The Fighter Page 4

  “You’re like a country bumpkin who’s never seen a modern home.”

  “I saw my uncle Prezman’s place in Warsaw, but we had neither running water nor electric power at home. Coming to France was a good decision. I am living like a rich man!”

  A big event takes place in 1936. A Jew, Léon Blum, becomes prime minister of France. I can’t imagine such a thing happening in my home country. On the contrary, Poland is expelling all Jews from the government and public service, just like the Nazis did as soon as they seized power in Germany. New waves of anxious Jews arrive in Paris every day. The anti-Semitic leagues and newspapers grow more virulent.

  The Léon Blum government, supported by the People’s Front, an alliance of the socialist and Communist parties, forces the bosses to give two weeks of paid vacations to their workers. I’m not an illegal worker anymore, but a legitimate employee of my uncle, so I’m entitled to vacations like everybody else. We spend our two paid weeks camping in the Jura Mountains with Les Amis de la Nature (Nature’s Friends), a new offshoot of FSGT. I am taking vacations for the first time in my life!

  I think I’m happy, or at least happy enough. I live in a small but comfortable apartment with the woman I love. I’m not hungry. I have lots of friends, whom I see in the evening at the club and on Sundays when we camp on the banks of the Marne River.

  …

  In 1938, I’m twenty-three. I’ve been boxing for seven years. As Karl’s assistant, I give lessons to newcomers. One day, Karl brings a young guy to me and asks me to see what he’s worth.

  “Okay. Go get some gloves and try to hit me. What’s your name?”

  “Rosenberg.”

  “I’m Wisniak. How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  This kid is even shorter than me. Five feet one, at most. I remember my first day at the club… I was in the same position, in front of Karl. I fought so hard that I forgot to breathe, but I couldn’t hit Karl even once. Now it’s my turn to jump aside and dodge with a smile on my face. Ha, but it isn’t that easy… Shorty pretends he is a machine gun. He hits with both hands, any which way, without thinking. I don’t smile anymore. I parry, I jump, I dodge. I hope he’ll run out of breath! Well, I sock a few to his stomach to cool him down. This makes him furious! After a while, he does stop, utterly exhausted. With all this crazy shooting, one of his punches grazes my jaw. When I come home, Rachel shrieks to high heaven.

  “Why, Maurice, did you look at yourself in a mirror? Your face is totally mangled!”

  “My jaw is slightly out of line, but it’ll straighten out. That’s what you call an occupational hazard.”

  “Listen, you can’t keep this up. It’s a dangerous sport. You’re the head of our family. Soon, you’ll be a father. You have to start acting responsibly.”

  I don’t always obey Rachel. I’ve got to admit that she has more common sense than me, though. She is pregnant. I’d better stop worrying her by being so foolish. I agree to hang up my gloves. I’ve boxed plenty anyway. I can’t count my victories. Karl said I had the fists and the legs of a champion, but that something was lacking in my temper: savagery, rage, fierceness. I didn’t really want to hurt my opponent. I saw several fights with the world champion Marcel Cerdan. Out of the ring, he’s quite a sweet guy, full of charm, but when he fights he becomes a wild dog. As if he hated his opponent for some reason and was actually trying to kill him.

  My brother Jacques says the reason I am not nasty enough is that I had no father.

  “Do you know Doctor Freud?”

  “I don’t know any doctor. My health is good, thank God.”

  “He isn’t a doctor in Paris, but a great scientist who lives in Vienna. He invented psychoanalysis. Haven’t you heard of it?”

  “I guess I may have. There was an article about this psychowhatsis in Die Naïe Presse the other day, but I didn’t read it.”

  “According to this theory, boys love their mother and are jealous of their father. They don’t know it, because these feelings are hidden in their subconscious mind. That’s what Freud calls the Oedipus complex. They want to kill their father and marry their mother, like the Greek hero Oedipus.”

  “Nobody does that.”

  “Of course not, but all the boys want to do it in their subconscious mind. Since they can’t kill their father, they take revenge on other men. When Marcel Cerdan tries to knock out the other guy, he is hitting his father without being conscious of it. You didn’t have a father, so you don’t want to hurt your opponents.”

