The Story of a Life (9 page)

IT WAS ONLY in Italy, after the war, that I heard about the Pen, a sort of animal enclosure that they called the Keffer. Refugees sat around in groups, talking loudly about the atrocities. Sometimes it seemed that they were competing among themselves—who had seen more and who had suffered more. We children didn’t know how to tell our stories. We would sit and listen. Sometimes they would bother us with questions. During the years of the war, we had learned not to answer.

People told their stories and described what they had seen. But apparently not everything was discussed. There were atrocities that were beyond words, that remained dark secrets. This was the case, for example, with the Keffer. Whenever this name rose to someone’s lips, the speaker would be silenced. One night I heard one of the refugees say, “There are atrocities that one should not speak about.”

“Why?” wondered another refugee.

“I can’t explain it to you.”

“You have to speak about everything, so that everyone will know what they did to us.”

“I’m not going to argue with you.”

“If we won’t be witnesses, who will bear witness?”

“They won’t believe us, anyway.”

As was the case with most arguments, this one settled nothing. Some atrocities were described in the most minute detail, and some atrocities no one dared talk about.

But one night I heard more about the Pen from a refugee who had come from the Kalschund camp. He was a short man, solid and broad-shouldered, and his sturdiness had in no way been diminished by the war. With a face as coarse as a boxer’s, his very stance declared: I’m ready for another war.

He seemed not to be aware of the self-imposed taboo that the refugees placed on this subject. At first the others tried to stop him, but either he didn’t get it or he pretended not to, and he stood up and spoke. “The Pen that was called Keffer was an integral part of the Kalschund camp, and from some angles I was able to see most of it. It was a pen for German shepherds that were used as guard dogs, for hunting, but mainly to chase after prisoners who had escaped. The dogs had been brought over from Germany already trained, and they were the pride of the guards and the officers. Toward evening, they would be let out to hunt, and then everyone could see how large and proud they were, and how much more they resembled wolves than dogs.

“The Kalschund camp was a labor camp for metal welding. It also produced ammunition. Only strong men were brought there, and, despite the extremely harsh conditions, they would usually last for a year or even longer. If women had somehow been mistakenly included in the transport, they would be beaten and returned. Once some elderly women were brought in on the transport, and they were immediately taken out to be killed. One day some small children were included in the transport. The camp commandant ordered them to be stripped and pushed into the Pen. The children
must have been devoured instantly, for no screams were heard.

“This became routine. Any time small children arrived at the camp (and every month there were some), they would be stripped and pushed into the Pen.

“One day, something surprising happened: the dogs devoured whatever they devoured but two children were not harmed at all. And even more astonishing: the children just stood there stroking them. The dogs looked content, and the guards, too. From then on, the guards would throw pieces of meat to the dogs and pieces of bread and cheese to the children. The camp commandant would bring his guests to the Pen to show this to them. But eventually, even for these children, the Pen stopped being a safe place. German shepherds are German shepherds. When starved, they know no pity. Even these children, who were in the Pen for weeks, were devoured.

“Had it not been for the Pen, Kalschund would have been considered a bearable camp, but its existence made this labor camp into a death camp. At Kalschund people weren’t taken out to be executed, but the sight of those children sent to their death utterly demoralized us. It was no wonder that we had so many suicides there.”

The refugee continued, “Once we saw a child outside the Pen. He was crawling on all fours next to the barbed wire and gesturing to the dogs. What was outside apparently terrified him more than the dogs inside, and he returned to the Pen.

“One night, a child escaped from the Pen and somehow reached our barracks. He was a terrifying sight. His face and his neck had been mauled, but he didn’t complain or cry. People tried in vain to get a word out of him. Eventually he uttered some syllables that were more like small growls.

“It was extremely dangerous, but we were prepared to
put our own lives at risk, and so we hid him inside a wooden crate. At night, we would take off the lid, give him water, and feed him. The knowledge that there was a child in the barracks changed our lives that autumn. There was fierce competition among us as to who would give the child his daily ration. All of us fought to give it to him.

