The Fighter
JEAN-JACQUES GREIF
Chapter 1 1918.
In Praga, a suburb of Warsaw
Chapter 2
Poles have a sixth sense
Chapter 4
My mother becomes the courtyard's queen
Chapter 5
Here, nobody guesses we're Jewish
Chapter 6
She speaks French like a real Parisian girl
Chapter 7
The Germans pound the streets of Paris with their heavy boots
Chapter 8
A small town named Pithiviers
Chapter 9
These cars usually carry cattle
Chapter 10
Did you see the name on the signs? Auschwitz
Chapter 11
It seems to me he is heavier than a living man
Chapter 12
I am not allowed to hit a German
Chapter 13
Who is this stranger who saves my life?
Chapter 14
Little Rosenberg wants to show he's the best
Chapter 15
I'll tell the kapo you studied electricity
Chapter 16
We perceive shreds of screams, carried by the wind's uneven breath
Chapter 17
Something must turn up before tomorrow
Chapter 18
I am not strong enough to vanquish the Polish blizzard
Chapter 19
There's no patrol in front of the fence
Chapter 20
An elevator that falls a thousand feet down
Chapter 21
I swallow six eggs with their shells
Chapter 22
The cooks get used to me
Chapter 23
The Red Army is trouncing the Germans
Chapter 24
Your son is the same age as my daughter
Chapter 25
Herr Remmele is a boxing fan
Chapter 26
We pass the camp gate in the middle of the afternoon
Chapter 27
When I say hi to these Germans, they don't answer
Chapter 28
What do they want? Tell me, Wisniakâ¦.
Chapter 30
On May 8, 1945, we hear that the war is over
Chapter 31
Hitler didn't kill everybody
To Maurice Garbarz
1918.
In Praga, a suburb of Warsaw
“Come, Moshe,” my mother says. “In this new Poland, children have to be registered.”
When I was born, the czar still reigned over the great Russian empire and Poland was a mere trinket hanging from his belt. He had so many subjects that nobody ever tried to count them. He didn't even ask them to register their children. Or, at least, he didn't ask my mother.
At the end of the First World War, the czar of Russia tumbled down from his throne. His army of Cossacks left Warsaw. Poland became an independent country.
We walk to the town hall in Praga, our Warsaw suburb.
“How many children?” the man in the office asks.
“What you say?”
“How many? Your children, lady!”
“Four children.”
She finds him hard to understand. Before the war, the
government people spoke Russian. Now it's Polish. Why don't they ever speak Yiddish, the language of the Jews?
“How old are they?”
“Schmiel Yankl, my first, he more than ten, sir.”
“More than ten years old?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, let's say eleven. I'll register him as Schmiel Yankl Wisniak, born in 1907. Next one?”
“My daughter, Pola Kailé, she younger.”
“Of course. If he is your eldest. When was she born?”
“Schmiel, he walked already.”
“Let's say he was two. Pola Kailé Wisniak, born in 1909.”
“Then Anschel Leib come.”
“Did the daughter walk already?”
“Hmm ⦠Yes, sir.”
“I'll write down Anschel Leib Wisniak, born in 1911. Is that all?”
“Also my last one, Moshe Azik.”
“Two years later?”
“No, sir. He young⦔
“Your youngest, I understand. All right: Moshe Azik Wisniak, born in 1913.”
This is the date written on my birth certificate and all my other papers, but my mother is quite sure I was born on January 17, 1915. Who can know better than she? There was a great flu epidemic. My father died a few weeks after my birth.
Before my father's death, we were poor already. Afterward,
we became even poorer. My mother sews day and night near the window or under the light of the oil lamp. She is known as Myriam the Seamstress. Her customers can barely pay her. When I was a baby, as she didn't eat enough, her milk was too watery to nourish me. I was very small. My legs were so thin and crooked that I couldn't stand up. I sat on the floor all day. I moved, though: I glided around as fast as a stone on a frozen lake. Soon after my third birthday, my mother brought me to a healerâthat is, a doctor who couldn't get a diploma on account of being a Jew.
“He has rickets,” he said. “Give him two spoonfuls of cod-liver oil every day.”
After a few weeks, I was strong enough to begin walking. Now they call me Monkey Moshe, because my legs are curved like a chimp's. I am very thin.
If it weren't for my brother Anschel, hunger would kill us all. He is clever. He sticks an iron pike at the end of a cane, then he steals potatoes on market days. On other days, he sits down in the street and weeps.
“Why are you crying?” people ask him.
“âCause I'm hungry.”
“Poor kid⦠Here, go and buy some food!”
They give him loose change. He buys bread and brings it home. My other brother, Schmiel, has a job already. He cuts leather for one of my father's cousins. He left school when he was ten, although he loved to study. Anschel will also leave school when he is ten. Already, he doesn't go too often,
as he spends all day looking for food. The salesgirl at the grocer's takes pity on him. When he asks for a quart of milk, she fills up his can, which contains half a gallon. One day, the grocer's wife hears him buying half a quart of oil for the lamp. She comes out of her back shop and sees he is carrying a gallon-and-a-half jug.
“Oy, your mother gave you quite a big jug to carry just half a quart of oil. You seem to find it rather heavy.⦔
My brother tells us about it.
“Lucky she didn't look inside the jug! It would have meant the end of my scheme.”