  I don’t know where Jacques finds all these strange theories. Or rather, I know quite well: in books he reads after work. While I practice sports to relax, he reads. I read only Die Naïe Presse, a Jewish newspaper with a communist bent, which has been around since 1934. Jacques says Paris is a fantastic city, where you can find a free public library in every municipal hall. When I stop boxing, I begin reading books like he does. I can’t read French books, so I borrow books in Yiddish from the club’s library: our great Jewish writers Peretz, Sholem Aleichem, Shalom Asch; translations in Yiddish of novels by Tolstoy, Gorky, Upton Sinclair, Maupassant.

  Jacques has a daughter named Rose, born in 1937. At least she won’t be jealous of him and try to kill him, like this Oedipus. My brother Albert is also married and he has a daughter, too.

  Léon Blum has governed France for only one year. In 1938, a new cowardly government signs a treaty in Munich that lets Germany gobble up part of Czechoslovakia. It’s obvious that Hitler won’t stop there. We’re afraid there will be a terrible war.

  On May 15, 1939, we welcome our little Élie into this world.

  Chapter 7

  The Germans pound the streets of Paris with their heavy boots

  On September first, 1939, the Germans bomb Warsaw and invade Poland. France and England, as Poland’s allies, declare war on Germany.

  An amateur boxing match lasts only three rounds. You climb into the ring and start punching each other right away. A big professional fight, in ten or fifteen rounds, is a different thing. Often, not much happens during the first round. The boxers move forward and backward, try a punch or two, dodge, and wait. This is called an observation round. In the great fight between France and Germany, the observation round lasts for several months. The French talk of a “funny war,” but the English call it a “phony war.” Before the end of September, Poland is vanquished, crushed, dismembered. Meanwhile, France and England hop up and down to warm up.

  Some Polish officers who escaped the disaster and fled to France decide to form an army in exile. They hope to reconquer Poland, or at least to help their allies. All the Poles living in France must enroll in this army. Me, I don’t feel so Polish anymore. Besides, I must take care of my family. I’m a young father.…

  Cops ask me for my papers in the street. A young man not wearing an army uniform—this seems wrong to them. They keep me for three days in their police station, then send me to the Polish army. I wonder whether the exiled officers really want Jews to join their army. These Poles tell me to stay home and wait.

  “We’ll write to you. We’ll need you when we march in the streets of Warsaw.…”

  I should have gone with my brothers. They came up with a good scheme: they enrolled in the Foreign Legion. After fighting for France, they’ll be allowed to become French citizens. They don’t fight much, actually. The Germans knock France out in a few weeks in May and June 1940. The captain of Jacques’s unit gives his men one last order.

  “We’ll soon be surrounded. Put civilian clothes on and save your skin!”

  Jacques obeys his officer and comes home.

  As for Albert, the Germans catch him with his whole regiment and send him to a prisoners’ camp in Alsace. He convinces the commander of the camp that he is a skilled tailor who can cut a nice suit for him. The commander, whom he measures carefully, sets him up in a room, gives him cloth and thread, comes every day to check his work, tries the suit on, looks at himself in the mirror, and grins with pleasure.
Albert writes to Paule that everything is fine. She jumps on a train and comes to the camp. The commander gives Albert a day off so he can see his sister. Albert and Paule take the train and flee to the Free Zone in the south of France. Albert knows someone in the city of Montauban, so they settle there. Albert’s wife and daughter join them after a few weeks.

  The Germans pound the streets of Paris with their heavy boots. I don’t feel like going out for walks anymore. In November 1940, posters appear with instructions for the Jews: we’re supposed to go to our neighborhood’s police station and register. The posters threaten “severe punishment” for whoever tries to slip away. One thing we know about Germans: when they say “severe punishment,” they mean it. It isn’t as if I had a choice. With a name like Moszek, the Polish version of Moshe or Moses, I can hardly pretend I’m not Jewish. My mother, my brother Jacques, my friends at the club, everybody registers. The police employees write down our names and addresses, then stamp the word Jew on our residence cards.

