The Woman from Hamburg Read online

  The farmer, Marcin B., made a hiding place for them in the barn. In the evening he would bring them a pot of food. They could hear his slow, heavy steps in the distance. He would stand still in the middle of the barn, check to see if any strangers were there, and approach the hiding place. He’d remove the straw and bend back the nail; only he knew which nail could be bent. He would take out a board; only he knew which board was not nailed down. He’d place the large, cast iron pot on the threshold. One of the boys would stick out his hand and drag the pot inside. The farmer would put the board back in place, bend the nail back, and straighten the straw. They sat in darkness. Fredek and Szmul talked in a whisper, and Tojwełe listened. Tojwełe was small, red-haired, and freckled. True, before the war he used to smear himself with Halina brand anti-freckle cream that he’d stolen from his mother, but without results. The other boys were two years older than he was; they came from big cities and they didn’t have freckles. They talked eagerly about the cars that they would buy after the war. Fredek was going to buy a Panhard, and Szmul, a Buick. This was the first time Tojwełe had ever heard those names. He interjected that he would buy an Opel, the same kind that Captain Lind owned. An Opel! The boys burst out laughing disparagingly and began reminiscing about railroad stations. Some of them were approached through long, dark tunnels, and thundering trains passed overhead. Did you ever see a tunnel? Tojwełe had to confess that there wasn’t a single tunnel in Izbica. Half a year passed. Marcin B. told them it was spring already and the apple tree was in bloom. It grew near the barn, next to their hiding place. There will be a lot of apples, Marcin B. said. He asked where they had gotten such nice sweaters and a leather jacket. From Sobibor, from the sorting room. They lent him the jacket and a sweater. He went off to church on Sunday, wearing them. On Monday, several men came to see him. They screamed, Where are you hiding the Jews? We want leather jackets, too. They probed the straw in the barn with sticks, but they didn’t find anything. Maybe their sticks were too short. You heard them, Marcin B. said that evening. Go away from here; I’m afraid. They asked him to buy them a gun, and then they’d go into the forest. They’ll catch you, he said, they’ll ask where you got the gun and you’ll betray me. We won’t betray you; please buy one. You’ll definitely betray me; go away, I’m afraid.

  A couple of days passed. In the evening they heard the farmer sending his children to their grandparents’ for the night and calling the dog into the kitchen. Later, he came to the barn. He bent back the nail, removed the board. Fredek crept out to get the pot. They saw a bright light and heard a crash. Fredek curled up and his legs began thrashing. Someone’s hands shoved Fredek to the side. They saw the chubby face of a boy they didn’t know and another light. Tojwełe felt a sting in his jaw. He touched his cheek; it was wet. He, too, was shoved aside by someone’s hands. When he opened his eyes, in addition to the darkness he saw Uncle Jankiel. He was sitting beside him on the straw, tiny and hunchbacked as always. Aha, Tojwełe thought, I am seeing Uncle Jankiel. When someone’s dying, he sees his own childhood, so I’m dying now. You know, said Uncle Jankiel, a person’s hair and fingernails keep growing for three days after he dies. He can hear, but he cannot speak. I know, said Tojwełe, you already told me. I am no longer alive; I can still hear and my fingernails are growing. He heard voices and crashing sounds, one after the other. Make sure he’s dead, or he’ll start moaning when morning comes. That was the farmer’s wife talking; who knows, maybe she was talking about him, about Tojwełe. Mister, please let me live; I’ll be your servant for the rest of my life. That was Szmul talking. The men didn’t want Szmul to be their servant, because there was another bang and Szmul fell silent. He’s already getting stiff. That was Marcin B. talking, undoubtedly about Tojwełe, because he touched his hand. Here it is! That was an unknown voice, maybe belonging to the boy with the round face. He must have found something. Probably their bag of gold, because suddenly they all jumped up and ran to the kitchen. Are you alive? That was Szmul. No, Tojwełe whispered. He wanted to tell him about the hair and fingernails, but Szmul had begun crawling to the door. He got up on his knees and crawled after him. Szmul turned toward the trees. Tojwełe had the impression that he was still following him, but when he came to, he was sitting under a tree, at the edge of the woods. He got up and walked straight ahead.

