It was the winter of 1921 when I last cried. I had a fight with another kid in the street over a piece of bread that the other kid had stolen from me. I wanted it back, and the kid hit me. It was turning into a brawl in the street when my father came down from the balcony. He tried to drag me away, but I wouldn’t go away, wanting my right to be taken away from that kid. My father slapped me and tore me away back to our house. I cried all the way. My ten-year-old mind didn’t understand why I was being punished for wanting what was mine to begin with. I was mad at my father and that kid too.
Later that evening, when my father came back, he patted my head and gave me a box. It was an old toy train with a small twisted track. He knew how much I loved watching the steam engines roll in at Lattenkamp station on my way back from school every day. The sound of the trains arriving and the angry steam that came out of the funnel as the train stopped was music to my ears. I was over the moon to get that toy train. My mother seemed to be arguing with my dad over something, but I was just too busy playing with the train. Ah, childhood. The naïve mind of mine was a bliss I can never forget. Little did I know that my father had spent his savings to get me that toy and my mother was furious about it.
We lived in Winterhude, a quarter in the borough Hamburg-Nord of Hamburg until my father moved to Berlin in 1925. It had been six years since the war, and Germany was still recovering from it. There weren’t many jobs, and my father had to work for meager wages in a coal factory. I was fourteen by then and was turning out to be a very angry teenager. I was a quiet kid and kept to myself. I still hadn’t forgotten the bread incident. That small incident had taught me how cruel and unfair things can be and that made me angry. Angry at this world and whoever made it like that. I had decided that day never to cry again, ever.
I had fallen sick as soon as we moved to Berlin, and my family didn’t have enough money to take me to a doctor. My mother would sit by my bed and cry, praying to God for my life. I was in pain, but I kept it to myself. I didn’t want to see her so helpless, so I would pretend that I was feeling better and that she didn’t need to worry about me. In the end, I survived. I don’t know if God had heard her or maybe I was just plain lucky, but I survived.
In the summer of 1930 my father died after a prolonged illness. They said it was the lungs that gave away from all the smoking he did. My mother followed within a year, and I was left by myself. I didn’t cry at their funerals either. I tried to but I just couldn’t. I blankly stared at people that did the burials. Even a reality as severe as death didn’t make me break my cold heart. I was left alone in this world. I took a job at the train station and saved money till I had enough to leave this cursed city. I hated Berlin. Berlin had taken away everything I had, and the world still went on. How could it be? But then I knew the world was unfair, and hence the one who created it was too.
I left Berlin and moved to Kraków, Poland in 1937. It was a relief. I led a quiet life there, working at a toy factory near the Vistula river. I used to spend my evenings alone sitting by the side as the river quietly flowed ahead to its destination. and then… The war broke out. Germany attacked Poland and Kraków was no exception. The horrors of war unfolded in front of my eyes as Hitler’s forces tore through the country. Kraków became the capital of Germany’s General Government The Jewish population of the city was moved into a walled zone known as the Kraków Ghetto, from which they were sent to extermination camps such as Auschwitz and the Nazi concentration camps like Płaszów.
I tried to run away from it, but Berlin had followed me. It was like as if our destinies were tied together. Soldiers came to our factory too, to sort out all the Jewish workers and send them to Auschwitz while I was allowed to stay with all the other non-Jews. Suddenly I felt like the kid that had stolen the piece of bread from me. It felt unfair and yet I felt as if I was part of it all. I would dream of myself laughing at me with a piece of bread in my hand, and I would wake up all covered in sweat in the coldest of nights. There it was, another reason, to hate, to question the fairness of it all. I had no answers that convinced me otherwise. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives. For what? Sadly, again, life went on about its business as usual as the war ended in 1945. Death seemed the only fact in this world. I still didn’t cry. Wars came and went. Lives taken, people slaughtered. My heart had turned to stone, or it seemed the world didn’t care.
It was the summer of 1956 when I heard some noise outside on the street. I went outside to find my own son fighting with another kid. The other kid was complaining that my son had taken his bar of chocolate and that it belonged to him, and my son hit him. The little kid cried. It took me 35 years back. The same scene flashed before my eyes. I went to my kid and took the bar from him. He looked scared, just like a child would be on being caught red-handed doing something wrong. I gave the bar to the other kid and wrapped my arms around him. He looked at me with tear filled eyes as he took the bar from me.
I cried that day.
