Thursday, February 4, 2010

Place of Honor: A Story of Passover, by Charles Zigman




AUTUMN, 1939: In the town of Lodz, as in other cities in Poland, the residents of the Jewish community were hated. Considering what had been happening in the month since Hitler’s armies had invaded Poland, the Jews really hadn’t had things so terribly bad before: Daily, Jews from all parts of the country were being herded aboard long trains. To Treblinka; to Auschwitz; to Buchenwald; and, unbeknownst to them, to death.

A train consisting of forty-eight cars would today carry one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight of Lodz’s Jewish residents (thirty-six per car) to the Buchenwald concentration camp, which, they were assured, was merely a “work camp,” where they would be sequestered only temporarily, before being returned, in fine form and fettle, to their own town.

A black-uniformed SS Corporal (burgeoning belly; thick, greasy mustache) checked his list as the frightened-looking Jews boarded, each passenger calling out his own name. Mothers called out names of their children, as they lifted their little ones onto that too-high first step.

In contrast to the melancholy stares of those who were boarding, was that of a youngish, yellow-bearded man in a leaf-green tunic, who was humming an antiquated Jewish folksong with a cheeriness which was inappropriate to this unwanted exodus. The ones in front and in back of him in line shot angry glances at him.

“What is your name, Jew?” the Corporal inquired.

“My name is Eli, my brother,” he exclaimed, extending his hand in firm friendship. “What is yours, if I may ask?”

“Don’t you try any of your Jew tricks on me,” the Corporal grunted, stepping back. “What is your family name?”

“My family name? Cohen… I am Eli Cohen.”

The Corporal examined all five pages of his list.

“There is no Eli Cohen on this list. It isn’t your turn. You’re lucky—but it won’t last. Now go home.”

“All of these people are my associates,” Eli said. “I couldn’t feel comfortable in my home today, knowing where you are really taking them.”

“Now, wait a minute,” the Corporal replied, in equally hushed tones, not wanting to create a panic, “What do you mean, ‘Where we are really taking them,’ hmm? We are taking them to work. And that is all we are doing.”

“Okay. Whatever you say, sir,” Eli winked, conspiratorially. “I won’t tell if you won’t!”

“You are holding up business,” the Corporal growled nervously, sweat beading upon his cruel forehead. “Go home. When we want you, Cohen, you can be sure we will come and get you.”

Eli mischievously manipulated some dirt with the heel of his shoe.

“I don’t mean to be impertinent, but… do you have a waiting list? I’d really like to get on this train, if you please,” Eli grinned at the German.

“No! Now, will you go home!”

Eli’s smile widened. “In that case,” he said, “Your Fuhrer, Herr Hitler, is a pig. He is a disgusting vermin of the lowest order!” Eli began to canter around, in absurd burlesque of Hitleresque lockstep.

The Jews looked away, embarrassedly – at their feet, at one of the two, nearby water towers; anywhere. They knew they were not in a favorable situation, and that this supposed ‘co-religionist,’ a man whom none of them had ever seen before today, was going to raise the already-boiling water to a more volatile temperature.

“That’s it,” the Corporal screamed, his eyes narrowing into a scowl. “On the train, kike. Or I will shoot you this minute!” He patted the Lugar in his pocket, driving his point home.

“Thank you, sir!” Eli said, as he leaped aboard the train. “By the way, I should like to commend you to your superiors. Won’t you tell me your name?”

But the Corporal, who was busying checking off other names, ignored Eli, who disappeared into the recesses of a boxcar that was about one-third of the way down the line, a car which was only identified by a large, yellow number – “18.”

The boxcar to which Eli had admitted himself was dark and dank and, after two more villagers were admitted – an elderly, rheumatic man and his wife – the Officer shut the door behind them, bringing the number of passengers in the car to thirty-six.

They were all so very tightly packed in the humid chamber, none could sit down, and the four children in the car began to cry. One’s mother wiped her child’s tears away with the red scarf she had worn about her head.

Eli smiled a smile incongruous with the confused looks of the other passengers.

“That’s a smart thing you did, fellah,” a scruffy-faced man mumbled to Eli, his tone conveying that he meant exactly the opposite. “What kind of an idiot gets on voluntarily? For all we know, we might be going to our deaths.”

The other passengers, who had never entertained that thought, and merely had it in mind that they were being transferred to a work camp, hushed up all at once, including their children, one of whom, a tow-headed girl, now frightened, hugged at her misty-eyed mother’s voluminous thigh.

