Authors: Anita Diamant
As they got up to leave the mess hall, Leonie said, “I’ll catch up with you later.
I have to go to the latrine.”
Shayndel frowned. “Again? I think you should talk to one of the doctors.”
“It’s nothing. I’ve always had a delicate stomach.”
“All right,” Shayndel said, “I’ll see you at lunch. We’ll make up a little Hebrew
conversation circle with some of the others.”
As soon as they parted, Shayndel heard someone call her name. Hannah took her arm
and said, “Walk with me.”
She leaned close, as if she were about to share a girlish confidence, and said, “There’s
a woman coming to Atlit today. A German. She will be assigned to your bunk and I want
you to keep an eye on her. Now smile and nod at me, like I just told
you that Miloz, the handsome one, has been asking about you.”
Shayndel grinned and nodded like a fool, less because of Hannah’s instruction than
her attentions. She had watched the affable and increasingly pregnant busybody, suspecting
that Hannah’s pushy friendliness had an ulterior motive.
“Nicely done,” said Hannah, as they walked past a pair of guards. “We have been told
that this person was a collaborator—a
capo
—in one of the camps. We’d like you to find out if it’s true.”
“We?” Shayndel asked.
“Come now,” said Hannah. “You of all people must have guessed that the Palmach has
eyes and ears in Atlit.”
“Me of all people?”
“I know about you,” Hannah said. “You were in the youth movement since childhood;
the Young Guard, right? I also know that you fought bravely against the Germans in
the forests outside of Vilnius. You’re a hero, for goodness’ sake, and anyone with
eyes can see that you’re not like most of the other girls, bourgeois brats or sad
cases like that little French friend of yours, who seems like her insides are made
of broken glass. Besides, you know all the songs and you carry yourself like a soldier.”
“I think you might be making a mistake,” Shayndel stammered.
“I have no time to play games,” Hannah said firmly. “They aren’t going to let me stay
here much longer. The pregnancy is going to show any minute. Have the others noticed
yet?”
Shayndel tried not to smile. “There’s been some talk.”
“I’ll bet there has. And you can tell everyone that I am not married but I will be
before the baby is born. In fact, I may be out of here by tonight, so you will be
reporting to Tirzah Friedman,” Hannah said.
“The kitchen director? I wondered about her.”
“Of course you did! Which is why you are the right girl for the job,” Hannah said.
“You will act as extra eyes and ears for her. Tell her anything you discover about
the German woman. After that, keep a lookout for changes among the guards, their schedules,
everything about them, in fact. If you have suspicions about anyone else in camp,
tell Tirzah that as well; anything that you sniff out.”
“Eyes, ears, and nose, eh?”
“You’re a comedienne, too? Fine. Tirzah will be asking for a helper in the kitchen
in the next few days. Make sure to volunteer so she can select you.” At that, Hannah
squeezed her hand and walked off.
Shayndel was flattered to have been singled out by Hannah, who seemed the perfect
pioneer woman: strong, blunt, cheerful, and confident. It made perfect sense that
she would be working with the Jewish military forces. Hannah was exactly the kind
of girl Shayndel had dreamed of becoming since she had followed her brother, Noah,
to one of his secret meetings. She had probably been no more than twelve years old,
but she still remembered the opening words of the speaker that night, an earnest young
man who had actually been to Palestine. “To all of my brothers and sisters in HaShomer
HaTza’ir, my comrades in the Young Guard, I bring greetings from the land of Israel.”
The applause that followed his remarks lifted her out of her seat and changed her
completely. She was no longer just a girl from a small town in west-central Poland;
she was a Zionist, heart and soul, and her only desire was to go to the Young Guard
summer camp so she could learn Hebrew, wear pants, and work in the fields. Shayndel
got her wish the following year and became famous in that little world, not only for
her
command of the map of Palestine, but also for the way she forced the boys to let her
march in their formations, carrying a broom on her shoulder, and for her enthusiastic,
if slightly off-key, singing of folk songs. Shayndel loved every minute of camp, even
when it was her turn to chop onions for her comrades’ dinner.
