Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (6 page)

Janos drove us in his car. We pulled up next to a three-storey apartment building above a café at an intersection on a main road. After telling us where to go, Janos drove off, leaving Joan and I standing on the pavement. For a moment we stood there in silence. Then Joan took my hand and said, ‘Let’s go meet our father.’

A half-drunk Hungarian man opened the door to us. We stepped into a flat filled with smoke. There were at least six other men present, sitting around a table playing cards. The lounge and dining room area was one room and quite spacious. My eyes darted around as I wondered which one of these men was my father. If I’d had a choice, I wouldn’t have chosen any of them. It didn’t matter anyway as he was as much of a stranger to me as all of them.

The man who had let us in called out, ‘Hey, Fritz! Here are your kids.’

My father was slumped in one of the chairs in the lounge. It seemed to be a great effort for him to get up and greet us. I’m not sure if this was because he was drunk or whether it was out of a lack of interest. His breath reeked of alcohol and cigarettes. His attention went straight to Joan. He hugged and kissed her, saying how he couldn’t believe how big she had grown. Then he looked at me, his eyes moving from my head to my toes. He stretched out his hand and, reluctantly, I shook it. I’m not sure why he didn’t hug me. Joan sat on his knee while I sat down on the couch opposite them. He didn’t look anything like me. He was balding, and what hair he had was combed back slickly with Brylcreem. And he was not a big man; for some reason I had thought he would be.

Fritz asked us about our mother, school and other stuff like that. Then he said, and I’m still not sure if he was joking or not, that Joan was his daughter but that I was not his son. He seemed to find this very funny. Apparently he was convinced that my mother had had an affair with Janos when they were still together and that I was the result. As the morning progressed, he did little to impress me. He was quick to tell us that he was getting remarried to an Afrikaner woman named Anna-Marie who had five of her own children, the youngest of whom was a boy my age, Christo. He said he had just got a job at the Iscor steelworks and would be staying in Vanderbijlpark and that we would be seeing a lot more of him. I don’t think it was me that he wanted to see, but rather my sister, and I couldn’t wait to get away from there.

When Janos came to fetch us, he asked how the visit had gone. I asked him if it was true that he was my father. He denied this, so the question was, who really
was
my father? At home my mother tried to convince me that Fritz was in fact my dad but I wasn’t convinced. I didn’t care. Fathers, in my opinion, were people the world could do without.

After that first time we visited Fritz fairly often; I became good friends with Christo, his stepson. We went to boxing classes together and generally got up to mischief. Fritz changed his attitude towards me after my mother talked to him, but neither of us ever expressed much recognition of our blood tie. I never could accept him as my father. I felt nothing for him. Besides Christo, Anna-Marie’s other kids were already grown up. She and Fritz enjoyed drinking, as it turned out, and Fritz would bash her up every now and again. This would lead to him getting a hiding from one of her sons. How dysfunctional could you get?

Just as I was beginning Standard 5, my mother dumped Janos. At first it was strange not having him around, but I can’t say I missed him.

Mom got a job at Iscor, where she ran the canteen, which meant that my sister and I had the run of the house while she was at work. That was disastrous. It seems we had inherited our parents’ fighting spirit and we fought like cat and dog. My mother did her best to bring up two strong-willed individuals on her own, but being a single parent wasn’t easy. We were difficult to control, and she constantly threatened to send us to boarding school if we didn’t get along. Stubborn as we were, we paid no heed to her warnings.

In early December, in the summer of 1971, one day my mother left for work much earlier than normal and returned unusually late that evening. Besides the regular chitchat at dinner, she offered no explanation. Later in the evening, after taking our respective baths and just before bedtime, we were summoned to her bedroom, where she seated us one on either side of her. I had never before seen my mom so pensive and tormented. Her subdued posture made it obvious that we were in for something unpleasant. She took our hands, and, in a solemn and melancholy tone, she began to explain that, since her separation from Janos, it had become increasingly difficult for her to make ends meet, and that now she could no longer support us. In addition, she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, worrying about us and our future.

She then revealed what she had been doing that day: she had been to Johannesburg to confirm and finalise our acceptance and admission into Arcadia, a Jewish orphanage. Then she told us that we would be leaving first thing in the morning. Joan began to cry, tearfully protesting that we were not orphans and that she couldn’t send us away. We belonged with our mother.

My mother’s eyes, in turn, filled with tears and I saw that her lips were quivering. There followed an awkward moment of silence as she did her best to compose herself. She wasn’t finished. She said there was something else very important that we needed to know. We listened attentively as she told us how, when she was a young girl, in 1944, her parents, Margit Blanca Hecht and Shandor Sinkowitz, had been taken away by the Nazis in the dead of night. She had had three uncles, her father’s brothers, who had all been killed before the war. She had witnessed her sisters, brothers, uncle and aunts and their children being taken away, loaded into cattle cars and sealed freight trains, and sent to the gas chambers where they, along with millions of other Jews, were exterminated. She also spoke of a stepsister who had been shot and killed for no reason other than that she was a Jew. My mother took refuge in the ghetto and managed to survive among the community there. She got some work in a shoe factory. Then the SS came and rounded up all the Jews in the factory. They lined them up and took them away to be shot. One of the soldiers, however, took a liking to her and pulled her out of the line. Eventually the war ended and, miraculously, my mother had survived its hell.

