Arithmetic of a Classical Philologist
Max Livni grows up.
More and more he leaves religion and leans toward Zionism. Small coins wander from his pocket to the saving box, where money is accumulating to buy land in Palestine.
He still covers his head. He prays mornings and evenings, but it is only make-believe.
He does not want to hurt his parents.
But they probably already suspect what is going on in their son’s head.
“In our family all religious commandments were kept strictly. This is a very limiting life, whatever you want to do, there is a rule that orders you how to. Do you know that a religious Jew has to clip his nails in a certain order? Not one after the other, you start with the first, then the third, the fifth and then only the second and the fourth. An orthodox Jew ties his shoelaces to a specific rule – first you tighten the lace of the right shoe, but do not knot it, then the left, then comes the knot of the right shoe and back to the left. There are thousands of such rules.”
Now, when Max speaks about it, he smiles.
Like a person who escaped from an odd world.
“When I was twelve or thirteen, like every adolescent, I started to doubt. At school we were taught of dinosaurs and fossils and at home that the world is some 5.700 years old. I questioned my father and the rabbi, how that was possible – but their answers did not satisfy me.”
It was decided.
“I decided to go my own way but at the same time I did not want to cause my parents pain.”
Zionism was, for them, unacceptable?
“Absolutely against the spirit of our family. Orthodox Jews believe that a return to Palestine is possible only with the coming of Messiah.”
Max’s father – professor doctor Eugen, in Czech Evzen, Lieben – was a classical philologist. He taught Greek, Latin and Philosophy at the State German “Gymnasium” at Stepanska street.
At the same school about which the author Franz Werfel wrote his famous novel “Class Reunion”.
“I think that he was an extremely nice, humanitarian and very convincing person. After the war I found letters written by his students from all over the world – from London to Johannesburg – and all of them were very warm. They surely liked him,” Max Livni relates.
“Actually, I best liked about my father the following episode: one of his students, who was about to finish his studies asked him: Professor, for so many years now you transmitted to us the highest ideals. Do you believe that it was worthwhile? That you really achieved something?
Father answered: Lets try some arithmetic. I teach for some 25 years, every year three classes with 30 students in each – that makes a total of 2.250 students. I suppose that half of them never listened to my words, that leaves about 1.100 students. Half of them forgot everything after a month, there are still some 550 students. Half of these forgot everything within 10 years – 260. After a further 10 years again half forget – but still there are more than 100 people who remembered something of the highest ideals and keep them forever. That is not a small number, actually – I multiplied myself by 100.”
Prague Localities
Just approximately, looking for empathy, after I awake in myself for a short span of time the feeling or the impression that returned me decades, I walk between houses at which before WWII the Lieben clan lived.
On the second floor of the house At the Three Feathers (look at the sign above the gate), where Tynska street ends, Max’s grandmother Arnostka Liebenova, nee Jeitelesova, lived. “From our apartment we looked into her windows, we talked with each other,” Max remembers.
At Kozi street professor Hugo Lieben lived.
A historian who, at the peak of the slum clearance (to be exact, it was in 1906), participated in the birth of the Prague Jewish Museum. He succeeded to save at least part of the liturgical items from synagogues falling into oblivion.
That was the basis for today’s collections.
Professor Lieben described the museum’s possessions and cared for them for many years. In 1942 – at age 61 – he died. Only a short time before reporting for a transport that would have taken him to ghetto Theresienstadt.
His sons Jan Sam Lieben and Loeb Gabriel Lieben leaned even before the war toward Communism.
For a religious family this was a shock!
In the summer of 1939, both emigrated to England and returned home with the “Western army”. They were not Lieben anymore, but Lomsky. Like many other Jews they changed their name after their experiences with Nazism.
“The first became a surgeon and after the Soviet occupation in 1968 he emigrated with his family to Sweden. The second, younger one, rose in the power hierarchy and reaches the position of district secretary of the Communist party in Plzen. Then came the Slansky trial and Hanus Lomsky was accused in one of the follow-up trials of Zionism, Westerner and who knows what else and sentenced to ten years. After five years they let him out, but he was not allowed to return to Prague. Though – his descendants live in Prague and elsewhere in Bohemia.”
In a noble, Secession era house, adjacent to which stands an identical twin of it, facing an intersection that today is named after the Israeli town Rosh Ha-ayin – lived – an old acquaintance – the physician of the needy, Salomon Lieben with his wife Tsipora. They occupied a whole floor, as was then usual, the waiting room and the physician’s office were part of the doctor’s apartment.
And finally, just beside the church of the Holy Spirit – opposite the Spanish Synagogue, called also temple – lived (after moving there in 1937) the family of Max Lieben. Father, mother and his two brothers.
