Long Lost Brother

by Don Kafrissen

  That evening they came to the clinic just minutes before closing time. Abraham gripped Yuri, pretending to hold him upright while Yuri clutched his arm across his chest.

  Isaac flung open the door and called, “Help! We need some assistance here! My friend is hurt.”

  Kohn came running from a room in the rear. “Bring him back here, please,” he said, indicating an examining room down a short hallway.

  Abraham did so, slowly, while Isaac checked the other rooms. Evidently the other nurse, Holzer, had gone home, and there was no one else in the building. Isaac turned off the light in the waiting area and twisted the lock on the front door. He already knew that there was a rear door that led to a small parking area and behind that a brushy copse of trees ̶ a perfect setting for what they had planned.

  As he entered the examining room, he found Kohn aiming a small Walther semi-automatic pistol at Isaac’s friends. Isaac entered behind Haupman, who turned at the sound of the door opening. As he did, Yuri leapt from his chair and hit him roughly with his fist on the side of his head. Isaac grabbed at the pistol wrenching it from Haupman’s hand. Haupman stumbled and crashed against the side of a cabinet holding towels, dressings, and a collection of stoppered bottles.

  Abraham grabbed Haupman from behind and twisted his arm up behind his back, keeping the former Nazi’s face pressed against the wall. Yuri found a roll of adhesive tape and they secured his hands together behind him.

  “How did you find me?” Haupman asked in a calm voice.

  “I remember you from the clinic at Auschwitz. I am an artist, and I drew your picture,” said Isaac.

  “I remember you also,” added Yuri. “You were in the clinic with Mengele.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Ah,” said Isaac, smirking, “we have a very nice little ceremony planned for you.” He nodded at Abraham.

  Yuri cracked the rear door and gave the okay. Abraham ushered Haupman outside while Yuri cleaned up the office, wiping all surfaces they might have touched with a rag soaked in alcohol. As Isaac and Abraham stood under the dark portico in the rear, Yuri flipped off the lights and joined them. Isaac picked up their bag of supplies.

  They quickly crossed the graveled parking area and went deep into the dark wood. Isaac illuminated the path with a hand torch from the bag while Yuri and Abraham hustled their prisoner behind.

  They got to a small clearing and stopped. Abraham spun Haupman around and Isaac stepped close and said, “Now, try to remember this next part, Dr. Haupman.”

  Isaac stood before the three as they formed themselves into a line. “All right,” Isaac said in his most imperialistic voice, “What have we got here? New prisoners for our factories? Hmm, you,” he pointed at Yuri and motioned him to the right, then Haupman to the left and finally Abraham to the right with Yuri. He stepped forward and in a mocking voice said, “I am sorry, Dr. Haupman, but you didn’t make the cut.” He cupped his elbow in his palm and placed a finger beside his nose.

  “What childish game are you playing, Jew?” the sneering doctor asked.

  “Why, don’t you remember how you and Mengele used to select those new arrivals for the work crews of the gas chambers? And,” he waved an arm, “remember the small wood you left as a staging area for those unfortunates who, as I said, didn’t make the cut?” He stalked back and forth before the still calm doctor. “I am most sorry that we don’t have the time or the tools to disinfect you first and then cremate you, like you did to so many.”

  He turned to Yuri, “Did you leave the note?”

  Yuri nodded and recited, “For all the sins I have committed at Auschwitz, I am forever sorry. Signed, Dr. Josef Haupman.”

  Again Isaac stepped forward, close to the doctor. He slowly rolled up his sleeve, showing the doctor his tattoo. Yuri and Abraham stepped forward and, by the light of the flashlight, displayed their forearms. “Remember these numbers as you are dying, Herr Doctor. Three Jews, your former prisoners, are ridding the world of scum like you.”

  Behind Haupman, Abraham brought forward a loop in a rope they had rigged earlier in the afternoon. Isaac looped it around the doctor’s neck. He and Yuri stepped back and told Abraham to untape the doctor’s hands, which he did. Abraham, not wanting to be directly responsible for taking a life, withdrew to the path and kept watch. Isaac and Yuri jerked the rope tight, pulling Haupman up onto his toes. Another haul on the rope, and Haupman’s feet were now a half-meter off the soft mulch of the forest floor. One more tug and his feet were waist high. While Isaac held the rope, Yuri secured it to a pre-selected branch.

