Plunder by Menachem Kaiser (suggested reading txt) 📗

excitedly. I stole glances with Steve. It’s a strange moment, when the door is (literally, metaphorically) open but it’s not yet clear if you’re going to be allowed in. Often, even if they aren’t initially suspicious they start realizing that they should be suspicious: any mention of “property” and “war” and “Jew” can set off alarms. It’s (usually) unfounded, not based on anything they know—​in my experience they don’t usually know much about the provenance of their own home—​but it can tap into a general, more diffused fear, an awareness that here lies trouble. Sometimes you can actually see the suspicion seep in: facial features harden, bodies stiffen with defensiveness.

But she was extremely unsuspicious—​I don’t think it even occurred to her that there was anything she should be suspicious about—​and friendly. At Steve’s request I won’t use her real name; let’s call her Justyna. Justyna was excited. She nodded along as Piotr explained who Steve was, that his father-in-law (it may have become “father”) had lived in this apartment before the war. She nodded vigorously and said in her raspy Polish, Yes, I remember you. That’s impossible, Steve said. I’ve never been to Poland before. The woman shrugged and said, You were here a long time ago, eighteen or nineteen years ago. Steve said again that it was impossible. Well someone was here, she said. She shrugged and laughed and beckoned us inside but then ushered us back out and made us wait while she brushed her hair; then beckoned us inside again. The living room was nice, modest, clean. An enormous television was playing an episode of something like Cops, not on mute. Steve said again and again how meaningful it was for him to be here, to see this apartment. Justyna had lived here only since the 1970s; she didn’t know much about the history of the place.

We walked out to the small balcony, barely big enough for the four of us. There was a clear view of the Góra Zamkowa church, where a priest had granted refuge to Jews fleeing from the synagogue that the Nazis had locked and set on fire. I’m going to do it, Steve said to me.

My father-in-law, Steve said to Piotr, and Piotr said to Justyna, watched the synagogue burn from the attic. (Was this true? I don’t know. I don’t think so.) It would be very meaningful to me if I could go up and see the attic, he said.

The request didn’t immediately register—​Justyna was jumpy, things were getting lost in translation, she kept going back to the little bit she knew about the church. But once she understood what Steve was asking she said, Of course.

She fetched the key and opened the padlock and we walked up the wooden stairs into the attic. It was extremely attic-like—​unfinished, creaky uneven wooden floors with raised beams, sloped roof. Some junk scattered about, but not much, it wasn’t used as storage. It was clear that no one ever came up here.

This is it, Steve said. He walked to the window. This was the larger window. Maybe twenty feet away was the second, smaller window, beneath which should be the eggs, but the attic had been partitioned, there was a wall separating the windows. Steve and I walked to the partition, careful to keep our weight on the support beam. We looked through a hole in the dividing wall. There it was, we could see it, the second, smaller window. Steve asked Justyna if there was a way to access that part of the attic, where the smaller window was. That was the window my father-in-law watched from, was the excuse he gave, though by now it didn’t matter, Justyna didn’t care, she wasn’t at all suspicious. She shrugged. She wasn’t sure, she never came up here. She said it might be possible via the neighbor’s apartment. So the four us went down into the yard and knocked on the neighbor’s door, but there was no answer. Steve and I, giving whatever excuse, went back to the attic by ourselves. Maybe there was another way to get to the second window, maybe via the roof.

In the attic by ourselves, without Justyna, without Piotr, we could machinate freely, which was good, but was also on some level uncomfortable, because we were, it was getting harder and harder to deny, intruding: Justyna had given us permission to come up here but we were rapidly approaching the limits of what that permission had implicitly covered. We were stepping into deception territory.

Steve was excited, and nervous. I think this was the moment when it all became frighteningly unabstract. Are you going to write about this? Steve asked. He was protective of the story. I don’t know, I said. Certainly not without your permission. Okay, he said, that’s reassuring. It isn’t my story, I said, it’s yours, but yet it feels close to mine. Maybe as an epilogue. But nothing without my permission, right? he said. Right, I said. Whatever you want me to leave out I’ll leave out. Okay, we’ll see, he said, but maybe don’t use my real name. Of course, I said.

Getting to the second window via the roof was dangerous. The only viable option was through the hole in the partition.

Steve had something the matter with his leg, and couldn’t do it, but I could, and said I would. Are you sure? Steve said. I think he felt a little guilty. I assured him how much I wanted to. We are right there, I said, we are so close to being able to check those bricks. I got on my back and slid forward, wormed my way through, then walked to the outside wall and crouched in front of the second window. There was no pane, it was just a square hole in the wall, covered by a wooden board held in place by two metal wires strung across.

The window was four brick-levels up from the floor. According to Steve, according to his father-in-law, the