The Last Witness (32 page)

She said something about him being a hundred years old. He dismissed it as no big deal.

“Lots of people get to be a hundred these days,” Jack said. “But two hundred? Now that would be something. That’s what I’m working on now.”

She liked him right away.

No one else was home. She said her husband was at work and they had two sons, both at college out of town. She said she owned a hair dressing salon and drew customers from well-to-do women on the Upper East Side. Business was good. Even though she was the owner, she worked Saturdays – her busiest day – but took Wednesday off, which was today.

“I guess I was lucky,” Jack said.

“No I arranged it like that. If you couldn’t have come today I would have taken another day off. Meeting you was more important than going to work.”

She brought him coffee and cookies, and said she wanted to have him for dinner one evening to meet the family, but thought it better this time if it was just the two of them. She mentioned Christine and said what a lovely girl she was. Jack hadn’t told her what happened. He didn’t know how to begin. Then she began talking about her grandfather. Her
Zayda
. Jack listened and then he started telling her stories from the ghetto about himself and Josef Karasik, but she seemed to know them all.

“My
Zayda
told me everything,” she said. “He always talked about you. What a brave little boy you were. But what I don’t know is what happened to you after the ghetto. After they took you away.”

Jack told her about the sewers and how his baby brother was born there and died there. How his Aunt Gerda had to suffocate him because he wouldn’t have survived and how she had to do it or the Germans would have found out about them, but they did anyway. He told her about
Father Kasinski and what he did for the family. He told her how he, his parents, his aunt and his two cousins all went to Auschwitz and how he was the only survivor.

“That’s what I want to know,” Emily said. “How did you survive Auschwitz? Children didn’t survive that place.”

Jack said two dozen children, including him, were liberated by the Red Army in January, 1945. He said they were from many countries – Poland, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. Then she said something about how the Russians never got credit for helping defeat the Nazis.

“That’s true,” Jack said and then he shook his head. “They raped the girls, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“When they came to liberate us. Some of the older Jewish girls. The Russian soldiers raped them. There was no one to stop them. I thought they were beating them up. What did I know?”

“I never heard that before.”

“It was a war.”

Jack said he had been at the camp since August 1944 when he arrived by train from Lodz. He told her about the boxcar.

“How did you survive? You were just a little boy.”

Jack said it was a long story, but if she had the time he would tell her.

“For you Jacob I have all the time in the world.”

He liked being called that. No one had called him Jacob for so long that he had forgotten what it sounded like, but his parents called him that. Or something close.
Ya-coov
. She went to bring fresh coffee and when she returned she wanted to hear the story about how he survived.

“One thing your grandfather and I both learned in the ghetto was this,” Jack said. “Even people who want to harm you have a price. They can be bought. Josef … your grandfather … used to buy them by selling them cigarettes. I learned a lot from him. He was a rascal.”

Emily laughed and her eyes started to tear up.

“You want to know how I survived Auschwitz? A boy who wasn’t even five years old? I turned five on December 1, 1944, a few weeks before we were liberated. There was no birthday party for me.”

She smiled.

“I survived because I took what people taught me and used it.”

“Tell me,” she said. “I want to know.”

“When I got to the barracks at Birkenau … they called it Auschwitz II … I shared my bunk with an older boy named Jerzy. He told me everything that went on there. Everything. Birkenau was hell. Even a little boy four years old can recognize hell when he sees it. Every night the
Kapo
came for him. He was a German … seventeen … eighteen … and I still remember what he looked like. He wasn’t tall but husky and he was a lot bigger than me and he was a lot bigger than Jerzy. He took Jerzy away every night and did what he wanted to him. I didn’t understand any of that at the time. All I knew was that every night the
Kapo
came for Jerzy and a few hours later Jerzy came back and he was always tired. One night the
Kapo
took him away and Jerzy never came back. I never found out what happened to him. He probably wound up in the gas chamber unless the
Kapo
killed him. I don’t know. Anything was possible. But a couple nights later the
Kapo
came and this time he wanted me.”

Emily put her hand to her face.

“I opened up the heel on my right shoe and showed him my
chervonets
. It was a gold coin from Russia. Father Kasinski gave it to me. Naturally the
Kapo
wanted it but I told him I had lots of them. I told him I hid a coin at the bottom of every latrine out in the back and there were a lot of latrines there, at least thirty of them, but I only had room for one coin in my heel. He didn’t believe me so I told him if he left me alone I would show him a different
chervonets
the next night. He would know because it would have a different year inscribed on it and that’s what happened. Every night I showed him a gold coin with a different year on it. One time I heard Mengele and the other doctors talking and I knew the war wasn’t going well for the Germans. It was just a matter of time, they said, before the Allies defeated them so I told the
Kapo
when the war was over I would share all my gold coins with him. I promised to give him half of them. If he would just leave me alone.”

“But you said you only had one gold coin,” Emily said.

“I did have only one gold coin but when I was a little boy living in the ghetto my father showed me how he changed the nameplate on sewing machines. You see, he was a tailor and he fixed everyone’s sewing machine. All the Jews wanted a Singer sewing machine and all the Germans wanted a
Pfaff
. It was a different make. German, of course. The name was painted in gold letters on the black base, then it was covered with this transparent lacquer. My father showed me how to sand off the lacquer, repaint the black, then paint the name ‘Singer’ in gold and recoat it with the lacquer. He was a very enterprising man. He made sure every Jew got a Singer sewing machine and every German got a
Pfaff
. Nobody could tell the difference. They just looked at the nameplate. So no matter what kind of sewing machine he had he made sure all his customers were happy. I used that same kind of reasoning with my
chervonets
at Birkenau. You see, I had a friend. A
Sonderkommando
. They were Jews who helped burn the bodies. Some of
them were just as bad as the Nazis but this man helped me. He took me where the ovens were and put my
chervonets
in for a few seconds. That was all we needed to heat it up. Then we took it out and etched a new year in it with a carving knife. We did it together. We did that every day until the
Kapo
was convinced I had a mini Fort Knox hidden in the latrines out in the back.”

