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.
By David Selzer