Finding Home (Hungary, 1945)

CHAPTER 1

The black locomotive chugged heavily south toward Hungary through the ruins of a defeated Germany. The four wooden cattle cars that followed lurched roughly and rhythmically, like an orchestra conducted by a madman. The metal wheels gave off the same steady clunk—clunk—clunk as the metronome atop the piano that waited for Eva at home. She felt the tingle in her fingertips, the dry pain in her throat, the blurring of her vision. She grunted as her fingers dug into the wall, desperately clinging to reality as she spiraled toward another delusion. The sounds of the train dulled and what little light remained in the world dimmed and disappeared. Eva clawed toward home as a thick darkness swallowed the tracks and closed in on the train.

A metallic bump from the cars behind hers jolted the young woman. She emerged from her vision, feeling the scratchiness of the dull woolen skirt and threadbare gray sweater the Red Army soldiers had tossed to her as they had ridden out of the open gates of the abandoned camp at Auschwitz. Her precious fingers—dirty, bruised, and scarred—rested on the ledge of the cattle car’s barred window as if ready to caress a piano keyboard. She hadn’t played an actual piano since the day before the deportation. Yet moving her fingers across imaginary keys kept her remembering and sane in the camp, allowing her a small hope of salvation. Fingers trained since age four to bring light and hope, ordered to assemble instruments of death in the camp munitions factory.

During her nine months in Auschwitz, Eva never dreamed. Death danced mockingly around her. Hunger and anxiety ate away at her from within. Survival kept her mind sharp and focused. There was no room for dreams. After the Russians liberated Auschwitz in late January, 1945, Eva was sent to a displaced persons camp. Only then did her dreams return. They were not the pleasant nocturnal images of her once comfortable childhood. Rather, troubled visions of her lost family and friends assaulted her at random hours of the day and night, as did macabre imitations of her piano performances. The visions clung to her like a mourning shroud. The more she fought to free herself, the more entangled she became until she slumped to the ground in defeat. The British army doctor at the displaced persons camp had checked her ears, throat, and pulse, then pronounced that when she reached the sanctuary of her home, the dreams and visions would fade away. But Eva was not home yet. She stood locked in this cattle car, transiting a liminal space between horror and hope.

The lurching movement of the train and the measured clicks of the wheels signaled to Eva that she was returning to life, to her large house and exquisite Bosendorfer piano, to whatever friends from high school were still alive. When Professor Sandor came back from the Terezin camp, she would continue her preparation for attending the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in September. She had been accepted before the deportation. Eva focused on the letter she was desperate to write the Academy upon her return home. Thinking about her promising future helped push away the horrific memories of the year she was leaving behind.

Eva turned and looked around the car. The wooden walls were rough and splintery, except where they were polished smooth by years of cattle jostling and rubbing on their way to the slaughterhouse. Five ragged mannequins rocked pensively against the walls or stared blankly back at her from the hay bales that provided the only physical comfort during their journey. The baker, the butcher, the young Hassid, and the two farm hands—all who remained of the three hundred Jews of Laszlo.

The clothes they wore came from Jews stripped and murdered in the camps. The baker wore a banker’s silk vest atop rough spun woolen trousers and muddy farm boots. The others wore an odd assortment of fancy and common garments. Eva picked at a loose thread on her sweater and thought fleetingly of the young girl who must have worn it last. She hoped some surviving Jewish girl, somewhere, was wearing the nice clothes the Germans had stripped off her.

Eva gazed out the window at the passing landscape. It was late May. The gray and black of her world in the camp had evolved into a riot of green on the trees and in the fields, and the exquisitely blue sky of a Hungarian spring. Blue was her favorite color. It was the color of her mother’s eyes and the color of hope. The air inside the car reeked of the human and animal odors that clung to the walls in a last cry for remembrance—dirty bodies, sweat and the pungency of blind fear. The air that entered through the barred window battled between the choking smoke of the locomotive ahead and the liberating vernal scents from the fields beyond. As the train rounded a curve, sunlight shot directly into the window. Eva shut her eyes against the glare but welcomed the warmth on her face. The comforting heat spoke of another time, a time of butterflies and clover in the fields, picnics, and friendships. That first shared cigarette with Andras, the handsome boy in her graduating class. He had toyed with the yellow Star of David patch she and all the Jews had to wear. Closer and closer, inches away from her first and only kiss. A sweet idyll shattered by the sound of a loudspeaker atop the police van.

