowly falling note, straight
out over the sea of people. As if the silvery blast has struck up in him, too,
the Chairman suddenly starts to recite:

LABOUR, LABOUR, LABOUR!

Time and
again I have told you

Labour
is the ROCK OF ZION!

Labour
the FOUNDATION OF MY STATE.

HARD,
PUNISHING LABOUR –

And from down in the hall they watch
everything go flying into the air: sheets of paper, tray and medals – fanning
out from the Chairman’s rhetorically extended right hand. The sheets of paper
come sailing down, preceded by the tray, which describes a gallant arc in the
air before hitting the floor with a dull crash, and followed by the medals and
their ribbons, which come pattering down all around like little rockets decked
with pennants.

In the midst of this rain of medals,
the Chairman has gone down on all fours and is crawling around looking for the
pieces of paper he has dropped. Someone towards the back of the hall starts to
laugh. At first discreetly, with their hands over their mouth. Then (as a few
more people join in) more openly.

Two police officers have made their way
up to the podium to try to help, but are stopped by Gertler, who abruptly gets
to his feet in the first row and says:

There, you see;

This man has completely lost it!

At that moment, the doors to the foyer
are slammed open and Amtsleiter Biebow comes striding down the aisle, bodyguards
in his wake. The sharply issued commands and stamping, rapping boot heels send
all the functionaries in the first row swiftly back to their seats, and they
huddle there as Biebow – having appraised the situation for a few moments, hands
on hips – resolutely climbs onto the stage, grabs hold of the Chairman who is
still crawling around, pulls him up into a standing position and then slaps him
sharply with his gloved hand, twice, across the face.

Rumkowski, who still does not seem to
have realised who it is, just stares straight ahead, saliva running from the
corners of his mouth.

Biebow picks up the items scattered
across the stage floor and presses them into the Chairman’s arms; then he puts
his own arms around him to keep everything in place (the diplomas, the medals
and the Chairman himself):
You are an old man now,
Rumkowski
, he is heard to say, and those in the front row with their
ears anxiously pricked up think they hear him murmur almost lovingly:

You
are an old man from an obsolete age, Rumkowski.

You
thought you could buy yourself power and influence, that you could go on
extending your perverse and filthy nest within the walls of a Greater Power
and then carry on embezzling and misappropriating just as people like you
have done so many times before throughout history, as it is in your nature
to do.

But
let me tell you something, Rumkowski: that age is now past. That age is
auf ewig vorbei.
What counts now is
Entschlossenheit, Mut und Kompetenz.

This last bit he says not to Rumkowski,
but turned to the audience. And he smiles as he says it: a smile that is trying
to be complicit and indulgent at the same time.

And apparently it succeeds, for
suddenly everybody (except Miss Fuchs, who looks shaken, and Mrs Regina
Rumkowska, who sits fiddling with her handbag as if looking to hide inside it)
starts to laugh. Everyone in the hall, from the ranks of dignitaries at the
front, all the way to the foremen and master machinists at the back. Some even
put their hands in the air and start to clap and cheer as if they were at some
crude variety performance, and once the tension in their arms and legs has
relaxed, others join in too, and whether from relief or recklessness, begin to
stamp their feet and boo and heckle.

But this is no variety performance.
Perhaps it takes a little while for people fully to register that it is in fact
Herr Amtsleiter
standing there with the
Eldest of the Jews like a child in his arms, reaping the applause. One member of
the brass ensemble at least had the presence of mind to realise there was a way
to defuse this potentially lethal situation, and on his own initiative played
the opening notes of the
Badenweilermarsch
–