“You did these?”
Isaac nodded and pulled his sleeve back. The blue numbers were only now beginning to blur a bit.
Seymour Levintall nodded, recognizing a fellow survivor.
“Why did you put those particular drawings aside?” asked Isaac.
“I know them. The Witch, Doctor Haupman, Sergeant Boettcher, Helmut Kroll, and a couple of others I recognize but did not know their names,” Levintall said, “You have a remarkable memory, young man. What are you doing now?”
Isaac glanced at the man behind him, then leaned low to whisper in Levintall’s ear, “Irgun.”
Levintall jerked back and glared at him, palms flat on the table. He pushed himself up and stood, gesturing Isaac to follow him. They walked into a corner where Levintall leaned close, “You are wasting yourself here. How good an artist are you, young man?” He appraised Isaac shrewdly, then pointed, “Do you see that man beside the door?”
Isaac turned and looked, “The tall man with the beard?”
“Yes,” said Levintall digging into his briefcase and coming up with a pad and pencil. “Do you know him?”
“No,” answered Isaac. He studied the man for a few seconds, memorizing his features.
“Draw him,” ordered Levintall shoving the pencil into Isaac’s hands.
Isaac shrugged, walked over and sat at the table. In two or three minutes, he thrust the pad back into Levintall’s hands.
Levintall was astounded, “This, this is fantastic,” he exclaimed. Then he narrowed his eyes, “Are you sure you don’t know this man?”
“I never saw him before tonight, sir. In fact, this is the first time I have ever been to Jerusalem.”
Levintall hurried over to the man who was just leaving. He spoke for a minute, then gave him the drawing. A smile lit up the man’s face and, after speaking to Levintall who pointed at Isaac, the man tipped his hat and left.
Levintall strode back. “Pack up your things, young man. You are coming with me.”
Isaac smiled, thinking the man was joking, “Where are we going, Mr. Levintall?”
“Belgium. Brussels to be exact.”
“Why there? I thought you worked out of Vienna.” Isaac was perplexed.
“No, no, that is where Simon Wiesenthal works, though I hear he is moving to Linz. He is a great man, and right now he is after the big fish. We go after the sardines, the low-level monsters. Later, we will collaborate with him.” Wringing his hands together, he again asked, “So, when can you leave? I would like to be on my way in two days.”
“Sir, it is not so easy. I am not alone. There are three of us.” He motioned Yuri and Abraham forward and introduced them.
Levintall shook hands all around, then gathered up his papers, “So, you three will come with me then to Brussels? We can always use more volunteers.”
“Volunteers? For what?” asked Abraham.
Levintall stopped and stood up straight, “For what? I’ll tell you for what, young man. We are Nazi hunters.”
Chapter 33
Isaac, Yuri and Abraham called Zvi Sacher in the Irgun in Beersheba to resign, and described their new duties. To say that Zvi was not pleased would be an understatement.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he screamed into the phone. “You belong to me! I have work for you three slackers!”
After the rant went on for too long, Isaac quietly hung up the telephone.
An American Army Air Corps C-47, on loan for the duration of the War Crimes Trials, took the young men first to Cyprus, where Levintall had hoped to interview camp survivors that were being held in British detention camps. They had been intercepted while fleeing the charnel house that was Europe to Palestine, the Promised Land. The British detention authorities denied Levintall permission to enter the camps, even with his American escorts. No reason was given. Though the camps were somewhat better than the Nazi concentration camps, they were still camps. They stood near the gate and looked at the inmates. The clothing was better, the barracks were sturdier and the prisoners seemed to be in better physical condition.
Isaac’s heart ached for the nearly 50,000 Jews interned there. He wondered if Deborah Eisenstein was swallowed up there, or his brother, Herschel. The British would not even allow them to look at the lists of names. Isaac asked for the names of the camp commanders, but this too was denied.
Levintall asked him what he wanted the names for. Isaac turned on him and barked, “Because someday I will hunt them down and kill them for detaining my brothers and sisters.”
