Levi's War

by Julie Thomas

She shook her head. ‘I know you love Simon with all your heart and he’s your father, no doubt about that. But we tried for years to conceive a child and I finally realised it wasn’t going to happen. Your biological father is your Feter Levi. He’s every bit as much your family, and you look so like him, so like the grandmother neither you nor I ever met.’

  He hadn’t spoken to Feter Levi about this revelation, and then suddenly, when his uncle had died of a heart attack, it had been too late. He couldn’t share his secret with anyone in his family while Simon was still alive; he knew that the family, and especially Daniel, were his father’s proudest achievements. But oh how he longed to have his Feter back now! Why had he kept so much from them all? It wasn’t because he didn’t love them. He had been more fiercely protective than David had ever realised. It must have been because he loved them so much that he felt the need to keep the truth from them.

  Kobi Voight excused himself from dinner at the kosher restaurant they’d discovered close to the hotel. He wanted time to be alone and think about his great-uncle. Had he wondered why Feter Levi didn’t marry? Had he spared a moment to ponder whether the elderly man had had a love of his life? He hadn’t known Levi as anything other than a man in his nineties, quiet, thoughtful and watchful. Kobi’s cousin, David, and the other members of the family had memories of him as a younger man, possibly athletic and a bit of a daredevil. He’d always been creative, an artist, a potter, an interior decorator. Kobi, as an artist and an art history professor, shared those traits. Levi was the one who had spent hours with him, studying every inch of the Albrecht Dürer painting that Kobi had persuaded the family to allow to go on public display. Levi had died before he’d seen that happen, but Kobi knew that he would have been greatly pleased by the way it was received. No one else looked at the painting the way Feter Levi had. Feter Simon was obsessed with the Guarneri violin and listening to his grandson, Daniel, play it, but Feter Levi had adored that painting since childhood.

  No one in the family had known his other secret. If Levi had been honest about his sexuality, then maybe Kobi could have been honest about his.

  Kobi had felt confused by his feelings at school. He had waited to meet a girl he wanted as a girlfriend, like his friends seemed to be doing. It hadn’t happened. His one sexual encounter with a woman, at a party when he was at art school, was an absolute disaster. Then he’d lost his heart to an older man and had a brief gay affair. When the object of his infatuation left town without telling him, he was devastated and decided against pursuing love of any kind.

  In 2014 he’d gone to Berlin on sabbatical, taking some letters his mother had given him. He’d had them translated, and subsequently discovered that his mother was a Horowitz by birth. The letters were written by his grandmother, Rachel, Levi and Simon’s younger sister, to his mother, Elizabeth, before the Red Orchestra network was broken. If Levi had found Rachel and rescued her and her daughter before they were betrayed in 1942, what would that have meant? Elizabeth had grown up with German, Lutheran parents who’d immigrated to Australia in 1950, and she’d married and had three children, including Kobi. How different things could have been didn’t bear thinking about.

  Elizabeth hadn’t discovered the truth about her heritage until 2014. She’d met her uncles, and had been there when Feter Levi died. And now he had still more to tell her. How would his mother react to all that had happened since, all the new revelations?

  While in Berlin he’d met George Ross and they’d . . . What? They’d done nothing. A little flirting, some museum visiting together, some shared dinners. George was on his own pilgrimage, finding his Jewish Polish roots. They’d split up before Kobi had discovered his own Jewish family. How ironic would George have thought it — they shared the same kind of background, the same tragedy and stories of survival.

  And now here Kobi was, in London, in a hotel room reflecting about George, his mother and his Feter Levi and life and lost opportunities. Almost without thinking he rolled off the bed and opened a drawer. Empty. What hotel stocked a phone directory in 2017, he scolded himself, as he opened his laptop. Within five minutes he had a telephone number written down on the bedside pad. The phone rang several times and he nearly hung up.

  ‘Hello?’ a voice said.

  He hesitated.

  ‘Hello? George Ross speaking,’ the voice said. He could hear the irritation.

  ‘George. You probably won’t remember me, my name is Kobi Voight. We met in Berlin,’ he said, wincing at how insecure he sounded.

