Plunder by Menachem Kaiser (suggested reading txt) 📗

But whatever it was, his children, my father and his siblings, seem unhaunted—​my father has explained to me just how normal it was growing up, how all of his friends’ parents were survivors, how no one he knew had grandparents—​and it’s been passed down, this normalcy: for my siblings and cousins and for me it’s become undetailed family history, our grandfather was a survivor, he went through what he went through, it’s our legacy, but we, or at least I, have never felt particularly disturbed by this legacy, it’s simply always been there.

But then I read the file, saw how my grandfather had tried and failed for more than twenty years to reclaim what his family had lost, and here was an opportunity, I thought, to allow myself to be disturbed. The building, maybe, was a means to access a history, a person, that I’d always thought inaccessible, immutably closed.

2

Yechiel, a Brooklyn-born Hasid who lived in Kraków and had been trying for years to break into the local real estate game, particularly prewar Jewish property, put me in touch with a lawyer known, he said, as “The Killer.” “She’s good?” I asked. “Of course,” Yechiel said. “She’s The Killer.”

I reached out to The Killer, made an appointment, and a few days later I gathered up the file and took a taxi to a large apartment block in the north part of Kraków. The Killer’s ground-floor office was a single rectangular room with two large adjacent desks facing the door, pinching the room into an H-shape. On the wall The Killer’s diplomas hung beside unframed posters of kittens and an oversized cat calendar.

It was a mother-daughter-daughter team. The Killer was in her eighties and had a wrinkled, intelligent, severe face, with gray hair cut short. She was sphinxlike—​she sat very still and without expression, and she spoke only Polish and in a brisk monotone. She was incomprehensible to me on two levels: we had no common language plus she was totally unreadable. Her daughter Grazyna, polite, patient, middle-aged, was her right-hand woman, her paralegal, and our interpreter. The other daughter, Jadwiga, obviously less critical to operations, sat at an old computer in the corner—​the only computer in the office—​watching a video of wrestling pandas.

They greeted me warmly, offered me cookies from a package and orange soda. I sat down and we got to it. I showed them the file, told them about the building. The Killer and Grazyna flipped through the pages, commenting to each other in Polish. They asked me clarifying questions—​who’s this, who’s that, who’s alive, who’s dead. I asked them to explain some of the Polish/German documents. Communication was, if not arduous, then choppy. Grazyna never spoke for herself—​any question I had, no matter how minor or procedural, she relayed to The Killer, who responded at length to Grazyna, who translated. Our communication thus felt rather monarchal.

Grazyna kicked her sister off the computer, then went to Google Street View and searched for Małachowskiego 12; I recognized the building immediately. “That’s it,” I said. “Oh!” Grazyna said. “Super, super.” They then sought to determine its value. They asked me how many apartments were on each floor, but I couldn’t remember; so, judging from the image on the screen, they estimated: five floors, five apartments per floor. Grazyna brought out a tabletop calculator. Say each apartment was, on average, seventy square meters. That would bring the total square footage of the building to 1,750 square meters; and given that nearby apartments were listed at between 1,100 and 1,600 złoty per square meter, the building was worth between 1.9 million złoty and 2.8 million złoty, about $430,000 to $630,000.

“Super,” Grazyna said. “Super.”

“Hunh,” I said.

Grazyna then went to the municipal website and searched for a deed, but nothing came up. She explained that this was likely because the building hadn’t been bought or sold since before the war; the records hadn’t been updated. The pre-digital records, she said, would be in City Hall, in a ledger she called the “Forever Book.” Right now the status of the building was in limbo, technically speaking it was ownerless: nieuregulowany stan prawny/nieustalony właściciel. This meant: unregulated legal status/undetermined owner. An accidental testament to absence.

We then focused on my family. Had my grandfather ever received any compensation from the Polish government? No. Was I sure?—​because receiving any amount of money would mean forfeiture of claim. I said that as far as I knew, he had never gotten any money. My grandmother had received a small pension from the German government. But nothing from the Polish government. Good, they said. They then seemed to imply that if there was in fact documentation to the contrary, it would be best if that documentation were to remain unknown.

The next order of business was to construct the family tree.

Who was your grandfather? Maier was my grandfather. When was he born? In 1921. And who were his parents? Moshe and Sura-Hena, as you can see, here’s a photograph of my grandfather’s birth announcement. When were they born? I have no idea. Did your grandfather have siblings? Yes. There was a brother, Michoel Aaron, I know this because my father is named after him, and a sister, whose name I don’t know but can try and find out. When did Moshe die? In the war. When did Sura-Hena die? In the war. Do you have their death certificates? No. When did Michoel Aaron die? In the war. When did the sister die? In the war. Do you have their death certificates? No. Did Moshe have siblings? Well, there’s Shia, he’s on the mortgage, he owns 32 percent. Are there others? I don’t know. Do you know who were Moshe’s parents? No. Did Michoel Aaron or the sister have any children? I don’t know. Did Shia have children? I don’t know. Can you find out? I can ask, but if Shia, Michoel Aaron, or the sister had children I’m nearly certain none survived. I would have heard of them. Do