Levintall did not understand. “But they are only doing their duty, what they were ordered to do.”
Sarcastically, Isaac clicked his heels and replied, “Heil Hitler! Just following orders, Mein Furher!”
Seymour paled, “We’ll have no more of that, young Isaac. Now you take orders from me. Do you understand?”
Isaac nodded and mumbled, “Yes, sir.”
But Yuri and even Abraham could see in his eyes that he was only putting on an act.
Several hours later, the plane landed at Melsbroek Air Station, the former German military airfield and now the Allies’ field. It was closer to the Brussels city center than its cousin, Gosselied Aeroport, which was 46km south of the city proper.
Levintall had a car there, an ancient Peugeot, which took them into the city. They navigated the ring street and finally stopped before the Palais de Justice. “There,” said Seymour Levintall, “is where we will bring those sardines to justice.”
Isaac and Yuri just looked at each other, small smiles barely turning up the corners of their mouths. They sat in the rear of the car while Abraham sat beside the diminutive Levintall. He released the brake, and they turned up a side street, crossed a wide boulevard where some of the buildings showed bomb damage and then turned onto Rue Jourdan, a street of shops, interspersed with apartment buildings. Their number was 1365.
Levintall halted again before a tobacconist’s shop and said, “Well, here we are. Not the tobacconist, but next door.” He pointed. The gold lettering on the door read, Seymour Levintall, Enquêtes Guerre, and below it, in English, War Investigations.
When they went inside, there were six or seven people busily moving filing cabinets, desks and chairs around a large open space. In the rear, two carpenters were erecting a wall with two doors, cordoning off small interrogation rooms. One young woman was holding a blackboard up over a desk. Yuri, ever helpful where young women were concerned, strode over to help her.
Isaac and Abraham rolled their eyes, smiling. Levintall described the work they were doing, which consisted of identifying and locating former camp guards, doctors and nurses in the infamous experimental wards, executioners, gas administrators, non-military barracks police, Gestapo agents and anyone else who could be identified by eyewitnesses. When Levintall felt he had sufficient evidence, he would inform the American or British authorities and supply them with the information needed to prosecute the offenders.
“What happens if the Americans or British refuse to prosecute?” asked Isaac.
Levintall shrugged, “We keep pressing, gather more evidence. What else can we do?”
Isaac just said, “I see.”
Later, after introducing them to their fellow volunteers, he took them to a boarding house several streets away, on Rue du Conseil. There, a Madame LeDuc, a lumpy woman with graying hair wrapped in a bun, greeted them, flour on her arms and apron and a cheerful smile on her plump face. “Bonjour! Bonjour Monsieur Levintall. Welcome back to Brussels.” She spoke French with a slight guttural accent. Isaac guessed that French was not her milk tongue.
Levintall kissed her on both cheeks and introduced the three men with him, also speaking in French. He introduced them as Monsieur Isaac Rothberg, Monsieur Abraham Cohen and Monsieur Yuri Klausner. Isaac understood a word or two, but that was all. Abraham, on the other hand, greeted Madame LeDuc in halting French, kissing her hand.
“Bonjour, Madame LeDuc. I’m sure you have a lovely establishme
nt. Would you be so good as to show us some rooms, s'il vous plait.”
She fluttered her hands before her ample bosom and chirped, “Why, of course, Monsieur Cohen. Please follow me.” She ascended a stairway on the right, the three young men following.
Levintall said loudly, “I will leave you gentlemen to bathe and rest. Meet me at the office in,” he checked his pocket watch, “three hours, yes? That will be at seven o’clock, please.”
Promptly at 7:00 PM, the three arrived at the small office. Levintall ushered them down the street to a café where they ate dinner. Afterward, while sitting back and sipping wine, Isaac asked, “What are we supposed to do for spending money, sir?”
“You have no money saved?” Levintall asked.
