NIAGARA FALLS — Winston Churchill, who saw a bit of history in his time, called the Hungarian Holocaust the “worst crime in the history of humanity.”

I was not yet aware of that comment, one day in 1977, as I sat looking out the window of a Ukrainian Village restaurant in Chicago. It was cool and damp outside, and the people walking by the window were starting to turn up the collars of their jackets. It was November, and no one looked forward to winter in Chicago.

I think it was then, that afternoon, that my novel “Klara” began rumbling around in my mind. It took me many years to actually put it on paper, but it was then that the seed was planted. No question about it.

I watched the people passing by on the sidewalk, out along Chicago Avenue. The restaurant was quiet, not much business, and smelled of Ukrainian cooking, cabbage and such. The waitress looked at me and smiled, but her smile was timid and suspicious. I was not from the Village and was not Ukrainian, she could tell. I wasn’t exactly sure how she could tell, but she could. Several of the passers-by looked in at me, sitting alone as I was at a table. The looks on their faces were not all that different from that of the waitress. I sipped my coffee, furrowed my brow, and tried to look like I belonged there. But I did not.

But I did know some things about the neighborhood. I had worked nearby for awhile and knew some Ukrainians. I also knew some Polish folks, from the streets around the village. It was a strange marriage, the Poles and Ukrainians, like two old people sleeping in separate beds. They needed each other financially, but didn’t especially like each other. Everyone on the streets around the village knew the boundaries, and the histories. I asked questions, watched the people, went to the bars, and even went to the wedding of a young Ukrainian couple I knew. So I started to think, and “Klara” started to come to life.

This relatively short novel, with the enticing cover, is indeed about Ukrainian Village in Chicago. But mostly it is about the memories, the ones buried beneath its orderly and sober veneer. Dark secrets, guilt that could not be extinguished, goodness almost forgotten, and the “worst crime in the history of humanity.” It was all there somewhere.

I started to think about all this that afternoon at my table, smelling of cabbage, sipping coffee, knowing a few things about the Holocaust, but not much. Looking at the people passing by my window, I remembered a salient fact about the Holocaust — that it was perpetrated by normal people mostly. Sure, it was planned by monsters. The machinery was devised by monsters. But that machinery was oiled and operated by normal people, hundreds of thousands of them. And millions others watched. In fact, I thought I saw some of them out the restaurant window that day. Collars turned up against the wind, looking funny at a young Irishman from Buffalo who didn’t quite belong.

So “Klara”, as riveting and suspenseful a story as it is, portrays mostly normal people, who happened to have the misfortune of living through hell. And my goodness, what effects hell can have on us! We can never know those effects, until we face them. Some of the characters in this novel faced them well, with courage and compassion. Others wilted, and never got over the things they did. Klara herself survived, like the flower coming through the rocky arctic tundra in the spring. But she was a small child, and only learned later.

This novel is also about her learning, her awakening, her thawing out finally.

The story is also about the Catholic Church. As a lifelong Catholic, I always wondered about that aspect of the Holocaust. As I read more about the period, I realized that the Church, and her priests and nuns, were in the thick of things back then. But like most everyone else, they were normal people too, living through hell, reacting in remarkably different ways. Some with courage and humanity, some with neither.

The following excerpt, from the book’s climactic chapter, illustrates this a little:

 

One of the Ukrainians dragged little Katy over to Sister Agatha. She waved the child away, saying repeatedly that this was not one of her children. Josef noticed this and went over toward the old nun. He ordered all the Christian children to line up in a row, along the back edge of the courtyard not far from the fountain. An old truck then backed into the mouth of the courtyard, from the Market Square, with much rattling and sputtering. There was a heavy machine gun in the back of the truck, pointed directly at the children. This was the rusted old truck, the one we would see again many times, the one that will someday transport us to hell.

Commandant Josef called out for any Jewish children to step forward. None of them moved. Katy ran over to Anton and buried her head in his sweater. He had been thrown into the fountain, and was sitting upright now, his head up against the base of the statue. The Ukrainians had handled him roughly and had tied his hands with rusty wire they found in the back of the truck. I could see blood on his hands. Since he could not hold Sonia’s girl, he rested his chin on her head and whispered something to her. She looked over at me then, her eyes pleading and desperate. Josef pulled her up then by the back of her little sweater and dragged her once again over to Sister Agatha.

I tried to run to her, but was held by one of the Ukrainians. They were everywhere in the courtyard, these Ukrainians, small men with pale apathetic faces. They had for us neither malice nor mercy. But through those years, I had never seen one defy a German to his face. Not once. Not that day surely. Not in the damp courtyard of St. Mary’s church that Halloween evening of 1943. It was as though they were not men. Not quite men. Ill-shaven, groveling creatures they were. I will have no use for Ukrainians, ever. Except for Peter, the only one I saw show mercy. God will bless him for that. God will bless him for giving us Klara. I remember everything that happened next, as clearly as I remember brewing this tea I am now drinking.

‘Well old nun!’ Josef shouted, holding Katy up by the back of her clothing, a few inches off the ground, as though she were a writhing small animal he had hunted and caught. ‘If she’s not yours, who is she? One of the Jew children you told me about this morning, right?’

Old Agatha flared her nostrils and glared at him.

‘Yes! That is what she is,’ she snapped. ‘But these here are my baptized children, commandant! Your superiors have promised my bishop they would be safe. I have showed you all their papers. I will show you again if you wish.’

What about this one?’

‘Not mine, I told you. Not mine!’

Well the old nun was confused. She had not been prepared to deal with the choices she had to make in 1943. And she was not alone.

Joseph Leary is a resident of Lewiston. His novel, “Klara,” is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online booksellers.

For more information call Features Editor Michele DeLuca at 282-2311, ext. 2263.