by Julie Thomas
‘Return from where?’ Simon asked.
The major hesitated. ‘Levi explains it so well, I shall leave it to him.’
Cindy squeezed Simon’s hand. ‘You are absolutely sure you want to see this? It’s not too late to change your mind.’
He smiled at her and turned back to the major. ‘I know what my brother told me about his war and it wasn’t much. For decades he just said that my war was much harder. I was in Dachau. And he felt ashamed to compare his experiences to mine. That was his way, he was always putting himself down. Now I want to know the truth.’
Major Stratton sat behind them and watched as they absorbed the story. They were all transfixed, occasionally one or other of them gave a gasp of shock or a giggle of recognition. These were Levi’s family, the people who had loved him all their lives. He’d died nearly three years earlier in Vermont at the grand age of ninety-five and, unbelievably, it appeared they didn’t know the truth about his war. Stratton was about to change all that. He recognised that they were what stood between him and using this story for publicity.
The sofa was occupied by the two he suspected had the strongest opinions of the group. Simon Horowitz, Levi’s younger brother, had survived five years in Dachau, then lived for decades as an American banker. Next to him was his daughter-in-law, Cindy, a striking blonde who looked like she didn’t miss a thing and watched over the old man like a gaoler.
The leader was her husband, David, Simon’s only child. He was the peacemaker and looked the most like Levi, his Feter (uncle). David and Cindy Horowitz’s son, Daniel, was a handsome young man in his early twenties and a virtuoso violinist. Stratton’s research had revealed that the family had lost a 1742 Guarneri del Gesú violin during the war, looted by the Nazis, and reclaimed it in 2008 so that Daniel could play it.
Dr Kobi Voight was an Australian art historian. His mother, Elizabeth, had been born to Simon’s younger sister, Rachel, in 1942. Rachel had been a member of the famed Red Orchestra resistance network in Berlin and had died in Auschwitz. Her daughter had been raised by a Lutheran couple who’d immigrated to Australia in 1950, and she’d been unaware of her true heritage until quite recently.
The family was a collection of astounding stories of survival, courage and sacrifice, even before you added Levi’s true history to their own. They were determined and stubborn and held onto their heritage. What would they say about making this new chapter of bravery public?
He let the video run until it reached the moment Levi accepted the role with the Special Operations Executive. He froze it and walked between them and the screen.
‘I suggest we pause there for a moment. You need to take breaks in order to absorb it all, and there is more than you can see in one day,’ he said.
‘He never told us about these people, not Mr Teyve Liebermann, nor Margot and Fred, nor Pierre.’ It was David who broke the silence.
Simon was frowning and rotating his empty cup between his hands. ‘Papa had told us Levi was going to Switzerland and then to London. I think I assumed that was what happened and I don’t think I actually asked him, but I’m sure he always said Switzerland. He told me about the Gestapo officer and that the gun had jammed and he’d fought back and escaped, but the rest . . .’ His voice trailed off.
‘I wonder if Mr Liebermann had children, if he has descendants,’ David mused, more to himself than anyone else.
The major nodded. ‘I believe the shops are still owned and run by the family, his grandsons now. There are branches in several cities,’ he said.
‘I’d love to find out if they know about Levi. If his gift of the diamond helped to establish the stores,’ said Cindy.
‘Easy enough to find out,’ David said. ‘We just need to google the company and find out who runs it.’
She looked down at her hand and then smiled at Simon. ‘Well, I know where one of the diamonds went. And I have always treasured it,’ she said.
Simon smiled at David. ‘One for your mother and another for your wife. That was the deal Levi and I struck.’
‘G-d bless him,’ said David.
‘And I feel privileged to have them both,’ Cindy said. She squeezed Simon’s hand.
‘Poppa, did you know?’ Daniel asked suddenly.
‘What? Did I know what?’
‘About . . . the men.’
‘That Levi had slept with men? No, not for sure, but I suspected he might have. As far as I know, after the war he was celibate.’
Kobi spoke for the first time. ‘Why?’ he asked sharply.
Simon shrugged. ‘It wasn’t like today. Everyone just accepts it today. As they should. When Levi was young it was against the law. We grew up relatively conservatively, but for the last twenty years we were Reform Jews. He was pleased about that.’
Kobi stood up. ‘Excuse me, Major, where is the nearest bathroom?’ he asked.
‘Last door on the right, end of the corridor,’ the major said.
Kobi took the lift to the ground floor and headed out the door to the serene quiet of the pool and fountain. He sat down heavily on the edge of the concrete rim. His brain was spinning and he felt slightly sick. So, Feter Levi, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t I ask you?
The events in Berlin in July 2014 had made their way to the front of Kobi’s memory. George Ross, the English investment fund manager who’d shared Kobi’s passion for Dürer and explored the city with him. When it came to the point, whether to make the relationship physical, Kobi had made his excuses and run away. He could still hear George accusing him of being a boring old tease and sticking his head in books while life passed him by. At the time all he’d felt was relief . . . but now the idea of seventy years of celibacy just seemed terribly sad. Were you too cautious, Feter Levi, or were you lazy? Was it too much work? Who had you lost? Was the pain too great?
