Long Lost Brother

by Don Kafrissen

  Isaac looked down to see a rifle barrel tapping his foot, then realized that someone was, in fact, tapping his foot. He awoke with a start, sweating. A tall, dark-haired young man was tapping his foot with a broom.

  "Time to eat," the tall man said.

  Only Isaac and Ivan were still asleep. The other two were already up and gone. Isaac waved a hand at the young man, "Thank you. We'll be right there." He yawned and asked, "Who are you?"

  "Martin. Sophie's son. Get up."

  Isaac stood and kicked Ivan on the foot. "Supper's ready," he said groggily.

  In the small kitchen, Yuri and Petar were eating some sort of pasta with chunks of meat and gravy on it. Slices of bread lay on a wooden cutting board.

  "When they are finish, you and Martin eat," Sophia said.

  Ivan staggered in scratching his butt. Isaac grabbed him by the arm, turned him around and steered him toward the back door. "Let us start unloading the lorry. They will be finished soon." He turned to Sophia and asked, "Where would you like the casks of food, Frau Sophia?"

  "Up front, bitte." She called, "Martin, help them."

  "Ya, Mama," he answered, following Ivan and Isaac out to the truck. It was dark and quiet outside. The stars were bright in the spring sky, the noise of the equipment now silent. Ivan hopped up on the truck and rolled the barrels to the edge. Isaac and Martin manhandled them to the ground and they took turns rolling them through the parlor to the storefront. There were fifteen in all.

  They came in and washed at the kitchen sink. "Running water?" said Isaac. "City water pressure?"

  Martin snorted, "Someday, maybe. We have a cistern on roof. Rained hard three days past." When he finished, he handed the towel to Isaac. "You smell bad."

  Isaac nodded, "It keeps the Russian soldiers away."

  “It would keep me away too,” replied Martin.

  Ivan asked, "Where are the guns?"

  Martin thumbed over his shoulder, "Next building, dress shop."

  Yuri and Petar stood and made room at the table for the others. Petar belched and patted his flat stomach. "Good food." As he slid by Sophia, he asked, "Can we get in the store next door?" He asked this in broken Yiddish.

  "Yes. Take the torch on the shelf."

  Petar took a flashlight from the shelf beside the rear door and stepped out into the night. There had been so much destruction in Chemnitz that the smell of burnt wood could still be detected in the cooling air.

  Yuri opened the door with a scrape. Petar shone the light into the interior. He saw dust-covered tarpaulins atop high stacks of oblong objects piled high. He handed the light to Yuri and pulled a canvas tarp off one stack of wooden crates. The top one had already been opened, and the lid was just laid back on. Yuri peered over his shoulder, shining the light into the crate. Inside were rows of German MP-40 sub-machine guns. He touched them. They were slippery with some black substance.

  "Cosmoline," explained Petar. "Keeps them from rusting." He ran his hand over the weapons, counting to himself. There were three rows of ten crates, thirty guns to a crate. He pulled the canvas back and counted five high. Petar looked around and surveyed the piles. There were three stacks of canvas-covered crates. Four hundred and fifty weapons. Marvelous! He wondered if there were magazines also.

  Yuri and Petar smiled at each other, then Yuri shut off the light and they walked back to the grocery rear door.

  Isaac and Ivan were just finishing. Martin was at the sink washing dishes, while his mother leaned against the wall, eating from a plate held in her hand. She drank from a mug. Petar smelled beer and smiled at her.

  "Beer. It's still Germany, even though in a year we will probably be drinking vodka."

  Yuri told the others what they had found. Martin said, "Not four hundred and fifty. Only three hundred and ninety. Two boxes have many magazines, maybe six or seven hundred. I didn't count." He grinned, "Oh, sorry, only three hundred and eighty eight. I took two plus six magazines."

  "Going to shoot Russians?" asked Ivan. He stood with hands on hips, surveying the taller man. "You know that the Russians are not going to pull back, don't you?" He pointed a stiff finger at Martin. "You need to get out while you can. There's nothing more for you here."

  Martin looked from Ivan to Sophia, back and forth. "What should I do, Mama?"

  Before Sophia could answer, Isaac said, "We can use a good man like you in Palestine, in Israel."

