Chapter 5 – Aron: A Chance to Do Good

To: Samuel Katz

Lukiskes Prison

Vilnius, Lithuania

~~~

My Dearest Brother,

I received a short note yesterday from Danuta informing me of your incarceration in Vilnius. If I only had your words, I could perhaps better express the heavy angst that has settled in the pit of my stomach since I heard. Alas, you are the writer in the family.

All I can say, Samuel, is that I dearly hope the brotherly embrace of this letter reaches you. I most sincerely pray it finds you in good health and spirits. Despite our distance, you are always in my heart, as you and our parents were since the day I left for Palestine so long ago. If this missive has been sadly uncommunicated by me over the years, it does not, has never, nor will ever alter its veracity.

Danuta mentioned nothing of the circumstances surrounding your arrest, nor when she expects them to release you. All I received was the address to which I now write. If you can perhaps enlighten me as to where you are and what has happened, perhaps I can somehow be of assistance? The Bank does have Lithuanian dealings, and perhaps I could prevail upon my superiors to attempt to use their connections to somehow ease your plight.

My powerlessness to help you, little brother, threatens my sanity. I was a poor sibling to you since long before I left—you then but a child of 13, and I myself barely more adult at 18. Please know that I had only the deepest, most pressingly personal and sincerely ideological reasons for doing so, and don’t resent my actions—selfish and misguided though they have turned out to be.

I know so little of your life, nor you of mine—which is my own fault, of course. Since I cannot ask you the questions I’d like, I will share with you something of my own life, here in Tel Aviv. My hands shake even now, almost a week later, as I recollect it.

I still have a copy of Davar from September 9 in front me—a full week ago, which might as well be an eternity! The headline is “Quiet in the Mediterranean won’t Last.” How right Katzenelson, the editor-in-chief, was! I bought the paper that morning, and by the evening, our quiet Tel Aviv, this island of tranquility in the storm enveloping the world, had changed immeasurably.

It was Tuesday afternoon, and the summer heat had not yet left Tel Aviv. I stood in a line on Bugrashov Street, near the intersection with King George, having left work at the bank early that day. A neighbor had telephoned me in my office to tell me that they were finally distributing kerosene on our street. I’d had none for cooking the whole week previously, so I rushed home to gather my flimsy (what the British call the four-gallon cans we all use for kerosene, since they are so poorly made) and queued up behind the horse-drawn cart. I was chatting amicably to my neighbor, Mrs. Lowenstein, whose affability I have appreciated since I first moved to my flat. How odd it still is to write those words! Me, a homeowner in Tel Aviv. Yet they remain blessedly accurate, despite everything.

I remember thinking how unusual it was to hear any airplane noise, especially given that the British had just closed the Tel Aviv Airport, which was located not far from here, north of the Yarkon River. I saw the five planes come in from the direction of the sea, and noted that they weren’t the usual Palestine Airways de Havillands. Their noise faded as they turned north, and I went back to chatting with Mrs. Lowenstein.

I knew something was wrong when I suddenly heard the engines, much closer now, approaching from the East. Before we realized what was happening, they were upon us, huge and moving so quickly. The first swooped down like some prehistoric bird god, and from its belly burst a flood of... paper. Yes, paper! The plane dropped thousands of pieces of paper, which floated gently down from the sky like misshapen snowflakes. The writing was, oddly, in Arabic. I recall feeling relief so immense that I could not help but silently grin in puzzlement to Mrs. Lowenstein and the others in the line. Someone towards the back of the line began translating loudly. All I heard was “...you will recover ownership and freedom of your land with Italian assistance!” I had no time to consider the possible meaning of these words, because the second plane was upon us.

This plane did not drop paper.

What I saw—what I still see now, brother—is something that no one should ever see. I saw Mrs. Lowenstein’s legs—which had held her in conversation with me just seconds before. I couldn’t understand because they were twitching by the kerosene cart, which had tipped over, whereas she was calling to me from across the street. And I heard a roaring in my head, not through my ears, but actually in my head. When I covered my ears, it only got louder. I didn’t hear screaming, but I did see the kerosene cart horse, which lay on top of the kerosene seller, who was moving his mouth as if screaming. I couldn’t hear him, and I tried to move, but something was on top of me, and it wasn’t a piece of meat. It was the body of the man who was just behind me in the line for kerosene. I knew this because I recognized his red suspenders, but he had no arms. My head was still roaring, and there was SO MUCH BLOOD...

