By Clara Kramer
A book Jimmy found for me at the library (I should put that in more often, he usually finds a few good books for me every week at the library)
Heartbreaking, beautiful, so sad. A book recalling Clara's experience hiding in Poland during the Nazi occupation based on the diary she kept during that time as a fifteen year old girl. In contrast with Anne Frank's diary, this story is told by an old woman referencing the diary she kept while in hiding. The weight of the years she had to carry these memories - these stories, these images of baby limbs, the necessary suppressed grief of so many lost - in her mind force a simple, stark and heart wrenching narrative
"What Dudio hadn't prepared himself for was to witness this child's murder, his sister's son; a child he had held on the day of its birth, his bris and countless other times. The SS soldier swore and cursed as he shot little Moschele. He had enough human feeling to curse his fate that he had to commit such a crime, but not enough to save the innocent child. Who would have known? Dudio and this officer were alone. Nobody would have known.
Great is God and full of power, with wisdom beyond reckoning. God gives courage to the lowly and brings hope to the bereft." Pg. 135
"Mania's [Clara's sister] voice was now in my ear, 'We were never so close before the war.'
My sister, who without a care sped through life on a bicycle with a skipping rope wrapped around her neck, was now cutting my heart open with every word. All the famous and learned rabbis in the history of our town could not stand up to the razor's edge of such words. Truth demands truth, but how could I possibly agree to the idea that we had ever not been close? I knew my sister. From Mania it was a simply a statement of fact. I didn't say anything. Although she wasn't saying there was anything lacking in me, I knew what was lacking in my bookish, shy self. When did my wild little sister become so wise? She then told me, 'You don't like to talk about your feelings.'
Again, I could not find a single word. In every way, especially this last one, she was telling me how much she loved me. We were hiding for our lives, in danger of imminent death from so many different sources you couldn't even thing about it without going crazy or wanting to end your own life, and here she was confiding her secrets.
After a prolonged silence she said, 'I'm glad we didn't go to the nuns.'
I finally had something to say, 'Me too.' I said. Her love simply filled me up Her last words that night were: 'I'll be quiet now. Good night.' She closed her eyes and in a moment I could hear her steady breathing. I was happy too. Such happiness as perhaps I have ever felt. What is this creature that God has made, that even as our families were slaughtered and each moment might be our last, we could still feel such love? Perhaps this was the greatest miracle of all." Pgs. 150 - 151
"My tears were coming now. Julia was questioned. They told her that they had caught a Jewish girl who had claimed to be cleaning house for the Becks. Julia looked right in their faces and called it an outrageous lie. She asked to see her accuser. Beck had a few more things to tell us. He had heard an SS buddy talking in a bar about a girl they had caught who said she was fro Lvov. A maid! Mania had never given us away.
Her last thoughts were to protect us at the cost of her own life. A 13-year old girl, no more than 40 kilos, stood up against the SS an the Gestapo, whose officers and men represented the collected might of the Nazi empire, and they could not break her. In the bright, bright light of such love and courage, how could I not find the will to live?
Dudio had seen the murder and had given Mr Beck a letter with the date, 19 April. Dudio wrote saying tht they had brought her to the old Jewish cemetary, shot her and dumped her body. The cemetery was ow a barren field of unmarked graves.
...I didn't know what they did to her or how much she suffered. But I did know that this had to have happened in front of dozens of people who had come out because of the fire. This had happened in our neighborhood where everybody knew and loved her. The Becks had made a choice to risk their lives to save us, but all Tilzer had to do was look away and my sister would still be alive." Pg 164
I had to look up an antihero, which I thought Mr Beck may fall under but he doesn't. He simply isn't a stereotypical hero. From wiki: "Unlikely heroes are simply characters who may not be conspicuously flawed, but simply ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances." But I read that and know, he was flawed. That is what was so amazing, scary, beautiful, unusual and uncharacteristic about him. He was a man, a person like any of us who had his own family and self preservation to be considered and yet he hid EIGHTEEN JEWS in his home for TWENTY months.
He was a drunk, a wife beater and a cheat.
"They say there are no angles here on earth. But they didn't know Beck. As much as his face could be ravaged by drink and exhaustion, there was a purity and goodness in his eyes. He said, 'I just can't be part of people dying.'
It was a simple declaration. Those words kept us alive. They kept him going when his courage failed and his faith was tested. With the war raging outside and millions compromising everything they believed to stay alive, how many were like Beck? He held our lives in his hands and there was now no one on this earth I would have trusted with them more It was in moments like these that I felt most strongly that we would survive. I had never met anyone like Beck before. My father was a good man. So were all the men in the bunker. But I didn't know if they had what Beck had. I didn't know if Papa would risk my life to save a stranger We had been strangers to Beck and now it felt like we were his family. I had gone through four notebooks and the blue pencil that Beck had given me was down to a nub. Every time he gave me a new notebook, he said the same thing, 'Clarutchka, I hope you say nice things about me.' I prayed that I would live so the world would know his courage and great love."
Her notebooks eventually saved his and Julia's life.
I will always remember Mania. I will always remember Beck. Both will remind me that you do not know something based on their face value. People often surprise you. Sometimes in awful ways, and sometimes in beautiful ways.
Thank you Clara for writing this book, their memories live on inside me.
I would also send this book to my two sisters, but it is simply too sad to think about losing them in this way. I thought of them constantly throughout this book!
Book 42
No comments:
Post a Comment