  She nodded, "Go, Martin."

  "You also, Mama, you come too, ya?"

  She shook her head. "I'm too old, and I like it here. I want to see what the Russians will do. Besides, I have many barrels of dried fruit to sell." She turned to the four men, "You take my son with you when you go. Now go back to sleep. Rest, and after one day we will say goodbye."

  As the men trooped back to the bedroom, Isaac pulled Martin aside. "Come, walk with me." They went outside into the night again. When they were at the lorry, Isaac asked, "Can you get another smaller truck or an auto for maybe three or four hours?"

  Martin thought for a minutes and said, "Ya, I think I can borrow my friend Olaf's Ford. It is old but runs well." He frowned. "Why, where are we going?"

  Isaac looked around, making sure none of the others were listening, "Freiberg. It is between Chemnitz and Dresden."

  Martin waved a hand dismissively, "Yes, yes, I know Freiburg. I have been there. Why are we going there? And why don't you want your friends to know?"

  Isaac said, "It was my hometown. I want to see it once more. It is where my Papa and Grandpapa were shot, my mother and sister raped and where we were all sent to the camps."

  Martin nodded. "I will return here in one half hour with the auto. Be ready, bitte." And he disappeared into the night.

  True to his word, Martin was back with a small Ford sedan in only fifteen minutes. "Get in, Isaac," he called through the window. Isaac climbed in and Martin drove out of town. "I'll go north first so we avoid the Russians. They stay in the cities, mostly."

  On through the night they sped.

  Only once did Isaac ask, "Where do you get your petrol?"

  Martin shrugged, "Sometimes we are able to purchase it," he smiled sweetly, "but most often the Russians donate it to my friend Olaf. At night."

  They reached Freiburg a little more than an hour later. Isaac directed Martin down a street of houses and a small park. A turn at the end they were on his street. The houses and shops alternated until near the center of town, where they were all shops. "Stop, please," he asked Martin.

  Quietly, he opened the door and stood in the cool night. His family's shop and home was now a store selling plumbing fixtures. He walked to the door with new glass and pounded a fist on it.

  Martin called to him, "Isaac, do not do anything foolish."

  Isaac waved a hand at him to be quiet. Then he pounded on the door again. A light came on and a man in a nightshirt came to the door. It opened a crack and a short plump man with a round face and a thin mustache peered out frowning. "Ya? What do you want?"

  "I am sorry to wake you, Mein Herr. I was looking for Herr Wilhelm Junger. I thought he lived here."

  "Nein, some Jews named Rothberg lived here. They moved away. Junger is a policeman. He lives on Auenwald Strasse in the large gray house, ya?" He pointed, "That is two streets that way."

  "Danke, Mein Herr. Again, I am sorry to wake you. Good night." Isaac tipped his hand to his head and backed away.

  Martin said, "That was risky, my friend. Suppose he calls the man you are looking for?"

  Isaac shrugged, "I don't care. That man will still pay." He settled himself into the passenger seat and pointed, "One more stop, Martin, then we shall return home."

  They drove for another five minutes and stopped in front of the large dark house. Isaac knew which house the policeman and former SS officer called home. He just couldn't believe that the man would return home after the war. Weren’t the Allies still looking for former SS officers? Even the Russians hated them.

  Once again, Isaac, and
this time Martin too, walked up the paved walk. A dim light shone from inside the house. They looked at each other, and this time Martin knocked. As he did, he nudged a pistol into Isaac's hand. "It is loaded, safety off."

  In a few moments a man answered the door, a woman standing behind him. "Ya? Can I help you, young gentlemen?"

  "Herr Junger?" Isaac asked the man. He was tall, broad and imposing. At this point in his life he was getting jowly and his cheeks were marred with broken veins. His stomach drooped over his trouser top. His wife was a frowsy, overweight woman with mottled skin. She could barely see over her husband's shoulder.

  "Yes, I am Wilhelm Junger. What is it you want? I am a police officer, you know, and …"

  "I know who you are, Herr Junger, or should I say SS Captain Junger?"

  "See here, young man, do I know you?" The man was blustering and didn't appear at all intimidated by the revelation.

