EVENTS MARCH, 1942. ENTRY MARCH 26, 1942. N.L. Rachel is suspended, as so many of us are here, between two worlds: private and public: the world within herself and the world within the wall. She is not able to let go of the one, and the other has not quite got hold of her. Thus she is irresolute, vacillating, moody, cautious, and taciturn. Yet I think she is striving for a balance….
EVENTS MARCH 16, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. FROM RACHEL APT. Talked with Rachel today just after she paid young David a visit at the Rukner Home. The boy has been there nearly six months now. I have noted how depressed Rachel was to “lose” him at first [ENTRY SEPTEMBER 25, 1941]. Now she thanks God that she had the inspiration to put David in the Home. She says that he thrives; that he is a blossom among parched rocks. He has gained weight, and the merry, mischievous look he used to have in prewar days has returned. During her visit to him today he smiled and giggled constantly.
David: —— We’re going to have a garden this spring in the place where one of the bombed houses was on Gensia Street. The TOPORAL lady gave us the choice between flowers and vegetables, and some of the others had a hard time making up their minds, but I said I wanted to grow peas—because they put out both flowers and vegetables!
In an obscure way, Rachel seems to regret having lost an object of pity in David: it must have been sweet and comforting to ache for her poor, skinny, little old man of a brother—now this self-indulgence is impossible. David is better off than she: he is a child, permitted to live once again a child’s life. In place of her former pity, Rachel now urges pride. Peas! How much cleverer than the other children he is!
EVENTS MARCH 24, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. FROM RACHEL APT. Rachel is still upset tonight, and I have an idea that part of what bothers her is that Zilberzweig’s business this morning was private, and not some exciting Hashomer project. Of course Rachel would not say that, even if she recognized it: she centers her misery on the thing itself.
Rachel says that when she came in from an errand this morning, she found on the vestibule table a sealed envelope, addressed to her. Inside was a note:
—— Come when you can to workshop number three. Hil.
“Workshop number three” appears to be Zilberzweig’s own two-room apartment on Pawia Street. When Rachel arrived there, the leader, in a frayed tan wool dressing-gown, was talking to a man Rachel had never seen; she waited a few minutes while the two murmured by the door, until the stranger left.
Zilberzweig invited Rachel inside, offered her a seat, and said cordially:
—— I summoned you because I have a message for you from your father. One of our couriers brought it in. She says she was directed to your father by a janitor named Kucharski, to whom Rutka Mazur had sent her. What do you know about this Kucharski? Is he reliable?
—— Yes, I…I think so. He was very helpful to Rutka when she went to Wilno. Why?
—— No particular reason. It’s just that we have to be careful. As I understand it, he was janitor at your courtyard in the beginning, is that right?
—— That’s right. (Rachel says she wondered: Why does he palaver this way? Why doesn’t he tell me the message?)
—— Was he extremely talkative then?
—— He was quite a gossip. Like an old lady. But never malicious and usually truthful.
—— The truth can hurt, you know, especially in our business.
Rachel says she now burst out irritably:
—— What did my father say?
Zilberzweig, drawing a hand across his forehead, as if to wipe away the delicate scar-lines of worry there: —— I’m sorry. The message was this: Please send three or four small diamonds.
Rachel says she flushed; she felt angry and humiliated.
Rachel: —— Was that all?
Zilberzweig: —— You must assume that if he was able to send the message, he was well. You must assume that if he is your father, he loves you. I admire him for the economy of his message….My dear girl!
For Rachel had begun to weep, with the silent, eye-brimming stare of a girl who has lost a fight to suppress a sudden misery. [NOTE. N.L. And I am positive, at least, that some of Rachel’s continuing unhappiness tonight comes from her embarrassment at having broken down before Zilberzweig.]
EVENTS MARCH 26, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. FROM RACHEL APT. When the urgent message came this morning, inviting Rachel to assist Zilberzweig at a most important conference with leaders of other Jewish organizations, as Zilberzweig’s secretary, Rachel says she was tortured by the thought that Zilberzweig had invited her more or less out of pity—because she had appeared so crushed by that interview about her father, and Zilberzweig had been embarrassed and sorry for her, and wanted now to cheer her up. This may be true. If so, the two worlds overlap: Rachel is now drawn out into the public world because of her deep involvement in her private world….On the other hand, there is the possibility that Zilberzweig invited Rachel simply because he thinks her a bright girl….
