by Jana Zinser
He was sweating as he took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped into the hall to the main reception room. He was nervous. The hardest part was always getting out. He felt the Nazi uniform was getting tighter, cutting off his circulation, and he could barely breathe. He was on his way through the lobby and was almost out. He could see the door.
“Bruno!” Radley called, but Peter didn’t recognize his name and didn’t stop. “Bruno!” the commandant called again. “Officer Bruno!” The commandant reached out and grabbed Peter’s arm.
Peter realized Radley was talking to him. He was trapped. He reluctantly turned around, afraid he would be recognized this time.
“Yes, sir?” Peter said, in a barely audible voice.
“I need you to deliver these to the train office immediately.” Radley held out a folder stuffed with papers. “Confirm the cargo invoices. The shipments must not stop.”
Peter’s hand shook as he reached out to take the papers. “Yes, Commandant Radley. I will deliver them right away.” He took the papers and turned quickly toward the door, as if eager to complete his assignment.
He was almost out. He reached for the doorknob.
“Bruno?” Radley called out.
Peter turned back. “Yes, sir?”
“How did you know my name?”
Peter stared, not knowing what to say. He cleared his throat. “Everyone knows you, Commandant.”
Radley smiled and nodded, filled with his own arrogance.
Peter waited until he was outside and a block away before he looked at the folder in his shaking hand. The invoices Radley had given him were from the train scheduling department, invoiced payments for the trains carrying Jewish prisoners. He opened it up. It was the charges for a list of Jewish prisoners deported from the Bockenburg work camp the day before, to the Reinigen Camp in Lodansk, Poland.
He scanned the list until he saw Eva Rosenberg, Bert Rosenberg, and Helga Rosenberg. He stared unbelievingly at the names, until he finally accepted their reality. His beautiful Eva had been sent to Reinigen, meaning cleansing, a place known for the cruelest torture and almost certain death. He had seen the camp and witnessed its atrocities from the cover of a farmer’s house nearby.
He crumpled the paper in his hand. Breathing heavily, trying to control the surge of anger, he raised his face to the sky. Then, he smoothed out the papers that held Eva’s name, folded them, and put them in his shirt, along with the other papers. Eva, his beautiful Eva, was alive, but being shipped like cargo to a death camp. All Peter was doing was blowing up a small Nazi building, a minor irritant to the unstoppable Nazi machine.
Inside Eva’s swaying train car, without fresh air and no bathroom facilities, it had become unbearably foul. Eva clung to Bert.
“Papa, the smell, I’m sick. There’s no air,” Eva said.
“Sing,” Bert said.
“Sing?” Eva shook her head. “No, I can’t. I can’t even breathe.”
Bert took her face in his hands. “Yes, you can. You are the bravest girl I’ve ever known.”
“Do you think God can still hear me?” she whispered, with tears in her eyes. “Papa, am I still Jewish?”
“You are a strong and faithful Jew, and God smiles on you,” Bert said. Eva sang:
Hear, O Israel
Our prayer has begun.
The Lord is our God.
The Lord is one.
The other passengers sang quietly with the beautiful young woman. Helga stood with her arms crossed, her lips pursed as if to make sure no prayer escaped, as the train rumbled unsteadily along the tracks.
The wind blew the clouds across the sky as the moon peeked out. Peter, wearing a Nazi uniform, walked the streets of his old neighborhood in Berlin. He would wait for the huge explosion at Nazi headquarters. Then he would meet Sloan and Mica at the burned synagogue across the street from the only home he had ever known, except for Coventry, which he did not see as a home, but rather as a place of temporary incarceration. His childhood had been spent on that block in Berlin. His memories of home were here. He could still remember the foul sickening odor of the fire as it demolished the holy place, his synagogue. The sun had gone down and the wind had kicked up.
Sloan readied a petrol bomb outside Nazi headquarters. He held up the deadly liquid-filled bottle with the rag poking out. “I’m looking forward to some fireworks.”
Mica took his box of matches from his pocket and lit one. Before he could light the rag, the wind blew the match out. Mica lit another one, and a gust blew it out.
“You can’t light a simple rag?” Sloan asked impatiently.
“Not in this gale. We should have waited for a calmer night,” Mica said.
“Commandos wait for nothing. Light it again. Pretend it’s a Hanukkah candle.”
Mica smiled. He lit the match and cupped his hand around the flame to protect it from the wind. The match stayed lit, and he moved it slowly toward the rag.
“Hurry up, Mica, they’re going to see the match,” Sloan warned.
Mica’s protective hands brought the burning match to within an inch of the rag. Sloan rolled his eyes and stuck the rag into the small flame. Not being saturated enough in gasoline, it was slow to ignite. Precious seconds ticked by as Sloan heaved the bottle with the burning rag toward the office window of Nazi headquarters.
