A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [188]
Part of the problem was that the Jews had once again become a happy and prosperous community, and strolling down the Belgielei on a Shabbat, it was possible to forget that there ever had been a Holocaust. Survivors did not want to remember, but they knew they could not let the rest of the world forget, and for this reason in the 1990s Perl began speaking about his experiences. He was not able to dismiss the historical revisionists with the same optimism with which he shrugged at the Flemish nationalists. People were being published who said it was all a lie, that the Holocaust had never happened, and that meant that Perl could no longer keep his nightmares to himself. In February 1993 he spoke for the first time about his Holocaust experiences, torture, and his two escapes from deportation. This was not an intimate conversation in his home but a lecture to forty students. “I feel that we have to come out and witness now. My story is nothing compared to those of the people who have been in Auschwitz. Nevertheless, I have my part also.”
Though he was born after the war, the Holocaust remained on Mechilem's mind also. If nothing else, his mother would have kept it there. After the fall of Communism an influx of illegal Poles came into Belgium. Everyone in Antwerp was hiring Polish cleaning women. Mechilem saw a television interview with a Belgian official who, asked about all the illegal Poles in Belgium, said, “What can I do if the Jews keep giving them work?”
Mechilem told his wife, “I will mop myself, but I don't want Poles in my house!” They hired a Yugoslavian. “I'm not sure if that's better,” he said. People would come into his store with stories about the Poles, how they would switch dishes or slip traif, unko-sher food, into the pot. They did not trust Poles because they thought they still hated Jews. “They call us all rich and greedy,” someone said to Mechilem.
“And in Poland,” it was pointed out, “there are only a few Jews that haven't been killed or driven off. And the Poles are still anti-Semites even without the Jews. They want to get those few.”
“See,” said Mechilem, “the Poles are greedy.”
31
In Paris
ANDRE JOURNO FUMBLED IMPATIENTLY WITH HIS CIGAR-trimmer and snipped the tip of his long hand-rolled Havana. He thrust it into his mouth and then took it out as though too exasperated to even smoke. “It's shameful. Shameful, absolutely disgusting, no shame.”
It was the tenth anniversary of the gun attack on Goldenberg's, a day that he had told countless reporters over the years, “We must always remember.” The first few years, journalists would work Rue des Rosiers, and when they got to him, he liked to say something about how the day must always be remembered. But this year, they weren't even asking him. They had a television crew down at Goldenberg's filming some special, and that was all. “It's just shameful the way he's exploiting that tragedy to get himself publicity. That is all I have to say.”
By 1990, the Marais had taken over the Pletzl. All that was left of the Pletzl was the Rue Pavee synagogue, a few shtibls, a center the Lubavitchers had set up on Rue des Rosiers, a few kosher butchers, some bookshops, Goldenberg's, the several shops of the Journo family, and the three bakeries of the Finkelsztajn-Korcarz family. And there was one old-time barbershop, whose owners, being the only non-Jews in the neighborhood, had witnessed the roundups and deportations throughout the occupation.
These remnants were surrounded by the chic, the trendy, and the American. In the 1980s, just as the refurbishing of the Marais was largely completed and ready to sell and Paris real estate prices had become inaccessible to most, the dollar became strong against