side.
“
I
don’t feel ready at all,” Atara said.
The girls stared at the unfolding landscape, the row houses, mining shafts, once again painfully aware of the distance between them.
Deaf Hill, Stony Heap
.… What had happened?
Newton Aycliffe, Doncaster
.… They kept silent.
They alighted in London and transferred from King’s Cross station to Charing Cross station, where they waited for the train to Dover. In the crowded waiting area, newspapers crackled as pages turned and folded.
A headline caught Atara’s attention:
ZIONIST OFFICIAL SHOT
Collaborated with Eichmann
Atara was familiar with the Rebbe’s fulminations against Zionists, but this was a secular paper. She nudged Mila. “Look!”
Mila shrugged a shoulder. “What do you expect? Zionists have no morals.”
Atara stepped up to the news kiosk. She stared at the black-and-white photograph under
Collaborated with Eichmann:
boxcars with open doors, people climbing up, down, standing nearby; some in Hasidic garb.
She searched her purse for coins. She looked right and left to make sure no one from her father’s world or from the seminary’s world was there to see her.
“You’re buying a Goyish paper?” Mila asked, alarmed.
Dragging her heavy suitcase, Mila marched toward the train pulling into the station. “I’m not sitting next to you if you’re going to read that,” Mila said when Atara caught up with her.
Atara dragged her suitcase down the narrow center aisle of the coach car, she thanked the man who helped her lift her suitcase onto the luggage rack, took a seat. Once more, she examined the photograph.
The Kasztner Train, Budapest, June 30, 1944
, the caption said.
She started to read. An agent of the Zionist Rescue Mission in Hungary, Rezsö Kasztner, had been accused of collaboration. A long trial in Israel surfaced conflicting accounts. Kasztner considered himself a hero for having the audacity to negotiate with Eichmann in Nazi-occupied Budapest and saving as many as he could, but the court concluded that Kasztner obtained safe passage for a few by agreeing to keep the rest from resisting deportation.
Witnesses who had lost their families in Auschwitz testified that Kasztner’s people circulated fake postcards from Kenyérmezö—the Hungarian breadbasket:
We are resettling. There is food, work
.… Those who heard about the cardsthought: Why flee and endanger anyone’s life? They boarded the cattle cars.
Others testified that Kasztner sent Halutzim, Zionist pioneers, to warn Hungarian communities, but the people would not listen. One woman recalled that in the town of Szatmár, the rabbi, Joel Teitelbaum, threatened to excommunicate the Zionist youth who tried to warn his congregation.
Atara paused. It felt odd to see the name of the Rebbe in a secular paper, a national daily. She stared again at the photograph and suddenly realized where she had seen the image before: in the countless tellings of Mila’s dream.
Open boxcars with Jews in them
.
Atara sprung up, eager to confirm Mila’s version of her mother’s death: There had been a train of open boxcars in Hungary, in the spring of ’44. She stopped—the caption under the photograph mentioned Budapest, but Mila’s parents were fleeing deportations from Kolozvár. And the Rebbe lived in Szatmár. She needed more information before she awakened Mila’s memories, she needed to be sure, she needed the train’s itinerary and the date it departed, she needed a list of passengers.…
In Dover, she caught headlines on a news cart:
KASZTNER IN CRITICAL CONDITION
THE KASZTNER AFFAIR
She rushed down and bought two more papers. Once again, she saw mention of the Satmarer Rebbe. The
prominenten
, thepeople Kasztner had saved, had not come forward to testify in his favor during the eighteen-month trial; they had not wanted to be identified as owing their lives to him.
Kasztner asked for testimony of the grand rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the Rebbe of the Satmar Hasidim, but
“
I
don’t feel ready at all,” Atara said.
The girls stared at the unfolding landscape, the row houses, mining shafts, once again painfully aware of the distance between them.
Deaf Hill, Stony Heap
.… What had happened?
Newton Aycliffe, Doncaster
.… They kept silent.
They alighted in London and transferred from King’s Cross station to Charing Cross station, where they waited for the train to Dover. In the crowded waiting area, newspapers crackled as pages turned and folded.
A headline caught Atara’s attention:
ZIONIST OFFICIAL SHOT
Collaborated with Eichmann
Atara was familiar with the Rebbe’s fulminations against Zionists, but this was a secular paper. She nudged Mila. “Look!”
Mila shrugged a shoulder. “What do you expect? Zionists have no morals.”
Atara stepped up to the news kiosk. She stared at the black-and-white photograph under
Collaborated with Eichmann:
boxcars with open doors, people climbing up, down, standing nearby; some in Hasidic garb.
She searched her purse for coins. She looked right and left to make sure no one from her father’s world or from the seminary’s world was there to see her.
“You’re buying a Goyish paper?” Mila asked, alarmed.
Dragging her heavy suitcase, Mila marched toward the train pulling into the station. “I’m not sitting next to you if you’re going to read that,” Mila said when Atara caught up with her.
Atara dragged her suitcase down the narrow center aisle of the coach car, she thanked the man who helped her lift her suitcase onto the luggage rack, took a seat. Once more, she examined the photograph.
The Kasztner Train, Budapest, June 30, 1944
, the caption said.
She started to read. An agent of the Zionist Rescue Mission in Hungary, Rezsö Kasztner, had been accused of collaboration. A long trial in Israel surfaced conflicting accounts. Kasztner considered himself a hero for having the audacity to negotiate with Eichmann in Nazi-occupied Budapest and saving as many as he could, but the court concluded that Kasztner obtained safe passage for a few by agreeing to keep the rest from resisting deportation.
Witnesses who had lost their families in Auschwitz testified that Kasztner’s people circulated fake postcards from Kenyérmezö—the Hungarian breadbasket:
We are resettling. There is food, work
.… Those who heard about the cardsthought: Why flee and endanger anyone’s life? They boarded the cattle cars.
Others testified that Kasztner sent Halutzim, Zionist pioneers, to warn Hungarian communities, but the people would not listen. One woman recalled that in the town of Szatmár, the rabbi, Joel Teitelbaum, threatened to excommunicate the Zionist youth who tried to warn his congregation.
Atara paused. It felt odd to see the name of the Rebbe in a secular paper, a national daily. She stared again at the photograph and suddenly realized where she had seen the image before: in the countless tellings of Mila’s dream.
Open boxcars with Jews in them
.
Atara sprung up, eager to confirm Mila’s version of her mother’s death: There had been a train of open boxcars in Hungary, in the spring of ’44. She stopped—the caption under the photograph mentioned Budapest, but Mila’s parents were fleeing deportations from Kolozvár. And the Rebbe lived in Szatmár. She needed more information before she awakened Mila’s memories, she needed to be sure, she needed the train’s itinerary and the date it departed, she needed a list of passengers.…
In Dover, she caught headlines on a news cart:
KASZTNER IN CRITICAL CONDITION
THE KASZTNER AFFAIR
She rushed down and bought two more papers. Once again, she saw mention of the Satmarer Rebbe. The
prominenten
, thepeople Kasztner had saved, had not come forward to testify in his favor during the eighteen-month trial; they had not wanted to be identified as owing their lives to him.
Kasztner asked for testimony of the grand rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the Rebbe of the Satmar Hasidim, but
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