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  One summer, Szolem came to Warsaw with his bride, Aunt Gladys. They could not stay with us because Léon and I were quarantined with scarlet fever—the sole childhood affliction Mother had failed to shelter us from. I have a memory of them—or perhaps only Szolem—looking at us from a distance while Léon and I were engaged in a joyful pillow fight. The earliest date would have been the summer of 1927. In 1929, we were two healthy boys spending the summer in the park.

  (Illustration Credit 2.2)

  First Stage of a Rather Peculiar Education

  Achieving fluency in reading and writing came early and painlessly and left no memory. Polish spelling is supposed to be phonetic and easy, but of course is not; yet I don’t recall any problem. My next recollection bears a built-in date. I can see myself starting a letter by writing “January 1929,” then realizing that the new year had come and gone and changing “1929” to “1930.” I was five years and a few weeks old, far too young for school. Even today, I still sometimes begin a date with “19” instead of “20.”

  That letter was not written at home, and the error was pointed out by sweet and cultured Uncle Loterman. Starting early, and until I went to real school in the third grade, Uncle tutored me in the apartment where I was born and where that momentous dinner party was held in 1930. Officially, Mother feared epidemics. I am sure that Uncle was paid, and it may be that Mother sent me to public school when our money ran low.

  A loving tutor is wonderful, but Uncle’s lack of experience, organization, and teaching technique marked me for life. He was a chronically unemployed intellectual who—unlike other men we knew—did not escape idleness by earning several useless doctorates. He despised rote learning, including even the alphabet and multiplication tables; both cause me mild trouble to this day. However, small countries breed broad curiosity. He made me a skilled speed-reader. We discussed my readings, and—alas—the current events were seldom boring. He told stories from antiquity and trained my mind in an independent and creative way. We played chess constantly. Maps filled his household, like Father’s, and I read and memorized them. Certainly, these experiences did no harm. For as long as I can recall, I have viewed dates and numbers as aligned over an endless mental line. Who knows, it may be that the chess and the maps helped me develop the geometric intuition that was to be my most important intellectual tool when I became a scientist.

  This tutoring was to be the first stage of a peculiar education that was pushed here and there by the catastrophes of the century, alternating chaotically between short periods of relative “normalcy” and long ones of disorder. I became proficient at some things, but in many formal ways I remained extremely underschooled, both in class and in real life. Fortunately, the gaps in my formal education proved less deadly than feared.

  The Second Polish Republic, an Early History Lesson

  My family and friends took it for granted that events both past and present could have serious and immediate effects. Therefore, historic events were continually discussed, and I listened all the time, organizing everything in my mind. Today’s small Lithuania was at one point a major Catholic imperial power that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, through western Ukraine. In the Middle Ages, a dynastic union joined and partly merged the large Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the smaller Kingdom of Poland—two Catholic bulwarks against Eastern Orthodoxy. Somewhat later, the union called itself a commonwealth under a king elected by unanimous vote of the gentry. A single nobleman could derail the vote, and candidates to the throne needed deep pockets. So, many Polish kings were Hungarians, Saxons, or Swedes.

  A king of Poland and Sweden replaced the old capitals of Cracow and Vilnius with Warsaw, then a small harbor at the highest point on the Vistula River that was accessible to seagoing vessels. By European standards, Warsaw—like Berlin and Madrid—has a short history and, thus, few historical landmarks.

  The Polish Commonwealth lasted longer than expected. But in 1772, again in 1793, and thoroughly in 1795, it imploded—without military conquest—and was partitioned among the three empires along its borders. To the east, the few previously established Russian Jews—including a small number of protected merchants of the first guild—were joined by masses of former Polish Jews who somehow threatened the czars. Therefore, the prepartitioned eastern border of the Polish Commonwealth survived until 1917 as the eastern limit of the Pale of Settlement, where Jews could legally reside. Russian anti-Semitism arose only after Poland imploded.

