Long Lost Brother

by Don Kafrissen

  “That’s true,” said Miriam, “but you are our only uncle. Our only blood uncle.”

  Isaac’s gaze turned cold. “Yes, your blood uncle.” He snorted. “Now where was I?”

  Mim smiled, “The Canadian soldiers had just left, and you were in a camp they had set up for you.”

  * * *

  Three more of the prisoners had died, and now there were just sixteen of them left alive. The Canadians did not have time to bury the dead, so they’d just closed the boxcars. One soldier backed the train out and onto a nearby siding. Before they left, an officer asked the survivors what they would like to have done with their comrades.

  Isaac conferred with the others, “Do we wish to bury them?” He looked at the circle of faces. Most shook their heads, and a few cast their eyes down.

  Abraham spoke up, “We are too weak and many had sicknesses. It looks like these soldiers cannot take the time to bury them. What do you think, Saul?”

  He shrugged, “Where were we being taken?” No one in the group had any idea. “They were probably taking all of us to the ovens. It is probably the cleanest method for us to, um, dispose of them.”

  Abraham hung his head. He was haunted. “We cannot just leave them to rot. I vote that we give them a Viking warrior’s funeral.” He wiped away a tear. “May God have mercy on our souls.”

  The others nodded in silent assent.

  Isaac said, “You go tell them, Abraham. You are our elder.”

  He snorted and got to his feet. “Elder, eh?”

  In a minute he was back. “Their religious chaplain will say a prayer over them first. Now, understand, he is not a Jew, but if we all pray, maybe it will help.”

  Several soldiers climbed on top of the old wooden cars and began to douse them with petrol. One soldier wanted to put the Nazi guards’ bodies in one car with Jews, but Abraham, Isaac, and the others were so vehement in their objections that the officer hesitated.

  “What will you do with them?” Doctor Kilby asked.

  Abraham shouted, “Do you mean before or after we piss on their corpses?”

  The officer standing with the doctor said, “We will leave an additional jerry can of diesel fuel in case you decide to cremate them too.”

  The chaplain put a colored shawl over his uniform and stood near the center of the line of boxcars, reading a prayer. When he finished, the officer gave a signal and a lit torch was thrown onto a car. In two or three minutes, the entire train was engulfed in flames. Isaac, Abraham, Yuri, Saul and the others stood with bowed heads, mumbling the Hebrew prayer for the dead as the Canadian soldiers loaded up and drove back onto the road and away towards Berlin.

  Abraham was in good spirits. “Well, gentlemen, what do we do now? We have no money, only the clothes on our backs, maybe three days of food and, best of all, our lives.”

  “Do you think the Allies are prepared for the people left in the camps or the refugees from the bombings?” Yuri was regaining some of his interest in life, hardly daring to believe that he’d survived.

  Saul shrugged. “Let us go into the town tomorrow and see what awaits us.” He slapped Abraham on his back, “We are free men now, and I would like a beer.”

  The next day as they were preparing a morning meal out of the green c-rations the departed Canadian troops had left them, they heard the rumble of heavy trucks and tanks.

  The vehicles had red stars painted on them, and Isaac knew this to be the emblem of American troops. The convoy passed on the road, the soldiers waving at them.

  A jeep pulled off and stopped before them in the grass. A young officer with a narrow face looked up and down at the men. “Camp inmates?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Isaac.

  “This all of you?”

  Again Isaac nodded. “More in train. Going to Bergen-Belsen. Allies bomb train. All more dead.” He pointed to the remains of the train and the burned cars.

  “We got to Bergen-Belsen a few days ago. Don’t go there. It’s bad. Where did you get the tent?” The jeep’s driver was smoking a cigarette and offered the pack to Abraham, who was looking hungrily at it.

  “Danke,” he smiled, bobbing his head.

  “Canadian soldiers. One day past.” Isaac struggled to reply.

  The American nodded. “Need anything?”

  Isaac said, “Food? Where refugees go?”

