The Embarkation

By Murray Gitlin

What makes a Jew a Jew? This question is often heard among young American Jews who have not been brought up to understand the spiritual values which the Jews gave to the world. “The Embarkation,” Murray Gitlin’s emotional novel, first published in 1950, gives to a certain extent a psychological answer to this question.

The central figure in the novel, Martin Tester, is an American soldier who is forced to become a deserter due to the anti-Semitism of his commander. He wanders around for two years in Italy, knowing that a court martial awaits him if he ever returns to the United States. An American who works for British Intelligence in Italy discovers him and guarantees that everything will be forgiven and forgotten, provided he spies on ships carrying “illegal” Jewish immigrants from Italy to Palestine. Having no choice, he accepts the offer. However, coming face to face with the first transport of Jewish refugees, he decides to help rather than denounce them to the British agents. He is helped in this by an Italian girl who falls in love with him and by other Italians of good will, who ask no questions…

“The book is very well-written and makes absorbing reading.”—The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle

• Language: English
• Publisher: Valmy Publishing
• Release date: Feb 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781787209862

Murray Gitlin

Murray Gitlin was a white Jewish-American political activist. During World War II he worked as an official with the non-Communist philanthropic organization United Jewish Appeal. It was during this time that he met and married Thyra J. Edwards, a Texan-born black social worker, journalist, labor organizer, and advocate for women’s and civil rights. The couple moved to New York City after the war. In 1947, the United Jewish Appeal appointed Gitlin as deputy director of a branch of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to work with Jewish refugees in post-war Italy. There he spent five years with his wife Thyra, and wrote his book The Embarkation, which was published in 1950. Gitlin and Edwards returned to the United States in 1952, dividing their time between West Hartford, Connecticut, where Gitlin’s family lived, Edwards’ hometown of Houston, Texas, and New York City, where Edwards died of cancer in 1953, aged just 56. Murray Gitlin was also the author of All the Voices, published in 1960, which tells the moving story and thought-provoking story of an extraordinary white man married to a unique black woman.

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Text originally published in 1950 under the same title.

© Valmy Publishing 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE EMBARKATION

BY

MURRAY GITLIN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

1. 5

2. 8

3. 16

4. 19

5. 24

6. 30

7. 42

8. 55

9. 64

10. 70

11. 109

12. 136

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 149

DEDICATION

To

SOPHIE BERNSTEIN

1.

THE YOUNG MAN SAT ON THE FRONT SEAT BESIDE THE DRIVER and looked at the sun. A thin twist of cloud bisected it. The periphery was like a circle drawn with a compass, the contents reddish. He wore an old gray hat and a too small topcoat, rumpled as though it had been slept in. He looked thirty-five but could have been thirty.

This part of the world, the driver said, reminds me of Wyoming. Have you ever been to Wyoming?

It was a narrow macadam road and on each side of it the terrain had flattened out into a high plain rising slightly toward the side horizons.

I’ve never been farther west than Albany, the young man answered. He did not take his eyes off the sun-ball directly ahead of them. The eyes were engaged so intently in seeing and thinking that one felt their activity.

Haven’t you been all through this territory before? the driver said.

No. The fighting was on the other side. The Naples side.

The driver was smoking a pipe. He took it out of his mouth and knocked it against the sill of the open window. He had a clipped moustache and wore a drab-colored coat with a beaver collar.

Why is it, Tester, that practically all the deserters headed north for Rome? he said. You’d think they’d try to lose themselves in Naples, wouldn’t you? Why didn’t you?

I don’t speculate on the things I didn’t do, Tester said. I, on the other hand, like to speculate.

On the left side three strong hills appeared, treeless, the grass short-cropped at the base, and on them and around them no houses could be seen.

The driver knocked his pipe once more against the sill of the open window. You speak Yiddish? he asked.

Yes.

How well?

Pretty good.

I understand there are many accents and dialects. Which is yours?

Mine is what’s called Lithuanian Jewish, one of the most common.

The driver said: I’m told that a big percentage of them speak Hebrew. Do you speak it?

I can only read it.

Lithuanian Jewish with an American accent?

I don’t think so.

How come?

We always spoke Yiddish at home.

And at your uncle’s?

There too.

Your father is from Galicia. Does he speak with a Lithuanian Jewish accent?

No. His accent is called Galician Jewish. But we children spoke with a Lithuanian Jewish accent.

You think you can get by with it?

I’m pretty sure.

I’m told there are Roumanians coming across the Austrian frontier now.

I don’t know.

And Hungarians. The Hungarians, I’m told, don’t speak Yiddish at all.

I don’t know. I wouldn’t know these things.

