I Have Lived a Thousand Years (6 page)

NAGYMAGYAR, MAY 14, 1944

We never got to use any of the food supplies the Kálmáns brought after all. The end approached sooner than we expected.

After midnight there is a loud knock on the door of the small apartment.

“Mr. Friedmann Markus is to appear at the gate immediately.”

Daddy is fully awake. He dresses in haste, and hurries to the gate of the ghetto. He identifies himself, and the guard hands him a telegram. It is a summons for him to go to a forced labor camp in Komárom some fifty kilometers away. He is to report at the gate at 5
A.M.
tomorrow morning.

Every man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five received a similar summons during the night.

News of the summonses sends a shock wave throughout the ghetto. Rumors are turning into reality. Military trucks roar into the square and helmeted police pour out of the vehicles, quickly surrounding the ghetto with guns drawn, ready for action. What action? What’s going to happen? Is this the beginning of “liquidation?”

Grim and tight lipped, Mother is packing Daddy’s knapsack. Mommy was looking forward to labor camp, but did
not think Daddy would be taken away from us. The suddenness of it all, the military police with guns drawn ... it does not bode well.

I hear Mommy moving about in the darkened room, packing wordlessly. Daddy is in the kitchen, talking to my brother in a low murmur. As I huddle in bed, my stomach is twisted in knots like a rubber hose.

“Mommy, if I fall asleep, will you wake me at four thirty? Do you promise? Please, Mommy ...”

“Okay, okay. I’ll wake you. Just go to sleep.”

My head, the only part of me free of stomachache, is whizzing with a million thoughts. Daddy had called me into the kitchen and told me to take care of Mommy.

“Don’t be frightened, Elli,” he said. “The Almighty is going to be with you all. He will take care of my family. You’re a strong girl, Elli. Remember to help Mommy in every way.” He took my face in his two gentle yet muscular hands and drew it slowly to his own. Time stood still, and I thought my heart would break. I wanted to speak, but my words drowned in a morass of pain and helplessness. I wanted to tell him how much I loved him. I wanted to tell him that I knew he loved me. I wanted to tell him that I knew he thought I had nice legs and that it made me happy and proud. I wanted to tell him that our long walks, our long silent walks together, were the happiest times of my life. And our swimming together in the Danube on the long, hot summer afternoons, were the happiest afternoons of my life. I wanted to tell him how I loved him for his fast walk and powerful swimming, for his silences, for his athletic figure, for his youthful, quick movements. But I did not speak. I could not bridge that distance with words. I held him very tight, my hands gripping his slim
torso, my face buried in his neck. I did not cry. I was numb with the horrible foreknowledge of finality.

Gently, he loosened my grip. “Go to sleep now, Ellike. It is very late.”

“Daddy, I want to speak to you in the morning. I want to tell you something.”

“Okay. In the morning.” Quietly he walked me to the bedroom door. And then he sat down at the kitchen table with a huge folio of the Talmud. He beckoned to Bubi, and the two of them began to study the Talmud in hushed tones. “This is how I wish to part from you,” he said to my brother, “learning a passage of the Talmud. Remember this passage when you remember me.”

I hear the murmur in the kitchen, Aunt Serena’s restless tossing about on the sofa, and Mommy’s quiet preparations. Outside my window the ghetto has settled down. It must be about 2
A.M.

The sound of clattering carriage wheels wakes me. The house is dark. The beds and sofa are empty. Everyone is gone.

I run out of the house in my nightgown, barefoot. In the early dawn I can see the silhouette of a small crowd at the gate of the ghetto. I reach the gate, the crowd, out of breath. Mother, Aunt Serena, and Bubi are there among the handful of men and women. But Daddy is not. Daddy!

I force my way to the open gate flanked by armed military police. Daddy!

Carriages are clattering in the distance. The last carriage is barely visible now, but I can see Daddy’s erect figure sitting among several men. His back is turned, and the outline
of his head, neck, and shoulders is sharply etched into my mental vision by searing pain.

A sudden, violent shiver shakes my body. The chilly dawn is rapidly brightening into shrill morning. All at once, Mother becomes aware of my presence.

“Elli! In your nightgown! And barefoot!”