  After the Allies defeated Germany and Austria in 1918, and then Trotsky’s Bolshevik army in 1920, Poland regained independence, with expanded and nonhistorical frontiers. For these and other truly unavoidable reasons, Polish history from 1919 to 1939 was rough. Its western frontier reached the sea via a corridor splitting Germany. In its eastern lands the upper class was largely Polish, while most inhabitants were hostile Lithuanians, Byelorussians, or Ukrainians. Completely alienated Gypsies were very visible in their typically colorful clothing. Altogether, the new Polish citizens hardly knew one another. The ethnic Poles, especially the relatively spoiled former Hapsburg subjects in the south, were disappointed that unity brought no harmony.

  Last but not least, as far as we were concerned, Poland had been destroyed by Asian invasions and found itself without a middle class, so Germans—both Christians and Jews—were invited. In the 1920s, about 10 percent of the residents of Poland were middle- and lower-class Jews. Some continued to wear medieval caftans in diverse styles proclaiming their sect.

  After Polish reunification, around 1920, Ignacy Paderewski, the famous Chopin pianist and short-term president of Poland, officially declared Jews the sole cause of every economic and social ill. This was the Second Polish Republic we came to know.

  Unemployment was widespread, especially after the Depression hit, and lasted until the war. Emigration was high. Ethnic Polish peasants rapidly became French miners. Father’s youngest sister, Regina, married a man who shepherded trainfuls of Jews from shtetls straight to Bremerhaven and then to steerage in waiting steamers headed for the United States. His plan to take the last ship himself was foiled when the United States set a tiny quota from Poland.

  Ferocious nation-building was turned on its head. Earlier attempts over a hundred years had tried to transform a hodgepodge of underdogs into proper Russians, Austrians, or Germans. These were replaced by efforts to see them either leave or become Poles. One day, my elementary school teacher received orders to read aloud an official statement, which became part of our textbook. “Poland is a happy multinational country where all the ethnic problems of the past have been solved.” She then looked at the class and—in effect—winked. We all knew what she meant.

  Neither Poland nor its diverse citizens managed very well. Hardly any country managed—or manages—much better. Ethnic cleansing was tried and did not work. Since diversity cannot be avoided, one may as well like it (as I came to) or at least learn to live with it.

  Polish Elementary Schools

  In 1919, a burning desire to reestablish lost national unity led Poland to build a strong system of compulsory elementary education. In Warsaw, the schools were segregated by religion—programs were identical except for special lectures by a priest or rabbi. The Jewish schools did not teach Hebrew, which I “studied” at home unsystematically, and therefore never learned.

  While exceptions to segregation were rare, the new Polish educational system that was set up by intellectuals and influenced by fashion and dogma ruled that a child should not be humiliated. Hence, after illness held Léon back for a year, he was transferred to the nearest public school, which happened to be for Catholics.

  Poor and rushed, the ambitious authorities took all kinds of shortcuts in converting available space. My Public School 24 for Boys linked together two apartments on a rather high floor (I seem to remember the sixth) of a walk-up that filled a whole block above a smelly wholesale fish market. Class sizes had to fit room sizes. One room with no desks was used for breaks that classes wer
e forced to take in turns.

  (Illustration Credit 2.3)

  The new Polish education viewed the teacher as a surrogate parent, so the same person taught everything except religion and gym and was “promoted” every year with her class. After that class graduated, the teacher was then “demoted” to the first grade. The four years I spent in the class of Mrs. Goldszlakowa were one of the “normal” periods in my schooling, which alternated with highly “abnormal” ones. They were a breeze, a pleasant experience that left few memorable impressions.

  Long Summer in Belarus

  At age ten, I spent an unforgettably exotic summer in an area that was then eastern Poland and is now near the center of independent Belarus. Soon after my arrival, I was warned sternly, “Watch out. If you walk toward the sunrise, you will soon reach a big wooden wall interrupted by mirador towers, with clear shooting lines. Keep away. Sometimes there are soldiers in the miradors, and they shoot without asking.” So I had a first glimpse of the feared Soviet Union from across a calm meadow that had been casually split by Western diplomats and Soviet commissars. I kept away.

