EVENTS JULY 22, 1942. ENTRY JULY 24, 1942. FROM DOLEK BERSON. As yet I cannot say what my own reactions are: I am befuddled. Today I got Berson to tell me how he first saw this unseeable thing, and his story helped me. Curious how comforting another’s discomfort can be. The only fearful thing is to be alone.
Berson went home for the noon hour on the twenty-second. Having accepted the Hashomer invitation, he had already thrown himself, with his typical fervor, into the rudimentary work that had been assigned him: he was in the kindergarten of the underground, and he enjoyed it.
At just about twelve thirty, Berson, sitting in the living room, became aware of an unusual commotion outdoors. A few minutes before there had been quiet all about; then, in isolated, quickly successive sounds—a door slammed, a shout from an open window across the courtyard, a gramophone record started up and then suddenly stopped with a screech of the needle pushed across the grooves, a window hurriedly closed, a scream in the streets, more shouts, distant wailing—the racket grew, until at last a whole conglomerate of new noises made a great, eerie, supra-ghetto buzz. Berson got up, went to the window, and looked out. He saw agitation in the streets: everyone seemed to be hurrying. He went into the kitchen and said to Froi Mazur, the only other member of the “family” in the apartment at the time:
—— Something is happening. I’ll go out and see what it is.
Berson ran downstairs and out into the street. Outside the disturbance seemed directionless, aimless, and even meaningless. The usually idle street-populace was in a hurry, but every which way: they were not running away from anything, nor toward anything. Berson met a man in a black suit with a collarless shirt which was carefully fastened at the neck with a brass stud.
Berson: —— What is happening?
The man: —— We’re going on a trip.
This reply was delivered in a shout and accompanied by what seemed to be a grin of real happiness, though it may only have been a grimace; the man ran on. Berson confronted a woman who ran along clutching a brown shawl over her head.
—— What’s happening?
—— Oi, misery!
The woman lifted her eyes to heaven and wagged her head back and forth mournfully; that was all; she hastened away.
Berson, mystified and frustrated, says he suddenly remembered the way he had felt when, many years before, his father had assigned him to the sales force of the glove factory and one after another of the sure-fire customers had given Berson evasive answers: Business is terrible….I can’t move the gloves I have in stock….Maybe next autumn….Berson felt the same bafflement now as he had experienced then; once again his self-pity was mixed with an unclear pity for those whom he approached: they seemed, both then and now, to be in the grip of some external circumstance that forced them to answer equivocally.
Seeing a Jewish policeman, Berson went up to him and grabbed him by the coat (as, he immediately remembered, he had once desperately grabbed a potential customer and tried to shake an order out of him) and asked:
—— What’s happening?
The policeman, reaching for his truncheon: —— Let go of me or I’ll bash your head in.
Berson thought then of the Judenrat, and he began running toward Grzybowska Street. As he ran, he says he wondered whether Symka in the hospital could hear the buzz of this elusive excitement hovering over the ghetto: he saw her in his imagination, lying on one of the twelve iron beds in the ward, which also housed more than forty people on straw ticks on the floor—her face pale and drawn (Just a general exhaustion-and-undernourishment syndrome, Dr. Breithorn had said. I have a few vitamin concentrates left—but if they don’t work…; the doctor had shrugged), but her eyes intelligent, yet, and beautiful, and those eyes, he now imagined, inquiring of the passing nurses as to the rumor in the air—was it real or just something in her ears? We’re going on a trip, a nurse might say, smiling. Oi, misery! another might say. I‘ll bash your head in, another might perfectly well say. Berson felt so sorry for Symka alone in the multitude of the sick that he almost turned around to run northward to the hospital, in order to comfort her. The sound, dear girl, is only in your ears—and mine.…But then Berson saw a knot of people fighting to get near one of the street hoardings where public notices were regularly posted, and he ran toward it. The people looked like a litter of black-coated animals fighting to get at maternal sources of supply. Berson plunged in and by main strength was able to get close enough to read the beginning of a new poster:
1. On the order of the German authorities, all Jewish inhabitants of Warsaw will—
A head swung into Berson’s line of vision. All Jewish inhabitants of Warsaw will what? Be declared British citizens? Be given a feast of lox and gribbenes and gefillte fish and tzimmes? Berson, his hopes suddenly wildly high, bobbed his head and pushed.
