Our Holocaust

Grandpa used to say, "People have to die of something," and refuse to donate money to the campaigns against cancer, against road accidents, or any other campaign. To avoid being called stingy, he would rail against the great public charity shows. His performance was so good, that no-one but us, his near relatives, would have known the simple truth - he really was stingy.

In his house, stinginess was the universal law. He carefully collected empty bottles for their deposit and when one cracked, he glued it together skilfully. He dumped his shirts, cuckoo-like, in other people's hampers, adding stains when necessary. He managed to coordinate his colds with the rest of us, swallowed our syrups and squirrelled away his own. He would be the first to recover, to announce, "We're better," then hoard the leftover antibiotics. In his bathroom he kept a bottle of liquid soap, and as its level fell, he repeatedly diluted it with water, till he ended up with water that thought it was soap.

But his most marvellous achievement was his mastery over teabags. Every bag, even on its tenth plunge into boiling water, exuded something - the shadow of tea, verging on a physical representation of it. He would raise it and stare suspiciously, knowingly, at the bag dangling from the teaspoon at the end of its string. He estimated the bag's remaining potency and decided its fate - "Selektsia," he called this ritual when he felt like tormenting Grandpa Yosef.

We suspected that he did not throw away the teabags even when they were finally exhausted, but hoarded them somewhere, perhaps to make himself a new mattress. All through our childhood we searched for them, but not even our most diligent poking into his things - even when we discovered his letters to the dancer Joyce, his unpaid debt to the late Finkelstein and his fabulous stash of condoms - did we find a single old teabag.

Sometimes we liked to remind ourselves that he wasn't our real grandfather.

We called him grandfather, Grandpa Lolek, in obedience to our family's "law of compression," an ingenious invention of our parents', the first Holocaust generation. The absence of brothers, uncles, fathers and mothers, did away with the niceties. Adults of our parents' generation were called "uncle" and "aunt," and their children were our cousins. Not that everything was up for grabs. Indeed there were rules. There had to be a correponding family feeling between the respective generations for the seam to close and for every individual to find a relative. We needed the friendship in our parents' generation before we could call their children cousins. A withdrawn "uncle," who took no interest in the family doings, deprived us of a whole clutch of concerned cousins. But it couldn't be helped - the law of compression allowed no compromises.

What we needed above all were grandfathers and grandmothers, so we broke through all the barriers and picked what we could.

I never knew my father's father, Ze'ev-Wolf (there was a small photograph of his grave in Dad's album). We appointed his cousins, Grandpa Lolek and Grandpa Heinek, to be our grandfathers. A similar device worked on Mother's side - to her father, the ailing Grandpa Sholem, the last of the Holocaust people, imprisoned in his terminal illness, the result of Gestapo torture, we added a distant relative of his, Grandpa Menasheh. Along the way we also acquired Grandpa Ernest, Grandma Eva, Grandpa Will.

Under all this camouflage, my real family was pathetically small.

Grandpa Sholem, 1912-1980.

One aunt.

Her son, the one true cousin.

Actually, one other uncle, my mother's half-brother.

"You don't have to be a psychologist to understand it," Effi said when I told her about my urge to get into bed with Anat every time we came away, exhausted, from a wedding in her family. In the car, as she was kicking off her shoes, my hand would begin to fumble with the buttons of her dress, while in the back whined Yariv, the five-year old prince.

Grandpa Lolek, the tea wizard, was not the first grandfather. We acquired him fairly late, but he figured strongly in our lives and added sparkle to our days. Usually he would burst into our world in his 1970 Vauxhall, a dying, moaning contraption, which only he could coax into life. Always with a tie on, always smoking, flamboyantly dressed, he would emerge from the car like Emperor Franz Josef appearing on the balcony to wave to the masses. A couple of minutes later he'd be at the table, drinking tea, eating a slice of cake and smoking a cigarette.

Unusually in our world, Grandpa Lolek was not a Holocaust survivor. World War II found him serving in the Polish Cavalry, those poor lunatics who charged the German tanks, waving their swords and shouting "Hurrah!" When his unit fell apart, Grandpa Lolek fled to Russia, where he joined the volunteer army of the Polish General Anders. In its ranks he journeyed through Persia and Palestine to England, in order to rejoin the fighting. The Anders army, including Grandpa Lolek, were thrown into the worst battles and suffered the most dreadful losses. These ten-a-penny soldiers, sent to the front whenever some general at headquarters muttered, "Let's give them a try," suffered tremendous losses, were sifted and strained, until the only survivors were Grandpa Lolek types, coated with pure luck, totally without fear of their longtime neighbour, Death. They'd seen him day after day going about his business, and were accustomed to nod at him, touch their caps, by way of a neighbourly gesture. They didn't meddle in his business and he didn't meddle in theirs.