One of them, Abraham, succeeded to emigrate at the last moment. Until today he is totally orthodox and lives at a religious kibbutz in the Negev desert.
At the Svateho Ducha (holy spirit) the Liebens lived at street level. In the neighboring apartment lived a group of young Jews from various corners of Bohemia. They were preparing to emigrate to Palestine.
They hoped that they would succeed to escape.
To no avail. But they were lucky, they were young and, finally, survived.
Among them was Pavel Fischl. After the war – already in Israel – an actor, dramaturge, author, stage director and finally child psychologist.
But even before that he was the first husband of Jana Krejcarova, later Cerna – the famous Honza, daughter of Milena Jesenska. He got to know her after the war in Burian’s Decko.
The marriage ended in a crash.
Then he, too, succeeded to emigrate to Israel.
He settled here under the name of Gabriel Dagan. But his friends called him always Patya.
Attestation for Max’s brother
Max Lieben, today Mordechai Livni in Kiriat Tivon
Entry Forbidden to Jews!
Here begins the second part of Max Lieben’s life story – who today is Mordechai Livni – on the fate of his Prague family.
On what happened after March 15, 1939.
Of Max Lieben’s family, consisting of almost 50 members, 6 persons survived the war.
Max Lieben himself, the guide in this story.
His brother Abraham, who emigrated to Palestine.
The two Lomsky brothers.
The daughter-in-law of a cousin of Dr. Eugen Lieben, Max’s father.
And Dr. Berthold Jeiteles.
The one who cared for the family prayer room; he survived the war in Theresienstadt. In May 1945 he returned to Prague and waited, he did not believe that all the others died – after the first World War it also took a long time before all returned from captivity.
“Our relatives live somewhere. They will all return,” he said.
In the end he, too, understood.
He emigrated, to stay with his niece in the USA; he died there.
The family that had lived in Prague for centuries, in fact, disappeared.
And though the anti-Semitic spirit awoke already after Munich in 1938, it all actually started on March 15, 1939.
Then an endless chain of regulations and prohibitions began.
Exclusion from public life – Jews were not allowed to be active in public administration, courts, schools and scientific institutions. They could not work as advocates, physicians, veterinarians, chemists, newspaper editors, they could not even make a living as artists.
And all that was only the beginning.
Then came registration of Jewish possessions, jewelry, art, a prohibition to trade in real estate and securities.
Bank accounts were frozen.
Jews had to surrender radio receivers.
Then all valuables.
Telephones.
Sewing machines.
Cameras.
Bicycles.
Skis.
Furs and woolen clothing.
Jews were forbidden to enter restaurants, cafes, parks and public gardens (first the Stromovka in Prague). Jews were forbidden to enter forests, the shore of river Vltava (between the railway and Hlavka bridges, that means in the whole town center), they were forbidden to enter a number of streets.
They were not allowed into theaters, cinemas, libraries, baths, swimming pools or to attend sport events.
Leaving their homes after 8 p.m.
They could travel by tram or train only in the last part of the rearmost car – with a special permit. At the same time they were not allowed to enter restaurants and waiting rooms at train stations.
Jews were not allowed to move to another apartment, if not ordered by the authorities to do so, nor could they leave Metropolitan Prague.
They were allowed to shop only from 3 to 5 p.m. – at that time the poorly supplied Protectorate shops were empty.
They did not get ration cards for clothing and cigarettes.
Jewish children were expelled from Czech and German schools. Later even the last, Jewish school was closed.
Finally, in October 1941 it was decided on the obligatory branding of all Jews by a yellow star. Before the end of that year the first transports to Theresienstadt left the Holesovice train station in Prague.
He Looked Like a Prophet
From Max Lieben’s family the first was the grandmother – that from the house with the Three Feathers, into whose windows Max looked as a child. She did not survive for long in ghetto Theresienstadt. She died in August 1942. She was 78 years old.
Then the others followed.
The many-branched family left one apartment after the other. In a town where they knew every corner, every sign was read a thousand times, its message long ago learned by heart; and where everybody knew them, the Liebens possibly the last really orthodox family in Prague.
Kosher even now, at a time of abject misery.
Even afterwards – in Theresienstadt.
“The Jewish community employed my father at one of the magazines where possessions, confiscated from Jews, were stored. Such magazines were located in former synagogues, gymnastics halls and other Jewish institutions. Once he had to sort out so many books with a red binding that the row would add up to 3.5 meters. The content was not important, the architect had decided that red would look good in the apartment of some Nazi big shot.”
Max Lieben and his brother Rudi (Rudolf) also worked for the Jewish community. Though they hid it from the parents, they were more and more enthusiastic for the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
There was no God anymore.
