10
JEWISH V/E STERN BULLETIN
Friday, September 21. 1962
Deaths my fafher died
difficult to say that he did be- , cause it was before I was born.
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(Continued from Page 9)
But a war, doesn z it mix up people and lands and turn everything upside down making those who are lying down pictures on Lhe wail? Anything is possible.
Once—it happened before Hitler came, just before Hitler came —that his friends invited Papa to a reunion. They wrote him a very nice letter. On top of that letter they had printed a single military symbol—a hunter's cap, the antlers of a deer, and crossed rifles. And why was this so? Because it was a battalion of fusiliers. It was a battalion which had a great and honorable tradition, an aristocratic battalion. At first they hunted rabbits and deer, and they hunted people in wartime. They did not really hunt them; they killed them. Not because they wanted ■ to eat them like people eat rabbits, but because they had to kill
them and to break them open, so that all the flesh and blood should be seen and not hair and smiles and arms or any other pleasing combination.
Papa didn't answer the invitation. This, too, was a death, for they loved him a great deal and called him David. It was on Yom Kippur during the war that they gave him part of their rations, so that he should be able to fast afterwards, and they gathered little stars for his prayers, brief moments of quiet for his quiet supplications, and Papa in turn strengthened their spirit with his faith and his funny stories.
He kept on dying at more frequent intervals. He died when they came to arrest him because of the Nazi armband which I had found and thrown into the garbage-can. Black they were when
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they came to the dpor. T h e s, e black ones broke the door open. How heavy their st:eps.we]^.!-How frightening it was for me.to see that my Papa wasn't able to protect our house and stand up against this enemy storming in. Tills was^ the end of my childhood. How was it possible for them to come in and enter.our home against the will of my Papa? Perhaps if I had been bigger, I would have been able to cover Papa just as he covered me as he stepped back.
He died when they placed pickets before his store with signs reading "Arier! kauft nicht beim Juden." He died when we left Germany in order to come to Israel. All the past years died at that moment, and when our train passed the Jewish Home for the Aged, of which Papa w^as one of the supporters^ all the old people were leaning out and v/aving their white bed-sheets from porches and!windows. Not as a sign of surrender but to wave good-by to him. What is the difference between good-by and surrender? In either case flags or white handkerchiefs or even sheets are waved.
Yes, he died mahv times. He was made from all different kinds of material. Sometimes he was like iron, sometimes he Avas like white bread, sometimes ;he was like precious old wbod; and all these had to die;. Sometimes 1 saw him when his hands, were like a garment covering his face, so that I might not s^ his face in all its nakedness. Sometimes his thoughts were heavier than his small body and he walked stooped under their weight, under their burden. At times he was i as strong as ^telephone poles and jhis amazing thoughts flashed i like messages through the wires. Sometimes songbirds came down to rfest on them.
"When Papa truly died, God didn't know whether He- h a d died in earnest. He w^as used to his being resurrected again, but this time he wasn't. Several Vx^eeks before he had had a heart attack. Funny, people say "heart ctttaek." Who attacks .^whom? Does the heart attack the body or does the body attack the heart? Or perhaps the world a.t-!.tacks both of them?
One day I cam.e to visit him when he was l.ying beside a huge ! oxygen tank. His eyes were like i broken sli'vers of glass at a v/ed-I ^Ung. When I carae closer I heard ; the whisper of that huge oxj^-^ gen bomb. There used to be a 1 time v/hen angels stood next to sickbeds and now there are boribs full of oxygen which v^hisper. Men in submarines and a.irplar.e pilots get oxygen. Where is Papa going? Will he go under [he water or v.dll he be lifted up? One thing is sure, he is about to i
iileave us.
He motioned to me and ! -'^-'-'^'^
and wants\ to get out." And I jwent over to our neighbor's and 'freed the cat. After that, again we heard nothing but the v/Iiis-per of the oxygen. On top of the oxygen tank there was a clock measuring the pressure. All the time Papa has left is the tim.e that there is oxygen in the tank. My mother was standing at the door. If she had been • able to, she too would have stayed like the oxygen bottle, right next to his bed and given him strength from her own life.
After that Papa got slightly better. Day by day the colors returned to his face. It was as if all the colors had fled and dispersed at the time of his heart attack; now the colors came sneaking back like refugees after a bombing. The oxygen tank was kept outside on the porch.
On the day preceding the evening of his death, they made a cardiogram. A doctor came, opened a sort of radio and connected all sorts of electric wires to Papa. If someone truly loves you, he doesn't need such a complicated instrument to examine your heart. But it isn't like this when a person is sick. The needle zigzagged on paper like a seismograph registering earthquakes, and Papa looked like a radio ' station, surrounded by wires and antennas. That was the day of his last broadcast and I heard it.
The doctor however said: "Oh, we are okay!" As if someone had asked whether he was okay. He took his machinery apart and showed us the zigzag. That evening my wife and I went to see a filni. After the distorted faces on the screen stopped laughing or crying, we went out, into the street. My wife .bought some flowers from a vendor right next to an artists' cafe. Young poets with snd faces forever scanning the distant horizons come there, as v/ell as people with all sorts of medals from various wars. Soiiie of them with a limp because of a war injury, and they limp because it is considered aristocratic to limp; and mustachioed people come and tliose who love war, who do. not wear uniforms, and girls W;ho ■list love to be with all of them. VJe bought red roses. Perhaps in order to encourage the color on Papa'? cheeks.
We went in and sat down near Papa. My wife put the flowers into a vase so that they would-be able to •breathe better. We moved our chairs right next to his bed and Papa began to talk— about the man who came to Israel after he had iumiped off a train and been hidden by kind goyim. Papa's eyes v/ere filled with tears w h e n he told hid this hunted, man. His Hnni- the good ,people vvlio
i-IisteDDed close to him saying:-'^'^^ ^^'^^^ filled with ter^s l^'Papa" don't talk; it'll strain i'^"^^ ^^^^^ mouth, was iilled l:^';(|)U.'lAnd he said: "The cat is' ^'i'^^ a strange gasp.^His speech ]:|iowling: on our neighbor's roof, (Continued on Page 12
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