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III
Under the new flag’s given symbol of glory
The ranked boots pummelled in unison
The uncomprehending soil.The physical acres
Mudded indifferently with the many heel prints.
He was one of many in the anonymous ranks
Turning the bright fragments of memory as he marched… Of the orator’s promise electrifying his spine,
The dream of heroes.Weight of rifle on his bruised shoulder.
Invented manhood to him.The forward action was glory.
“On a Photograph of a German Soldier Dead in Poland” by John Ciardi
29
1st February 1983
Melbourne, Australia
They want to interview me for the ceremony.To get my story, they said.My story.It’s something I haven’t told anyone.I don’t know where to start.How do you begin something like that?It’s been hidden deep inside me so long, I’m not sure how to start pulling it out.
One piece at a time, my love.That’s what Jan said when I told him how I felt about it all.It’s your award,I replied,I don’t know why I have to be interviewed.
They’ll put the interview in a pamphlet to be handed out on the day.I don’t have to go on the stage, which is a relief.But I’m nervous still.How to find the words?
In the end, I agreed to do it because it seemed to mean a lot to my boys.And I’m happy for Jan and Waltrina.They deserve the award.I want the world to know what we went through and how they fought for us even though it might’ve meant a horrible and humiliating death for them.
Righteous among the nations.
It has a nice ring to it.I’ve longed to see them recognised all this time for what they did.They rescued us.It’s as simple as that.Jan wanted to stay in the ghetto and fight that day when it burned to the ground, but he came back to us instead.He told me later he knew that if he stayed, he’d die, and then who would look after me and my family?
“I had a responsibility,” he said.“A responsibility to you.I knew I couldn’t save them, as much as it pained me to admit.But I could save you.And so that’s what I did.”
Janek and Waltrina Kostanski saved my family from death more times than I can count.And they did it knowing it could mean their own demise in the most painful and degrading ways the German military could devise.
The Nazis certainly knew how to be cruel.Even then I didn’t understand just how bad things could be, but I’ve learned a lot about it since.Those of us who lived it understood the fear, but we didn’t see the camps.Jadzia did—she was there.She witnessed what they did, but she wouldn’t talk about it.The rest of us could only guess.
We saw people crammed into trains and taken away, never to return.Deported to somewhere in the east, we were told.But by the time the ghetto burned, we’d learned the truth about the extermination camps.Or at least some elements of the truth, but not the whole.No one knew the whole of it until the Russians liberated Treblinka.
The things I’ve read, the stories I’ve heard since, haunt my dreams.Or they did when I was younger.These days, I dream more about grandchildren and sunny days and sunburnt skies that warm my head as I walk along golden shores.This adopted home of ours has brought us so much peace and joy.
It’s hard to remember the fear of those days, but now as I drive to the studio where the television reporter waits to speak to me, that feeling returns like a premonition of the interview ahead.
The journalist is beautiful, like some kind of hauntingly serene doll.She won’t stop smiling with those impossibly white teeth as she leads me through the studio, introducing me to everyone we pass.I smile and nod, shake hands and utter greetings, but can’t remember a single name she’s told me.
By the time I’m seated with the camera pointed at my face, there’s a line of sweat trickling down the centre of my spine.It’s hot beneath the lights, and I’m nervous about what I’ll say.Will the words come out in a way that makes sense?I haven’t spoken them before, so it’s hard to know.
I’ve talked to Jan about those days, of course, but it’s different when you’re with someone who lived it with you.You don’t have to explain.There are things unspoken that have no need for words.He knows what I’m describing without me having to draw him a picture.And so the explanations, the stories—they’re stuck deep down in the recesses of my mind.Memories without words.Experiences I never wanted to exhume.
She asks about those days, and what Jan and Waltrina did for us.So I tell her.Then I talk about living in the apartment with the Kostankis in that small hidden room for two years.
Two whole years without the fresh air or sunshine on my face.Two years without seeing anyone but Tata, Nathan, and the Kostanskis.No friends to go out with, no boys to flirt with, no school days or trips to the country.
No picnics or parks, no walking beneath the moonlight.I spent the last years of my teens locked in a tiny, dank apartment in battle-scarred Warsaw, afraid that the SS might knock on the door at any moment.Scared that the neighbours could hear us if we spoke too loudly, or laughed too much, or if Tata’s violin bothered them, and they’d turn us in.
And all that while, we listened to the sounds of death in the streets below.We saw the billowing smoke from the ghetto until the eighth day of May in 1943, when finally the last of the ghetto residents were gone and the ghetto was no more.We witnessed groups of people being rounded up and sent away.
We heard rumours that the Jews in the extermination camps learned of the ghetto’s insurrection and formed their own resistance movements.That the Germans cracked down on the rebellion in early November, killing a record number of Jews over the space of two days.When they blew up the Great Synagogue, it was seen as a last act of defiance by the Germans in the aftermath of their ghetto victory.
Meanwhile, we played games of cards and bickered over the lastpierogi.We sang songs and listened to Tata playing Beethoven.I danced with Jadzia and Danuta, baked with Waltrina, and snuck to the window seat to sit close with Jan and talk about books we’d read or movies we longed to see, or whatever it was he’d done at the market that day out in the big, wide world I longed so desperately to rejoin.
