I Am Juden Page 2

  ‘Get down,’ I hissed at her through a rictus grin, nodding as I unlatched the door.

  Stepping backwards, never once taking my eyes off the soldiers, I retook my position at the counter and tried to stop my hand trembling as my fingers sought the taped cotton thread.

  The short soldier pushed the door open, ringing the bell. I glanced at the stacked eggs, but Shoshana stayed hidden. Unlike the other two soldiers who wore spiked helmets, the shorter one wore a black beret. Although the door-frame was no impediment to his height, he removed the beret upon entering and smoothed down his short black hair with vicious slaps, as if he attacking his own scalp.

  He was ten years older than the others. His pale face was a strange mixture of gauntness at the cheeks and paunch below the chin. The other two were altogether more imposing, ruddy and thick-limbed, but were for now content just to stand there flanking their superior. The bags on their backs looked heavy. I could see no gun barrels protruding and the holsters on their brown belts contained only water flasks.

  ‘Good evening, Little Grocer.’ The short man spoke German with a heavy Austrian accent.

  ‘Good evening to you, gentlemen,’ I replied.

  ‘My name is Obergefreiter Gruber. I’m very sorry to intrude upon you at this unfeasibly late hour.’

  ‘I was just closing up, Obergefreiter, but it’s no inconvenience, truly. Are your men hungry?’

  The other two soldiers cheered at this.

  ‘Music to our ears,’ Obergefrieter Gruber said. ‘How observant you are. We made the right decision in stopping here, I told my men that. I knew it from the sign above the door. What did I say? With a name like Siegler, we can’t go wrong.’

  The other two grinned.

  ‘May I enquire of your age, Little Grocer, if it’s not too impertinent a question considering we’ve only just met?’

  ‘I am ten years old, sir.’

  ‘Ten years old, Jozef Siegler, ten years old.’ I did not interrupt to ask how the Obergefrieter knew my name. ‘And it is - please correct me if I’m wrong - but I’ve always believed it is a fundamental absolute of your people that you eat and drink with a gusto that some may regard – wrongly, of course - as bordering on the obscene ? The porcine, if I may be so bold.’

  ‘My people?’ I said.

  ‘Pot-bellied greengrocers, of course!’ Gruber smiled at his thugs. ‘Not that your stomach has yet to develop that particular protuberance. Oh dear, you must forgive me, I’ve been several days now with only these two intellectual titans for company, and my conversational skills have evidently grown rusty. I’m ashamed to say that was my attempt at small talk. Completely redundant, now that I think about it. You people wouldn’t be much good if you didn’t know your onions from your elbows, would you? Greengrocers, that is.’

  ‘No, Obergefreiter,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose we would.’

  ‘Well, then. We are in agreement on that.’ He beamed, genuinely pleased and quite, quite mad, I now realised. ‘I shall not take up too much more of your time in pleasantries, other than to praise you for the tidiness of your shop. You pass inspection, Little Grocer! What is the expression? You cut the mustard, ja!’

  ‘Thank-you, Obergefreiter.’

  ‘And such refined manners, too. Most encouraging. But to turn to the matter at hand, as I promised. It is neither mustard nor onions nor elbow grease that we require from you tonight, although I see you are well stocked in all three.’

  ‘Tell me what you require and I shall do my very best.’

  ‘What I require is that little black bean which the lowly soldier cannot do without. Unfortunately, we’ve been lacking its dark, sinewy stimulation for several days now, which is another factor to bear in mind when assessing my conversational perspicacity. I wonder, Little Grocer, if you could hazard a guess?’

  ‘Could it be coffee, Obergefreiter?’

  ‘Why, yes!’ He clapped in childish glee. ‘Amazing. It’s true: you people really do know how to rob a man of his thoughts.’

  ‘How much would you like, sir?’

  ‘Shall we say, three bags full?’

  ‘We only have it in aluminium cans, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Decantable cans, I trust? Aluminium is rather bulky for our pack-packs, you see.’

  ‘Of course.’

  For the first time since the soldiers had entered, I lifted my finger away from the taped end of cotton. Maybe coffee was all they wanted.

