Chapter 16 A Tale of Love and Darkness (16)

A frayed photo album preserved from Werner's time.Here was Dad, and his brother David, both at school, serious and pale, with their large ears poking out from under pointed hats, both in suits and ties and shirt collars pointed.This is Grandpa Alexander, beginning to be a little bald, with a bushy beard and neat attire, looking a bit like a little diplomat in the Tsarist era.Here are some group photos, maybe the graduating class.It is difficult to know whether it is Dad or Uncle David who graduated, their faces are very blurred.Boys wear hats and girls wear berets.Most of the girls have black hair, some with Mona Lisa smiles that know what you desperately want to know, but you won't know because it's not meant to be for you.So who is it for? It is almost certain that the young people in these group photos were actually stripped naked, forced to run, whipped, chased by vicious dogs, starved and frozen, and put into the Bona forest pit .Besides my dad, who among them survived? I scrutinized the group photo against the bright light, trying to see something in their faces: some cunning or boldness, some inner tenacity that might have made the first The boy on the left in the second row guessed what was waiting for him, didn't believe all the comforting words, crawled into the gutter under the quarantine area before it was too late, and joined the forest guerrillas.Or else, what about that pretty girl in the middle, she's smart and cynical, not my love, don't lie to me, I'm younger, but I already know everything, I know things you can't even dream of.Presumably she survived? Did she escape to join partisans in the Rudnik Forest? Did she manage to hide in a section outside the exclusion zone because of her Aryan appearance? Did she hide in a monastery? Or did she manage to evade the Germans and their Lithuanian cronies before it was too late and slip into Russian territory? Or did she emigrate to Palestine before it was too late and live a taciturn pioneer life until her seventies Six years old - managing beehives or chicken coops on a kibbutz in the Yazril Valley? This is my young dad, who looks a lot like my son Daniela (middle name Yehuda Ariyeh, Same name as my father), looks creepy, seventeen years old, tall and thin, like a corn cob, wearing a bow tie, innocent eyes looking at me through round lenses, a little embarrassed, He is also a bit proud, a king of chatter, but very shy, which is not contradictory, his black hair is neatly combed back, and his face shows a kind of joyful optimism: Friends, don't worry, everything will be fine, we Will overcome everything, put everything aside, no matter what happens, it doesn't matter, everything will be fine.The dad in the photo is younger than my son.If I could, I'd walk into the picture and warn him and his jovial friends.I'll try to explain to them what's going to happen.Almost certainly they won't believe what I'm saying, are you kidding us? Here's my dad again, in prom attire, with a fur beanie and a Russian hat, rowing a boat , the two girls smiled at him, a little coquettish.Here he’s wearing ridiculous knickerbockers and socks, and a smiling girl with parted hair in the middle hugs him from behind.The girl was about to drop a letter into a mailbox marked "Postal Service" (clearly written in the photo).Who is this letter addressed to? What happened to the recipient? What is the fate of the other girl in the photo, who is wearing a striped dress, a small black handbag on her arm, and white shoes and socks? After that, how long can a girl continue to smile? This is my dad, also smiling, suddenly reminiscent of the little girl who was dressed up by her mother when she was a child, and there were five Boys, four girls.They were in the forest, but they were wearing the best clothes they had on in the city.However, the boy took off his coat, stood there in a shirt and tie, posing a brave and childish pose to challenge fate, or challenge the girls.In the photo, they built a small pyramid with people, two boys carried a fat girl on their shoulders, a third boy held her thigh affectionately, and the other two girls looked up and laughed heartily.The bright sky and the railings on the river bridge are also very cheerful.Only the surrounding forest is not smiling. It is dense, majestic, and dark, extending from one end of the photo to the other, and probably will continue to extend.Forest near Vilna, Rudnik Forest? Or Bona Forest? Or Popischuk or Olkeniki Forest, where my dad's grandfather Yehuda Leif Klausner liked to sit in his He rode through the Olkeniki forest in a chariot, trusting in his steed, his strong arms, and his luck even in the dark, even in the torrential downpour of the night.Grandpa spiritually longed for Aritz Israel, which has experienced two thousand years of misfortune and is being rebuilt.He misses Galilee, the Plain of Sharon, Gilad, the valley of Gilboa, Mount Samaria, the mountains of Edom, "Rush, the Jordan River is rushing, you are surging."He donated to the Jewish National Fund, paid the Zionists in shekels, eagerly read bits and pieces of Ariz Israel, and fell in love with Jabotinsky's speeches.Jabotinsky sometimes passed through the Jewish town of Vilna, gathering enthusiastic audiences.Grandpa had always supported Jabertinski's self-important and uncompromising nationalist politics with all his might, and considered him a Zionist.However, even when the flames of Werner land were almost at his and his family's feet, he was inclined—maybe Grandma Shlomit made it inclined—to find somewhere less Asian than Palestine, more beautiful than always. A slightly European new home in dark Werner. Between 1930 and 1932, Klausner wanted to immigrate to France, Switzerland, the United States (albeit with red Indians), the Scandinavian countries and Great Britain.But no one in these countries would take them in; they had enough Jews already. ("One more than one," Canadian and Swiss ministers said at the time, and other countries followed suit without saying it.) About eighteen months before the Nazis came to power in Germany, my Zionist grandfather Hopelessly blind to Werner's anti-Semitism, he even applied for German citizenship.Fortunately for us, Germany also refused to accept him.This is them, these passionate Europhiles, who speak so many European languages, who recite European poetry, who believe in the supremacy of European moral standards, who enjoy European ballets and operas, who nurture European traditions and dream of its post-National post-ism, admiring its manners, dress and fashion, loving it unconditionally and unrestrainedly for decades since the Jewish Enlightenment, doing its best to please it, contributing to it in every way, To be part of it, to break its indifference and hostility with fanatical pleasure, to befriend it, to please it, to be accepted by it, to be owned by it, to be loved by it...