Instead their Zionist organization helped old people, disoriented and helpless, when they got the summons to a transport.
What to take?
To pack in the permitted baggage?
Old letters and pictures?
Warm clothing?
Books?
“We remained among the last in all of Prague. We accompanied to transports all of our family – grandmother, uncles, indeed all and, of course, also all of our friends. We traveled to Theresienstadt only in July of 1943. After we went away, almost only Jews of mixed marriages remained in Prague.”
But before that, before the last of the Liebens entered the train at Holesovice station, an event happened in Max’s life that much later, after the war, again influenced his life significantly.
“One day – it was in the evening, when Jews were not allowed to leave their apartments – the bell rang. It was a stranger, blue eyes, hair like a prophet. He asked to speak to my father, you are welcome, I invited him to enter; he introduced himself and said that he would like to help our family somehow. He brought a bottle of milk, that, for Jews, was almost impossible to obtain. Then he sat with father for some three hours, discussing philosophical questions. After that evening he came a few more times.”
His name was Premysl Pitter.
Rudi Rosen’s Coded Messages
Theresienstadt.
Here, people still lived. However miserably, they still lived.
Professor of classical philology Eugen Lieben was sent to living quarters in barracks for men, his wife Hannchen to barracks for women, the two sons – Max and Rudi, each separately – to youth homes.
Max was 17 years old.
“Life in Theresienstadt was defined by one word: transports. They arrived from various countries but mainly they were leaving constantly ‘to the East’. That was the only thing we knew. There were no reliable news, only rumors. We did not know a thing of the final solution, of extermination camps in Poland. Yes, it was said that life ‘in the East’ is difficult – hunger, diseases and hard work.”
Nobody could imagine the real dimensions of the persecution.
“Our naivete and lack of knowledge are best illustrated by the following example: with our friends summoned to transports we had agreed codes, to enable them to let us know the real conditions in the East. Then we got a postcard from one of them – Rudi Rosen. There were 25 German words, the sender’s address was given as ‘Labor Camp Birkenau’. Rudi wrote of everyday matters, but signed ‘Rudi Namut’. And ‘namut’ means in Hebrew – which many of us had learned – we are going to die.”
How did you react?
“I remember a meeting in the attic of one of the houses in Theresienstadt, my friends and I studied the card and concluded that conditions in Birkenau are evidently very hard. Maybe that Rudi is sick, depressed and that is the reason for his pessimistically coded signature.
Not much later a second postcard from Rudi arrived, again from Birkenau. Some letters in it were slanted in the opposite direction of the handwriting. These letters, together, gave the German word GASTOD (death by gas). We again analyzed the coded card and our consensus was that Rudi works at a factory of toxic gases and people die there from work accidents.”
On September 28, 1944, Max Lieben and his brother Rudi were deported with a transport. A total of 2.500 men and boys were crowded into cattle cars – 370 of them will survive.
The journey lasted three days.
First northwards, then to the East.
“Then the train stopped. The doors were opened and we heard shouting: ‘everybody out, hurry, hurry!’ The scene we saw was like a nightmare: in the background four enormous chimneys spewing flames and dense, biting smoke, nearer to us there were long rows of low barracks, even nearer a double fence of barbed wire, the latter was mounted on porcelain isolators and evidently electrically charged. At regular intervals watchtowers were located in the fence, manned by armed guards. Searchlights panned in all directions and the fence was also illuminated. In front of it a chain of armed SS men, some of them with leashed dogs. And then there were people in striped uniforms, shouting at us in broken German. That was the first time I saw a prison uniform, I still wore my clothes from home.”
Israel, 1962 M. Livni, his wife Chava and daughters Nurit and Liora
It was a happy moment when Max and Chava met in Bratislava
Max Lieben passed the selection – he was healthy and on the advice of one of the prisoners he lied about his age, made himself older.
After that came hopelessness.
Darkness. Wet, muddy earth.
Chimneys spewing fire.
Biting smoke.
Max Lieben notices a cousin from Prague. They succeed to talk shortly. “I asked him about his father, Dr. Shimon Adler, who in Prague taught religion. He pointed to one of the chimneys and said: he is there. And mother? Same answer. I did not understand. I surmised that we are in Silesia and remembered from school that there are coal mines and steel works. All from our transport, who passed selection and were not led away – as they told us – for lighter work, thought at first that the chimneys belong to such a factory.”
Max Lieben began to see that – when they analyzed Rudi Rosen’s message in the Theresienstadt attic – no skepticism, no suspicion arose (though there were some experiences from pogroms!) even in the persecuted fantasy.
And Rudi Rosen wrote it so clearly.
GASTOD.
