Shane Malone - Eureka Street

Well, Poland is almost judenftei.
Richmond, in his pilgrimage through
Poland to Konin, visits town after
town, village after village, where his
family contacts had lived and where
old and often large Jewish communities
had been. Now there are none
there, except for one or two old Jews,
bewildered, as if in a dream . The
m ajority had been killed, the survivors
fl ed-to Israel, or America or
Australia, as from a plague spot.
There are many synagogues and Jewish
houses restored. But they are
museums. No Jews.
Along Richmond's journey, even the cemeteries had
disappeared, and when he got to Konin, he had to search
befme finding a little stone memorial, deep in the forest,
put up by a few people, near the mass graves. There is a
detailed account of the Konin massacre, given by a Polish
vet, who was forced to observe it and dispose of the bodies.
I think it is the most terrible thing I have ever read.
I went to Cra cow in 1990 with a
friend, whose home town it had been.
Cracow in '39 had 200,000 people,
with perhaps 70,000 Jews. Now there
arc 800,00 inhabitants- in from the
country-and 500 Jews. Synagogues,
cemeteries and the Jewish quarter
were being restored but for America
n tourists. Along Richmond's journ
ey, even the cemeteries had
disappeared, and when he got to
Konin, where every Jew there and
thereabouts had been murdered, he
had to search before finding a little
stone memorial, deep in the forest,
put up by a few people, near the mass
graves. There is a detailed account in
this book of the Konin massacre,
given by a Polish vet, who was forced,
along with a few others, to observe it
and dispose of the bodi es. I think it is
the most terrible thing I have ever
read.
But to restart, at Verstandig's
childhood. He gives a simultaneously
delightful yet sombre account of
growing up in a shteLl, and the boring
nature of the religious and secular
education he received-all rote
learning and the cane. There were
the family politics and the marriage
market, with the family the eco-
nomic institution that Marx thought
it was. Class and status distinctions
were alive and well- one didn't recognise
poor relatives. The stories of
the clmorret (beggar) with a place at
the end of the rich man's table were
true, but hardly a picture oft he harsh
economic and social realities of Jewish
Poland. Verstandig estimates as
many as 90 per cent of the shtetl
youth as being unemployed. So
people went around singing 'If I were
a Rothschild, diddle diddle diddle
dum'. Fans of Fiddlet on the Roof
please n ote. Young Verstandig,
trained as a lawyer,
had lots of chutzpa,
which hasn ' t deserted
him, and was
doing well, until the
roof fell in and the
world stopped. His
chronicle at this
point is enthralling
and frightening.
In contrast, Richm
ond builds block
by block, by endless
stories of peoples's
lives and the deaths
of villages and towns, whole fa milies,
a whole people. Both writers
tell of num erou s rescuers and
kindnesses, and great bravery by
Polish people-often quite unexpected
and very often by the simple
and the simply religious. Richmond,
whose book is adorned with photographs
of families long since gone
and scen es long swept away, found
some of the Polish friends and protectors
who were astonished to hear
of people whom they hadn't known
since the war- along with their
subsequent fates. It is all desperately
sad, and one of the low
"'\ T points in human history.
v ERSTANDIG RAI SES SOME interesting
queries about the Allies and
Auschwitz. At one point, when in
hiding, near what was becoming the
front line as the Red Army advanced,
his group noticed the flights of fourengined
bombers pounding the German
lines in support of the Russians.
These they eventually identified as
American bombers operating from a
base in Ukraine. They were working
on a long line north-south in Poland.
On this line was Auschwitz. Ye t we
are still told that that camp and even
its railway lines were too far for
planes to get at. It might have been
from the West- but the East
T he author is scornful of the
Allies' practical indifference to the
fate of Europe's Jews, an indifference
shared by the Jewish World Congress
based in America. He asserts that
this indifference continued after the
war with the displaced persons, of
whom he was one in Germany, still
neglected and starving long after
war's encl. The great sums raised in
America just mel ted away, the DPs
on the spot ge tting little. Some of
my friends say it was similar in
Poland. Scams from top to bottom.
Vcrstanclig threw himself in to
communal politics here, but after
19 72 cl ecicle cl that they were
irrelevant to the present day, that
they were still preoccupied with old
issues and divisions, and leadership
changes were altering the whole
character of what was, in any case,
ceasing to be a community. So he
withdrew and m oved over
to charitable work.
R
I CI~M ON D' S 1\00K is not political
in the sam e way. He lets his
interviewees tell their own stories,
so yo u get a broader perspective on a
world that is gone, leaving a strange
pall hanging over the landsca pe,
while the people below go about their
business as though nothing has ever
happened. But of course life must go
on, must renew itself. A condition of
permanent mourning, which I see in
many people, is living death. But
you can't always choose your mental
state.
Richmond finishes:
From the beginning I had known I
would have to co me here. Now the
journey was done. To say I felt regret
at leaving this place would be false
and sentimental. I felt no emotion,
ma ybe it was spent. Or may be th e
town was releasing me from its grip,
for I knew now that it was not the
pl ace that held meaning for me but
the people who once lived here.
Their Konin would stay with me
always, a persistent echo.
Mark Verstanclig would say
Amen to that.
•
Max Teichmann is a Melbourne
writer and reviewer.
36
EUREKA STREET • APRI L 1996