8

Vladek

I want to tell you about Vladek, one of Yusef the janitor’s boys. Yusef was a goy who drank constantly and hit his wife and children whenever he felt like it. His son Vladek wasn’t safe at home, so he grew up with us. The cellar where they lived was always dark. Yusef’s wife had something on the boil all day long—either wash or cabbage. The steam only let up a little in the evenings.

Vladek hung out with us, the courtyard children. He didn’t do too badly. Sometimes he got a piece of challah, other times a bit of buckwheat kugel—whatever one of our mothers had shoved into our hands. We didn’t have much ourselves. The courtyard was full of poor, barefoot people, one poorer than the next. Seremetinke, the owner of the courtyard, was always fighting with his tenants about rent money. He was hardly a rich man himself.

When we were young, Vladek had somewhere to go. But when we got bigger, we were sent to a Talmud Torah, the Toras Emes School. Vladek was miserable. He had nothing to eat and no one to play with. In the afternoons, he stood watch, waiting for us to return.

We didn’t walk to Toras Emes, we ran. They handed out American milk and wheat dumplings. We played cops and robbers in the large courtyard. No one pushed us very hard to study. Our teacher, Mr. Gershovitsh, knew who he was dealing with, so he gave up without a struggle. Tevke the Tapeworm, Orke the Lucky Seven, and Shmuel the Organ Grinder’s Twin sat in the first row. They were already thugs by then. We had another teacher, the tiny Miss Funk, one of the daughters from Funk’s bookstore. We called her by her first name, Chana-Bashka. She tried teaching us at first, but eventually she also let go of the reins.

Figure 2. “Vladek wasn’t safe at home, so he grew up with us.” By Yosl Bergner from Avrom Karpinovitsh, Baym Vilner durkhhoyf (Tel Aviv: I. L. Peretz, 1967). Courtesy of the artist.

If it hadn’t been for the principal, Mr. Ayzikov, we would have looted the entire Talmud Torah, brick by brick. He barely talked to us but just gave us a look. Even if we were rolling on the ground and grabbing each other by the throat, one look from him was enough to send us crawling into the corners like wild animals in a circus. We sat quietly during his lessons. Sometimes he’d walk between the benches and stroke one of our heads, something that never happened at home. If we, hooligans that we were, left the school knowing how to write a letter from prison or give an accounting to a fence, we had only our teacher Mr. Ayzikov to thank.

Once Vladek asked his father to send him to school. Yusef was drunk. He beat Vladek badly and chased him out of the cellar. The only thing the janitor cared about was his bottle of whiskey. Vladek got tired of wandering around the courtyard on his own, so he started following us to the Talmud Torah in the mornings. One recess, Mr. Ayzikov noticed him and asked him what he was doing there. Vladek explained. Mr. Ayzikov was surprised to hear him speaking Yiddish. He told the other teachers to give him food along with the other children. Tevke started smuggling Vladek into class. Mr. Gershovitsh was ill and Chana-Bashka had no idea what to say. She was afraid if she walked through the classroom, one of us would grab the front of her dress. I got a pencil stub and a piece of paper for Vladek and he learned the alef-beys with the rest of us.

And so we grew up and went off, some earlier, some later. Every person at home was an extra mouth to feed. Lots of families didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. The courtyard was in constant turmoil. Yusef died from drinking, and people started chopping up the bannisters to heat their ovens during the winter. Even Seremetinke stopped coming around to inspect his property. There was a brawl in the courtyard every single day.

We boys spread out through the city trying to find a way to earn a few groschen. Some of us managed to organize something. Zevke the Little Mirror started selling the Ovnt-Kurier newspaper. Shmuel, the Organ Grinder’s elder son, had a good voice, so he sang and begged for money. One of the coachmen hired Tevke the Tapeworm. Vladek and I wrenched copper doorknobs off expensive doors and sold them for scrap. Before that, we’d tried working on the freight cars on Bunimovitsh’s branch line going into Kinkulkin’s mill, but it didn’t pan out. One day there was work and ten days, nothing.

And so we got drawn into the profession. We stopped coming home to sleep. No one really cared. My father was ashamed of me. Even though our neighborhood was swarming with criminals, he never had anything to do with them. He collected rags for the Olkeniker paper factory until the day he died and never took so much as a thread for himself. My father even told my mother not to take money from me, but what choice did she have? Aside from letting her children go hungry. Vladek also used to toss a little something into the cellar. He wasn’t a bad sheygetz.