World War II ended. Anders' men, the remnant of the remnant, were rewarded with British citizenship. But Grandpa Lolek, being in love with an American dancer from Kentucky named Joyce, returned to Poland to see if any of his family had survived. In the process he lost Joyce, who thereby lost an opportunity to become Grandma Joyce (in actual fact, she exchanged Grandpa Lolek for a Viennese pianist). His family had perished in the gas chambers. The only survivor was his younger brother Heinek, with whom he went to Palestine. Here he began fighting another war - against the unfortunates who moaned about their fate, who talked in whispers about Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Grandpa Lolek reproached the survivors:

"You had a terrible selektsia? They took one out of three of you? Ten hours naked in the snow in the Appelplatz? That's practically a treat! Now us against the Germans in Monte Cassino - if only it was just one out of three! Two nights and two days and if you rest one moment you're dead. Forward, move, no stops! Eh, what do you know from trouble..."

His Hebrew was full of mistakes, every sentence a mass of errors.

Then he'd raise his glass: "Life is good, Jews!"

A touch antisemitic.

He drank a lot and smoked. Always slim and straight as a ramrod, though he suffered from backaches.

He owned some land near Gedera about which he'd had a discreet word from certain-officials-in-the-right-places that it would soon be re-zoned for housing. For 30 years he periodically went to check on his treasure, which was still agricultural, still strewn with lettuces or strawberries, destined to be eliminated like baby teeth and leave the space for what really mattered. In the course of 30 years, officials came and went, but Grandpa Lolek never lost faith. He had full confidence in the persistence of corruption, and refused to sell the land to a pestering farmer from the near-by village of Gidron. The farmer went on making offers, and Grandpa Lolek went on turning him down.

"On my land vegetables not grow!" he would declare, passionately committed to his ideology. His land was not to be demeaned with such ludicrous things as turnips. His land was to be a pure nugget of real estate.

Grandpa Lolek would go to Gedera and return - not home, but straight to the Good Mechanic Green, because the Vauxhall couldn't do all those kilometres without giving up the ghost. While waiting for the resuscitation to be completed, he would sit with the Arab workers, enjoying a cup of bitter coffee. He repaid them with stories about the war. The workers loved him - a Jew who told stories about victories that were not over Arabs. You could sit with him and listen with an easy conscience to tales of battles and tactics. For a free wax-polish you could even get a good word about Saladin.

That 1970 Vauxhall was a rare agglomeration of obsolete spare parts. The car had long ago strayed from the regular course of license-insurance-test, having been patched with whatever replacement parts came to hand, though a newly-installed part often threatened its weaker neighbours. "The cheap are chosen, the strong survive" was the dominant law in the Vauxhall, till all the reputable garages refused to touch it. Only the Good Mechanic Green, a righteous man, agreed to look after it - no guarantees, no reports, no hassle. Encouraged by Grandpa Lolek, the Good Mechanic Green devised ingenious solutions: he installed in the Vauxhall a radiator from an old Volvo and a pump from an old Saab. Screws that had not been tooled in any factory on earth could be found in the Vauxhall, as well as windows from Fiats, Renaults and Dafs. And deep inside the works, like a precious gem, hid an ancient Chevrolet carburettor, the last of its kind.

The Good Mechanic Green did no one else such favours. Once, when I approached him about my Subaru, he pointed out gently that his was a Volkswagen garage, so how could he fix my Subaru? He also asked why I didn't switch to Volkswagen. I told him I objected to German cars on principle.

"Because of the price?"

"Because of the Holocaust."

The Good Mechanic Green understood and didn't argue. Some people refuse on principle to buy Japanese cars because of their tinny bodies. OK, so the Holocaust was also a matter of principle, but you should go to a Subaru garage. Grandpa Lolek and his Vauxhaull was a special case.

Grandpa Lolek loved his Vauxhall and paid the Good Mechanic Green promptly without argument. In all other matters he clenched his fist, refusing to carry out the action called payment. He honed his debt-accumulation to an art. Debts were the spring of his eternal youth, a source of strength and fresh spirit. Nothing was as splendid as Grandpa Lolek setting out to dispute a debt. He addressed his creditors proudly, condescended to present his demands, even to listen a little. The greater the creditor and the stronger his case, the more superb did Grandpa Lolek become in confronting him.

