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Cafe Pat combined a bakery and a cafe. The clientele at the Pat were wheeler-dealers, agents, money changers and religious Jews, and they were a bridge between the religious neighborhood of Meah Shearim and secular Jaffa Street. At Cafe Pat, things were transacted there that required silence and discretion. Envelopes passed from hand to hand, and sometimes dollars could be glimpsed between the hands.
The old Jewish way of life continued here with the same expressions and hand gestures. I had seen these Jews before the war, and I had seen them in the ghetto and the concentration camp. They had not changed. The Zionist dream had not transformed them. Yet, as I've already said, I never judge other people by moral standards or a Zionist yardstick. Whoever was in the Shoah learned that there are people who will not harm you, but who will also not offer you a crumb from their own rations. People who are considered "decent" can be indifferent, entrenched within their egotism. On more than one occasion, I was taken in and looked after by shady dealers - people who, by all criteria, would be considered outside the law. But during the war it was they, and not the "decent" people, who offered me a crust of bread and shelter. And in the period of chaos and confusion right after the war, it was the thugs who protected the children. But besides this, I like dealers and money changers. Behind their gray facade, there can be a solid character. A dealer knows how people tick, and he understands human foibles. If you've come to ask his advice, he won't tell you: "That's illegal," but rather advise you how to avoid getting into trouble. Naivety is not for them; they are also a reservoir of irony and humor.
"What are you writing?" asked one of the dealers who noticed that I sometimes came into Cafe Pat and sat there writing for some hours.
"Stories," I told him, not trying to conceal it.
"Imaginary or from experience?"
"That's hard for me to answer."
"Why?"
"Everything's from experience, but not in the order that it took place." On the spot, I attempted to summarize everything.
"Where were you in the war?"
I told him.
"I've heard about Transnistria," he said.
He said he also thinks it's hard to write about the Holocaust, since what happened to us was beyond belief. It's hard to speak of the unbelievable, he agrees, since people might think you're making it up, or even worse, lying. When I told him that I was learning Yiddish, his face rounded in astonishment.
"With whose support? Who's behind you?"
"There was no need for encouragement."
"Chernowitz was a city of assimilated Jews, wasn't it?"
"True."
"May God look after you," he spoke to me as people who believed in God would speak a generation
ago.
Before he left the cafe, he came up to me, put a wad of banknotes on my table and said to me, "That's for you." When I refused to accept the money he said, "You can't refuse it. That'fs my thanks and my gift for your studies. You should know that if someone studies Yiddish in our day, I feel I have to show my appreciation—almost to take my hat off to him."
And that’s what he actually did, and wouldn’t let me say another word.
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