Mosaic Read online

  To the memory of my parents, Bronia and Henry Boguslawski.

  Their courage was a blazing torch which lit up my life, and their love, strength and optimism have been a lifelong inspiration.

  And to Michael, Jonathan and Justine. Having you in my life has been the greatest gift.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Dedication

  The Song Survives

  Author’s note on Polish proper names

  Map

  Baldinger/Spira Family Tree

  Bratter/Goldman Family Tree

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Part III

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Picture Section

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  Author’s Postscript to the Perennial Edition

  The Voyage of Their Life: The Story of the SS Derna and its passengers

  Winter Journey

  Nocturne

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  About the Author

  Praise for Mosaic

  Books by Diane Armstrong

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  THE SONG SURVIVES

  Flames may consume a priceless work of art,

  Thieves plunder coffers full of gleaming jewels.

  Only a melody lives on

  And weaves among the throng.

  If callous souls don’t moisten it with tears

  Or nourish it with hope,

  It will float to the hills and soar to the spires

  And from its eyrie sing of bygone days

  Like a lark that flees a flame-draped building and clings to the rooftop.

  When the roof crumbles, it flies to the woods

  Above ruins and tombs,

  And warbles its lament to all who pass.

  From ‘Konrad Wallenrod’ by Adam Mickiewicz; translated by Diane Armstrong.

  Author’s note on Polish proper names

  There are many name changes throughout this narrative.

  In surnames ending in ‘ski’ the feminine form changes to ‘ska’, e.g. Mr Boguslawski but Mrs Boguslawska. The feminine form of some surnames ending with a consonant end in ‘owa’, e.g. Mr Bogdan but Mrs Bogdanowa.

  Polish first names ending in ‘a’ change to ‘u’ when the person is being addressed. So when someone is speaking to Lunia, for example, they address her as ‘Luniu’.

  In Polish, the affectionate diminutive form of a name is often used, so my father, for example, who was given the name Hirsh, came to be called Hesiu.

  Another reason for name changes is that Jews with distinctly Jewish names often changed them to avoid discrimination and persecution. That’s why my father changed his name to Henryk, whose diminutive form is Henek. In Australia, however, he became known as Henry.

  MAP

  BALDINGER/SPIRA FAMILY TREE

  BRATTER/GOLDMAN FAMILY TREE

  PROLOGUE

  On a hazy summer’s day in 1990, when the air quivered and the cobblestones sizzled beneath my feet, I wandered around Krakow’s Kazimierz district with my cousin Mario. As we explored narrow lanes and discovered traces of long-forgotten buildings, the past seeped out of the worn paving stones, weathered gates and twisted alleyways. Around each corner I expected to see shadowy figures in long black coats entering prayer houses, and to hear horse carriages clattering along narrow streets.

  I don’t know what made me pause in front of a large white building with a stark facade. Above the entrance, two deeply recessed windows stared down at the street like knowing eyes in an ancient face. According to the plaque on the wall, this was Ajzyk’s Synagogue, which was being restored. Even today this building stands out from its surroundings like a duchess at a fish market, so I could imagine what a sensation it must have created three hundred years ago when it towered over the huddle of wretched dwellings that surrounded it.

  When we pushed open the oak door to look inside, acrid fumes of new paint bit my throat. The late afternoon sun slanted into the spacious prayer hall, lighting up its vaulted ceiling and newly plastered walls with a warm glow. A paint-splashed ladder stood against one wall, beside two buckets stuffed with rags. The building was deserted.

  As we turned to leave, a hum of murmuring voices resounded across the room, stronger and more insistent all the time. Mario and I looked at each other. So the synagogue was not empty after all. A group of people must have gathered to pray upstairs.

  The scent of newly sawn wood rose from the floorboards as we sprinted up the stairs two at a time, eager to find out who they were. I flung open the door, imagining heads turning towards us in surprise.

  We stood in an empty, silent room.

  There was no-one in the building, no-one in the grounds, no-one anywhere in the street. My skin prickled as I stood surrounded by white silence, grappling with thoughts too strange to comprehend. How to make sense of those murmuring voices we both had heard, that rhythmic chanting of Jews at prayer, those cadences which were to haunt me for months to come.

  After returning to Sydney, I dreamed one night I was in Krakow once again. Searching in one bookshop after another, I asked each bookseller the same question. ‘Do you have a book about the Jews of Kazimierz?’ And at each store I received the same reply. ‘There is no such book.’

  Before the words had evaporated into the warm night air, I sat bolt upright as the meaning of that dream became clear. The book I’d searched for in my dream didn’t exist because I hadn’t written it yet. It was my own book I was looking for, and the voices that I’d heard that day in Ajzyk’s Synagogue were the voices of my ancestors clamouring to be heard.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  The clouds hung dark and low, and a sharp wind blew the leaves off the chestnut trees that autumn day in 1980 as Daniel Baldinger made his way through the alleyways of Krakow’s Jewish district, wondering how to break the news to his wife Reizel.

