Plunder by Menachem Kaiser (suggested reading txt) 📗

I noticed a few long chests standing against the wall. I went over and lifted the lid—​and saw the potatoes. I greedily grabbed the potatoes and, ignoring the presence of my savior, began to eat them. Maintaining any restraint was beyond my control. I unconsciously chewed and swallowed the potatoes, and didn’t even notice that the German woman had left the basement. I saw her again, after devouring several raw potatoes. She had returned with linens and food.

“Eat,” she said. “And in the meantime, I will prepare a hiding spot in this box, since it’s already dawn and soon they will come down here for water.”

She set down the food and took care of transferring the potatoes from one chest to another. I started to swallow huge chunks of cake. I took no time to chew. After a few minutes, everything was eaten. I walked over to her and helped her move the rest of the potatoes.

When the chest was empty, she put down a feather bed and a small pillow and two blankets, then looked at me and asked if I wanted more to eat.

“Yes . . . but bring only bread.”

I was sorry that I ate so much cake. After a while, she came back with four slices of bread and a liter pot of porridge with milk.

I ate that in no time as well. Then she helped me lie down in the chest, and closed it up—​and I was alone.

I fell asleep. When I woke up, I saw her leaning over me. She watched me with concern and anxiety. Seeing me open my eyes, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank God,” I heard her words. “I thought you were dead. You slept twenty-four hours straight. Did anybody see you?”

“No,” I replied.

“You have . . . to eat and drink. Tomorrow, I will come again, and now I must leave, because I am afraid that someone will see me.”

I was alone again. I lay quietly and listened. I heard people entering the neighboring cellar room; how they rattled empty buckets; how they pumped the pump. There was the sound of a bucket filling with water, the sound of footsteps on the stairs. From time to time, someone sang a song. Through the cracks in the chest, I watched the dawn and the falling twilight. I was often worried that my savior would change her mind . . .

Every day, I waited twenty-four hours for her to come. I greeted her always with unrestrained joy and when she left my heart sank. A strange joy filled me when I heard her words, which she repeated almost every day:

“Did you sleep well? Good-bye. Until tomorrow.”

Then she would close the lid and leave the basement. I was left alone again. I listened again—​the steps, the clatter of buckets, the splash of water, the detached words, the steps again—​and then twenty-four hours of surreal silence.

After a few days, I could no longer lie in the chest. At night, I woke up and walked very quietly around the basement. Freezing, I finally returned to the chest, wrapped myself in blankets, and dreamed of once again hearing the sonorous voice of the one who saved my life—​I fell asleep.

One day, unexpectedly, she brought a chair with her to the basement. She put it in a corner and said:

“Come out and sit a little at night but be careful . . . quiet.”

I didn’t manage to thank her before she disappeared like a shadow.

In those days, my only joy was her visits. Her voice made my heart beat faster. There was so much, so much I wanted to say, tell, ask—​but I did none of that, because I had to constantly take care, watch, listen. With an excess of questions crowding my lips, I often couldn’t utter a word. The words died on my lips, and I was afraid of my own voice, that if someone heard it, they might grow suspicious and suspect something.

One day in 1998, Shimon and Rochel Plonsker, an elderly couple from Ramat Gan, Israel, were in the Frankfurt airport, maybe they’d just arrived, maybe they were about to head home, but in any case something had gone wrong, there was an issue with the airline, and they were getting into it with one of the employees; the argument got heated.

A man named Alexander Fruhlich happened to walk by, took notice of the tumult. Fruhlich worked for the airline—​though on that particular day he wasn’t working, just passing through with his wife on their way home to Berlin—​and intervened, came to the Plonskers’ rescue.

The Plonskers, grateful, invited the Fruhlichs to lunch.

At lunch, Alexander, upon learning that the Plonskers were from Israel, told them that he had a special connection to someone in Israel, though he wasn’t sure where in Israel this someone lived, or even if he was still alive; it had been some time since they had been in contact. His name was Abraham Kajzer. Did the Plonskers know him by any chance? No, they said, they did not. But what was the story? What was this special connection? Alexander said that more than fifty years ago, in 1945, in the last weeks of the war, his mother, Gertrud Fruhlich, had hidden Kajzer in the cellar, inside a potato box, had saved his life. After the war Gertrud and Abraham had stayed in touch, Alexander said—​Abraham even visited once, in 1965—​but they later lost contact. Gertrud was still alive, Alexander said. She was ninety years old, and had never forgotten Abraham. She still had a photograph of him on her wall.

The Plonskers were very taken with this story, and over the following months they spearheaded an effort to have Gertrud recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations, accorded by Yad Vashem to non-Jews who, at great risk, had saved Jews during the war. They submitted as evidence the section just quoted from Abraham’s memoir; a letter from Alexander corroborating the story; a 1965 German newspaper article about Gertrud’s heroic act; a photocopy