A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [175]
Bus tours to Theresienstadt, “an easy day trip from Prague,” became popular. Viera Krulis, who was in Theresienstadt from December 1941 until Liberation, got on one of those buses. When the bus arrived, she stepped off, saw the gates to the old fortress city, and fainted. She was put back on the bus and taken home. Before the war, her marriage to a prominent non-Jewish banker might have saved her, except that the banker had realized that his career would not go well under the Germans if he was married to a Jew. He divorced her, and she was deported along with her parents and sister. The rest of the family was sent to Auschwitz and killed, but Viera, on the strength of a childhood first-aid course, spent the next four years trying to deal with epidemics of typhoid, encephalitis, and scarlet fever—the diseases that overtook the crowded camp. After being liberated, she returned to Prague and took her son — now her only living relative—back from her former husband. She never spoke to her husband again. Her son grew up to also marry a non-Jew, and their children have no Jewish identity. Viera went back to Theresienstadt on a second bus tour, and this time, she proudly announced, she made it through the tour, blending in with the rest of the tourists.
Prague's Old-New Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Europe, became a star attraction listed in all the guidebooks. At first, the old guard minyan was so unprepared for the onslaught of tourists that there were not even extra yarmulkes. Male visitors would walk through the ancient synagogue bareheaded, camera in hand. The S5'wagogue was open all week for tourists but closed to nonworshipers early Friday evening and Saturday morning so that a service could be held. The Saturday morning scene began not unlike it had seven hundred years ago, when this synagogue was new—with one small difference. In those days the men would mill around the high-ceilinged, stone-walled synagogue. Some would study Hebrew, others would pace and fidget with their prayer shawls. When the sun cleared the horizon, it would hit the amber glass in a small, bullet-shaped window concealed in the eastern wall, and a single ray of gold-tinted light would penetrate to the reading area in the middle of the synagogue, and the morning prayers would begin.
This window was a forgotten detail. Six-story turn-of-the-century art nouveau buildings now blocked the sun from entering that window until it was well over the horizon. But the men still paced around waiting—not for a ray of light, but for tourists. Stocky Viktor Feuerlicht, meticulous Karol Wassermann, and about five other aging stalwarts patiently waited for the Israeli, American, or Dutch Jewish tourists so that the cantor could begin.
Some of the tourists who filled out their ranks showed little interest in following the service. Others were genuinely religious. The women in this medieval synagogue are kept truly out of sight behind a thick stone wall. They can catch glimpses of the bimah through narrow windows that seem more like tunnels because they are several feet deep. When the time came to read the Torah, Pavel Erdos, who was younger and stronger, helped lift the heavy antique scroll. No one could recall Erdos having been Jewish until the tourists arrived. He made a profitable business booking tour arrangements for Israelis, although he understood no Hebrew, which may have been one of the reasons he looked so bored during the services. But with Feuerlicht's bad arm and Wassermann's heart condition, it was good to have him to help with the Torah. He always came late but on time for his part.
By the end of the Saturday morning service, the nonworship-ping tourists would begin to arrive in a trickle, then more and more,