Of course, the ultimate dream and the purpose of the movement was to settle in Eretz
Yisrael, to drain the swamps and grow oranges, to reinvent everyday life in the kibbutz—the
collective farm that would do away with greed, unfairness, and even jealousy. Like
her brother, Shayndel adopted Zionism as her religion.
When Noah was seventeen, he had declared himself an atheist and stopped going to synagogue
with their father. Shayndel found it hard to deny her mother’s pleas to accompany
her on major holidays, but on the Yom Kippur before her fifteenth birthday, the two
of them slipped out of the house before their parents were out of bed. They spent
most of the day walking with friends in the countryside, talking about the German
threat and debating whether they should join the resistance or try to get to Palestine
immediately, and how that might be done.
When their parents came home from the synagogue for a midafternoon nap, they found
Shayndel and Noah in the kitchen, drinking tea and eating cold potatoes from the previous
night’s dinner. Mama hurried to the window and drew the curtains. “Everyone was asking
for you at shul,” she said.
“I don’t care.” Shayndel shrugged. “Don’t try to make me feel bad about it, and for
heaven’s sake don’t start crying. Religion isn’t what we need now. Praying to God
isn’t going to solve anything. The only true redemption of the Jews will take place
in our own homeland.”
Noah smiled at her. “You sound like a pamphlet.”
“Do you disagree with me?”
“Of course not,” he said, reaching for an apple.
“You are no better than an animal,” said Papa bitterly. “Why can’t you fast like everyone
else for a single day? You don’t get anywhere in life without discipline. And piety.”
“Piety?” said Noah. “Excuse me, Papa, but you are a hypocrite. Like everyone else,
you go to shul because it is expected and then sleep through most of the service.
Not that I blame you for dozing off. It’s all nonsense. And you know it.”
“Apologize to your father,” said Mama.
“Ach,” said Papa, and slammed the door.
The arguments continued, but after the Germans invaded Poland, Papa began to listen
more than he talked. When Noah announced he’d decided to go to Riga, where he could
book passage on a boat bound for the Mediterranean, their parents made no objection,
though no amount of begging, threats, or tears would move them to let Shayndel go
with him.
As the Nazis marched closer to their town and stories about what they were doing to
the Jews became impossible to ignore, Shayndel brought home a few of her Young Guard
friends to convince her parents to let her go to Vilna, a gathering place for Zionists
from all over Eastern Europe. Her father walked out of the room before anyone said
a word. Her mother served tea and listened to their arguments about the need for resistance
and the relative safety of the city. But after they had left, she took Shayndel’s
face in her hands and said, “I understand why you’re doing this. But, darling, that
tall fellow is in love with the other girl, the brunette with the hazel eyes. You
are making a fool of yourself.”
Shayndel left home a week later, in the middle of the night,
without saying good-bye. In Warsaw, she discovered that Noah had been murdered on
the road by Polish thugs and wrote home to tell her parents the terrible news and
ask for their forgiveness. Later, she learned that they had been murdered with all
the other Jews in town—shot and buried in a field that had been her family’s favorite
picnic spot. She prayed that they had never received her letter.
As Shayndel walked along the back of the Delousing Shed, she noticed that one of the
doors was unlocked. Seeing no one, she slipped inside, set the latch, and stood perfectly
still, waiting to be sure she hadn’t been followed and that she was alone. A sparrow
flew through the clerestory windows and landed on a beam high above her, which she
took as a good omen.
There were no towels or soap and the water was freezing, but Shayndel stood under
the shower and let the grit and sweat of Atlit wash away, remembering when she would
have given anything for the luxury of clean water, no matter how cold, and a little
privacy. When she started to shiver, she turned off the tap and shook herself dry,
like a terrier, and dressed. As she slipped back into the daylight, she ran her fingers
through her hair, pleased with herself; she still knew how to disappear and get what
she needed.
Shayndel followed the sound of voices to the shady side of the dining hall, where
Arik was holding forth. His Hebrew classes began with the same vocabulary lists and
drills as Nurit’s, and like her, he ended with patriotic poems and songs. But where
Nurit talked about her home and family, her garden and her neighbors, Arik always
turned the conversation to politics.
