Amir Gutfreund - Our Holocaust

I went to check the blender. The only thing wrong with it was that it was unplugged. The power chord was lying cunningly on the counter, disconnected from the socket. When I plugged it in the blender started whirring loudly, ready to blend and mix. I took it with me anyway, for some reason, and placed it on the back seat of the Vauxhall. (There was a reddish-brown stain on the upholstery, as if right there was where the battle of Monte Cassino had ended, when Grandpa Lolek had spun around and stabbed a German on the back seat with his bayonet).

At Grandpa Yosef’s house I opened the door to find him wearing an apron, holding a steaming pie fresh from the oven.

“I brought the Vauxhall.”

“ Nu , welcome, welcome. Come in please.” He put the pie down and wiped his hands on the apron. On the brown wooden table was my documentation, bound and neat. Grandpa Yosef hadn’t touched it.

“Haven’t you read what I wrote?” I ask. Eighty well-written pages.

Grandpa Yosef squirmed. “ Nu , no time. I didn’t get to it. Hans is coming tomorrow morning, and the house…no time….” He sliced a piece of pie and served it to me, then continued to cut more slices for an invisible guest.

“All right. When you have time, read it.”

“ Nu , taste it, taste it. I’m a little…I’ll read it, I’ll read it all. I just haven’t had time.” He wouldn’t leave the pie alone. He sliced and sliced, sinking the knife into the dough, attacking it nervously. He got up and asked, “Would you like some sugar for the pie?” Without waiting for an answer, he reached out and leafed through the pages. Then suddenly he said, “ Nu , documentation. Naked in the snow for ten hours, can you know what that is? Hunger like there was in Buchenwald, can you know what that is? No, no. You cannot know what that is…” He darted into the kitchen.

I cautiously tasted the pie, another of Grandpa Yosef’s strange concoctions. The sparks of his soul. He came back with sugar and scattered some on my pie without asking. I tasted it — cardamom and sugar.

“So, how are things?” I asked.

“Good, good. Just that there’s no time for anything. Hans is coming and look, look at the state of the house.”

“The house looks fine.”

“Effi volunteered to pick him up at the airport. It’s a good thing it worked out for her, and she’s coming from Jerusalem. You’re busy, I know, with Grandpa Lolek’s operation. You can’t do it, nu . It’s a good thing Effi volunteered.”

(“Wherever Hans Oderman is concerned, I’m the first to volunteer,” Effi said.)

I looked at Grandpa Yosef. In a white undershirt, his shoulders looked soft. His tiredness suddenly seemed very pronounced. A whole life of charity, of nerve-wracking righteousness, and one visit from Hans Oderman of Germany, of all things, was wearing him out to the point of exhaustion. (I suddenly understood and was seized by panic: He was not like Grandpa Lolek; he would die one day. There was a day waiting for us, a funeral, rain, umbrellas, a rabbi praying.)

“Aren’t you a little tired?”

“Tired? Gracious no. I enjoy the work.”

“Isn’t it difficult for you like this here? Alone?”

“Difficult? No, not difficult. I get along fine, thank God.”

Something strange in our conversation. Like forcing a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit. Something wrong, but you ignore it.

Grandpa Yosef went into the kitchen again and reemerged with his pride and joy, a cake that looked like a hat with a battered rim. He declared, “Finally the lekach cake came out right! All those years my Feiga tried to teach me the recipe, and finally…” He placed the cake on the table to slice it. His pride was real, glowing. (Success, after years of failure, and there was no one to give him a prize.)

We both sat and ate. Grandpa Yosef wandered through his desert of life without Feiga, without Moshe. I pushed along a ball of hatred and they asked me to build bridges. To forget, to forgive. Hans Oderman was arriving soon, the orphan researcher.

“ Nu , how’s the cake?”

“Delicious.”

“When my Feiga was still alive, she always knew how long to mix the batter, when to take it out of the oven. She would always remind me. Without her, sometimes strange things come out of the oven.”

