Purim in Ludwiksdorf

They called him all sorts of different names.

"You know, David, let them call him what they want but I like him, I really do."

David didn't agree or disagree. He didn't comment.

"To me", I said, "He's different."

From Brussels he came.    Twenty or twenty-one he was - Nathan Gotleib.

"What do you mean, he is different?   A 'buntownik' he is!"

"Yes, that's exactly what I like about him."

Most of us had that justified fear of Germans, whether they were guards in camp, foremen at work or pedestrians outside the camp.We were showing that fear in a vaseline-like manner as we called it then.

No one wanted to risk one's life being a hero so that behaviour (fear plus obedience) was the norm, the acceptable norm to most of us BUT NOT TO NATHAN.

He kept his head high and showed no fear.   Obedience, YES, he wasn't stupid, but fear, NO!

It was that Sabra-type, as we call it today, behaviour that caused him problems, not with Germans but with other prisoners, especially the 'frumer' (orthodox) ones.

You see for them (the 'frumers') suffering was part of lager life and any sign of fighting or resisting it wasn't welcomed.

One would think that submission to suffering was some sort of a 'mitzvah' - resisting it, a sin.

"He was always like this", Monsieur Orenstein who knew him from home, whispered in my ear one afternoon when Nathan picked a fight with some prisoner who wanted to jump the soup queue.

"Always fighting for justice, that fool!"

"Gustav", someone tapped me on my shoulder.  "Would you want to be Fastrigosi in our play?"

"To do what, Nathan?"

We were painting the lager fence in Ludviksdorf camp in 1944.

"You see, Gustav, Purim is around the corner and I am organising a 'Megilla'."

"What?   What's a 'Megilla'?"

"You know, a Purim 'Shpil'.  We already have all the others.

Benjamin Katz will be Ahashueros.I", Nathan continued, "will play Haman.  Jack Teebaum " (We all knew Jack Teebaum, film star from Amsterdam). "Jack Teebaum will be Esther's uncle.

All we need now is Esther and Fastrigosi."

"Esther - no worries! Helen from the 'schneider Stube' (tailor workshop) will say yes, if I ask her.

Fastrigosi - this is where you come in, Gustav."

"Okay", I said with no hesitation, too embarrassed to ask actually who was Fastrigosi.

All I remembered from Purim were our lovely Purim balls we had in our school in my home town of Sosnowiec.

I was never good at remembering lines.

For me to learn by heart a poem at school was a major tragedy.

Just imagine how complicated it was to learn some 'Megilla' lines in Yiddish - I never spoke Yiddish at home - believe me, it wasn't easy.

The 'Purim Shpil' eventually took place one Sunday afternoon, not exactly the 'Purim' day, but still....

The store barrack was our concert hall.

We removed the spare beds, blankets and other lager utensils that were normally kept there.

The concert started when "Menashe Menashe" was sang so nicely by 'kleine Silver' the cantor from Dobrowa synagogue.

'Zog Shoin Motl Vos Wird Zein Dein Sof' was his encore number.  That was our favourite.

We all knew what Karl Berman, the ex-'kapelmeister' of Berlin Philharmonia will play on his violin.

'Dichter und Bauer' (Poet and Peasant) of Von Suppe.

Then came the 'Megilla' details of which I don't remember.

But I do remember Helen, Esther the 'Malke' gave me a kick when Hamen came on the stage.

"What is he doing?" someone near me whispered.

We all knew that Nathan's Haman dress was to be a kaftan made out of some bed cover.

We also knew that he would be wearing some sort of a turban on his head, but none of us knew that Nathan would be wearing a HITLER-LIKE MOUSTACHE.

Total silence covered the barrack when Haman started his bit.

There was no need for the usual "Sha! Shtil!" that normally accompanied our occasional concert.

Total silence, so scared we were.

Glikstein who was our musician playing the tunes of the 'Megilla' on his 'Hohner'mund harmonica (mouth organ) almost lost that bit of breath needed to get a tune out of that small five centimetre-wide instrument.

"My God!" screamed someone on the audience, when the side barrack door opened.

First we all saw a yellow SA uniform before seeing a face.

"My God!!!"

"You can come now. "The voice of the Polish Court Clerk was cool and strict.

"Pan Prokurator (the District Attorney) is waiting."

It was quite normal for us survivors to attend (just after the war) different Court cases, hearings and interrogation procedures usually against some ex-kapos, German guards or collaborators accused of various crimes.

However, the one I was about to attend at the District Attorney's office in Katowice in 1946 wasn't a usual one.

I was in fact here to defend a German against whom a case was being prepared.

Herr Barr was our lager fuhrer in Ludvigsdorf in 1943-44.

In the hierarchy of labour camp it was rather an administrative position, not to be confused with a lager kommandant, military position.

We actually liked Herr Barr.  We found him reasonably humane in his approach to us.

In fact in one of our favourite 'dream discussions' on the subject of "what we would do after the war", David came out with a suggestion.

"You know, friends, after the war if someone will attempt to put hands on Herr Barr we will have to defend him."

And so we did!

"Weiter machen, weiter machen" (Continue, continue), insisted Herr Barr.   And so we continued.

When Esther the 'Malke' eventually convinced the king not to slaughter the Jews we knew that there was NO ESTHER FOR US in 1944, as most of our people, our families, were already gone.

I can't remember what the legend tells us about the death of Haman but in our Ludvigsdorf 'Megilla' Haman has a special 'misn sof' - a special death.

Three times he was stabbed by heavily built Moishe Sonenshein.

With every thrust, Sonenshein, our executioner (who already lost his family in Srodula ghetto yudn rein), repeated with hatred and anger, "Far mein frau und kinder",

"Far mein mame und tate.

"Und far mein Yiddishe folk".   (For my wife and children, for my mother and father and for my Yiddish people).

Silence and tears was our applause when the curtain (made out of grey lager blankets) was rolled down.

"Das var doch fantastich", we could hear Monsieur Orenstein's outcry when a minute later we, 'The Artists', joined the audience.

He ran to his friend Nathan embracing him and repeating again and again "Fantastich, fantastich, und so viel courage."

Herr Barr, our lager fuhrer, discreetly left the barrack pretending that he never understood a word and wouldn't know what the whole thing was about.

Nathan left Ludviksdorf towards the Autumn of 1944 with a transport to lager Neukircher in Upper Silesia.

The rest of us male prisoners were sent to Faulbrich - Ludviksdorf camp was closed.

I met my school friend Szlamek, a few months after the liberation in Waldenburg where we were both waiting for some food parcels that were in those days regularly distributed by UNRA.

"Tell me, Sjlamek, in Neukircher, did you by some coincidence come across a young Nathan Gotleib from Belgium?

Late in 1944, I mean."

"Gotleib, from Belgium?"

Sjlamek scratched his chin with a typical hassidic gesture.

"Nathan Gotleib from Belgium.

Oh yes, I think I did.

Yes, we had a boy by that name."

"He was mercilessly beaten by a kapo for organising something.

Something to do with the anniversary of the first Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Yes, he was beaten up but he survived.

It was just before the liberation.

" Would that be the same one, Gustav, do you think?"

"Oh, yes, THAT would be him, THAT WOULD BE HIM FOR SURE."

THEY CALLED YOU A LOBUZ.

THEY CALLED YOU A HEFKE MAN.

Thank God you have survived!

I would like so much to shake your hand now, to embrace you and to kiss you.

WHERE ARE YOU, NATHAN GOTLEIB?