  They stood and looked at the slowly strangling Haupman. His feet kicked wildly and he clawed at the rope, digging his fingernails into his throat until blood ran. His voice was only a gurgle, and his tongue came out between his crooked teeth. Isaac and Yuri stood watching by the light, not talking. Finally, a last kick and Haupman’s bowels emptied. He was finally dead, as dead as the more than one million prisoners that had been gassed and cremated at Auschwitz, many selected by the now dead doctor.

  Isaac examined his feelings. Did he feel remorse in killing his fourth fellow human being? He just looked at the slowly swinging corpse. This man had been evil. Was Isaac now evil too? He didn’t think so. He didn’t kill indiscriminately, for no reason. No, he was trying to even the score. He knew that in the future, no Jew would ever fear the tread of the blackshirts on the steps in the small hours of the morning. No Jew would be loaded in drafty cattle cars again with the promise of “relocation”, and for sure, no Jew would ever pass under a welded metal sign saying “Work Will Make You Free”, into a camp surrounded by barbed wire.

  If Palestine, Israel, would be the one place in the entire world where Jews could gather and live in peace, then they would have that. They might have to fight the British, the Palestinians, the Egyptians, the Lebanese, and the Syrians, but Israel would become home.

  “Did that disturb you, Isaac?” asked Yuri, as they turned away and headed to where Abraham waited.

  “No. I was just comparing myself to the Nazis.” He looked Yuri in the eyes and nodded his head, “I am all right. How about you?”

  “He was a bad person. As long as we get rid of bad people, I am good. I am not like Abraham, who refuses to kill. I am like an exterminator of vermin, only very specific vermin.”

  “Could you kill Nazi soldiers who fought in the war?” asked Isaac

  “I don’t think so. They were doing their job.”

  “That’s what the guards at the camps said also,” Isaac mused, “How do we tell the difference?”

  Yuri shrugged, “That is for us to decide, is it not?”

  Chapter 35

  When the three men returned to Brussels, they reported to Seymour Levintall that the Americans had taken Haupman into custody and would try him soon with others who been apprehended in Austria. Though skeptical, Levintall was too busy to follow up on each reported Nazi.

  “Where to next, boss?” Asked Isaac.

  Seymour looked up and moved a file to the upper corner of his scarred desk. He eyed the trio. “Only one of you this time.”

  Isaac frowned, “Why? Too far? Too expensive?”

  Levintall nodded. “America. Chicago in the state of Illinois.”

  “Who is our latest customer, Mr. Levintall?” asked Yuri.

  Levintall sighed. “Look, you three, sit down. We’re going to be working together for a long time, I hope. You might as well start calling me Seymour.” He raised his eyebrows and looked at each of them. One by one they nodded, Yuri tentatively. Abraham, the closest to Seymour’s age, just smiled, and Isaac mouthed a thank you.

  Seymour flipped open a file. There was a grainy photograph of a man on one side and another one of Isaac’s drawings on the opposite side. Underneath was a name that froze Isaac’s blood: Rolf Boettcher. This was the sergeant who had killed his friend Samuel, in a fit of insanity. Boettcher had been transferred to Auschwitz and was one of the guards who herded the men, wom
en and children into the “decontamination chambers.” Isaac remembered him well.

  “How did he get to America? Didn’t the Americans know who he was?” Isaac was outraged, pacing up and down in the small office.

  “No, he passed himself off as a German-American who got caught in Germany when the war started. He even had an American passport in the name of Ralph Brandt.” He raised an eyebrow at Isaac. “Perhaps he even had the same, um, artist, as you fellows did.” He sat back in the creaky swivel chair and clasped his hands over his protruding stomach. “So? Who is it to be? You, Isaac?”

  “I suppose. I would still like my friends with me.”

  “Fine,” agreed Levintall. “Do you have any money?”

