A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [7]
At the time A Chosen Few was being researched, Gebert had taken to wearing a yarmulke when at home in his central Warsaw apartment. In those days he would not wear it on the street. Now he does. Occasionally Poles come up to him, not to abuse him, but to say how pleased they are that today a Jew is free to wear a varmulke on the streets of Poland.
Polish Jewish writer Julian Stryjkowski in a recent speech described how when growing up in Galicia he spoke only Yiddish. When he was sent off to school he was told to say when he heard his name, jestem, a Polish word meaning literally “I am.” It was the Polish way of saying “here.” This being the only Polish he knew, he would answer any question on any subject, “jestem.” The other children would laugh. Today there are some four million Jews in Europe, not quite a third of the 1935 population but a million more than in 1945. They do not always want to be symbols. Not all of them even want to live Jewish lives. But they all wish to live their lives, in what they see as their own countries, just like other Europeans. Yet they must constantly assert, jestem—here.
Breaking my own rule about making predictions, I suspect that there will always be Jews in Europe.
New York, November 2001
INTRODUCTION, 1994
In the final days of the Soviet empire, when there was little left but humor, a story circulated about two men who on a cold winter's day put up a sign, “Fish for Sale.” Immediately a huge line formed. The two fish vendors, realizing that there were far more customers than fish, angrily marched outside and shouted, “There will be no fish for Jews. All Jews go home.”
After the Jews left, the line was only a little smaller. The two men had to think of something else. The customers were stamping their feet to stay warm, but they were keeping their places. The two sheepishly emerged from their storefront forty minutes later. “I'm sorry, but we only have enough fish for party members. Everyone else go home.”
This time about two thirds of the line left. The rest continued to stand with their hats pulled down and their collars tugged up. When after another hour the fish vendors saw that no one had given up, they came out again and said, “Sorry but there will be fish only for recipients of the Order of Lenin.”
There were two Order of Lenin winners in the line. Everyone else left. The two stood there in the cold for another hour, wondering when they would get their fish. Finally the fish vendors came out and said, “I'm sorry, we really don't have any fish at all.”
The one frozen Order of Lenin winner turned to the other frozen Order of Lenin winner and said, “You see—the Jews always get the best deal.”
For all its unbelievably destructive wars, its weaponry, and its genocide—to use a word invented in this century—the end of the twentieth century is bearing some remarkable similarities to its beginning. At the turn of the century, just as stability and prosperity seemed to be within Europe's grasp, the future was menaced by the crumbling of the Russian empire and the emerging nationalism of small Balkan states. Through unification, Germany, the economic giant of Europe, had created an affluent internal market far larger than that of its neighbors.
So striking are the similarities that German chancellor Helmut Kohl angrily declared to his country's neighbors, who were nervous in the face of a newly reunited Germany, “We are in the year 1992, rot 1902.”
Another similarity is that the world's Jewish population will finish the century at about the same size as it began. In the 1930s Hitler promised that after the next war, there would be no Jews in Europe. He came extraordinarily close to achieving his goal. Before the Holocaust, Judaism was predominantly a European culture. The character of Jewish culture had become essentially European, and Jews were a significant part of Europe. This all changed with the Final Solution.