“In fact, you are right,” Eli answered him, an amusing smile radiating outward from his gentle countenance. “That is exactly where we are going.”

That comment, expressed dispassionately enough, begat pandemonium, to which each passenger contributed at least one horrified look or blood-curdling scream. The scruffy man grabbed Eli by the collar of his greasy tunic, and Eli laughed.

“What do you mean, scaring them like that?”

“I didn’t mean to scare anybody,” Eli said, pushing the man’s hand away from his neck. “I’m just not a terribly good liar, that’s all. You’ll all excuse me.”

“We’ve never seen you in Lodz before,” an elderly woman with enormous vocal range, who Eli thought (knew?) must have, at one time, worked on the Yiddish theater circuit as chanteuse, screamed. “You’re a Nazi spy!”

“I am Jewish, as you are,” Eli said. “And, in response to the other part of your charge, you have not, any of you, seen me before in your town, that is true. But each and every Passover, you set a place for me at your Seder table.”

The passengers all looked at each other, and all each could hear, besides his or her own thoughts, was the metallic cacophony of the train, as it scraped over each square of track.

“You mean to tell us that you’re Elijah, the Prophet?” the scruffy-faced man asked, facetiously.

“Very good,” Eli said, patting the man’s back. “You have attended shul – and not just the local tavern, as your whiskey breath would indicate.”

The scruffy-faced man instinctively reached for a bottle in his overcoat pocket, as he would do whenever he heard something odd like that. He wanted to throw it out the window, even though there was neither a bottle in his pocket, nor a window in the car.

“You can’t be Elijah,” the elderly woman shouted.

“What is your name?” Eli asked her.

“Shulamit Rosenberg.”

“You can’t be Shulamit Rosenberg,” Eli returned. “Does anybody have some food? A speck of bread – or perhaps a morsel of cheese? I’m famished.”

Although Eli smelled roasted meat from one of the ladies’ satchels, nobody offered him a solitary bite.

“I thought not,” he answered, and he next proceeded to pull a plate of baked chicken from mid-air. “Will anybody join me? The children all look very hungry.”

People waved him off. “We’re not falling for your magic tricks,” the chanteuse said. (The adults agreed with her.)

None of the adults would take chicken and, though there was scarcely room, Eli knelt and presented the steaming platter to the four small children aboard. Each grabbed a savory piece of chicken, devouring it, rapturously, despite admonishments from the parents that the man before them was the Devil and that, in effect, they were eating The Devil’s Chicken.

“These sweet children know who I am, instinctively,” he said, looking up at the adults as he knelt, with his plate, in front of the children. He lifted the chin of a shy girl, gently, between thumb and forefinger. He looked her eyes, pleadingly:

“Darling, would you tell the grown-ups who I am? You know who I am, don’t you?”

The girl nodded affirmatively, and looked to the adults, reciting something she had probably, and preternaturally, always known:

“This man is Elijah the Prophet, who is said to come and tell the Children of Israel when the Messiah will deliver us back to the Promised Land.”

She then looked at Eli for an approving glance, which he doled out to her as easily as he had the chicken.

The girl’s obese mother pushed her against her breast and cackled at Eli

“You are the Devil!” She underscored her malediction with a gob of spit, volleyed in the direction of his eye. He erased it with his green sleeve.

The other adults, too, began to shower Eli with curses, but the children suddenly rallied to his side, affirming that, in fact, he was the Prophet.

Eli passed a finger in front of his lips, for as much as to tell the children, “Let them find out for themselves.”

When the children began to shoot disappointed glances at their parents – the Unbelievers – the adults all started to look guilty.

“Assuming you are Elijah, which I doubt very strongly,” the scruffy-faced man lectured, “why wouldn’t you try and get us off this train?”

“I am a Jew like you, with a moral compunction to follow my people unto what awaits them. In this case, I am sorry to say that it is death.”

He found a small nook on the floor and settled into it, apologizing for the legs he was bumping.

“You can’t do anything?” a blonde woman asked him, the red-cheeked daughter of the chanteuse. “You won’t try and help us?”

“You don’t believe who I am, anyway. What difference would it make.”

But there seemed to be a sudden, general consensus that Eli was, in fact, Elijah, based on the fact that people who are tempered by fear are sometimes very likely to believe in anyone who is immediately sympathetic to their cause.

“If you are Elijah…” The scruffy-faced man began to ask his question, but stopped, fumfering for the right words.