  ‘Kobi!’

  It was so loud he had to take the phone away from his ear. He grinned.

  ‘Yes, Kobi.’

  ‘Where are you?’ George asked.

  ‘In London, long story. I wondered if you’d like to go for a drink?’

  There was no hesitation at all. ‘Hell yeah! Where are you staying?’

  ‘Near Leicester Square,’ Kobi answered.

  ‘Bar Soho. Old Compton Street, you should be in walking distance. I’ll meet you there in thirty minutes.’

  It was a gay bar, as Kobi knew it would be. It shimmered with class; wooden floors, plush sofas, heavy red curtains and a bar lined with old books. George was there when he walked through the door. He looked much the same, short dark hair, olive skin, designer stubble and tawny eyes behind rimless glasses. Kobi wondered in passing what Feter Levi would have thought of him. He still had a lean, muscular body underneath the Amani suit and a handsome face, but he looked a little more thoughtful, as if life had knocked some of the sheen off him.

  Kobi extended his hand and George shook it. ‘Good to see you, Kobi,’ he said. ‘What would you like to drink?’

  Kobi was about to ask for a beer, but changed his mind at the last minute.

  ‘I’ll have a cosmopolitan, please,’ he said.

  George grinned. ‘Excellent choice.’

  He took the steps to the bar two at a time and eventually returned with a drink in each hand. A cosmopolitan for Kobi and an espresso martini for himself. Kobi had sat down on one of the red sofas and George joined him.

  Kobi accepted the glass with a nod. ‘Thanks. Imagine being able to find you so easily in a city this big,’ he said.

  George shrugged. ‘I don’t think anyone can stay hidden nowadays, not with social media. What brings you to London?’

  ‘Family. We were contacted by the military archive at Kew. They’d found a recording made by my great-uncle when he came back from the war. They wanted us to see it. My Feter Simon and his family were coming over, so I said I’d meet them here. I still live in Melbourne.’

  ‘Feter?’ George was looking at him with a frown of confusion. ‘They’re Jewish?’

  Kobi nodded.

  ‘You didn’t tell me.’ There was a slightly accusatory note in George’s voice.

  ‘I didn’t know. It was through the letters I had with me, In Berlin. The author was my maternal grandmother. Feter Simon is a Dachau survivor.’

  ‘Good Lord, how amazing! My family were Polish, also Jewish. I often wondered what happened to you,’ George said. He sipped his cocktail.

  ‘Feter Levi told his family that he stayed in England during the war, but it appears that wasn’t the case. He was sent back to Germany, in uniform, as a spy, and he ended up in Italy with the partisans.’

  George was staring at him. ‘And you’re finding this out now?’ he asked.

  Kobi nodded again. ‘It’s quite a story. He played the piano for Hitler and he took a bullet for him. And we’ve discovered something even more enlightening.’

  ‘It sounds like a movie script,’ George said.

  ‘He was gay.’

  For a moment they looked at each other. Kobi felt a connection running back in time to his great-uncle, the feelings he’d hidden and the love he’d lost when Erik died. It surged forward and seemed to engulf him. He smiled at George over the rim of his glass.

  ‘And so am I,’ he said quietly.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Northe
rn Italy

  January 1944

  To Levi, it was almost as if someone somewhere had had a hand in what happened next. Three days after Erik’s death, a Jewish doctor from Rome arrived on his way north. He told the group about Assisi, where the men of the Catholic Church were involved in an underground organisation hiding and smuggling Jews, procuring false papers that allowed them to travel or to live openly in the town. He didn’t know much, but he knew it was G-d’s work and it was a beacon of hope. As he listened, Levi felt a wave of calm wash over him. He had to make his way to Assisi, he had to help.

  He went to Peter and explained to him that he wanted to leave and travel south. He asked to take nothing more than a pistol and some ammunition and a small amount of food.

  Peter embraced him warmly. ‘We are so sorry to see you go, Wolfie, but we understand. You need a change, you need to be somewhere new, somewhere without memories of Ludwig. Our love and all our prayers and our thanks go with you.’