  Six months later, on May 12, 1941, I receive a summons by mail:

  Prefecture of Police

  Mr. Wisniak, Moszek Ajzyk will report in person, with a member of his family or a friend, on May 14, 1941 at 7.00 hours, 2, rue Japy (sports hall) for a review of his situation. ID papers will be requested. Any person failing to report on the designated day and hour may expect the most severe punishment.

  I know the Japy sports hall quite well. I boxed there! It is not far from our home, so I walk there with Rachel, after dropping Élie at my mother’s. This summons is strange. Why should a family member come along?

  Rachel worries.

  “Maybe we should have found a way to join your brother and sister in Montauban.”

  “You’d leave your job? And what about me? Would I find new customers over there?”

  As we come closer to rue Japy, we see other Polish Jews. Hundreds of people are gathered inside the sports hall. I find my brother Jacques and several of my friends from the club. The cops ask our wives or friends to go to our homes and bring back a suitcase with our clothes and our things, because they’re sending us to a camp. So we know why someone had to come along. I see tears running down Jacques’s face.

  “My little Rosette was still sleeping. I didn’t even say good-bye to her.…”

  “As for me, I won’t be at home for Élie’s birthday: he’s going to be two tomorrow. Rachel planned to bake a cake. She bought two little candles. I built a small wooden truck, with iron wheels. The bastards! They really fooled us.… If they had mentioned a suitcase, we wouldn’t have come. We would have tried to hide, or we would have escaped to Montauban. What a clever trick: come with someone…”

  “The Germans told the French police how it’s done, I guess.”

  “You believe the French can’t think up such a scheme? The police are the same everywhere!”

  One hour later, Carole (Jacques’s wife) and Rachel bring us our clothes. When we ask the cops where we’re going, they answer, “A camp,” but won’t say more. Where is this camp? In France? In Germany? How long will we stay there? Rachel thought about that. She put a thick woolen sweater, my coat, and my winter boots in my backpack.

  Chapter 8

  A small town named Pithiviers

  Here I am, carrying my backpack just like in the old camping days, boarding a bus with my brother Jacques and other Jews. I ask Rachel not to worry and to give Élie a kiss for me. She is comforting Carole, who is crying loudly.

  Through the windows of the bus I see Parisians on the sidewalks. They are going to work or hurrying home. They worry about money or whatever. They should rejoice at being free! We cross the Seine River. I see the high towers and proud steeple of Notre Dame Cathedral. Although I’ve lived in Paris more than ten years, I’ve never visited Notre Dame. I promise myself I’ll do it as soon as I’m free again. Yeah, and I’ll climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower, too.

  The bus joins a herd of others in the courtyard of the Austerlitz train station. My brother’s face, which was very dark, lightens a little.

  “We’re staying in France. If we went to Germany, we would start from the Gare de l’Est.”

  We board a train very similar to the ones I used to take on weekends. Those were happy times! We go across quiet suburbs. I recognize the lazy bends of the Seine, then the Fontainebleau forest. Now we see fields and meadows. The train stops in a small town named Pithiviers. All the passengers feel relieved. Nothing bad can happen to us this close to Paris.

  We discover the camp.… According to the military guards, it was built to house German prisoners at the beginning of the war, when France still hoped to win. It contains twenty wooden barracks with corrugated iron roofs, a dispensary, some offices. The barracks are on the spartan side. They’ve made two-tiered bunks with rough planks and covered them with straw. I think of the carters in our courtyard, who slept in the stables with their horses.… They give us very little food.

  “In the German concentration camps,” Jacques says, “they always keep the prisoners hungry. This breaks their will and their resistance.”

  At least the guards let us write to our wives, and soon our wives send us parcels full of food.

  By and by, we learn what happened. They arrested 3,500 Polish Jews and a few dozen Czech Jews on May 14. They sent them to Pithiviers and to another town nearby, Beaune-la-Rolande. The official statement says they had to arrest foreign Jews, all of them parasites and illicit peddlers whom they would put to work.

  Jacques finds it pretty funny.

  “Before the war, all these anti-Semitic parties complained that the Jews took work from the Frenchmen. Now they tell us we’re lazy parasites and they want to put us to work!”