—— be resettled in the East.
So that was the cause of the murmur in the air! Berson says he decided at once: He would not go. East or west, he would not go. He would refuse to go anywhere. His heart jumped when he read the next sentence:
2, The following categories are exempt from resettlement:…
Dancing, dodging, craning, shoving, he read the list. [NOTE. N.L. The categories are: Jews employed by German enterprises; Judenrat and its employees; Jewish police; personnel of Jewish hospitals and sanitary columns; Jews on forced labor, or fit for it; immediate families—i.e., wives and children—of above types; hospitalized sick who could get special permits from Judenrat doctors.] Berson says his first thought was for himself: that as a Judenrat employee, he was safe. His second thought, glass-clear and decisive, was that because of this poster, which was signed by the Judenrat, he could no longer tolerate working there: he would resign. His third thought was for Symka: after his resignation from the Judenrat, she would no longer be protected as the wife of a man in an exempt category: perhaps she could be exempted under the sick clause, if Dr. Breithorn would help….[NOTE. N.L. The sick category, 2h., reads as follows: All Jews who on the first day of resettlement find themselves in one of the Jewish hospitals and are not fit to be released; the unfitness for release must be stated by a physician designated by the Judenrat.]
Berson burrowed out from the crowd and started for the hospital. He ran at first, but then, tiring, slowed to a breathless, hardworking walk. Going along Smocza, he saw an elderly man dart out of a house, running awkwardly because he was buttoning his trousers, and heading straight for Berson. The old man asked, in a bewildered way:
—— What is happening?
Berson: —— It’s the end.
At once Berson realized that in his impatient despair he, too, had given an evasive answer, and he turned toward the old man, who was already rushing away, and shouted:
—— Wait! Wait! All the Jews of Warsaw will—
But the old man ran on, unhearing.
Berson himself now hurried northward. At the intersection of Smocza with Mila, a crowd of people completely blocked the street. Berson was in no state of mind to brook any more frustration: he offered his right shoulder to the mob and forced his way into it. He was filled with a brutish intolerance of delay: he drove forward. It was only when there were no more people directly in front of him that he was stopped—by a sight:
Coming out from Mila Street, and turning northward on Smocza, was as wretched a parade of Jewry as Berson had ever in his life seen, even in his Lumpenproletariat days. Beggars, ragpickers, schnorrers, corpse-gatherers, grave-diggers, garbage-looters —Berson had seen all such in the ghetto, but those were princelings and velvet-wearers compared with this array of outcasts. Looking along Mila, Berson could see that the Mila “Death Point,” one of the so-called “way stations” for homeless refugees, was being emptied. Ragged, dejected, empty-faced, these barely living men and women limped and staggered along, mostly in together-leaning duets and trios, their mouths working as if in painful concert, though in fact they were silent. At the end of the procession there were carts into which those who fell down were loaded, log-like.
Resettlement, Berson thought bitterly—as though these feeble beings had ever been settled anywhere!
Then Berson saw something that startled him: the parade of poverty-stricken Jews was being constrained to move by Jewish policemen, and midway along the column Berson could see Stefan Mazur, his face contorted with something that was not quite rage and yet was beyond rage; Stefan was beating the miserable marchers with his wooden club, cursing them, occasionally shoving them: the handsome young man seemed possessed by some bestial, sadistic Other Self whom Berson had never met (though now Berson says he remembered the haste with which Stefan had hurried away, that night in April, to inform on Pavel Menkes). For a moment Berson considered running out and remonstrating with Stefan, but then he thought how queer he would look in the eyes of the crowd, and besides, he began to feel within himself an emotion akin to the dreadful one on Stefan’s face and in the boy’s ferocious actions: hatred: hatred for these miserable Jewish specimens. What right had they to be so mean? How dared they be such vivid reminders of human inequality? What right had they to advertise the depths to which Jews could be driven? Quickly Berson’s hatred surged over the threshold into the place of compassion and became mixed up with compassion and at last was wholly converted into compassion: and he wept. All morning, ever since first hearing the rapid crescendo of the rumors of alarm, he had wanted to cry; for weeks, months, years, he had wanted to cry; and now he did, with great racking sobs.