Life went on. Before long, we’d served a few long sentences in Lukishke prison. I lost touch with Vladek a few times. He tried settling down outside the city. The life of a criminal just wasn’t for him. Prison was really hard on him. As for me, after my last year in the clink, I also started to hate that life.

When people took off for the Soviet Union, I went looking for Vladek and said, “Let’s go. We’ll start over, get some training and live an honest life.” Vladek was enthusiastic. We went to Hirshke the Canary, who took people across the border. Ten of us crossed into the Soviet Union at Radoshkovich. There was a long red banner with the words “A New Life Awaits You” hanging from the military outpost in Zaslov.

They took us to the Minsk prison. There was a famine in Russia and people were starving to death. In jail, we lived on two hundred grams of bread a day. We whittled pieces of wood from the bed planks for cigarettes. At that point, Lukishke was looking pretty good as far as prisons went. Vladek was going under. He didn’t have the strength to stand up.

It was quite the new life. They interrogated us, hitting us everywhere. We told the truth: who we were and what we wanted. The officials wrote and erased. At one point, they took a group of detainees and ordered us into formation and onto a train. We had no idea where the train was taking us until the last minute. In the middle of the night, they ordered us to leave the heated freight car and told us they were sending us back to Poland. If we wanted a lighter sentence, we should tell the Polish border guard we were getting ready to cross into Russia. The Russian official told us we were being sent back to set up a Soviet government in Poland. In Mołodeczno we were convicted of trying to cross the border. We got off with a few months.

I want to talk about Vladek. We returned from Mołodeczno in rags, without a groschen. Vladek was so weak, he could barely speak. He went to stay with distant relatives in one of the villages to regain his strength. I asked Itsik the Buckwheat Pudding if I could keep score in the pool hall. It was a way to survive, at least in the short term. I got drawn into the world of the pool hall. There was no difference between day and night. Everything went by in a fog.

A good few months passed. One day the door of the pool hall opened and in walked Vladek, looking well fed and wearing a nice suit. He didn’t rush over and throw his arms around me. He played a few games and then asked if I wanted to go to Velfke’s restaurant with him for some liver with kishke.

Vladek was looking good. In our trade, you don’t ask a person how they got their money; you wait to be told. But I was miserable and wanted out of the pool hall. So I broke the rule and asked Vladek if he’d snagged a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity or if he could bring a partner into the business. Vladek laughed so hard the glasses on the table shook. I was looking straight at him, but I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. When he calmed down a little, he said, “It’s a business all right, but not for you.”

I was insulted. “What do you mean, not for me? Haven’t we broken enough locks together? You doubt my skill?”

“Well,” he answered, “if you’re ready to picket Khanovitsh’s ready-made clothing shop and make sure no goyim enter, then okay.”

I couldn’t believe it. “You? You’ve joined those hooligans? Do you realize they don’t let Jews walk the streets?”

“We tell them not to carry sticks. Anyway, I do other things.”

I got up from the table. Vladek called after me, “I’m done with being a criminal. No more jail for me.”

Jewish students were being beaten up at Vilna University. And the anti-Semites hired guards to stand outside Jewish shops and stop Christian customers from entering. The threat of violence hung over the city and here Vladek was part of it.

I made for the exit. Here I’d thought he’d offered me whiskey to celebrate his success with a cashbox. But drinking to the money he was earning now? I left the restaurant without looking back.

To this very day, I don’t understand what was going on with Vladek at that time. The sheygetz was raised in a Jewish courtyard. He knew the alefbeys as well as any of us. So well in fact that Zelik the Benefactor, a trustee for the small prison synagogue, once tried to include Vladek in a prayer minyan for a yortzayt service. I’d recruited Vladek into the profession and made something of him. And after all that, he went and joined the hooligans, the students with foxtails on their caps who beat up Jews. Had the Minsk prison broken his spirit? Quite possibly. After all, there were plenty of ways to earn money at that time. Mitsken was putting people to sleep on the trains and needed a helper to steal their suitcases. Handsome Mishke was looking for someone to travel to the fairs with him and sell fake lottery tickets. Vladek could have had any one of those jobs. He had a good reputation with us. But the gangsters decided the wolf had gone into the forest, and that was that.

I’d grown up with Vladek and knew him better than anyone. I remembered when we were boys and went swimming at the French mill. When the village louts attacked, Vladek was the first to grab a brick, even though they kept yelling they weren’t after him.