Of course, I never sent this letter. I crumpled it and threw it into the waste bin. Then I retrieved it, smoothed it carefully, and burned it over the sink in my small kitchen.

I did write a letter to Samuel, in which I expressed concern and empathy. The words I wrote were exactly what one might expect a remote—some would say estranged—older brother to write. Correct. Sympathetic. I vaguely offered assistance that both sender and recipient knew I would proffer only in correspondence.

I stood with the stamped airmail envelope clutched in one hand, hesitating in front of the red Royal Mail pillar box at the corner of my oddly-named street, Buki Ben Yagli. It was the name of the biblical head of the Dan tribe, but more recently the penname of the Russian-Jewish author Yehuda Katzenelson—no relation to the editor of Davar. I’d taken the time to learn this before buying the flat at number 8 three years previously, because I realized this would be more than just a place to rest my head. At the unusually young age of twenty-five, after arriving nearly destitute in British Mandatory Palestine just seven years previously, I was purchasing a home in the very center of what would become the collective home of the entire Jewish people. It was a moment worthy of thorough consideration.

I slipped the tip of the envelope into the mail slot, but kept one edge tightly pinched between forefinger and thumb.

Over the course of a lifetime, everyone embraces and rejects their past in equal measures. Maturity is the acceptance of the past, whereas youth is defined by its rejection.

I was, I feared, still young in this respect. Perhaps I would remain so forever. Yet even as part of me denied connection to my family in the galut, the diaspora, I still longed for the comfort of a home built for me, not by me. Now that I had the latter, the former seemed as precious as it was unobtainable. This, I understood, was why I composed letters to Samuel that I would never send, and instead sent letters that I reviled.

Still not releasing the letter, I looked up Bugrashov Street. Municipal workmen filled in the bomb craters. There had been fifty-six of them—bombs, not craters—according to Davar, each weighing 100 kilos. One hundred thirty men, women, and children had died—Arabs, Jews, and one Australian soldier. They’d driven the coffins from the Hadassah Balfour hospital on the backs of trucks, to the Nahalat Yitzchak cemetery, where they would simultaneously inter them in a mass grave. A mutely disbelieving populace—myself included—had lined the streets, silently watching the endless line of vehicles pass by.

Still I stood, unable to let go of the letter that said nothing of what I felt. Like the coffins I’d watched go by, I’d buried my feelings for my family en masse—too deeply, I worried, ever to exhume. The farther I reached my hand into the cookie jar of my emotions, the more elusive the crumbs at the bottom became.

On both sides of the street, workmen dotted rickety scaffoldings, busily replacing windows and shutters, and filling in shrapnel pockmarks. The surface of these walls would be smooth, I thought, but their underlying structure would carry the scars of the attack as long as they stood, as would I.

My hearing had improved slightly already. The doctor had told me that the deafness was only temporary, although the high-pitched tinnitus seemed likely to become my permanent auditory companion. Other than a few bruises, I remained otherwise—perhaps miraculously, perhaps unjustifiably—unhurt. I kept asking myself one simple question: Why?

Haifa had been bombed just the day before, and London the day before that—the first salvo in what people were already calling the Blitz of London. The Haifa port and the terminus of the Iraq-Haifa pipeline were strategic targets, so they made some sense in all the senselessness. But why Tel Aviv? Why waste bombs on a city with no military value whatsoever?

It was a mistake, or so the quasi-official, ever-reliable Tel Aviv rumor machine reported. The Italian bombers had originally targeted Haifa, but were chased off by British fighters, and rerouted to the Jaffa port. That the Italian pilots didn’t manage to find this clear coastline location would be laughable if not for the deadly outcome of their callous incompetence.

A car horn blared behind me, and I started. The envelope—clutched precariously with only the very tips of my fingers—slipped free. It slithered, as if of its own volition, into the letter slot, absolving me of responsibility for its demise.

I nodded curtly in inward self-comfort, putting the message to the remnants of my old home behind me, and turning back toward the new.

I’d been out of the office for a week already. It was time to return, yet I stood rigidly in front of the building on the corner of Ben Yehuda and Gordon, long enough to draw curious looks from several co-workers as they streamed in around me.

