The Last Witness (5 page)

Andrew’s grandfather William Blinkney served in Afghanistan after the turn of the century and while his father Sean never served overseas he did help develop a fitness training program for new recruits at an old military base out west
.

Andrew was a fierce competitor as an athlete and a soldier. Early in his second tour of duty, he once saved the life of Private Mike Rickey who was wounded by sniper fire. Directed by the chief surgeon over his radio, Andrew managed to stop the bleeding after applying a tourniquet to Pte. Rickey’s leg. He also helped treat other casualties
.

Known by the nickname ‘Muckraker’ because he liked to get down and dirty, he was a loving father to his little girl Felicia, despite being away for much of her life. This newspaper ran a photo of Andrew holding Felicia before his most recent departure a year ago
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A yellow ribbon has been tied around the tree in front of the Blinkney home in Fergus. Andrew’s mother Andrea said her son always wanted to be a soldier. While his life ended in sacrifice, he brought honour and a great sense of pride to the community. The town of Fergus and people of Wellington County will miss him
.

The accompanying photo of a handsome, square-jawed man in uniform was serious, but not stern. After penning the obit, Christine hoped the Blinkney family would like what she wrote and, hopefully, so would the spirit of Hugh Massingberd. But still, it was the little girl Felicia who tore at her heartstrings. A little girl now without a father. Through no fault of her own. Christine thought a lot about that, and kept asking herself why such things happen.

8

Christine’s first inkling about Jack’s early life came at the train station. Her sister Tiffany was getting married, the wedding was taking place in Kitchener, and Jack the family patriarch would be there. But his blood pressure was acting up and his doctor thought it best that he not fly. Of course, the trains were almost as fast. The sleek electric rockets roared along the rails at 300 kilometers an hour and did the New York-Toronto route in two and a half hours flat, and then it was another half hour to Kitchener, so the time difference was minimal. Jack arrived with his son Ralph, and Ralph’s wife and kids, who were all grown up. Ralph was sixty-eight, and like his father lived in New York. This was Jack’s first trip out of the city since Eve’s death, and a group of family members were at the station to meet him.

“He’s not feeling well,” Ralph said as they got off the train. “It was a long ride for him.”

Jack never came out and said as much, but Christine was his favorite. He knew it and so did she. She hadn’t seen him since her great-grandmother’s funeral. She watched him step off the train onto the platform. There were hugs and kisses, and the little ones with their shy greetings of ‘Great Grandpa Jack,’ and then it was Christine’s turn.

“Christine,” he said. “My little Christine.” He had always called her that. My little Christine.

“How are you, Jack?”

He looked wearier than the last time, but was the same old Jack with the soft, gentle exterior masking that inner tenacity. His ashen hair neatly parted, he was very much the gentleman.

“I made it,” he said.

It was a gray, dreary day with the rain coming and going in spurts, leaving a trail of puddles on the ground and black clouds overhead. Jack didn’t like canes to help him with walking, but he had one this time. He was slogging along the walk at the train station with Ralph on his arm, using the cane for support, and Christine could see the fatigue draped over his frail body. There was a loud rumble and the ground began to shake as the train on the next track started pulling away. It slowed and screeched to a halt, then pulled away again, and something happened. Jack stopped, he lifted his head, his face went white, and his hands began to shiver. His eyes straight ahead, full and still, he didn’t seem to be breathing. Christine had never seen him like that before; he looked like a feeble old man. Her mother Emma, who was a nurse and always let everyone know it, cried out, “I think he’s having a heart attack!” But Ralph knew better.

“Jack has the heart of an ox,” he said of his father. “He’s just tired. It was a long ride. And seeing everyone like this. It’s a lot for him.”

Ralph put his arm around him and led him to the men’s room inside the terminal. Ten minutes later they were back, and Jack looked fine. Everyone was waiting for him. Jack scanned the group, spotted Emma and walked over to her. He peered right into her eye.