The situation with Vladek really bothered me. I waited for an opportunity to talk to him. I knew the guys wanted to knife him. They said it was a short road from picketing to informing. I had to warn him. After all, he was no stranger.

The goons from the student associations used to sit in Sztral’s Café. Behind the café there was a pool hall, one of the best in the city. That’s where the party underlings, guys who earned their money breaking windows or causing a ruckus on market days, hung out. I knew Vladek spent his evenings there. I went to Sztral’s, but I didn’t go in. I didn’t want the goyim to pick a fight with me and for Vladek to get pulled in. I asked Yane the Scorekeeper to tell Vladek I was waiting outside for him.

I remember our meeting like it was yesterday. It was a summer night. We sat on the grass next to the Viliye. The guys who pulled logs out of the water were baking potatoes on campfires at the river’s edge. Some of the light from the fire reached us, and I saw Vladek’s swollen face. He looked like he’d started drinking heavily. For a moment I thought about his father, our courtyard, and our childhood. I wanted to say something, to scold him like a younger brother and tell him to give up the whiskey, but before I could say a word, he stood up and said, “So, you want to pull a heist?”

I felt like he’d doused me with cold water. Can you believe it? Yusef’s son Vladek had become honest and I was just a thief with nothing on my mind but breaking into a stranger’s shop in the dead of night. Vladek obviously thought he was better than me, so who was I to tell him how to live his life? I just warned him that the guys were watching him. They’d figured him for an informer.

Vladek flew into a rage. He grabbed at his chest. “Let them stab me. Just let them, those dirty dogs. If it wasn’t for me, Zevulin the Peach would have rotted away in Lukishke.”

There was a story going around about Zevulin the Peach. He’d been a big shot in the gangster’s organization, the Golden Flag, and some of the guys had questioned his authority. An argument broke out and Zevulin thrashed a few of them. He’d had to get out of Vilna quickly. Someone had definitely helped him get papers. Now Vladek was telling me he’d had a hand in it.

Vladek was standing with his face to the river, breathing heavily. I put a hand on his shoulder, “Vladek, maybe we’re destined to be criminals. There are people like that.”

“No. Not me. They promised me, when they take power, they’ll give me a job on the trains. I want to work. I want to be like other people.”

In the time I’d known Vladek, he’d never been a big-time crook. A real criminal loves the trade and the risks that come with it, but that just wasn’t in Vladek’s blood. He’d dreamt of becoming a machinist all his life. They’d promised him exactly that, so he was doing their bidding. Meanwhile his bosses were happy to look for Jewish children in the streets to crack their heads open.

Me and the other guys couldn’t just do nothing. We walked around with knives, and blood flowed. I let it be known that Vladek had helped Zevulin. His good deeds protected him. Otherwise the guys would have gone after him. Vladek stopped coming into our territory. He and I grew apart.

The war broke out. People scattered in every direction. The year the Soviets were stationed in Vilna wasn’t too bad at all. They harassed the rich but left everyone else alone. Almost everyone who was arrested and sent to Siberia returned after the war. When they were taken from their homes, everyone in Vilna was in tears except for Tsalel the Nose, who owned the big clothing store. He stood between two soldiers on a military truck, waving his cap and yelling, “Good luck, my fellow Jews. Soon you’ll envy me.”

A few of our guys found good work for themselves. Peretz the Diamond became the superintendent of the covered markets and Osherke the Bootmaker, a tannery manager. I could have gotten myself a job, but the trade in watches was brisk and guys were raking it in. I decided to stick with the watches for the time being. I didn’t see Vladek in the city. I figured he was scared and lying low until things calmed down.

The celebration didn’t last long. The Germans appeared in the city one fine morning. All year long, the Russians had bragged that if war broke out, they’d make mincemeat of their enemies. They had us convinced. And then suddenly there were Germans on Yatkever Street.

The Germans started grabbing people and taking them to Ponar. Everyone was stunned. We weren’t used to violence like that. Even the gangsters were rattled. Our leaders were gone. There was no one to tell us what to do. People in the streets kept telling each other that things would change. They did change. They shoved all of us into three streets enclosed by a high fence. The Germans created a ghetto.

As luck would have it, I was already living on Shavelske Street with my Freydke, so I stayed in my apartment. Shavelske was part of the ghetto. They rounded up all the Jews from the other streets. They just stood on the cobblestones. I went down to the courtyard and saw Mr. Ayzikov with a bundle in his hand, staring at the sky. Of course, I took him and his wife up to my apartment. I gave them a room and informed Freydke that we would share everything.