  “I’d like them to give us some work. Doing nothing all day makes me nervous.”

  “You know this camp is full of Jewish scholars? People who came to France to study science or medicine. I heard they’re planning conferences.”

  “Go to your conferences. I just wish they’d give us a ball so we could play soccer.”

  In July, the camp’s commander says our families will be allowed to visit us. Weeks before the day, I imagine the moment when I’ll see my Rachel and my little Élie. Then this moment comes and it is over so fast. In two months, my son has changed. He speaks better, he has a new way of smiling….

  On June 21, 1941, the Germans attack the Soviet Union without any warning. In 1939, Stalin had signed a treaty with Hitler, because he wasn’t ready for a war. I hope he is ready now. The German army won’t reach Moscow as easily as Warsaw or Paris, so the war will last a long time. Maybe I’ll stay years in this camp and my son will grow up far away from me.

  The guards are looking for guys willing to work outside the camp. I go and fetch Jacques as fast as I can.

  “Come, Jacques, this is a fantastic chance!”

  “Yes, this will relieve us of this dreadful boredom.”

  “I mean a chance to escape. Once we’re outside, it will be easy.”

  No luck. They separate us: they send Jacques to a Pithiviers workshop, me to a big farm with twenty comrades. As I’ve always lived in a city, I’ve never seen a peasant. I thought peasants were poor people, like factory workers, exploited and oppressed by the rich. Well, the peasant who owns this farm doesn’t merely exploit us—he treats us like slaves. We must harvest, plow, make hay, tend the cattle. It’s really tough. It never stops. He feeds us so little that we can hardly stand. He seems to resent having workers who cost him nothing. Instead of thanking us, he insults us.

  “You rotten Jews, you’re good for nothing. Stealing our money is easier than holding a scythe!”

  The guard who takes us there has never seen such heartlessness.

  “He treats you worse than dogs!”

  This guard is a good guy. I wouldn’t say the same about his colleagues, far from it. He doesn’t think it’s right that we’re being kept in a camp.

  “Listen, fellows. When I take you to the farm, I can’t watch you al
l. If I notice that one or two are missing when we get there, what can I do about it? I can’t leave the prisoners and go warn the other guards, so I have to wait until evening to report it.”

  Obviously, he is telling us we should escape. I talk to my brother.

  “It is simple. We hide in the woods, then we walk all night heading south. We cross the line that separates the Occupied Zone from the Free Zone. You know where Montauban is?”

  “Somewhere near Toulouse, I think.”

  “We’ll ask people. We’ll get there eventually, one way or another.”

  “Okay, but I can’t leave my workshop. We’re just six Jews with one guard. He keeps his eyes on us. Why don’t you go by yourself? I’ll follow when I can.”

  I could escape by myself, that’s true. But what about Jacques? Without me, will he be able to shake off the guards, hide, reach the other side of France? He is so sluggish, sometimes…. Even in the camp, he finds books and spends time reading and dreaming like a student. Becoming an outlaw isn’t something you learn in books. I can’t leave him behind. I must take care of him.

  Chapter 9

  These cars usually carry cattle

  I didn’t take my chance when I should have and now it’s too late. More than a hundred prisoners escaped during the first six months. They say the Germans are furious. The guards put up more barbed wire around the camp. Nobody goes outside to work anymore. We hear rumors that they’ll empty the camp. From May 1942 on, hundreds of men leave every week. We don’t know where they go. Some guards talk about a camp in Compiègne, others say Drancy, near Paris. More sinister rumors mention camps in Germany or in the Ukraine. Lacking definite information, we make up a name, Pitchipoï, to name this mysterious location in Eastern Europe where they deport Jews.

  My brother goes in June. I leave on July 17. On the way to the Pithiviers train station, I walk with Brod, whom I’ve known a long time. He is a tailor. My other brother, Albert, worked in his workshop when we came to France. He boxed for a year or two, on and off, then stopped because he found it too tiring. He is a placid man, always ready to smile. I used to see him also on the banks of the Marne River. He’s lucky—in Pithiviers, he worked in the kitchen.