“It’s still a little hard for you without Feiga, isn’t it?”

“Oh… nu . When my Feiga was still alive, there was always someone to talk with, someone I could discuss an interesting Gemara page I had read with, or things they were saying in the neighborhood. Now there’s no one to talk to, and my thoughts roll around inside and keep going. Nu , not to worry.”

“It will be all right. Time heals, they say.”

Grandpa Yosef looked up. “Time heals?” His face relaxed for a moment, gathering up a thought like a river collecting rivulets. Suddenly he shouted, “Time heals?! I still haven’t healed from the people I lost long ago, and time heals? A little hard without Feiga? How about it’s still a little hard without my brothers and my mother and father, who went in Belzec, and I still can’t accept that? Maybe that’s still a little hard?” He carved thick, moist slices of cake that fell on their sides, one on top of the other, on the dish.

I looked at him quietly. I had never heard Grandpa Yosef shout before.

He hummed and huffed as if to still himself. He moved his head from side to side, trying to understand. “ Nu , I…. Well. You know….”

“It’s all right.”

“I’m actually a little…after I told you everything…things haven’t been sitting well inside. Nu , the memories….”

He went to the kitchen and dragged some pots around. Opened and closed the oven door. Did what he knew best, putting himself into order. He pulled something off a shelf. Opened the fridge. Closed it. Came back and apologized again. I did too.

“Anat said it wasn’t good of me to remind people of what happened.”

“ Nu , well, Anat. She knows how to feel things. Is everything okay with you two? With the issue?”

A ball of hatred rolled along. The dung beetle lost its ball.

“Everything’s fine,” I said.

“Yes….”

“There’s nothing to be done.”

“ Nu , everybody has problems.”

We spoke quietly, breaking down the previous exchange into small words, letters, tiny signs that meant nothing. Grandpa Yosef tried to find something to do with his hands. He started slicing the cake again. “You know, I still have trouble with Rothschild too. Since we spoke, it’s been harder. I can’t get rid of the thought that he somehow stayed there, for evermore in Buchenwald. That’s where my last memory of him is, and apart from what is in my memory, what other existence does Rothschild have? Sometimes I think, if only I could get him out of there and have one memory of life after Buchenwald. For example, Rothschild managing a store here on Herzl Street, doing business. But how? That’s where he stayed.” He paused for a thought. “And Mr. Hirsch walking around the neighborhood, that’s not easy for me, it reminds me of things. But you accept it. You live your life. With all sorts of things, you live.”

Grandpa Yosef, our sleigh-dog, still pulling the corpse wagons.

We ate the cake silently. Grandpa Yosef pulled the pie towards himself and cut a slice. He tasted it. “I might have put too much cardamom in this,” he mumbled. “Maybe it doesn’t need any cardamom at all.” He fell silent.

(He cannot be helped. Grandpa Yosef pulls the corpse wagons. Everyone here in the neighborhood, that’s what they do. Pull wagons. White figures looking for things at night, sitting like tubers in warm homes, saying, “How are things?” and answering, “Life goes on,” like a frightened lie, like something that redeems. Grandpa Yosef at least has the strength to live. Most of the people here have never lived after the camps. Even though they were liberated and sent to Israel on boats and given houses to live in, nothing truly alive came out from behind those fences. A massive fraud. Eating and drinking and sleeping for fifty years, with remarriages and new children — all a fraud. All that survived are shells with memories. Empty shells listening to the radio, walking to the grocery store, going to visit relatives. Fifty years, and in Germany the war is long over. The guard soldiers and the train conductors and the propaganda clerks have already forgotten. The foremen, the gas manufacturers, and the transport supervisors have already forgotten. The engine operators and the experimenters and the order-givers have already forgotten. Those who were not hanged have already forgotten. Those who were not shot by avengers — forgotten. Only here, in the neighborhood, shells with memories.)