HER EARLY CHILDHOOD was of palaces and weddings, mother has told me. The central palace was inaccessible. It loomed behind guarded gates and a high fence that could be seen from the street in which she lived. Sometimes she was taken on strolls around the perimeter of the palace grounds. She would peer through gaps in the fence at the imposing edifice set far back within lush gardens. Nowadays the gates are always open, the buildings used as an academy of medicine. A path stretches several hundred metres to the palace doors. A framework of scaffolding grips the walls, and workmen stand on platforms from which they restore the crippled facades.
Count Jan Klemens Branitski had the palace built in 1763. At that time Polish nobility tended to look west for models to emulate. They aspired to the grandeur of its monarchies; the palace was designed in the style of Versailles, complete with gardens laid out in perfect symmetry. But whereas the West may have inspired dreams of imperial splendour, the East emanated the threat of imperial might and the brute strength of the descendants of Peter the Great. The eastern empire triumphed in 1815. The Bialystok coat of arms — a knight on a rearing horse, shield grasped in one hand, sword brandished high above the head in the other — was removed, and Branitski’s Versailles became known as the Czar’s palace. A succession of Romanovs stayed there with their entourages en route to hunting expeditions in the Bielowieza forests.
The weddings were somewhat more accessible. The Probutski family moved to Bialystok from the shtetl of Grodek in 1910. Mother was three years old at the time. Her new home was a timber cottage that stood in the grounds of the landlord’s solid brick mansion. Directly opposite was a reception hall where weddings were held day and night, a perpetual simche, a seemingly endless celebration. Bands of klesmorim played for hours at a time, and the melodies of their violins and flutes hovered over neighbouring streets and lanes. While the guests danced within, the Probutski children stood on tiptoe outside, to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom through the windows. We are talking of events that took place over eighty years ago. At such a distance memories streak like fireflies that flash brightly for a moment in the mind of my mother, before receding back into the darkness. The son is hungry for information, for any spark that might illuminate the beginning of things.
In a wooden shack next to the Probutski home, within the grounds of the landlord’s house on Ulitza Palacovej, there lives an elderly couple, Layser and Polina. When a buzzing sound is heard in the heavens on a midsummer’s day in 1914, Layser and Polina rush out into the yard to join the crowd that has rapidly assembled, not so much out of alarm as out of curiosity. Layser, a devout Hasid who sees the hand of God at work in everything, jumps with joy as he points up at the sky: ‘Look! A messenger from heaven! Could it be that the Messiah has come at long last?’ He embraces Polina while the Probutski children run wild, circling the crowd, squealing and laughing as they point to the iron eagles winging above. This is a grand spectacle, a commotion, a miracle, a riddle. And as the crowd gazes the eagles release their droppings, and the first bombs rain down on Bialystok.
Layser is lost in the smoke and confusion. ‘God is angry’, he cries. ‘We are not yet worthy of the Messiah.’ Polina takes hold of him by the ears and drags him from the yard. ‘Run, you old madman! This is no time for useless sermons!’
Everyone is running. The landlord has flung open the doors of his mansion; the crowd tumbles inside and descends to the cellar. Little Hershel, two years old, the last born of the nine Probutski children, sits on the cellar floor. With each explosion he claps his hands and exclaims: ‘Another bomb! Another bomb!’ This is a circus! A carnival! Bialystok has become a wild fairground, alight with fires and collapsing buildings.
A bomb grazes the Great Synagogue. A fragment streaks towards the roof where Zachariah, my father’s eldest brother, is leaping with excitement. Such a fireworks display demands the best of vantage points. Sheine Liberman has rounded up the younger children and shields them from the smoke and debris as they huddle against a wall. The buildings of Bialystok are swaying precariously. My father recalls to this day how the walls trembled while he hid behind his mother’s skirts, and he retains the clear image of a clock rattling and shaking above Sheine Liberman’s head, yet somehow remaining intact and secure.