‘Thought I might find you here.’
He turned to see David sit down beside him.
‘Sorry. I suppose you want to get on with the film —’
‘No, it’s okay. Everyone’s recovering from Feter Levi’s shocking revelations. Wonder what the army thought in 1945 when they heard that bit?’
‘Whatever he did for them, he’d already done it, so they couldn’t stand him down.’
There was a long moment of silence.
‘Does it upset you?’ David asked.
Kobi sighed. ‘I needed a moment. No, it doesn’t upset me. I wish to G-d I’d asked him and talked to him about it.’
David glanced at him. ‘Why?’
‘Because . . . I don’t like to think of him being lonely and not able to be true to his real self. And he kept so much inside. I’m just being sentimental.’
‘Don’t for a moment think you’re the only one who wishes for a chance to talk to him about things . . . which he ought to have been told. This family is riddled with secrets,’ David said sadly.
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ Kobi asked.
‘It might, or at least not so alone.’
Kobi stood up. ‘Let’s go back,’ he said, his voice brittle. ‘They’ll want to get on with it.’
David hauled himself up to his considerable height. ‘Okay, if you’re ready.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
SOS Training Base
The moors
October 1940
When Levi told his trainers about what had happened in the hut on the Danish border, they told him he had a strong inbuilt survival instinct. Most people had it, but not everyone could access it. This was a good thing; they could use it to create a person who reacted instinctually to dangerous situations. On his second day, they loaded his backpack with heavy kit and sent him running over the rough ground for miles.
‘You have an hour to make it to this mark and back.’
He stared at the man in army uniform. ‘And if I don’t make it in an hour?’ he asked.
‘You do it again. Stop whining and . . . go!’
Halfway there, he stopped and vomited his
breakfast onto the rough grass. He was tall and athletic and had always loved the sense of freedom running gave him, but this pace was relentless. The desire to finish inside the time drove him on and he made it by three minutes.
‘You will do this every day until you can do it easily inside half an hour.’
As he mastered each skill, another was added. A week in, they’d put a pistol into his hand and taught him to stand properly and aim. It felt cold and heavy, and his first desire was to throw it aside.
‘It will kick back and rise when you fire it, so you need to compensate for that.’
His hands were long and elegant and he found holding the gun came naturally. He practised and practised until he could hit a tin can in a tree at a hundred yards.
At night he lay in the bunk and thought about Pierre and life in the camp. How betrayed had Pierre felt? Once again he’d reached out and once again the object of his affection had been wrenched away.
And Levi turned his decision over and over in his mind. This wasn’t something he had to do. He could have said, ‘No, thank you, choose someone else.’ Presumably they would have allowed him to stay in the camp, attending lectures, playing the piano, and enjoying his friendships.
So why had he embarked on this dangerous course, one that could, even most probably would, cost him his life? The local newspapers were full of the war, what was Hitler planning and what might happen if he invaded Britain. Levi had close-up, first-hand experience of living under the Nazi regime, and he knew that these people had no idea of what it would be like. The Jews he’d met in England reminded him of his family and friends prior to 1933, confident, smug and completely at ease with their life. A Nazi invasion would shatter their complacency. If his actions could change just one tiny sliver of history, make it harder for the Nazis for one minute, then it was worth it. Besides, the Special Ops men had promised that if he could find his family they would do their best to bring them to England. Did he trust these people with their smooth words? Not for a moment, but if he found his family then maybe he could smuggle them out. And what his spy masters wanted of him wasn’t so much for the now, it was for the future. He wanted to be able to say that when he was given his chance to change the course of history, he took it.
A month into his training the hand-to-hand combat began.
‘Today we begin one of the hardest aspects of what you have to learn. How to kill another human being, silently, efficiently and without hesitation.’
Levi didn’t know what to say, so he nodded. The man he’d come to know as Harry, with no surname, was standing in front of him. Between them was a half-body mannequin. Harry picked it up and held it out towards Levi.
‘Take this.’
Levi did as he was told.
‘You approach him from behind and put your arm around his throat and then you twist his neck to the left until you hear his neck snap. Try it.’
Levi grasped the body with his left hand and twisted with his right.
‘Further, man, harder!’
Eventually he heard the sharp crack.
‘You will practise this until you can do it without having to think about how hard and how far to twist.’
After that came the lessons in pulling out a flick-knife and slitting a man’s throat, from side to side, with enough pressure to cut the artery. He spent hours fighting with Harry on a bare patch of earth. Harry taught him how to punch effectively, how to thrust his knee and find the groin, and how to use his body to flip and lever another to the ground.
‘Why are you doing this?’
The voice was sharp and sounded angry.
‘Because . . . I —’
‘Not fast enough! I need an answer. Why are you doing this?’
Levi peered into the bright light that shone into his eyes, but he could see nothing of the figure seated across the table.
‘To be part of the war effort.’
‘What part? What war effort?’