  I walked over to the shelf above the eggs, raised a clandestine finger to my lips to keep Shoshana silent, and removed three bags. Crossing back in front of the soldiers, I stopped at the pyramid of coffee cans, unscrewed the lid of the one at the apex and began to pour the black powder into the first bag. To calm my nerves, I whistled as I worked, until the two soldiers inharmoniously joined in. Neither seemed to notice when I stopped.

  ‘Three bags full,’ I said when done, presenting the cradled coffee to the Obergefreiter.

  ‘Excellent. And I think some tea, for the sake of variety.’

  ‘Tea,’ I repeated. Nobody had yet offered to relieve me of the coffee. ‘Of course.’

  I set down the coffee on the floorboards, fetched another bag, lifted the pot from the counter and began to pour dried Russian leaves when the Obergefreiter said, ‘Indian tea, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Indian.’

  ‘The standard three bags worth, I think.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I emptied the bag back into the Russian pot and fetched the Indian tea from behind the counter. Three bags later, six in total heaped in my arms, I returned again to the Obergefreiter. A wisp of Shoshana’s curls rose above the boxes but dropped again out of sight.

  ‘Flour, sugar and eggs, I think next. Fresh bread’s all very well, but it only stays fresh for a couple of days. Its constituent ingredients, however, may be used for several months. But look at me lecturing the Little Grocer on food economy!’

  ‘Flour, sugar and eggs,’ I said.

  I deposited the tea next to the coffee on the floorboards, and started collecting the rest of the order. My reappearance at the egg boxes was almost too much for Shoshana to bear and it was only with the severest of facial contortions that I persuaded my sister to remain hidden.

  This time, before loading myself up like a cart-horse, I asked the Obergefreiter if there was anything else he required.

  ‘Coffee, tea, flour, sugar and eggs… I do believe that’s everything.’

  I began stacking bags against my chest using my left arm as a crude shelf when the Obergefreiter said, ‘Ah-ah-ah! Almost everything!’

  I flinched.

  ‘Except of course for your bill, Little Grocer!’

  I allowed myself to relax.

  ‘How much do we owe you?’

  I finished loading the bags onto my arm, abandoning the calculations that came so easily to my brain. Providing the soldiers left, I’d charge them a nominal amount only.

  ‘Let’s call it two rubles,’ I said.

  ‘As cheap as that? Good Lord. And here was I thinking you people had acquired a reputation for penny-pinching. Greengrocers, of course.’

  I stood laden before him, attempting to smile.

  ‘Well, in that case,’ the Obergefreiter continued. ‘Seeming as I’ve got more rubles left than I was expecting, we may as well add a few more items while we’re about it.’

  A sigh escaped my lips. This was never going to end, none of it.

  ‘How rude!’ the Obergefreiter bristled.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m a little tired, that’s all.’

  ‘No, how rude of us, I meant. What on earth was I thinking? Three able-bodied soldiers standing round gawping while you’re working up a sweat with your hands full. Musketier, relieve the Little Grocer of his burden.’

  The younger of the two soldiers stepped up and pointed to the heap of goods I was cradling. I shifted the bags in readiness of transferring them. The soldier raised his hand but then promptly slapped it down acros
s my arms in a puff of flour, breaking my hold. Bags and boxes tumbled to the floor, splitting and breaking as they fell. A sticky puddle of eggs yolks and coffee powder began to ooze around my shoes.

  ‘Clumsy fucking kike,’ the Obergefreiter spat. ‘You might wallow in this kind of squalor but we certainly don’t.’

  I began retreating to the counter.

  ‘I think you’d better go now,’ I said.

  ‘Imagine being left to look after a shop like this. So your father could run off and help the Jewish swine in Siberia. If that’s your people’s idea of family loyalty, I’d hate to see how you treat your friends.’

  My finger found the edge of the counter and inched along until it came to the taped thread.

  I said, ‘My father was more of a man than you could ever hope to be,’

  ‘The Heroes of Zion?’ the Obergefreiter said. ‘Don’t make me laugh. Even the Russians trampled them.’

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘But there were casualties on both sides. And if you know your history, you’ll know how well the Ghetto was defended. Every Jew for miles was on hand with a pick-axe or rifle.’

  ‘And where are they now, Little Grocer?’

  I held the cotton and tore the thread.

