Shtetl Days

Veit also moved the Torah from the Ark in the shul. A blank substitute scroll would burn, along with a couple of drugged and conditioned convicts who would try to rescue it. The Poles would make a bonfire of the books in the bet ha-midrash--but not out of the real books, only of convincing fakes.

People slept in their village living quarters, or on cots in the underground changing areas. Hardly anyone had time to go home. They wore their costumes all the time, even though the laundry did tend to them more often than would have been strictly authentic.

Eyeing a bandage on his finger--a knife he was sharpening had got him, a hazard of his village trade--Veit Harlan grumbled, "I’m Jakub a lot more than I’m me these days."

"You aren’t the only one," Kristina said. His wife was also eligible for a wound badge. She’d grated her knuckle along with some potatoes that went into a kugel.

"We’ll get to relax a little after the pogrom," Veit said. "And it’ll bring in the crowds. Somebody told me he heard a tourist say they were advertising it on the radio."

"‘Come see the Jews get what’s coming to them--again!’" Kristi did a fine impersonation of an excitable radio announcer. It would have been a fine impersonation, anyhow, if not for the irony that dripped from her voice.

"Hey," Veit said--half sympathy, half warning.

"I know," she answered. Her tone had been too raw. "I’m just tired."

"Oh, sure. Me, too. Everybody is," Veit said. "Well, day after tomorrow and then it’s over--till the next time."

"Till the next time," Kristi said.

"Yeah. Till then," Veit echoed. That wasn’t exactly agreement. Then again, it wasn’t exactly disagreement. Wawolnice moved in strange and mysterious ways. The Reich’s Commissariat for the Strengthening of the German Populace knew in broad outline what it wanted to have happen in the village. After all, National Socialism had been closely studying the Jewish enemy since long before the War of Retribution. Without such study, the Commissariat would never have been able to re-create such a precise copy of a shtetl. Details were up to the reenactors, though. They didn’t have scripts. They improvised every day.

The pogrom broke out in the market square. That made sense. A Polish woman screeched that a Jew selling old clothes--old clothes specially manufactured for the village and lovingly aged--was cheating her. Rocks started flying. Jews started running. Whooping, drunken Poles overturned carts, spilling clothes and vegetables and rags and leather goods and what-have-you on the muddy ground. Others swooped down to steal what they could.

When the melamed and the boys from the kheder fled, Veit figured Jakub had better get out, too. A rock crashing through his shop’s front window reinforced the message. This part of Wawolnice wasn’t supposed to burn. All those elaborate fire-squelching systems should make sure of that. But anything you could make, you could also screw up. And so he scuttled out the front door, one hand clapped to his black hat so he shouldn’t, God forbid, go bareheaded even for an instant.

Schoolchildren, plump burghers on holiday, and tourists from places like Japan and Brazil photographed the insanity. You had to go on pretending they weren’t there. A pack of Poles were stomping a man in Jewish costume to death. One of the convict’s hands opened and closed convulsively as they did him in. He bleated out the last words that had been imposed on him: "Sh’ ma, Yisroayl, Adonai elohaynu, Adonai ekhod!" Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one!

Another performer playing a Pole swung a plank at Veit. Had that connected, he never would have had a chance to gabble out his last prayer. But the reenactor missed--on purpose, Veit devoutly hoped. Still holding on to his hat, he ran down the street.

"Stinking Yid!" the performer roared in Polish. Veit just ran faster. Jews didn’t fight back, after all. Then he ran into bad luck--or rather, it ran into him. A flying rock caught him in the ribs.

"Oof!" he said, and then, "Vey iz mir!" When he breathed, he breathed knives. Something in there was broken. He had to keep running. If the Poles caught him, they wouldn’t beat him to death, but they’d beat him up. They couldn’t do anything else--realism came first. Oh, they might pull punches and go easy on kicks where they could, but they’d still hurt him. Hell, they’d already hurt him, even without meaning to.

Or they might not pull anything. Just as the reenactors in Jewish roles took pride in playing them to the hilt, so did the people playing Poles. If they were supposed to thump on Jews, they might go ahead and thump on any old Jew they could grab, and then have a drink or three to celebrate afterward.