by Vic Shayne
I had a ball; all the singing and drinking brought back wonderful memories, in a language that filled me with warmth. I was treated like a best friend as they toasted me and coaxed me on to sing and drink “just one more for the road.” This went on for four or five more rounds. At last, somehow, I pulled myself away. I was given a pack of cigarettes then showed the door to a standing ovation. I don’t even know how I was able to stand up when I walked out; I was so drunk. To the waving and cheering of a hundred drunken communists, I started to walk away from the bar then remembered I had hidden the bicycle in the bushes. It took me a while, on wobbly legs, to pull it free from the branches. I held onto the handlebars and wondered why the bike wouldn’t stay still and why the trees were bending and the building was spinning around. With great concentration, I climbed back on the bike and rode sideways all the way to Maria’s house.
Nowhere but Palestine
Still waiting in Rome for my visa to clear so I could leave for America, I heard that there was a big displaced persons camp in Turino, up north. I decided to catch a train and pay a visit. Like Rome, Turino was bursting with refugees, and one of the biggest DP camps was called Grugliasco. It was situated near the Alps and along train tracks that brought survivors into Italy mainly from Western Europe.
Having been in Italy for two years, the DPs were quite restless. Although Jewish organizations were well established in the DP camps, with schools, a synagogue, entertainment, and vocational training, nobody seemed to have an answer as to what would come next. Or when they would be allowed to get on with their lives, settle down somewhere, start a family, and pick up the pieces. Where would all of these people go and how would they get there? All the countries had quotas; they weren’t accepting more than a certain allotment of refugees. But above all, the Zionists among us realized that, after being through the hell of the Holocaust, we Jews needed a place of security. The world had proven to us over and over again that we were, at best, guests in a foreign world. With or without the consent of the rest of the world, the Zionists were making plans to create a Jewish homeland to accept Europe’s scattered refugees.
It was in Turino that I first met up with the Jewish Brigade, a division of the British army out of Palestine. To see Jewish fighting men in uniform was inspiring to us Holocaust survivors in a way that nobody else can fully appreciate. The Jewish Brigade, made up of trained, armed, healthy soldiers, was empowering. Now that the war had ended, and the Brigade had seen action fighting the Germans in northern Italy, the division’s focus had changed. The Brigade took on the monumental task of catering to the needs of displaced persons, including setting up a few DP camps and then bringing to Palestine all who wanted to go to form a Jewish state from the remnants of the Holocaust. To accomplish this, they were given the covert task of locating military equipment, weapons, and vehicles throughout Europe and finding a way to smuggle these things into Palestine under the noses of the British occupying forces. The time for this mission could never have been riper. Displaced persons—Holocaust survivors from the death camps—were largely being ignored by world politics although they needed to begin anew. No productive life could be found for us where we came from in Eastern Europe, so our Zionist dreams were being fashioned into reality out of desperation and the most basic psychological needs of a deeply traumatized people. The Jewish Brigade was our new source of strength in finding dignity, purpose, and peace. I decided to do whatever was needed of me to bring my people home.
Within days of my stay in Turino, I made friends with a few of the Brigade officers. I told them that I wanted to be part of their movement to create a Jewish state. I was willing to do whatever it took to help; and I was not alone. I was told that the British did not want any more Jews to enter Palestine and that they were continuing to refuse entry in through the ports. The British had promised us settlement prior to the war, with the Balfour Declaration, then shut off immigration with their 1939 White Paper. Then, after the war, they continued to stall. They were virtually without compassion for the hundreds of thousands of concentration camp survivors who needed a safe place to start a new life. Any rational, intelligent person who could see how people were living in postwar Europe would understand that life could not continue this way. The Jewish Brigade, Zionist organizations, and even politically neutral Jews joined a massive exodus movement.
Now I, along with thousands of others, was brought up on the prayers and pledge of “Next year in Jerusalem.” It was our obligation to return to Eretz Yisroel. Finally, but under the worst conditions, the remnants of Europe’s Jews were the people to make this two-thousand-year-old promise come to realization. We wanted this not for ourselves but for the future generations; our lives were already lost, our families taken from us forever. All we had to live for was the future and we had no fear of death to make this happen. We wanted the Zionist dream to come true to honor the memories of our mothers and fathers, our sisters and brothers, and families and friends who were murdered for no other reason than the fact that they were Jews. Palestine would be our gift to the world of our children and grandchildren yet to be born. We understood very well that the world was proving unwilling to give Jews refuge, as each nation, one by one, turned us away or limited our entry.
I was then reminded of the words of the Zionist Zev Jabotinsky when I saw him speak in Baranowicze in my former life: “You will not build Israel with money but with blood.” This was all we refugees had to give; and we would give it freely, to the last man, woman, and child.
I began meeting with the Jewish Brigade regularly. My knowledge of so many languages, they told me, was useful. I was friendly with the Italians, I could communicate with the Brigade in Hebrew, and I could organize people who spoke Polish, Yiddish, and Russian.
