We Are Here Read online

  When I went back to Brussels from Paris, this friend said to me, ‘Do you know there is a Jewish canteen for soldiers?’ I couldn’t believe it. I was in awe: a Jewish soldier! And they asked for Jewish girls to come and serve on their day off. There was dancing as well. One day I was in that canteen, there was a group of men there, and they pointed out one of them. He had just come back from a concentration camp, so everybody jumped on him: ‘Did you see this one, that one?’ That’s how I met Kurt.

  When I was in the office one day, Kurt comes in with this other guy. When I knew some Jewish survivors were coming in for ration cards, I used to jump at the counter. I wanted to look after them. I felt so much pity for all of them.

  So I went to the counter, and that’s when Kurt introduced his friend Eddie, and I said, ‘What are you going to do now?’ I couldn’t care less what he was going to do now, but I wanted them to know that I cared about them. He said, ‘I am going to Australia.’ He could almost not speak French. He said, ‘Are you coming?’ I said, ‘Why not?’ as a joke. I went into the office and said, ‘What do you know, one of the prisoners asked me to go to Australia.’ They all thought it was so hilarious. I didn’t have any need to go to Australia.

  After that, he wanted me to visit him, to come over for a meal. I thought I would offend him if I refused. He represented nothing of my upbringing, of my background. I always thought, as a joke, I will marry a poet, an intellectual. My brother came to Brussels to meet him and said, ‘He seems a nice boy.’ If my brother approved, for me that was good enough.

  We are both survivors. I didn’t understand that for a long time because I never really felt the persecution. I was terribly lucky. No one in my immediate family died. My father was not taken. My mother was not taken. When the law came that said we had to put on the shop window that we were a Jewish business, or that we had to wear the yellow star, we got the yellow star, but the Greek Jews decided not to wear it. I didn’t realise how serious it was: in Brussels, I was still going out after eight o’clock at night, after curfew.

  I lived normally in Paris. It didn’t bother me having another identity; I was always Flore. With my French identity papers, I could get rations. I did the shopping and cooking and cleaning. I went to the theatre. I was not unhappy. That’s why I felt always embarrassed — because I didn’t suffer.

  I often think how lucky I have been all along, without doing anything. I was never in an attic. I was never hungry. I never did anything to be able to survive.

  And yet it seems I am more angry than my husband about what they have done to my people. When I came back after the war, a woman came to see me. The council used to give money to the wives of Belgian prisoners of war, and a colleague had fallen in love with one of the wives, who was working there part-time. They told me after the war that the colleague thought that if he denounced me then they would take my job away and the woman would be able to work full-time. So he denounced me. He went to prison later, and his own wife came and begged me to interfere, which I didn’t; I am not the pardoning kind.

  I find what they have done so humiliating. Although I enjoy things and I can appreciate beauty, I am more on the pessimistic side since the war. They destroyed all the descendants of all those people that they killed. They deprived the world of so much. I always say that if I had been in a camp, I wouldn’t have died from lack of food or extreme work. I would have died of vexation.

  The Holocaust was a defining moment in Eddie’s life, not in mine. That was for him a big, big happening in his life. Not for me. For me, it’s in the totality of it. I feel on my shoulders the pain of the Jews. I feel more than Eddie, I reckon.

  I loved Australia from the start. When I saw shops closed in Sydney for a Jewish holiday, I thought we were in heaven. Who would even mention that you were Jewish in Belgium?

  I felt very Jewish but not in a way that involved God. In the beginning in Sydney, we really kept away from religion, but not on purpose; it just didn’t come into our lives. We didn’t belong to a synagogue. We didn’t go even for the high holidays. Our son Michael had a bar mitzvah at fourteen. I don’t know if we would have even made him one, but when he reached thirteen, and other boys were having theirs, he said, ‘Mum, I want to make my bar mitzvah.’ I was very pleased.

  We worked very hard, and we moved eight times — Eddie is the typical wandering Jew. He would take a year to convince me to move. Then a week after we moved, he would lose interest. He doesn’t take roots.