Attention! Attention! All Jewish residents of Laszlo will report to the Town Square tomorrow at eight a.m. for processing. Only one valise of personal items will be allowed . . .

Nine months in the hellish torment of Auschwitz. Three months in the surreal safety of the displaced persons camp. Three days locked in this train. Now the nightmare, the earthquake, and its aftershocks were finally over. The train was slowing down. They were home.

CHAPTER 2

The station master of Laszlo drummed his stubby fingers on the desk, waiting for the two o’clock Special Train. He could feel the rumble in the small station building before he could see the train. That usually thrilled him, even after thirty years on the job. But this time was different. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The Jews were coming back. Who would be among them? He knew a good number of the town’s Jews and had felt uneasy watching them being loaded onto cattle cars like animals by the town police and the German overseers. Until then, the government had done a good job of resisting German demands to deport all the Jews during the war—too good a job. Hungary had the largest remaining Jewish population in Europe. Even though they were allies, an impatient Hitler invaded. Eichmann himself passed through Laszlo by train on his way to speed up the deportations.

Like most of the townspeople, the station master had thought the Jews were being sent to a work camp. Many Hungarian Jews before them had been sent into forced labor battalions to build roads and trenches, releasing more soldiers for combat. But the labor battalions had always shipped out on Hungarian passenger trains with Hungarian crews. The deportation train was a long line of cattle cars pulled by a large, black engine from Deutsche Reichsbahn, DR, the German company. The first and last cars were full of heavily armed German soldiers. It was only after the train left that a drunken SS guardsman who supervised the loading laughed at his naiveté. He said these Jews were being shipped to a concentration camp called Auschwitz, where Hungary’s Jewish problem would be solved forever.

The station master had never heard of Auschwitz. He should have protested there was no such problem. The Jews of Laszlo were assimilated and productive members of society. Most Hungarian Jews were. Hungary wasn’t Poland. Yet he didn’t protest. What could he say to armed men? Who would listen to an aging railway station master in a small town when the whole world was aflame? It all happened so quickly. The SS swept in like a killing frost. The Jews were taken away. Some nights it haunted him so deeply, he lay awake stiff as a corpse and soaked in sweat.

These Special Trains gave him a headache. Dozens had been rolling through Laszlo over the last few months. Day and night they came, shuttling Jews from the four thousand work and concentration camps the Germans had set up throughout Poland, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Germany itself. It was as if the new postwar government was in a hurry to deliver the Jews here and there and get things back to normal. To forget. The state could cut away the past and start fresh. The station master could not. As the screech of hot steel brakes announced the arrival of the train, he cinched his tie and straightened his hat.

The conductor dropped from the still-smoking cab holding a clipboard.

Good afternoon, Johann, the station master said. Quite a small train today.

The conductor surveyed the train with a bored look and shrugged. He held out the clipboard to the station master. Sign here, Josef.

And what do we have today? the station master asked, trying to mask his discomfort.

A cargo of six DPs. Nothing more.

DPs? The station master focused on the clipboard, avoiding the heat and recrimination that shimmered off the train.

Displaced persons.

Oh, you mean the Jews returning to Laszlo.

Call them what you will, Josef. To me, they are just cargo. And I am not responsible for their condition, either. Six DPs were packed alive three days ago and the door has not been opened since. He tapped on the clipboard. Sign here and be quick about it. I have other cargo to deliver.

