Sappy Tales and Silent Screams: Subterranean Echoes from the Holocaust

By Norbert Friedman

In the course of trying to have my manuscript Sun Rays at Midnight published, I discovered that there were thousands of other manuscripts by survivors submitted to the Project of Holocaust Survivors Memoirs and other publishing institutions, manuscripts that for various reasons will never see the light of day.

Publishers claim, that because of the flood of the survivors memoirs, the poor literary quality of most and the similarity of the narrative, there is no market for the memoirs, that despite, that the 2002 Nobel Prize for literature was granted to a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, Imre Kertesz for his memoir Fateless.

That, despite the fact that not so long ago an Oscar was granted for the film, Pianist-.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503531413

Norbert Friedman

Norbert Friedman was born in Krakow in 1922. He was imprisoned in 11 concentration camps before being liberated by American forces. Following liberation he went to work for the U.S. Army before attending university in Frankfurt. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1950, and married Marilyn in 1955. The father of two sons and grandfather of four, he writes and lectures on the Shoah, is an educator at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, NYC, and is the recipient of the Yavner Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to teaching about the Holocaust and other violations of human rights.

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Copyright © 2015 by Norbert Friedman.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2014922877

      ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5035-3139-0

      Softcover      978-1-5035-3140-6

      eBook      978-1-5035-3141-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/15/2015

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CONTENTS

FOREWORD

GISELLE, A LOVE STORY

PEACE ON EARTH

MY FATHER’S CHAIR

PEERS

ZEIDI

SILENT SCREAMS

INTRODUCTION

THE SILVER CROSS

THE MARITAL BED

A LEAP OF FATE

THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC

VIDDUI-MEA CULPA

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

FOREWORD

Originally I planned to have the manuscript of these short stories buried in some of my many papers in an old cardboard file amongst old pictures mixed with the insurance policies and unpaid bills. It would assure that after my death my children would find it and, maybe, enhanced by my passing, it would have a chance to be published. Then I thought about leaving it in the files of cyberspace on the hard disc of my computer. But weather being what it is here in Florida, there is no guarantee that a hurricane-strength storm, would not wipe it out.

Because my memoir Sun Rays at Midnight which I had published by a Publish-on-Demand company did not earn what I hoped would be deserved reviews, and because I would like to see this work between covers while my eye-sight is still OK, instead of postmortem, I decided to try the route of nontraditional publishing. So, if you are reading this page, it means that I succeeded and that the written word is still alive.

The book’s first part, Sappy Tales is designed to gradually take the reader through the writer’s experiences, some of them pre-World War II and some of them current.

By choosing vignettes the writer creates a mosaic of conditions and mind-sets of his contemporaries since his early teens from Giselle a Love Story up to his recent experiences as a grandparent in Zeidi. It’s a portrait of a vanished world and a struggle of those who survived it, to go on with their lives.

The second part, Silent Screams deals with four cases of post war derailments of lives of writer’s intimate friends, caused by events that the protagonists themselves were not able to properly verbalize.

Silent Screams starts with the inability to shed the fears of having one’s identity discovered in The Silver Cross:

Goes through the consequences of a post war family’s structure wrecked by the ghosts of memories of war experiences, as portrayed in the story of The Marital Bed;

Continues with the tragic results of being forced into a homosexual relationship in Leap of Fate, then into the incredible story of paternal betrayal and rejection, as depicted in The Sacrifice of Isaac.

It ends with the writer’s confession of a burden that had plagued him all through his adult life, in Vidui- Mea Culpa.

GISELLE, A LOVE STORY

The late afternoon sun has moved behind the oak trees throwing a shadow over my limited sanctuary in the corner of my backyard. It was here that I would seek quiet and solitude and sometimes-even solace from the events around me. But now I had to move my plastic-molded chair to another spot to escape the shadows and the coolness of the approaching evening, there were only a few such sunny spots left in the garden.