  ‘Tell Roza I will pray for her family,’ Levi said.

  He slipped away that night when most of the group had gone to sleep. If he was honest with himself, he feared that Roza or Sandro might persuade him to stay. He and Sandro hadn’t gotten off to the best of starts, but they had become firm friends. The Italian was a man of few words, but his heart was fierce and genuine and he admired strength and commitment in others. He knew that when Wolfie was beside him, his back would be covered, and no matter what happened the German-turned-Italian wouldn’t miss. Now he wore Erik’s warm coat — it was a tight fit, but it kept out the chill.

  And little raven-haired Roza was a source of confusion to Levi. Since Erik’s death she’d wanted to sleep cuddled up to him so that his body heat would keep her warm, but he’d insisted that she continued to sleep between her mother and her aunt, safe from any instinctive reactions on his part. Her eyes sparkled when she laughed and she was good company. He knew she was fonder of him than she should be and she would miss him.

  It felt good to be on the move again, but in the still moments of solitude Levi grieved his companion with an ache that threatened to knock him sideways. He carried Erik with him in his heart, but it didn’t compensate for not having him there. His mind was flooded with words he’d wanted to say and hadn’t, because he’d assumed that they would have time. Now that that opportunity was lost he couldn’t help but curse his reticence.

  Once again he planned to travel at night and find hiding places to sleep during the day. However, twenty-four hours into his journey he recognised a car and flagged down a businessman from Trento who ran an armament factory vital to the German war effort, and who secretly supported the Liberista by giving them food and bullets. He was travelling to Rome on sanctioned business, and he hid Levi in the boot of his vehicle and took him all the way to Assisi.

  Assisi was a medieval city set among the rolling hills of Umbria, on the southern flank of Mount Subasio. As the birthplace of St Francis, one of the most important saints in the Catholic Church, it held abbeys, convents and basilicas. Some were open for people to pray, learn and be healed, but some were cloistered, which meant their occupants led secluded lives of silence and prayer, and the Germans, most conveniently for the resistance, left them alone.

  His first stop was a house called ‘Casa Papa Giovanni’. The door was answered by a young Italian woman.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  Levi took a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘I am looking for . . . one moment . . . yes, Monseigneur Don Aldo Brunacci,’ he said.

  She smiled at him. ‘Are you Jewish?’

  The question was so simple and yet, under the circumstances, weighted with such significance. His shock must have registered on his face.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  Again he didn’t know what to say. Which name should he give her?

  ‘I have heard that there is an organisation here that hides Jews,’ was all he could think of. She looked up the empty street, both ways, and then motioned for him to follow her inside.

  ‘Would you like a glass of water?’ she asked.

  He smiled gratefully. ‘Yes, please.’

  She pointed to a bare kitchen table. ‘Please take a seat. Don Aldo is out, but he will be home soon.’

  She gave him a glass of water then left him in the room by himself. Who are these people? What am I going to say to this man? Have I made a terrible mistake? He turned the glass in his hand and stared miserably at the grain in the wood of the table. Suddenly he felt very alone.

  About twenty minutes later a man in a simple brown Franciscan habit, with a white rope belt at his waist, opened the front door. He was in his thirties, sturdy and strong, with glasses and an open, smiling face. He spoke briefly to the woman who’d welcomed Levi, then came into the kitchen. Levi stood up.

  ‘Hello, are you Father Brunacci?’ he asked in Italian.

  The man extended a large hand. ‘I am. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m German and I’ve been fighting with the partisans in the north. I heard that you are helping Jews to hide and to escape, and I want to help with that work.’

  The priest sat and indicated for Levi to do the same. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Levi, Levi Horowitz.’

  ‘So you are Jewish?’

  Levi nodded. ‘We lived in Berlin before the war. My father was a banker and I had three younger siblings. I was sent to London at the end of 1938, after the Kristallnacht. I haven’t heard from any of my family since then. I was interred on the Isle of Man, and then in late 1940 the British Special Operations Executive sent me back to Berlin in uniform and I spied for them. But I decided to flee to Italy and fight with the partisans . . . and here I am.’