  Lost in thought, he crossed Meiselsa Street, past prayer houses where bearded men in wide velour hats and long black coats walked brim to brim. Above narrow doorways, signs in Yiddish advertised Susser Brothers’ wines, Pischinger’s chocolate, Blawat’s accessories and Rosenberg’s tailoring. In the marketplace on Plac Estery, housewives in long skirts and silk wigs peered at cheeses, squeezed chickens and poked tomatoes on the stalls. Not far from barefoot peasant women in flowered kerchiefs holding up plump chickens, fishmongers pulled slippery carp out of wooden barrels as big as wells. Sharp eyed and sharp mannered, they pretended to curse the shoppers who bought fish from their riv
als. ‘Your arm should drop off when you carry it home, God forbid! Onions should sprout from your navel!’ they shouted.

  A lad in a fraying jacket swung past Daniel with his basket heaped with crusty salt-spangled bagels. An apple-cheeked woman had to swerve to avoid dropping her tray of pears scented with cinnamon and cloves. ‘Spiced pears! Sweeter than your mother’s love!’ she called in a piping voice. A flustered matron, her silken wig awry, hurriedly selected carrots for the tzimmes and onion for the carp. ‘Are you late for this Sabbath or early for the next?’ the stallholder laughed.

  Normally Daniel would have stopped to breathe in the country smell of white farm cheeses and pats of glistening butter, but today he walked past them, hardly noticing. Soon the stallholders would fold up their stands, the storekeepers would pull down their wooden shutters, and peace would fall like a velvet mantle over the noisy streets of Kazimierz. Inside every home freshly scrubbed faces would sit expectantly around lighted candles and braided challahs, ready to share the Almighty’s gift of the Sabbath. Daniel’s face grew sombre. Inside every home except his.

  Amid the bustle of the marketplace, he exuded an aura of dignity, a solitary figure in a well-cut overcoat and homburg hat, his neatly trimmed beard streaked with grey. Daniel had the penetrating gaze of those who see beyond appearances, and the commanding presence of a man who knows himself and seeks no man’s favours.

  On his way home to face the most distressing decision of his life, my grandfather Daniel Baldinger is unaware that a shadowy figure is pursuing him through the crowd, dogging his footsteps, craning to catch every nuance of his expression. I am the invisible stalker, weaving a bridge between my grandfather and myself, between past and present, to piece together fragments of lives that ended before mine began. All my life my father told me about this patriarch whom he venerated and admired. Just, tolerant, understanding and wise. All my life I’ve accepted this image without questioning, but now I’m embarking on a journey into the past to meet the grandfather I never knew.

  Daniel turned into the narrow alley which sunlight rarely warmed and reverently touched the mezuzah affixed to the right hand side of his front door jamb where a tiny scroll of parchment was inscribed with the main tenets of Jewish faith. But he needed no mezuzah to remind him of the glory of God. God’s commandments were inscribed in his heart.

  As soon as she heard Daniel close the front door, Reizel’s heart hammered beneath her high-necked blouse. She took a deep breath, smoothed down her long skirt and gripped the well-worn oak table where they had shared so many meals. One thousand times that day her mind had churned over what her fate would be, and now that the moment had arrived, her mouth felt as dry as if it were Yom Kippur. Outside, a pewter sky hung low over a grey, cold city, but her cheeks burned and her hands were clammy.

  The compassionate gaze in her husband’s deep-set eyes told her the answer before he spoke. She stiffened and looked away. ‘I’ll provide well for you,’ he said, hoping that the gentleness of his voice would soften the blow. ‘You’ll have a house and your own business, you’ll want for nothing.’ But his words didn’t comfort her because the only thing she wanted in all the world was to stay with him.

  Daniel and his wife had been married for ten years. Or more exactly, one hundred and twenty months, because their life together had been measured out in her menstrual cycles. Daniel was thirty-five, and with every passing year he seemed to hear God reproaching him. ‘I can’t live without children,’ he told her. ‘In return for the gift of life, a man must leave another generation to replace him. I want to have sons so that I can teach them to worship the Almighty and study the Torah. If I can’t doven in shule beside my sons, I won’t have fulfilled my duty to God,’ he explained.

  Reizel rarely argued with her husband, but this time her future was at stake. ‘Perhaps Almighty God, blessed be His name, didn’t intend us to have children,’ she replied, tight-lipped. Daniel shook his head. A couple must have children. Go forth and multiply, that’s what the Almighty had instructed Adam and Eve. And the Gemara said that a man must have sons to say the Kaddish prayer for him after he dies so that his soul can find eternal peace.

  Divorce among orthodox Jews was very rare in 1890. As couples didn’t marry for love, they didn’t separate when love was gone. Marriages were arranged, expectations were low, and eventually most husbands and wives came to appreciate each other’s good qualities. Divorce, however, was permitted in certain circumstances and childlessness was one of them. Daniel’s spiritual adviser, the Sanzer Rebbe, whom he consulted about the major dilemmas in his life, had told him that if a husband and wife have been married for ten years and have no offspring, they are permitted to separate so that both can remarry and have children. My grandfather must have been extraordinarily determined, because as well as Reizel and his parents-in-law, even his own parents opposed his decision.