It somersaulted in the air. The bottle broke the window, smashing against the floor inside as planned, but there was no ignition. The fuse had been extinguished on its wayward tumble.
Unaware of the kink in their plan, Sloan and Mica waited, expecting an explosion, but all they heard was heavy breathing and the pounding of Nazi boots. Then they were quickly surrounded by officers, with guns pointed at them.
In his old Berlin neighborhood, Peter strolled by the red-and-green garbage trucks parked in neat rows, the same trucks where he used to climb in and pretend to drive when he was younger. He stopped and looked at the cabs that had seemed so impossibly high when he was little. The simple dreams of childhood faded when faced with the reality of life’s brutal messages. He still had the urge to pull himself into the garbage truck’s cab and start its powerful engine, but he didn’t. He had more important things to do. It was not the night for childhood fantasies.
He walked on, past 435 Edelweiss Street where Herr Frank and Bruno the dog used to live, until he came face to face with his childhood block awash with memories. A shiver went through Peter when he saw the remains of his burned synagogue across the street and what looked like an abandoned camp on its grounds.
He crossed the street and stopped outside his family’s old butcher shop, which had become a shoe repair shop. He looked up to see a light on in the apartment above the shop, his family’s apartment, his family’s home.
Peter remembered the day his father told him he would grow up to take over the butcher shop, and how his heart had stopped with the realization that he had no other choices. As he looked at his old neighborhood, he knew he would give anything to have his father back in the clean shop with the orderly meat, even if that meant he was destined to do the same.
Footsteps snapp
ed behind him. “Guten tag. Have you heard the good news?” a police officer asked him.
“No,” Peter said. “I’m off duty. I’ve been looking for my dog. What has happened?”
“Tonight, we can celebrate. Two rebels have been captured.”
Peter couldn’t breathe for a second. “Who are they?” he asked, his heart pounding with fear.
“Notorious rebel leaders. The man they call the Bear, and Mica the Murderer. Both are wanted enemies of Germany.”
“Ah, excellent,” Peter said, as sweat beaded up on his forehead, despite the chilly evening wind.
“It’s been a long time coming. It’s a glorious day for Germany! The Resistance has suffered an irrecoverable blow,” the officer said.
Peter whistled, pretending to be searching for his dog, then casually asked, “How did it happen that they captured these criminals?”
“They tried to blow up headquarters.”
“Tried? Surely, they were not successful.”
“There was a gasoline spill in an office, but no fire. They are as dumb as straw. Dummkopfs!” the officer said, laughing.
Peter swallowed hard. It felt like he had a mouthful of Maude’s unforgiving porridge caught in his throat. It wouldn’t go up or down. “Were the rebel leaders arrested?”
“Yes.
“Good . . . how will they be punished?”
“I hear that tomorrow morning they will hang the rebels by their necks in Edelweiss Park.”
“That is unusual.”
“They will be made an example, so all can see that we do not take rebels lightly.”
Peter swallowed hard, trying to find some air to breathe. “I won’t miss it,” he said, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “Well, I’ve got to go. Loin roast tonight. My dog will have to come home on his own. Auf Wiedersehen.”
“Auf Wiedersehen.”
Peter looked back at his home, stolen by the Nazis. He remembered the look of utter helplessness on his father’s face as the Nazis had pulled him out their apartment door. No man, even one with good legs, was strong enough to stand up to the power of Hitler, not even the rabbi. He looked at the burned shell of the synagogue across the street. Surely, God would allow retribution for the destruction of this sacred place.
Peter was alone, young, and new to this rebellion, but he knew there was no one else to do it. It would be up to him to land a blow against the Nazis and rescue Sloan and Mica from hanging.
He hurried down the sidewalk, glancing up at Herr Frank’s, and the real Bruno’s, old apartment. Herr Frank had been a coward in life, and, maybe, a coward in death, too. Peter also realized he had been a good man, a man trapped in the evil of his time, and he had not been strong enough to pull away from it.
When Peter turned the corner, he saw there was still a commotion around the broken window of headquarters. Instead of turning away, he found himself striding toward the scene of his friends’ capture. After all, he was still dressed in a Nazi uniform.
Peter managed to maneuver his way to the broken window. He stared at the building. His petrol bomb had failed. It was his fault, but he couldn’t try again, because Sloan and Mica were being held there now. He would not let it go. Someday, he would finish the job.