  I never went to hear him speak. It embarrasses me. It bothers me when he talks about the Holocaust. For me, it’s personal. I remember years ago finding it was a bit too much, Eddie always speaking of that. We went to a celebration, and Eddie would speak of the camps. And I would knock him under the table. I suffered for the people who had to listen to him. I thought they thought, here he goes again. In general, people don’t like to hear of tragedies. They want to hear of happy things. Me, I don’t want to share.

  Eddie is like a star. People stop him at the shopping centre. They must have come to the Jewish museum and he spoke to them. They are very, very touched by Eddie, not, I think, by the Holocaust. Only his face remains, not the tragedy. The kids are emotional for what happened to Eddie. And when they say, ‘I will never forget you,’ they mean Eddie. But I think of the masses of people that were killed.

  Even when they praise Eddie, I am sure that at that moment they mean it, but it will not live with them. I know that we have to teach the world — although for me, it’s for nothing. In terms of accepting Jews, it will not make a difference.

  I don’t like the commercial side of the Holocaust. But there is one very good thing. Talking makes my husband rich. It gives him almost a reason to live. It’s incredible. I bless the museum every minute, and I bless Eddie.

  Jack Greene

  BORN: Jacob Grünschlag

  29 May 1925

  Bolechów, Poland (now Bolekhiv, Ukraine)

  He is a convivial man, generous with this time, and straight-forward in a manner that seems at odds with the many identities that have brought him, late in life, to this cosy lounge room at the other end of the world.

  He was born Jacob Grünschlag, the middle of three sons of a Polish timber merchant and his homemaker wife, a placid young man who liked to laugh. This is who he was in his formative years, with a German-sounding name that took him to a local Jewish primary school and on to a neighbouring high school with plans, when he graduated, of joining his father in business.

  For most of his life, he has been Jack Greene, a name that belies his European origins and which he adopted in another era in another hemisphere. In this guise, he has been a Sydney accountant, a father of two and grandfather of four, a donor to charities, and an unstinting storyteller, the man who was able to inform the author Daniel Mendelsohn about some of his murdered relatives in his book The Lost.

  But he is also a product of his past, and although it is the best part of a century since he last sat at a table with his parents and his two brothers discussing politics and life in Poland, he still reflexively turns his head to the sound of ‘Yankel’, the enduring nickname from his childhood.

  In his nineties, he is one of the few surviving Jews who lived before World War II in Bolechów, a comfortable town of timber mills and tanneries and a vibrant Jewish life. Up to 4,000 members of Bolechów’s 12,000 pre-war population were Jewish. At war’s end, apart from those who had survived in Russia, forty-nine were alive. Today, by his own estimates, he is, at most, one among six.

  His story of displacement began well before Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. For as long as he could remember, he had had a lingering sense of being a stranger in his birthplace, a sentiment that was reinforced as he played in the street with neighbourhood children and they reminded him, as teams were chosen, that he was Jewish, not Polish, as though the two groups were inherently separate.

  He was fourteen when Wor
ld War II began, and his latter childhood became a steady erosion of liberty under successive intruders. First to arrive in town were the Russians, and then for varying periods came Ukrainians, Hungarian, and Slovak soldiers, and finally the Gestapo. He never saw fighting in Bolechów, but, as the restrictions imposed on Jews increased, he often wondered if he would return to a free society.

  In October 1941, his mother and older brother, Gedale, were caught by the Gestapo in a round-up of Jews. He saw neither of them again. He spent days hiding with his father and his younger brother, Bumek, in a hayloft and then in a stable as the captures continued and he lost twenty-five of his cousins, his four aunts, and his grandmother. No other Jewish student from his school year survived.