“I have the heart of an ox,” he insisted and thumped himself on the chest.

Except for Emma, everyone figured it was just as Ralph had said. The excitement of seeing the family again. The long train ride from New York. His first family function without Eve at his side.

“He’ll be all right,” Ralph said.

That evening after dinner the whole family gathered at Christine’s. There was her father Will, her mother Emma, her sister the bride Tiffany, and Tiffany’s husband-to-be. The groom’s
family was there, too, along with Christine’s grandfather Bill, who at seventy was Jack’s older son. Bill and his crew were locals who lived in Kitchener. Jack was sitting in the den, drinking a glass of soda, leaning on his cane.

“It was a good dinner, wasn’t it?” said Christine.

Jack patted his stomach. “I’m going to burst,” he said.

She got beside him on the couch. “Are you excited? About tomorrow I mean? Tiffany getting married? I can hardly believe it. My sister.”

He nodded his head. “It is hard to believe.”

Christine nudged closer, making herself comfy. “Jack, what happened at the train today?”

He put down his glass of soda.

“What was it?” she said.

He lowered his eyes and stared into his lap.

“Jack? Can you hear me?”

Everyone kept saying how his hearing was going. Christine hadn’t noticed, but then she didn’t see him every day.

“Jack can you …”

“It was an ugly day,” he said. “Overcast. Rain. The air was damp and cold.”

“So that was it? The weather?”

“Maybe. No. Not really.”

“What was it then?”

“The noise the train made. The sound.”

“What about the sound?”

“It’s been a long time since I was on a train. But it made me think of the first time. I was just a little boy. Four years old.”

“You were on a train when you were four years old?”

He nodded. She smiled.

“What year was that?” she said.

“It would have been around 1944. Thereabouts.”

“I bet it was a lot slower in those days.”

“It was the sound.”

“What about the sound?”

He lifted his head. “How old are you now, Christine?”

“Fifteen.”

“My little Christine. Fifteen.”

“It rhymes.”

“What rhymes?”

“My little Christine. Fifteen. You made a poem, Jack.”

He smiled. “It was the sound,” he said again.

Christine knew precious little about her great-grandfather. She knew he was born in Poland and came to Kitchener as a boy. He grew up, got married and raised two sons – her grandfather Bill and her great uncle Ralph. Jack was good with his hands, and in his younger days he was a tailor. Then came an opportunity in New York City. A shop with all kinds of sewing machines was going out of business, so he bought it. Everyone always said he knew a lot about sewing machines. There already was family in New York and, as time passed, plenty of Fishers would be on both sides of the border.

“What about the sound, Jack?”

“It reminded me of …”

She waited. “What?” she said.

“Auschwitz.”

It was only a whisper. He raised his head as if to say more, but no words came. Christine could see something was bothering him. She wrapped her hands around his and gave them a squeeze.

“You want to tell me about it?” she said.

He shook his head up and down. “Like I said it was 1944. I was four years old. I was with my mother and my father and they took us by train to this place.
Auschwitz
. I didn’t know what it was.”

“It was in Germany?”

“No. Poland.”

“You were born in Poland, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Where exactly?”

“Lodz.”

“Where is that?”

“It’s a city in the middle of the country. But when I was born it wasn’t called
Lodz
.”

“What was it called?”

“Litzmannstadt.”

He didn’t say it the way an English-speaking person would say it. He said it as if he was German. It was strange hearing him talk like that.

“That’s German, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Why was it called a different name?”

“Because the Germans occupied the city and changed the name. They occupied the whole country. All of Poland.”

“Why did they take you there?”

“Where?”

“To that place. What did you call it?”

“Auschwitz.”

Another whisper.

“Why did they take you there?”

He sipped his soda water, put it down and looked at her. “Because …”

“Because what?”

“Because we were Jews.”

Christine was dumbfounded. “Jews? What do you mean?”

“I never told you about this.”

“You were Jewish?”