“If I am Elijah, yes?”

“If you are Elijah, why is it that, for centuries, Jews have been leaving a place of honor for you and a glass of wine at the Seder, and yet, you have never shown up to honor the invitation?”

“It’s like with anything else: If you accept one invitation, you have to accept them all, right? I know I should go into these people’s homes, but to me, it would be tantamount to my having accepted charity, and I would feel embarrassed.”

“We, your people, who you say you are following to the grave because you feel so much for us – we embarrass you?” an elderly man interjected. “Explain, please!”

“Well, it’s like this: Did you ever sit at a table and watch other people, as they’re watching you eat? It’s embarrassing, isn’t it. It’s something I try to avoid, whenever I can.”

“So you mean to say that you will never honor a single invitation to a Seder?”

Eli felt the fits and starts of the train with his behind.

“Sure, one day I’ll have to do that. But if I did it now, people would ask me when the Messiah is coming, which I would feel obliged to tell them, and I haven’t even found out when it is, myself. The ‘Home Office’ is a little slow these days – as you’ve probably already figured out.”

The seventeen others in his car seemed to be disappointed in Eli, but he proceeded to ameliorate the situation by telling a little story:

“I have actually ‘come down’ during each of the periods in which Jews have been threatened, to comfort them in their times of need. The last time was thirty-five years ago, in the little Jewish area in the South of Russia – the Pale of Settlement. It was during the Pogroms. Those wretched Black Hundreds were flying Jews up flagpoles everywhere I looked, and I thought, since it was such a time of despair, it would be a good idea to take the Seder with some of my people, again. Jews at the time, of course, had to hold their Seders surreptitiously, in their basements, to avoid being seen – just as they do now, of course.”

“Some things never change,” the elderly woman interrupted, with that quintessentially-resigned Hebrew shrug which had been passed up through the ages.

“You’re right. Anyway, I visited every family in the Pale, occupying the place that each had set for me, each family expecting that I wouldn’t show up. In each household, I drank my cup of wine, and reassured each family member that the Pogroms would soon be over.

“Never having done this before – going from house-to-house, I mean – you can imagine that, by the tenth cup of wine, I was so shikker, I didn’t know where I was. The lady of the house, in the last apartment I visited, threw me out into the street, bellowing that if a man as sorry as I were the Prophet, there would never be any hope for the Jewish people.

“So I wandered the streets for hours, sick from drinking far too much wine. And just as I was about to pass out onto the cobblestone street, I heard the hooves of a horse, and was soon in plain sight of a horse-drawn carriage, out of which two huge Cossacks, wielding muskets, stepped.

“’Jew,’ they began, ‘in the name of Czar Alexander the Second, we sentence you to be hanged to death tomorrow morning in the Public Square!’

“I told them about how important I am. But I don’t think it mattered, because they shoved me into the carriage and took me down to the police station as though I had committed a crime – which, apparently, I had, just by being Jewish.

“The next morning, they hanged me, and fifty other Jews, by the neck, in the most massive Pogrom ever. Because of who I am – naturally – I was brought back to life. And I’m here with you now, ready to go through it all again, in this New Pogrom.”

Everybody was a little reticent in commenting on this adventure. Eli shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that this is really what transpired, and that it was their prerogative not to believe him, if they didn’t want to.

Night soon fell, and the thirty-six cramped souls slept standing, because they were packed too tightly to fall.

The metal door was then, rather boisterously, thrown open by a blonde-haired, youngish SS Private, a sound which woke them all.

“We have another three hours until we reach our destination,” the Private intoned, the same message being simultaneously transmitted by other guards to the passengers of other boxcars. “You have five minutes to relieve yourselves. Anyone who wishes to abuse the privilege will be shot on sight.”

The forty-eight boxcars suddenly began to disgorge one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight cramped Jews into the night air. They stretched and breathed deeply.

In front of them, lay an endless field of ripe corn, and the passengers were told to use this area for a bathroom, much to the consternation of the bewildered farmer who, at this moment, was being acquiesced by a couple of SS guards, who were telling him that it was for the good of the Reich, and that the Fuhrer would probably give him a medal.

Four other Officers patrolled the circumference of the field, making sure nobody got out of line.

A little tow-headed boy from Boxcar 18 stood, releasing a thin stream of urine onto the green stalks, laughing as he made the stalks ‘wave.’ When he was finished, he watched to see that nobody saw him, and he began to boisterously chew on a clean ear of the tender corn.