  The officer said something to the corporal beside him, and the soldier got out and waved a truck down. Soon a box was handed down, and the truck drove on its way.

  The soldier struggled over to the men and dropped the box. The officer looked at the men again. “Not much. Can’t afford it, but with the food is a couple of bundles of Deutschmarks, too. Good luck,” The jeep jerked to life and was soon lost to sight in the clouds of dust churned up by the trucks and tanks.

  Saul and Abraham opened the box and took out jars and packages obviously removed from German homes. There were several jars of pickles and jams, packages of bratwurst and a half dozen loaves of bread, no more than a day old. Wrapped in rough cloth was a small wheel of cheese and in some newspaper was a large square of butter. There was a tattered Nazi flag, probably a souvenir, which Isaac threw onto their small fire. They each spit on it before it was consumed.

  In the bottom, wrapped in a German language newspaper, were three large bundles of used Deutschmarks. Isaac and Saul closed the lid of the now empty box and commenced to count the neatly bundled money. There were fifty, one hundred, five hundred and one thousand denominations. Many of each. The others crowded around and watched greedily. “Mein Gott, there is a lot of money here,” exclaimed Abraham.

  Saul quickly scribbled on the lid with the stub of a pencil. “If we divide it equally, there is plenty for all.” He looked at the others. “Is that satisfactory with you?”

  They all nodded eagerly, and in a few minutes, Saul had arranged the money in sixteen piles, dividing it up so each got some smaller and larger bills. There were no coins. Each man came forward, and, as Saul handed him the money, whispered, “Danke.”

  When they were done, Abraham brewed some coffee in a kettle that the Canadians had left behind. The others had their own little camps, usually along ethnic or friendship lines.

  Abraham flopped down on the ground and addressed his mates, “So, now that we are rich and have food, what are we going to do? Are any of you going home?”

  Isaac laughed, “Home? I will never set foot in that house again. I am sure my good neighbors have looted it. We were, after all, jewelers.”

  “Saul? You?” Abraham asked.

  Saul sat back and sipped his coffee. He had a satisfied look on his face. “My friends, I am going to America. I have family there, and I do not wish to stay in this country one day longer.” He looked at Abraham and pointed at his pile of bills, “If you think you are rich, you had better spend that money quickly. I have a feeling that it will not be accepted much longer.” He raised a hand and mockingly said, “Heil Hitler.”

  Abraham sighed and said, “I suppose we must dispose of the guard’s bodies.” He looked around, “Will you help me, bitte?”

  The four walked back to the ditch by the rail line. The decomposing bodies lay in various poses, the uniforms stiff from the dried blood. “Should we take their weapons?” asked Isaac.

  “No,” said Saul. “If we are caught with weapons, we may be mistaken for German troops.”

  Isaac gazed at the others, still scarecrows with shaven heads. He started to laugh. Soon the others were laughing too. It was a release, an epiphany, an ending of one life. Abraham slapped his thigh, “Soldiers? SS guards? Us?”

  Yuri added, “I wish we were as well fed as these bastards!” He was feeling somewhat better as he got some nourishing food in his gaunt belly. He shambled to the edge of the ditch, dropped his trousers and aimed his weak stream onto the nearest corpse, a particularly vile SS guard. He grinned a near-toothless grin at the others, “Now I am finished. Can we burn them now?”

  Abraham and Saul had
lugged the jerry can of petrol with them. They carefully unscrewed the lid and splashed the contents over the bodies. “Should we pile them together?” asked Isaac?

  “Go right ahead,” said Abraham. “I won’t touch them.”

  The others agreed, so Isaac wrapped a rag around a stick and lit it with a match. Soon it was aflame and he touched it to the petrol-drenched uniforms. They caught immediately, and the men stepped back. Abraham whispered a prayer for the dead while the bodies burned. Isaac spit into the ditch, and the group turned and walked back across the field to the camp.