  Isaac smiled disarmingly at the old man, "Perhaps you will remember my family? We ran a jewelry store before the war. You shot my father and grandfather. Then you watched as my mother and sister were raped. Perhaps even took part. Don't tell me you don't remember, Herr Junger?"

  Junger stepped back as if struck. In doing so, he stepped on his wife's foot. She gave a little cry and then asked, "Is this true, Willi?"

  "Shut your mouth, woman," he said, turning and slapping her hard. She spun, hit the wall and covered her face with her hands.

  He spun back and shook a finger in Isaac's face, "You dare come here and say such things in front of my wife? You dare?" He reached behind him and withdrew a pistol from a narrow tabletop.

  Before he could raise it, Isaac shot him in the chest. He'd placed the pistol nearly against Junger's chest so the man’s fat muffled the sound. A large black stain mottled his undershirt, and the gun dropped from his fingers.

  Frau Junger moved around to stand in front of her husband. She eyed the blood spreading on his shirt and dripping on the floor and smiled. Then as he started to sag, she spit in his face. "Pig! I have waited for years for someone to do to you what I always wanted to do but lacked the courage!" She slapped his face once, twice, three times.

  As Wilhelm Junger slid to his knees, he looked up into his wife's eyes and frowned, then fell forward, dead. The wife turned and said, "Give me the gun." She knelt and picked up her husband's pistol and exchanged it with Isaac's. "If the Russian police question me, I'll tell them that I just could not put up with his abuse any longer. Now go, Jew. You were never here." She pulled her husband's feet in and closed the door.

  Martin grabbed Isaac's coat sleeve and tugged him toward the car. They sat for a minute and then Martin started the car and they drove back to the bakery in silence.

  Isaac thought about what he had done. This was the third man he'd killed. Did he feel any remorse about any of the three?

  The first had been Bruger, one of the men who'd raped his mother and sister. Of course, he'd wished that the police had prosecuted and punished the men, but the only policeman who'd been present, Junger, had encouraged the others. No, he didn't feel remorse about Bruger. The second had been Goff, Dr. Schwartz's driver. With him, he'd had the assistance of Yuri and Abraham, but still, he'd done the deed himself. Remorse again? Not really. The three of them might be dead today if left to Goff. And the last, Police Constable Wilhelm Junger. No, that one actually felt satisfying. He had been a bad man, both to his wife and to Isaac's family.

  Isaac wondered: Was he becoming a Jewish Nazi? A revenge killer? It would bear considering, but wasn't there a difference in ridding the world of bad people, rather than killing them for sport or in anger? But isn't that what the Nazis had done? Demonize some people, make them less than human, and it becomes all right to "eliminate" them. But he wasn't demonizing a 'people', just individuals. On the other hand, would he eliminate all Nazis if he could? At least SS men?

  This was reminding him of some of the discussions the rabbis used to have regarding the fine points in the Bible or the Talmud. The rabbis and rabbinical students called this pilpul. Isaac viewed it as an endless and pointless discussion. On the other hand, it was probably necessary to … Ah, God, now he was doing it again!

  Chapter 25

  "Where have you two been?" asked Ivan.

  "Just visiting my old home," answered Isaac, tossing his light jacket onto a chair. The jacket clunked and the gun fell onto the floor. He looked from one to the other.

  Martin scooped it up and said, "Thank you for holding that for me, Isaac. I'll put it away now." He left the room but returned a few minutes later, acting like nothing had happened.

  His mother had the radio out and the volume turned low. "What are you listening to, Mama?"

  "Shhh," she said. "The Allies are conducting trials in Nuremberg of the Nazi leaders."

  Isaac and Martin sat. "Who do they have so far? Did they ever find Himmler?"

  Petar shook his head, "He committed suicide before the trials even started, the coward."

  Isaac nodded, "Who are they trying now?" He had heard that the war crimes tribunal had started but had been too busy to pay much attention.

  Sophia smiled and ticked some of the defendants off on her fingers, "Bormann, Donitz, the admiral, Hess." She spat on the floor before she continued; "Kalten Brunner, Hanz Frank ̶ him I don't know. Albert Speer and Streicher, very bad men. And Alfred Rosenberg."