Sometimes he contrived to have us present at these sessions. Simply to sit there. The presence of children can often blunt the edge of sharp intentions. We sit in silence, not unaware of our role. We watch as Grandpa Lolek sets thick box files, stuffed with papers and stamped official documents, before the creditor. He opens a file, leafs through it, suddenly his eyes light up. He looks up, beaming, as if half the difficulty has already been resolved. His nimble fingers, sprinkled with age spots, frees two-three sheets from the thick stack. He spreads them on the table, pats them with his open palm - "Here it is!" Now it's up to his opponent to modify his claims.

Negotiations begin. The exchange gets brisk. As tempers begin to heat up, Grandpa Lolek goes back to rummaging in his papers, which usually makes for quieter anticipation. Grandpa Lolek pores over the documents. Then, if he doesn't feel that the irritation has been dispelled, he takes the next, desperate step and offers a cigar.

Not all creditors are naïve. Some are even violent. But the hero of Anders' army pierces the opposing side with a cold blue stare. He forces his opponent into a river of agreements, phrases, options, commitments, arrangements and guarantees. Grandpa Lolek performs sleights of hand. Dates are set, methods are drafted, perhaps even a schedule of payments. Sometimes, in the spirit of accord, a new loan actually materializes.

Some of the creditors go so far as to sue Grandpa Lolek. In court, the course of justice becomes mysteriously tangled up. Grandpa Lolek's case is drawn out, delays and mishaps play havoc with it, changes and postponements keep cropping up. The court vacillates back and forth, sets a date for a hearing, then cancels it, fixes a meeting in chambers and calls it off. No one knows what is wrong with the court. It is if a hidden doubt in its heart is causing procrastination.

Or else Grandpa Lolek has managed to find among the court staff a clerk who admires his military career in Anders' army. Not because the clerk himself was a soldier, but from admiration for another Anders man - the late Prime Minister Menahem Begin. In actual fact, Begin, like other Jewish soldiers, deserted when Anders' army was passing through Palestine on its way from Russia to England, in order to join the Zionist struggle in this country, but his time in the Polish ranks had left a deep mark on Begin. Now, in return for memories of the late prime minister, the clerk helps as best he can with the court schedule, postponing, holding up, sowing confusion. In reality, Grandpa Lolek hadn't known Menahem Begin in those days, but soldiers are soldiers, so he talked on, and sometimes got carried away and sent Menahem Begin on to Europe with Anders' army, instead of leaving him here to lead the Irgun. He took him to the battles of Monte Cassino, Loretto, Ancona and the crossing of Italian rivers. His listener did not demur. On the contrary, he was thrilled - "And all this during the struggle here, in this country!"

Beside his penchant for getting into debt, Grandpa Lolek perfected the art of opportunity. Whenever time slowed its usual furious pace and allowed contingencies to appear, Grandpa Lolek jumped on it with both feet. His newspapers were always open at the ad pages and the obituary notices. Quick as a wink, he'd connect an ad and a notice, put on his most suitable tie and set out in his Vauxhall to hunt for opportunities. A simple foot-soldier, he did not disdain the least little profit. He kept a small account in every bank, transferred pennies from one to another, moaning about the bank charges, and waited for some dramatic, cosmic event which would strike the pennies on their march and turn them into billions in hard currency. Special sales dominated his daily life. He would fearlessly buy 60 packets of pasta, then wait patiently for a discount on tomato sauce.

He smoked without a qualm, with the relish of one who knows that he will not die of cancer. In this matter he was prodigal - he bought the best imported cigarettes, even when times were hard. He smoked them lovingly, pleasurably, smoked only his own and would not accept a cigarette from anyone. He even gave them away generously - one or two at a time, and once, before my very eyes, he gave a whole packet to a beggar in the street.

His debt management, his stinginess and thrift, combined with his appetite for business, produced considerable property. We would remind him that one day someone would inherit all that wealth. Grandpa Lolek avoided heirs like the plague. He undermined every attempt to give him children, who were nothing but temporarily-disguised heirs. He didn't think that "after his passing" would be a proper time for someone else to enjoy his money. He became nervous whenever the subject came up and shook his fist at his nonexistent offspring, warning them not to come near his property. Every night he went to bed alive, and in the morning inherited his own property.

The system appeared to be flawless.

Translated by Yael Lotan