“But why did the
Sonderkommando
help you?”

“I appealed to his sense of Jewish pride. He could see this little Jewish boy who was fooling this dumb German and he took a lot of pleasure in that. But I had to promise to give him the
chervonets
when the war was over and I did.”

“You gave it to him or you just promised?”

“I just promised. One day the
Sonderkommando
went to the gas chamber but by that time I had the
Kapo
in my hip pocket. He couldn’t wait for the war to end because he thought he was going to be rich.”

Jack chuckled and Emily burst into a smile. She liked the story.

“I appealed to his greed and it worked but he wasn’t the only person like that. There was another
Kapo
in the barracks, a German woman, and she was the only one who didn’t hit us. She liked children. She was Catholic and considered herself a good Christian so with her I appealed to her sense of Christianity. I knew all the prayers … in Latin … and I used to recite them for her. Sometimes we did them together. Sometimes we even sang them. She would bring me things. Like bread or soup that really tasted like soup. Or extra clothes to keep me warm. She was the only one who didn’t hit us.”

“So you used her the way you used the young German
Kapo
and the way you used the
Sonderkommando
?”

“I used Mengele too.”

“How?”

Jack took a sip from his coffee and asked if he could have another cookie. Emily said he could eat them all. She said she had lots.

“It was because of Mengele that I knew things were bad for the Germans. I didn’t know anything about the Allies but I knew if they were fighting the Germans they were my friends. Mengele and the other doctors said the Allies were winning the war and one day it would be over. Mengele was a real Aryan. He worshipped children with blonde hair and blue eyes. I had blue eyes. I can thank my mother for that.”

“But you didn’t have blonde hair. You said Father Kasinski dyed your hair. With peroxide.”

“Father Kasinski did dye my hair with peroxide but he also showed me
how
to dye my hair with peroxide. The nice German woman … the
Kapo
in the barracks … the good Christian who thought I was a Catholic just like her …”

“She gave you peroxide?”

“Yes. They had lots of it for the Germans. Not for the Jews or the other prisoners. But she liked me and helped me dye my hair.”

“And Mengele?”

“If he ever knew I was dying my hair he would have sent me straight to the gas chamber. No question about it. He used to check my hair all the time. He’d look through it and check the roots but it was always blonde so with him it was a matter of aesthetics. The aesthetics of the Aryans. He thought children with blue eyes and blonde hair were beautiful and he thought I was Polish. Not Jewish. He would have killed me if he knew I was Jewish.”

“So you fooled them all. You. A little boy of four years old. You fooled everyone.”

“I don’t think of it that way. I was just trying to stay alive. But I was fortunate to meet certain people. I was fortunate to have a father like I did. I was fortunate to have met Father Kasinski and I was fortunate to know Josef. Your
Zayda
. He was a good friend. He taught me a lot.”

Emily clasped her hands together.

“There is something I want to tell you!” she said. “Almost forgot. I belong to an organization. It was started a long time ago by children of survivors but there aren’t many members anymore. You go one generation and two generations and people start to lose interest. Even Jews. But today with all the trouble in Poland and this talk about closing Auschwitz … it’s the last camp … the only one they haven’t got rid of. Well we had a meeting and they want to have a rally to protest the rising anti-Semitism in Poland … you hear about it every day … and this move to close Auschwitz. They can’t do that. When they closed the museum people stopped going there and if they get rid of what’s left then nobody will think it ever existed. That’s all people have to know and then …”

“They will say that it never happened,” said Jack.

“They want to send the bulldozers in just like they did at Belsen and Treblinka and Sobibor and all the others. We can’t let it happen, Jacob.
You
can’t let it happen. After you there won’t be anyone left.”

Jack was thinking to himself. That was what Christine said. “Where are you going to do this thing?” he said.

“At the Statue of Liberty.”

“The Statue of Liberty?”

“Can you think of a better place?”

Jack couldn’t. “What do you want me to do?” he said.

She said it would be good if he could say a few things about what happened at Auschwitz. What he saw there. There would be a lot of people and her group could help him prepare his comments.

“One of our members used to write speeches for the mayor,” she said.

Jack said he would think about it. Then she clapped her hands together.

“Jacob! I almost forgot. I have pictures. Do you want to see them?”

“Pictures?”

“Of Lodz.”

“Yes I’d like to see them.”

She left the room and came back with a stack of digital photos.

“They can do these in 3D now but it’s not the same. I had them reproduced just like they were in the old days. I got them from my
Zayda
. They were his. They were black-and-white photographs from way back but we had them digitized and now they’re good quality but they’re still black and white.”

Emily handed them to Jack one by one.

“I recognize that,” he said. “That’s
Hamburgerstrasse
. That was the headquarters of the Jewish police and oh my God that’s
Bazarplatz
or Bazarowy Square. They used to do executions there. We didn’t live far from there. And that bridge. I remember that bridge!”

Then she showed him another picture. He stopped and squinted, closed his eyes, rubbed them. He looked at it again. It was a picture of a three-storey building. He sat up and his face went pale.

“Are you all right?” Emily said.

Jack didn’t say anything, but his mouth was wide open.

“Are you all right? Can I get you something?”

“It’s true what they say,” Jack said and it was only a whisper.

“What’s true, Jacob? What’s true?”

“What they told me … about the brain … how it can suppress memory.”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked at the picture again. “Oh my God,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Let me see that.” He took the photo in his hands. “That’s the hospital in
Lodz
.”

“That’s right. That’s what it says on the back. You remember it?”