IF I FORGET THEE

Some time between March 1942

and June 1943 a farmer –

working a field beside the railway

from Kracow to the extermination camp

at Belzec – finds a manuscript. He guesses

that it has been thrown from one of the trains,

and, knowing who would be travelling

in the cattle trucks, guesses that the language

the manuscript is written in is Hebrew.

There is a covering note in Polish:

‘Pious soul, this is a man’s life’s work.

Give into good hands’. He keeps it hidden

until the war is over. In June

1945 he travels to Warsaw, through the chaos,

thinking that if there were any Jews left

in Poland they would be there – and he might

find the good hands the stranger asked for.

One of the few buildings still intact

in the city is Hotel Polonia,

where the British Embassy is based.

The farmer waits in the busy foyer.

Eventually he sees two young men

who look Jewish, and approaches them.

One of the men – Rafael Scharf – is a sergeant

in the British Army’s Intelligence Corps.

He was in Norway interviewing

German POWs when he learned

that his mother is still alive in Krakow.

He is blagging his way across Northern Europe

in a jeep to rescue her and has stopped

at the Embassy for more petrol coupons.

The other young man is an old school friend,

returned from Palestine to search for

any surviving family members.

‘You are Jews?’ the farmer asks in Polish.

‘Indeed we are!’ reply the two young men.

He gives them the manuscript, pages

in fading ink from an exercise book.

They instantly recognise the writing.

It is their Hebrew teacher’s, Ben-zion

Rappaport: much respected, admired, loved.

The book – its English title ‘Nature

and Spirit’- is a collection of

essays: Rappaport’s views on Hegel, Kant,

Schopenhauer, scientific method, ethics,

and religion. His two ex-students

in time find a publisher in Israel.

Scharf told the story: ‘The pity, horror

and the irony of it all’. Though he was,

like so many exiles, a remembrancer,

he did not mention the farmer’s name.