‘Fighting Hitler, defeating Germany.’
‘But you are German!’
He sighed. ‘I am from a Germany that doesn’t exist anymore. The Germany I know doesn’t imprison and murder her own innocent citizens.’
‘So you don’t believe in the ideals of the Nazi party?’
‘No!’
The light switched off to reveal an army officer. ‘Well we need to change that. We need to make you a loyal and proud Nazi supporter,’ he said.
Part of everyday was spent studying photos of the German high command and learning their names and back-stories. His handlers flung taunts in his face about Jews. These he was used to; however, now he needed to learn not only to listen to them impassively but to actively join in. And he practised the piano, learning the music of Richard Wagner, a fervent anti-Semite who his father had banned, and who was a favourite of Hitler’s.
One of the more embarrassing issues they needed to address was the fact that Levi was circumcised. His handlers told him that most German men, who were not Jewish or Muslim, were not circumcised, and the Nazis used this as a way of ‘exposing’ men who didn’t look Jewish. Their answer would be to supply him with a letter from an authentic German doctor, stating he’d suffered from phimosis as a boy. It was a condition where the foreskin of the penis became very tight and could not be retracted, and circumcision was the most common cure. The letter would be on his records, but that wouldn’t save him if he needed to explain his circumcision under interrogation. It was imperative he kept the letter with him and didn’t lose it: his life could depend on it.
As the weeks passed he felt himself changing, hardening. The lessons were not easy to learn, and many went against his basic character. He spent nights weeping into his pillow and wishing he was home in Berlin. Until one day that stopped. One day he realised that if he didn’t embrace this new persona and the skills he would need, he simply wouldn’t survive. From that day on he started to become what they needed him to become, a trained assassin and spy.
Berlin, December 1940
Three months later Levi was parachuted into Poland, to lend credibility to his back-story of having come from the Eastern front. He stepped off a train from Warsaw at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, clutching a brown leather suitcase in his right hand. He wore the dress uniform of his new identity, Hauptmann Werner Schneider. British intelligence had created a rock-solid cover for him, and the relevant documentation had been inserted into German records. He was born in Cologne on 25 June 1919 and his father was an army officer still serving on the Eastern front, his mother a housewife. He had an elder sister, Lisle, who was married to a non-enlisted officer fighting in France, and a younger brother, Hans, who was in the Hitler Youth and was still at school.
Werner was a Hauptmann, or captain, in the German Luftwaffe, the air force. The equivalent rank in the RAF was flight lieutenant.
His record showed he was twenty-three, six foot one inches tall, Lutheran, spoke German, English, French and some Italian, loved to read and was accomplished at chess, played the piano expertly and was an experienced pilot. One of moles in the German Luftwaffe HQ had placed his file before a senior official in the propaganda office and suggested he would be a useful addition to the Berlin staff. So here he was, on a cold December day, waiting for a staff car to take him to his new quarters in his old home town. As he stood on the platform and listened, he let his brain become accustomed to hearing a barrage of German again, some of it humourous and conversational, some of it barked briskly, and still more as a shouted command. His eyes darted from left to right and the scene sunk in: uniforms both military and Nazi, older men in suits and hats, plain black dresses and coats on the women, stacks of luggage and no porters, very few children. People exchanging salutes and hurried greetings. There was something different about the place, an unspoken sombre, desperate atmosphere. It was a city on edge, a city at war.
The needles of driving heat stung as they bounced off his skin. He rotated his body under the steady stream of invigorating water. His arms and l
egs were muscular and strong after the unrelenting training, his hair was very short and his eyes had a coldness his family would not have recognised. On the bed lay his military uniform — white shirt, grey tie, brown belt, grey wool jacket and trousers, and black cap. The jacket shoulders carried the Hauptmann insignia, with its two stars. An iron cross on a ribbon lay beside the shirt, ready to be fastened at his throat.
The first time he’d tried the uniform on it had made him physically sick to see himself in the mirror. There were few things he now loathed more than a Nazi, a military puppet of this repugnant regime, and the thought of dressing up as one was beyond repulsive.
But the trainers had done their work well. They’d taunted him with cutting and crude words about Jews until his non-reaction became second nature and he joined in the jests. They’d taught him to press his fingernails into the palms of his hands to distract his brain when he felt fear or revulsion. Finally they’d put him in the cockpit of a captured Messerschmitt Bf 109 and taught him to fly. He wouldn’t survive in aerial combat, but if he had to prove he was a pilot or have a detailed conversation about flying, he could do that.
It had all come to this. His first morning in Berlin as Hauptmann Werner Schneider. In ninety minutes’ time he would report for duty in the propaganda ministry and start translating English news reports. And if his training was sufficient and he kept his wits about him, he’d survive.
His hand reached for the tap and he turned the water off. The bathroom was cold and stark, and he shivered as he grasped for the thin towel. He rubbed the steam off the small mirror and extended his right arm into the air with a straightened hand.
‘Heil Hitler!’
The words echoed through the silence. He sighed and began to rub himself down.