EVENTS EARLY DECEMBER, 1940. ENTRY DECEMBER 16, 1940. N.L. I try and try and try to comprehend this word: ghetto.
We Jews are shut up together; that is evident. The closure is complete. There are, I believe, eleven gaps in the wall, and now one can only call them entrances, for they are certainly not exits. Guards are on duty day and night, and passes are very hard to get. The wall itself is firm and whole, and wherever it surrenders its function to the side of a building, former doors, windows, and accesses of every kind have been bricked up. Berson worked as a bricklayer on this our containment, yet he seems happy enough. Indeed, I apprehend that he is much happier than usual, and more complacent. He used to hate anything official: I remember his desire to detour the nervous crowd in front of the Community Building the day a year ago when the Germans threatened us with a ghetto, because, as he said, that was more or less official turmoil. [ENTRY NOVEMBER 9, 1939.] Yet now that we have a ghetto, he is thinking of becoming an official. He has talked with me about quitting the brick detail and joining the Jewish police.
Only being in a ghetto could have brought such a change. But what is this being in a ghetto? Is it simply being within the wall?
EVENTS EARLY DECEMBER, 1940. ENTRY DECEMBER 16. FROM DOLEK BERSON. Talked with Berson today about the paradox of his wanting to get into the world of office-holders. He has about decided to enlist in the police. He recognizes the irony. He thinks the main reason why he considers becoming a policeman is that he yearns for order. The name of the police force appeals to him very much: Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst. Jewish Order Service. He wants to help restore order. I had not previously noticed any strong tendency toward tidiness in Berson, I must confess; though I can see how our present circumstances might have brought out this hidden quality, if he had it at all, since up to now the most obvious definition of being in a ghetto is: disorder. The Jewish district is, above all, chaotic. Only now do we begin to understand what has happened during the past four or five weeks. Eighty thousand Poles moved out of this area, and one hundred and forty thousand Jews moved in. The street scenes have been dreadful: crowds and crowds of Jews with all their goods on small pushcarts wandering through the streets looking for homes: no, looking for less than that: looking for mere corners in crowded rooms. The office the Judenrat set up as a clearing-house for apartments was overwhelmed; one saw hand-written placards advertising for living space on the walls of coffee-shops and even in the streets. One could see lines of people waiting in the streets for God knows what for days on end. One saw bargaining and arguing everywhere. Groaning was our music. Everything was transacted in a whine. Dr. Breithorn’s many years of sourness were justified in one terrible event: the transfer of the Czysta Street hospital within the boundaries of the ghetto—the parade of the sick and dying from a modern building, with the finest medical equipment, to two drafty buildings on Leszno Street. Instruments and laboratories had to be left behind. One can see hunger-panics in the streets every day. The Poles, against whom the Germans discriminate in rations, still get delicacies, such as 250 grams of artificial honey, 62.5 grams of margarine, 100 grams of dried peas, and one lemon, every week. Our people get bread and groats and, if they are wealthy, a little saccharine. Smuggling has begun, of course, but smuggling brings high prices. How long will our money last? Is there any wonder that Berson craves a little neatness?
Berson will not say so, but I believe he is still distressed about his entanglement with Pan Apt. Berson flew into that mess enthusiastically, wanting only to help; he came out of it abused and blamed by Pan Apt. So far as we can learn, the jewelry store is in German hands. Pan Apt has been flat on his back with influenza ever since the day the ghetto was locked. Rachel has been taking gentle care of him. Berson dares not stop in, and Rachel says she has not seen him at all. Even Rachel blames Berson as a meddler: I tell her this is unfair. Thus there is disorder also in our personal relationships.
EVENTS DECEMBER, 1940. ENTRY DECEMBER 19, 1940. FROM DOLEK BERSON. Interesting! Another reason why Berson has decided (now it is definite) to sign up with the police: he thinks that in this way he will be able to resist the Germans a tiny bit. He has been persuaded that the Jewish Order Service will actually be able to alleviate the lot of the Jews and even restrain the Germans in small ways. Slonim has evidently been arguing against this idea: he tells Berson that the Jewish police will only be German tools. Berson thinks otherwise.