By this time, all three of us were in tears. My mom said that she hoped one day we would understand her reluctance to share the tragedy that had befallen her family, and she tried, too, to describe the apprehension she’d felt about teaching us the way of our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But now that we were old enough, she’d decided, it was our right by birth to know the truth and seeing that we were about to embark on a new life, where we would be among our own people, we should be proud of our heritage, and free to learn the traditions of our religion which, G-d willing, we would one day hand down to our children and they to theirs.

Tears continued to fall from my mom’s eyes as she hugged us tightly and begged us to forgive her for failing in her duties as a mother. She promised that she would be in constant contact with us and would visit regularly. She also stressed that Joan and I should always love and protect each other, no matter what, and that we should strive to be good and righteous. She told us never to forget that she loved us more than anything in this world, and that it broke her heart to let us go. To this day her words that night and the memory of that moment resonate in my head, and whenever I think of it the tears still come.

Arcadia

The period of time between my mother’s heart-rending disclosures and our arrival at Arcadia remains something of a blur for me, but I do remember the desolate moment at the orphanage when Joan and I tearfully wished her farewell. At the same time we were greeted and welcomed by the compassionate smiles of Doc and Ma Lichtigfeld. The trauma of being separated from my mother, the imposing buildings that were to be our new home, and the sheer size and grandeur of the property all rendered me speechless.

I felt so many emotions: abandoned, lost, confused and anxious about what sort of cruel and deprived existence awaited us beyond the huge double wooden doors that graced the entrance to Arcadia. Joan and I were ushered to our respective departments. She was taken to the junior girls’ section; I went to the new boys’ department, which was formerly the hospital. There I was received by the principal, Sydney Klevansky, aka Vicky, whose cheerful disposition immediately dismissed all notions of malevolence that, until then, I’d associated with boarding schools.

After the grand tour, Vicky showed me to my dormitory. I understood that the other occupants – David and Sammy Lasker, Charles Goldman and Glen Osher – were roughly my age. The December school holidays had already begun and some of the Arcadia children were on vacation with their parents, while the majority had either gone out for the day or were preparing to do so. Vicky introduced me to Charles, who was on his way out to the bioscope, and instructed him to help me settle in. Running late, Charles apologetically excused himself but casually pointed in the direction of his wardrobe, saying that he was in a hurry, but, if I felt like it, there was a pile of comics in his bottom drawer. I was welcome to help myself.

With all the excitement and upheaval of the past 14 hours, I was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. I think I was asleep even before my head hit the pillow. I couldn’t have slept for more than an hour and a half, though, before I woke up. After freshening up, I set about to unpack my things. When my mom was arranging our admission to the Arc, as everyone called it, she had been told that we wouldn’t need to bring anything with us besides the clothes on our backs, as they would take care of all our needs. Luckily, Joan and I had brought some clothing and toiletries with us, as it later became apparent that the only clothes supplied by the Arc were donated and second-hand items, most of them unwearable.

When I was finished unpacking I decided to check out Charles’ comic books. I sat on the floor in front of the wardrobe, pulled open the bottom drawer and systematically began removing all the comics. I discovered that he had an extensive collection of some of my favourites, and I was drawn irresistibly into a sanctuary of make-believe.

All of a sudden, the swing door that led into our dormitory was flung violently open. Seconds later, a figure was towering over me aggressively and demanding to know what the hell I thought I was doing. I was stunned. Before I could answer, the boy began punching and kicking me and accusing me of being a thief. Instinctively, I raised my arm to protect my face and pulled my knees to my chest to block the blows and kicks, just as I did when I got a hiding from Janos. This beating wasn’t too severe, though, nor did it last long. I had had far worse from my stepfather. It ended with me being hurled across the length of the room. As I crashed to the floor, it dawned on me that the beginning of my so-called new life rather closely resembled the world I thought I had left behind. I prepared myself for the worst.

I later learnt that the person responsible for my undeserved hiding was none other than the acting head boy, Danny Lasker, who from that day on became my sworn enemy. My sister was furious when she heard what had happened to me, and went at once to confront him. She strongly advised him to get his facts straight before he found it necessary to get physical, and warned him in no uncertain terms that if he ever dared lay a finger on her brother again, he would have to deal with her.

I cannot recall ever having any problems with Danny after that, although most of us juniors were roughed up by the seniors from time to time. We accepted this as part of life in Arcadia.

Those early days were hard. I had no knowledge of Judaism, and, having been brought up as a Hungarian, not to mention thinking that I was a Catholic, I was different. The other kids were more than willing to teach me and help me out. One day when I was showering I noticed something odd: all the other boys were circumcised, while I had a foreskin. I didn’t know why but it made me feel uncomfortable, so much so that I tried to hide it and thereafter took my shower after everybody else was finished. In the event that somebody came to the bathroom, I would pull my foreskin back, which made it look as if I, too, were circumcised. Somebody must have noticed, though, and one of the seniors spoke to the principal. Before I knew it I was booked into the Brenthurst Clinic.