  In the morning, Isaac helped Saul put together a pack with some clothes, food and two bottles of water. Between the four of them they created some papers from a notebook also in the bottom of the box left by the Americans. Though not issued by any government, they looked quite authentic. Isaac drew a detailed picture of Saul, designing a paper giving him permission to leave the country and detailing his incarceration in the camp at Auschwitz. They even designed a seal and an imitation stamp. When the last of the ink was dry, they each looked at it carefully.

  Finally, Abraham decided, “Well lad, if it was up to me, I’d let you leave and good riddance.”

  They all laughed at this. “So where will you go, Saul? From here, I mean,” asked Isaac.

  Saul rubbed his chin and said, “I’m not sure. I thought of heading north, but there might still be fighting around Bremerhaven. I expect that I’ll find passage out of Amsterdam easier and with more, um, sympathy for a poor Jewish refugee.” This last was said with just the proper note of irony.

  “Well, you poor fellow, have a safe passage. Write to us and let us know where you end up,” remarked Abraham with a slap on Saul’s back.

  Saul looked puzzled. “Write to you? Where?” He looked back and forth at the grinning faces. “Mein Gott, you men have made a decision too, haven’t you?” He slapped his leg and laughed.

  Abraham stood tall and announced in his deepest voice, “You may write to us in care of Jerusalem!” He grabbed Saul around the waist and spun him around. “The fellows and I are going to become Zionists. We are going to Palestine and help create the state of Israel!”

  Saul smiled and shook his head, “Gentlemen, I think it will be easier for me to go to America than it will be for you to go to Israel.” Then he frowned. “Lads, when I am set, I will write to each of you in care of the central post office in Jerusalem. As for me, I will be in the great city of Chicago, America.” He stood and shouldered his bundle. “Well, I am off.”

  He shook hands with each of them and walked back the way the Americans had come. Several of the other men caught up with him and joined in the march. Others waved to Yuri, Abraham and Isaac and left, heading south. Soon the three were alone. They watched until Saul, their latest friend and fellow survivor, disappeared around a bend.

  This was the end of one part of his life, Isaac thought, and the beginning of another. He glanced around at their temporary shelter. Their tent was Canadian, the food and money provided by Americans and, glancing down, his trousers, shirt and coat liberated from good Germans who, of course, knew nothing of the plight of those in the camps. Their food would run out in three or four days so it was right they should make plans for the next phase of their lives. It was time to find some work and a way to get to Palestine.

  After they ate a hearty breakfast the next morning, the three sorted through the gear they’d been left and made up packs to carry. The others had departed the day before, going their own ways.

  “Well, men, which way?” asked Abraham, standing on the road. The dust had settled after two more columns of Allied military vehicles had passed. The men riding on the tanks and in the backs of the trucks waved, and the three waved back.

  “I vote west,” said Isaac. “I don’t believe I want to go from being a prisoner of the Nazis to being a prisoner of the Russians.”

  Yuri frowned, “You think we’d be prisoners if the Russians came here?”

  Isaac waved a hand dismissively, “They hate Jews as much as the Nazis do.”

  They started walking west toward the Allied area of control.

  It took three months, but between walking, riding trains and finally a boat departing from Brindisi, Italy, the comrades found a captain who agreed to employ them as fishermen and take them close to Palestine. They would be on their own from there.

  One dark night, their feet touched the sandy bottom of the eastern Mediterranean and they waded ashore. Abraham fell to his knees and kissed a rock half buried in the sand. He looked at Isaac and Yuri and said, “THIS year in Jerusalem!” He hauled himself to his feet and threw his arms around the shoulders of the other two. “So? Which way is Jerusalem?”

  Several hours later, after the sun came up, and they had slept, they entered the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

  Chapter 20

  The city was bustling, and construction was going on all around them. Even the buildings that had been bombed by the Italians in 1940 and 41 were being repaired. One would hardly know that there had been a war here. There were, however, many British soldiers walking about, patrolling the streets, and even directing traffic.

  They wandered up a street, Allenby Street, and found a small café with several tables and rough wooden chairs outside. They sat, dropping their packs by their feet. A small, thin man with a large, black moustache hustled up to them. He brandished a cloth and wiped the already clean white tabletop.

