And we had a chance.
In 1943, a shaliach – messenger, came from Israel to our village. A young Betar man with velvety hair and shoulders a meter wide. He had a low thick voice, and he spoke as if Hitler was standing behind the door. He said he’d come to save Jewish youth from Hungary. He came into the synagogue and begged to take at least the youngsters to Israel.
Give me the children, the children. I approached the Betar shaliach, don’t know why, but I wanted to hang onto his hand and not let go. He smiled at me and put out a large, sunburned, scratched hand. I wanted to shake his hand.
Father stood between us. Father said, Leiber, go home. I ran home. I didn’t know what Israel was but I thought, first of all, we’re getting out of here. I banged the door and fell upon mother.
Mother, mother, I want to go to Israel. I want to go with the shaliach.
Mother pulled at her apron and pinched my cheek. Hard.
Mother said, is that what the rabbi taught you, huh? We go to Israel only when the Messiah comes.
I stayed. I knew we’d missed our chance.
I waited for the Messiah. First I sat with my left leg crossed over my right, an hour later I changed legs, crossing my right over my left, for twice as long, and changed. I sat on the steps behind the house. I opened my shirt, showed him my entire chest, I wanted to open my heart to him, I put my palm, fingers stretched, over my heart, I heard it beat, tuk-tuk. Tuk-tuk. I seized the beats in my fist, threw my hand forcefully over my head, then I opened my mouth and called him, come Messiah, come, come to me.
In the meantime I listened to the radio.
I heard Hitler on the radio. His voice was like the barking of the big dog in the neighbor’s yard. I heard heil, heil. I heard Juden, and Juden like cursing. I heard incredible singing from thousands of throats. I felt as if the enthusiastic singing on the radio wanted to fix me to the wall and squash me like a mosquito.
I was certain the story would end badly for Jews. As bad as it could be. Even though I didn’t understand the reason and I wasn’t yet fifteen.
Yitzhak: Maybe we deserved it, we were cheats and liars.
Dov: Don’t say that.
Yitzhak: Man-eaters. The Jew in the diaspora wasn’t honest.
Dov: Not true, don’t say that, it’s how traders are, it’s impossible
to buy for a lira and sell for half a lira.
Yitzhak: An ordinary goy was honest. A Jew looked for
ways to earn, make a living.
Yitzhak
I liked wandering round the market.
The noisiest place in town. I didn’t want to study. Didn’t want to sit on my ass the entire day in front of my teacher’s mouth. I liked wandering about the market, traveling to places I didn’t know with my father. I liked meeting the man with the vegetable stall. He’d say to me, Yitzhak, you’ve grown, grown, want an apple? I liked meeting the man with a general store. He had burners, lamps, a nut-grinder, a small saw with a special handle, a bird-cage, and work tools. He had an interesting story for me. Sometimes I’d sit apart on the stairs and learn how to buy and sell goods.
I’d see and couldn’t believe my eyes. Goy soldiers would come to buy a horse from a Jew. The horse is lame. The Jew hits the horse on the second leg and hammers a nail into the hoof of the healthy leg, the horse looks healthy. The soldiers pay good money for the horse, the Jew spins around them like a happy top, offering cookies and tea, chatting away as if to friends. The goy soldiers say goodbye, goodbye, set off on their way, and then, boom. The horse falls. The goy soldiers curse the Jew. The goy soldiers kick a stone, seize a stick and break it on the back of the poor horse. The soldiers say, we’ll kill you, dirty Jew, we’ll hang you from the highest tree, filth. Ah. Holding my head, I ran away. That evening I told father and he nodded his head and said nothing.
Goy comes to a Jew in our village. Goy asks, lend me ten agorot – cents – for a bit of tobacco. A Jew lends it to him. How many bits does he return? He returns a lot. Or, instead, a Jew says to a goy, give me some beans, potatoes, cabbage. Goy brings more and more and the Jew isn’t satisfied. Sometimes Goy went to market, wanted to buy a nanny goat. He has no money. He came to a Jew and asked for money. How would he give it back? He’d return two nanny goats. That’s how a Jew exploited the goy. Goy didn’t understand trading. Jew ran the market. Goy looked after the goods. Jew paid Goy at the end of the day. But the goy waited for evening. Yes, yes. He waited for the Jew on his way home. With friends. Five. They hid behind a hill with sticks, knives and an iron rod in their hands. Yaakov approaches in his cart. He has small, red ears and ginger hair. There are two other Jews on the cart. One an uncle, the other a neighbor. One snores loudly, another farts. Yaakov is happy. His bag is filled with money. He hid it under the hay. On the hay he placed a sack of flour, over the sack a blanket. In his pocket he has a little money. Suddenly, a fire in the middle of the road. A small fire, just a small one. The horse stops. Three goys jump on Yaakov, one catches the horse’s bridle. The fifth jumps on the uncle and the neighbor. They had no time to wake up. The money was gone.
Then there was lame Friedman. He brought a mill to thresh goy farmers’ wheat in the village. He’d make a noise throughout the entire village, turrrr turrr turrr. Half the village worked around Friedman’s mill. Farmers would bring their wheat, thresh it, and how would they pay Friedman? It was divided up – one third to him, two thirds to the farmer. Friedman wasn’t a cheat. Friedman had bought the machine, prepared it for the month of May, fixed it, threshed the wheat, he justifiably took percentages. But Jews also had a mill. The goy would bring a ton of wheat to the mill. The goy would go home with two hundred kilos of flour. Isn’t that thieving? A little.
The Jew was smart. The Jew lived at the goy’s expense. Jews always had money in their pockets, they bought a hat, boots, a good coat, fresh fruit, like this, as open as my hand. Maybe that’s why the goys hated Jews. They always called us, dirty Jew, go to Palestine, there’s nothing for you in our country.
We were an ordinary family. We weren’t rich. Father was a trader and a butcher. There was no scarcity of food, but life was hard. They didn’t always buy father’s goods. Sometimes father would go to market with a cow and return two days later with the same cow. And if he did manage to sell it, he didn’t return home alone because of the robbers. Father always walked around town with a brother, an uncle or a friend. He traveled in a group. Sometimes he traveled in an old taxi with five or six people. The taxi barely went thirty kilometers an hour, they’d crank up the car more and more, sometimes they’d spend half a day cranking it. In the meantime, they’d drink coffee, play some cards, and they stuck together. Because of the robbers. Jews were uneasy everywhere. A Jew either existed or not, depending on the desire of the goys.
Dov
The goys always said: It’s the nature of the Jew to cheat the Christian.
And I tell you: The Jew had no choice. He had no land. He had to be