  ‘Do you really think Radion Siegler would leave his ten year old son to fend for himself?’ I said. ‘My father chased off nakniks like you before breakfast.’

  ‘And who’s to do the chasing off now, eh? Not your whore of a mother upstairs, surely?’

  I began to wind the thread around my fingertip. ‘Tell me, Obergefreiter. Are you familiar with the methodology of Russian duck-hunting?’

  ‘Bavarians hunt kikes, not ducks.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no,’ I said. ‘Season after season, there’s one ruse that the poor old duckies never see coming. Frankly, between me and you, their brains are too small. The hunter lays a long trail of ripe berries across the ground, near a large duck nest. The adult birds are of course unable to resist the temptation. They waddle along, scooping up the fruit in their fat beaks until they’re almost drunk on the fermentation, with absolutely no idea that they’ve been lured right up to very edge of a dark forest – much like the one behind you now.’

  ‘Is this where we’re supposed to turn round and gape out the window while you pick up that gun under the counter?’

  ‘There is no gun under the counter,’ I said. ‘But there are twelve men crouching in the forest with rifles raised and three Bavarian soldiers firmly in their sights. That’s a ratio of one of you to three of them, in case your maths isn’t up to scratch. And one of me. All I have to do…’

  I raised a distracting left fist slowly into the air while my right hand prepared to jerk the thread.

  ‘Is give this signal and…’

  I yanked the cotton.

  The thread cut invisibly through the air, pulling the black match at the window and striking the lump of sodium in the neck of the petrol can. A dragon-bellied roar of combustion blew out the shop’s window pane, studding the skinned rabbits with jagged chunks of glass. The soldiers flung themselves to the floor, shrieking.

  ‘Now, Obergefreiter,’ I said when the smoke had lifted. ‘If you’d like to avoid a similar fate, I suggest you walk out that door with your hands raised high and slither back to whatever Bavarian rock you crawled out from. And know this, please: Radion Siegler’s Heroes of Zion are watching you every step of the way.’

  ***

  The scene, unfortunately, has a post-script.

  The Obergefreiter turned to his men and pointed to what was left of the window. The soldiers nodded, stepped up to the shop-front, pulled the blinds down over the broken pane and came back to stand either side of their superior.

  ‘Nice trick with the cotton,’ the Obergefreiter said, dusting glass from his shoulder as he approached the counter. ‘Almost walked into it earlier. Ducked just in time. That was when I saw her.’

  The Obergefreiter turned to the stack of egg boxes.

  ‘You can come out now, little Shoshana,’ he said. ‘The real fireworks are just about to begin.’

  Part Two

  1

  1938. The year everything changed.

  For the past fourteen summers, I had considered myself a good German, employed by the still scandalously liberal University of Kiel in the northern province of Schleswig-Holstein, teaching Humanism and Civil Society in a country hell-bent on draining the tank of both. The campus of Kiel was a rare refuge. We’d absorbed so many displaced Jewish professors from ‘superior’ Aryan universities since the Nazis came to power that we were regarded as more of a gulag than an academic institution.

  History will show the Kristallnacht pogroms of November 1938 as the night when tyranny turned from economic and social legislation to the most concerted military campaign against a civilian population the world has ever seen. But at the time, it was just another riot. My parents Elena and Radion Siegler had survived street thugs in Odessa forty years ago, in Yekaterinoslav, in Kiev, in the Russian Pale.

  The final tightening of the Nuremberg Race Laws followed that bleak December: Jews were now prohibited from all German universities, including a flea-pit like Kiel. When my good friend Samuel Ehrlich retired in June, he was presented with a Schatz Grand Sonnerie carriage clock. I was given five minutes to clean out my office before being escorted off the premises by the SS.

  With little in the way of savings, I decided to join my mother and Shosana, who had settled in Kazimierz, the old Jewish Quarter of Cracow. Together they ran a large grocery store on Izaaka Street. Our father had never returned from Siberia, where he’d gone to help Stalin’s Jews. I reached Poland just in time for a family Hanukkah, 1938. It would be our last.

  That new year, I couldn’t even find a job teaching kindergarten in Cracow, and had no choice but to help out in the family store, a role I had forsaken as a youth in Romania to devote myself to study. The business had prospered since relocating to Poland – and in my absence - expanding to include a cobbler’s workshop next door run by an ailing Polish bachelor called Mordka Zygot, whom Shoshana somewhat spitefully referred to as her ‘annex’.

