Monday, January 17, 2011

The Holocaust Survivor

When I was in eighth grade, a Holocaust Survivor spoke to our social studies class. I didn't want him there. I was one of the only Jewish kids at my school, the only Jew in the social studies class, and I didn't want anything to make me stand out. My friends were at my bar mitzvah, so they knew I was Jewish, but they thought it just meant the big party when I had turned 13. I didn't want them to associate me with the Holocaust, to see me as a victim. One blow like that could knock me from the bottom rungs of the cool to which I desperately clung, mostly by being funny, down to the status of loser.
I worried that the survivor would be dressed all in black, like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. Fortunately, Mr. Schwartz was dressed normally, at least for an old man—khaki pants up to his chest, button-down shirt, loafers, and a big shiny gold belt buckle. He was old and fat; his leathery skin hung in folds. Fortunately, his accent was only slight. We were respectfully quiet, mostly because Miss Hanson, our teacher, stood at his side, her arms crossed, her lips a thin line.
“I'm here today to show you what bullying leads to,” Mr. Schwartz said.
My heart skipped a beat, afraid that my classmates were going to find out what some old people at my temple said about Gentiles—that they were all anti-Semites.
Mr. Schwartz stretched out his fingers and dramatically unbuttoned his cuff, then folded it upward like a magician showing us he had nothing up his sleeve. He pulled his sagging skin taught so we could make out the blue numbers on his forearm. It reminded e of what my mother said about tattoos. Her greatest fear was that I would someday get one. To prevent this, she tried to frighten me by saying that the beautiful mermaid tattoo you get when you're young will wrinkle up and look like a sea witch when you're old—Ariel becomes Ursula.
Mr. Schwartz told us about his childhood in Romania.
“When I was your age, we didn't have any television or video games,” he said jocularly. “We had to entertain ourselves by singing songs or playing practical jokes.”
I could tell he was trying to get us to like him, but it wasn't going to work. After his bullying comment, comparing us students to Nazis, he had lost us. We knew this was a lecture; we were presumed to be bad, perhaps evil.
He didn't even tell us what practical jokes were played.
“The Nazis invaded,” he said. “Then they passed anti-Semitic laws.”
Jews weren't allowed in the park; they had to stay home. They couldn't sing loudly, lest the Nazis patrolling the streets hear them. Mr. Schwartz didn't mention what effect the house arrest had on their ability to play practical jokes. Nobody asked.
He told us about how the Nazis shipped his family and him off in a train. In my peripheral vision, I could feel the other kids glancing at my face to get my reaction. I didn't turn my head, afraid I would make eye contact with someone, who would then keep staring. I was certain they were imagining me crammed shoulder-to-shoulder inside a cattle car, unable to move, no food, no water, no bathroom.
When the Jews arrived at Auschwitz, they were all lined up in front of the camp. Mr. Schwartz's parents and siblings were too weak to work, so they were sent to the left. Mr. Schwartz was sent to the right, and there he received his tattoo. I felt the other kids glancing at my bare wrist.
Suddenly, a horrible stench his me. Somebody farted. It was a bad one—a silent-but-deadly. I recognized the swampy, moldy smell as belonging to Shawn, the fat kid who sat next to me in the back row. I covered my mouth and squeezed my nostrils shut. The other kids in the back of the classroom covered their noses too. A small grin spread on Shawn's face.
The window needed to be opened. It was December and freezing outside; opening the window would let the heat out, but it would let the fart out too. But to open the window, I would have to ask for permission. Miss Hanson stood at the side of her desk with her arms crossed, ready to kill anyone who batted an eyelash the wrong way, and now was a bad time to interrupt Mr. Schwartz. His voice low and hushed, he was describing what happened to those sent to the left—to his parents, brother, and sister.
“They died from the gas,” he said.
An image popped into my head of every kid in our class sprawled on the classroom floor, limbs strewn haphazardly, dead from Shawn's fart. I started to laugh. I couldn't help it.