  It felt so good to tell the truth.

  The Father nodded. ‘You have certainly played your part against the enemy. We can hide you and provide you with false papers if you want to travel. We use Southern Italian names because the south is in the hands of the Allies now, and the Germans find it almost impossible to check records from the south.’

  Levi frowned. ‘I don’t want to travel, at least not yet. I want to stay here and help. I can speak and write English, French, German and Italian, and I’m used to danger. I want to help Jews until this war is over and we are all free.’

  Father Brunacci studied him for a long moment. ‘Do you believe in God, the God of the Old Testament?’ he asked.

  ‘Absolutely, but I find it harder to pray now. I have committed more sins in my need to stay alive than I ever thought possible. And I haven’t been able to obey the laws of my people for years.’

  The priest smiled at him. ‘God will forgive — He can see your heart and your motives — and we can undoubtedly use you. For now you need to rest. I’m going to dress you as a Capuchin friar and take you to the monastery of Santa Croce, a little way into the hills. First you must learn to act as a pious Christian until we can get you false papers, and then you can live in Assisi.’

  That evening Levi donned his third disguise since 1938. It was a brown woollen habit, tied at the waist with a white cord, with a pair of leather sandals on his feet. He walked with the Father to the monastery, where he was greeted by other friars, men of all age groups. Some he discovered were genuine Catholic men of G-d, and some were Jews in hiding. He ate a meal of pasta and vegetable sauce with bread, then retired to a tiny cell to sleep. It contained a bed and a chair and had a cross on the white-washed wall. He wasn’t sure whether he felt safe or a little uneasy lying underneath the crucifix, but discovered that sleep came quickly.

  He was woken when it was still dark and told that it was time for the first of eight cycles of daily prayer in the chapel. He followed the other monks, keeping his silence and walking in step with them. The small chapel was brick, unadorned apart from a rectangular painting of the cross with two women at the foot, behind a plain altar. He had told Father Brunacci that his name would be Father Erik and he would say very little, speaking only
when he absolutely had to.

  The chapel was freezing cold, and he shivered as he followed the actions of the others, kneeling when they knelt and prostrating himself on the stone floor when they did so. The Latin sounded foreign and unintelligible, and he did as Father Brunacci had suggested and said nothing. Silently he prayed for his family, for Teyve Liebermann, for Peter Dickenson, for Erik’s soul, for Karl and Elsa, for Roza and the rest of the partisans, and took comfort in the knowledge that all the men there were praying to the same G-d.

  After breakfast Father Brunacci arrived with two bicycles. Levi had ridden a bicycle as a child and it didn’t take him long to recover the skill.

  ‘Just remember that where your eyes go, the wheels will follow. If you look at the ditch you will end up in the ditch, so keep your eyes on the track ahead,’ Father Brunacci said as he watched Levi weaving around the courtyard. Together they rode slowly down tracks in the melting snow until they reached the city itself.

  ‘I am taking you to meet the most important person in our town, Bishop Giuseppe Placido Nicolini. Without him our work would be impossible. You will like him, I think; most people do.’ Levi said nothing, but hunched down against the bitterly cold wind. Nicolini lived in the Bishop’s Palace close to the cathedral. They leant their bicycles against the stone wall. Father Don Aldo rang the bell and the door was opened by a friar in a black habit.

  ‘Don Aldo! Good morning. Please, come in.’

  They were ushered into a book-lined study.

  ‘His Grace will be with you shortly. Would you like coffee?’ the friar asked.

  Don Aldo looked at Levi, who nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Yes please, brother,’ Don Aldo said. A fire spluttered in the grate, and Don Aldo heaped more wood onto it. ‘It is hard to keep the wood dry in this weather, so a good fire is one of our daily miracles,’ he said cheerfully.

  The door opened and the friar returned with a tray, a coffee pot, a milk jug and three cups on saucers. He was followed into the room by a man in a black robe, half-covered by a white lace overlay to his knees, which was, in turn, covered by a black cape. Around his neck hung a heavy cross on a chain.