The noise subsides; the iron eagles become a distant murmur. Sheine Liberman surveys her brood, and realises that her youngest daughter, Feigele, is missing. Bishke Zabludowski, who has been out on the streets by his news-stand under the town clock, is running homewards. As he nears the three-storey block of apartments he sees smoke billowing from the upper floor. The area has been cordoned off; the wounded and dead are being ferried away. A policeman stops the anxious Bishke. ‘My wife! My children!’, he remonstrates. ‘They are gone. All dead’, the policeman replies matter-of-factly. ‘There is nothing you can do.’
In later years, Bishke would often claim that, as a result of this incident, he knew what it would feel like to face a firing squad and live through a mock execution. It was several hours before he was able to determine that his family had survived. After a frantic search, Sheine Liberman had found Feigele on a lower floor, cowering in a corner, injured. Father recalls the name of the doctor, Rosenthal; when Feigele was taken to him for treatment, he greeted her with a warm smile and the remark, ‘Congratulations! You are the youngest among the wounded!’
For almost a year troops loyal to Czar Nicholas fought rearguard actions against the armies of Kaiser Wilhelm; between them, caught in the crossfire, were the 60 000 Jews and 20 000 Poles of Bialystok. Those who favoured the Russkis argued it was better to live with the devil one knew. Others preferred a German régime. After all, they had gotten on well enough with the German manufacturers who ran many of the larger textile plants. At least their language was similar to Yiddish, said the jokers: we would still know that a table is a table, and a chair a chair.
A growing number viewed the fierce battles as the death throes of the old order. Taking up the cry of 1905, they looked forward to an uprising of the proletariat and an end to all empires. The resurgent Polish nationalists put their faith in the legendary Pilsudski. The Orthodox gazed at the fiery heavens exploding with shrapnel, and proclaimed that the end of days was at hand and the prophesies of the ancient scriptures were about to be realised. But most of the populace scavenged for something to eat, and cast quick glances at the skies before ducking down into their primitive shelters. And with every explosion, little Hershel clapped his hands and exclaimed: Another bomb! Another bomb!’
Entire factories were packed away: machines, tools, materials, were crated and sent by rail towards the east. Those who could afford it piled their belongings into droshkes that conveyed them to the Bialystok station where they joined their travelling factories. As the Germans advanced, White Russian and Ukrainian peasants abandoned their fields and they too fled east, to seek refuge deep within the belly of their Czar’s ailing empire.
Field Marshal Hindenberg’s armies laid siege to Bialystok. The city was abandoned by the Russians and left in the hands of a Cossack army led by General Orlov. Leaders of the Jewish community hastily collected 4 000 roubles and delivered them to the General, for fear that otherwise he would allow his men to run wild on a pogrom and last-minute looting. Orlov took his troops out of the city on a Wednesday evening, in July 1915. Artillery continued to pound the outskirts of Bialystok. The station caught fire and burned, while the populace hid behind locked doors.
For a night Bialystok remained suspended between regimes, in a vacuum within which the echoes of incessant bombardment gradually subsided until, just before dawn, the shelling petered out into an uneasy silence. A restless populace waited and watched. ‘So, what’s new?’, the town jesters murmured. And, as was their custom, they composed a couplet for the occasion, the same one they had chanted throughout the ages, changing only the names of the leading actors:
One season leaves with the fire, another begins.
The Czar marches out, and the Kaiser moves in.
The first to arrive are the advance scouts, on motorcycles. They move cautiously along deserted streets to the clock-tower. Soon after, the infantry appear, bayonets fixed as they stride out in regiment upon regiment, led by commanders in armoured cars, cavalry on horseback, and artillery divisions wheeling cannons and tanks: a parade of thousands. Above them floats a massive Zeppelin, preceding a formation of aeroplanes. In the Zeppelin are Kaiser Wilhelm and Field Marshall Hindenberg — or so the rumour spreads, racing through the streets, filtering into cellars, garrets, and obscure courtyards, as slowly the besieged inhabitants emerge, blinking in the midmorning sun. They stare in awe at the great ship hovering above the clock-tower. Could it be? The Kaiser, no less? Looking down upon us?
