A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [115]
Jakub Gutenbaum didn't emigrate either. While he was never a party member, he did believe that Communism stood for some ideals, and this anti-Zionist campaign was a complete contradiction of those ideals. But he could not imagine what he would do in Israel. “‘I would be a foreigner there,” he thought. And his wife and child were not Jewish.
In 1968 the Kameraz family was through with Poland. Their Jewish building was no longer Jewish. The synagogue in the courtyard had been torn down and was now a playground. The mikveh next to it was no longer used, and the Jewish school was now a movie theater. Ninel's sister and her husband were both dismissed from their jobs, and they left Poland with their three children, as did most of their friends and neighbors. Their mother had died, md their father was ill and depressed. He wanted to emigrate but was too weak and soon he too died. It seemed to Ninel that everyone was leaving. Even her Jewish assistant at work was dismissed and left. In the mysterious ways of Polish Communism, no one ever bothered Ninel. She kept her job as an electrical engineer. But she too wanted to leave.
Ninel had been married since 1956 to a non-Jew. Since their marriage he had become fascinated with Jewish culture. Abandoning his physics career, he now taught Yiddish and the Kabbalah to Poles. When Ninel approached him about emigrating, he would say, Tm a Pole!” He would talk about their good life and the literature and film projects with which he was involved.
From NinePs senior class in high school, which had been three-quarters Jewish, only two Jews remained in Poland—Ninel, and a very disturbed schizophrenic who was under treatment.
HAVING ALREADY BEEN to Israel, Barbara Gora was certain that she did not want to live there, even though one of her closest friends emigrated there and two others moved to the United States. Although she decided to stay in Warsaw, her attitude about the city and Poland generally had changed. After seeing the Holocaust and the subsequent waves of survivors driven out every ten years, she finally reached the conclusion that somebody should stay in Poland and say, I am a Jew and I am still here. “If they don't want me, they have to have me,” she declared. “If they don't want Jews, then 1 should be here.”
This idea came to her on a spring afternoon as she sat in her living room with three non-Jewish friends reading in the newspaper about how the student demonstrations had been organized by the Zionists. One of her friends, a longtime Communist party member, said that they had managed to arrest a number of students and had singled out the Jews among them. The newspapers did not give their names, but she had contacts and she knew who was arrested. Many, like Barbara Gora, had Polish names. And yet, her iriend had said, they knew. They knew who the Jews were. How did they know?
And Barbara Gora, without a moment's reflection, said, “Well, I'll tell you something. I am a Jew.”
Her friends reacted as though she had just said her hair color wasn't natural. It was of no great importance. But Barbara suddenly realized what she had done. She had just said publicly, “I am a Jew”—and nothing had happened. And she didn't think anything was about to happen. For the first time in twenty-six years, ever since she had presented a piece of paper bearing her new name to a German guard and walked out of the Warsaw ghetto, Barbara had volunteered to non-Jewish people, “I am a Jew.”
She stayed in Poland. She did not change her name. She did not take up the Jewish religion, but every now and then she would tell someone, “I am a Jew.” Next time Poland had one of its bouts of Jew-hating, she resolved, she would still be there, and she