A stocky Officer with a limping gait walked up behind the boy, who was so engrossed in his meal, that he didn’t hear the crunch of the Officer’s boots grinding against some arid, fallen husks. He pointed the barrel at the back of the boy’s neck and fired. Both the boy and the corn-ear, which had been gnawed clean, hit the ground simultaneously.

The others looked up from what they were doing to see what had happened. The sight of her lifeless boy, blood oozing from the back of his skull as he lay in the corn, caused his mother to faint.

“If any of you get it into your heads to eat any of the corn, it will be our pleasure to mete out the same punishment which this young man has just received,” croaked an elderly guard over his bullhorn. He laughed, heartily, too.

Eli and the scruffy-faced man, whose name, he had learned, was Moshe Sturman, had befriended each other, both of them having been about the same age. They glanced, coldly, at the sight of the little boy’s body being carried away.

“Those pigs,” Moshe whispered, aiming his own stream in front of him.

“Listen, if it wasn’t the boy, it would have been someone else,” Moshe replied, firing his own stream.

“What are you two conspiring about?” an Officer asked them. Eli recognized him as the ample-bellied Corporal with whom he had to plead to be allowed on the train.

“You can still leave, if you want to,” the Corporal snorted at Eli. “You’re still not on the list, you know.” To Moshe, he continued, “Your friend, here, is a very stupid man. He is with us voluntarily.”

“You’re joking,” Moshe said to Eli, even though he knew it to be true. “You’re here with us voluntarily? You actually chose to be here?”

Moshe buttoned up his pants.

“If it had been me, I’d be out of here so fast,” Moshe continued, “I’d leave a trail of burning corn in my path!”

“Well, don’t you two worry about leaving, because neither of you is going anywhere,” the Corporal railed at Moshe. “Now hurry up. You’ve got two minutes to finish your business.” He walked away to bother someone else.

“I sure would like to get out of here,” Moshe said, a tear welling up in his eye. “Is it true what you said about us going to our deaths?”

“Unfortunately,” Eli answered, not as worried as he probably should have been in such a situation.

“If there were a way to get out of here…”

Moshe couldn’t finish his sentence, because he was now sobbing violently.

“I’m going to get us all out of here,” Eli clicked, dispassionately, in the same monotone in one would speak if inquiring about the weather.

Moshe froze.

“How are you going to do that? You said, yourself, that you are no different than we are.”

Eli winked. Then, he removed a cloth from his coat and passed it over his own face. His long, blonde beard was suddenly gone, like magic, leaving a thirty-five-year-old with a remarkably Aryan-looking face. He then passed the same cloth over Moshe’s face, and Moshe’s black, three-day-old beardlet was gone, too.

Just as an astounded Moshe was about to ask Eli how he had performed that neat trick, Eli feigned a stomachache and began to moan. Two thuggish-looking SS Officers approached, just as Eli had thought they might, to see what the problem was, and Eli and Moshe promptly knocked them both unconscious.

Eli indicated to Moshe that they should switch clothes with the two Officers, and it was time, presently, to herd the Jews back onto the train again. Eli and Moshe, now thought to be SS Officers, were placed in charge of making sure the passengers in Boxcar 18 were safely aboard once more. (The other passengers did not recognize their former companions, Eli and Moshe, because of their “new looks.”)

As Eli was about to close them in, the girl who had previously recited his virtues spoke, not immediately recognizing him:

“Wait, sir! We had two others in the car with us.”

Eli winked at the little girl, who then smiled, suddenly beginning to recognize him.

“Keep your chins up,” Eli grinned, and he and Moshe shut the door. Inside the closed boxcar, the two could hear applause – applause which, luckily, none of the real SS Officers could hear.

“What are you going to do now?” Moshe asked him.

“That’s what I was about to ask you,” Moshe smiled, placing a gentle arm on his new friend’s shoulder.

“Why ask me? You’re Elijah!”

“Who else should I ask? You see, I am Elijah the Prophet – that is true. But you, David, I have a surprise for you. You actually ‘pull-rank’ on me, so to speak: You happen to be the Messiah!“ (At this point, Moshe’s mouth dropped, just like your mouth would drop if somebody just told you that you were Moshiach.)
Eli continued, “You see, Moshe, one of the reasons I was sent down, at this point in history, was to make this fact known to you. I see you’re amazed, and that you’re having a problem breathing; but you have a few minutes to regain your composure, and to help me decide where we should redirect this train. So just try to relax, okay?”