  8

  The Wieprz River flows through that district.

  The river divided the world into two parts: the good and the bad. The bad part of the world was on the right side and that’s where Przylesie was located. On the left side of the river were the good villages: Janów, Mchy, and Ostrzyca.

  In the good villages, many people were saved—Staszek Szmajzner, the tailor Dawid Berend, the saddler Stefan Akerman, the meat sellers Chana and Szmul, the grain dealer Gdali from Piaski, the windmill owner Bajła Szarf, and the children of Rab, the miller, Estera and Idełe.

  The miller’s children were saved by Stefan Marcyniuk.

  Twenty years before, he had escaped from a Bolshevik prison in the heart of Russia; in Poland, he settled down in the attic of a Jewish-owned mill. “If I had a sack of flour,” he said, “I would bake bread, sell it, and I’d have a couple of groschen.” The miller gave him a sack of flour, and Marcyniuk baked bread. He earned his couple of groschen, and in later years he was one of the richest farmers in the entire region.

  The miller and his wife died in the ghetto; their daughter, Estera, was sent to Sobibor. On the day before her planned escape, Estera’s mother appeared to her in a dream. She came into the barracks and stood over her bunk.

  “Tomorrow, we’re running away from here,” Estera whispered. “Do you know about this?” Her mother nodded her head. “I’m afraid,” Estera complained. “I don’t know where to go; they’ll surely kill everyone.”

  “Come with me,” her mother said, and taking her daughter by the hand, she led her to the exit. They left the barracks and passed the camp gate. No one shot at them.

  “After all, this is only a dream,” Estera thought. “Tomorrow they’ll shoot and they’ll kill everyone.” They walked across the fields and through the woods and stopped in front of a large farmyard.

  “Do you recognize it?” her mother asked. Estera recognized it; they were in front of Stefan Marcyniuk’s house. “Remember this,” said her mother. “This is where you must come.”

  They escaped on the following day. Eleven days later Estera and her fiancé reached the village of Janów and stood in front of the house from her dream. It was nighttime. They didn’t want to awaken the owners, so they crept into the barn and lay down on the straw.

  “Who are you?”

  They heard a man’s voice in the darkness and someone’s hand grasped Estera’s hand.

  “It’s I, your sister,” Estera said, because that was the voice of Idełe, her older brother.

  “It wasn’t your mother, it was God who sent you,” Stefan Marcyniuk said, when they told him the dream. “You’ll stay with me until the war is over.”

  Tojwełe, too, reached good people in a good village, on the left bank of the Wieprz. He found a place to stay in Mchy with Franciszek Petla. Petla’s uncle was President Mościcki’s valet. He had traveled with the president to Romania, came home, and opened a porcelain booth at the Różycki bazaar. The village was informed that Tojwełe-Tomek was the valet Zięba’s own son. This impressed the children in the pasture, especially Kasia Turoń, who was the tallest girl, because she took after her father the cavalry soldier. The children looked after the cows. Their favorite game was “Catch the Jew.” The “Jew” was chosen by counting out one-potato, two-potato; the “Jew” ran away, and everyone chased him. When he was caught, he’d be asked: “Are you Jude? Did you kill Christ? Bing bang!”

  Two Germans stopped Tomek in the meadow. He was walking with Stefan Akerman, the saddler, who was in hiding in Ostrzyca. One of the Germans blocked them with his bicycle. “Jude?” The boys who guarded the cows and Kasia Turoń were sitting nearby.

  “Mr.
German,” Kasia shrieked, “that’s our lad.”

  “And this one?”

  Kasia didn’t know Akerman.

  “Mr. German, don’t you know what to do? Drop his pants and bing bang.”

  Akerman dropped his pants. The German removed his rifle and held it out to the children. “Who wants to make bing bang?”

  The children were silent.

  “Do you want to make bing bang?”

  The German held out his rifle to Kasia. She shook her head. The other German took Akerman away into the woods. They heard a shot. That German came back, then both of them got on their bicycles and rode away. At night, Akerman came to see Tomek. The German had given him a cigarette, fired into the air, and told him to walk away.