The station master took the clipboard with a shaking hand and looked at the list of Jewish names. He recognized a few. The baker, the butcher, and Jacob Fleiss’s daughter. He remembered Jacob’s annual ritual of taking his daughter to Budapest to attend concerts. The station master would bow and present her with a flower before Jacob picked her up and put her on the train. He continued to do it even when she was a teenager, although it embarrassed the girl. It was their private moment. The baker and the butcher never rode the trains, but the station master had bought the pastries and meats they produced and known the men all his adult life. He was relieved they were returning. Seeing them would remind him of what he had done, but at least they were alive. He struggled to blot out the surging memories of those Jews who did not appear on the clipboard. It wasn’t his fault. He signed the bill of lading.

I thought there would be more. He handed the clipboard back to the conductor and sighed. Six DPs it is. Received.

The heavy iron bolt resisted, but the large wooden door soon rumbled open. Eva and the others gathered protectively at the opening. She squinted through the residual smoke from the still-huffing engine and stepped out on to the sunny platform. Her home and the piano she yearned to play waited a half hour’s walk up the hill.

Her heart sank. Beyond the smoke, a group of armed, grim-faced police fanned out at attention behind a captain. Her hands began to shake at her side. The smoke enveloped the car again. When it dissipated, snapping dogs lunged at the shrieking people tumbling from the train. Sharp whistles pierced the air. Were they at the camp again? Eva’s balance deserted her. She stumbled backward into the car and huddled in a corner, her fingers searching through the dirty straw for the keyboard. The barking and screaming faded slowly. Someone crouched besides her and spoke gently.

Don’t worry, Eva, those men won’t hurt you. The war is over, Yossel the baker said.

The war will never be over, grumbled Oskar the butcher.

Yossel helped the others down from the train. Eva came out last. She watched as the baker stretched his back with a groan and turned to the familiar faces of the town police—the same policemen who had loaded her and her father and the rest of the town’s Jews onto the cars the day of the deportation. Yossel tipped his frayed cap to the captain and cleared his throat, while Eva shrank behind the other returnees to avoid the officer’s stares. What could he possibly say to these men?

Hello Captain Szabo, Sergeant Ritook, Gronski, Boros. Hello Zoldy, Corporal Miklos.

The policemen looked at each other. Eva could see they were perplexed by the gaunt man in a silk vest before them, whose skin hung on him like an oversized suit.

When I reopen my bakery I trust you will stop by in the mornings for bread and jam, as always.

Eva heard the nervous edge underneath the baker’s attempted camaraderie. She did not want to stand here confronting policemen. She ached to go home.

The captain peered hard at the man in front of him. Yossel the baker? Is that you? I can hardly recognize you. He shifted his weight uneasily and scanned the list he held in his hand. Yossel Roth, baker, Oskar Lazar, butcher, Mendel and Herschel Fischer, farmworkers, and Eva Fleiss, student. All from Laszlo. He looked up after each name, discomfort flickering through his officious demeanor as he went down the list. Final name. Naftali Nachman, from Kosveg.

Eva shivered as if a heavy spring storm were about to break. Sometimes, she could try hard and compartmentalize what happened at Auschwitz. The vicious German guards had caused those horrors. But these ordinary Hungarians standing in front of her, the local police of her hometown, had not only sent her to Auschwitz, but the very next day committed the unspeakable at Kosveg. Eva had known little about the orthodox Hassids in the hill towns surrounding Laszlo until the surviving young men from Kosveg arrived on the selection platform a day after she did. Eva had always considered the local police to be her friendly protectors, like uniformed uncles. In the end, they were just like the guards in Auschwitz. They took their orders from the SS, whose black leather gloves and trench coats controlled men like reins and saddles controlled horses. She noticed the different reactions on the policemen’s faces, ranging from disdain and haughty stares to guilty avoidance.

The captain cleared his throat into his fist. It is late in the afternoon and you must be tired after your . . . journey. The mayor has requisitioned the former Armin Hotel for your comfort, and the people of the town to welcome you back with donated clothes, personal items, food, and everything else you will need to get back on your feet. The town has provided new mattresses and pillows for the hotel to insure your comfort.