  Within a year, Bolechów was considered to be free of Jews. The only members remaining in the community were labouring for essential German industries as he, his father, and brother were at a nearby sawmill. But even that protection soon ended. In August 1943, having escaped imminent death several times with the help of a local Nazi, the three surviving Grünschlag men escaped to a forest. For the next year, with the help of a Ukrainian peasant, they lived in an isolated bunker, 1.2-metres high and 3.5-metres wide, a tiny squalid space that they shared with eight others.

  The months that followed were once inconceivable: tight, cold, deprived. Several of those hiding in the bunker, starving through a freezing winter, died there.

  By early-August 1944, the Russians had liberated Bolechów, and, like that, he and his father and brother walked back into their old town. They returned to their home, minus a mother and eldest brother and any possessions they had once claimed, and tried to resume living as a newly configured family unit. But the nightmare had not quite ended; he was drafted into the Russian army, and deserted it. In danger of being killed, he fled back to Poland — losing contact, in the process, with his father and brother, who had left for Munich, and eventually Australia.

  So he departed Poland alone and permanently, crossing into Austria and then Italy, where, at a displaced-persons camp in 1945, he met his future wife, Sarah. They married in Palestine in May 1947.

  In the early 1950s, at his father’s urging, he and Sarah prepared to emigrate from Israel to Australia so that the remnants of his family could be reunited. Twelve days before their flight, however, his father sent word that they should not come; he was moving to the US, and then to Germany.

  Their preparations all but complete, the couple left for Australia anyway, arriving in Sydney in April 1951.

  When we were liberated, our home in Bolechów was vacant. We stayed there, and a young Jewish Russian officer came in and started to talk to me. He asked what happened to the family, and I told him my mother and brother were killed in October 1941 and a friendly Ukrainian dobbed them in.

  My father wasn’t happy that I talked to him. He was reluctant to stir up something — they might take revenge; you never know. After three or four weeks, the Russians came and threw me into prison. At midnight, they called me out for an interview. They read what I had told Greenberg, the Russian officer, and then they asked me what I knew at the time the Soviets withdrew from Bolechów and the Germans came. By two o’clock in the morning they said, ‘You can go home.’ It was dangerous — there was a curfew — but I had no choice.

  I wasn’t scared — among the Russians, you didn’t fear for your life; but again, you do what you are told, you have no say — although it left a bad feeling. But it didn’t stop me from speaking. I felt I had to get it out of my system. So then I talked to whomever I could. Maybe it was a release, I don’t know. My brother Bob (Bumek) bottled it for years, and it punished him. But I was very happy to talk from the word go. It was like any other subject.

  It’s decades since they killed my mother and my brother Gedale. I never thought I would last ten years after that because you thought such bad things would affect your health and your drive to live.

  Being liberated is the start of your problems, not the end. It’s a whole life in front of you. You have to start to create life for yourself. Then I thought, well, I’ve got seven years, ten years, enjoy it. You survived. Live. Enjoy life.

  When I got on the train to leave Poland, I travelled for four weeks on the roofs of carriages, and I felt I would go wherever I like, I have life in front of me. I know eventually I will have to be trapped and work. But right now, I am free. It was immense joy.

  I came to Italy in July 1945 and met there an ex-employee of my father, Manes. He said, ‘Look here, I haven’t got anyone, you haven’t got anyone, let’s be a family.’ It was a very good feeling, that someone cared, someone liked your company, your presence. I met his future wife in Poland, and I travelled with her all the way to Israel, and we also became very good friends. When she died, there was a phone call from their daughter. She said, ‘Now tell me, you must have been related.’ And I said, no, we were not.

  He was like family. The bond was so close that people thought, oh they must be related. If I had some problems and wanted to discuss something, Manes was there. He talked. He cared. I could have gone to America to be with my uncle and aunt after Italy, but I knew Manes would love me to join him in Israel, so I thought, well, you’re family; I will go to Israel.

  Then because of my father, I had to go to Australia. I didn’t dare to tell Manes. I remember Sarah and me circled for three or four hours around his house to tell him we were going to Sydney, but didn’t; I wrote to him from here. I felt I was letting him down terribly. He was very good to me; he wanted to bring me to Israel, and I deserted him. I still regret that.

