Day 7: Photos and Prayers

Today, for no apparent reason, I decide to look at the Tarot card application installed in my Facebook profile. Today's card is The High Priestess and reads: "The High Priestess is the mysterious one and counterpart to the Magician. She symbolizes all that we are unable to perceive or comprehend, as she travels in dimensions that we can only imagine exist. She is able to uncover the infinite potential that exists within all humans. Her patience is perhaps her greatest virtue." How befitting, I think to myself, for the more I learn about the interviewees, the less I comprehend. The two words which keep occurring to me are 'incomprehensible' and 'inexplicable.'

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We visit Cholem again in the morning. He is a jolly and sociable man. He has photo albums and documents ready for us. He shows us the letter from Stutthof which confirms his mother's death. He has a card confirming he was at Dachau; his number was 81679. No names when he was in the concentration camp; people were numbers only. I ask him if he has a number tattooed on him. He says no, only those at Auschwitz.



He thumbs through the photo albums and narrates them. Here he is, at Zwingereck while visiting Dachau, with other fellow survivors. Here is a photo of his father's grave covered in snow. That one, that's him at Jerusalem. This one, with a lady from South Africa, also a survivor. And so on. Between all these, old photos, of his brother (he was shot in the street before the family was moved to the ghetto); his uncles playing in a band in Kaunas... Also, more recent ones, of him with his wood sculptures. I can see Cholem ageing before my eyes; a young man, an older man, a son, a tourist. I think, photo albums shouldn't be like this. They shouldn't be 70 percent full of graves and tombstones and visits to concentration camp memorials. Where are the happy holiday photos; the ones at a beach, of birthday celebrations and weddings? I wonder when I am dead and someone looks at my photo albums, what will they say of me, of the life I have led?

Yesterday, when we asked him if he would lend us one of his wood sculptures for the exhibition, he was relunctant. Today, he presses into our hands a number of sculptures. This one? he asks, or this one? We say, oh no, just one. But we end up with two. We ask him if he wants to give us something personal to him, it doesn't have to be precious; just representative of him. He gives us a button. He lifts his shirt up and we see breeches underneath holding up his pants. He jokes he will give us the breeches and motions that his pants will fall down. He goes to his room and brings out two other breeches - one is striped, the other an austere black. He gives us the black one.



We go for lunch and almost have an emergency. He is eating steak, and chokes on a piece. He turns blue and gags. I was smoking and away from the table. When I get back, the team says they didn't know whether to thump him on his back, and debated for a moment to get me as I know the Heimlich manoeuvre. But he is okay, thankfully; his nose is red and he coughs, but he is okay. He jokes about it afterwards, indicating with his thumb and index finger how big the piece was. How horrible if he were to expire on a piece of meat, after all he has gone through. We joke that it would be terrible to have this inscription on the grave - "survived Dachau, died from choking at a restaurant."

We drop Cholem off at the entrance to his flat and take some photos together. A neighbour is at the door too and she looks at me curiously. In these parts, I don't imagine they see many Asians. I smile at her and ask her to take a photo with me. She seems pleased. She stands around and we take photos of her and Cholem together.

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Isroel, whom we had interviewed at Choral Synagogue days ago, has invited us to film him when he goes to the cemetery. He wants to say prayers at his wife's grave. We meet him there. He has thoughtfully brought two umbrellas as it has begun to rain. He tells us about how his wife died, how she did not get treatment for her cancer until it was too late, how she did not listen to his advice to go to the doctor sooner. Suddenly, his frame is racked with sobs. He cries for a few minutes. Then, he stops, wipes his nose and eyes, and narrates again. I feel his loneliness. It is so palpable, it hangs in the air.

The last time we met Isroel, he did not want us to visit him at his home. We think he was embarrassed about it. But today, unexpectedly, as we are about to leave the cemetery, he invites us to his home.

His flat is a little more spacious than Cholem's but small nonetheless. There are bookshelves full of books. He shows us his photos, including one of him with his dad and his twin brother (see below).