Abraham laughed, “I must have left my wallet back in Auschwitz. So absent-minded of me.”
Levintall pondered, “What would you be doing back in Palestine?”
They looked at each other, and then Yuri said, “We were Irgun. Anything we wanted, we could take from the British. They have plenty.”
Isaac said shrewdly, “We are in Belgium. There were many collaborators here. All we have to do is track them down and take what they have. The Belgians won’t mind.” He sat back waiting for Levintall’s answer, which was swift in coming.
“No, no, that is not allowed. That is not how we operate.” He was clearly agitated, finally realizing what forces he had under his tenuous control.
“So?” Isaac dared.
“We have received substantial funds for our research from Jewish organizations in America, Canada and even from Britain. I know the Americans are using some recovered funds from gold and currencies that the Germans looted during the war. I have petitioned them for some, shall we say, research funds? I will call tomorrow and see what is happening.”
Isaac shrugged and declared, “We could also make a run back into Germany and liberate a bank or two.” He was pushing Levintall to his limit.
Levintall glared at him, “You will do no such thing. Tomorrow I will give you each spending money and set up some sort of payments for you on a regular basis.”
Isaac smiled beatifically, “Thank you, sir. Now, about papers. We will each need passports if we are to travel. I do not care where they are from, Belgium, Palestine, Germany; it is up to you. In fact, I would like to have several passports under a variety of names from as many countries as you can arrange.”
Abraham and Yuri nodded in agreement. The evening was growing dark and the streetlights were sporadic, as was local electrical power. The café was self-powered, probably by a small generator, as were several local shops. Isaac looked up the street and noted that off in the distance, there were black portions of the city, occasional flickering lights here and there indicating more small generators or gas lamps. Brussels was slowly recovering from the war.
Levintall knew he was defeated. “I will see what I can do tomorrow. There is a man I knew in the camp who now lives here. He used to prepare documents for the Germans.”
The next day, they went to a small men’s hat shop in the northern part of the city to see a man named Hirsh Einhorn. Einhorn’s shop sat alone between two taller damaged buildings. There were men working to tear down both buildings, though the hat shop remained remarkably untouched. When they explained their mission, Einhorn led them into a back room. He sat them individually before a white sheet tacked to the wall and took their pictures.
“Come back in three days and I’ll have passports for you. Bring money too. I do not do this for nothing. What countries?”
They discussed it and Hirsh waved his hand at Palestine, “No, no. Right now, only the British passport is recognized there. I will do Germany, Belgium and Netherlands.” He smiled, “Use the Dutch one as much as possible. It’s very innocuous. Nobody suspects the Dutch of anything except tulip smuggling.” He laughed heartily at his own joke.
When they were finished, the three took a stroll through a nearby park. Children were playing games while mothers sat and talked in small groups. The park was green except for the concrete anti-tank emplacements still littering the fringes.
“I think we are going to feel restricted by Mr. Levintall’s rules,” mused Abraham.
Yuri and Isaac agreed. “I think we must depart soon on a Nazi hunt. Let’s look in Levintall’s files and see how many of my drawings we can match to names. That should give us a start,” Isaac said. They watched the people strolling through the park and wondered how many of the men had been collaborators, camp guards or just neighbors who had turned their Jewish friends into the SS or Gestapo.
All through the next day, with the drawings spread on a large table, the three worked in concert with the other staff. There was Herta from Warsaw, a thick-waisted, solid woman with short dark hair, and Bruno, also from Warsaw, a thin, lively youth with long arms and a missing tooth. Bruno’s girlfriend, a wisp of a woman named Rosa, rarely left his side. She had slim, delicate fingers and was quite adept at retrieving the correct files from the many cabinets. A Mrs. Katz mothered them all. She was a stern, gray-eyed woman of middle age and had sore ankles, which she rubbed whenever she sat down.
Over the next three days, they were able to identify three Nazis from the drawings. While they worked, Isaac also sketched pictures of the office people, which he gave them as gifts. This endeared him to them and so the four worked hard at finding the identities and suspected locations of the Nazis.