  In the morning, in the meadow, Kasia said, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

  She was pretty. Maybe not as pretty as Małka Lerner, but she had blue eyes to make up for it.

  “Tomek, will you come to our drying shed? As soon as it gets dark. You’ll read to me.”

  He expressed surprise. “I can’t read in the dark.”

  “You can, you can,” said Kasia.

  He couldn’t read, so they lay down on a pile of tobacco. It smelled lovely. Kasia still felt bad because of Akerman, so Tomek consoled her. Then he felt bad, and Kasia consoled him. Then she screamed, “Tomek, you’re a Jew!”

  He jumped up and fastened his trousers.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” she whispered hastily.

  She told her brother Andrzej. He started giving Tomek Polish lessons.

  “We don’t say ‘Ojej, what’s haaa-pening?’; we don’t draw out our vowels, and no ‘ojej.’ ”

  Andrzej Turoń belonged to the Armia Ludowa, the communist People’s Army. After the war he joined the militia. Two AL partisans in Mchy joined the militia—Turoń and Tadzio Petla, the farmer’s nephew. They came home for the first postwar Christmas, both of them in uniform, and someone fired a burst of bullets at each of them. Tadzio was seventeen and Andrzej eighteen. No one knew who shot them, and if someone did know, he’s no longer alive, says Romek, Franciszek Petla’s son. (The youth with the round face, whom Marcin B. took on as his helper, also signed up for the militia and someone fired a round at him.)

  Romek Petla is a leather worker. He lives in the Nowe Miasto district in Warsaw. He sits at an old Singer sewing machine and sews the uppers for knee-high boots. Blatt visited him this time, too. They each drained a shot glass and followed it with a bite of something. They reminisced about Mchy, Romek’s deceased father of blessed memory, the Jews, Kasia, and also that postwar girl from Tarzymiechy, a little one, but with what eyes, and also, naturally, the bullet in the jaw.

  “Are you keeping it there?” Romek Petla asked.

  “Yes, I’m keeping it,” said Blatt.

  “And do you remember how I brought you bandages and salve? I got them from the German. For two eggs.”

  Romek Petla placed boot tops with sewn-in linings onto a level pile. The linings were insulated. The boot tops were ugly. For cheap boots, for poor people. Romek Petla said the demand for them keeps growing because there are more and more poor people. But so what, since the boot tops exude boredom. Romek Petla poured out another glass for each of them, but it was of no help for his boredom. On the contrary. For some reason, boredom takes root most eagerly in parts of shoes—in the soles, linings, and uppers.

  “So why do you really hold onto that bullet?” asked Romek Petla.

  “Do you think I know?” Blatt sank into thought. “I lose everything. If I had it removed, I would lose it, and this way it sits in my jaw and I know that it’s there.”

  9

  The war ended. The surviving Jews from Izbica got together in Lublin. For some ill-defined reasons it never occurred to them that they could return to Izbica. It also never occurred to Tomek, but he couldn’t leave. His boots remained in Marcin B.’s barn. He was walking around barefoot. The war was over, but he was barefoot. He gave ten zlotys to a boy.

  “Go to Przylesie,” he told him, “go into the fourth house on the right and ask for Marcin B. Tell him that Tomek is waiting for his boots near the well in Maliniec. Say that Tomek’s boots remained in the barn.”

  He waited near the well. It was July. It was hot. Marcin B. arrived, also barefoot. He held in his hands tall boots, polished to a shine. They were Szmul’s boots. Without a word he held them out to Tomek, turned around, and walked away. Tomek took the boots and also walked away. Still barefoot. With Szmul Wajcen’s boots in his hands, the right boot in his right hand and the left in his left hand.

  He went to Lublin. He met Staszek Szmajzner, the one to whom Peczerski had given the single rifle in the woods.

  “You have splendid boots,” Staszek observed.

  He told him about Fredek, Szmul, and Marcin B.