“At one time.”

“How could you be Jewish? You’re Catholic. We’re all Catholics.”

“I was a Jew first.”

She was bewildered and he could tell how bewildered she was.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Christine.”

“You were Jewish?”

“Yes. At first.”

She looked confused. She opened her mouth and just stared at him. He looked her in the eye and didn’t say anything.

“But if you were Jewish why didn’t you ever tell us? How could you hide something like that? Were you ashamed of it?”

“Ashamed? No. I wasn’t ashamed. But I didn’t want to remember. I wanted to forget. You see …”

She was listening.

He looked up to the ceiling, searching for something, and then shook his head from side to side. “You have to understand. Those were the worst memories of my life and they happened before I was five years old. In the ghetto and then
Auschwitz
. It was a horrible place. The most horrible place on earth. And the train today brought it back but it wasn’t just the train. It was the sky … the clouds … the rain … the muck.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There was so much muck.”

She felt his hands. They were cold. Like ice.

“Jack, you’re here with all of us now,” she said. “Your family is all around you. Tiffany is getting married tomorrow. Just think. You have a great-granddaughter who’s getting married.” Her thoughts turned to her great-grandmother. “I know it’s hard without Eve but …”

“I survived. I survived the ghetto and I even survived the camp. But I shouldn’t have. I had no right. My parents didn’t. No one in my family did.”

She was hanging onto his every word.

“Your grandfather Bill, he knows and so does Ralph. They both know. But we never spoke about this to the grandchildren. It was a new life here. We didn’t want to bother them.”

“You didn’t want to bother them?”

“Well …”

“You’re telling me you were born a Jew. My great-grandfather. That there is Jewish blood in my family. In me! I think that’s important Jack and I want to know about it. Whatever happened to you when you were a boy, that’s part of me too. Isn’t it?”

“Christine, my little Christine. You’ve always been special to me. Ever since you were a little girl. There was something about you but …”

“But what?”

He heaved a deep sigh. “One thing I will never be able to understand is how people can treat other people the way they do just because they’re different. How people can kill other people just because they’re different. It makes no sense.”

“I know what you mean. Just a few months ago in Turkey. The Great Holocaust. More than fifty thousand people killed by Muslims just because they were Christians.”

“The Great Holocaust. Yes that was a terrible thing. Terrible. But sometimes the Nazis killed fifty thousand Jews in a day.”

She looked at him, mesmerized by what he just said.

“It was hot inside that train. I was four years old and I still remember how hot it was. Everyone was filthy and sweating. We were in boxcars. I don’t know how many people were in the car. Maybe a hundred. That’s what they said. We were like cattle. Worse than cattle. You couldn’t see outside. I was little so I couldn’t reach the window but nobody could see anything
because the windows had barbed wire over them. There were so many people there was no room to move. And the smell. It was terrible.”

“What kind of smell?”

“There was no place to relieve yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was no place to go. They gave you a bucket … one bucket … for a hundred people. It got full … and you still had to go.”

“You mean …”

“I remember telling my mother I didn’t want to do it but what could you do? And it wasn’t just the children but the adults and the old people. There was a lot of old people.”

Christine had her mouth open again.

“When we got to
Auschwitz
German guards were watching us with their rifles. They all had rifles. Every one of them. We got out of the train and one old man … I can see his face even now … he had to pee because he was holding it in on the train and he couldn’t hold it in anymore. They pulled down his pants and made him go right in front of everyone. They liked humiliating people but that wasn’t the worst part.”

“What was the worst part?”

“People died on that train. There were dead people on it. Corpses. They were there with the rest of us. I remember dogs barking and the orders.
‘Heraus! Heraus!’
It was crazy. And there were these people in striped clothes. If you didn’t get off the train right away they just threw you off. Even if you were an old woman. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to them.”

Christine found it strange hearing him speak these words from another language and, as before, it was perfect. This perfect German coming from the lips of her great-grandfather.