The Elders of Komionka
by
GEROLD FRANK
I WONDER if they are still waiting for a reply from me, the Jewish elders of Komionka?
We came there one cold spring morning by horse and cart from Skidel, which is a one-minute stop on the Warsaw-Wilno line, and we came to visit grandparents we had never seen.
They told us we were the third
American couple to set foot in the village in the last fifty years; we could
well believe it. Two lonely, rutted roads in the heart of
There are no doctors in Komionka. The child born gasping dies; the child born crippled limps through life. No man can tell a child's age in Komionka, for girls who appear to be twelve may be eighteen, and boys who look six may be ten. One talks of bread, not vitamins. Now and then the government tax appraiser comes, and since all Jews are rich, the cobbler and the cigarette dealer know his stamp. They feel the very metal in their flesh.
In Komionka the children stared at us with wide, dark eyes. They followed us wherever we appeared. If we halted, turning to look at them, they froze in their tracks, panic-stricken, ready to flee. My grandmother would shake her finger at them, crying, "Go back! Go back! You foolish children you, what do you want?" But when we turned and went on, they came to life again, scrambling after us hastily, whispering and giggling, the crippled bobbing grotesquely in their eagerness, the tiniest ones falling as they ran—a fantastic beggar's crew, gaunt and wizened little people in rags and cast-off clothes patched and patched again.
The older people grew tongue-tied in our presence. Or else their reticence fell away, their eyes filled, and they wept .What of her son, her prosperous son in New York, asked this old, barefooted woman; why had he forgotten? This aged man with white, patriarchal beard, his eyes blue as a prophet's, his worn prayerbook never out of his hand—he, too, had a daughter in New York. What evil lay in the air of Golden America that made the heart ice and turned the eyes elsewhere?
The night before we left, the Jewish elders called upon us. We were packing, leaving behind us such pathetic possessions as we never expected to leave: a hot-water bag (how much better than a heated rock!), a box of aspirin tablets (with caution as to their use), odds and ends in every traveler's bag—soap and toothpaste and toothbrushes, iodine and laxative tablets, towels and safety pins, every available scrap of cloth and thread. We left behind, too, socks for the men, a little colored box for the children (they played with stones before we came), a sweater, bed sheets—
"We shall cut them up and make shirts of them," exulted an aunt—clothing and money, zloties to buy a cow or pay for a funeral.
While we were packing, my grandmother stole into the room. She plucked timidly at my sleeve. She said apologetically: "A delegation of the men of the village are here.
I told them you were busy but they beg you to receive them, if only for a word."
For a moment I did not know what to do. "What can I say to them?" I asked. "If they want money we have none to give. What can I tell them?"
My grandmother shook her head. "But only talk to them", she pleaded. "It will mean so much to them."
We walked into the low-hanging kitchen. The lamp had been placed on the heavy wooden table, and the men—there were perhaps a dozen, standing stiffly, bareheaded, each with his cap in his hand –loomed before us. They were tall, and in that room they seemed to tower. Somewhere I had seen this all before—medieval, strange, memorable.
We shook hands ceremoniously. Then one of the men stepped forward. It is impossible to convey the dignity and color of his words. What he said, in essence, was this:
"We do not seek to impose upon you. We know well that this village of ours has been honored to have visitors from America, and that to your people has come such honor, such grace, as comes to a man but once in a lifetime—to see a son's son from America a guest in his home and under his roof. Because of this visit we shall shine in your brightness until we go to our graves.
"But we learn that you leave us tomorrow, and we ask: Do not the people in America know our lot? Do they not know how we suffer? How hard life comes, and in what groaning and lamentation we draw our breath?"
"We know, we know," I said helplessly. "But—" I stopped.
The spokesman twisted his cap in his hands and looked at the floor, and began again.
"The whole world reads of the misery of our people in Germany, but they forget us here in Poland." His voice was low and labored. "The hate against us is not organized so publicly, but it is here none the less. They choke us and crush us, little by little. We live a slow death. We hold our crusts of bread as if they were gold."
Another raised his voice.
"And our children,"
he said, hesitantly at first, then more firmly. "Who under heaven's eye
will have pity on them? To whom can they turn? Where can they go?
The lamp wick sputtered, and shadows trembled.
"I cannot do much," I said at length. "I am only a tourist, an unimportant man. But I have eyes, and I will tell what I have seen here. Perhaps someone I tell these things to can help."
A murmur of voices and exclamations. "Ah, if he could do anything… if America could know…"
The spokesman voiced their thoughts.
"Yes, yes," he said.
"Only tell our people in
"I promise," I said. "I will do what I can."
"Then we may go," said the spokesman humbly. "We are content. And when you leave us, our deepest prayers and blessings go with you."
Again, ceremoniously, we shook hands all around. They filed carefully out of the room.
The next morning we left.
Shall I write to them? Shall I
say, I have told their story, and it is known? We all know. Three years have
passed since my visit. Do the Jewish elders wait, in the cold, barren, hungry