EVENTS JULY 22, 1942. ENTRY JULY 25, 1942. FROM DOLEK BERSON. Continuing Berson’s account:
By the time the end of the procession from the Mila “Death Point” had moved up Smocza Street, Berson had recovered himself, and he walked slowly along behind it. The line turned right on Stawki Street. The refugees were being led, apparently, to the Transferstelle, so the parade would take its course past the hospital, on Stawki. Berson accommodated his pace to the mournful march of the refugees; he was empty, now, he says, empty, empty.
In front of the hospital, there was a new confusion. A large crowd of porters, ricksha-pullers, handcartmen, and hospital attendants was milling about in front of the building, carrying and stacking and loading hospital equipment: to get past, the ranks of the refugees were driven across the street and had to trickle through a narrow bottleneck there. In sight of the hospital and more mindful of Symka than he had been, suddenly frightened by the thought that the hospital was being closed for resettlement as the Mila “Death Point” had evidently been, Berson began fighting his way forward again. For a few uncomfortable moments he was among the refugees: but going through them was as easy as going through a farmer’s field—they offered no more resistance, it seemed, than stalks of grain. Then he was in the agitated mob before the hospital—a more resistant mass. A man in a white coat shouted right in Berson’s face (as Berson pressed toward the hospital doors) : Eliahu, have you the bedpans there? A man with a ricksha was haggling over a price with a Jewish nurse. But, she said, on the verge of tears, we’re doing this work for all the Jews. The ricksha-puller, evidently maintaining at this inappropriate moment the habit of bitter gibes he must always have used in bargaining, said: Nu, so it’s for the Jews, does that make my work cheaper? You don’t like the Jews? Is that it? Berson elbowed and jostled his way in through the front door of the hospital. There was no one at the reception desk. Berson ran along the hallway until he met a nurse, a hard-faced, elderly woman.
Berson: —— Have you seen Dr. Breithorn?
The nurse, with a precision for which Berson was grateful:
—— He is among the patients, on the rounds. On Corridor Thirteen, I believe, by this time.
Berson thanked her and walked quickly back along the hallway to a staircase, which he ascended. He had no idea where Corridor Thirteen was. He began putting his head into wards and laboratories. People were running up and down the halls, carrying things. After some time, he stopped another nurse, a young woman, and asked her where Corridor Thirteen was.
—— We have no Corridor Thirteen. Twelve is the highest number.
The young nurse hurried away on some urgent errand. Berson ran up another flight of stairs and explored three hallways on the floor above. At last, in a ward that seemed somehow familiar to Berson, he saw Dr. Breithorn, on his knees beside a palliasse in the middle of the floor, and he ran up to him. Panting, leaning over the doctor, he said:
—— Have you read the notices?
Berson saw that Dr. Breithorn was listening through his stethoscope to the heartbeat of a fragile woman: a purse-thin breast was shoved askew by the metal ear-horn.
—— Dolek! Dolek!
Berson turned and saw Symka in her proper bed, down the ward—her ward! He held up a hand to indicate that she should wait a minute. The doctor took his stethoscope out from his ears and let it hang on his neck. Berson said:
—— Doctor, have you heard about the resettlement?
Dr. Breithorn, looking up disgustedly: —— No, we’re just turning the hospital inside out for an airing.
—— Could you give me a certificate for Froi Berson? To exempt her?