The officers told me that there was a lot of ammunition in Italy, especially in Rome. It was leftover from the war. The Allies had weapons, bullets, guns, rifles, and explosives all over the place—in Germany, Austria, Russia, Poland, and France as well. Too costly to recover, this materiel was just sitting idle.
“We need this ammunition,” one of the officers said to me. “Find out how we can get hold of it.”
Now I had my mission. I headed back to Rome in search of abandoned military supplies, thinking that the best way to find what I was looking for was to make contact with somebody “in the know.” Who did I know who knew influential people? There was only one person I could think of—one of the most popular people in Rome. As soon as I stepped off the train, the first thing I did was pay a visit to a friend, the son of a wonderful and wildly successful bakery owner named Mosca.
Mosca owned one of the biggest bakeries around. Everybody knew who he was. He was a well-to-do man whose three sons worked closely with him in the family business. Starting at close to three in the morning and finishing late in the day, the Moscas worked in a frenzy to meet the needs of their customers by loading up their drivers so they could head out on their routes.
The Mosca’s youngest son, Mario, was a close friend of mine; we used to run around together in Rome, chasing girls and finding things to do at night. Mario was a good-looking young man in his twenties who was always dressed to impress. He wore tailored jackets, freshly pressed white shirts, and shiny, soft leather shoes. His jet black hair was combed straight back and he walked with a bounce, as if he didn’t have a trouble in the world.
With their colossal bakery enterprise, Mario and his family supplied food stores, cafés, and small shops all over Rome. There were trucks coming and going all day long—in for loading and out for delivery. The Moscas had big contracts with an array of government agencies, one of which was the Reparto Celere (“quick-action unit”) police of Rome. If the upper echelon of the Reparto Celere had known about what I’m about to tell you, they would have thrown somebody in jail without a doubt. But fate was on my side, and all is now history.
The Reparto Celere had their hands full responding to communist uprisings and labor strikes and trying to quell riots before
they got out of hand. At this time in the late 1940s, the fear of the spread of Communism was at the forefront of every government rebounding from the war. A little protest here or there would break out like a fire; then the Reparto Celere came rushing to the scene to break it up. This police unit was quick, mobile, and very well supplied.
Mr. Mosca was a favorite with the Reparto Celere because he allowed the police to use his gigantic ovens to bake potatoes for their troops. After baking thousands of loaves of bread and countless rolls, Mr. Mosca would truck them out to his customers then get to work for the Reparto Celere. Day after day, the police drove their trucks full of potatoes up to the docks of the Mosca bakery. As police drivers sat parked outside the bakery, Mr. Mosca, Mario, and his brothers loaded a ton of potatoes into the ovens on tremendous metal trays, baked them for an hour or so, and then put them back onto the trucks for distribution to the Reparto Celere all over Rome, hot and ready for the mess halls. You can just imagine how popular the Mosca family was with Rome’s special police. He not only baked their potatoes but also happily gave them bread and other baked goods to take home to their families. Mr. Mosca was the bread angel; the wives of the police were the envy of all their neighbors. I knew that the Mosca family, with such a close relationship with all the police drivers, was our best link to the Jewish Brigade’s success. As the potatoes baked, day after day, the police would stand around chatting by the hot ovens. All the while, covered with a dusty layer of flour from his feet to his eyebrows, Mr. Mosca ran around his bakery kneading, mixing, blending, cleaning, clanging, and shouting out orders. He was a ball of energy. “You hungry?” he’d ask the police. “Here.” He’d shove a tray of fresh, hot rolls in front of them with a pan of olive oil over strong garlic. “Mangia!” He’d tell them. “Di mangiare bene e’ una cosa sacra”—to eat well is a sacred thing. No wonder he had so many friends.
In ovens so big you could drive a car into them, the Moscas held the secret to happiness, and their generosity knew no bounds. But when you do so many favors, people feel they owe you. And Mario Mosca wasn’t afraid to call in a few of these favors.
On a Friday morning, after the police had gone, I came into the Mosca bakery for a talk with Mario. There was a lull in the morning rush, and I brought him a pack of cigarettes. As usual, we were happy to see each other.
“Michele, what are you doing tonight?” Mario asked me. “I can borrow a car and we can go drive around town—maybe to see a movie. Maybe we can get some girls to come along. What do you say?”
“Sure,” I told him. I thought that this would be a good time to see what Mario Mosca could do for the plight of the Holocaust Jews. Little did he know what I was about to ask him.
In the early evening, I met Mario in front of a café. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled apologetically. “I couldn’t get a car,” he said. “Walking is good for us, don’t you think?” As we began to walk, he told me, “One day I’m going to have my own car. A black beauty—shiny for the nighttime. Girls love a sports car. Then we’ll have a great time. You’ll see, Michele.” So we walked a few blocks to a movie theater, watched a picture, then found a nearby restaurant where we sat watching people come and go along the busy street. While Mario was shoving forkfuls of pasta into his mouth, washed down by a glass of red wine, I took the opportunity to make my proposal. I asked him if he would be willing to talk to the Reparto Celere and ask them if they had any ammunition leftover by the Allies after the war. Mario wiped his mouth then stared at me for a moment. I could see the wheels spinning in his head. He squinted at me and jutted out his chin.