  The ukases (laws) of imperial Russia began with “We, Czar of all Russias, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland …” One czar ruled over three distinct Russias. The Byelorussian language was also called White Russian (no relation to the Russians who fought under the white imperial flag and lost the civil war against the Red Russian Communists) and was fairly close to Polish, my native and at that time only tongue. It was even closer to Little Russian, now called Ukrainian, and to the standard Great Russian that Mother (a Russian university graduate) spoke with some reliable friends when the Polish language police were not listening.

  Belarus had once been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It merged with Poland and then became part of the Russian Empire. The 1921 Treaty of Riga divided it and Ukraine between Poland and the Soviet Union, leaving Minsk, the capital, barely to the east of the border. Today, with some reluctance and for the first time in history, it is an independent country.

  Its meandering rivers and deep marshes are an obstacle to both conquest and progress. My summer there was spent in a hamlet of a few farms on more or less flat land, with a bridge and water mill on a small river. The hamlet’s Polish name was written “Połoczanka” and pronounced “Powotchanka.” The nearest little town was called Raków, pronounced “Rakoov.” A map from the wonderful collection at Yale’s library shows it at the very edge of the world, the meeting point of two then-Polish provinces and Soviet Byelorussia.

  My generous hostess was a Mrs. Goldberg, whose sister, Mrs. Wigdorczyk, was Mother’s best friend in Warsaw. This made it a safe escape from the city’s summer heat and dirt. Mr. Wigdorczyk was going east on business and made a detour to escort me. Why did Léon not come? I don’t recall.

  Up to Wilno, the modern Paris-Leningrad train used the standard-gauge tracks of Western Europe and America. In Wilno, we transferred to a nineteenth-century wide-gauge Russian relic filled with big old-looking women carrying big heavy bundles. The map showed tracks continuing to the Soviet border, then to Minsk and beyond, but at that time passenger traffic terminated in Mołodeczno. There, the tiny remainder of Napoléon’s Grande Armée that had escaped from Moscow in 1812 was hit by the lowest temperatures (–30°C) of that thoughtless adventure—as I noted years later on Minard’s classic graph of its thinning ranks.

  A horse cart waiting for us represented an exotic world, familiar from illustrations in old Russian novels. We drove on and on, deeper and deeper into the forest and—so I felt—the past. Finally, we reached a real old-style izba, or cottage, also like in those novels: very low ceiling and thatched roof, half buried underground, tiny and few windows to protect against the harsh weather. An enameled plaque like a city street sign gave the farm’s number (I still remember it was 24), the tenant’s name, and the date he moved in.

  Most locals spoke Yiddish, Byelorussian, or both. For a speaker of Polish, basic Byelorussian was not hard to learn, so I could describe to everyone the wonders of Warsaw and also follow local gossip. The farm belonged to a Polish aristocrat, the “little count,” who was rumored to own one hundred farms and live in Warsaw. Mr. Goldberg was literate, and to some extent he acted as “his” count’s representative.

  Having been told that we had driven forty versts from Mołodeczno, the little nerd I was could at long last find out the real length of a verst in meters. Schoolbooks said “about a kilometer” for good reason, one that the locals soon explained to me. Given the nature of the roads, there was a summer verst and a winter verst. Both measured time, appropriately so. Like in the Wild West of the United States, one might be stuck in a rut for a long time, so one began travel by choosing a rut carefully.

  At different times, the dusty hamlet square filled with farm animals moving around without becoming lost. A young bullock and a cow taught me about the birds and the bees. Equally vivid in my memory is a fellow who moved from farm to farm to neuter the piglets. No anesthesia, no protection against germs during or after, just a sharp knife moving quickly and firmly and screaming animals running back to their mud hole. A dentist’s son could only be fascinated and horrified.

