Absence and Silence For Henryk

“In 1997 I took a picture of Henryk, a wry grin on his face,

as he posed a trifle awkwardly at a Krakow souvenir stall selling

T-shirts and carved wooden figures of Jews”.

Ruth Ellen Gruber

Wherever one walked in Kaczimiercz, regardless of the time of day or night (and Tsvi particularly liked to walk the streets at night), you couldn't help but run into him, then have a drink, then have a meal. I endearingly called him "The Mayor of Kaczimiercz". Tsvi's last project was editing Khasidic stories of the Bratslaver Rebe and we talked about this over latkes at the Klezmer-Hois. His intellect was eclipsed only by his gentle sweetness. His ghost, like so many others, will hover over Krakow.

Yale Storm

Jewish history is about absence and silence,

European capitals have Jewish Quarters filled with museum shops

housing ritual objects and scrolls.

Mostly Japanese and Germans visit these tourist places.

How ironic that Hitlerʼs plans for a Jewish Museum

in Pragueʼs Jewish Quarter have been fulfilled.

In the absence of Jews I walked around the old quarter in Krakow

so eerie with all the hassidic melodies wafting out of the restaurants and bars

and the ham sandwiches with vodka being consumed within.

Little figurines of hassidic Jews with beards, side locks and hooked noses

being sold for the tourists, itʼs like a nightmare in a horror movie.

The silence of those murdered a few streets away is deafening

the entire quarter emptied out and taken to the local cemetery

not the famous one near the Rema Shul, mind you

just the new cemetery that housed the recent and mostly alienated

from Judaism are buried.

My friend [1] Henryk is buried there

sudden death Marta said,

he was the heart of post war Krakow Jews

translated Rabbi Nachmanʼs stories into Polish

he haunted the streets of Kazimierz

bumping into American tourists

Oh how I miss his gentle voice.

In truth my visit was preceded some 40 years

when at age 11 my father took me to Vienna

his first visit since leaving in 1939,

I never saw my father cry before

and in so many ways I am a weird kind of “child of a survivor”

For he survived alright

But not through the hell of Hitlerʼs inferno

Rather by escaping

And living with that fateful decision.

Henryk was full of history, opinions and stories.

Among his projects at the time of his death is a volume of translation and

commentary of Rabbi Nachman's Stories.

I met him the three times I visited Krakow over the course of ten years.

I am the son, the physical presence, and reminder

of my fatherʼs fateful choice in 1939

to leave and abandon his family

at 17 for freedom and survival.

His sister refused

and paid for the choice with her life.

As such,

I reflect that genetic choice

that betrayal,

and as such

it is etched into my soul.

It infects all my choices too.

So when I made my move to the States in 1974

for my medical internship and residency

my father was heartbroken

and accused me of handing Hitler a second victory. [2]

“Hitler took my first family from me, now you are breaking up

my family once more” he exclaimed.

It is this I carry for him.

It is this guilt I bear because of him.

It is this nightmare that haunts us both.

I must learn to own this too since

my life owes its very existence to his fateful choice,

it is suffused by that choice,

and marks my choices genetically with the same stamp.

My life is incarnated with its implication of his betrayal.

This dark unacknowledged mystery

this un-admitted secret

seems to motivate so many of my bad choices.

That choice between survival and freedom and honor,

family and sacrifice,

moral ambivalence and expedience.

How can I come to see this inherited genetic double-edged sword

that both wounds and heals simultaneously as a source of blessing?

for the very betrayal means living

the cutting of corners means getting to the finish line

and the flight to a new country means a fresh start.

Can I not see the character defects as measured by the perfection scale?

Can I rather accept the genetic trait that allowed him and I to live and

to survive-above all to see the blessing of children and grandchildren?

So his choice back then and my choice now

of just what is, the soulʼs code

Even this I must love too.

My history is also about absences and silences.

I never met my grandparents and would love to see and touch my aunt Alice

whose devotion to her parents

represented the light side to the fatherʼs dark choice

in her accompanying her parents to Izhbitz transit camp

then on to Sobibor or Belize to their deaths.

In that silence of their screaming presence we inhabit

this nightmare.

In the absence of Henryk and the silence of the old city

Where I walk alone now

Is the secret of the Jewish soul

[1] Henryk Halkowski, the heart and soul of Jewish Krakow, died suddenly of a heart attack in Krakow the night January 1-2.

[2] To borrow Fakenheimʼs expression.