The doctor stood up slowly. Slowly and without evident anger, he said:
—— Berson, you are the next-to-last person to ask me for a personal favor today. The next one I am going to kill. With this. (He took a large, cheap, folding jackknife from his pocket, an incongruously crude piece of machinery for a doctor to be carrying. He held it, unopened, a few centimeters from the end of Berson’s nose. Then, as coolly as before:) Now get out….
—— But under Paragraph 2, Article h., on the poster—
Dr. Breithorn, speaking now as to a friend, but with an odd, dispirited air: —— Listen, I have been given twenty-four hours in which to evacuate this entire hospital to another building. I am trying to keep two thousand people alive. I haven’t time for Article h. Do you want my advice? Hire one of the rickshas in front of this building and take your wife home. She will die—perhaps not right away: it depends on courage more than medicines. It would be best to have her near you. Forget Article h. And forget that you ever knew me.
With a terrible look of self-hate, the doctor turned away and then crouched down by the next palliasse.
Berson went to Symka’s bed, showing nothing (he thinks) on his face, and, wrapping a threadbare blanket about her, he picked her up and walked out of the ward with her in his arms. Her light body was an easy load.
—— Where are we going, Dolek?
—— Home, dear.
—— Am I better, then?
—— Yes, dear. Much better.
EVENTS JULY 23, 1942. ENTRY JULY 25, 1942. FROM DOLEK BERSON. Berson has gone through with his resignation from the Judenrat. I argued against it. I told him it was a reflex, not something he had thought out. But his mind was firm and set.
I cannot call Berson any more the Drifter.
EVENTS JULY 23, 1942. ENTRY JULY 25, 1942. FROM DOLEK BERSON. Berson convened the “family”—which, under the regulation that defines a family as consisting only of the wife and children of the principal, is no longer entitled to consider itself as such, but nevertheless still does—in order to survey its hazard.
Stefan Mazur, in the police, and N.L., in the Judenrat, are exempt from the resettlement. Mordecai Apt, in the bricklayers’ battalion, has already received an Ausweis, a precious work certificate that protects him. Rutka, as Mordecai’s wife, is safe. That leaves the senior Mazurs, the Bersons, the rabbi, Rachel, and Halinka still vulnerable. Froi Mazur and Symka would be all right if their husbands could get into an exempt category. On the twenty-third, therefore, the second day of the resettlement, the two husbands, the two Apt girls, and the rabbi went job-hunting.
We fixed the rabbi up with precisely Berson’s job in the Judenrat, as a clerk in the Health and Welfare Department. Berson could have his job back, or another like it, if he wanted; but no, he has decided.
Halinka had no trouble. She had heard from a girl she knew at the Britannia that anyone with a sewing machine could get a job easily, and she talked Froi Mazur into letting her “borrow” the small machine Froi Mazur brought from Lodz. Halinka hired a ricksha and took the machine with her to the Toebbens plant on Prosta. She was admitted at once and put directly to work as a seamstress. [NOTE. N.L. That is something I should like to see with my own eyes!]
Berson told Reb Yechiel Mazur and Rachel that he thought it would be easy for all three of them to get work at the button plant Gruber has set up, through his cousin Meier, who was certain to be in favor there. [NOTE. N.L. We know that Meier helped Gruber with arrangements; ENTRY APRIL 3, 1942.] And so the three went together to the shabby buildings on Muranowska that Gruber has bought for his shops. In the streets, there prevailed the same agitation as had been evident, uninterruptedly, since the news of the resettlement made its first, noisy capture of the ghetto: people were still moving about with apparent aimlessness, some carrying household goods, others gathering in argumentative knots, and still others running full tilt and wide-eyed, as if the Angel of Death were skittering his wings along the pavements behind them. In front of each factory workshop and office that had official sanction, a large crowd was gathered—and this was true at the Gruber shops, when Berson, Reb Yechiel Mazur, and Rachel reached it.