Pola, my sister, finds him selfish.
“You think only about yourself. What about the salesgirl? She would have lost her job!”
We're always hungry. When Anschel brings home a potato, he divides it into eight parts. Food is so scarce that we rejoice when we eat one-eighth of a potato or two.
The market comes to our courtyard on Tuesdays and Fridays. It isn't a big one like they have in Warsaw. Peasants lay out their vegetables on the ground. They sell turnips, beetroots, beans, cabbage, pickled cucumbers in a bucket, homemade vodkaâand above all, potatoes. The kids sing a ditty:
Sunday, potatoes
Monday, potatoes
Tuesday, potatoes
Wednesday and Thursday, potatoes
Friday, potatoes
Saturday, potato cake.
The courtyard is large, with houses on three sides and stables on the fourth. We live in a big room plus a small kitchen, on the second floor of a four-story building. At night, we stick two folding beds together and the five of us sleep there, as close as sardines in a can. They put me in the middle. In winter it's warm and cozy, but in summer I'm too hot.
They say that rich people have pipes that bring water into their homes. In our courtyard, people gather at the fountain all day long to fill up pitchers, jugs, tin cans. We keep water at home in a barrel. In winter, it freezes during the night.
Four outhouses stand in the courtyard, just under our window. I imagine that stinking gnomes live underground in a huge palace, the outhouses being its turrets.
I like to sit near the window. I watch the fountain, the outhouses, and especially the stables. They contain twelve carts, which are just simple wooden platforms drawn by two horses. I admire the skill of the carters when they tie mountains of scrap or rags on their platforms. Ah, these carters are tough men. Every evening, they get drunk on vodka in a filthy tavern on this side of the courtyard, then they cross back to the stables, singing and staggering, to sleep with their horses. Some of them are Jewish. I know
we're Jewish, too, but I can barely understand them. The language they speak sounds like Yiddish, but it contains strange words. “It's slang,” my mother says.
I notice that my brothers often come home with cuts and bruises all over their faces and bodies. Every other day, my mother sews up their old sweaters and their pants.
“The Poles attacked us,” they say.
“We ran, but they caught us.”
“They ambushed us at the corner.”
Why do the Poles attack the Jews? That's a great mystery. For a long time, I thought that the word
Jew
actually meant “poor,” but in fact these Poles who are not Jewish are often as poor as we are.
My brother Schmiel says that in Warsaw, on the other side of the Vistula River, the Jews live together in neighborhoods where the Poles do not enter. Our neighborhood, Praga, is “mixed,” which means that we can't escape the Poles. We must be careful.
I stay at home because of my crooked legs, but I walk better now. I'll soon go out into the courtyard and the streets. I'll have to face theses terrible Poles. My brothers are cowards. As soon as they see a Pole, they run away. I won't give in. I'll fight. I'll be as strong as the carters. When a carter argues with a peasant, he comes right up to him and grabs the lapels of his jacket. The peasant falls to the ground right away. At first I didn't understand what happened. Then, after seeing many fights from my window, I
noticed that the carter gave a knock with his head or a kick with his knee between the peasant's legs. The carter's move is so fast that you hardly see it. I'll grab the Pole by his jacket lapels and knock him out!
When the opponent knows how to fight, it is quite a different matter. Another gang of carters declares war on our guys. A battalion of enemies enters the courtyard. Our carters, Jews and Poles, confront the danger together. At first they fight with fists and feet. Then they grab sticks and chains. When these weapons fail, they pull out knives. The fighting lasts all night long. At dawn, we hear gunshots. My mother forbids me to go near the window, because of stray bullets. Once the fight is over, the police come to pick up the wounded and the dead.
Stray bullets are very dangerous. Mazik, the carters' leader, is a real thug. He levies his share of the cartloads, carries and resells stolen goods, extorts money from peasants who want to get a spot in our courtyard on market day. Sometimes he drinks so much he becomes crazy. He screams, waves his handgun, shoots everywhere. In the end, he puts his gun in his pocket and falls to the ground, dead-drunk. Then people find another body lying on the ground. It so happens that it is one of Mazik's enemies, someone who insulted him or didn't pay his due. The witnesses report the events to the police: Mazik was beyond himself, he was shooting without aiming. What could they make of it? The victim was killed by a stray bullet. Me, sitting near my
window, I often see Mazik shooting at a target for practice. He staggers and lurches and waves his arms like a windmillâ¦. A shot in the air, a shot on the ground, a shot in the center of the target!
Our Praga neighborhood is very poor. Everybody says it is a thieves' nest. From my window, I watch pickpockets at work on market days. You need good eyes to see more than a peasant jumping and hollering because his money has vanished. The pickpocket's hand is so fast.⦠It dives into the peasant's pocket and comes out holding a thick wallet. I see it! I also see something strange: just before the pickpocket acts, a man in a hurry jostles the peasant. After watching for weeks, I can follow the whole scene. The pickpocket needs three partners. Two of them shout at each other and trade insults, then pretend to fight. Gawkers gather right away. The third partner elbows his way through the crowd to reach the front row. As he pushes the peasant aside, he gives him a nasty poke in the back with his elbow. The peasant screams. He looks for the brute who hurt him so he can curse at him. He focuses his attention on the pain in his back. He doesn't feel the crafty caress of the pickpocket's hand.