Two secretaries leaned in conspiratorially, assuming they were out of earshot, and whispered, “He was there, at the bombing.”

My eyes were bleary from nights of restless sleep, from which I had frequently awakened, the memories and sweat of nightmares languidly evaporating from my skin with the assistance of my brand new Westinghouse electric fan. I stood on the entrance stairs, closed my eyes again, and tried vainly to rub the sleepiness away. What I saw behind my lids—what I’d been seeing every time I closed my eyes since the bombing—were Mrs. Lowenstein’s twitching legs.

I rubbed a hand through my hair, and straightened, feeling the muscles in my back tighten with resolve. “This is the undertow,” my father’s voice said from somewhere deep within. “And when you’re caught in an undertow, you don’t fight. You ride it to wherever it takes you, and keep breathing.”

I had work to do, and one did not maintain the position of youngest resident of the management floor, at the top of the three-story Anglo-Palestine Bank building, by shirking nostalgically.

From the top of the corner staircase, I waved to Sima, the grey-smocked tea attendant, who worked her way down the hallway behind her well-stocked stainless steel cart. As usual, she dispensed as much personal advice as she did over-seeped and greasy tea. This morning, she’d thankfully latched onto another bachelor employee. When she looked in my direction questioningly, I shook my head, smiled regretfully while demonstratively checking my watch, and ducked quickly into my stuffy, windowless office.

I closed the door behind me, and checked the calendar on my desk. Mr. Hoofien, my boss and Chairman of the bank, would arrive at 1 p.m. for an update on the status of our holdings in the Tel Aviv port, which we owned through Otzar Sea Industries. Otzar was my primary responsibility at the bank, or had been until the British nationalized the port last year, when the war broke out. It would be a short meeting with Hoofien, indeed, as I had little to report. Commercial activity in the port, which had opened just three years previously, had ground to a halt after its Greek longshoremen, along with their heavy equipment, were drafted.

I’d just put the finishing touches on a memo when the first whump! of an explosion rocked my desk so dramatically that my fountain pen rolled to the floor. It was followed by a second whump!, this one close enough to raise the volume of my tinnitus by several decibels. The still-fresh memory of the last bombing turned my bowels to water. For a time—perhaps seconds, perhaps minutes—I was utterly lost in phantasmagoric images that I’d hoped never to revisit.

When my instinct for self-preservation finally overcame, I bolted toward the door and shot out into the empty hall. It was 12:20, and the building was nearly empty. Most employees had already left for the daily afternoon break, observed by most businesses in the city. They would head home for a heavy lunch and a nap, and return at 3 p.m., after the heat diminished somewhat.

I sprinted to the stairwell, heading for the building’s basement shelter. A third explosion shook the building as I reached the ground floor. My footsteps echoed loudly as I crossed the high-ceilinged main hall, now breathing hard. I ran past three clerks, who were just getting up from their desks in alarm, and urged them over my shoulder to hurry after me. Another whump! rattled the windows facing the street, pushing us all to move faster. I’d just skidded around the corner and into the stairwell leading down to the shelter, the other three close on my heels, when we heard the front door crash open.

I turned, already concealed in the stairwell, as six masked figures came into the bank, all brazenly carrying pistols.

I’d felt many things over my four years in the Anglo-Palestine Bank building on Ben Yehuda Street. I’d felt immense gratitude at the opportunity of employment so soon after my arrival in Tel Aviv, downtrodden and still feverish from months in the swamps of Kibbutz Mishmar HaSharon, on the recommendation of my father’s colleague at Bank Zachodni in Warsaw. I’d felt amazement when singled out and “adopted” by Hoofien, after speaking up about the holding structure of the Tel Aviv port at a mid-level management meeting. I’d felt unabashed pride as I became Hoofien’s go-to man for everything related to the port.

Yet I’d never felt the righteous indignation that suddenly swelled my chest at the sound of that single Hebrew phrase.

Even as my ears burned with anger, I remained cautious, staying in the safety of the stairwell, out of sight.

The robbers had spotted my three colleagues, and ordered them to halt. The two clerks farthest from the stairwell obeyed immediately, raising their hands in submission and turning toward the robbers. The third man, who was closest to the stairwell, reached behind his back quickly, apparently for a concealed weapon.

A gunshot echoed loudly in the hall, torturing my already-ringing ears, and a rush of air hit me as a bullet ricocheted off the wall behind me.