  Mr. Zygot had no heir and it was deemed that I would be trained to inherit his customers, until the silly war scare died down and the restrictions on employment of Jews in education was lifted. So, at the ripe old age of thirty-four, I became a cobbler’s apprentice. My first job was to remove a pair of DIY heel-lifts a rather vain young man had glued on and to fit Mr. Zygot’s patented orthopedic replacement.

  Ever since the army visited my father’s store when Shoshana and I were children, my sister had worn a black eye-patch. I survived Obergefrieter Gruber’s inspection that Sunday afternoon with only a beating, and my broken leg healed. But Shoshana was part blinded for life because of my stupidity. Not that the young woman of 1939 needed my pity. Shoshana was more than capable of waging her own battles in Cracow, blossoming into a militant Zionist who spent all her evenings at an Akiva youth camp just outside the city, where she was already the only female madritch and trained surly teenage lads in the arts of close-combat fighting. In the evenings after my cobbling, Shoshana would tell me that Akiva desperately needed teachers of Jewish religion and traditions, and though I considered myself an expert in neither, I was keen to lend a hand. There was a growing need for Jewish solidarity in the Polish spring of 1939. Like my father, I heeded the call. In part I missed the collegial fraternity I’d known at Kiel. The Akiva camp where I spent the evenings and weekends was a second family that gradually became as important as my own.

  It was during a Sabbath meeting that I first learned of plans for the mass resettlement of European Jewry to Palestine. The Rabi believed it was the only way to survive the coming onslaught. Our own mother was weak and discussions began at Izaaka Street on how the three of us might make the move. There was no future for Jewish businesses, not even in Kazimierz.

  Over the next few weeks, a plan emerged: Shoshana and I were to lead a mission nor
th to Punsk, to arrange a transfer of Jewish orphans across the border into neutral Lithuania. Onward transit visas would be arranged in the capital of Kaunas, where we had an unlikely advocate in the form of a Dutch diplomat. If Shoshana and I were successful, we would return for the rest of our two families, Siegler and the Akiva camp. We said goodbye to our mother in May of 1939.

  Operation Punsk was an initial triumph. With the aid of my language skills and Shoshana’s seductive wiles, we managed to negotiate a snowy, moonlit crossing through the mountain border and safely delivered our orphans to Kaunas. But while we recuperated, border-controls began to tighten, mainly due to interference from the Russians. Then, thanks to an inside tip-off at the Dutch consulate, the diplomat’s irregular visa-granting came under investigation from the authorities. Fearing exposure, Shoshana and I made the trip east across Lithuania to a sun-dappled Wilno, where we were welcomed by the Hehalutz, the federation of Zionist pioneers.

  Along with hundreds more refugees we were taken to Akiva headquarters on Subocz Street in the north-eastern suburbs and welcomed by Akiva secretariat Joziek Rudashevski before being sorted by country of origin, or city in the case of Poles, since there were so many of us. Shoshana and I were introduced to a thick-set man with a wolfish grin called Herman Glik and we three were instructed to select a house of young adults to supervise from a very long list. I chose a large villa adjacent to the Jewish Old Town on Pilies Street, which became our new House of Cracow.

  Wilno in the summer of 1939 was a Zionist’s dream. The Jewish population of the city already comprised of over 60,000, and while tensions between Poles and Lithuanians were high, dealings between Lithuanians and Jews were relatively peaceful. The hub of Judaic religious culture in Europe since the medieval years, Wilno boasted over 110 synagogues, ten yeshivas and was home to both the Yiddish Institute of Higher Learning and the Strashum Library, which housed the world’s largest collection of Yiddish-language books. The archives of Kiel seemed positively bare in comparison. I had not become a religious zealot since leaving the Faculty of Humanism and Civil Society, but I had found a new respect for the traditions and customs of our people. While our house on Pilies Street was considerably less grand and cloistered than my German alma mater, it was a place of purposeful learning as well as living, and I was glad to be once more intellectually engaged. Evenings and weekends, our large central room was a place for discussion, study, and occasionally music, when we had the good fortune of hosting a trio of Romanians who’d brought guitars and violins.