Shtetl Days

If the SS swooped down on this gathering, what would they find? A bunch of men with beards, along with wives, girlfriends, children, and a few dogs running around barking and generally making idiots of themselves. A hell of a lot of food. No ham, no pig’s trotters, no pickled eels, no crayfish or mussels. No meat cooked in cream sauce or anything like that. Even more dishes than you’d normally need for all the chow.

Plenty to hang everybody here, in other words, or to earn people a bullet in the back of the neck. Suspicious security personnel could make all the case they needed from what was and what wasn’t at the picnic. And if they weren’t suspicious, why would they raid?

Someone here might also be wearing a microphone or carrying a concealed video camera. Being a Jew hadn’t stopped Judas from betraying Jesus. Even the so-called German Christians, whose worship rendered more unto the Reich than unto God, learned about Judas.

But what could you do? You had to take some chances or you couldn’t live. Well, you could, but you’d have to stay by yourself in your flat and never come out. Some days, that looked pretty good to Veit. Some days, but not today.

Reb Eliezer did what he could to cover himself. He waved his hands in the air to draw people’s notice. Then he said, "It’s good we could all get together today." He was speaking Yiddish; he said haynt for today, not the German heute. He went on, "We need to stay in our roles as much as we can. We live them as much as we can. So if we do some things our friends and neighbors outside Wawolnice might find odd, it’s only so we keep them in mind even when we aren’t up in front of strangers."

Several men and women nodded. Kids and dogs, predictably, paid no attention. What Eliezer said might save the reenactors’ bacon (Not that we’ ve got any bacon here, either, Veit thought) if the SS was keeping an eye on things without worrying too much. If the blackshirts were looking for sedition, they’d know bullshit when they heard it.

"All right, then." Eliezer went on to pronounce a brokhe, a blessing, that no one--not even the most vicious SS officer, a Rottweiler in human shape--could have found fault with: "Let’s eat!"

Women with meat dishes had gathered here, those with dairy dishes over there, and those with parve food--vegetable dishes that could be eaten with either--at a spot in between them. Veit took some sour tomatoes and some cold noodles and some green beans in a sauce made with olive oil and garlic (not exactly a specialty of Polish Jews in the old days, but tasty even so), and then headed over to get some of the venison on which his wife had worked so hard. Kristi would let him hear about it if he didn’t take a slice.

He had to wait his turn, though. By the time he got over to her, a line had already formed. She beamed with pride as she carved and served. Only somebody else’s roast grouse gave her any competition for pride of place. Veit managed to snag a drumstick from one of the birds, too. He sat down on the grass and started filling his face . . . after the appropriate blessings, of course.

After a while, Reb Eliezer came over and squatted beside him. Eliezer seemed a man in perpetual motion. He’d already talked with half the people at the picnic, and he’d get to the rest before it finished. "Having a good time?" he asked.

Veit grinned and waved at his plate. "I’d have to be dead not to. I don’t know how I’m going to fit into my clothes."

"That’s a good time," Eliezer said, nodding. "I wonder what the Poles are doing with their holiday."

He meant the Aryans playing Poles in Wawolnice, of course. The real Poles, those who were left alive, worked in mines and on farms and in brothels and other places where bodies mattered more than brains. Veit stayed in character to answer, "They should grow like onions: with their heads in the ground."

Eliezer smiled that sad smile of his. "And they call us filthy kikes and Christ-killers and have extra fun when there’s a pogrom on the schedule." Veit rubbed his rib cage. Eliezer nodded again. "Yes, like that."

"Still twinges once in a while," Veit said.

"Hating Jews is easy," Eliezer said, and it was Veit’s turn to nod. The other man went on, "Hating anybody who isn’t just like you is easy. Look how you sounded about them. Look how the Propaganda Ministry sounds all the time."

"Hey!" Veit said. "That’s not fair."

"Well, maybe yes, maybe no," Reb Eliezer allowed. "But the way it looks to me is, if we’re going to live like Yehudim, like the Yehudim that used to be, like proper Yehudim, sooner or later we’ll have to do it all the time."

"What?" Now Veit was genuinely alarmed. "We won’t last twenty minutes if we do, and you know it."