Eva startled at the mention of new pillows and mattresses. When her head was shaved that first day in Auschwitz, the Jewish barber pointed to the mountains of hair that surrounded the inmates. He said her hair would be mixed with that of other prisoners, turned into stuffing for bedding or woven into socks and sold to support the German war effort. Were they to sleep on the hair of murdered friends and relatives? Eva feared she would hear the muffled screams from deep inside the pillow. She swallowed hard to push down the nausea that roiled up with the thoughts. The displaced persons camp doctor said she needed to avoid seeing everything in terms of the gruesome past in order to move forward. But it was so hard. She had only been one week out of high school when she was deported. She had so little life experience through which to judge and counterbalance the deaths, the hellish behaviors she had lived through at Auschwitz.

Eva followed Oskar’s gaze past the policemen. The platform and the street leading to the station were deserted. Oskar gave a sardonic smile and nodded his head.

Yeah. A warm welcome by the town.

The captain stiffened as he glanced behind him. The people of Laszlo are trying to get back to normal, too. It is the middle of the afternoon. They are at work. Be assured they welcome you.

What do you mean, the ‘former’ Armin Hotel? the butcher asked.

Captain Szabo grimaced and recovered. Ah, yes. The hotel was taken by the town a few months ago for failure to file annual reports and pay taxes. The owner can’t be found.

You mean Armin Epstein? Of course he can’t. He’s dead! The old man was gassed and incinerated like the garbage you thought he was. Right off the train! shouted Oskar, taking a step toward the captain. The policemen grabbed for their batons, except for Corporal Miklos, who fell back as if pushed. Shock and sadness spasmed across his face. Eva was stunned by Oskar’s rage. She feared it would only anger the police. The guards would have shot him immediately for such an outburst at Auschwitz.

Calm down, Oskar, the captain warned. We’ve had no notice of his death. Things are very confused because of the war.

He was dead the moment you shoved him onto that train. They all were. My wife and son, Eva’s father, Naftali’s entire village, all of them. Angry tears surged down his cheeks. Yossel put a hand on Oskar’s shoulder and looked pleadingly at the captain.

Captain, please, we just want to put the horrors behind us and go back to our homes. We don’t need to stop at the hotel.

Some of the policemen stirred anxiously, but the captain held up his hand and they snapped back to attention. I’m afraid that won’t be possible right now. Please, everybody, go settle into the hotel. Get some rest and some food. Tomorrow at ten o’clock come to the town clerk’s office and your situation will be explained.

Oskar wiped his nose on his sleeve and studied the captain warily. Situation? What situation is that?

The town clerk will explain tomorrow. Now, please come with us in the van.

Eva looked at the police van, noticing a shadow under the fresh red paint. Crossed green arrows on a circle of white—the Arrow Cross insignia. It lurked like a suppressed infection waiting to burst to the surface again. When she was in high school, the Arrow Cross was more like a gang of angry young thugs and petty criminals than a real political party. She heard that the Germans put them into power after the mass deportations. With no Jews left to terrorize in the countryside the Arrow Cross turned their bloodlust onto the Jews of Budapest, murdering tens of thousands in random roundups. Bile burned in her throat and her hands shook again. The Arrow Cross was supposed to be gone now, a rogue wave that crested, broke, and disappeared. But the insignia sneered at Eva. She spoke in a barely audible voice. Are we under arrest?

The captain looked at the girl as if seeing her for the first time. She saw a twitch of regret in his eyes. His gentler tone betrayed his discomfort. No! Of course not. You are free citizens of Hungary. He regained his formal manner as he addressed the group, You are home now. Let us escort you to the hotel.

Oskar defensively held up his hands. No thank you, Captain. We know where the hotel is. The last time you escorted us somewhere it didn’t end well, did it?

CHAPTER 3

The small band of survivors trudged up the hill toward town, automatically forming the lines they had been forced into every day by the guards. Eva and Yossel led the group, followed by the grumbling Oskar and the taciturn Naftali. The Fischer brothers lagged behind, the younger Mendel leading the older Herschel by the elbow as the larger man blinked in confusion at the surroundings. The red van roared past in a spray of stones and dust as it returned to the police station in the center of Laszlo.

