It is a sunny Saturday morning on the terrace of a smart café in the centre of Curitiba. Fernando introduces me to his friend, Josef. “He speaks English and Ukrainian and he´s a Jew,” he says jovially. Later, when I hear that his mother spoke only Yiddish and recall that he speaks Ukrainian, I ask Josef if he was born in Brazil. No, he was born in a small town on the Polish-Ukrainian border: in 1936. I reflect for a moment on the implications of what he has said. “So, you are lucky to be here,” I say cautiously. He nods, “Yes, all my family survived, “ he says.
The Germans invaded Poland in 1939, and eventually, the Gestapo started murdering and deporting Jews from their town. Knowing very well what would happen to them all if they were caught, some members of a Czech-speaking community hid him, his father, mother and brother and fourteen other Jews – men, women and children – in a pit behind and partly under, some pig-sties at their farm.
For two years, they ate raw potatoes and vegetables from the fields and the best bits of the pig-food. They all survived somehow, and when the Russians drove the Germans out of Poland in 1944/45, they managed to escape from the Red Army and walk to Italy. After two years in Italy, they emigrated to Brazil (not Israel, oddly enough) and arrived in Curitiba totally penniless..
Once in Curitiba, the Jewish community helped Josef´s parents to find a room, but they had no money and no work and of course, spoke no Portuguese. . His father pleaded with a Jewish shopkeeper to let him have some new clothes on credit, so that he could try to earn some money by selling them from door to door.
Speaking hardly any Portuguese, Josef´s father worked from 7 am to 8 pm, hauling two suitcases around the streets and knocking on doors. But he managed to sell the clothes at a small profit. After 6 months, he was able to hire a boy to carry the cases. After a year he was able to buy a horse and cart. People asked to pay on credit, so much a week for a suit or a dress and that added to the profits. By the early 1950s, he was making enough money to buy a 1929 Ford, and was on the way to being another successful Jewish entrepreneur. who had started with nothing
Now, in his early seventies, Josef sits in the Autumn sun in a pavement café and remembers his extraordinary childhood. His mother spoke only Yiddish but he speaks six or seven languages, well enough: Portuguese, Ukrainian, Polish, some Czech, English, German, Spanish and French.
He says that the Czechs are very good people. His parents tried to keep in touch with the family who had taken such appalling risks to save them from the gas-chambers. As soon as they could, they contacted their rescuers, who were now living under communism. Knowing that life was very hard in Eastern Europe, they sent food parcels to their saviours, but months later, the parcels were returned and they were begged not to make trouble for their friends.
Decades later, when it was possible to communicate safely, they learnt that the Czech couple had died, leaving two sons. One son had died of cancer and the other never married. Soon he too died, and there are now no surviving members of that heroic family.
I tell Josef that I remember having to sleep in the cellar of our house when the Germans were bombing British cities in 1940 – 41. But, it was our cellar, under our house. The walls were whitewashed, and we had plenty of blankets. We even had a carpet and some chairs, though I can´t remember any beds. It was about 3 Metres by 3 metres. Instead of pigs we were next to our supplies of coal, apples were stored in boxes, and there were stacks of tinned food. After the All Clear siren wailed we all trooped back upstairs to our beds. “Anyone want a cup of cocoa and a biscuit? “
So even though the circumstances were very different, we have both spent part of our childhood hiding underground and here we are, sitting in the Brazilian sunshine, looking fondly at each other. He gets up to leave, “If you ever want anything”, he says, “give me a call.” We embrace and he strolls off to lunch with Fernando.