The victorious troops hold aloft flags and regimental banners as they march to the rhythm of military bands. They seem benevolent in the first flush of triumph. Doors and gates are swung open with increasing confidence; the inhabitants of Bialystok swarm onto the streets, unleashed from their self-imposed exile. ‘Who knows? Perhaps this lot will be better than the last one that ruled us’, some of the more optimistic are saying. ‘A plague on all their houses’, mutter those whose memories are more ancient, and they spit on the ground.
But for the children this is a picnic. My father, then a boy of ten, runs with hordes of children after the soldiers, scuffling for the sweets they are throwing into the crowds. And mother, whenever I ask her to recall the day the Kaiser’s troops entered Bialystok, searches for a tune; it comes first as a humming, then glides into the words of a German marching song which resounded through the streets of the city on that July day:
When the soldiers into town come marching in
Girls open doors and windows to let them in.
Marching songs, sweets, flags and banners: the initial flush of a new order. But all too soon the reality of occupation was apparent. Even as the Kaiser’s war machine was being paraded through the streets, Field Marshall Von Galvitz was issuing the first orders. He sent for the chief rabbi, the head priest of the Russian Orthodox church, and the Catholic archbishop of Bialystok, and imposed a fine of three hundred thousand roubles on their congregations, for ‘bad conduct’. The city was cordoned off, movement strictly controlled, and special passes and identity cards introduced.
When the soldiers into town come marching in
Girls open doors and windows to let them in.
My father, the arch realist when it comes to talk of war, asks me, ‘What else could one do?’ When the soldiers came marching in, either you fled, assuming there was somewhere to flee to, or you opened up. The girls who opened up were called ‘sugar boxes’, he tells me. They were sent by pimps, go-betweens, even families who were desperate for something to eat. In return for sexual favours they received flour, salt, and sacks full of sugar. The pimps organised it well, father claims. It was a polite, well-run business. My father, a prince in the art of survival, rarely speaks of heroism when he discusses times of great upheaval. Instead, he focusses on the back alleys, the side-streets, the small-time wheeler-dealers who saw their families and friends through with a dash of cunning, a willingness to bend the knee, and much more than an ounce of luck. As for me, the deeper I journey into the terrain of his youth, the less judgemental I become, the less inclined to argue with him. And the arguments between us had been, at times, quite ferocious.
While a few may have profited, the bulk of the populace was consumed by hunger. Bishke Zabludowski could no longer sell newspapers. Reb Aron Yankev could only find occasional work in textile factories requisitioned to make uniforms for the occupying army. The family matriarchs quickly saw what was what, and took charge.
Sheine Liberman made regular trips to Polish villages in the surrounding countryside to barter safety-pins, needles, buttons, and salted herring for peas, potatoes, corn, and cucumbers. Father often accompanied her on these missions. For him they were great adventures. When he tells these stories he creates images of a small boy running beside his mother on errands of survival, through an autumnal countryside bathed in gold, through field and forest into villages with ramshackle peasant cottages.
‘Come in, come in’, the old widow beckoned. ‘You are welcome. Stay overnight. It’s getting dark. You can start back in the morning.’ She fed them borscht and toffee apples, and made up the beds. Sheine Liberman and her Meierke slept in the one big room with the old widow, her son, and daughter-in-law; and, late at night, father heard for the first time the sounds of love-making. He could just make out the movements of the bodies in the darkness, against the faintest outline of wooden crucifixes, dangling from the walls, in mute submission to the instinctive ways of the world.
Sometimes, however, their trips could end on a bitter note. Gangs of bandits roamed the forests. They would attack and, with a few deft kicks and punches, seize Sheine’s food and trinkets, and run off with the loot. And even though many of Sheine’s missions were fruitful, gold turned eventually to snow, cool breezes to biting winds, and autumnal romances to the brute reality of desperate winters.
As for Chane Esther Probutski, she surveyed the ice-laden streets of the city and decided upon a more radical course of action. With her customary precision she packed a wagon with bedding and furniture, and set out with her children, under the cover of a stormy night, towards the east, to a shtetl called Grodek.