I shut off the Walkman radio and removed the headset. Tchaikovsky Symphony No.5 in E Minor was over and I was weary of the forthcoming commercials.

I was looking forward to the singing of the birds that were rejoicing over the end of the late summer day’s heat.

In the next yard, playful girlish voices filled the air.

I knew who they were; it was my neighbor’s lovely 11-year-old daughter Tova, playing with her friends.

There were shrieks of delight as they propelled each other on the swings and chased each other around the backyard.

Suddenly the sounds became muffled and the only evidence of their presence was the shadows and silhouettes swiftly flashing between the shrubberies in a chase after each other. And then, that too ceased.

But I was not alone. The sounds and sights of Tova and her friends rescued for me memories of another summer, from another world and another time eons of years ago, and of Giselle.

Her mother called her Gittel but I renamed her- Giselle, a name I thought more fitting for a beautiful maiden, the object of youthful love.

Gittel and her mother came from the town of Sosnowiec to stay for the vacation period in the mountainous resort of Bystra, where my father used to run a butcher shop during the summer months.

Somehow my mother and Gittel’s mother became friends, they both loved to read, preferably the latest romantic novels, most of which I was not allowed to see.

Gittel’s mother was tall, well-groomed, her clothing just right for a place like Bystra, an affordable middle class, but respectable resort.

She wore her hair long, which I liked, not knowing that the style was designed to hide a growth behind her right ear.

Her husband came to visit only once, for one week, he owned some kind of business in Sosnowiec that required his presence at all times.

Gittel was a lovely, lanky girl of eleven years of age, only six-months younger than I.

She wore her auburn hair in braids which flapped around whenever she made me chase her.

Her green eyes darted back and forth from one subject to another indicating her restlessness and curiosity; they would be still and pointed downward only when she wanted to appear coy and demure.

I have never known anyone like Gittel, at least not during a vacation time, a time of leisure and of summer-nights’ dreams.

I was smitten with Gittel and her coquetry. I would fall all over myself trying to please and serve her.

If I could, I would have swept the dust in front of her feet. As it was, I always ran in front of her trying to impress her with my physical ability doing cartwheels and somersaults.

Once such a display almost cost me my life, when unexpectedly a car (cars were very, very rarely seen on those roads) came down the road barely missing me.

I paid no attention to the fright of my mother- it was the expression of concern and fear on Gittel’s face that I noticed and that somehow made the frightening experience almost worthwhile.

As we walked together on our way home I called her Giselle for the first time and I told her that I always thought of her under that name.

She seemed pleased and ran ahead of me, skipping and jumping.

When we bid goodbye that afternoon she said quietly, looking at her feet I am glad that nothing happened to you.

Gittel and her mother stayed in a Pensjonat a combination of a boarding house and a hotel.

We lived in the village on the second floor of a brick house; we had lived there all year round for the last two years.

Our mothers would invite each other for what we knew as the second breakfast or for the evening meal known as "podwieczorek".

They served tea and cookies and berries with cream and sugar, sometimes cold beet borscht with new potatoes and chives sprinkled over them.

During those meals I was made to mind my table manners so as not to embarrass my mother.

My father was always busy in the butcher shop or the slaughterhouse.

On the days when I was not required to help him I was allowed to join Gittel, her mother and my mother on their daily walks.

We strolled along the village road alongside the winding river, which originated in the surrounding mountains.

The river (and I do not remember its name, I think that it was also named Bystra) had so many different faces within the few miles that it ran through the village of Bystra.

At times it was narrow and swift, cascading over rocks and felled logs where crossing was treacherous. In other spots it widened, flowing lazily, its surface glistening in the summer’s sun, wide smooth rock at its shore where the village women would do their laundry, and where we children would board a wooden tub for a Tom Sawyer like trip down its current careful to debark before we reached its only waterfall.