Everyone in the ghetto worried about rustling up a crust of bread. Some people cozied up to the chimney sweeps—that trade was as good as gold. The sweeps moved freely through the city, so it was easier for them to find a little something to eat.

I was in bad shape in the ghetto. My mood was bad. The guys suggested I set up a table at my place with a slit in the boards to hide marked cards. I could lure in stiffs with money and cheat them at rummy. But I was no longer the same guy. The ghetto had broken me. I was also concerned about Mr. Ayzikov. I joined a brigade and went to work at the Poribaniker airfield.

In two roundups, everyone close to me was sent to Ponar. It was just me and Mr. Ayzikov left. His wife was sent to Ponar. He’d been in the ghetto hospital during the roundups, and the doctors kept him hidden. When people ask me how I managed to avoid death, I don’t know what to say. Intelligence made no difference in that situation. Everyone played a stupid game of blackjack with their life and took whatever blind luck doled out.

Suddenly the apartment felt too big. I asked Tevke the Tapeworm to join us so I wouldn’t feel so lonely. He was also alone.

One evening the three of us were sitting together, sharing a few smuggled potatoes, when Mr. Ayzikov said, “Children, you’ve got to get out of the ghetto. The Germans are going to kill us all.”

Continuing to peal his potato, Tevke the Tapeworm asked, “What are you talking about? Where can we go? The Germans are everywhere. Things in the ghetto aren’t so bad—we can still get by.”

With the patience he developed over years of teaching, Mr. Ayzikov explained, “Tevele, the Germans are going to murder every single one of us. They’ve confined us in the ghetto to make it easier.”

Mr. Ayzikov had been sitting all bent over. Suddenly he straightened up and began speaking harshly, almost shouting. “I’m telling you to escape! Fight back! Take revenge!” He was breathing heavily. Tevke and I sat there completely dumbfounded. We didn’t dare say a word.

After he calmed down a little, Mr. Ayzikov walked over to his bed. He hoisted the mattress, took out a little pouch, and gave it to us. “Here’s my wife’s fortune—a few gold ten-ruble coins. To help you on your journey. If either of you survive the war, go see my son in Palestine. You’ll find his address at the bottom of the pouch. Tell him that his father, the Jewish teacher, ordered his students to fight back. Don’t forget to tell him.”

Then Mr. Ayzikov stopped talking and buried his grey head in his hands. We found him dead a few days later. He’d poisoned himself. Life in the ghetto was hard for a gentleman like him, especially when he was on his own.

It was easy for Mr. Ayzikov to say, “Fight back.” It’s true that people were leaving the ghetto, but to get to Belarus. There was a rumor that things were calm there. Anyone with money made a deal with some wheeler-dealer and they went. The whole thing didn’t appeal to me. I found out that Kozshik Stankevitsh was running the show. They’d called him Kozshik the Scythe in the pool hall because he held his stick on the oblique. In the good years, he couldn’t go near the pool table until he put his money down. And now he was the big savior. We found out later what happened to the transports.

I started to think about Vladek. Maybe he could help me. After all, we’d once been like family. We’d grown up together and spent years in the same cell. Been through good and bad together. Had he forgotten everything? Was he watching the massacres and drinking whiskey with the Germans? Maybe. In times like that, anything was possible.

My fears were eating away at me. Eventually I said to myself, “What do I have to lose? If he helps me get where I need to go, good. If not, I’ll wash my hands of him and live with whatever God sends my way.”

In the meantime, Tevke and I got into an argument. He asked me for a few ten-ruble coins to play cards. Four-eyed Estherke had opened a gambling joint and was taking stakes. Tevke said she had a room full of suckers just waiting to be taken for everything they were worth. Of course I didn’t give him anything. That money meant a lot to me. I’d stuck it under a beam in the attic and every night, when I shoved my hand into the crack to check if it was still there, the satin pouch stroked my fingers like it was alive. It felt like Mr. Ayzikov’s order to leave the ghetto and fight the Germans was pulsing between the coins. Tevke said he was a full partner. I told him if he came with me, he’d get half. He was angry and went to help Esther with her business. He tried convincing me that it made no sense to escape and look for death. As if we had to go looking when everyone was carrying death on their shoulders. But what did Tevke know? He had a glass of whisky in one hand, a playing card in the other, and he’d even snagged a caress or two from Estherke. What else did he need?