Eva sneezed as a mist of early blooming parlagfu ragweed invaded her nose.

"Gesundheit, said Yossel. The smells and sounds of late spring at home, right?"

Home, Eva replied, visualizing her beautiful house. I don’t understand why I can’t go to my home.

Suspicion laced Oskar’s voice. Who knows what they’ve got planned for us.

Oskar, keep an open mind, the baker calmly responded. We’ll find out what’s going on tomorrow. I’m sure everything’s fine.

Yossel cast a protective glance at Eva. She knew he was trying hard to keep their homecoming positive for her sake. When he thought she was asleep on the train he had whispered to Oskar that the poor girl had lost everything and gone through too much for one so young and innocent. But how could anyone who survived Auschwitz be called innocent?

The road to town was too empty for a late Thursday afternoon. Where was the welcome the police captain promised? The few people they did encounter turned away or put their heads down and hurried past. Eva wondered what the townspeople saw—the usual peasant families who wandered into town from nearby Romania looking for work or handouts, or a phantasmal reminder of what they had done.

Where is everybody? she asked, peering around the deserted, dirt streets as a trickle of sweat ran down her back.

Like the captain said, they are working, Yossel replied. We can’t expect the world to stop for us because we’ve returned.

Oskar’s voice rolled over their shoulders like distant thunder. Why not? They owe us a lot more than a welcome.

Eva heard the labored breathing of the Fischer brothers behind her. Those young men had been in the same rotating Jewish labor battalion as Oskar’s oldest son. They had shipped out and come home on leave together several times before the deportation. But the brothers came home alone the last time. Eva noticed in the cattle car how they avoided Oskar’s anguished stares. It was clear he couldn’t bring himself to ask about his son, and they wouldn’t volunteer anything. In the camp, Eva heard that the Laszlo battalion had been ordered to Russia to join the German sneak attack on its former ally. The entire Hungarian Second Army and unarmed labor battalions had been slaughtered at the battle of the Don River. The camp gossip was that all members of the Second were declared heroes and their families would get privileges after the war, but not the Jews who served in forced labor. There was no one to honor their memory except whoever remained of their shredded families.

As they continued, Eva thought of the last time she had walked this road. The day of the deportation. Crowds lined both sides of the street. So many faces she knew peeled back to reveal their true selves. Little children joyfully and mindlessly waving miniature Hungarian flags, jeers from many of the onlookers, shock, embarrassment, sadness, and tears on other faces. Her father kept trying to take her hand, but teenage girls did not hold their father’s hands in public. She remembered the smug faces of the high school girls who used to taunt her after class. Looks that she returned. How petty and meaningless that all seemed now.

A mother and child appeared as they neared the hotel. The small boy waved to Eva. She sucked in a breath. Eva didn’t recognize the mother, but the child looked familiar—had she played with him in the park or been his babysitter one afternoon? She returned an uncertain smile, realizing it was the first time she had smiled since the night in the displaced persons camp when the inmates first assembled by hometown. The night she saw Oskar and Yossel. It was a joyous occasion at first, as families and friends gripped each other in tears and laughter. Yet by the end of the assembly the groups were so small, even from the bigger cities like Debrecen and Miskolc, that the magnitude of the disaster sank in. Her father, her teachers, shop owners, and friends. Every Jew she knew was gone.

Suddenly, Eva remembered the child’s name. Izidor? she called out. The boy turned his head and studied Eva wonderingly. The mother yanked the child roughly in the opposite direction, tearing Eva’s smile away with him. She turned to Yossel in bewilderment. I know that little boy. How could he be here? He’s Jewish. How could he be alive?

Yossel watched the woman walk briskly with her child until she met a man down the street. Their faces registered anxiety as they stared back at the Jews before hurrying away. No, Eva, you can’t know him. You are only seeing shadows.

