I was running as fast as I could, darting in and out of entrances and into alleyways, to avoid the men in black. I thought that if they found me they might beat me up too. After all, I was eleven years old now and I was tall: they might have thought of me as more of a man than a child. And I assumed they would know that I was a Jew.
Just outside the tenement where we lived, I ran into my sisters. Hannah was so relieved to see me that she clutched me in a tight, long hug. She bundled us into the building and up the stairs so that we could warn our mother what was going on. We wanted to tell her what we had just witnessed, the terrible things that were happening. But she already knew.
I understood what had happened when I heard Hannah's cry. So small, as if she was just a little girl, which of course, now that I am a grown man, I know that she was. She tried to stop us, my other sisters and me, from seeing it, but it was too late. I saw it and I can never forget what I saw.
My mother's feet were in the air, her body dangling from a beam in the ceiling. She was hanging there, swinging like the pendulum in a clock – a clock that said we had reached the end of time.
Tom closed the notebook and looked up. This was a nightmare. Truly, a waking nightmare.
He checked his watch. Too early to call Henning. He imagined what he would tell him. ‘I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that the dead guy may not be so innocent after all. The bad news is, you killed a Holocaust survivor.’
PR calamities didn't get much worse than this. Rebecca Merton would simply have to pop this notebook into an envelope and send it to any newspaper in London and the United Nations name would be caked in mud. He could see the headline, across a two-page spread: ‘“My father's wartime hell”, by daughter of UN shooting victim’, complete with full colour photo of ‘raven-haired Rebecca Merton, 31’.
Tom rolled a cigarette, before seeing the wagging finger of the waitress. Of course, London now had the same bloody puritan rules as New York. He kept it unlit and ordered another espresso. He went back to the notebook and girded himself for the next revelation.
I remember very little about those next few days. We moved around as if in some kind of trance. My sister Hannah the least. She did not allow herself to be stunned for very long. She had to be our mother now …
My job was to be the provider of food. I was a child, but I looked older and my looks held another advantage. I could pass for one of the local Lithuanian lads, not marked as a Jew. I would scavenge wherever I could, turning up at a baker's shop just before closing time, my hand out for any scraps. If there was a woman there I would try to catch her eye: women were more likely to take pity on me. ‘Such a sweet face,’ they would say, handing me a loaf-end of bread or a hardened rock of old cake.
‘Where are your parents?’
‘I'm an orphan.’
‘Hear that, Irena? He's an orphan. What happened to your mum and dad, little one?’
‘The Russians.’
‘Oh, those evil animals. And here I am giving you a hunk of stale bread. Irena, fetch that meat we have in the back. Come on, quick now. Here you are, young man. Now you be on your way.’
None of us told the truth. If anyone ever came near Hannah, she would lie outright. ‘My father will be back soon,’ she would say. ‘My mother has just popped out.’ At the time I thought she was simply ashamed to admit we were orphans. Now I understand better. She did not want people to know that in our two rooms, there were only children. She must have worried that someone would send us away or steal what we had. Or worse.
This time, between the Russians and what followed, did not last long. The books say there was, in fact, no time at all, that an advance group of Germans was already there, from the very beginning, even organizing the pogroms the night my mother ended her life. But when the Germans arrived in force, we knew it.
In fact, we heard them before we saw them. I was in the apartment, watching Hannah carve up the crust of bread I had brought into four pieces. As the boy, the man of the house, mine was always the largest. Rivvy and Leah had equal chunks – and the smallest Hannah gave to herself. The girls had learned patience and would eat their food slowly, making even a bite of bread last as if it were a meal. But, at that time, I could not control my hunger. I gobbled up whatever I was given as soon as it was in front of me.
At first, I thought it was a storm. But the sky outside was bright and clear. Yet there it was again, the deep rumble of distant explosions. ‘Shhh,’ Hannah said and we all held still. Hannah closed her eyes so she could concentrate. ‘Aeroplanes,’ she said eventually.
Soon there was a different noise. It was the thunder of an army marching into a city. And then there were sounds that were not nearly so far away. Hard, mechanical sounds of motorcycles and infantry and mammoth field guns on wheels and finally tanks, all rolling into Kovno.
Hannah edged towards the window, not daring to press her face too close. I barged ahead and took a good look. What I saw confused me. The windows of the building opposite to ours, and the one next to it, were opening. Out of them were unrolling large, billowing pieces of cloth: flags. Girls were leaning out, smiling and waving, throwing flowers at the men below.
‘Is everything going to be OK now, Hannah?’ I asked.
‘Maybe, Gershon. Maybe.’ But she looked unsure.
We went to school the next day and I knew immediately that even if our Lithuanian neighbours were glad to see the Nazis, we Jews were not. Everyone was tense. The headmaster spoke to the whole school and his face was carved with anxiety. ‘We are a people who have been tested many times,’ he said. ‘Children, you all know the story of Pharaoh. And of Haman. Men who came to destroy the Jews. And what happened each time?’ No one wanted to answer; this didn't seem like a normal lesson. ‘Each time they failed, because God protected us. We survived. Children, this may be such a test now.’
I'm not sure if it was that day or the next but it happened very soon. Notices went up in German. I stood on tiptoe, my neck craned, to read the one posted on a lamppost near the school, translating it first to the boys in my class and then to a small group that gathered around. The sign said that from now on all Jews would have to wear a yellow star on their outer clothing, to be visible at all times. And there would be a curfew: not for everyone in Kovno, but for the Jews. After dark, every Jew was to be indoors; there were to be no Jews on the streets. And we were not allowed to walk on the pavements. Those were reserved for Aryans only. We would have to walk in the gutter.
Even then, I don't know whether I was scared. These were new rules that we would have to live by, but it seemed better than the Lithuanians and their pogroms. If this was all they planned to do to us – make us wear a yellow star and stay home after dark – then it was better than being beaten on the streets.
But I could not comfort myself like that for very long. A few mornings later, we were woken by a loud banging on the door. I sat bolt upright. My chest was banging. For the first, confused seconds I wondered if it was my mother at the door: I imagined her, smiling, her hair combed and neat, come to take us away from here. I must have been about to say something because Hannah, who was also now sitting up, placed her finger over her lips and fixed me in a glare that told me to keep very still.
The