  “Yes, gentlemen, what will you have?” He looked them up and down and asked, “Camp survivors?”

  They nodded and Abraham said in his rusty Hebrew, “Just arrived. We have only Deutschmarks and a few Lire. We would just like something to drink, sir.”

  The man stood before them and pulled a sleeve on his left arm back. The tattooed number stood out.

  The three also turned their arms up, showing their numbers. The waiter wiped a tear away and just nodded. In a few minutes he was back with three bottles of beer and three large sandwiches, good corned beef on pumpernickel with mustard.

  “Oh, no, my friend, we cannot afford this good food. Just some cold water, please,” Isaac persisted.

  The waiter said, “You think I give you this food from my uncle’s kitchen? What do you think we are, a charity? That will be one hundred marks.” After a hesitation, he added, “Each.”

  Abraham paid him, and the waiter hurried away. The smell of the food made Isaac’s mouth water. He was putting the weight back on that he’d lost. They all were, but Abraham had lost more than the others. They dug in and made noises of satisfaction as they ate and drank. It was the most delicious food they had eaten since they’d been liberated. Isaac could barely remember that food like this existed.

  Abraham finally sat back and burped loudly, barely covering his mouth. “Well lads, what next?”

  Yuri just shrugged. He was content to let the other two do the deciding. He was daily happy just to be alive. God would provide for them all, or Isaac or Abraham would.

  Isaac leaned forward and said, “With all the building going around here, I think jobs in construction should be easy to get.” He said this in Hebrew, and Abraham raised his eyebrows. Isaac reasoned, “We are in the Holy Land. We might as well start remembering our Hebrew.”

  “You are right.” He turned to Yuri. “Do you speak any Hebrew, my friend?”

  Yuri shyly said, “I was a rabbinical student. I am twenty years of age. I should have a congregation of my own now.” He grinned at them.

  Abraham laughed, “Well, you do. You have the beginnings of one with Isaac here, and me.”

  The day was warm with a nice breeze off the nearby Mediterranean Sea. Sea birds squawked and wheeled above them, looking for dropped morsels.

  Other Jews summoned by the waiter helped them find an affordable room in a large house owned by a huge Latvian woman whose husband had died in the war. She agreed to let them stay there until they found jobs and could pay her.

  Obtaining work was not difficult. Within two days they wer
e working on a building site. Here Isaac met a fellow worker who was an ardent Zionist. After a few weeks, the man took him to a secret meeting. At this meeting he was introduced to the Irgun, a clandestine militant group dedicated to throwing the British out of Palestine. The British had decided to limit Jewish immigration to Mandate Palestine. This Mandate instrument was passed by the League of Nations granting Britain permission to govern all the area comprising occupied Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jordan.

  At this first meeting, Isaac asked, “If not here, where else were we supposed to go? Most other countries have immigration restrictions on Jews too.”

  A man at the front of the room, later introduced as Zvi Sacher, stood and calmly said, “We have decided to split from the Haganah, at least for now. Jews all over the world should be allowed to come to Palestine. The British oppose this, yet restrict immigration to Great Britain. The Americans, our so called saviors, allow Jews to immigrate to America if only they already have family there.” Wryly he continued, “We are, of course, allowed to return to our homes in Germany, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria, and all the other countries that gladly shipped us and our families off to the camps and ovens.” He was working himself up to an angry rant. “Who here wants to return to your former homes? Who here wants to live beside those good neighbors who turned us in to the SS and the Gestapo? Who, here, is now willing to stand up to injustice? Who here will never again crouch in fear when that knock comes in the middle of the night? This is now our country! This is now where we will stand and fight! This is the Jewish homeland and I will stand and fight the Arabs, the British, the Turks, and anyone else who tries to throw us out or kill us!”

  Isaac whispered to his co-worker, the man who had brought him to this meeting, “What is the Haganah?”

  “It is a para-military group like ours, but they want to negotiate with the British to end the Mandate.”