  ‘Divorce!’ His mother-in-law had been aghast. ‘What has poor Reizel done to deserve this terrible fate? Who will marry a woman cast off by her husband after ten years? What’s to become of her?’

  Daniel looked troubled. ‘This is no reflection on Reizel,’ he pointed out. ‘Our holy books have said that there’s no disgrace in divorce if a couple separate because they are childless.’

  Reizel’s relatives stirred the pot. ‘What’s the world coming to when a man can cast off a wife after ten years? Mark my words, he’ll look for some young maidl somewhere,’ one aunt sneered. ‘You’ll see, younger is better! So that’s how our sages are applying their learning, encouraging men to forsake their wives when they become bored with them.’

  Their rancour was understandable. Although the rabbis permitted a childless couple to divorce, they didn’t demand it. According to my father, his father’s choice was all the more remarkable since he loved his first wife, but his yearning for children overshadowed everything else in his life.

  Although Daniel was born in the village of Lukowice, his parents later moved to nearby Nowy Sacz, a pretty mountain town south of Krakow, where Jewish tailors, bakers, butchers, cobblers and merchants lived and worked in dim workshops around the town square. Behind the square flowed the Dunajec River, where on hot summer days boys splashed beneath the bridge and lazed in the shade of the willow trees.

  Ever since the first partition of Poland in 1772, the south-eastern part of the country had been named Galicia and had become part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So many Jews had settled in Galicia that it was said that even the Vistula River murmured in Yiddish. German was the official language and Vienna was the centre of the world. After completing his training as a gasfitter in Vienna, Daniel had moved to Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of Krakow. A good tradesman with a sound business sense, he built up a successful business at a time when plumbing was in its infancy. At the age of thirty-five, he was financially secure and highly respected in the community. But without children to glorify the Almighty and ensure immortality, what was the point of such success?

  The days hung heavily on Daniel and his wife until the time came to mount the well-worn stairs to the rabbi’s house. Silently they sat side by side in a room where squeaking floorboards were piled with fraying books and dusty scrolls while the old scribe with a black skull cap on his head scraped on a piece of parchment with a goose quill.

  When the bill of divorce was completed, the white-bearded rabbi placed it into Reizel’s trembling hands and pronounced that as they were now divorced, they must never again live under the same roof and were both free to remarry after three months. I can imagine how slowly and heavily Reizel descended the stairs to begin her empty life.

  After setting her up in a little dairy on Wawrzynska Street where she sold milk, eggs and butter in the front room and lived in the back, Daniel started looking for a second wife who would give him the sons he yearned for.

  He didn’t have long to wait. A man of exemplary character and good income who is in search of a wife rarely lacks offers, and the eager shadchens of Galicia soon started por
ing over their lists of marriageable girls. In the doorways and marketplaces, synagogues and shtibls, tongues wagged overtime. ‘Have you heard? Daniel Baldinger is looking for another wife. He’s a good match even though he’s divorced. They say he’s doing very well, laying those gas pipes of his.’

  But before any of them had time to submit their candidates, a china merchant came to see Daniel. He was a stout man with dancing eyes and a tar-black beard that bristled with a life of its own. The purposeful gleam in his eye revealed that he hadn’t come to sell cups and saucers. ‘I’ve come on an important errand, Mr Baldinger. You’re looking for a wife and, believe me, I know just the one. I do business with a merchant in Szczakowa called Abraham Spira who has a marriageable daughter,’ he said, stroking his wiry beard. ‘It’s a good family, the father is rich, and the daughter is hardworking and modest. You’ll get a handsome dowry and a good wife, God willing. And she’s a sheine maidl, too, khanaynahora, may the evil eye not touch her.’ The merchant looked at Daniel and moistened his full lips.

  Daniel liked a pretty face and admired modest, industrious women. He also admired learning, and what he found out about this family’s antecedents aroused his interest. Abraham Spira was descended from Nathan Nata Spira, a famous seventeenth century Jewish philosopher whose commentaries on the mystical texts of the Kabbala had become classics. He believed that the secrets of the universe could be unravelled by mathematical calculations. Abraham Spira was also said to have been descended from the great sixteenth century rabbi Moses Isserles of Krakow.

  Although this impressive lineage undoubtedly whetted Daniel’s interest in the prospective bride, not much linked Abraham Spira spiritually with his ancestor. Abraham was a despot who disciplined his nine sons like a general. An aristocratic looking man whose fine face was framed by a neatly trimmed beard of soft grey hair, he was a progressive Jew. He chose well-cut suits made of the finest materials and didn’t want his wife Ryfka to wear a wig like other orthodox Jewish matrons of the time.