The delegates were crowded into Pan Zilberzweig’s room, and some of them had to sit on the floor. Rachel says that Zilberzweig whispered the names and identities of the representatives at the conference to her, not to entertain her, but because he wanted a record of all that would be said. Rachel was nervous; Zilberzweig had told her that writing would not be permitted at such a meeting as this and that she would have to remember everything and write it down afterward.
—— Rapaport and Slonim of the Bund, Kurtz and Budko of the Communists, Lakh and…(delegates, she says, of Left Poale-Zion, Dror, Akiba, Misrachi, the General Zionists, and two rabbis of the Orthodoxy. The Revisionists were not present).
There were only three women on hand; Rachel says she felt great self-esteem. She recognized one of the Poale-Zion delegates as the stranger who had been talking with Zilberzweig when she had gone to get her father’s message; perhaps they had been making arrangements for this meeting. Her father! What would he think of her if he could see her now, sitting in a room with two live Socialists and two Communists? He would have apoplexy; vindictively (her father had to pay something for those four diamonds!), Rachel imagined her father walking into the room, seeing her in such company, turning purple, and keeling over—she would fetch a rag with cold water and bring him to consciousness and he would soon see that it was all right, everything was quite comfortable here.
Zilberzweig, loudly: —— We have called this meeting in order to determine whether we can undertake a common course of action—whether we can begin now to work, not as divergent political units, but as organized Jewry. I need not recite to you the danger signals we have been receiving—the Mazur Report from Bialystok and Wilno, the ugly rumors from Lublin, the brutalities in Lodz, Radom, Lwow, and Krakow, and now especially the report some of us have heard that we here in Warsaw may be treated to something unpleasant in the very near future. You have all heard of this last; you all have your intelligence services. The experience in other cities has shown the Judenrats there to have been ineffectual in the extreme. Only by banding together can we do anything to defend our people against these outrages. As political parties, we all have our ultimate aims—and more power to them!—but to achieve them separately, we must survive together….I’d like to hear from some others on this question….
Several men spoke, each in his own terms and using his own clichés (Kurtz spoke of an anti-Fascist bloc, one of the rabbis of the community of the Law); but the meeting did not sharpen into focus until Rapaport stood up. The white-haired Socialist said:
—— In principle, we are one hundred per cent with you. We very much desire the destruction of the Nazis. It is just a question of the best methods. In that connection, Chaver Delegate of Hashomer Hatsair, I am reminded of an occasion as far back as October, 1939, when you and I spoke to a rally in front of the Community Building concerning the very first threat to put us in a ghetto, and, as I remember it, I was the one who urged resistance then, and you, speaking for Hashomer, urged moderation and patience. Yes, the record of the Bund is clear and consistent. However, on the point of mechanical liaison now between all Jewish organizations, I regret to state that the Bund cannot participate. The Bund is a Socialist party, not a Jewish party, primarily. We seek the brotherhood of all working men—Jewish, Polish, Czech, French, and yes, German and Russian, too. We will continue to work, along with our Polish comrades, for the defeat of Hitler, the arch-enemy of the working class. I regret that we cannot join with other enemies of the working class—even Jewish ones—to achieve that end.
The meeting became a hubbub. Several speakers tried to argue with Rapaport, until at last he put an end to persuasion, by saying, in what Rachel thought was a pathetic appeal:
—— Gentlemen! This is not a personal decision taken by me alone. My party has decided. The decision is not presently revocable.
The Socialists were thereupon asked to leave the meeting, and the other organizations tried to agree on the formation of a liaison group. But the mood of the meeting was depressed, its business was done in a desultory fashion.
After the adjournment, Zilberzweig agreed with Rachel that there was no need for minutes of the meeting. What was there to Write, Rachel says, but one sentence?—
—— Among ourselves we could not agree to agree.
EVENTS MARCH, 1942. ENTRY MARCH 26, 1942. N.L….And yet, is a “balance” possible? Will not the two worlds always tug her back and forth, in starts and spasms?