So in 1933 Schlomidt and Alexander Klausner, lovers who had already disappointed in Europe, and their youngest son Yehuda Arije, who had just completed a BA in Polish and world literature, were almost uninterested. It was a reluctant emigration to an Asianized Asia, emigration to the Jerusalem that I always yearned for in the sentimental poems my grandfather wrote in his youth.They took the ship "Italia" from Trieste to Haifa. On the way, they took a photo with the captain, whose name was written next to the photo. His name was Beniaamino Umberto Stadler.True.In Haifa Port, such a family legend has been left behind.A doctor or health officer in a white coat from the British Mandate was waiting for them, spraying all the passengers with disinfectant.When it was Grandpa Alexander's turn, there was our story.He was very angry, grabbed the nozzle from the doctor's hand and sprayed the doctor all over, as if to say, if anyone here dares to treat us like in the diaspora, treat him like this.For two thousand years we have endured everything in silence, but here, in our own land, we must not suffer in silence a new exile, our dignity must not be trampled—or sanitized.

Their eldest son David, a loyal and hard-working Europhile, remained in Vilna.There, at first, despite being Jewish, he was offered a professorship in literature at the university.He was no doubt intent on pursuing Uncle Joseph's admirable career, as my father had pursued all his life.In Vilna he would marry a young girl named Marka, and there, in 1938, his son Daniela would be born.I've never met the kid a year and a half older than me, nor have I been able to find a picture of him.There are only some postcards and a few letters in Polish from Aunt Marka (Marcia). "February 10, 1939: The first night, Dhanush slept from nine in the evening until six in the morning. He had no problem sleeping during the night. During the day, he lay there with his eyes open, with his arms and legs in the same position. He'd say..." Little Daniela Klausner wouldn't live to be three.Soon they will come and kill him, to save Europe from his destruction, to prevent Hitler's "nightmare visions" in advance: loathsome, bow-legged jewish bastards seducing hundreds of girls... A dark-haired Jewish youth with a satanic smile on his face, lying in wait for the unsuspecting girl, staining her with his blood... The ultimate goal of the Jewish people is to annihilate the nationality...by degrading and impure other peoples , to lower the level of the highest race...with the secret purpose of destroying the white race...if 5,000 Jews were shipped to Sweden, they would occupy all the important positions in a very short time...poison all races, cosmopolitan Jews .” But Uncle David thought differently.He has contempt for such hateful views as the anti-Semitism echoing from the vaults of the majestic high cathedrals, or the brutal and dangerous Protestant anti-Semitism, German racism, Austrian murder, Polish hatred of the Jews, Lithuanian The cruelty of Germany, Hungary, or France, the enthusiasm for mass murder in Ukraine, Romania, Russia, and Croatia, and the distrust of Jews in Belgium, Holland, England, Ireland, and Scandinavia do not matter.All these, in his view, are the hazy remnants of the barbaric and ignorant age, remnants of yesterday, dying.As a professor of comparative literature, European literature is a spiritual home for him.He did not realize why he should leave his country of residence and emigrate to West Asia, a strange and unfamiliar place, in order to please the mindless anti-Semites and narrow-minded nationalist mobs.So he stuck to his post, waving the spiritual banner of progress, culture, art and uncharted territory, until the Nazis came to Vilna.Culture-loving Jews, intellectuals and cosmopolitans were not to their taste, so they killed David, Malka and my little cousin Daniela who was nicknamed Danush or Danushko .In the penultimate letter, dated 1940, Dhanush's parents wrote: "He has recently begun to walk...he has an amazing memory." Uncle David sees himself as a product of his time, an extraordinary, A multicultural and multilingual, enlightened European, an unmistakable modern man.He despised prejudice and national hatred, and he was determined never to give in to uneducated nationalists, chauvinists, demagogues and ignorant prejudice-driven anti-Semites Promise "Death to the Jew," barking at him from the wall: "Jew, go back to Palestine!" Go to Palestine? Absolutely not.A man of his type would not take a young bride and young son with him and flee to some drought-stricken Levantine province, away from the violence of the raucous mob where a few desperate Jews tried to The irony of building an armed state of segregationists themselves is that they apparently learned the worst from their enemies.No, Uncle David is absolutely in Vilna, at his post, in one of the most important frontiers of the rational, open-minded, tolerant and liberal European Enlightenment, where the struggle for survival is now fought against Threat of a savage frenzy that engulfs it.He needs to be here because there's nothing else he can do.until the end.

to be continued...