“The British are not our allies,” he said, speaking a little too fast for most of
his students. “There was some hope that when Labor came to power we’d be able to count
on them, but now they are denying the right of our people to come home. There are
a hundred thousand Jews waiting in Germany with nowhere to go, and those bastards
offer us a quota of two thousand? This is not the act of an ally but of an enemy.”
“I heard they were going to permit another fourteen hundred a month,” said a stocky
young Pole named David, who had been in Atlit for less than a week but seemed to know
everyone in the camp.
“Bah,” said Arik, “that only happens if the Arabs agree to it, and they want the Jews
out—or dead. And what the British want most of all is access to Suez and oil.”
“If you’re right, then the Yishuv will be at war with the British in earnest, and
soon,” said David, who was sitting on the edge of the bench, his elbows on his knees.
“And that’s too bad. My cousin fought with the Palestinian regiments, and he had nothing
but praise for them.”
“The limeys don’t want your respect,” shouted a baby-faced boy with a very deep voice.
“They’re in bed with the emirs and the effendis, and that makes them our enemies.”
“But we are not at war with the British,” someone objected.
“Not yet. But if we are to have a state and a homeland for our brothers and sisters
in Europe, we must kick the empire out of here,” said Arik.
At that, Miloz, the camp heartthrob, got up from his bench muttering, “I have no idea
what they’re talking about.” Four girls followed as he walked away, and all the men
in the class turned to watch them except for David, the well-spoken Pole,
who caught Shayndel’s eye and motioned for her to take a seat beside him. “I am David
Gruen,” he said. “And I believe you are Shayndel Eskenazi, yes?”
“Shhh,” she said. “I want to listen to this.”
Someone in the crowd said, “The minute the British are out of here, the Arabs will
attack us. Isn’t that right, Arik?”
He shrugged. “We will beat them. The Jews of Palestine know how to fight.”
“But there are millions of them,” said David, “and just a few hundred thousand of
us.”
At that, a man in the front row said, “Maybe you can explain this to me, Arik. In
all of my years as a Zionist, in the youth groups and in all of my reading, no one
ever mentioned the Arabs. Now I come here to discover that there are three times as
many of them as there are Jews here in the land. Did any of you know that?”
“They are peasants,” said Arik. “Worse than peasants. They are illiterate, dirty,
backward. The educated ones with money use their tenants like serfs, like slaves.
Besides, the Arabs did nothing with this land for hundreds of years, and I would remind
you that we bought the land from them, legally. But now that we have built factories
and made modern farms, now that we have jobs and schools and hospitals, the Arabs
are crying that we are taking over their precious birthright.”
“It sounds like the story of Esau and Ishmael,” said a woman sitting in the back row.
Shayndel saw that it was Zorah, her arms crossed tightly against her chest.
“Esau and Ishmael? What are you talking about?” Arik demanded. “Do you think we should
let our brothers rot in Displaced Persons camps so that these people can take the
land back to the dark ages? If you want to quote the Bible, what
about, ‘this land that God gives to you.’ To you, not to Esau and Ishmael. To the
Hebrews. To the Jews!”
“The rabbis taught that our misery was caused by the mistreatment of Ishmael, the
brother of Isaac, and Esau, the brother of Jacob,” said Zorah.
“Which rabbis?” Arik scoffed. “Diaspora rabbis? No, my dear, it is not so complicated.
This was our land from the beginning, and it is our land to win back.”
“You were a stranger in a strange land,” said Zorah.
“So what? This is the real world,” Arik said. “If we do not act, there will be none
of us left to debate the fine points of the Torah.”
“And that means we must become like all other nations and oppress our neighbors?”
“You know, Zorah has a point,” Shayndel whispered to David, impressed at how her usually
silent barrack-mate had stood up to Arik.
“Maybe,” said David. “But there really is no turning back, and nowhere else to go.”
“Enough philosophy for today,” Arik announced. “I’ll be back on Friday. Until then,
speak Hebrew to each other. Now everyone stand up for ‘
Ha Tikvah
.’”
Shayndel thought that “The Hope” might be the saddest piece of music ever written.
The song was so slow and stately it sounded more like a dirge than an anthem. Still,
the melody was more powerful than any hymn’s, and the words still moved her as deeply
as the first time she’d heard them, a young girl with braids and a brother.