Exodus - Leon Uris [64]
“I can’t,” Kitty whispered. “I can’t.” She looked up at Ben Canaan with a pathetic expression.
“I didn’t want anything like this to happen,” Ari said. “I am sorry, Kitty.” It was the first time he had ever called her Kitty.
“Take me back to Mark,” she said.
They walked into the hall. “Go to Dov,” Ari said to David. “Tell him that we agree to his terms.”
When Dov got the news he rushed over to Karen’s tent and burst in excitedly. “We are going to Palestine,” he cried.
“Oh dear,” was all that Karen could say. “Oh dear.”
“We must keep it quiet. You and I are the only ones among the children who know about it.”
“When do we go?”
“A few more days. Ben Canaan is bringing some trucks up. Everyone will be dressed like British soldiers. They’re going to pretend to be taking us to the new camp near Larnaca.”
“Oh dear.”
They went out of the tent, hand in hand. Dov looked out over the sea of canvas as he and Karen walked in and out among the acacia trees. They walked slowly toward the playground, where Zev had a class of children practicing knife fighting.
Dov Landau walked on alone along the barbed-wire wall. He saw the British soldiers marching back and forth, back and forth. Down the long wall of barbed wire there was a tower and a machine gun and a searchlight.
Barbed wire—guns—soldiers——
When had he been outside of barbed wire? It was so very long ago it was hard to remember.
Barbed wire—guns—soldiers—— Was there a real life beyond them? Dov stood there and looked. Could he remember that far back? It was so long ago—so very long ago——
Chapter Twenty-two
WARSAW, POLAND, SUMMER 1939
Mendel Landau was a modest Warsaw baker. In comparison with Dr. Johann Clement he was at the opposite end of the world—socially, financially, intellectually. In fact, the two men would have had absolutely nothing in common except that they were both Jews.
As Jews, each man had to find his own answer to the relationship between himself and the world around him. Dr. Clement clung to the ideals of assimilation up to the very end. Although Mendel Landau was a humble man he had thought out the problem, too, but had come to an entirely different conclusion.
Mendel Landau, unlike Clement, had been made to feel an intruder. For seven hundred years the Jews in Poland had been subjected to persecution of one kind or another, ranging from maltreatment to mass murder.
The Jews came to Poland originally to escape the persecution of the Crusaders. They fled to Poland from Germany, Austria, and Bohemia before the sword of “holy” purification.
Mendel Landau, like every Polish Jew, well knew what had followed the original flight of the Jews into Poland. They were accused of ritual murder and witchcraft and were loathed as business competitors.
An unbroken series of tribulations climaxed one Easter week when mobs ran through the streets dragging each Jew and his family from his home. Those who would not accept baptism were killed on the spot.
There was a Jew’s tax. Jews were forced to wear a yellow cloth badge to identify themselves as a race apart. A thousand and one statutes and laws aimed at suppressing the Jews stood on the books. The Jews were moved into ghettos and walled in to keep them isolated from the society around them.
In these ghettos something strange happened. Instead of dying slowly, the faith and culture of the Jews deepened and their numbers multiplied. Sealed off forcibly as they were from the outside world, the Jews turned more and more to the laws of Moses for guidance, and these laws became a powerful binding force among them. Inside the ghetto they governed themselves and developed closer-knit family and community ties which continued even after the ghettos were outlawed.
For those who ruled Poland the ghetto was only part of the answer of how to deal with the Jews. Jews were prevented by law from owning land or belonging to dozens of trades and crafts in which they might offer significant economic competition.