Plunder by Menachem Kaiser (suggested reading txt) 📗

How forgotten these graves were. If Abraham had been buried in Silesia the site might very well have become a shrine. At the very least it would have been well maintained and -visited. But here in Israel he was just another survivor from Poland. Dead, childless, and remembered by a rapidly diminishing number of people. He was dead and his memory was dying. No special myth attached to him here. I have a question but I don’t know if it’s appropriate and I also don’t quite know how to articulate it. I want to ask: Which is preferable? The celebrated myth, which is at least partly false? Or the uncelebrated person, the memory of whom so quickly disappears?

Before I left the cemetery I returned to the office, to the two bearded men behind the desk, the director and the intern, and told them there was a bush blocking Abraham’s and Sophie’s tombstones, that the tombstones were obscured and filthy, and that the cemetery was responsible for unobscuring and cleaning them. Or at least I tried to tell them this; I sputtered in my clunky Hebrew. I don’t know what I succeeded in getting across. The director smiled and nodded and tapped at his keyboard, and the intern didn’t do anything.

16

We appealed the ruling of Judge Wioleta Grabowska of the District Court in Sosnowiec. We believed we had a good case, that our arguments that my relatives who had died in the Holocaust were dead were strong; that a higher court would recognize the inconsistent rulings of the two lower courts; that a higher court would recognize and overturn the Sosnowiec court’s arguably anti-Semitic casuistry.

The hearing was set for early September 2018 in the Regional Court in Katowice, and again I was called to testify as proxy for my father and my aunt. But I’d just moved to New York and couldn’t justify the cost and inconvenience of flying to Poland for a day or two. And anyhow it wasn’t obvious that this second trial would be all that different from the first trial: new judge but same procedure, same arguments, same documents, same testimony. The Killer represented me in my absence.

The morning after the trial I got on the phone with Grazyna and The Killer to hear how it had gone. It was a characteristically frustrating conversation; I wanted to hear everything, from the color of the walls to what was happening on the judge’s face, but they didn’t seem to think there was much to report, only that The Killer had argued the case and now we had to wait for the decision. Start from the beginning, I said. What was the courtroom like? Grazyna said that she didn’t know, she hadn’t gone inside—​only her mother had been allowed in. I asked Grazyna to ask her mother what the courtroom was like. My mother says it was a courtroom, Grazyna said, in the Regional Court in Katowice. Does your mother think it went well? I asked. My mother submitted the documents and made the arguments and now we wait for the decision, Grazyna said. Did the judge say anything unexpected? I asked. My mother says there were three judges, Grazyna said. Three judges? I said. Is that normal? Grazyna said something about a rule change but I couldn’t get straight what rule had been changed, whether it applied to all appeals cases or just inheritance claims or what.

Three judges! Had I known there’d be three judges I would’ve flown to Poland, expense be damned. That there were three judges—​a goddamn tribunal, and three appellate judges, no less—​tasked with deciding whether or not my dead relatives were dead pushed the absurdity past its breaking point; it was now state-sponsored farce. Can you imagine? Three judges, in their robes, on the bench, pursed lips, furrowed brows, listening to The Killer’s arguments, evaluating the Sosnowiec judge’s decision, gathering in closed chambers to debate whether or not these four dead Jews were dead. (To aid your imagination: all three judges were women in their late forties or early fifties, which I thought was a weird demographic coincidence, especially considering that the judge in Sosnowiec was also a woman in her late forties or early fifties; The Killer agreed it was strange but offered no further insight.) That the issue would be discussed out loud, not just privately mulled, that it would be debated, that a consensus would have to be reached—​it supercharged the preposterousness. I imagine the discussion got pedantic, technical, even metaphysical. What does dead even mean? If a Jew dies in the forest and no one is there to record it . . . ? Can, for the sake of expediency, the Holocaust be considered a natural disaster? I imagine that at the outset the judges were split on the matter: one was of the opinion that these Jews should be declared dead; one was of the opinion that these Jews should not be declared dead; and one was undecided, could see both sides. I can see both sides, says the undecided judge, who is sitting in the middle. On the one hand they are dead, but on the other hand maybe they are not technically dead. I am having trouble deciding. Of course they are dead! says the judge on the right. We all know it. We know our history. All the Jews died! We also know math. If someone was born in 1888 how old would they be today? They are dead. What else is there to talk about? Interesting argument, says the judge in the middle. I can see your point of view. Idiots! thunders the judge on the left. You perverse commonsenseniks! Did you not swear to uphold Polish law, to the letter? Of course, says the judge in the middle. We did, says the judge on the right, though more begrudgingly. Then tell me, says the judge on the left, what does dead-ness have to do with anything? We are not here to decide whether these Jews are