Shtetl Days

As Veit opened up, the voices of the children chanting their lessons floated through the morning air. He’d been an adult when he came to the village. Would the boys grow up to become the next generation’s tavern-keeper and rabbi and ragpicker . . . and maybe grinder and jack-of-all-trades? He wouldn’t have been a bit surprised. The Reich built things to last. Chances were Wawolnice would still be here to instruct the curious about downfallen Judaism a generation from now, a century from now, five hundred years from now. . . .

You learned in school that Hitler had said he intended his Reich to last for a thousand years. You also learned that the first Führer commonly meant what he said. But then, you had to be pretty stupid to need to learn that in school. Hitler’s works were still all around, just as Augustus Caesar’s must have been throughout the Roman Empire in the second century A.D.

Something on the floor sparkled. Veit bent and picked up a tiny shard of glass the cleaners had missed. He was almost relieved to chuck it into his battered tin wastebasket. Except for the lancinating pain in his side, it was almost the only physical sign he could find that the pogrom really had happened.

He settled onto his stool, shifting once or twice to find the position where his ribs hurt least. The chanted lessons came through the closed door, but only faintly. The kid who went around with the basket of bagels--no kheder for him, even though it was cheap--came by. Veit bought one. The kid scurried away. Veit smiled as he bit into the chewy roll. Damned if he didn’t feel more at home in Yiddish than in ordinary German these days.

In came Itzhik the shokhet. "How’s the world treating you these days?" Veit asked. Yes, this rasping, guttural jargon seemed natural in his mouth. And why not--fur vos nit?--when he used it so much?

"As well as it is, Jakub, thank the Lord," the ritual slaughterer answered. He often visited the grinder’s shop. His knives had to be sharp. Any visible nick on the edge, and the animals he killed were treyf. He had to slay at a single stroke, too. All in all, what he did was as merciful as killing could be, just as Torah and Talmud prescribed. He went on, "And you? And your wife?"

"Bertha’s fine. My ribs . . . could be better. They’ll get that way--eventually," Veit said. "Nu, what have you got for me today?"

Itzhik carried his short knife, the one he used for dispatching chickens and the occasional duck, wrapped in a cloth. "This needs to be perfect," he said. "Can’t have the ladies running to Reb Eliezer with their dead birds, complaining I didn’t kill them properly."

"That wouldn’t be good," Veit agreed. He inspected the blade. The edge seemed fine to him. He said so.

"Well, sharpen it some more anyway," Itzhik answered.

Veit might have known he would say that. Veit, in fact, had known Itzhik would say that; he would have bet money on it. "You’re a scrupulous man," he remarked as he set to work.

The shokhet shrugged. "If, eppes, you aren’t scrupulous doing what I do, better you should do something else."

Which was also true of a lot of other things. After watching sparks fly from the steel blade, Veit carefully inspected the edge. The last thing he wanted was to put in a tiny nick that hadn’t been there before. At length, he handed back the slaughtering knife. But, as he did, he said, "You’ll want to check it for yourself."

"Oh, sure." Itzhik carried it over to the window--the window that might have stood there forgotten since the beginning of time but was in fact brand new. He held the knife in the best light he could find and bent close to examine the edge. He took longer looking it over than Veit had. When the verdict came, it was a reluctant nod, but a nod it was. "You haven’t got a shayla on your puppik, anyway," he admitted.

"Thank you so much," Veit said with a snort. A shayla was a mark of disease that left meat unfit for consumption by Jews. His puppik--his gizzard--probably had a bruise on it right this minute, but no shaylas.

"So what do I owe you?" Itzhik asked.

"A zloty will do," Veit said. The shokhet set the coin on the counter. After one more nod, he walked out into the street.

Those chickens will never know what hit them, Veit thought, not without pride. The knife had been sharp when Itzhik handed it to him, and sharper after he got through with it. No one would be able to say its work went against Jewish rules for slaughtering.

Jewish rules held sway here, in Wawolnice’s Jewish quarter. Out in the wider world, things were different. The Reich let the performers playing Poles here execute--no, encouraged them to execute--those convicts dressed as shtetl Jews by stoning them and beating them to death. Assume the convicts (or some of them, anyhow) deserved to die for their crimes. Did they deserve to die like that?