A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [141]
Pinchas Kornfeld started as a cleaver like his father, Israel. He did not pass the time listening to people's troubles while cleaving, as his father had. He had heard enough of that as a child and wanted to avoid Holocaust stories. Instead, he carefully recorded major passages of the Talmud and other commentaries on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, so that he could study while cleaving at home. By the 1970s, he too could see that manufacturing was moving away from Antwerp. In 1979 he became a broker. Then he was a businessman and not a craftsman, and for that, he said, the only thing that was needed was “mazel,” luck. Behind the Pehkaanstraat near the train station, is a little S-hook of four streets lined with modern glass buildings high enough to block the sun on the rare sunny day. This is the diamond district, concentrated mainly in three buildings, the Bourse, the Club, and the Kring (ring). Diamonds are traded there, often around a table in a small office with a small, accurate scale. The Diamond Kring, where brokers such as Pinchas Kornfeld traded, specializes in the rough stones.
Kornfeld was active in Jewish institutions such as Agudat Israel, a worldwide Orthodox organization. Because Pinchas was soft-spoken and diplomatic, he seemed a good choice for handling anxious parents whose children would be attending an Agudat Israel summer camp in the Ardennes. Someone had to talk to the parents, assure them that their children would be well looked after, that the vegetarian wouldn't get meat, and that the boy who had to leave early would get back.
In the summer of 1980, on the day the children were leaving, Kornfeld went to the Agudat Israel office where the bus would be parked and the parents would gather with their children, waiting for him to reassure them. It would take patience, but it had to be done. Trying to make the day more enjoyable, he brought his own six-year-old son and his little daughter, who were both still too little for the camp. They could play around the bus where the older children were gathering.
Levy Kohane was there with his father, seeing off his younger brother David. David was very quiet and studious. He had been very attached to his mother and had seemed depressed since her death a year before. At 15, he was the baby of the family, and everyone fussed over him and worried about him. The summer camp would probably be good for him. His brother and father said their good-byes and walked away. As Levy crossed the street, he noticed a young man at the corner throwing rocks. This kind of thing was happening sometimes now—some troubled kid would decide to throw a few rocks at the Jews.
But then he realized that the man on the corner was not throwing rocks, he was throwing hand grenades. He threw two, and then sprinted down the street. Kornfeld heard the explosion and ran outside. Children were standing wide-eyed in the street. People were scurrying in different directions, not knowing where to run, while younger children stood paralyzed with terror. Kornfeld caught a glimpse of his own children, but he did not have time to comfort them because there was so much blood on people, on the street. He called the police and ambulances arrived in two minutes, which was still too late for David Kohane. With a piece of shrapnel through his chest, he writhed in agony for a few seconds, and when his father leaned over him, he whispered, “It hurts.” Then he died, the only fatality. But 20 of the 55 people present were wounded.
Minutes later, the police caught the killer. The attack had been on a narrow treeless street of solid, high-ceilinged big-windowed houses in the heart of the residential section of the Jewish neighborhood. The killer had apparently planned to escape to the Belgielei, the wide-open boulevard that led to the train tracks by the Van Den Nestlei synagogue. From there, it would have been easy to follow the tracks up Pelikaanstraat to the train station. To run almost the entire length of the Jewish ghetto through