9

EVENTS AUGUST 1, 1942. ENTRY AUGUST 3, 1942. FROM LAZAR SLONIM. Slonim has some sort of cruel streak in him. I remember how sincere his regret seemed to be at his remark in the soup kitchen on the inferiority of Rapaport’s brain compared with his own [ENTRY JUNE 11, 1941]. Yet with what delight did he tell us last night that Rapaport has failed in his effort to get help from the Polish Socialists!

The news of Rapaport’s failure went quickly around today. There is a tendency to laugh at the old fellow, because of his having alleged, the day of the famous handshake [ENTRY JULY 29, 1942], that the reason the Bund could not join other Jewish organizations was that it was planning to fight the Germans shoulder to shoulder with its Polish Socialist comrades. It seems the shoulders do not like each other’s touch too much. But I do not join in the laughter. I think this must be very hard for Rapaport, who always has striven for co-operation with the Polish Socialists. I got Felix Mandeltort to persuade his friend to tell me what happened:

Rapaport made his exit from the ghetto through the New Court Building, on Leszno Street. This strategic building, incidentally, with entrances on both the ghetto and Aryan sides, is a center of official (and illegal) transactions between the Jewish quarter and the outside world. With papers to spare and a door-guard primed, Rapaport had no trouble getting through: he went out under legitimations of an official of the Judenrat. [NOTE. N.L. How were these arranged, I wonder?] He was dressed in a neat black suit; with his tidy mane and huge, pointed eyebrows, his lined face and his piercing eyes, he must have looked responsible, official. Outside, he walked north and east, diagonally toward the Vistula, up Dluga Street. About half a mile northeast of the ghetto area, he cut to the banks of the river, where he paid a zloty to a man in a flat-bottomed boat to take him across to Praga, He walked to a narrow alley off Florjanska Street and knocked on a plank door to one side of a poor-looking courtyard there.

A disheveled, twisted-seeming Pole opened the door and said in a pleasant voice:

—— Ah, Comrade Henryk! Come in! And how are things in the Jewish quarter?

—— Hello, Comrade Boleslav. (And he gave a meaningless answer, he says, to the Polish comrade’s meaningless question:) Not too bad. (Then:) Has the meeting begun? It took me longer to get here than I expected.

—— No, we haven’t begun yet. The Chairman asked me to tell you to wait here.

Comrade Boleslav indicated the single straight chair in the barren anteroom, the walls of which were papered with yellowed sheets of the Nowy Kurjer.

Rapaport, making himself as comfortable as he could in the chair, stretching his legs out jauntily and putting one over the other: —— You mean, until the meeting begins?

Comrade Boleslav: —— The Chairman meant during the meeting.

Rapaport, standing up again quickly, the easy swagger gone out of his manner: —— But I thought I was to have an opportunity of explaining to the Central Committee…

Comrade Boleslav, running a hand through his hair: —— The Chairman was quite explicit. He said here.

Rapaport says that Comrade Boleslav’s voice was not harsh; to the contrary, he spoke gently. Rapaport says he has known this Boleslav from the earliest days.

Rapaport: —— But you understand, Comrade Boleslav, I have come at considerable personal risk. It is not easy to arrange to come….

Comrade Boleslav, his hand still going through his black bush of hair: —— Your problem is on the agenda of the Central Committee. The Central Committee will discuss it. (He repeated then pointedly:) The Chairman was explicit.

Rapaport sat down heavily. Comrade Boleslav excused himself and backed through a door with a limping walk he evidently has, and closed the door behind him. Rapaport heard Comrade Boleslav’s uneven footsteps cross a room; another door opened and closed. Then there was quiet inside: in the far distance, out of doors, Rapaport could hear the shunting of trains….

Rapaport says that during the meeting he entertained bitter thoughts about his former friend, Comrade Boleslav Kwasniewski.