The young man pulled a map out from the crack between the two seats, opened it and spread it on his lap. Beyond Clitunno were two parallel red lines—a secondary road. There were no towns and farther on along the coast no parallel lines. He put a finger on Clitunno and then, with another, measured the distance from it to the coastline. The coast was low wasteland. It was in white on the map.

You’ll take over from there, Tester, said the driver, without turning his head.

Along the coast?

No. At Clitunno. Any truck coming down the road has to slow down in Clitunno. The streets are narrow. You’ll have time to look the trucks over. It’s open road out of Clitunno right to the coast road—and no traffic. A car that tried to follow would leave itself wide open. The two ends of the coast road are covered, from the Taranto side and the other side. You’ll cover this one.

A truckload of people in a tarpaulin-covered truck won’t look any different from a truckload of oranges, he said. One can’t go over and feel the sides.

It’s up to you to figure out a way.

Peasants on bicycles returning from the fields had passed on to Altamura, and now toward them from the direction of Clitunno came the wagons drawn by the horses. From the foreheads of the horses hung silver and tin spangles, from the arched hames, the blinders of the harness embellished in white metal. The sun caught the burnished surfaces and flashed beams to the windshield of the car. The processional of bright-painted wagons reached to the end of the vista. Old men and women and the younger people were in the wagons. Across the shoulders and the black hair of the women the gay shawls and scarves made a spring mixture of color. It was late winter.

Is your Italian as good as your Yiddish, Tester?

Better.

Where did you learn it?

By speaking it for two and a half years in Rome.

That means you were staying with Italians?

Yes.

They knew you had deserted?

Yes.

A wonderful people these Italians.

Fog was hanging close to the ground. It was still light. The streets of Clitunno were blocked by the late afternoon crowd, peasants ambling down the middle, housewives in wooden clogs and shawls hurrying bottles of wine and olive oil home. The car could not go on but had to stop, creep along and stop again. In the side streets the night had come. They drove up an alley and got out at a trattoria. Two old peasants were sitting at a table drinking red wine. The owner was behind the counter at the coffee-making machine. Tester and the driver sat down by the door.

We’ll have some coffee, the driver said. What’s yours? Espresso?

Cappuccino.

The driver called out the order.

The one question, Tester, which you have been wanting to ask for some time now—correct me if I’m wrong—is: Am I in my right mind to entrust such a mission to a man I hardly know? On the face of it to detect a truckload of Jewish refugees on their way to a ship is of little consequence. By this time you know better than that. I think you see its real significance. Unless you do you will get yourself involved in an issue of right or wrong, moral or immoral. You will not be an informer, Tester. You will be participating in an act of mercy! Remember that. I’ll take my chances on you. Nothing in your life, as I’ve been able to put it together—let’s leave out the desertion—shows any instability. You’ve gone along from youth to school to job in a straight line. You’d be a married man with a family by now if that other hadn’t happened.

Outside could be heard the sound of wooden clogs on the cobblestones.

Here is where I’m going to leave you, said the driver. You’re on your own. I thought we might have dinner together, but it’s a small town. Let’s not get into trouble when we don’t have to. I’ll drive on back to Bari tonight. From inside his coat pocket he took an oblong envelope and laid it on the table.

Tester glanced at it but did not touch it.

You’ll find your soggiorno inside and my phone number and two hundred thousand lire. Spend as much as you have to. The moment they pass, get me on the phone. Phone me whenever you feel like it, but phone me at least every day.

Tester was sitting with his hands folded across his chest. The expression on his face did not change. The eyes were still intent and preoccupied. The cappuccino was in its final stage of preparation.

You’ll find fifty dollars in tens in the envelope. They’re always handy to have in your pocket, the driver said.

Tester did not reply. The coffee came.

You’ve said so little in these two days, Tester, that I’ve been wondering whether by nature you’re a man who doesn’t talk much or whether you feel a certain remorse at leaving behind two and a half years of hiding in Rome. I’m not sarcastic. Are you trying to hide—how shall I put it?—a personal negative reaction to me because I found you on those steps that night? I’ll predict that you’ll be changing your mind about me, Tester. The time will come when you’ll call me the man who saved you from dying of slow boredom in Rome. Clitunno, Clitunno, said the driver in a voice of reminiscence. There’s a little hotel called the Roma around here somewhere. It’s not bad. Try it. It’s quiet and off the main route.

I’m to stop there?

Yes. The trucks, of course, will be traveling at night. There will be somebody at the number I gave you all night. Ask for the urgentissimo service. It should come through within five minutes.

Tester nodded.

Is there anything you want to ask me?

No. My valise is in the car.