“Your parents work at the steel works? I asked unbelievingly, even though I could not imagine what they could do there. What steel works are you talking about? he answered. Don’t you know where you are? – and that is when I heard for the first time the word Auschwitz and what it means.”
American Tanks
Ten days passed.
Max Lieben and his brother Rudi managed to join a group of prisoners destined for the next transport. They did not know where they would be taken and what awaits them there. But one thing they had already learned: in Auschwitz nobody will survive!
They were taken to Kaufering, a branch camp of a concentration camp near Munich. Like slaves they built here an underground factory.
Here, too, conditions were catastrophic.
Then came diseases, diarrhea, typhoid fever.
In the beginning of December 1944 Max’s brother Rudolf – Rudi fell sick. Without regaining consciousness, he died on the second evening of Hanukkah of consumption.
The next was Leo, Max’s cousin. He died when he learned that at the selection at the Auschwitz ramp his older brother Felix volunteered to accompany his parents.
”He blamed himself, stopped eating and working and only went on praying.”
Max Lieben also contracted typhoid fever but he survived.
Liberation was in sight. But the camp found itself in the midst of enemy fire.
To die now, in the last moment?
“The only lower place there was a latrine – so, Dr. Hanus Kafka, a Prague physician and I submerged in it up to our necks – grenades flew over our heads in all directions.”
Then the shooting stopped.
And American tanks at the edge of the forest.
It was May 1, 1945. Max was 19 years old and weighed 29 kilos.
The Last Journey
Max Lieben returned to Prague.
He knew already that the parents died in Auschwitz. They were included in the transport from Theresienstadt in October 1944 and, immediately after arriving in the camp, they went to the gas chamber.
They were old, not healthy.
Max survived – but what now?
For the second time and actually by coincidence, Premysl Pitter entered his life.
”It was a short time after the war, in 1945. I met him on the street, he told me that he was in charge of four castles, where he brought Jewish children from Theresienstadt, most were orphans, for recuperation. They were cared for by Czech teachers and educators, I could join them. It would help me to restore my health.”
Max Lieben accepted the offer. He went to Stirin, later to Kamenice. Here – and also in castles at Olesovice and Lojovice – Pitter assembled in the years 1945 – 1947 more than 800 small children, descendants of Jewish parents, but also children of deported Germans, until it was possible to send them to their relatives. Premysl Pitter emigrated from Communist Czechoslovakia in 1951.
“I cared for a group of children aged 7 – 9. I taught them Hebrew songs, dances, I educated them toward Zionism and the Czech teachers did not like that. Actually, they did not understand it at all, they could not – they taught them Czech folk songs. It did not work and in the end I left – with no hard feelings, but I left.”
The next stage of Max Lieben’s journey led to Bratislava.
He again cared for Jewish children with no parents, no home. But this time it is a house managed by the Zionist movement and the children are preparing to leave for Palestine.
And there was something else: “there was a girl, only a bit younger than I was. Her name was Chava Fuerstova and after two weeks, during which we could not stand each other, we fell in love. Since then we live together – from 1946 until today (Max Livni calculates fast), that is 62 years. We have children, grandchildren – so we will probably go on.”
Maybe that a similar fate brought them together.
Chava was born in Bratislava.
In a German speaking, Jewish, but not religious home.
Like Max, she joined the Zionist movement before the war. And she, too, against her parent’s will. “They always believed in some kind of humanism in the others and did not see that nationality and religion are important. The only important thing for them was – to be a good humane person.”
And then – like Max – Chava Fuerstova lost both parents in Auschwitz. Together with her younger sister she got through Auschwitz to a little camp near Dresden and then to Mauthausen, where the Americans liberated her.
Now they had decided to leave for Palestine as soon as possible. But more and more children kept arriving at the Bratislava children’s home, emerging from convents, partisans and concentration camps.
“Every month a group of children left for Palestine, accompanied by an adult. Partly officially, sometimes illegally. We, too, wanted to go but were told: we do not have a replacement for you, hold on, again and again. So it went until 1949. Then we, too, finally traveled.”
But that was not Palestine anymore, where they arrived – a biblical designation or that of a British mandate area – but Israel, a sovereign state that just now had fought its first war for independence.
Max and Chava settled for a time at a kibbutz and then moved here – the small town Kiriat Tivon, east of Haifa.
“It reminded us here of Europe,” Max Lieben – for a long time now Mordechai Livni - says today, looking toward the deep valley. As an autodidact he became a designer of sophisticated medical apparatus.
“Some 200 people live in Israel, for whom we cared in Bratislava. Many of them are our friends until today.”
That is more than there were Liebens in Prague.
* * * * *
ראשי
צ'אט
07-08-2008, 13:02
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