But did you see how the parents looked at us?

Oskar barked out a harsh laugh. What do you expect? We’re the stuff of nightmares, creatures from Grimm’s fairy tales. I’d run away if I saw us coming, too. The smell of the camp still clings to us. I bet it always will.

Yossel spoke up as the couple and child faded away. They all have to be feeling shame. Even the ones who didn’t do anything, the ones who stood by and let the deportation happen. He removed his cap for a moment and wiped the perspiration off his balding head with his other hand.

An elderly couple passed by. The man curled his lip when he saw the Jews, revealing ancient teeth turned yellow by a lifetime of resentment. He waved an ivory-topped cane toward the survivors. Look. See what a Jew looks like shorn of his fancy clothes and arrogance. Underneath they are all demons.

His wife clung to his arm. She spoke to him but her eyes never left the group. I thought Eichmann exterminated all of them.

Oskar met the old man’s stare and returned the angry look. After the couple walked away he spit on the ground in their direction and turned to Yossel. Shame? Nah, they just don’t want us back.

Eva detected the low murmur of Naftali’s niggun, the wordless melodies the orthodox Hassids chanted incessantly in Auschwitz. She clenched her fists, disturbed by the memories evoked by the sound and by Oskar’s constant muttering. She quickened the pace when she spotted the Armin Hotel further up the hill. She was anxious to get to the old, familiar building, get some food and a decent night’s sleep, and return to her home in the morning.

They walked on, Eva noticing that each of the survivors seemed lost in his own muck of memory and anguish. She searched for something to say to Yossel, to get the sight of the child and the words of the old couple out of her head. You were so brave back there, speaking to the police the way you did.

Yossel waved a hand cavalierly. Me? That was nothing. I have known most of those men for years. I’ve baked cakes for their weddings and promotions, given them bread and hot tea on cold mornings. I have to act like everything is normal with them. That’s how we start the healing with the town. He appraised the young woman. You are the brave one, Eva. Smuggling gunpowder out of the factory into the camp under the guard’s pointy Aryan noses. When the bombs exploded in the crematorium it was like God saying ‘Hold on.’

Eva shrugged. It was a small act. The older women organized it. I just did what they told me. At that point, I didn’t feel I had anything to lose. I didn’t feel anything at all.

Still, it was a brave thing. Maybe you didn’t feel anything in your head or even in your heart, but deep in your soul a little spark of life was flaring up to say even in that hellhole you mattered. And you do.

The door of the Armin Hotel had been left unlocked. As she entered the small, musty lobby of the traveler’s hotel, Eva could smell the despair from the last guests, probably out-of-town Jews who never finished their business in Laszlo nor advised their families they would not be coming home. The grey rug was threadbare from years of shuffling salesmen, and the cream-colored walls could not hide the mold of neglect. The dusty incandescent bulbs in the wall sconces gave off a tired yellow glow. Framed photographs of Charles IV, the last King of Hungary, a few politicians, and some sportsmen hung askew on the walls, their smiling faces unaware of what the war had done to their hosts. The lobby was clogged with boxes labeled clothes—men and clothes—women and children.

Oskar gave a ragged laugh, edged with bitterness. Guess they thought some children were coming back with us. The butcher squeezed his eyes shut for a long time. Mine didn’t. He exhaled angrily and dug around in a box until he found a belt. He held it up in triumph. Finally! I can stop holding up these oversized pants like some Romanian country beggar. Eva stared at the buckle. She never thought something so small could give someone such a sense of dignity.

Oskar pulled a pair of three-quarter length trousers out of the box and put it against his body. I’d look like a starving Russian peasant in these.

Yossel shook his head. Be careful, Oskar. People in Laszlo might think you’re a Communist if you wear those.

I’m not, but why shouldn’t I be? The Russians were the only ones who helped us. They pushed the Germans back and captured Budapest.

Just the same, Yossel said. We don’t want to stand out or give people cause to talk about us.