  Soon I could satisfy a burning curiosity. I approached a neighbor sitting barefoot on a stone wall and managed to ask him, “Why is it that you have no toes?” “Because I am old.” “But so is my mother, and she has toes.” “And my feet have frozen several times, and my toes fell off.” His daughter, also ten, was my friend, so how old could he be?

  The only continually exciting spot in the hamlet was the small water mill over a depth of about one yard of water, and the only native Polish speaker was Jósef the miller. Northern France and southern England had perfected that technology during the twelfth century, but in Połoczanka a technical expert from far away was needed.

  To my surprise, that mill was not crushing grain but “fulling” wool, an activity that few have heard of, though its past importance throughout Europe is reflected in the common surname Fuller. When snowbound during the winter, the farmers spun their sheep’s wool into a rough thread, then wove it into cloth with a loose square weave. This cloth was put into hot water with a basic black or brown dye. Ratchets attached to the wheel of the mill moved big wooden blocks up and then allowed them to hammer down on the cloth.

  Near a wooden bridge a bit upstream from the mill, the road was falling apart. I remember my excitement when the bridge approaches were rebuilt.

  The miller’s girlfriend was a maid on a farm, and I was their confidential messenger back and forth. I once asked if she was happy to live in Poland instead of Russia. She responded, “Not at all!” “Why so?” “Because on Sundays the Catholic procession crosses Raków ahead of the Russian Orthodox procession. In Russia, the Orthodox worshipers are not humiliated in this fashion.” In fact, our family in Warsaw knew that the popes were harshly persecuted by Stalin, but—though she lived only a short walk from that big wooden wall—she had no idea. When her Byelorussian parents found out she was involved with a “foreigner,” they took her back in a rush to be married properly.

  When not playing with urchins in the dust, I was roaming the fields and the forests in search of wild mushrooms.

  The Goldbergs did not dare let me return to Warsaw alone, so I was still hanging around when the time came to harvest rye (wheat would not grow there). I offered to help, but it was Jewish New Year and the neighbors only allowed me to watch. A long line of stooped women from a number of farms moved across the field. Scythes were either not known or worthless on the rough ground. The sickles they used instead explained the Soviet emblem: the crossed sickle and hammer symbolized exploited farmers and workers. Men followed, pulling the rye into big bundles, then other women gathered grains that had been dropped. If one stood far enough away not to smell the sweat, it made for an idyllic postcard scene straight out of the biblical story of Ruth!

  At long last, the Goldbergs selected a young woman about to leave Raków for a pioneer sc
hool in Warsaw, on her way to a colony in Palestine. She agreed to accompany me to Warsaw. We took the slow night train to Wilno. The platform we waited on for the morning train to Warsaw was almost like home for me, but she felt lost and homesick and I had to reassure her. A telegraph boy passed by carrying on his chest a box that served as a movable desk; she stopped him and paid for a wire to inform Mother I was coming. A reader and knowledgeable city boy, I was familiar with telegraphic style and insisted that Mother would understand if the telegram said “1600.” But she wanted something foolproof and dictated: “I shall arrive in Warsaw at 4 p.m. Please come. Love. Your son.” She was older and it was her money; how could I resist!

  On arrival at the big, noisy station in Warsaw, the young woman was in full meltdown. But that stage of her ordeal was almost over: Mother was there, arranged for a droshky (a horse-drawn taxi) to take her to school, then took me home. Połoczanka itself seems not to have survived the war. What happened to my friends there?

  Prisoners in Their Own Country Dream of Escape

  In 1930s Warsaw, the Depression was terrible and the already bad ethnic and political strife was getting worse. My rational and decisive parents closely followed events in Germany and Russia and concluded that our prospects of happiness in Poland were grim.

  Around age ten—like in Paris around age twenty—I lived through a period of loud ideological activity, rife with demagogues proposing all kinds of radical solutions, magic bullets that could not miss. A child cannot make life decisions, but I knew how to listen and watch. I am sure that my choices later on were profoundly influenced by my family’s attitudes and the steps they either took or did not take.