  When we came to Australia in 1951, you could get a job anywhere. My cousin arranged me a job as a packer at a wholesaler of crockery and cigarettes. I could speak Hebrew, Polish, German, and Yiddish, but not English. I’d had two lessons; I knew the word ‘umbrella’.

  Once I learned English, I enrolled in a night course in a technical college. After four years, I became an accountant, and within two years I started my own business. It’s not a great story. It’s a story of you-have-to.

  Around 1960, I became Jack Greene. My son went to school and they couldn’t pronounce his name. He hated it, and I didn’t like it, either. To start with, it was a German name. It was difficult to pronounce. I am still Jacob officially, but they told me at the time, ‘There’s no such name as Jack. Someone called Jacob is also called Jack.’ But now Jack is a name. I made it Greene with an ‘e’ at the end so I would be different. In the business, it was easier to pronounce Greene. But there are more Greenes than people. I should have picked a nicer name.

  I do believe in God, in an upper justice. That’s what lets you live or drives you to want to live, otherwise what’s the point? Sometimes, you feel terribly let down; my mother was killed. Or after a killing of 1,000 people you say, ‘Where is God?’ The answer is you stop thinking about it and then you start believing in it a little bit, till the next disappointment. You hold on because otherwise there is no hope in life, there is no justice. You have to believe in something. Otherwise you just exist.

  The main lesson I learned in the Holocaust is to value your life. There’s nothing more dear or more expensive than life. And I think if you appreciate it, you talk about it, you enjoy it. To survive was just impossible. What chance have you got? None, none. And then you survive. I had to pinch myself whether I am really alive.

  Sarah was sad about it. She couldn’t laugh like I laughed. I always liked laughing, funny stories, or memories from good times. I always enjoyed life.

  I wanted to live, and there’s a good German saying, ‘to live and let live’. And there’s another good Jewish saying, ‘instead of being an angry fool, be a placid fool’. So to be able to live, you have to be a placid person.

  After the war, I wanted to join a gang that would take revenge on the Germans. I thought of it quite a bit. And then, luckily, I thought I would be wasting my first years of freedom and I wouldn’t achie
ve much. I hate them, sure, but I try not to think about them. To hell with them.

  I realised it won’t do me good; if I will be angry, I will suffer. But I think it’s not the philosophy; I think it’s the make-up of the person that gives you that feeling. It’s a part of your personality.

  My father was not like that. He felt let down completely by the world. And he left us; he went back to Germany and decided not to be in contact with us because he thought we were trying to scheme against him.

  Two years before he died, he came back to Australia. We spent quite a bit of time talking then. I said, ‘Listen, there was a period, ten years, where we didn’t know where you were. What happened when you lived in Munich?’ And he said, ‘Don’t you remember? I was on the train travelling with two big suitcases and two Gestapo men boarded and they found me.’

  That was in 1978. That was thirty-odd years after liberation, and I knew he wasn’t well. He had lost everything and he just couldn’t recover. My father was a self-made man. Then no one had time for him. And somehow, he was derailed.

  I come from a shtetl (small Jewish town) where my grandmother, my mother’s mother, had three living sisters two kilometres away. My father had brothers and sisters. It was a very close-knit family. It meant a lot. During the Holocaust, everything disappeared. The family shrank all the time. Then you felt you were on your own.

  Now what it means to me is my children and grandchildren, that’s all. My only regret is I didn’t have more children. I was a coward. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to support them. Because that’s all you have.

  The dearest are the grandchildren. To me they are everything. I cried the first time in the last fifty years when my granddaughters left for London. That’s the only time I cried. I am sad about the past, but I don’t cry about it.

  I went back to Poland in 1996. My brother wanted very much to go, because he didn’t remember that much, and so did two of his friends. My son went with us, and he loved it. I went because of my brother. And possibly there was some curiosity in me. Without them pushing me, I wouldn’t have gone for anything.