“How could you do it? You promised to wake me! How could you do this to me? I did not even say goodbye to Daddy. I could not even kiss him goodbye. How could you do this?”

My hysterical sobs surprise everyone. I am aware of the astonishment my violent display causes. But I’m powerless in the face of my savage grief. In the face of unbearable loss. I know what I wanted to tell my father in the moments of parting, and I was robbed of those moments.

All the self-delusions of the ghetto suddenly evaporate with the vanishing dawn. Oh, Daddy! How could you leave without saying goodbye? How could you leave me, Daddy?

The fathers are gone and the ghetto plunges into profound gloom. Every movement slows, every sound is muffled. Only the crying of the children is louder and more frequent. That’s the only prevailing sound.

Then, another sound is added. The chanting of Psalms. The older men left behind in the ghetto now sit on the ground in the synagogue and chant the Psalms all day long. And all night long. The chanting of old men and the crying of young children blend into a slow rhythmic cacophony. The sounds reverberate in my aching belly and lull me to sleep.

The chanting goes on for six more days and nights, until it turns into a dull refrain in my soul.

C
AN
I K
EEP
M
Y
P
OEMS
P
LEASE?

NAGYMAGYAR, MAY 17, 1944

Tables are set up in the middle of the synagogue yard. A row of Hungarian military policemen are stationed next to the tables.

In obedience of the latest order, the ghetto inhabitants stand in long lines in front of the tables, their arms laden with piles of books of every size and color. They are delivering prayer books and Bibles, notebooks and picture albums, textbooks and novels, identity cards and passports, huge folios of the Talmud and the Torah scrolls from the synagogue.

The tables overflow with mountains of paper. The spillage of human lives, loves, and identities now piled high in obscene casualness on the ground.

“This, too?” A young woman clutches a pile of family photos.

“Everything.” The Hungarian military man with a spectacular mustache is firm.

“Can I keep this one, perhaps? Just one?” The trembling hand holds the picture of a baby.

“Leave everything.”

The glossy snapshot flutters on top of the pile.

“Will we get these back? When we come back, I mean.”

“Oh, of course. You’ll get them all back.”

With hesitant footsteps the young woman moves on. My brother is next in line. He dumps our books and quickly steps aside. I am carrying our documents, my parents’ marriage certificate, our birth certificates and report cards, paper clippings, my father’s business books, all my best notebooks saved throughout the years, and the honor scroll I had received just a few weeks ago.

There is one special notebook among them. Into this notebook I had carefully copied all my poems—one hundred and five in all. I am going to plead, politely, for my poems. I am going to smile sweetly, and ask the tough Hungarian policeman with the waxed mustache to let me keep my poems. But when I hear his rough reply to the young mother’s plea for her baby’s picture, when I see his face as he reassures her, I change my mind. Would we indeed get all this back? How would all this be sorted out? Even if his reassurance was sincere.

Quickly I thrust the notebook with my poems inside my blouse. With my right elbow supporting the notebook under my blouse, I hand the papers to the officer and hurry on.

My hurried footsteps carry me to our crowded little room in the far corner of the synagogue compound. I have to hide the notebook before anyone sees it. Even Mommy is not allowed to know. She would worry about the grave infraction. Quickly I tuck it deep into my knapsack all packed for departure. With suppressed excitement I run back to the yard.

I stop, paralyzed. Oh, my God! Wild flames are dancing about the pile of books. A column of dark smoke is rising from the middle of the heap. They are burning our books!

I walk as if in a dream. Ash particles are flying in the hot breeze. The pungent smell of smoke fills the air. Men, women, and children crowd about the conflagration as the flames leap higher and higher, churning up blinding clouds of smoke.

The Torah scrolls! The fire is dancing a bizarre dance of death with one large scroll in the middle, twisting in an embrace of cruel passion. Aged folios of Jewish wisdom and faith tumble and explode into fiery particles, spluttering pellets of ash. Volumes of the Bible, leather-bound Psalms, phylacteries turn and twist and burst into myriad fragments of agony. Pictures and documents flutter as weightless speckles of ash, rising, fleeing the flames into nothingness.