Muranowska Street was half filled with the crowd. The three doors of the shops were tightly closed; two of them, in fact, were boarded over, nailed tight, fort-like. A Jewish policeman stood guard at the third. From time to time he opened the door and whispered to a man inside, and occasionally the latter would stick his head out and murmur something to the policeman, who would then admit a single applicant. Some time later this person would emerge, usually with an expression of intoxicated relief and shameless exuberance. Personal fates were being decided by that slowly opening and closing door, and by the confidential mumbling between the policeman and the grim doorkeeper. The crowd around the policeman was dense and intractable: men who had been given a hard negative six, eight, and ten times would not move away, but would ask again and again. Consequently, it took nearly an hour for Berson and his two companions to make their way, with many a purposeful nudge and rude word, to the neighborhood of the policeman’s weary ear. When at last they were close, Berson said:
—— Message for Meier Berson. Tell him, D. B. Berson and two others are here.
The policeman opened the door. The doorkeeper’s head came out. The policeman repeated Berson’s words. The doorkeeper’s expression did not change: he withdrew his head; the door closed. Berson looked at his friends and smiled and nodded in a confident and (he says) slightly patronizing way. Nothing happened for a long time. Finally the door opened. Not the doorkeeper, but an elated, successful applicant came bouncing out, whispered to a waiting woman, and, bobbing his head down like a diving loon, made his way out under the surface of the crowd, as it were; his wife ducked and swam underneath and after him. The door closed again. The three waited a long time. Finally Reb Yechiel Mazur said:
—— Do you think we should send word in again?
—— Meier will answer, don’t worry.
But an excessive time seemed to pass—it was, in fact, only a few minutes, but the minutes were doom-laden and they dragged under their burden—and Berson asked the policeman:
—— How long should it take to get an answer?
The policeman, shrugging: —— It depends.
This sounded somehow reassuring, and Berson, Rachel, and Reb Yechiel Mazur exchanged smiles….
The door opened. The doorkeeper put his head out. Berson leaned forward and heard:
—— Pan Meier Berson to D. B. Berson: Pan Meier Berson is very sorry, he cannot handle the request.
Berson: —— No! That can’t be! Please be so good as to check up on that answer. I’m certain there is a mistake.
The doorkeeper, still addressing the policeman and not even looking at Berson: —— There is no mistake. I spoke to Pan Meier Berson personally. I thought (as if regretting wasted zeal) it might be something special.
Berson felt dazed—and he says he also felt Rachel’s hand take his.
Rachel: —— It’s all right, Dolek. We’ll find something.
(When the three had pushed out to a less dense section of the crowd, she said:) You know, I had a feeling, that day we ate the horsemeat cholent, that Cousin Meier should have been invited.
Berson: —— Do you suppose that could be the reason?
Reb Yechiel Mazur, irritable, in the first uncharitable utterance Berson had ever heard from the saintly man: —— What other reason?
All day the three friends hurried from factory to factory—to Toebbens, Hallmann, Roerich, Schultz, Schilling, Oksaka, Avia. At some places there was not even a possibility of getting near the gate or door; at others, they were told, as everyone without connections was: Full up, full up! At one workshop, Berson was nearly admitted, but when he said he had two friends, all three were turned away. It was then—already well into the afternoon—that Reb Yechiel Mazur said:
—— We must try separately. Three is too many.
Rachel: —— That’s right, Dolek. It’s every dog for himself now. And (she smiled) when the dogs get hungry for dogmeat, please don’t eat me!
And they split up.
When the whole “family” had gathered at the apartment just before curfew, at ten that night, Berson said he had finally landed a job as a carpenter at Reisinger’s joining factory on Swientojerska Street; Reb Yechiel Mazur said that his old friend Felix Mandeltort had helped him get a place in a tiny shop where they make artificial flowers; as for Rachel, she was still without work—but she seemed strangely happy. She confessed, at last, that she had not even tried to find anything: she had gone to see little David, at the Rukner Home, and she had had a marvelous time in a game of blindman’s buff.