Plunder by Menachem Kaiser (suggested reading txt) 📗

Yes.

Do you have potatoes?

There are potatoes in Israel.

Do they grow their own potatoes?

That’s a good question. I don’t know.

What do they grow in Israel?

Oranges? Citrus? Pomegranates?

The orange trees are in private gardens or big farms?

I think both.

Do you have windows in Israel? We have windows in Poland, do you have windows in Israel?

Sure.

Do you have villages in Israel, or big cities?

Both.

So Jewish people are working?

In Israel?

Yes.

Sure, they are working.

So they are working, and not only trading?

Ah. Yeah, of course.

What happened in Lebanon? What do those Arabs want from you?

The truth is I am not Israeli, I don’t really know that much about Israel.

Okay. Hitler was a clown, from the circus. I don’t know what he wanted from Jews. What did he want from the Jews?

This is a good question.

Can you tell me what he wanted from the Jews?

No. I don’t know.

So it went for a while—​Spiranski asked me many questions about New York City, the subway, Black people, Arabs, Jews—​until Janek arrived, and it was time for Spiranski to go home. We said good-bye and Janek and Andrzej picked Spiranski up and loaded him into the car.

Fifteen minutes later Andrzej returned. Now time for the tour, Joanna said. Andrzej, visibly excited, rising to his toes, opened a door and gestured proudly at the—​I don’t know how else to describe?—​war museum he’d set up in the bedroom. Hundreds of artifacts were displayed in closed glass cabinets. On the far wall, above the narrow bed freshly made with yellow rose-patterned linen, was a pair of World War II–era rifles, an antique pistol, a collection of sabers. (And below the bed was a pair of blue slippers, a brain-breaking detail of hominess. He slept in here?) Everything in here, I asked, you found? Of course, Andrzej said. The room was a startling testament to the man’s obsession and, I suppose, skill as a treasure hunter. (When I asked whether this was the largest treasure collection among the explorers, Joanna and Andrzej scoffed. Not even close, they said.) My reaction to the room was complicated. I was surprised, impressed, mortified, and very curious. Whatever look I had on my face didn’t bother Andrzej in the slightest. He beamed. He was exceptionally proud.

He gave me a tour of his collection, section by section, artifact by artifact. On his face throughout was a look of mischievous pride; he kept glancing at me for affirmation, which I readily supplied.

We began with the fancy metal detector in the corner, then moved on to a set of swastika-engraved cutlery. Then a gorgeous compass; a collection of Nazi identification cards; glass/plastic artificial eyes that Andrzej claimed had belonged to Nazi officers. Many, many bullet cartridges; a couple of massive mortar rounds; dozens of Nazi/Iron Cross badges, buttons, and pins. Heaps of Nazi coins, bills, ration cards. Various pieces of jewelry. (Is this where the “Jewish ring” would have ended up?) Canisters; grenades; clips; a miscellany of rusty metal things I recognized as parts of weapons but have no idea what they’re called. What looked like a stick of dynamite but according to Andrzej was a kind of dynamite-stick holder. Two clocks (or devices that looked like clocks); old military phones; a Russian radio, which Andrzej fiddled with, saying all it needed was new batteries. An enormous gun with a very long chain of bullets (which he must have attached himself; he certainly didn’t find it like that): capable, he said, of firing 1,100 bullets a minute. Many more Reichsadler badges. A humongous Continental typewriter. A long row of military helmets, many with Nazi insignias, but also of Soviet, American, and British origin. Andrzej put on a helmet and said it was the same helmet the famous Polish spy Hans Klause used to wear. A massive, beautifully illustrated 1906 atlas. A Napoleonic saber so rusty it was serrated, which Andrzej, still wearing the helmet, brandished like a soldier ready to strike, or like a child pretending to be a soldier ready to strike. Andrzej took one of the guns down from over the bed, cocked it. I asked if it still worked. No, it’s just for reenactment, he said, you cannot shoot with it, but he said this with a very mischievous smile. On the floor was a large wooden trunk with a Reichsadler stamp. Inside were Nazi knives, which Andrzej, of course, unsheathed and brandished.

What to make of all these cherished swastikas?

I remembered how startled and confused I had been by the Nazi paraphernalia in Andrzej’s Land Rover. Even if a Reichsadler dangling from your rearview mirror doesn’t necessarily mean you identify as a Nazi, surely you must be aware that some people might in fact make that assumption, right? The fact that Andrzej apparently did not care, that he had no problem flaunting his swastikas, was worrisome. Where I come from you do your absolute best to put to bed even the slightest suspicion that you are into the Third Reich.

But seeing Andrzej’s museum-room, witnessing his pride over his collection of hundreds of artifacts marked by imagery that I’d always understood as obscene and prohibited, helped put Andrzej’s Nazi-philia into context. All these swastikas, Reichsadlers, Iron Crosses, etc.—​these weren’t marks of affiliation, they were trophies. Or scalps. Plunder from a fallen enemy. (When I later learned the extent of Andrzej’s hatred toward Germans, including those living today, I found it far more disconcerting than whatever inanimate objects he kept in his sanctuary.) This was how he ordered, measured, displayed, and celebrated his treasure. Yes, he prized these objects; he stored, cleaned, fetishized them in a way that I find difficult to relate to; but at the end of the day it was less about what they represented than the fact that he had found them. Andrzej was not a skinhead, even if the skinhead and Andrzej might have similar ideas regarding interior design. In the United States a swastika is hard to see as anything but a deliberate provocation and a sign of affiliation with Nazi