A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [186]
Mechilem knew that arguing with her was useless, but he had somehow to stop her from hurting herself. It was as though she felt guilty for living into old age, for outliving everyone, for living twenty years more than her parents had been allowed to. “I can't enjoy my life,” Dwora insisted. “I eat, and I think of how my parents had nothing to eat.”
Her first child, born when Antwerp was barely behind the combat lines, had married an English dentist and moved to Israel. The second had married a French doctor and moved to Israel. In all, four of her children had married professionals and moved to Israel. Mechilem was the only Silberman left in Europe.
That was how the Jewish population of Antwerp remained at about the same size—large families where most left but a few brought in a mate and stayed. Mechilem's wife came from England. The important thing was that traditional Orthodox Judaism remained in the world. Still, it was difficult for Antwerp Jews to see their children leave. Harry Biron was an Antwerp Jew who raised his two daughters to be Zionists. When they went to Israel, he said, “We gave them the idealistic education of Israel, the dream. So they followed the dream. The education was right, but 1 would like them in Antwerp, preferably in a house just down the street.”
In 1986, Jozef Rottenberg sold his multimillion-dollar pharmaceutical company, which he had started after the war with a few employees, to an American multinational. The company had become large by Belgian standards, but he thought it would be too small to stand up to competition in a fully integrated European economy. His family's dark, handsome, high-ceilinged Flemish house had a coatroom always filled with the hats and wraps of a half-dozen visitors, and the elegant little garden was littered with the toys and tricycles of grandchildren. Mordechai, the first postwar Rottenberg, whose birth was celebrated on the streets of the diamond district, grew up to have the Rottenberg good looks and charisma. He worked for his father's company, then after it was sold moved into cosmetics. He had one brother with an Antwerp diamond company, another in Vienna, one in Israel, two in New York, and a sister in England.
Mechilem Silberman was comfortable in the heart of the diamond district where they had always lived, with his shop full of antique silver that was too heavy and unsuitable for sudden flight. “If only he would do a little diamonds on the side,” Dwora said.
Mechilem wore a vest and a yarmulke with a hat over it, shaved the top of his head, and wore a frizzy blond beard. He did not want to be like his father, Hershl, who had seemed afraid, stayed cleanshaven, and taken his hat off when gentiles came in. But for all Mechilem's apparent boldness, he confessed, “I'm not sure why, but I am not sure we are safe here.” And he admitted that if he went to a doctor or lawyer or bank director, he still took his hat off. His doctor always laughed about it, because none of his other Jewish patients did that anymore. Removing the fear would take one more generation. His children would not take off a hat. “Kids today would never do that. They aren't ashamed of anything.” But it was different for Mechilem. When they were traveling, away from the world of the diamond district, and his children started speaking Yiddish in loud voices, Mechilem felt embarrassed and would tell them to