Yiddishlands: A Memoir

30. Partisans’ Hymn

196 Ask me the name of any town or townlet in Poland and I can tell you its Jewish equivalent. Góra Kalwaria? Ger. Opatów? Apt. Rzeszów? Reyshe. Tyszowce ?Tishevits.Chełm?Khelm.TheseplacesarethecapitalsofmyYiddish heartland. They exist on a separate plane, in their own geography, which is why I had zealously avoided going there as long as possible. In the spring of my forty-fourth year, I accepted an invitation from the Polish Ministry of Culture to help decide “The Future of Auschwitz,” a bizarre and impossible assignment, which Raphael Scharf, with his Polish manners, British wit, and Jewish heart, tried to alleviate by taking me and Professor Khone Shmeruk on a walking tour of Kraków. Forty-four, explained Scharf after quoting a passage from Mickiewicz’s poetic drama Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve), carried deep mystical significance for the Polish national poet, whose first name was Adam, “man” in Hebrew, the numerical value of whose letters, alef-dalet-mem, add up to forty-five. Even Professor Shmeruk, implausibly, tried to cheer me up. “You know what they used to say?” he asked rhetorically. “There are three impossibilities in life: A Jew sitting in a droshky without a parcel by his side, a policeman doing his beat with an umbrella, and a whore wearing glasses.” Speaking of whores, Scharf was quick to point out where the most famous Jewish brothel in prewar Kraków had been located: right across from the courtyard where 30 Partisans’ Hymn Gebirtig lived, on Berek Joselewicz Street. “Naturally,” said Scharf, “there’s no mention of it in any of his songs.” It was easy for them to conjure up the lost worlds of Polish Jewry. They’d been born here. What did I have to come back to, other than this depressing and futile conference? When again, after this impromptu pre-conference tour, would I hear Yiddish spoken in Poland? And when last I conversed in Yiddish, in Warsaw, it was too painful for words. Ruta Sakowska, who never left Poland because someone had to preside over the publication of the Warsaw Ghetto Archive, said to me, so quietly that the Director of the Institute could not possibly have heard, “undzer eynzamkayt iz umbashrayblekh , our isolation, our loneliness is indescribable.” So who were they kidding with their locker-room banter? Do the arithmetic! I wanted to shout to my elderly friend and would-be mentor; forty-four means that I’m old enoughtospeakafluentmame-loshnbuttooyoungtohaveeverhearditspoken here, where every tenth person once spoke Yiddish and, in the major cities, every third. English was the lingua franca of our five-day meeting, much to the chagrin of the French delegates, because English was the language of our convener ,JonathanWebber,thelanguageofboththeAmericanandBritishdelegations , and the language of post-communist Poland. Hebrew, thanks to Jonathan’sintervention,hadrecentlybeenaddedtothelanguagesthatgreet the visitor to the Auschwitz Stammlager, visitors who are assumed to be of European descent, since there are no Arabic, Chinese, or Japanese inscriptions . Wanda, with her jet-black hair and high Slavic cheekbones, gives us the standard tour in flawless English. She apologizes for her relative inexperience . Only fifteen years on the job. Yesterday, she informs us, they buriedtheveteranguide,aformerFrenchinmatewholivedonthepremises for forty-seven years. The one word that gives Wanda trouble is HOLLOW-COST, and the reason becomes clear as we proceed through the camp, beginning at the infamous gate, with its labor-camp façade, and follow the cobblestones block by block, the mug shots of the Polish-Christian inmates displayed in Number 6 (Jews were tattooed, she explains, never photographed), to the various national exhibits, the Bulgarian so egregious that it has recently been closed, again after Jonathan protested, and from there to Death Block 11, where Wanda becomes extremely animated when showing us the execution yard with its individual hooks, the kangaroo courtroom, and the underground Partisans’ Hymn 197 punishment cells, one with a perpetual candle lit by Pope John Paul in memory of Father Kolbe, and her voice starts to quiver when she recounts the “untold” story of the Home Army soldiers who were tortured and perished here. All this, including the (reconstructed) gallows next to Crematorium I where Commandant Hoess was hanged, is the manageable story of known victims whose native countries have honored them with national pavilions. The HOLLOW-COST narrative is still ragged. Only lately could Wanda speakofJewishvictims,andthefinaltallyofhowmanyandwhatproportion has still to be decided. There is more to see than to...