[FROM CONVERSATIONS. INSERT INTO EVENTS AUGUST 1, 1942. FROM LEVINSON‘S RECORD OF THE CONVERSATIONS OF MAY 9–10, 1943….For instance, says Rapaport, do you remember my telling you about the day the Polish Central Committee turned me down?—— I remember it.—— Do you remember my description of the crippled Polish comrade, Boleslav? —— I do. —— Do you remember my saying I was bitter about him?: —— I do. —— Nu:

A scene came back to Rapaport as he waited that day: a rough, improvised camp in a strip of woods near a road in western Galicia in 1935: he remembered unrolling his blanket to spread it out for the night, and finding the chocolate gone….He and Comrade Boleslav Kwasniewski and a taciturn, moody pit-miner named Winkler were working together as a flying squad of agitators, showing up successively at trouble spot after trouble spot. He remembered how much he had liked Comrade Boleslav. This young Pole had hurt his back when some scaffolding had buckled under him a couple of years before, yet he was far from immobilized, he could limp thirty miles a day, and was always cheerful, gentle, mild, kindly, and understanding. A marvelous companion. An honest eye and a steady hand. Never argued, always wanted to help. Rapaport himself had been more mercurial in those days, and had depended upon Comrade Boleslav to cheer him when he was discouraged and quiet him when he grew imprudently angry. Boleslav had not worked much since his accident and was terribly poor; Rapaport, who had saved some money, had bought, among the provender for this trip, three large bars of bitter Swiss chocolate, and each evening, when the men had finished their work for the day, had walked to some isolated country place, had supped on bread, cheese, and milk, and were talking or singing songs, Rapaport took out a chocolate bar and cut a little mouthful for Winkler, Boleslav, and himself. This was a pleasant diurnal sensation: the stars emerging, crickets exclaiming—the hard, puckering square in the mouth. Then one evening—when less than one bar had so far been consumed—he unrolled the blanket and found the rest of the chocolate gone. He knew that the chocolate could not have fallen out of the roll; he had had a special way of folding it in. Rapaport suspected stupid Winkler; cheerfully that night Boleslav had asked: No ration this evening, Henryk?…Several months later, in Krakow—Rapaport had forgotten all about the episode on the road—a meeting of a strike committee was being held, and Rapaport was arguing against raising a strike fund from non-striking plants, on the ground that many of the workers, especially the Catholics, were growing rather resentful of the so-numerous strikes at that time; whereupon gentle little Boleslav had turned to him and said, with a sudden flicker of a sneer: What do you expect the strikers to live on—Jewish chocolate? Boleslav had asked this with such intensity that Rapaport had immediately absolved poor, slow-minded Winkler from the suspicion he had previously held….

And then, at the meeting on a back street in Praga nearly seven years later, the hand running through the hair (that was a new mannerism; Boleslav never had used to do that) and: The Chairman was quite explicit….]

The meeting was over. The inner door had opened; footsteps across the next room—two pairs; Comrade Boleslav and the Chairman standing finally in the news-encased room. Rapaport says the Chairman is an overpoweringly big man, with excessive hands and jaw; and with the mild, loose manner of such giants.

The Chairman, with a measure of cordiality: —— Rapaport! It’s good to see you.

Rapaport: —— It has been several months.

The Chairman, protesting, as if it were Rapaport’s fault: —— Months! Years, man!

Rapaport: —— Have you any news for me?

The Chairman, his manner becoming deprecatory: —— A terrible agenda today. We had one of the worst agendas I have ever seen. (He cleared his throat.) I regret to say that we did not reach the Jewish matter on the agenda.

Rapaport says he looked at Comrade Boleslav [FROM CONVERSATION. INSERT….The gentle, appealing tone: No ration this evening, Henryk?…], then back at the Chairman, and he burst out:

—— In other words…

The Chairman, raising his great, simian hand with surprising swiftness, and trying to placate: —— There are no other words, Comrade Henryk. Our agenda…

Rapaport, insisting: —— In other words, you, too, are against us.

The Chairman, with a heartbreaking look of sympathy, regret, and pity: —— My dear Comrade!

Rapaport turned and went out the door.