The Last Witness (21 page)

“Why is what here?”

“The
gorj
.”

Jack looked at Eve for help.

“God made it,” said Eve.

“Why did he make it here?” said Christine. “Why didn’t he make over there? Or why didn’t he make it at my house?”

“That would be dangerous,” Eve said. “That’s why God made it here.”

“But isn’t it dangerous here?”

Jack laughed. He was standing right behind her now, his hands on her shoulders. “Christine, you are a very smart little girl. Did you know that?”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“People tell me. I know a lot.”

“What do you know?”

“I know I like looking at this …
gorj
… because it’s big and pretty. There’s lots of trees and water and birds. The birds don’t fall. I bet they walk on the ledge.”

“They do but they can also do something you can’t. They fly. If they fall off the ledge they just fly away. But only birds do that, Christine. Not people.”

“I want to fly too. How long has the
gorj
been here?”

“It’s older than you and older than your parents and even older than your Grandpa.”

She turned around and looked up at him. “Great Grandpa Jack, are you the only one as old as the
gorj
?”

That brought a chuckle. “I guess so,” he said.

“You know why I like it here?”

“Why?”

“Because there’s no countries and no one is fighting.”

Again she stuck her nose through the railing, licking her lips. Then she whispered under her breath, but only to herself, so no one else could hear.

“I still think I can do it.”

26

Soon after they had moved to New York City, Jack and Eve took in a Midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the moment he stepped inside it took him back to the first time he ever visited a church. The Church of the Virgin Mary in Lodz. That was the day he had met Father Kasinski. The little boy who knew only the ghetto had been awed by the great open space, the beautiful stained-glass windows, and the faces of the disciples staring back at him. But even that glorious church was nothing compared to St. Patrick’s. This palace had enormous stone columns climbing up to the heights with huge chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

Christine’s family was in New York to spend Easter with Jack and Eve. Sitting next to her great-grandfather in the mammoth cathedral, Christine couldn’t get her mind off the sheer enormity and detail of the place. She wanted to know everything. When it was built. How long it took. The dimensions of the sanctuary.

Jack told her that work was suspended during the Civil War. The cornerstone was laid on the Feast of the Assumption – August 15, 1858 – and for years afterward nothing happened because Americans were too busy killing themselves. That was how he put it. Work resumed in 1865 and the church eventually opened in 1879. Over the next one hundred and fifty years a number of renovations and improvements took place.

“Christ the Lord has risen,” said the archbishop presiding over the mass on this Easter Sunday. He spoke of the increased attendance during the past week and of the extra crowds who came on Ash Wednesday before prodding those present as to where they were the other fifty-one weeks of the year. It made Christine chuckle. There were references to the Crucifixion, burial and
resurrection from the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. When it was done and the crowds began to spill out, Christine had her arm around Jack.

Jack was her link to the most insane madness the world had ever seen, but his scars were revealed to her only in glimpses. There was the time at the train station in Kitchener when the sounds took him back to his arrival at Auschwitz, and then the time at the Confession box. That, too, was in Kitchener. The family had gathered for a Sunday morning service, and when it was over the line for Confession formed.

“Got anything to confess, Jack?” Christine said. She stepped into the box and shut the door behind her. A few minutes later, she came out. “That was good. I got some things off my chest. Now it’s your turn.”

Jack was reluctant.

“Go ahead,” she said.

He stepped in and closed the door. Not thirty seconds went by before she heard him screaming and pounding from the inside. She pushed the door open and found him sweating. She asked him what was wrong.

“I had my back against the wall. There was no room to move in there.”

“You were screaming.”

“I was trapped.”

He said it had been like that ever since he was a boy. It had been like that in school and sometimes even in his own bedroom. He didn’t like feeling trapped. Now here in St. Patrick’s Christine was thinking about that time at the confession box. She hadn’t taken Jack to Confession since then and wouldn’t do it today. When the Easter service was finished, they went back to Jack’s home on the Upper East Side. A brownstone.

“Jack, have I ever told you how lucky you make me feel? Because I know you never had the things that I have. Like my family around me all the time. What was it like for you?”

“Lonely.”

“But people took you in. They cared for you.”

“The family that raised me treated me like a son but I wasn’t their son and I knew perfectly well why they took me. They felt sorry for me. Everyone was sorry for me because I was an orphan. Every morning I would wake up thinking they’d all be gone and the house would be empty.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought they were going to leave me.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because everyone left me.”

“That was different.”

“Not to a little boy it wasn’t. Even when I got married I thought your great-grandma was going to leave me.”

“No!”

“It’s true. I did. It was hard for me to think someone would really stay with me. You have to understand, Christine. I was just a little boy when all this happened. My earliest memories were the ghetto and
Auschwitz
. One day my parents were with me and the next day they weren’t. They were gone. Just like that and I was all alone.”

“Jack.”

“I never saw them again. That’s why it was so lonely. You see, it’s lonely when the only thing you have of your family, the one and only thing you can hang onto, are thoughts.”

Kitchener, Ontario 1947

27

The teacher’s name was Miss Tacini and the ‘c’ was soft.
Ta-seeni
. But when Jack tried saying it, it came out
Ta-cheeni
. He was having trouble with English because his tongue didn’t work like an English tongue. In Polish, a ‘c’ was always
‘ch,’
but there was no always in this language. It was bad enough being with students two years younger; they had put him back two grades upon his arrival.

“Good morning, Jack. How are you today?” she would say to him and he would reply
“Good mor-neeng Mees Ta-cheeni.”
Immediately, the chuckles and heckles would begin.