Moshe was speechless (you would be, too!) and he next rejoined Eli in Eli’s gallop up to the front car, because the train was now, once again, on the move. Upon reaching it, they jumped aboard. The surprised Engineer, not expecting the arrival of what he believed to be two SS Officers, was jolted.

“Is it all right for us to sit up here with you?” Eli asked, now, suddenly speaking fluent German. Indicating Moshe, he continued, “My friend, Officer Klingensmith here, and I, have always wanted to sit up front with the Engineer!”

“You’re the boss,” the multi-chinned Engineer answered. “You can sit wherever you want!”

“Tell me,” Moshe asked the Engineer in German, “My friend Corporal Frauenfelder, here, and I have never seen Buchenwald before. Is it really as efficient in exterminating that Jewish rabble as we have heard?”

“Oh, a thousandfold,” the Engineer grinned, becoming excited by the thought. “Do you know that the Jews are the Fuhrer’s greatest chemical resource? Why just this morning, I cleansed my gouty toes with a bar of soap made out of hoary Jew gristle! Isn’t that absolutely fantastic?”

“Oh, yes,” Eli agreed, becoming violently ill at the thought, as was Moshe. The train was now careening along the tracks at full speed.

Eli motioned to Moshe to look under his seat, which he did, spying a metal pipe, which he handed to the Prophet. While the Engineer continued to mumble, Eli stood behind him, raising the pipe behind his head, bringing it down onto the Engineer’s thick skull with a dull thud, the obese man expiring after a few quick, motor-induced paroxysms.

Moshe hurled the disgusting Engineer from the train, and watched his head effortlessly split on a rock. He then rejoined Eli at the controls.

“Since I’m the Messiah,” Eli said, breathing deeply,” I guess I’m supposed to make the announcement that we are diverting our course, from Buchenwald to the Promised Land. But I’m afraid that such thing as a proper ‘State of Israel’ won’t be existing anytime soon.”

But Moshe had a better idea about where they could all go.

The train switched tracks.

Moshe, who was the Messiah, peeked into the plush, adjoining dining car, where he and Eli suddenly saw ten SS men slumped dead over their plates, and most assuredly, this was not a result of the greasy bratwurst which they had just consumed!

When the doors of Boxcar 18, and of the other forty-seven boxcars, were thrown open, all at the same time, and all, seemingly, by themselves, the light that penetrated was so intense, the passengers were all temporarily blinded. As pupils began to adjust, the Prophet and the Messiah, now both adorned in flowing, white robes, greeted them and helped them off the train, which, once it was emptied, immediately vanished into thin air, right before everybody’s eyes – all forty-eight cars of it. And it goes without saying that the passengers, who were also suddenly adorned in similar white robes, were silent and confused.

“My friends,” Eli exclaimed, “as I told you, I am Elijah, the Prophet, and this man,” he continued, indicating Moshe, “is Moshiach – our Messiah. Now,” he said, gesticulating, “I want to show you all something. All follow me, if you please.”

The one thousand six hundred and sixty-eight representatives of God’s Chosen People, including Moshe and Eli, followed the Messiah and the Prophet to an endless dinner table, upon which an infinite amount of settings had been placed, a full glass of wine before each.

“My friends,” Elijah began, “Welcome to Heaven… which, believe me, is a great deal friendlier than the place where the Germans were going to take you! What you see in front of you, is a table set for the Passover Seder. My brothers and sisters, just as you set a place of honor for me at every Seder, hoping that I will join you at the table, so I have always set a place of honor for each and every one of you. Will you all now join me for the kiddush?”

The 1,668 Lodzians complied, happily. When all, including the Messiah and the Prophet, were seated, everyone noticed that the seat at the far end of the table remained unoccupied. Since the Prophet was seated at the head of the table, nobody could imagine for whom the empty place was reserved.

Then, suddenly, the little tow-headed boy from the cornfield, now adorned in a white robe of his own, assumed the place of honor at the head of the table – but only after giving Elijah the Prophet, and his mother – who was “worried sick” – big hugs.

It may have been hard to be a Jew on earth, but here – it was no problem at all.




THE END.



Charles Zigman is the author of WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR: THE COMPLETE 95 FILMS (AND LEGEND) OF JEAN GABIN (www.jeangabinbook.com, 2009) and the 2013 children's book THE BELLY BUTTON THAT ESCAPED -- http://bit.ly/2nzDzGs

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