  "But what about the lower level SS officers, the camp guards, the kapos? The ones who committed the murders, not just the ones who ordered it?" Isaac jumped to his feet, pacing. "Who is going after the bastards who loaded us in the boxcars? Who is going after the ones who dropped the gas pellets?"

  Yuri stood and went to his friend. "We are, Isaac. Who else? And Abraham, of course."

  Petar said, "They spoke of a man who was at Auschwitz, a man who is gathering information on all the men you speak of. His name is Seymour Levintall."

  Isaac whirled on him. "After we deliver these guns, I must find him. I have drawings of some of the men and perhaps we can find them."

  Yuri raised his arms, "But where will we find this fellow, Levintall?"

  "Guys, guys, let's concentrate on getting the guns back home, shall we?" said Ivan. "We're all tired. Let's sleep one more day, and we'll leave tomorrow night. But first we have to figure out how to disguise these weapons. Does anyone have any ideas?"

  Sophia smacked the table with a spoon, "You men. You know you have to get them out of the crates, ya?"

  The men nodded. She went on. "Empty the barrels of fruit and put them in there."

  "But if we get stopped by the same soldiers, they will know we had not sold them. Suppose they check again?" said Petar.

  Isaac said, "We must cover the guns with something so vile, the soldiers will not want to look into the barrels."

  Ivan laughed. "What about manure?"

  Isaac shook his head, "Manure would be carried loose in the truck, not in barrels. Something slimy, smelly. What can that be?"

  They talked for another hour but couldn't think of anything. Finally Sophia ordered, "Martin, go see Gerda. Take her this." She scribbled a short note on a scrap of butcher paper. She turned to the men, "Now go to sleep. Martin will be back later. You can leave after dark. I will make some food to take with you."

  After they had slept, the four men once again gathered in the kitchen. Sophia laid out their food and gave Petar a box containing bratwurst, bread, some of the dried fruit and a bag of pastries. She apologized, "I am sorry, this is the best I could obtain. Please leave me some money."

  Petar asked, "Has Martin returned?"

  "Ya, he has been busy in your lorry."

  Isaac raised his eyebrows, "Really? Doing what?"

  Sophia smiled and winked, "Why don't you go see?" She cleared the table, and Yuri stayed to help her tidy the kitchen.

  On the back of the truck, Martin was packing the guns in the barrels. Beside him were several washtubs with very odiferous contents.

  Ivan pinched his nos
e, "Mein Gott Martin, what is that?" The others staggered back. Isaac tucked his nose into his shirt.

  Martin grinned and answered, "Come, come, gentlemen, you wanted something smelly and slimy, eh?" He thrust a hand into one of the tubs and came out with three small fish. To say that they were not fresh would be an understatement.

  He grabbed up a scoop and poured some fish over the top of the guns. "There are guns and magazines in each barrel. I believe we will have just enough fish to cover the tops of each to a depth of, oh, two hundred centimeters?" He held out a slippery hand to Isaac. "Won't you join me?"

  Isaac smacked the hand aside and hoisted himself onto the rear. Then he held out a hand to Yuri. There was only enough room for the two of them and Martin. They slid the wooden crates down to Ivan and Petar's waiting hands, only now the crates were filled with the dried fruit. Soon they were finished and washed their hands in a basin on a shelf against the rear wall of the bakery shop.

  Petar hugged Sophia, "Thank you for everything, Mein Frau." He handed her a roll of Reichmarks and whispered, "There are some pounds sterling in the center. I hope that will help. Or would you prefer rubles?"

  Sophia chuckled and patted him on the arm, "Who knows whether pieces of paper will be worth anything in six months, a year? You have brought many barrels of food. That is worth more than gold right now." She shrugged, "I can bargain with it, ya?"

  Petar nodded. "Good luck. We may not be able to get you out once the Russians tighten their grip."

  "As long as you take Martin with you. He is a good boy. Please look after him, ya?"

  "We will, but after they leave us, it will be up to Isaac." He thought for a minute, rubbing his stubbled chin, "He is young, but a very tough young man. Martin will be all right."

  They each said goodbye and thanked the old woman, then climbed aboard the lorry, Isaac, Yuri and Ivan in the rear, Petar driving and Martin in front. They avoided the city center and rolled out of the small town in the dark and quiet.