The first was Dr. Josef Haupman, one of the doctors at the medical testing facility at Auschwitz headed by the infamous Dr. Mengele. It was rumored that Haupman was working as a nurse at a small clinic in Austria in a town called Pfunds, using the alias Leo Kohn. This information had come from several sources, though no photos had accompanied the two letters and one postcard. Since that western part of Austria, the Tyrol, was under the control of the American army, they should have no problem traveling there by train.
When they approached Levintall, at first he was against their going, but they assured him that if they located the infamous Dr. Haupman, they would approach the American authorities with their findings. Isaac assured Levintall that he could make a positive identification. “But why must all three of you go?” he asked plaintively.
Isaac tried to soothe him by saying, “Yuri and I are sometimes a bit volatile. Abraham will be there to keep us under control. Please, Mr. Levintall, we will not do anything rash unless we are forced to.”
“And I will see to it that they are not forced to, sir,” smiled Abraham. “Oh, and, by the way, we will need funds for the trip and a little to pay for our passports from Hirsh.” He stuck out his hand, still smiling.
Resignedly, Levintall opened his safe and pulled out a bundle of banknotes. “Here are some Deutschmarks, American dollars and even some British pounds. Try not to spend it all, please?”
The next day, they collected the passports from Hirsh. The forger pointed at them, “Remember, take only one each with you. If you are searched and the authorities find more than one, they will consider them all to be forgeries. And,” he added over a retreating shoulder, “these are too good to waste. Nor will you get your money back after you get out of prison!” He laughed again, shaking his head.
Seymour Levintall gave them a letter describing his work with the War Crimes Commission and asking the American Authorities for whatever assistance his men might need.
Chapter 34
The three Nazi hunters traveled southeast through Belgium into Germany, through Stuttgart and then to Munich. From there, they had to take a bus to Innsbruck in Austria. Even in summer, the mountain air chilled them. Pfunds lay south near the Swiss border. They had avoided Switzerland because the border guards were reputed to be exceptionally keen eyed and might detect the false passports. The Americans were less cautious and more welcoming, and ever eager to assist the War Crimes Commission and their investigators.
Since all three men spoke German, they came to Pfunds, in the Landeck Valley, and claimed to be surveying for a ski ar
ea. They passed themselves off as representatives of the newly emerging Fabriken Kraus, a company that constructed buildings in mountainous areas.
Abraham found a small hotel, and they settled in. After questioning the desk clerk, they learned that the medical clinic was at the east end of town in a small half-timbered building, and that, yes, Herr Kohn, was a nurse there.
“Why? Are you not feeling well?” the clerk asked.
“No, no, I am fine,” Abraham replied. “My friends and I are going hiking and if one of us should get hurt we just want to know where to go,” answered Isaac.
“Then why did you ask about Herr Kohn?” the clerk asked suspiciously.
Isaac was quick with his reply, “Why, our company gave us his name saying that he was an excellent medical technician, as good as any doctor, and we just wanted to know if he was working there. In addition, if our company constructs a building here, our men just may need a medical person upon occasion.”
This seemed to mollify the clerk, who suggested several hiking trails on the outskirts of town.
They went for a walk and soon found a small café situated diagonally across from the medical clinic. They settled in for a late breakfast. Time passed and the owner refilled their coffee cups several times. Around midday, two people, a man and a woman, came out of the clinic and walked across to the café. Isaac smiled up at them as they passed. Their nametags read Kohn and Holzer. Isaac looked close and nodded. It was definitely Josef Haupman, Dr. Mengele’s assistant at Auschwitz. The small mustache was gone, and he’d lost some weight but, besides the face, Isaac recognized the triangle tattooed on his left thumb, faded but still visible.
The rest of the day was spent scouting the town, purchasing a few supplies, and planning the operation. It was to be quick, in and out.
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