Peter disappeared into the Berlin night, carrying the heavy burden of his mistake. He’d let Sloan and Mica down. Mistakes could kill. He would make his plan, and tomorrow, before the hanging, he would carry out his rescue. His father had always told him: If you work hard, you can make your own luck. Peter was going to need some luck, but this time, he would not act like a child. He would not be careless. It was time to grow up and be a man, fighting for his people and his friends.
The clouds covered the moon, and the windy night grew dark. Peter strode off into the darkness with Iron Isha’s death notation, the death-train invoice list, and a strange grid of letters and numbers that were so important they’d been locked up, still hidden inside his shirt, tucked in the waist of his pants.
CHAPTER 37
THE END OF THE LINE
(October 1942)
Eva’s deportation train pulled up to the Reinigen Camp in Lodansk, Poland, and stopped. It was the end of the line. The tracks ended abruptly at the entrance gate.
The moon shone brightly above the barbed wire fences. The Nazi guards, wearing skull and crossbones insignias on their shirts, stood in watchtowers holding guns at the ready, in case some defenseless prisoner should decide to risk freedom for certain death.
Brick buildings stood in rows along cobblestone streets. The ordinariness of the buildings fooled the arriving inmates at first, but starvation, torture, and death awaited them inside. There was nothing ordinary about the Reinigen Camp.
Police guards and dogs were outside the fences, ready for the train’s arrival. When the train opened, soldiers pulled people out of the cars at the camp’s front gate. The dead, who had been so carefully cared for on the train, were dragged out and roughly stacked like wood on top of each other.
A woman held her limp dead baby still wrapped in a blanket. She wept in sorrow for the child, who had never had a chance to live, and in gratitude, that the child had been spared from the horrors of the world. A Nazi officer ripped the baby from her arms and tossed it onto the pile of dead bodies. She wailed.
Bert reached up and helped Eva down. He held his arms out for Helga, but she pushed them aside. Nazi officers shouted orders as German Shepherds barked and snarled, straining at their leashes, trained to rip flesh on command.
The people stumbled and looked around. A police officer, swinging a billy club, motioned to them. “Men to the right! Women and children to the left!” the guard yelled to the traumatized new arrivals.
“Where are we?” Helga asked. “What is this place?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not good,” Bert said.
The sick and sad people, exhausted from the train trip, shuffled around, separating reluctantly from loved ones. Eva clutched her father. “No, Papa. I can’t leave you. Please, Papa. Tell them we have to be together. Please, Papa.”
“Eva, we must do what they say,” he said, gently.
“Papa, I can’t live without you. You’re the only one who’s ever loved me. I can’t breathe without you!” Eva said.
“You have my love with you. You won’t be alone. And you have God. Do not throw away your hope. It may be the only thing that will keep you alive.”
Eva nodded, her chin quivering with emotion, trying so hard to be brave for the father who had given her the strength to accept herself when her mother hadn’t. He was a father whose blood did not run through her veins, but his love ran through her heart.
“Move along!” the policeman yelled.
Bert, still holding Eva, didn’t move fast enough. The guard hit him with the butt of his gun. Bert let go of Eva’s hands. She held them out to him.
As he moved away from her, she whispered. “Papa. I love you. Thank you for being my one true papa.”
“I love you, too. You are my sweet joy,” Bert said, as tears ran down his cheeks. It was the first time Eva had ever seen her father cry, and it was more frightening
than anything else she’d seen.
The crowded line of women and children swept Eva along like a riptide of fear. Helga slogged determinedly ahead without looking back. She moved easily away from them, as if this destination had been what she was waiting for to finally get her freedom from them.
The camp’s reception and prisoner processing building still had a line outside. Helga swayed, almost fainting from the lack of food and air on the train. Eva ran to her and held her up.
Inmate matrons were prisoners but worked as guards, keeping the other inmates in line. One matron was tall and fairly thick, in contrast to the extreme thinness of everyone else, which attested to the extra perks she was given for her betrayal of her people. She held her hands out. “Stop. What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing. She’s just tired. It was a long train ride,” Eva said.
“I really can’t allow—”
“She’s a very good seamstress. The best in Berlin. You can’t even see her stitches. If you need anything, she—”
“What about you? Are you strong?” the matron interrupted, with a slight nod.
“I’ve got the strength of two women in me,” Eva answered, struggling to hold up her mother to prove her claim.
The matron almost smiled. Smiles, unless in ridicule, were rarely seen at Reinigen. Happiness vanished for all who entered. “Go on in, Little Hercules, but remember where you are. Even the toughest don’t survive here.”
Eva helped Helga walk into the building, as they were herded along, roughly pulled and pushed by the policemen.
Another inmate matron shaved their heads. When Eva’s long beautiful hair hit the floor, she cried.
“What are you crying for? Your hair is the least of your problems,” the matron scolded.