Cape Town - Imagine being a little girl living in a village in Poland, during the beginning, duration and end of World War II.
Mala is Jewish and slowly she loses her entire family as the Nazis enter Poland and first turn her home in Tarnogrod into a ghetto and later into a killing ground. Mala has the ‘benefit’ of being fair-haired and light-eyed and so she is able to venture out of Tarnogrod to forage and search for food for her family. She puts herself at great risk in doing this, but she is accompanied by a cat named Malach, who seems to appear and vanish as he is needed. Perhaps a true guardian angel.
While most of the evil of the Holocaust is breathtakingly horrendous, there are the moments that Mala, in her astoundingly simple and real autobiography, chooses to tell us about the banality of evil: “With each passing day, life became more and more difficult for the Jewish community, and anti-Semitic acts became increasingly commonplace.
“Every evening, an old Jewish bagel seller would arrange his wares neatly on white paper napkins in a big wicker basket. He would then take the bagels to the town square and peddle them. How petrified I was when I saw a burly policeman step on the basket and trample the bagels with his dirty boots.”
Mala’s Cat is full of horrendous observations about a tranquil and happy life that is torn apart by Nazi brutality. Through the simplicity of her direct style, she tells of hiding out in farms where sympathetic Poles hide her, or feed her. But, all the time, this little girl and young teen is aware that she could be found at any time.
There are times when she comes perilously close to being found, or stumbling across SS soldiers, but Malach seems to warn her every time.
Mala Szorer is the maiden name of that little girl, who does grow up and travel from Europe and marry and have children of her own. Her memoir was first written as Alone in the Forest, which was published in 1995. Suffering often defeats memory, but the horrifying and yet at times beautiful bravery of Mala shines through this simply written yet complicated story.
What 14-year-old has the sheer audacity to trick her way into going to work in Germany as part of a labour detail?
And, yet she does. Hiding in plain sight of the enemy.
The history of the Holocaust is one that often relies on stories told by those who survived. And Mala’s Cat is one of those books that glows in its striking bravery and determination to survive when everyone you love has been taken from you. It also reflects on the manner in which those who literally ate roots and plants to survive managed to build new lives for themselves.
As for Malach, the guardian cat, once Mala is safe, he vanishes. An angel? An imaginary comfort animal who offers bravery to a little girl and young teen, it’s left to the reader to decide. Not a comfortable read, especially in the times we live in where those other than us suffer dreadfully, but a book you will not put down once you have picked it up.
Mala’s Cat by Mala Kacenberg is available at Loot.co.za (R280)
Cape Times