It also had lovely, secluded spots with enough space to spread a blanket, either in the shade of the trees that lined the shoreline, or on the pebbled narrow strip of a beach-like riverbank.

One such site was the favored spot where our mothers would stop to rest; they would spread one blanket for themselves in the shade and another one for Gittel and me on the riverbank.

They would unpack a little picnic basket and engage in gossip: about the vacationing crowd, who had money and who had not? Which husband seemed faithful and which had a roving eye?

My mother was thirty-four years of age that summer and although hers were hard years of early aging she was still youthful in her heart.

And so was Gittel’s mother. They reviewed the last romances that they had read, and those that they thought to have observed blossoming around them.

One such afternoon when Giselle and I basked in the sun (she in her one-piece black bathing suit, I with my shirt off and the bottoms of my trousers rolled up) I tried to get up enough courage to tell her about my affection for her.

Her silky, freckled body, deliciously warm from the afternoon sun, lay next to me and its nearness stirred in me boundless, hitherto unknown strange sensations.

Blood was pounding in my temples; there was desire for this nymph-like creature next to me, unexplainable desire of things that the boys would whisper about at the evening bonfire gatherings.

All those corporal feelings though were tempered by my romantic, platonic worship of this youthful goddess.

I kept admiring her body resting on its side, her right arm bent at the elbow resting on top of it.

Gently, subtly like a butterfly settling on a flower to sip its nectar, trembling, I brought my lips and touched her shoulder.

The world stood still and I was oblivious to it, including our parents.

Giselle’s right hand slowly moved seeking contact with my body, in its subtle gesture approvingly noting my act.

My heart stopped its beat, my throat tightened I was overwhelmed with joyous emotions, she loved me too.

If it were not for our mothers sitting right above us I would have had jumped up and started singing and dancing.

Instead I silently buried my head in the blanket trying to maintain some physical contact with her body.

I felt my hair touching her back and that was enough.

On the way home I was bubbling with nonsense, trying to conceal and at the same time express my happiness.

We were saying goodbye at the juncture of the road where we usually parted, but I elicited permission from my mother to accompany Giselle to their Hotel under a pretext of borrowing a book.

I see you tomorrow, was all that I could get out, sure, was all she said. I ran back home, or rather I soared. I was weightless and there was no limit to my physical prowess.

Next day it rained, it rained cats and dogs.

Why does it always rain like that on vacation?

I was looking for a pretext to run and see Giselle, but I was not allowed to go outside.

There was constant rumbling and occasional lightning.

I sat by the window daydreaming, envisioning scenarios where I would prove my love to Giselle, rescuing her from danger and receiving her reward in the form of kisses and tender embraces.

Noon came and Mother made me something to eat.

I hardly touched my food, using the trusty old, I have a belly-ache, for an excuse.

In the evening my father came home and again I could barely eat, my heart was heavy with love sickness.

Afterward my father went out to play cards with the downstairs neighbors while my mother became engrossed in her book.

Before my father left he offered a remark: Old Jan said: that it’s going to rain like this for at least two more days, the clouds are stuck in the mountains.

My heart sunk to the bottom of my stomach.

What if I will not be able to see Giselle? I must tell her how I feel.

Finally I resolved that I should write her so that she should see how my whole being was full of love for her.

I found a corner away from my mother’s chair and I started to write my first love letter, except that what started as a love letter somehow transcended itself into an ode and a sonnet.

My heart sang with all the lyrics that I ever encountered reading Polish poetry, Mickiewicz, Krasicki, Slowacki and others.

Every superlative ever seen in a ballad or a poem found its way into the pages of my creation.

It was late into the evening when I finished the letter.

I read and re-read it again and again, making slight corrections on the way.

The more I read it, the more swelled had my heart become and my head to go with it.

It was unquestionably the most beautiful, the most profound composition ever conceived.

In my opinion it was the purest, heart piercing declaration of platonic love ever written.

