Sunrise West by Jacob G.Rosenberg Read Free Book Online

furnace?’

    It is early morning. A translucent blue sheet of ice hangs above the town; there is no sun. I am entering a dimly-lit café. No one acknowledges me, yet everyone is strangely aware of my presence. In the tense silence I can hear their condemning eyes, see the deceit on their numb lips.
    They wait to find out what I will say, though they know that my words will be irrelevant.
    What unsettles them most is my striped uniform. And my previous night’s vision, embossed on my forehead forever.

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    We met outside Ebensee, shortly after liberation. ‘Now that the Germans have gone, who will look after us?’ he asked with a half-smile.
    I didn’t answer — I knew that such a question, bizarre as it might seem, afflicted many prisoners who had grown accustomed to a life of slavery. But I could see that he was a sad jester, with a pressing need to talk. Besides, he looked vaguely familiar. So I let him talk.
    â€˜I remember you from ghetto,’ he said. ‘My name was Maximilian Zacharski — now I call myself Moshe Zakhor. Before the war we lived in a spacious apartment on Narutowicza Street. My father, Szymon Zacharski, was a wonderful man, a renowned tailor who worked only for the military, mainly high-ranking officers. He wore a Piłsudski moustache, called himself Stanisław — a ferocious assimilator who advocated that Jews should make themselves socially invisible. He refused to speak anything but Polish. “Poland is our fatherland,” he would tell me.’
    â€˜Friend,’ I cut in, ‘your father’s beliefs were mine as well, though I suffered many disappointments. But I still can’t erase from my memory those days when Jew and Pole marched arm in arm beneath the flutter of red flags. I was once a member of the Bund, a party of humble people that believed strongly in integration, though never, ever, at the price of losing their integrity.’
    He nodded, impatient to continue. ‘My mother Miriam, known as Magda, was a beautiful, restless woman, much younger than father. She was slim, with sky-blue eyes and a proud bearing. He idolized her. Gentiles didn’t know she was Jewish — they couldn’t understand why a woman like her had married a Jew. Anyway, before the ghetto was sealed he urged her to run away, perhaps one of his highly-placed clients could assist. There were negotiations, an exchange of money, but at the last moment the sympathetic client had a change of heart. And in the end her Aryan looks didn’t help her either. As you know, my friend, betraying Jews became a lucrative source of income. And it wasn’t just the financial reward. To my mind, the murder of Jewsthrough the ages was always the most effective pagan rebellion against authentic Christianity.’
    He smiled bitterly and awaited a response, but I remained silent. ‘So, what do you intend to do?’ he asked at last. ‘Palestine is closed, the quota for America is as long as the Jewish exile, England has shut her gates, as in the good old days. We’re displaced persons now — is that a future?’
    â€˜My friend Raymond is going back home to France. I’ll probably go back to Poland, the land of my birth, where our people lived for a thousand years.’ And, yielding to a poetic impulse, I added: ‘Where the great Vistula speaks my tongue, where my beloved silver birches pray to God in the silence... Someone over there, Moshe, is surely awaiting my return, ready to welcome me with open arms.’
    â€˜No, no!’ he cried. ‘In your old home, people of stone now dwell. You think they await you? — maybe they lie in wait for you! Just itching to finish the job.’
    â€˜There are always the hoodlums. Most people over there are not like that.’
    â€˜Please,’ he fired back, then shook his head. ‘There is nothing more difficult than to convince a