The lead robber ordered two of his men into position by the door. The remaining three moved quickly to the service desk, smashed open the door to the tellers’ positions, and started gathering cash from the tills.

Gun steady, the leader of the thieves calmly approached the clerk who had attempted to draw the weapon. He reached behind the man, took the Webley .38, weighed it appreciatively in his free hand, then viciously whipped the clerk across the face with its handle.

The clerk crumpled to his knees with a loud groan, his hands clutching his face.

“What were you planning on doing, brother?” hissed his assailant. “Shooting me? Why? I’m not the enemy. Your masters at this bank, the ones collaborating with the British... they are our enemy—yours and mine. They are the ones we in the Irgun fight. And you want to shoot me?”

He was close enough that I could see the throbbing artery that stood out on his forehead, and the sweat that ran in rivulets down the sides of his face, disappearing into the kerchief that concealed his identity.

The clerk stood hunched over, clutching his injured face, but the robber shoved him onto his back with one foot, and leveled the pistol at his midriff. “A gut shot should put you out of our misery, but still give you time to consider the error of your ways.” He spat and cocked the weapon with a loud click. “One less Jewish collaborator to impede our progress toward nationhood.” His finger slid into the trigger guard.

I’d also felt sheer boyish glee in the Anglo-Palestine Bank building. It was the hot glee of the child who grabbed a whole plate of sweets from the party table before others could partake. It was the glee of an older brother who successfully wrestled a toy from a sibling’s small hands. It was the glee of a bloody-muzzled hyena that successfully fought off rivals at the site of a fresh kill.

I’d set it up simply and beautifully. The bank had financed Otzar, and Otzar had built the port. Yet the port either lost money or barely broke even every year, because they’d built it in a sandy, shallow water location that prevented large ships from approaching the small anchorage. This translated into expensive and time-consuming manual offloading that ate into profits. Things improved after I came in, thanks to some creative reporting techniques, for which I discovered I had a true penchant.

I ensured that the bank continued to pump money into Otzar. Otzar, in fair turn, continued to pump money, through several untraceable middlemen, into my personal account in a rival bank. Everyone was happy. Tel Aviv had a source of Zionist pride and joy in which the bank could claim a pivotal role. Otzar could keep operating, despite having no legitimate business raison d’etre. And I could, at the age of 25, purchase an apartment on a quirkily-named Tel Aviv street near the bustling center of town.

I felt no glee now, at the audacity of this robbery by Jews. I had stolen from the Bank myself, but I had not robbed. I was a man of conscience, albeit not one built for denial based thereon. I’d seen an opportunity and taken it, the same way others would have done. I’d hurt no one, threatened no one.

This man, whose finger slid ever closer to the trigger, even as the sweat dried from his forehead and his breathing slowed, represented everything I hated, and everything I secretly feared I had become.

I acted without thinking. I saw the opportunity and grabbed it blindly. “Stop!” I heard myself yell. I stepped suddenly out of the stairwell, my own hands raised.

The thief, startled, swung the pistol toward me and fired a single round, which went thankfully wild. He checked himself when he saw that I was unarmed, and turned the weapon back to the prone figure of the clerk. He hesitated, seeming less certain.

Emboldened, I took the next move on the real-life chessboard on which I now acted without hesitation. I inched slowly between the gun and the clerk, keeping my hands held high. My voice remained steady, calming, although my heart was racing.

“I don’t think you want to kill anyone, brother, but if you need to, kill me. I’m a senior manager at this bank. This man is just a lowly worker.”

“We’ve got it! Let’s go! Let’s go!” The voice of one of the other robbers broke the stillness.

When they next returned to me, I met his gaze. “We are not the enemy, brother. Take what you came for and leave.”

He returned my stare, and I could see his anger drain away. Without a word, he turned, joined the others, and left the bank.

I turned back to my injured colleague, and with no pride in my reckless yet undeniably selfless actions the moment before, wondered why the chance to do good came along so much less frequently than its opposite. As I bent to help him, I saw the robbers through the front doors. They piled into a single car and tore off down the utterly deserted street.

I later learned that the explosions had been decoys, brilliantly conceived to spook the still-skittish citizens of Tel Aviv, and leave the streets clear for their escape. It had worked. The robbers got away with over 4000 Palestine Pounds—a staggering sum—and only one was caught.