Oskar threw the trousers back into the box, his face twisted in disgust. I’d rather look like a Russian peasant than a Hungarian.

Mendel grabbed a red dress with puffy sleeves and a wide collar from one of the women’s boxes and held it up. Eva, this would be good at your new school.

Eva hid her reaction to the ugly dress. She did not need these used clothes, except for something to wear in the morning. Her closet at home was full of dresses, skirts, and blouses. I might need something that loud to take people’s minds off my playing. I’ll need a lot of practice to be good enough for the Academy. The men stopped rummaging through the clothing and stared at Eva. Yossel gave her a surprised look.

You are a wonderful pianist, Eva. I remember seeing you play on Revolution Day before we . . . were taken away. A little practice and you will have all those professors dropping their monocles in their teacups, just like before.

From the back of the room Herschel stuttered as he tried to speak. His words boomed across the room. Yu . . . yu . . . you have to be great, Eva. You ha . . . have to make us proud.

Eva was taken aback by the first words she had ever heard from the lumbering Herschel. She thought that the last beating he received from the fleeing guards as the Russians advanced on Auschwitz had rendered him dumb. He seemed so docile, yet there was such conviction in his plea. She took in the hopeful faces of the men in the room, except for Naftali, who never glanced her way. She should have been comforted by such a show of support, but it settled on her shoulders like a heavy winter cloak. The women in the camp said Jews mitigate the distress of loneliness through communal compassion, but except for the baker, Eva didn’t know any of these men. What did she represent to them? A lost daughter or sister? A community that no longer existed? She didn’t want to be their Jewish hope for the future, she didn’t want to be anybody’s anything. Maybe she was being selfish, but the weight of her own grief was hard enough to bear without being responsible for anyone else’s happiness.

Her silence hung in the room while Herschel waited expectantly for a reply. When none came, Eva and the men continued to open the boxes. Naftali stayed back, announcing he didn’t want any of the clothing. Yossel went behind the reception counter to find keys for the rooms. Since the floors shared common bathrooms, it was decided that the men should stay on the first floor and Eva could have the second floor to herself. Naftali began to walk toward the door.

Naftali, where are you going? asked Yossel, standing with his hands full of keys.

Naftali turned and stared at the floor. I must go home to Kosveg.

Now? Oskar protested as he adjusted his new belt again. It’ll be dark in a few hours. Wait until morning and some of us will go with you. The roads may not be safe for us yet.

Naftali refused politely, but agreed to take some bread that Oskar retrieved from the kitchen. After he left, Eva took a key from Yossel and walked toward the stairs.

Do you think Naftali didn’t want to stay in the hotel because a woman would be here? I’ve heard that the Hassids are strict about separating men and women. I hope he didn’t leave because of me.

I don’t think so. He’s haunted, like the rest of us. Naftali not only lost a family, he lost his entire world. He jingled the keys in his hand. The Hassids up in Kosveg and those other little villages didn’t have much to do with us before the deportation. Then one day they are snatched up, and when the door opens again they are with us in Auschwitz.

They thought they were better than us, holier than us, Oskar murmured offhandedly as he poked a finger through a hole in an old shirt.

And we thought we were better than they were, too. Right? Yossel countered. One thing we found out was that our petty differences didn’t matter in the end. The Germans treated us all equally.

Oskar shrugged. God treated us equally, too. He ignored the Hassids just like He ignored us. He picked up a hat embroidered with Egon Pig Farm and threw it to the floor. What’s Naftali hoping to find in Kosveg now? There’s no one there.

Eva shook her head slowly. I don’t know. Maybe he’s going to say goodbye.

CHAPTER 4

Naftali strode the few kilometers through the undulating hills between Laszlo and Kosveg, holding his bread tightly and humming a melancholy niggun. He was glad to be away from Laszlo, where modernity had tempted so many Jews away from the path of righteousness; riding and smoking on the Sabbath, mixing freely with women, ignoring the rituals. Coarse fellows like the butcher and the baker could barely read Hebrew and did not fast on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Even in the hell of the camp, men like them had