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one: “When will people stop hating?”
- University of North Texas Press
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1 chapter one “When will people stop hating?” On this lovely Thursday at the end of summer the citizens of Krakow move as usual through some of the finest architecture in Europe. Towering gothic churches, stately Renaissance homes and trendy cafes with gilt lettering crowd together around the main square. The true heart of the city is the storybook castle up on the hill where the Polish kings are buried. Below its thick wall flows the shimmering Vistula River. It’s 1939 and radio is a big deal. People are amazed the technology can bring them news from the other side of the earth. Inspired by the breakthrough, many students at the university are obsessed with math and electronics. Four centuries earlier Copernicus learned enough math here to figure out that the earth goes around the sun. Not everybody is caught up in the radio craze, however. The bearded men in long black silk coats walking under the iron streetlamps spend a good bit of their time mastering ancient religious texts. Some believe in a miracle-worker who lived in the dark mountains on the horizon where melting snow feeds the river. WRStxt.indd1 5/9/0710:16:38AM 2 William & Rosalie Horse hoofs echo through the cobbled streets as wagons bring food in from the countryside and supplies to stores and shops. Twelve of the wagons belong to Benzion Baum. He and his partners sell firewood to bakeries, candy makers, and hundreds of homes. Twenty-five years ago it was just Benzion in one wagon. He carried the split trunks through front doors and back doors, making neat stacks by stoves, bread ovens, and pots of bubbling chocolate. Customers liked the wood vendor. He was dependable, earnest, and fair. Today he owns a yard on the other side of the river where twenty employees unload wood from train cars into the delivery wagons. In the new factory next door thirty more workers can’t keep up with orders for the insulation product Benzion designed ten years ago. During harsh Polish winters it helps people save money on firewood. Benzion lives at 7 Dietlovska Street, a prestigious address in a neighborhood called Kazimierz, home to most of the 70,000 Jews in the city. His wife’s name is Helena and the couple have two girls and a boy. His oldest daughter, Rosalie, is sixteen. Our apartment was not far from downtown on a treelined street a few blocks from the river. From our windows we could see the Vistula and the castle on top of Wawel Hill. Mom and Dad gave us a home full of love. As committed as he was to his work, he stayed home if one of the kids was sick. My sister Lucy was fourteen and my little brother Henry was eight. We played in the parks and jumped on the backs of the wagons the horses pulled up and down our street. In winter we went sledding and on WRStxt.indd2 5/9/0710:16:39AM [54.224.100.102] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:29 GMT) Chapter One 3 sunny days we played kickball. In Poland back then children didn’t have many toys or dolls. In my favorite game you tried to flick pebbles into a hole with your finger. I kept coming home with dirty hands and Mom was afraid I was turning into a tomboy. I went to a little school not far from home. History was my favorite subject so I loved it when our class went to the castle. It has an ancient hall with a winding stair that goes way down into the dark. This was supposed to be the cave of Smoke, the Krakow dragon. When we were little we were terrified of Smoke because the legend says he liked to eat children. None of us was afraid of the Germans because we were not informed about politics at all. At that age I never really thought about being Polish. It was just the country where I was born. My dad’s best friend owned a soap factory and lived directly above our apartment. Their daughter Mania was my sister’s best friend. Dad and Mania’s dad would drink coffee and listen to news on the radio. Hitler was kicking Polish Jews out of Germany and Dad helped three of these refugees find a place to stay. My uncle Isaac lived in Germany. He could tell what...