The Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg Read Free Book Online Page A

had the skill of tanning the hides the old way, by rubbing fat into them and burning them over an open fire.
    He also had the art of repairing clocks and watches.
    He used mixtures of herbs to make decoctions that cleaned wounds and eased swellings.
    He knew exactly what kind of clay to insert between the oven stones of stoves that had burnt through.
    It was said that he could even tame wild wolves.
    The Chairman went quiet for a little while.
    The end of his cigarette glowed red and enlarged before fading again when he took a puff, and then another. He was called Kamiński , he added quietly to himself.
    In the light of the glowing cigarette, the furrowed old face softened, and assumed a sort of introspective look. As if he could see quite clearly in front of him the man he was attempting to conjure up for them:
    He was called Kamiński . . .
    And everybody got angry with this Kamiński.
    (the rabbi got cross, because he saw him as an envoy of Satan, but so did the baker, the tanner, the paver, the locksmith and the apothecary, because they all thought he was stealing their customers from before their very eyes . . .)
    So the members of our kehila unanimously decided to have him deported from the village.
    But it was decided that he would first be shut in a cage and put on show in the market place.
    He sat in the cage for forty days, a trapped animal baring his teeth like a wolf, while he showed the children who flocked around the cage how to make matze –
    Pat pat, with both hands
    ( like this! )
    The Chairman clamped his cigarette between his lips. Held up his own hands and demonstrated by clapping and patting his hands together.
    Bread, he said, and smiled.

The Lord took seven days to create and
order the world.
    It took Rumkowski three months.
    On the first of April 1940, a whole
month before the ghetto was sealed, he opened a tailor’s workshop at 45
Łagiewnicka Street and put the energetic manufacturer Dawid Warszawski in charge
of operations there. This was the resort later
to be known as the Central Tailors. Shortly afterwards, in May, another
tailoring workshop opened at 8 Jakuba Street, close to the ghetto boundary. On
the eighth of July, a shoemaker’s opened in the same premises as the Central
Tailors.
    And so it went on:
    14
July : a cabinet-maker’s and a factory for wood products at 12–14
Drukarska, with a timber store for the latter in the yard.
    18
July : another tailor’s workshop, at 18 Jakuba.
    4
August : a workshop for upholstering furniture at 9 Urzędnicza.
Mattresses were also made here, as well as sofas and armchairs (stuffed with
dried seaweed).
    5
August : a linen factory at 5 Młynarska Street.
    10
August : a tannery at 9 Urzędnicza. (This dressed soles and uppers to
be used for shoes and boots for the Wehrmacht.)
    15–20
August : a dye works; a shoemaker’s (actually a slipper factory) in
Marysin; and another tailoring workshop, this time at 53 Łagiewnicka Street.
    23
August : a metalwork factory on Zgierska, manufacturing among other
things metal tubs and various kinds of bucket and pail; as well as containers
for wood-gas fuel, primarily for military use.
    17
September : a (new) tailor’s, at 2 Młynarska Street.
    18
September : another tailor’s, 13 Żabia Street.
    8
October : a furrier’s, 9 Ceglana.
    28
October : yet another tailor’s, 10 Dworska Street.
    Apart from uniforms for the German
army, the tailors produced (for the same army): protective and camouflage suits;
footwear of all kinds: shoes, heavy-duty boots, marching boots; leather belts
with metal buckles; blankets, mattresses. But also various kinds of women’s
underwear: corsets and brassieres. And for men: earmuffs and woollen jackets,
the model known at the time as golfing jackets.
    Under the authorities’ direction,
Rumkowski set up his administrative office in a number of interconnecting wooden
barrack huts on Bałuty Square. The German ghetto administration had its local
office in a couple of similar blocks.