  They all shook their heads. What they had left from the Austrian job, Abraham had turned over to Mrs. Katz, who had stuck her hand out as soon as they came through the door. The only money they had was what they had liberated from Dr. Haupman, a handful of Austrian bills.

  Seymour slapped his hand on the desk, “So, it is settled. Isaac will go to Chicago, America, and you two will go to tracking down our homegrown Nazis, yes?”

  Isaac nodded, and Yuri said, “Isn’t Chicago, America the place where Saul Goldman was going when he left us by the train?”

  Isaac brightened. “Yes. I often wonder if he made it. I will see if I can find him while I am there. Thank you, Yuri. I will say hello from you and Abraham. I’ll tell him that we are all big shots in Palestine!”

  Levintall shook his head. “You are not going to have a chummy reunion. You are going to identify a man and turn him over to the American police. Please try to keep that somewhere in that tiny mind of yours.”

  “Fine, Seymour, when do I leave?”

  “In one week. I am going to interview three more people who can help to positively identify Rolf Boettcher. One worked at the SS guardhouse, cleaning the showers and toilets. He saw Boettcher without clothes and noticed some identifying marks on his body. This one said he had the blood type tattoo under his left arm. I believe it was a B. If this man has it, and he looks like our Sergeant Boettcher, then we have enough proof for the Americans.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” asked Isaac.

  Levintall read from the file, “Boettcher was inducted into the SS in 1936. They all had it then.” He shrugged. “If he doesn’t have the tattoo, then he probably isn’t our man.”

  Abraham said, “You have another job for us, sir?”

  Levintall nodded. “There are enough Nazi SS to go around.”

  Isaac walked back to the rooming house alone while Seymour described what he wanted Yuri and Abraham to investigate while he was gone.

  America. He had often longed to see that vast country, the winner of the war. The Americans that he had met were generally friendly and interesting, though often full of themselves. He wondered how full of themselves they would be if Germany had won the war and now held Europe and parts of Asia.

  Later that evening when they sat down to a delicious dinner prepared by Madame LeDuc and served by her flirtatious daughter Hanna, they discussed their impending missions. Yuri was eager to return to Palestine to help Zvi kick out the British. They had heard about the bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun in July. Ninety-one people had died, and the word was that the Irgun was in hiding. The three friends were glad they’d had no part in it, though they expected that Gabi, their friendly bomb maker, had finally found some use for the blocks of plastique he’d liberated from the British airfield bunker.

  The Irgun was universally condemned for their role. The British called it a massacre of innocent men, the American newspapers blasted the Jews for being no better than the Nazis and, surprisingly, the Jewish press and provisional government in Palestine also condemned the bombing. The King David Hotel was the administrative headquarters for the British in Mandate Palestine. Abraham said, “If that doesn’t make them want to give up on us Jews, I don’t know what will.”

  During the week, they explored Brussels and met and talked to many people. They discovered a family of Jews selling cheese in an outdoor market who had miraculously found each other after the war by going over lists in displaced persons camps. Isaac asked if they had ever heard of a young woman named Deborah Eisenstein. No one had.

  The day before Isaac was to leave, Yuri and Abraham left on their mission. They were going to Denmark to assist the Danish government in identifying some collaborators who were trained by the SS in Germany at their school in Bad Tölz, about 50 km south of Munich. The Americans had captured the school with all the files and photographs intact. The two lads were to collect the applicable files, then travel to Copenhagen with an American escort. Levintall had set aside a large box of detailed descriptions and data he had collected. Simon Wiesenthal had written to say that he had sent all the files he had collected up to Copenhagen already. Levintall had promised to insure that all files would be returned as quickly as possible.

  The night before they left, the three, along with Hanna LeDuc, went to a dance in the basement of an abandoned building in the north of the city, in a neighborhood called Evere. The overwhelming blare of music was created by a local band consisting of two drummers, a piano player and two men hammering on two of those new American amplified guitars. They played a combination of jazz, polkas and something totally new that they couldn’t describe. The place was packed with young men and women. The young women greatly outnumbered the men no doubt due to the war’s toll on young manhood.