I reached my impression that Berson has this motive in an indirect way—through a story Berson told this evening; or rather, through the manner in which he told it. One definition of being in a ghetto is: being in a conversation. We talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. For want of meat, we eat gossip. And last night Berson gave us the following tidbit with such relish, with such sparkle in his eye, that I reached the above conclusion:
Fischel Schpunt has a new game. It seems that the grotesque little bureaucrat, realizing his comic power as a result of his performance the day the secret prayerhouse was discovered, is now going out of his way to trick and insult the Germans—and he does it in such a way that the Germans only laugh at him; the Jews laugh, too, long after each prank. For the past few days, Schpunt has been touring the blockaded streets, visiting one after another the eleven gates in the wall, and whenever he sees a German soldier on duty, he approaches casually, catches the German’s eye, and then tips his hat with such friendly alacrity, or reaches out to shake hands with such apparent sincerity, that the German is usually tricked into thinking he has encountered an acquaintance, responds, realizes he has simply been accosted by a very funny-looking Jew, and bursts out laughing. Schpunt has developed a kind of claque of idle people who follow him around. Berson saw one of Schpunt’s salutations this afternoon. He laughed as he told us about it:
—— His face! His face hated the German so, and the German couldn’t see that part of it: the German could only see the funny part.
EVENTS DECEMBER 21, 1940. ENTRY DECEMBER 22, 1940. FROM DOLEK BERSON. Well, Berson had his first official day yesterday, and the reaction is curious. Very curious.
The police force was set up by the Judenrat. Chairman Sokolczyk asked for two thousand volunteers between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five, and he couched his appeal, in a poster, in formal language, but in language that hinted the Jewish police would be able to help their fellow Jews and protect them. (In one sense, they can, as Berson points out: they will at least save the Jews from being policed exclusively by Germans and by “Navy-blues”—Polish gendarmes.) The police were incidentally offered extra rations. A great number of volunteers turned out, especially professionals and intellectuals who now would have no other work: the declassed and the “golden youth.” Indeed, by the time Berson decided definitely to join, four days ago, it was necessary to pull wires in order to land an appointment; of course it fell upon me to do the pulling.
Berson applied at the Judenrat day before yesterday morning; I had pulled; he was accepted. He was told to report the next morning and was given his “uniform”: a cap, a belt, a wooden truncheon, and insignia. He took his things home, put on a black suit, and decked himself in his new plumage. Above the visor of his dark blue military cap there was a Star of David, which he says seemed proud and defiant in this setting, and on the blue ribbon around it a single round tin disk, designating his rank: the lowest: ordinary policeman. Berson says his wooden club swung authoritatively from his belt. Besides his white Star-of-David brassard he also sported a yellow armband with Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst stamped on it. And on his chest he wore a simple badge with his number: 217.
When Symka saw him, he says she exclaimed that he was beautiful, playfully shoved the cap onto the back of his head, and kissed him on both cheeks, with a formal accolade, as if she too were somewhat official.
On Berson’s first day of duty, yesterday, under a cold, crisp, sunny sky, he was assigned to traffic direction at the busy corner of Karmelitzka and Dzielna. Here the flow consisted of wagons full of furniture, pushcarts with personal goods, venders’ trundle-carts, wheelbarrows, bicycles, and pedestrians by the thousands. Berson says he felt that his signals were strong and clear without being pompous. The surging, heavy currents in the streets responded promptly to his commands, and he felt immensely powerful. He went home last night giddily happy, and he sang and cavorted absurdly before Symka’s merry eyes.
But when Berson went to his room to take off his trappings, he looked in a mirror—and he says he was frightened by what was reflected. He saw in the glass an apparition of cruelty. He suddenly remembered what it had been like to have a club in his hand all day. He remembered chasing a group of beggars away from his corner. He remembered what had happened when some Germans had come along: the only thing he had resisted was his own impulse to hobnob with them.
Berson has a theory. He thinks that because cruelty—and there, in one word, I suppose, is the definition for this ghetto I have hunted for—because cruelty has been inflicted on him, he now feels the need to pass the cruelty on to someone else. He said tonight:
—— I am like a cup. I’ve been poured full with a too hot fluid. It has to be poured out of me, before I crack.