I woke up alone. Effi had left and gone to Dov’s room, where she sat comfortably eating jam and loquats, preparing me some apple rinds as she munched her way through a bag of toffee candies. The sun stole in between the oleanders, striking my face. I opened my mouth wide, feeling singed. Voices came from afar, people walking. My eyes could not see, shadows were distorted, glimpses of color danced around. I vomited, still lying on my back, almost choking. I could not open my eyes. How would I get up? I lay helpless, wanting to drink just one drop. I tried to move again, in vain. Nausea. I wanted to pass out, not to suffer the dizziness, the thirst. At the last minute, before giving in, I made one more effort. I rolled onto my side and sat up on my knees. Things were dripping inside my head. Circles running in my eyes. I vomited again. I got up very slowly and opened my eyes. I walked, lightly touching the branches, anchoring myself in the spinning world. I followed the shrubs all the way to where the path began and made my way to Dov’s room. Got to survive.
I ate three dinners that evening, and for the next two days I kept drinking from every tap I came across, just in case. But at the moment when I touched the door to Dov’s room, on the border between an Israeli kibbutz and Cell Block 55 in Buchenwald, I touched a speck of Shoah. Only a hint, just for a moment, but I will never again be as close. The Buchenwaldian moment was over as soon as I washed my face, but a glowing spot remained inside of me. And there remained Effi’s look when I turned up at the door, my face and shirt stained with vomit and blood, my eyes vacant, unresponsive, as I walked to the sink with a strange quaver. A speck also remained deep inside her. I had been to Buchenwald, she had not. A solid stain of failure that no future victories could melt away. An Archimedean point that marked new directions in our relationship.
To console herself, she stood on the peaks of Monte Cassino with Grandpa Lolek the hero. When we went back to school, she brought him in to tell his story to her class. Despite his broken Hebrew and the hollow ring of his tales, when he faced an audience of thirteen-year-olds, Grandpa Lolek might as well have been a recruiter for the Israel Defense Forces: six armor officers, five paratroopers, two pilots and one Mossad agent were ready to sign up. At the end of the class, Effi stood beside him on that glorious mountaintop with her eyes lowered modestly, basking in admiration. He wouldn’t come to my class. Even one free appearance was beyond his emotional strength. For Effi, he agreed. She was always his favorite. He had plans to marry her off for a good price one day. “What a beauty! My woman! Men will be around her like flies!” The object of these compliments, barely fourteen years old, was less excited. Men were always like flies. Sometimes the compliments were dual. He would gather us both in his arms and gush, “You are mamelach, like my children.” He shoved the word like to the front, its prominence thwarting any ideas of offspring-hood we might have.
Later that summer the anarchy continued. Due to a coordination mishap, we were sent to spend two whole days with Grandpa Lolek. There was no telling what he was promised, and he usually collected his debts promptly and firmly. In any event, he managed the first day nobly, took us to the Carmel Center and with a flourish of generosity bought us each two swimsuits. He even took us out, like grownups, to a café, where he let us order chocolate cake and hot cocoa while he smoked his cigarettes and sipped a cup of tea. The cakes and cocoa were our reward for listening to him once again recount the story of Joyce the American dancer, the one who came with a troupe from Kentucky to entertain the soldiers, but one of the generals took a liking to her and she was ordered to stay behind when the troupe left and entertain him alone. Once he was sufficiently entertained, he wanted to send her to entertain another general, but our Queen Esther responded with a stinging slap on his cheek. Lonely and tearful, she walked the streets until she met her savior, Grandpa Lolek, a soldier in Anders’ Army waiting to be deployed to the front. On the rainy dock, she danced for him with two umbrellas in her hands, etc., etc., etc.
We tried to ask him about the war.
“Grandpa Lolek, why won’t Grandpa Yosef tell us about what happened to him in Buchenwald?”
“Grandpa Lolek, what do you know about Adella Greuner?”
“Grandpa Lolek, what happened to my mom in the village when she hid with Christians?”
But we gave up in despair. Grandpa Lolek knew only one war, his, and it sounded very similar to the wars we had here. The Six Day War, for example. His description of the battle at Monte Cassino, May ’44, week after week after week, melted away the delight of chocolate cake and cocoa. Grandpa Lolek tried to impress us with descriptions of the final hilltop battle. “Seven days, we skip on foot, from rock to rock.”
“It was probably cheapest to travel by foot,” Effi whispered, her face a study of chocolate.
But I noticed the unusual words Grandpa Lolek used—‘skip’, ‘from rock to rock’—and it occurred to me that he might have read about Monte Cassino in books, impressed at his own feats.
Grandpa Lolek grew animated as he continued to broaden our education. “Monte Cassino, what do you know? Germans were positioned there, not to move. You move, you lose all of Italy, all the war. Fighting there, the Germans. Everybody against them, no good. No passing. They bomb from the sky, day and night. From the land we try to get up. Germans slaughter everyone. Through the rocks, not possible. Uphill. Difficult. Anywhere a soldier walks, a German is hiding, and bang-bang. They tried everything, the generals. No more soldiers of theirs left, and the Australians tried and the New Zealanders tried. Fighting, fighting, and no doing. All day, all night, they bring bodies down. No getting by the Germans. Strong, those Germans. Animals. They decided: Send the Poles in. Anders’ soldiers. Why not? Soldiers for free. In May, we start to conquer. Fifteen of May, the beginning of the end. Last battle, they said. Well, ask your father. That was the day when his mother, Rachela, went in Auschwitz. Exactly that same day. Fifteen of May. Ask him, ask him. And me on the hilltop, Monte Cassino, fighting the Nazis. There were casualties, you should know. For two weeks now, we, the Poles, on the mountain. The Germans were men, lions. Us Poles, we had more hate. Up we went, and took the Germans, one at a time, with bayonets. Until no more. We slaughtered the last German. Anders’ Army on the mountain. Me, the Jew, on the mountain. Your father’s mother, Rachela, a righteous woman, Auschwitz. Your father and his father in train car, to a new concentration camp, they have luck, not Auschwitz. Strong. Your father is good boy, his father sick already. But me, a Jew, on Monte Cassino, up top, and no one has bad word for me. Germans, only with bullet in the head, and if all Jews were like that, no Hitler. There would not have been…”
He calmly ordered another cup of tea, leaving us wide-eyed, with many new questions racing through our minds. For me, my mother’s birthday, May 15th, now connected with the new date, the day of Grandma Rachel’s death in Auschwitz. I would have to ask Dad about it. But I soon forgot. The loyal mechanism worked every time: whatever we weren’t allowed to ask, we forgot to ask. Dad would continue to hide the date, celebrate Mom’s birthday with her and quietly think about his mother. Mom mustn’t know, not to ruin her celebration. Only after Mom died, did he tell us how all those years…