  The three young men were welcomed immediately. Abraham fetched them four tall bottles of a local beer, spending the Austrian dollars. Hanna waved to some friends and drifted away with her beer. The three leaned against a tall table and sipped their beers, gazing at the jumping, gyrating, jitterbugging crowd. The girls seemed more out of control than the men, it appeared to Isaac.

  In a few minutes, Hanna returned with two friends. One, a girl with frizzy red hair and a wide face with full lips was just about Abraham’s height. They smiled at each other, and Abraham admired her full figure and freckled arms. The one she brought for Yuri was a slim, olive-skinned girl with long, black hair, a slim neck and delicate features. She had deep, speckled catlike eyes and thin, arched eyebrows. When she smiled, one noticed that one front tooth was slightly longer than the other. She compensated by sneering out of one side of her mouth. She was shorter than Abraham’s friend by almost a head, but she had a commanding presence.

  Hanna grabbed Isaac’s arm and drew him to the dance floor. The band had toned down and was now playing a soft, sweet ballad, which a brightly dressed girl was singing into a microphone in a language Isaac couldn’t identify. As Hanna turned toward him and wrapped her arms around his neck, she whispered, “It’s Flemish. The song is about a boy who went off fishing and never came back. Very sad. May I cry on your shoulder?”

  She laid her head on Isaac shoulder and pressed her hips against his, moving sensually against his hardening manhood. She pressed harder and hummed in his ear, or purred. Isaac had never been with a woman, never had the chance, though he knew what to do from talking with friends and imagining what it would be like. He slid his hands down her back and cupped her soft buttocks in his hands, pulling her tightly against him.

  She was rubbing herself up and down now, and he felt a curious, wonderful feeling. “Stop,” he said. “Can we go somewhere?”

  She smiled and kissed him, “I was wondering what was taking you so long.” She took his hand and drew him to the back of the room. Through an archway was another room with pillows and blankets on the floor and two chairs beside the door. She grabbed a blanket and pulled him deeper into the dark room. There were dim lights near the top of the walls. She found an unoccupied space along the wall and pushed him back. Then she draped the blanket across her shoulders. “Here, hold this up.”

  While he did, she dropped to her knees. Covered by the blanket, she unbuttoned his trousers. Then she stroked him until he was hard again and put him in her mouth. When she was satisfied
that he was ready, she stood and lifted her skirt. Beneath her long skirt, she was naked. Hanna guided his hand down between her legs and whispered, “Just rub up and down gently, ya?”

  He did as instructed and his hand became quite slippery with her juices. She lifted a leg and wrapped it around him, then guided him in. He wondered at how easily they fit together. The slippery juices helped, and he just stood still for a minute, marveling at the feelings.

  “Just move in and out slowly. Do not squirt in me. When you feel you can’t hold back any longer, tell me.”

  Isaac leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, marveling at the feelings washing over him. She moved back and forth, rubbing herself on his hardness. She moved faster and her eyes flew open and she looked deeply into his now opened eyes. “Oh, my, I am coming, Isaac.” She was on her tiptoes now and just pushed herself hard against him, fingers digging deeply into his back. She gave a couple of short, muffled cries, then a long, deep sigh.

  “Are you ready now?” she asked him.

  He smiled, “Very close. What should I do?”

  This time her smile was mischievous. “I’ll take care of you from here,” she said. She stroked him with her hand and suddenly he could not control himself any longer. His legs stiffened and he felt a surge he could not hold back. She covered him with a paper napkin. When he was finished, she wiped him dry with a handkerchief, which she stuffed in a pocket. She then gently kissed him and put him back in his trousers, buttoning them back up. The napkin went into a waste container by the door.

  Isaac and Hanna stood looking at each other in awe. Hanna broke the silence, “Your first time, eh?”

  He nodded, not sure whether to be ashamed or not. “You were wonderful,” he said with deep feeling. “Thank you.”

  She laughed, “No, thank you, kind sir.”

  “Is it always like that? That wonderful?” Isaac didn’t know what to say, to ask.