“Ammunition?” he repeated.
“Just make conversation,” I told him. “See what you can see.”
“What are you going to do with ammunition—rob a bank?”
“There’s Allied equipment lying around Rome,” I said. “The Jewish Brigade would like to make a deal. Don’t tell them this at first,” I said. “Find out if we have anything to talk about.”
Mario’s expression was controlled, but I could see that he was interested. I don’t know how he felt about the plight of the Jews, but I knew he loved money. He said, “I’ll see what’s going on.”
A week went by and I walked into the Mosca bakery. Mario told me that I was right. There was a lot of ammunition sitting around Rome—bullets, TNT, explosive devices, hand grenades, detonators, rifles, and guns. “The police say there’s more than they know what to do with,” Mario said. “So, now what?”
I was ready with the answer. “Make some arrangements.” Another day went by. Mario did some more talking. I came back at around noon and brought Mario a pack of cigarettes. He took one out, lit it, and jumped up on a table, sending a small cloud of flour into the air. “Well,” he said, “they’re interested in talking to your Jewish Brigade.”
“Good,” I said. “Let’s do it.” I made the arrangements for the meeting, and the very next morning I found myself sitting in a chair in the middle of Rome’s Piazza Etcetera.
It was late morning and the sun was casting short shadows on the cobble-stoned plaza. There were a number of people milling about and I strained my eyes looking for the representatives of the Jewish Brigade. I didn’t know what they looked like or from which direction they were coming. There was not much more I could do but sit and wait. A half hour went by and then an hour. A grandmother and small boy were across the way, feeding pigeons crumbs of bread until at last they had no more to give. The child ran at the birds and sent them flying. Then he ran off giggling and his grandmother slowly shuffled after him.
Here and there somebody would stroll along then disappear into a doorway. I was told by my contacts in the Brigade to just be patient and stay put, so I remained in my seat and scanned the whole area as more and more people poured into the plaza. I thought of getting a cup of coffee but worried that my contacts might miss me. I rubbed my arm out of habit, feeling the spot where I had been shot a few years earlier. A reminder of why I was here raced through my head. Several more minutes passed by and a policeman sauntered into the plaza. He stopped to talk to a group of young ladies seated several feet away then glanced over at me and winked. I smiled and he tipped his hat to the girls, turned on his heels, and walked off whistling.
What was once a cool morning was now turning into a warm day. I stood up, took off my jacket, and folded it over the back of my chair. When I turned around, standing in front of me was a man of medium height and build with a pencil-thin mustache and a serious, dark complexion. He asked me my name and I told him. Then he walked off. I sat down and rested my good arm on the table in front of me. I checked my watch. Two minutes slowly passed.
Then I noticed a smartly dressed man and woman walking toward me. The man was carrying a suitcase, and the woman cautiously glanced in all directions as they approached me. Introductions were short and I doubt that they used their real names. When the man reached out to shake my hand, the sleeve of his jacket hiked up to reveal a serial number tattooed on his forearm. We waited for the woman to sit; then we got down to business.
“Is everything arranged?” the man asked me. I nodded.
“Good,” he said.
We stared into each other’s eyes in a moment of anxious silence and then, with his foot, the man pushed the suitcase to me under the table. I felt it bump up against my leg. Without another word, they both arose to their feet, turned around, and quickly walked away. Nobody smiled. They did their job and now it was my turn.
I kept my leg against the suitcase and stood up to put my jacket on. Then I picked up the suitcase by the handle. It was much heavier than I imagined. Inside there was enough money to fund a war. Literally. I found the shortest route out of the piazza and walked at a steady pace along the streets of Rome. These were familiar streets but now they looked so much different. The buildings were ominous. I found my head swimming with thoughts, stirring up emotions and words planted long ago. I heard my grandfather uttering the words Eretz Yisroel and my fellow inmates in Mauthausen praying t
o God on their way to the ovens. I saw the face of Zeb Jabotinsky as he pleaded for a Jewish state to a small crowd in my hometown of Maitchet—a state paid for not with money, but with blood. Zayde spoke to me, reminding me that the exodus out of Egypt did not mean freedom but the beginning of a long journey fraught with danger. I had taken that journey and emerged without my family. And now I was on a new journey.
With only a few blocks to go, the aroma of the Mosca bakery wafted through the air, somehow reawakening feelings from the darkness of my soul. My mouth watered. My stomach growled as it did when I was scavenging for food in the forest with Shmulek Bachrach and as it did when I lay starving in my cold bunk in Mauthausen while listening to weak, desperate prayers to God coming from a man dying on the floor.