I know. I’ll bring it in.

I can take it myself.

They stood up. The driver paid.

Buona sera, they called to the owner.

Buona sera, he replied.

Outside, Tester took his valise, the car started and disappeared.

2.

THE STREET WAS DARK, TESTER WALKED LEFT TOWARD WHAT he thought was a piazza but it was a right-angle turn. He followed this to a second turn and there stopped. A peasant with a bottle of wine under his arm came by and he asked him the way. The valise was small and not heavy. He carried the envelope with the money and soggiorno in his other hand. He thought it must be about half past eight, but he did not feel hungry. The streets were empty. The sound of his footsteps, caught between the two sides of the buildings, accompanied him as far as the hotel. He remembered he had not looked at the soggiorno to see what was written there. He walked beyond the hotel to the first street lamp and opened the envelope. The money was in denominations of ten thousand, tied together with a paper band, new crisp bills. He left them in the envelope. The soggiorno was of the yellow type, issued in Bari, and bore the seal of the Bari police office. He stood under the street lamp and read it. He had been given a new father, a new mother, a new birthplace:

Cognome Eckstein Nome David Paternità Israel

Maternità Caspar, Sarah nato a Varsavia

il 25-11-1910 di nazionalità polacco

di condizione profugo

luogo di provenienza Salzburgo

data di ingresso in Italia 10-6-46

scopo del soggiorno dimora temporanea

luogo di dimora in Italia campo UNRRA

He folded the soggiorno, put it in his pocket and went into the hotel. There were plenty of rooms.

Quanto tempo rimane?

I do not know how long.

He went upstairs and lay down on the bed. It was a small room facing a courtyard.

Had it been possible to change the course of events it would still have been impossible not to get caught on the flight of steps leading off the Salita di Montecavallo three nights ago? The man was descending the stairs with caution greater than was called for, and then as he caught up level asked for a match. But he asked as one who does not need a match. The two days since of traveling with him by car from Rome here to Clitunno had not made a picture as precise as at that moment. Aside from the unique height—the six feet five or six inches, topped by a brown felt high in the crown, narrow in the brim—there was the way the eyes pierced the pocket in which he kept the fake documents, pierced it with a sort of calm, thorough, absolutely self-assured, unembarrassed look. Had he been able to fake that same equanimity, the man—who seemed to be going on nothing but intuition, one of the thousand spies asking matches of young men looking non Roman, offering or asking drinks of them in bars and clubs—might have continued on down the stairs toward the Via dei Giardini. But he, Martin Tester, belonged to that army of American, British, Slav, German, French, Hungarian, Polish deserters—military and civilian—patriots, fascists, anti-fascists, victims and the victimizing, who were chewing off the last few leaves left on the olive, plane and mulberry trees of Italy. In the attempt to save their necks they had developed a sixth sense, alert to noises; they slept with their socks on, but as scavengers for food they had become careless. It was the voice, however, more than any other quality which had caught him and held him. The man spoke slowly, low, but clearly, gave the final letter of each word a peculiar, dragging emphasis, as if to hold his victim.

It seems to me I’ve seen you before, the man had said in Italian on the steps leading down from the Quirinale above. Where?

You’re mistaken. He had not said it right.

You speak English?

He had hesitated. Yes, he said.

American?

No.

No?

Italian.

Born here?

Yes.

In Rome?

Yes.

Where did you learn to speak English?

My father spoke it. He was an American. That is, he had been an American. That was the third error. The first had been to stop at all.

Born there?

Yes.

And when did he come to Italy? I hope you’ll excuse all these questions. Perhaps you’d prefer not to answer.

Not at all. That’s all right. Of course. He went to his pocket for a cigarette.

Try these. Pall Malls.

Tester took one. Thank you, he said. He lit it. He’d had the opportunity to make a quick calculation. He came to Italy in 1910.

Your mother Italian?

Yes.

I’m American, the man had said.

Yes, I can tell from the accent.

From New England. The state of Massachusetts. And your father, where was he from?

From Michigan.

I know Michigan well. I have a friend who runs a farm near Kalamazoo. Spent several summers there. What did your father do?

Do?

His profession.

He was an artist.

A painter?

Yes.

That accounts for his coming to Italy.

Yes.

And you?

Me? I’m a chemist.

Were you in the Fascist Army?

For three months, he answered.

And then?

I deserted.

Where?

Sicily.

There are many deserters in this country, the man had said.

Yes. Many.

Including Americans from the American Army.

I suppose so, he had said calmly.

"Many. The Italian girls, the easy life, and a man wants to save his own neck. All over the world. He believes in heaven, but he doesn’t want to take a chance on the