I was horrified at myself for laughing at such a serious moment. I pressed my hands to my face to hold in the laughter, but it spilled through my fingers. Spasms of hilarity shook my whole body. I didn't look, but I was sure the other kids were staring at me. Miss Hanson would kill me. I had never been sent to the principal's office before, but would be now. The principal would call my parents, who would send me to military school.
I tried to think of the least-funny thing possible. I began conjugating Spanish verbs in my head. It managed to settle down the laughter, but then when I peered through my splayed fingers, I made eye contact with another boy, who was also barely able to contain his laughter. I wasn't the only one to connect the fart with the gas chamber. Seeing each other sharing the joke caused us both to break into fresh paroxysms of laughter. Most of the boys were now giggling uncontrollably; we almost fell out of our chairs. The girls shook their heads and frowned. Miss Hanson looked livid with anger, steam almost shooting out of her ears.
Mr. Schwartz slammed his fist on Miss Hanson's desk, rattling her mug of pencils.
“You think it's funny?!” he screamed, his voice shaking the window panes. “How would you like it if I murdered your entire family and stuck you in a prison?!”
Terrified at his yelling, we immediately stopped laughing.
Mr. Schwartz's eyes twitched and a vein throbbed through his wrinkly neck.
“You're the Hitler Youth!” he screamed. “If you were in Germany then instead of America now, you would—“
Suddenly his face contorted.
“Oh God!” he gagged. “What is that smell?!”
This started us laughing uncontrollably again.
“Who did this?!” Mr. Schwartz screamed, with such fury that we became silent in mid-laugh. He pressed his nostrils shut with his fingers, so when he spoke, it was a nasally quack, but we didn't dare laugh. “You think this is funny?!” he quacked furiously. “I'm talking about the Holocaust and you're farting?! Who was it?!” His eyes scanned us to find the guilty party.
I didn't want to be a tattle tale. Neither did the other kids. We all kept our eyes down, no one glancing at the culprit.
“Shawn,” Miss Hanson said. “Remember the talk we had? About not in class?”
Mr. Schwartz released his nose, wiped his fingers on his shirt, and glared at Shawn.
“See a doctor,” he said. “No healthy person can make such a smell.”
Then Mr. Schwartz went to the window and opened it. Cold December air and snowflakes whooshed in.
“You're the Hitler Youth!” he berated us. “You can think of yourselves as good people because you live in affluent America, but if you lived in Germany, you would have been Nazis. You're just like the Polish who laughed as Jews were marched past to the death camps.”
Every kid in the class got quiet and small, the freezing up that is a kid's only defense against an irate grownup; moving a muscle or shifting a gaze might provoke him, and his fury would home in on that unfortunate individual who shifted his eyes. Even Miss Hanson looked afraid to interrupt him. She stayed standing next to her desk, surveying the scene as though it were a traffic accident.
Now I understood why some people hated Jews. If any of my classmates grew up and joined the Ku Klux Klan, I would know why.
“You don't understand the lesson of the Holocaust,” Mr. Schwartz continued. “You're just going to repeat it.”
I wanted to prove to my classmates that I was on their side, not Mr. Schwartz's. I didn't consider them potential Nazis or guilty for the Holocaust. I was one of them, not one of Mr. Schwartz's people.
“I know the lesson of the Holocaust,” I said.
“Raise your hand,” Miss Hanson said.
I raised my hand.
“Well?” Mr. Schwartz said. “What's the lesson of the Holocaust?”
“The lesson of the Holocaust is that we shouldn't get tattoos,” I said. “They might look cool now, but when we get old, they'll wrinkle up and look terrible.”
The boys laughed. So did a few girls. This time, no one bothered to cover his mouth or try to stop laughing. A vein in Mr. Schwartz's forehead seemed about to pop. His face burned red and he narrowed his eyes at me. I thought he was going to hit me, but then his eyes filled with tears and he bit his lip. He rolled down his sleeve, buttoned the cuff, and stormed out of the classroom, slamming the door behind him. My classmates were still laughing.
“Shut up!” Miss Hanson screamed.
The class became quite. We had never heard her tell us to “shut up” before.
She turned to me, her eyes full of fury.
“Principal's office! Now!”
I walked out of the silent classroom, looking penitent on the outside but feeling thrilled inside. I should have felt terrified by my impending meeting with the principal, but I wasn't. I knew I would be a hero to the other boys, at least for the next few days.

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