Read Online A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz by Goran Rosenberg - Free Book Online
Authors: Goran Rosenberg
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ghetto, when the two hundred thousand Jews of Łódź have just been forced behind the barbed wire, into
das Wohngebiet der Juden in Litzmannstadt
, and when nearly all of them are still alive and the transports haven’t started yet and the dawn streets aren’t lined with the previous night’s bodies, with people who starved to death or died of typhus or killed themselves, and when the whole thing still seems too unreal to be true. Yes, this is what your world looks like when its root fibers are still attached to living people and memories and it’sstill possible to draw a family tree with an ever finer tracery of branches to ever more distant names, places, and stories, and no one yet knows that whole family trees can be chopped down and whole worlds liquidated.
On July 25, 1943, your father Gershon dies in apartment number 6. On July 26, 1943, Jeremiah, Obadja’s father, jumps from the window of apartment number 5 on the third floor and succeeds, not without difficulty, in killing himself. On November 10, 1943, your youngest brother Salek dies in apartment number 6.
I also have their birth dates. Gershon is fifty-six when he dies, Jeremiah forty-two, Salek nineteen. I also have the exact dates on which Rosenberg after Rosenberg is dispatched from the ghetto for onward transport. Rosenberg’s a common name in the ghetto, where it’s spelled with a
z
instead of an
s
.
“
Ausg
. 10.3.42 Tr. 35” is written after the name of the porter Idel Rozenberg, who lives in apartment number 25 at 51 Sulzfelderstrasse (Brzezińska) and was born on 1.1.1897.
Ausg
. means
ausgeliefert
, dispatched for delivery, and Transport 35, like all the other transports of 1942, goes to the gas vans, the mobile gas chambers in Chełmno.
The list doesn’t include this detail, but I know it’s so.
On March 15, 1942, weaver Majer Hersz Rozenberg, who lives in apartment number 3 at 4 Kranichweg (Żurawia), is dispatched on Transport 31.
On March 25, 1942, schoolboy Mordela Rozenberg, who lives in apartment 10 at 1 Fischstrasse (Rybna), is dispatched on Transport 36.
On September 1 and 2, 1942, the ghetto’s hospitals are emptied and the patients dumped into military trucks. Some are dumped out of the windows. Some try to run away.
Between September 5 and 12, an
Allgemeine Gehsperre
or general curfew is proclaimed: everyone is ordered to stay at home and no one is permitted to have guests and one block of apartments after another is forced to give up the old, the sick, and the children. Within two weeks, sixteen thousand people are dispatched from the ghetto, never to be heard from again.
On September 4, 1942, Chaim Rumkowski makes a speech.
I hope you don’t hear it.
I hope nobody at 18 Franciszkańska hears it.
I don’t know what anyone can hope for after hearing it.
But at the same time, I want everyone to know what Chaim Rumkowski said in his speech of September 4, 1942. So that everyone will know what sort of place it is that you’re leaving behind when you board the train to Auschwitz in August 1944 and your world is liquidated.
Or is it already liquidated now?
It’s a quarter to five in the afternoon and the sunshine is glaring and the day is still hot and loudspeakers have been set up in the square outside the fire station at 13 Lutomierska Street, and Chaim Rumkowski makes a biblical speech, without euphemisms. Or perhaps a speech with biblical euphemisms.
At any rate, a speech that cannot be misunderstood.
Or a speech that must be misunderstood if your world is not to collapse at once under the weight of its monumental futility and be liquidated on the spot.
“Fathers and mothers, give me your children!” says Chaim Rumkowski.
His white hair is tousled, his movements slow, his voice broken, but his words cannot be misunderstood, so they must be misunderstood.
He has received an order from the Germans to dispatch all the underage children of the ghetto.
And he is also to dispatch the old and the sick.
At least
das Wohngebiet der Juden in Litzmannstadt
, and when nearly all of them are still alive and the transports haven’t started yet and the dawn streets aren’t lined with the previous night’s bodies, with people who starved to death or died of typhus or killed themselves, and when the whole thing still seems too unreal to be true. Yes, this is what your world looks like when its root fibers are still attached to living people and memories and it’sstill possible to draw a family tree with an ever finer tracery of branches to ever more distant names, places, and stories, and no one yet knows that whole family trees can be chopped down and whole worlds liquidated.
On July 25, 1943, your father Gershon dies in apartment number 6. On July 26, 1943, Jeremiah, Obadja’s father, jumps from the window of apartment number 5 on the third floor and succeeds, not without difficulty, in killing himself. On November 10, 1943, your youngest brother Salek dies in apartment number 6.
I also have their birth dates. Gershon is fifty-six when he dies, Jeremiah forty-two, Salek nineteen. I also have the exact dates on which Rosenberg after Rosenberg is dispatched from the ghetto for onward transport. Rosenberg’s a common name in the ghetto, where it’s spelled with a
z
instead of an
s
.
“
Ausg
. 10.3.42 Tr. 35” is written after the name of the porter Idel Rozenberg, who lives in apartment number 25 at 51 Sulzfelderstrasse (Brzezińska) and was born on 1.1.1897.
Ausg
. means
ausgeliefert
, dispatched for delivery, and Transport 35, like all the other transports of 1942, goes to the gas vans, the mobile gas chambers in Chełmno.
The list doesn’t include this detail, but I know it’s so.
On March 15, 1942, weaver Majer Hersz Rozenberg, who lives in apartment number 3 at 4 Kranichweg (Żurawia), is dispatched on Transport 31.
On March 25, 1942, schoolboy Mordela Rozenberg, who lives in apartment 10 at 1 Fischstrasse (Rybna), is dispatched on Transport 36.
On September 1 and 2, 1942, the ghetto’s hospitals are emptied and the patients dumped into military trucks. Some are dumped out of the windows. Some try to run away.
Between September 5 and 12, an
Allgemeine Gehsperre
or general curfew is proclaimed: everyone is ordered to stay at home and no one is permitted to have guests and one block of apartments after another is forced to give up the old, the sick, and the children. Within two weeks, sixteen thousand people are dispatched from the ghetto, never to be heard from again.
On September 4, 1942, Chaim Rumkowski makes a speech.
I hope you don’t hear it.
I hope nobody at 18 Franciszkańska hears it.
I don’t know what anyone can hope for after hearing it.
But at the same time, I want everyone to know what Chaim Rumkowski said in his speech of September 4, 1942. So that everyone will know what sort of place it is that you’re leaving behind when you board the train to Auschwitz in August 1944 and your world is liquidated.
Or is it already liquidated now?
It’s a quarter to five in the afternoon and the sunshine is glaring and the day is still hot and loudspeakers have been set up in the square outside the fire station at 13 Lutomierska Street, and Chaim Rumkowski makes a biblical speech, without euphemisms. Or perhaps a speech with biblical euphemisms.
At any rate, a speech that cannot be misunderstood.
Or a speech that must be misunderstood if your world is not to collapse at once under the weight of its monumental futility and be liquidated on the spot.
“Fathers and mothers, give me your children!” says Chaim Rumkowski.
His white hair is tousled, his movements slow, his voice broken, but his words cannot be misunderstood, so they must be misunderstood.
He has received an order from the Germans to dispatch all the underage children of the ghetto.
And he is also to dispatch the old and the sick.
At least
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