Jack was different from the other children, but then he had always been different. When he was a little boy, he wasn’t even supposed to be there. He was hidden. A Jew born in the ghetto of a Polish city that was suddenly German. Then, when he and his cousins were discovered, they were sent to a camp to die, only Jack didn’t die. He survived. Two years in an orphanage in Holland and he got sponsored by the Jewish Congress and came to Canada where he was adopted by a family in Kitchener. Their name was Fisher.

Jack was eight years old, but all the other children in his Grade 1 class were six. Language shouldn’t have been an issue for him since he was more advanced than any of them – he could speak Polish and German, and was more than capable in Dutch – but here everyone spoke English. It was the only language that mattered.

Two years after the war ended, on November 11
^th
, a discussion came up in class. It was Remembrance Day in countries of the British Commonwealth. Miss Tacini asked the children
what they knew about the war and for all of them the responses were in terms of their parents or older siblings.

“My Daddy’s younger brother was a soldier.”

“My Mom worked in a factory.”

“My sister always listened to the news on the radio.”

Then it was Jack’s turn. He was older, his memories more ingrained.

“I lived in the ghetto. We barely had enough to eat.”

Someone asked what the ghetto was.

“It was where they kept Jews. My parents had to hide me because the Germans would have killed me if they found us.”

“Now now, Jack,” Miss Tacini said.

“Why would they have killed you?” a boy asked.

“The Germans killed all the Jews. They starved us to death or they burned us in ovens or they put us in gas chambers.”

Miss Tacini held her hands up. “Jack, we’re not going to talk about such things.”

“He asked me.”

“I know but we’re talking about soldiers. We’re not talking about things
like that
.”

“But that’s what happened. I was born in a ghetto then we went to Auschwitz and my parents were killed. Everyone was killed there. They were murdered.”

There were gasps from the other children.

“Jack, I’m telling you again that we are not to talk about such things. We don’t want to hear about things like that. Do you understand?”

The little girl next to Jack nudged him on the shoulder. “Is it true?” she said.

Miss Tacini overheard and shook her head. “No, of course not.”

“He’s making it up?” the girl said.

“I’m afraid he is.”

Jack was about to say something when she put her finger across her lips, a sign to hush up, and she meant business.

“Now,” she said, “does anyone know why we have Remembrance Day on November 11
^th
?”

No one knew.

“That was the day the war ended but not the war just past. I’m talking about the Great War. World War I. It ended on November 11
^th
, 1918 and ever since then we have celebrated Remembrance Day on this day and there’s something else you may not know. Did you know that the city where we live … Kitchener … used to be called something else?”

No one knew.

“It was called Berlin. Berlin is a big city in Germany. Canada was one of the countries that fought against Germany in World War I and during the war someone decided to change the name to Kitchener.”

Jack raised his hand. Miss Tacini was reluctant to let him speak again.

“What is it, Jack? I hope you’re not going to …”

“Kitchener used to be called Berlin?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’ve lived here all my life. Why the look on your face?”

Jack couldn’t speak. His brain, his whole body, was suddenly numb. He decided right then and there what he would do. When school was over, he would go straight to the train station. Not home.

Berlin was the biggest city in Germany and the center of the Third Reich. It was also where he was supposed to meet his parents. That is what his father had told him. When they were on the train to Auschwitz, his father said they would meet at the train station in Berlin if they got separated. It would be their point of contact. The train station in Berlin. That is where they would meet, at Track No. 1. Later, he was told that both his parents, along with his Aunt Gerda and his cousins Zivia and Romek, all perished in the gas chambers. But he was only five years old and it made no sense that the most important people in his life would leave him just like that. Gas chamber or no gas chamber.

He never forgot what his father said to him.

Jack’s regular bus arrived. He asked the driver how to get to the train station and the driver said to cross the street and take another bus in the opposite direction, then switch to yet another bus and head downtown. Jack did as he was told. The terminal was on Weber Street West, immediately south of Breithaupt.

“This is it,” the driver of the second bus said. “You catching a train?”

“I’m meeting my parents,” Jack said with a confident smile.

“There’s only two tracks so it won’t be hard to find them. Where are they coming from?”

“Berlin. I mean I’m meeting them in Berlin. At the station.”

“Kid, Berlin is in Germany.”

“Didn’t Kitchener used to be called Berlin?”

“Yes a long time ago. Is that what you mean?”

Jack said it was.

“Good luck. I hope you find them.”

The terminal was busy with scores of men in business suits and hats. Most of them were carrying briefcases or luggage. There were few women. As the bus driver said, the terminal had only two tracks, so Jack marched to a bench by Track No. 1 and sat down. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. An hour went by, and two trains came and went. When the first one arrived, Jack got up and searched as the passengers scrambled off the train. He eyeballed every one of them. It was a mad rush. If his parents were on this one, he didn’t want to miss them, so he climbed up on the bench to see better but no luck. It was the same with the second train.

The Fisher family always had dinner at six o’clock. Of course, they were expecting him after school, but he didn’t phone and he didn’t leave a message. What on earth would he tell them? That he was meeting his real mother and father and had to leave them now? That he was grateful for all they had done, but he had to be with his parents? Surely they could understand that.

Another train arrived at six-fifteen and, like before, there was a flurry as people rushed through the doors. Everyone was in a hurry. At seven, after yet another train left the platform, a porter in uniform approached him.

“Are you lost, son?” he said.

“No sir.”

“You waiting for someone?”

“I’m waiting for my parents.”

“What train are they on?”

“I don’t know. All I know is I’m supposed to meet them here.”

Jack looked up at the porter. “Kitchener used to be called Berlin, didn’t it?” he said.

“Yes. A long time ago. What’s that got to do with it?”

“My father told me to meet them at the station in Berlin. That’s here. Isn’t it?”

The porter put his hands on his knees, his eyes level with Jack’s. “What’s your name, son?”