It was certain to win over her affection if there was still any doubt about its existence.

Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde move over, a new romance with intensity and dimensions to surpass all other love-stories that were ever written was displacing your prominence in world’s literature.

Sleep was slow to come and when it did it was full of scenes of my handing the letter to Giselle and her eventual reaction to it.

The few films with love plots in them, that I was allowed to have attended, provided the visual scenarios for my dreams.

It rained during the next two days, just as Jan had predicted.

When it stopped I ran barefoot to Giselle’s hotel, the letter inside my shirt close to my heart.

The rain-soaked streets, full of puddles of water felt cool under my feet and splashed my legs with mud up to my waist.

Finally I reached the hotel. I wiped my feet on the mat at the entrance and I cleaned the mud off with a handkerchief.

My heart was pounding as never before, I was hoping to garner enough courage to hand her the letter and to immediately run away.

I asked for Giselle to come out. She met me outside and greeted me with coolness and annoyance.

What do you want? she inquired. Why did you come here so early? she asked with visible irritation.

My heart sunk to the pit of my stomach. Paralyzing consternation and shock prevented me from providing a reply, I stammered something like, eh..eh.. I just wanted to see you.

No, not to day, and having said that Giselle turned around and went back to her room.

The walk back to my house was the most sobering, most painful and bewildering struggle with the complexity of female psyche that I ever was made to deal with.

Several days passed. The weather was lousy and we did not go for our strolls.

I could not muster enough courage to give the letter to Giselle on the one afternoon when they came to visit.

It was an unusually quiet visit; Giselle’s mother looked pale and tired.

She spoke to my mother in restrained tones, and Giselle showed no interest in my mother’s attentiveness, or mine to her.

Finally the reason for this subdued mood was disclosed, Giselle and her mother were to leave the next week, well short of the end of the season.

I was heartbroken. I decided that I would hand her the letter in a very dramatic fashion at the train station.

They however left in a hurry, early in the morning two days after their visit with us.

There were no good-byes, not by Giselle, nor by her mother.

I was told that Giselle’s father came a day earlier to take them home.

The dreaded word, the big C was never mentioned, but the tumor behind Giselle’s mother’s ear was the reason for the unexpected turn of events.

I had resolved that I would give the letter to Giselle the next summer.

But they never came back again. Giselle’s mother died shortly after the summer ended.

I kept the letter and my love for Giselle, secrets known only to me.

My love paled with time and was replaced by consequent other infatuations, but the letter I have returned to, frequently.

The more I read and re-read it, the more in my youthful conceit I became convinced, that I was destined to become a great writer some day.

It gave me an impetus in the years to come, to try my hand in different forms of writings, in several different languages.

I have never disclosed the source of my audacity to consider myself to be adequately gifted to write.

If the world events would have been different, I would probably be displaying the yellowish pages of my first love letter that no one besides me had ever seen, as evidence of how early my talent had started to bloom.

However, if some Polish neighbor or Polish-speaking German did come upon it while ransacking our possessions, after we had been displaced at the beginning of World War II, and if they read it, you probably would have heard the reaction, a resounding: How juvenile.

PEACE ON EARTH

The milky, seemingly weightless stuff had been falling for hours.

By nightfall the country-side was totally engulfed in the featherbed-like comfort of the white blanket of snow.

The empty streets, the lights in the windows of the village houses and the smoke rising from their chimneys indicated that the life of the hamlet has turned inward…..

And now the peaceful quiet was breached by the ringing of the church bells…..

The village would stir shortly; soon it would be time for the Midnight Christmas Mass.

Peace on Earth.

My parents and I huddled by the kerosene lamp playing a game of cards. Despite the late hour, it was not the time for sleeping.

Only my little brother was put to bed.

He was too young to be aware of the tension and the fear that was always a part of the proximity to the observance of Christian rites…….

The singing of the Carolers was getting louder as they were nearing our street.

I could recognize some of