  Staszek stopped a Soviet truck carrying a captain. He gave him a half liter of vodka. They drove to Przylesie. Marcin wasn’t there. He’s gone to do the threshing, his wife said. You can stand in for him. Staszek indicated Marcin B.’s daughter with his head. Gentlemen, the wife groaned. She ran off somewhere and came back with gold in a pot. Take it, gentlemen. The girl was already standing against the wall. She isn’t guilty, Tomek yelled. And my sisters, were they guilty? asked Staszek. Was my mother guilty? Marcin B.’s wife sank down on her knees before Staszek. He raised the rifle he’d taken from a German to his eyes and took aim at the girl. Tomek shoved his arm. Marcin B.’s wife was weeping loudly. Marcin B.’s daughter stood there calmly, leaning against the wall. She was looking up at the sky, as if she wanted to discern the flight of the bullet.

  10

  They lived on Kowalska Street, with Hersz Blank, who had established his own business in Lublin. Come what may, people will always need hides. Someone stopped Tomek in the stairway: “Don’t go there; there’s still blood.” He wasn’t surprised. He knew that people exist, exist, and then they’re gone. He went to the Jewish cemetery. Hersz Blank lay in the little cemetery hut, wrapped in linen. A boy from Sobibor, Szlomo Podchlebnik, had brought him there and wrapped his body. Jews from Izbica, Lublin, and Sobibor came for the funeral. At the funeral people talked about two things. That this was done by men from the Armia Krajowa, the Home Army, and that it would be necessary to leave here. Many people left for Palestine. Tomek went to the States via Palestine, because he knew an American Jew. He settled in California. At first he worked on automobile radios. Then he began speaking about Sobibor, he wrote a book about Sobibor, and placed memorial tablets in Sobibor. Twenty-odd years later, his wife informed him that she didn’t intend to spend the rest of her life in Sobibor.

  Staszek Szmajzner left for Rio. He married a Miss Brazil. He settled down in Copacabana. When he opened his windows, he could hear the Atlantic. He left his home and moved to the Amazon. He didn’t want to see any people other than Indians. With his rifle that he acquired in Sobibor and with which, in Marcin B.’s homestead, he had fired an honorary shot for his mother, his sisters, and also for Fredek and Szmul, he shot at birds in the Amazon jungle. He spent thirty years writing a book. When he finished it … and so forth.

  The Home Army men who were involved in the Hersz Blank affair were executed in April 1945. Not because of Blank, but for a conspiracy against Bolesław Bierut and the authorities. Bierut personally approved the sentence. It was carried out in the Lublin castle. Eleven people were executed during a fifty-five-minute period. They were young people, patriotic and brave. The Supreme Court recently absolved them of all the crimes they were accused of. Several articles appeared in the press in relation to this. All of them included references to Blank. The journalists agreed that since it was Home Army people who killed him, they must have had a reason. Evidently, Blank was an agent of the UB, the secret police. One journalist wrote: “One may assume that Blank was suspected of being an informer.” Another journalist didn’t assume. He knew that the Home Army men suspected Blank of collaboration. The third journalist was certain: Hersz B
lank was a collaborator with the UB.

  In the meantime, the Home Army men were charged not with Blank’s murder but only with participation in his murder. The murderers were not sentenced at all. Even their names were not mentioned during the investigation. Pseudonyms were used: “Rabe” and “Mietek.” Why weren’t their names revealed? Why weren’t they charged? Why did the authorities guard these secrets till the end?

  Who killed Hersz Blank is not known. Home Army soldiers? Members of the UB? Or perhaps murderers hired by the security organs, either the Polish or Soviet ones?

  No one is trying to explain this death. The Supreme Court, which declared the innocence of the Home Army men, dismissed the Blank case as beyond the statute of limitations.

  Hersz Blank was twenty years old. He was religious, from a Hasidic family. When he was murdered, his older brother was sitting over the Talmud, as was his custom, talking with God about the most important matters.

  11

  Thomas Blatt parked the car before entering the village. We walked through a ravine.

  Along the right side, there were houses at intervals of about two hundred meters. If you have to ask for food, these are the kinds of houses to approach, Thomas Blatt said with expertise.