I began to really look for Vladek. I asked everyone who worked in the city to find out what they could about him. One day Osherke the Chimney Sweep had news for me. He’d seen Vladek near the post office lugging sacks of mail. I told him to let Vladek know I needed him. Osherke was afraid. I couldn’t blame him, but I was determined. I reminded him that he owed me something.

Osherke showed up two days later, looking very pleased with himself. He took some cream cheese from his bucket, scraped off the coal dust, put it on a piece of bread, and handed it to me. Then he told me he’d managed to see Vladek and have a few words with him.

A week went by and Vladek didn’t show. Whenever I returned from work, I craned my head in every direction. Maybe Vladek was lurking beyond some corner. I started to think Osherke had conned me about Vladek and brought the cheese to be done with the whole business.

In Lukishke prison, I’d once hatched a plan to saw one of the bars in two, but here in the ghetto I was at a complete loss. I’d given up. I felt I was betraying Mr. Ayzikov, and that really bothered me.

Vladek finally showed up. When I’d given up all hope of ever seeing him, he walked into the ghetto with a municipal work brigade so he could speak to me. I remember every detail of our meeting. I was sitting at the table, sunk in my depression, when the door opened and in walked Vladek. He had a determined look on his face—his jaws were working. I stood up and walked over to him. He put his arms around me. We hugged each other for several minutes without saying a word. Then he walked away and dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief. Finally he said, “Okay, so here we are.”

I got to the point immediately. “Vladek, I want to leave the ghetto. If you can’t or don’t want to help me, there’s no point staying.”

Vladek got angry. “You think I risked my life coming here to listen to that? Sit down. Tell me everything.”

“First you have to promise you’ll help me.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“What can I say? You turned against us in the good years. What should I think now that your people are close relatives at the big celebration?”

Banging his fist on the table, Vladek yelled, “Shut up.” He stood up, grabbed me by the lapels and hissed through clenched jaws, “We didn’t ask the Germans to come.” Then he stepped back and spoke in a calmer voice, “Those animals will die. Things will change. Everything has become clear.”

I told him what was happening. When I mentioned Mr. Ayzikov, he shook his head and muttered to himself, “He was a decent guy. Looked out for me in those years.”

We agreed that he’d wait for me three days later, next to the Ostra Broma Chapel. He’d show me when it was time to follow him by kneeling and crossing himself in front of the religious icon above the entrance gate. I gave him a few pieces of gold to get me a revolver and some bullets. We agreed he’d take me to his mother, Yusef’s widow. She was staying with relatives in a little village. From there, it wasn’t far to the forest.

The day I left the ghetto, Vilna was radiant. Summer had arrived. There were green leaves on the trees on both sides of the street, just like in other years. It was the first time I’d gone anywhere without the yellow patch. I felt like everyone was looking straight at me, thinking they were seeing things. I swallowed my fear and walked to the Ostra Brama Chapel dressed up in my Shabbes suit with Mr. Ayzikov’s pouch sewn into my belt.

Vladek was standing with a group of men and women, praying silently. I walked over to one of the church pillars and stared at the picture of Mary with her child. The colorful ribbons hanging from the gilded frame made me dizzy. I waited for Vladek to kneel and cross himself. The ten minutes I stood there felt like a year. I was terrified. The ribbons looked like huge red tongues, dancing wildly. I found myself babbling, “God, have mercy. Show me a miracle.” Just then Vladek got down on one knee.

The crowd turned their attention to God. Vladek saw me. For a second our eyes met. I waited for him to walk further and then I followed him. We left the city.

Vladek didn’t live to see liberation. So many years have passed, but his cries still ring in my ears, “Berke, antloyf. Get going.” He was lying in the street covered in blood, but still he yelled. From a distance, he’d seen the two Gestapo soldiers arrest me at the edge of Ruzele to take me back to the city. Another person would have pretended he’d seen nothing and kept going. But Vladek turned back to shoot at them. For a moment they didn’t know what was happening. Vladek mowed one of them down, but the second soldier released a volley from his automatic. Meanwhile I ran back and forth in zigzags through a potato field.

After the war, I learned that Vladek had set up a Polish organization in the post office to pocket important letters. I don’t know why he didn’t tell me when he came to the ghetto. Maybe he’d been sworn to silence.

I gave Mr. Ayzikov’s letter to his son in Palestine. The gold helped me get weapons in the forest. I never saw Yusef’s widow. To tell the truth, I didn’t look very hard for her. I wouldn’t have been able to tell her that her son died because of me.