“Sometimes it seemed that he was recovering and that his wounds were healing. Over time we improved upon the crate and made a place for a can of water. One night, when we removed the lid, we saw that the child wasn’t breathing. We were too afraid to go out, so we buried him under the barracks. From then on, he was with us even more. For some reason, we were certain that one night he would get up and speak to us in his own voice.

“That’s how it was until the Russians came. When the Russian army liberated the camp, there were two children in the Pen. They were taken out and brought to the room where interrogations were held. The children stared vacantly, stuttered in broken syllables, shrugged their shoulders—one of them even stamped his feet—but not a sentence escaped from them. The investigators tried to talk to them in a friendly way, first in Yiddish and then in Polish. At one point an elderly man was brought in who tried to talk to them in Hungarian, but it was no use. Though the children had survived, language had been completely torn from their throats.

“Then one of the survivors burst in; stuttering, and with great emotion, he told the investigators about the Pen and about what had been done to children there. The investigators didn’t believe him and asked that another witness be brought. The next witness, a tall and lean man, confirmed it: since he worked next to the furnaces and had an unimpeded view of the Pen, he had seen with his own eyes how the dogs had devoured the children.”

The refugee lowered his voice and continued: “At Kalschund the survivors didn’t disperse immediately after the liberation. A medic bathed the two children and bandaged their wounds. There was a terrifying vacancy in their eyes. Most of the day they sat on their beds, frozen in silence. But eventually, like the adult survivors, they started to fight and had to be separated.”

TERRIBLE PEOPLE—corrupt and violent—preyed upon us all the way from the Ukraine to Italy. Most abhorrent of all were the perverts. They would seduce children and do painful things to them before letting them go. The children who were abused neither complained nor cried. A kind of silent expression settled onto their faces, as if a secret was sealed up inside them. They carried this secret for many years, through their time in the youth village, and sometimes even into their military service.

During my first year at university, I saw a young man of around my age whose lips were pursed like those of the children who had been abused. I made no overtures to him. To my surprise, he addressed me, asking for my notes, since he had missed three lectures. I wasn’t wrong: he had been in the ghetto and in a concentration camp and, like me, survived only by miracle. After the liberation, he had indeed made that tortuous journey from the Ukraine to Italy. He arrived in Palestine two months after I did.

Two days later, he returned my notebook and thanked me, but we didn’t arrange to meet. Afterward I noticed that he avoided me, as if he sensed that I knew something of his secret. So that he wouldn’t feel threatened, I also distanced myself from him.

Although we were surrounded by evil people after the war, there were also some who increased in stature as a result of it. Their walk slowed, their expressions became more open, and their faces glowed with a kind of spirituality. They were for the most part educated people, but simple folk also attained these heights.

Unlike the rest of the refugees, these people didn’t hoard food or deal on the black market. Most of the time they kept to themselves; people like these were to be found in every convoy and in every displaced-persons camp. When the DP camps grew larger, they would sometimes become the youth leaders and the teachers, and they defended the children with all their might. They struggled not only against the smugglers, the middlemen, those illegally crossing borders, and the perverts, but also against people from the Joint Distribution Committee who didn’t want to allocate space for classrooms, and who skimped on writing pads and books.

Amid the greed, bribery, and corruption, these exceptional people not only taught the children to read and write, but also taught us mathematics, Hebrew, Yiddish, and French, and they read to us from the Bible. There were also musicians, who taught us music. We children had the privilege of finding ourselves, albeit for a short time, in the company of wonderful people. Among them were high-school teachers and university lecturers whom the war had stripped of their degrees, their social standing, and their careers. Now all they asked was to help those who had suffered the most. But it wasn’t always in their power to protect the children. The DP
camps were completely exposed. All kinds of smugglers and perverted characters lay in ambush in every corner. And, it must be said, not all the children wanted to learn. There were children who, after a couple of days of study, would run back to the smugglers. The teachers would pursue them in the hope of saving them, but the smugglers were quicker.

