Honey on the Page by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FOR028000 Foreign Language Study / Yiddish, JUV033020 Juvenile Fiction / Religious / Jewish
Publisher: NYU Press

Chapter 11

The Great Synagogue was packed when Guttmann brought in his sleeping son. Erik ran over to him, in order to help lay down the “sleeping package” comfortably on a bench.

“I see, Herr Guttmann, that you pulled off your ‘kidnapping,’” he smiled at the father. “Snatching a child doesn’t always work. . . .”

“I needed it to work, Erik! We have to save him from the great danger that’s hanging over all of us. . . .”

Guttmann turned his face away, so Erik wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

Erik noticed everything, but he pretended to be absorbed in his record book, where he was recording the names and the histories of the children being entrusted to him.

“So, Herr Guttmann, now is the time to write down your son’s history. We need to know everything so that we can find each other after the war. . . .”

“If that’s the case, Erik, then write down that my son’s Jewish name is Jacob and that I named him after my grandfather, of blessed memory, Reb Jacob Guttmann of Frankfurt-am-Main.”

“Reb Jacob Guttmann was your grandfather, Herr Guttmann?!” cried Erik with great surprise, and again he offered the father his hand to shake.

“So that means that Stefek is a great-grandson of that distinguished Jew, whose name entered into the history of German Jewry? You may be sure that I will take care of Stefek, just as if he were my own child!”

“As long as you’re writing, Erik, write also that my father, of blessed memory, Reb Joseph Guttmann, was also a learned Jew and a generous benefactor who walked in the footsteps of his father, Reb Jacob Guttmann, in this regard. . . . And if it interests you, I myself have also looked into the finer points of the law, even once I was a university student in Paris. . . . But I must tell you the truth: alas, my son doesn’t even know the Hebrew alphabet. . . . His mother and grandfather wanted him to grow up as a true Pole. . . .”

Erik wrote down all of this in his record book. As he finished writing, there was starting to be a lot of movement in the synagogue. Men, women, and children began to push toward the doors.

Erik wanted to help Guttmann carry his sleeping son to one of the wagons, but Guttmann wouldn’t allow it. This time he wanted to feel the “sweet burden” by himself, with all his limbs. . . .

He carried his son out and lay him down in a wagon. He remained standing in the middle of the street, until that wagon moved and until all the wagons and pedestrians had passed by.

And when the street in front of the synagogue was empty, he stood there still, murmuring to himself, “As long as my son is saved . . . nobody need worry about me. . . .”

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