EVENTS NOVEMBER 5, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. N.L. On a pick-up round, this morning, one of the delivery boys in the Judenrat building told me that a package had just arrived for Secretary Mandeltort by registered mail from Berlin. Hearing this report six months ago, I would have been mildly dismayed by the poverty of the office boys’ gossip; today, I got up and went directly up to the third floor, to Felix’s office. When I reached it, there were already several people around the Secretary’s desk, including the Chairman, Engineer Grossmann, himself.
Felix, as I entered the office: —— There are fifty-four.
N.L., to one of the men near the desk: —— Fifty-four what?
This man: —— Certificates for emigration to Palestine.
Felix, seeing me press forward: —— Look, Noach! Approved by the British. Validated in Berlin. (The Secretary’s face was glowing.) Fifty-four lives.
N.L.: —— But how many are in the names of people who are still alive?
Felix: —— That’s different. Let’s go through them and see.
And so Mandeltort began reading off the names, one by one, and the people around his desk would say, Deported, or, Alive, as the case might be. There were about twenty names that no one recognized; we checked them later as best we could against the records of the Vital Statistics and Labor Departments, and we also asked around the Judenrat building; and finally we narrowed down the unaccounted list to seven. By this time it had been established that of the fifty-four certificates issued, only twelve were in the names of people who were still living and could be found. Engineer Grossmann went this afternoon to Commissioner Haensch at the Brühl Palace and asked whether it would be possible to substitute new names for those of men and women definitely deported, and to the surprise of everyone, Haensch said he would authorize the departure of twenty-one Jews to Palestine, and if substitutions would be necessary, in order to fill that quota, he would approve them. Engineer Grossmann immediately called a meeting of the Judenrat in order to select the nine “personalities” to be given the extra certificates. The certificates were offered first to the department heads of the Judenrat, and they were accepted promptly by Fostel of Taxation and Revenue, Kohn of Sanitation, Murin of Auditing, and Zadkin of Supply. It was then the turn of the secretariat, and Engineer Grossmann said:
—— Mandeltort?
Felix, shaking his head: —— No, thank you.
It can be imagined that this refusal made us all catch our breaths. Engineer Grossmann addressed Mandeltort as if the Secretary’s had been a rather naughty reply:
—— After all, the package of certificates was addressed to you in the first place.
But I could see that Felix had his mind made up. He looked straight at the Chairman, and said:
—— No. I think I will stay here in Warsaw.
EVENTS NOVEMBER 7, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. N.L….At any rate, the whole question of the Palestinian certificates is now academic, since Haensch has told us that action on them must be postponed a few days: we know what that means. The only substantial residue of the hope-lifting, hope-dashing episode is our new respect for Felix Mandeltort, engendered by his quiet announcement that he preferred to stay here in Warsaw.
After that first day, I had to laugh at my alacrity in rushing up to Felix’s office simply because an office messenger had told me of the arrival of a registered parcel from Berlin. Actually, of course, that reaction had a perfectly sound foundation. I must have had at the back of my mind the report given at the meeting of surviving Judenrat department heads, only a few days ago, by the chief of the Postal Department, comparing traffic in the Post Office on the single day of July 21, the day before the deportations began, with that on October 20, the day, it happens, when the Z.O.B. was formed. On July 21, according to my notes on that report, 2,446 food packages arrived in the ghetto Post Office; on October 20, eight arrived. The figures on cables, money orders, foreign postcards, registered letters, and ordinary letters reflected in the same way the disruption of our contact with the outside world as a result of the deportations. It was as if the wall around us had grown immensely higher. Altogether, 11,813 pieces arrived on July 21; by October 20, when the wall had gone up skyward, only 688 arrived. And very few of the latter, of course, could be delivered. Was it any wonder, then, that I jumped up in a silly way and ran upstairs when that sallow messenger told me about a registered parcel that had come to my friend straight from the adders’ nest?
How Felix’s face shone as he leafed through the certificates! One would have thought he had dreamt all his life of the hill of Zion. I have not seen such beatitude here for months. My reminder that not all the certified persons were alive seemed to strike him as being in rather bad taste. He really had been transported by those certificates. Then, over the next few hours, as it became clear how few had survived long enough to make use of those ironic documents, and especially when it turned out that, as usual, the officials of the Judenrat were going to divide the windfallen fruits among themselves, I saw Felix hardening up to his decision. And when he delivered it, he did it with grace and humility, not making it a better-than-thou drama, but only uttering the choice as for himself.
Until this decision—and I include his determination to join the underground—I have regarded most of Felix’s choices either as expiation for, or as confirmation of, his weakness in getting involved in smuggling; or, for that matter, in getting involved in the Judenrat to begin with. This was bigger than that. Felix is calm again, and he is less pompous and more natural than he has ever been in public. He acts as if his late family were standing around him, just back of him, near enough to whisper in his ear, all the time. I have recorded the deep impression the Zweinarcz murder made on him; that must have been part of this same, final process. Felix is now a man who knows himself. He knows what it means to be a Jew in Warsaw at the present time. He is, in short, perfectly awake. He is steady and even seems fortunate compared with some of our anxious people. For the first time since I made his acquaintance, his first name, which is Latin for “happy,” fits him.