There were exceptional children among the survivors, children who had flawless memories or highly developed musical talent, and there were even ten- or eleven-year-olds who spoke several languages fluently.

It turned out that the forests and the hiding places had not only distorted young lives, but had also nurtured unusual talent. For these children, it was not the smugglers who lay in ambush but the handlers. They would kidnap children, blindfold them, put them in trucks, and transport them to distant places. All along the coast of Italy were DP camps filled with scores of people, and everyone was in search of entertainment.

The poet Y.S., a short, unimpressive man, bald and thin, was our teacher. From up close he looked like one of the dealers. But the moment he opened his mouth, you were captivated by his voice. He taught us poetry and singing—all in Yiddish. He would pit himself against the youth leaders who had been sent from Palestine. They advocated Hebrew; he, Yiddish. They were taller than he was and better-looking and, most important, they spoke in the name of the future, in the name of change that was all to the good, and they spoke about the life that awaited us in Palestine. He, naturally, spoke about what had been, about continuity, and how there could be no continuity if we didn’t know the language of the persecuted. He used to say that whoever speaks the language of those tortured people not only keeps their memory alive in this world, but also staves off evil.

During that time, the DP camps were like battlefields.
Sometimes it seemed that all the struggles were over the children and who would claim them. Would the smugglers succeed in fanning them out over the continent, or would the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade protect them and bring them to Palestine? Or perhaps some distant relatives would lure them to America?

The poet Y.S. was the most courageous of the defenders. Any time he saw a smuggler or handler attempting to enslave a child, he would stand up and cry out, “The God of Justice will not forgive you!” They of course would heap scorn and ridicule upon him, calling him all kinds of names, and on more than one occasion they beat him up. These beatings in no way deterred him; he would denounce them, get up, and never miss a class.

Y.S. taught us for three months. He started out with seventeen children, but over time the smugglers and the handlers tempted away six, so only eleven remained. At night we would sleep with the windows closed, and Y.S. would block the door with his bed. He didn’t only teach us poetry. For hours he would talk to us about the Ba’al Shem Tov, about his great-grandson, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, and about the small towns to which the teachers of Hasidism would journey as they taught love of one’s fellow man and love of God. Y.S. did not wear a
kippah
, nor did he pray, but he was extremely devoted to the teachers of Hasidism and would call them “holy people of God.”

At the end of the summer, the handlers tried to kidnap Miliu, a child from our group who had a remarkable singing voice. Twice they broke into the hut and tried to snatch him. Y.S. fought back with all his strength and saved him. But the handlers were undeterred. One night, three of them broke in and kidnapped Miliu. Y.S. was very badly hurt trying to protect him. The next day, he was taken to a hospital in Naples.

After that it began to rain heavily. The Italian police sealed off the camp and conducted searches. The traders and smugglers tried in vain to protect their goods. Suitcases were confiscated and loaded onto two trucks. After the trucks left the camp with the contraband, people pounced upon a man named Shmil and accused him of informing. He denied it, claiming that he was a good Jew and that one Jew doesn’t snitch on another. The traders and smugglers didn’t believe him; they were sure he had squealed on them, and started to beat him. He screamed and begged, but the more he begged, the more they beat him. Eventually he fell silent, and died all curled up.

After the murder, we left the camp with our teacher, Y.S., and moved with him into an abandoned hut by the beach.

IT WAS NOT from a pleasant man that I learned to pray. At the time, I was in a transit camp on my way to Palestine, in one of the long and shabby barracks into which hundreds of survivors were crammed. Men played cards, drank vodka, and had sex with women in broad daylight. In the dark corners of those same barracks, people stood and prayed in the morning and in the evening. Not many. It was always difficult to gather together ten men for a
minyan.
After the war, the lust for life was strong, and praying was derided; people refused to join in, even as bystanders. First persuasion, and then pleading was necessary.