“Almighty God, forgive our sins! Woe to the generation witnessing its Torah burnt to ashes! Woe to the generation witnessing its sacred trust trampled to the ground!”

It is the rabbi’s voice. He stands with flaming eyes, tears rolling down his long brown beard. “Woe to us, my friends, we have witnessed the burning of the Torah! Woe to us! Woe to our children! God, forgive our sins!”

The rabbi grips his overcoat and rends a tear in it. The sound of the ripping cloth jars my insides. All the men who stand near follow his example. They rend their clothes one by one, and begin the chant
“El mole rahamin
...” The chant for the dead.

Below my feet the flames are dancing no more. Only a huge, flat heap of gray ashes remains, a fluttery, flat heap framed by a wide edge of scorched earth. The accumulation of hundreds of lives. Mementoes of the past and affirmations of the future. My brother’s tefillin, my diploma, and my honor scroll. My grandparents’ picture that hung above my
bed, and the novel I had been writing. My father’s letters and all his Talmud. All transformed into this light fluttery gray mass.

My poems! My poems are safe. They alone escaped the fire. Did it matter now? A stab of devastating guilt pierces my insides. Am I entitled to them?

Oh my God, can I keep MY poems?

The taste of ashes in my mouth is laced with a sudden surge of nausea. I reach the public latrine in time.

I vomit, again and again. But the taste of ashes is not extricated from my insides.

A
UNT
S
ERENA

NAGYMAGYAR, MAY 20, 1944

“You cannot carry all that. It’s more than a hundred pounds. It’ll break your back.”

Bubi overcomes Mommy’s objections, and she helps him swing the loaded pack onto his back. It is a staggering load. But my prematurely tall, seventeen-year-old brother walks with feigned ease under the prohibitive weight.

“You see? It’s nothing.”

Then he helps me put the straps of my pack on my shoulders. But as soon as he heaves the pack on my back, I stagger and fall. And I am unable to regain my balance.

“I can’t carry all this. I can’t even stand up. How could I ever walk with this?”

“Don’t be a sissy. Try.”

Mother is worried. “No. She can’t manage such a load. We’ll take a few things out of the pack.”

I am embarrassed. And hurt. I so wished to carry as much as my brother. Every article of clothing, every item of food may be essential. Perhaps, precisely the thing we take out of my pack will be the thing needed most. Why don’t I have the courage to face carrying the burden? I hate my weakness.

Aunt Serena volunteers, “Why don’t you add those things to my pack? My pack is too light anyway. You know I can carry much more.”

But we know she can’t. My favorite aunt is a gentle, frail widow in her late fifties. She has suffered from poor health most of her life. We have learned not to play rough games or make loud noises in her proximity. My kindly, soft-spoken, delicate Aunt Serena, Mommy’s elder sister, has always been my special friend. Ever since I was born she has pampered me with a thousand little attentions. She would share every favorite dish, every special delicacy with me, even if I took hours to show up at her house for my daily visit.

I remembered her roast pigeon, her cocoa roll, her candied orange peels. Oranges used to be rarities in our country. One could buy oranges only in the spring, and the price would be very high. Aunt Serena would buy one orange, and wait for my visit. We would sit on the veranda, and she would peel the orange slowly, carefully separating the slices. She would hand me a slice, and take the next for herself. Each slice of orange would be a tender offering of love. Each slice of orange would bind us closer together.

Then she would wash and boil the orange peel in water and sugar until the syrupy liquid thickened and dried on the strips of peel, turning it into a most delectable orange candy.

“Forget it. We don’t need these anyway. Forget it.”

Mommy quickly puts the things back into the closet. Now my pack is bearable. It still feels like a drag on my shoulders, but I manage to stand upright with it. Mother’s knapsack is as large and as heavy as my brother’s.

The news of liquidation had struck the ghetto like a thunderbolt. On a Thursday the Hungarian military police officer read the order. On the next Sunday, at 5 A.M., the ghetto would be liquidated. “Every person, man, woman, and child, is permitted to take along any of his personal
possessions, as much as he or she can carry, but not exceeding fifty kilograms in weight. Belongings must be carried in a sack on the back. No suitcases are permitted. Be prepared to carry your load for long distances ...”