Isroel and his books


Isroel, his dad and his twin brother. This photo makes me think of the cat song they sang to their dad, who was with the Soviet army, when he was hospitalised. (See blog entry)

We learn something new about Isroel today. He is a chess champion. He shows us photos of him at a chess board. When we ask him what he would like to lend or give us for an exhibition, he gives us a silver spoon which he says belonged to his wife. Also a pair of spectacles and accompanying leather case. Plus a chess piece. As he hands the white queen to me, he says, "very strong" - the most powerful piece on the board. We leave. Everyone else has headed down the stairs. I am packing up my bag. I I say "aciu" the only Lithuanian word I have learnt since we arrived here, which means 'thank you.' He points to a silver mezuzah on the door frame; he kisses his finger and touches it. I imagine he is telling me that he is blessed. I am glad for him. I remember his story that he told us, when he felt ashamed at one time to be a Jew. "Shalom," I say to him in lieu of good bye; I don't know why. It just seemed appropriate. Again, I feel the loneliness wafting in like a draft. He seems relunctant to see us go.

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I see how listening to Isroel, Chasia, Berl and Cholem speak about the past, no matter how horrible, is a way to honour their lives and their pain. I am overwhelmed by sadness as I suddenly think of my grandmother; cowering under her dining table, naked. She is in her 90s and dementia has overtaken her. I am sorry no one has asked her to tell her story - not like this. Her story is lost.

All I remember or can gather about her and what it was like to live through the war came by way of what seemed, at that time, to be inconsequential moments. Like when we were booked on a tour in Hong Kong. For some reason, everyone in that small group were elderly folk and survivors of the war. They swapped stories and I listened in. Like how they scavenged for food in the forest, stripping the bark off trees and boiling them for food. How their family members were carted off in trucks to no one knows where; most probably to Burma to build the railway there. I wonder why I did not ask more.

Another incident I remember occurred when I was studying in Australia. We were in my uncle's home in a Sydney suburb. Hirohito had just died and we were watching the news. I looked at my grandmother's face to see her reaction. There was none; her expression was stoic and unperturbed. She just said matter-of-factly, "The Japanese emperor is dead." She never spoke of her experiences during the war. Each time I visit her, she spoke only of the goings-on of Hong Kong film stars and updates of the latest Chinese soaps on TV. I wonder if she has lost her capability to engage in even such trivia now.

Day 6: PM

It's odd, almost serendipitous. This morning, I wrote about waiting for time (see blog entry). Tick tock. Tick tock. When we visit Cholem's, he has clocks everywhere in his flat. I wonder why...? I tell Shiv we must ask him when we next visit. This time, we have a short interview. Later, we will return to conduct a more thorough session.

Cholem is 82 years old. He was born in Kaunas. His flat looks like it has received the treatment of a woman's touch. It is full of knick knacks displayed behind glass cupboards - china figurines, wood sculptures, teacups and teapots. There are lace curtains in the kitchen, a glass bowl of fruit on the table, a basket of medicine, plastic trays for more knick knacks... I figure he likes to be organised. Everything appears to have a place. And those clocks. There are 2 digital clocks and 4 quartz in the living room, a cuckoo clock in the corridor, and 3 plastic ones in the kitchen.

He used to be a carpenter, so he has many pieces of wood sculpture in his flat. He caresses them as he explains them to us. He tells us about the ghetto. The trip there in a cattle wagon. How people were "hunted like animals." He tells us about Dachau. About his father giving him his last piece of bread. About the march through fields and snow on the eve of liberation. About receiving a document recently from Poland confirming his mother's death; her number is on the list of those who died in a concentration camp but he doesn't know how. He points to a picture of himself in his younger days; he is a handsome man.


A younger Cholem watching over porcelain collectibles

He tells us he does not know how to explain the joy bursting through him when he learnt he was liberated. He expresses how he thought he was finished, how he was sure his heart would stop, when he realised he was trapped in the ghetto. He says he cannot understand why anti-semitism exists. How simple lives are turned upside down. He asks, why do neighbours turn against each other? Why do they deface public buildings with swastikas? Why do people steal tomb stones from cemeteries? Why do they strip bronze plaques from graves? I watch him tell his story and I don't know what to think. The only thought that goes through my head is this: because there is evil in the world; because there are cruel, cruel, cruel, selfish people... It is inexplicable otherwise and incomprehensible to me.

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Later on, we speak to a journalist. We ask him what his views are on the Jewish holocaust within the context of a contemporary Lithuania. He tells us that we have to remember the past and not forget it. However, that when one is reminded too often, it can grate on the nerves.

I think of Cholem, who continues to have nightmares; sometimes he even falls out of bed. Unfortunately, he does not have the luxury of not being reminded. He lives with these memories everyday.