Read Online Vera by Robert; Vera; Hillman Wasowski - Free Book Online Page B

soul together. This is all my father has to sell – his skill in business. But by the haggard look of his face, I judge that he does not harbour any great confidence that he will continue to earn such rewards in the future.
    It is not only food we need; firewood is almost as much a matter of life and death. The wood has to be purchased from Polish peasants, who bring it in by the barrow-full. Such a humble thing as wood helps to preserve the life of a human being! Really, how little of anything is required: a small quantity of food, rags to cover one’s body, a little wood for heat. This is the foundation of existence, and from this we reach out, eventually, and create greater comfort, and art, and music, and books.
    I do not ask myself questions about the politics that reduced us to this bare subsistence, but if I’d had the knowledge and the years, I would have said, ‘Why this? What harm have we ever done? Leave us the fragments of food you would normally throw away, the rags you would no longer wear, the fuel you would barely miss and we will survive. Why bother to murder us?’

    But no, they insist on murder. They come with trucks and trap the children and force them on board with shouts and threats.
    It was during one of these rounding-up actions that I witnessed the poor, whimpering boy, too ill to hurry, who is upended and swung by his feet, so that his head is shattered against a stone bollard. The perpetrator – the soldier – he can live with his brutality, he can still sleep, still eat, perhaps even show love for his own children, should he have any, God forbid. But it is harder for me, as a witness, to live with it.
    Now when we have warning that the soldiers are coming, we are hurried into a cavity in the shed beside the house – as many children as can be found, into a cavity behind a false wall. We are warned: ‘Say nothing!’ We are warned: ‘If they hear you they will kill you!’
    Parents who raise their children in places of peace still live with a dread of the terrible things that can happen to their darlings – attacks by monsters, men of diseased appetite, psychopaths or sadists. These parents attempt to guard their children against abduction with adamant rules backed up with examples of what can happen – no, very likely will happen – if the rules are disobeyed. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t accept a lift with anyone we don’t know well. Don’t go down to such-and-such a part of town by yourself. Always be home before dark. Transgress, and you could be murdered, eaten up in a pie, thrown in the river … and so on. Stories to frighten the little ones. And then there are other stories, also designed for children, that dramatise these lessons: Snow White, who accepted an apple from an old woman, a poisoned apple; Goldilocks, who took what was not hers and was chased through the woods by bears. So many cautionary tales! So many ogres who hid under bridges, giants who ground the bones of children to make their bread, wolves who ate little pigs who failed to build secure dwellings.
    I had heard such stories, back in times of comfort. But the stories changed.
    I was no longer in the realm of fantasy when my father said, ‘Listen to me. When you see gangs of boys, gangs of young men, you keep away, cross the street, hurry home. Do you understand, Vera? They will do you harm.’
    My father spoke from first-hand experience of the harm that such gangs of young men inflict. Only a year earlier he had himself been attacked in the street by a gang. These thugs carried walking sticks in which razor blades had been embedded, and would come up quickly behind men and women they identified as Jews, raise these lethal clubs and rain blows down on the Jewish skull. Their intention was certainly to kill before running off, and they would have killed my father except that he was wearing a hat, a Homburg, and the felt of the cloth partly