The Locket

by Evans, Mike

  “Perhaps I could do that if it was something that was only directed at me. But this was against all of us, solely because of who we were. I cannot merely accept what I saw them doing.”

  “I am not suggesting that what happened was okay or right,” she continued patiently. “I am only saying that it cannot be explained. That you cannot find the answers you are looking for. There is no accounting for evil in the hearts of men.”

  That phrase—no accounting for evil in the hearts of men—stuck with me and I thought about it often. Not because it was an answer; it wasn’t. Instead, it was a succinct articulation of the issues that plagued my mind. An accounting for the evil in the hearts of men. I wanted an accounting. Someone was accountable. Many someones. And all I wanted was for them to pay for it. That conversation, more than most, helped me to see there was some logic to the things going on inside my head, and I began to sort my way out of the confusion that troubled me.

  With Eli’s help, and with Chana and Yohai lending support, my days began to even out. Business at the café improved and life settled into an otherwise happy routine of work followed by time alone with Eli, which I enjoyed immensely. Two years later, I gave birth to our son. We named him David—Stephan David—and the past receded a little more.

  * * *

  In the spring of 1945, news reached Jerusalem that the war in Europe was over. Some took to the streets in celebration. They rode past the café in trucks, blowing the horn and shouting. A few carried rifles, which they fired into the air. Eli stood with David and watched from the sidewalk. I sat at a table in the café and sipped a cup of tea. For so many of our people, that day had come too late.

  The Japanese surrendered in August of that same year, but by then everyone in Jerusalem was focused on what the news of peace meant for Palestine. Japan was far away. The Arabs lived right next door. How we settled our differences would affect us all.

  Several Jewish factions argued for the creation of a Jewish state—the reconstitution of Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people. They spent much time and effort convincing the United Nations to back their plans. Most Arabs in the region were opposed to it, claiming just as adamantly that we were interlopers and refugees who should return home to Europe now that the war was over. The British government, which administered the area under a commission sanctioned by the United Nations, wanted only to see its involvement brought to a logical conclusion that would allow their withdrawal. Yohai and Eli spent many hours talking about it with anyone who would listen. My attention was drawn in a different direction.

  In the final days of the war, newsreels brought the world a glimpse of the camps where we’d been forced to live and where millions of Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and others were systematically murdered. Faced with clear and convincing evidence of the horrors foisted on us by the Germans, the Allied powers established a war crimes department to prosecute those who were responsible. Not long after Wilhelm Keitel signed the instrument of surrender, he and many other German officers were put on trial at Nuremberg. I followed news of the trials in the newspapers and magazines, eager to see whether the truth would come out and how many of the Germans actually stood trial. I was most interested in whether Adolf Eichmann was charged and how much of his involvement they disclosed.

  Each day, The Palestine Post carried articles that included stories of witnesses detailing all that they had encountered. Customers in the café were interested too, and when they learned something about my story they brought me newspapers and magazines from other places with articles on the trials. At night I sat at the kitchen table and studied each of them, making notes and pinpointing locations on a map for the places mentioned. For a year or more I sorted through articles and notes, comparing what I read to the facts I knew from experience.

  By the end of 1946, twenty-four senior German leaders had been tried. Most had been convicted. Only five escaped sentencing. Then the news stopped. I searched the papers for word of what would happen next but found nothing. As my anxiety mounted, Yohai became concerned that my past would overwhelm me again. He was friends with Haim Rotschild, an aide to David Ben-Gurion at the World Zionist Organization, and asked him to talk to me in hopes of easing my mind. Not long after that, Haim appeared at the café for lunch. We sat at a table in the kitchen and talked.

  “Yohai tells me you have been following the trials at Nuremberg.”

  “I was, but now the newspapers stopped covering it and I don’t know why.”

  “They stopped covering the trials because the trials have ended.” “Ended?” I was startled. “Why did they end?”

  “Most of the senior leaders have been dealt with,” he shrugged. “Most of the ones who remain are either dead already or their whereabouts are unknown.”

  “What of Adolf Eichmann? I read all the newspaper articles and yet I saw nothing of him.”

  Haim arched an eyebrow. “Eichmann has not been found.” Anger rose inside me. “Where are they looking?”

  “Officially, no one is looking.”

  “What does that mean?” I blurted out. “They don’t care anymore? This was just a show for them and now they’ve moved on?”

  “In some ways,” he nodded, “yes, they have moved on. What they discovered was more horrible than they imagined. To continue to delve into it would bring up more unpleasantness than they wish to bear.”

  “It was horrible,” I slapped the table for emphasis. “It is hard to bear. But the world has to know.”

  “Yes. That is true,” Haim agreed. “And the ones they tried are only the surface of a very putrid, vile cesspool. But no one knows how deep it goes and no one wants to find out what’s at the bottom.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when they get to the bottom of it, the question will arise, why didn’t they do something sooner?”

  “That’s a good question,” I nodded. “Why didn’t they?”

  “But then,” he continued calmly, “we would face the dilemma of determining where complicity with the enemy stops and survival of the victims begins. And that would cast a cloud over many of our own people.”

  “Collaborators,” I said flatly.

  “Collaborator versus survivor.” He gave me a knowing look. “Many who survived that horrible ordeal did so by engaging in otherwise unseemly acts. Women who found prostitution preferable to the gas chamber. Men who chose the job of extracting gold-filled teeth from the corpses of their fellow Jews over hauling five-ton blocks of marble from a quarry. One survived, thousands did not. Or men of distinction serving on community councils who decided, in some instances, those who lived and those who died.”

  “But they had no real choice. They could choose or the soldiers

  would choose for them.”

  “And many of them chose to bear the pain of death themselves in order to give others an opportunity for survival and life. But you see my point. The world can only do so much. The rest we must do for ourselves.”

  “I witnessed a soldier shoot a husband and wife because they did not possess the proper documents. While their bodies lay bleeding on the pavement, their two small children were brought to their side. Then the soldier who shot the parents, shot those two innocent children in the head. Their last name was Averbuch. They died right in front of me. Blood from their heads splattered on me. Every night when I sleep I am awakened by the sound of that gun.” Tears rolled down my cheeks and my voice quivered. “Who is going to find those soldiers and make them pay for what they did?”

  “Officially,” he replied, seemingly unmoved by my response, “no one.”

  “Officially?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “Officially, no one will make them pay. The time for paying has passed, officially.”

  “But unofficially?”

  He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “People are working on it. In an individual effort. Following leads, searching for clues of the location of many second-tier leaders. But it is not an easy task, and it will not be accomplished
by the Allied governments. They have moved on to war in Korea and the struggle against the Soviet Union at the effort to rebuild Europe. Even here in Palestine those who could lead the effort to find the Nazis and bring them to justice are distracted by the work of establishing a Jewish state.” He paused and leaned over the table and in a whisper he said with righteous anger, “But when that work is done, we shall find them all.”

  That evening at home I packed away my notes with all the articles I had clipped and the map I made. I had spent more than a year of my life consumed with details of the trial. My son was growing older. He needed my full attention. It was time to be done.

  But that night when I went to sleep, the nightmares returned. Over and over I saw the soldier’s face standing near the curb in front of our house. One minute smiling, the next contorted in a hideous snarl. The Averbuch children with big, sad eyes, watching as their parents died, and in the next instant they lay at the soldier’s feet. Over and over the images flashed through my dreams and always they ended with the loud report of a gunshot, jarring me awake, bolting me upright in bed.

  Eli tried to talk me back and most nights he kept me from drifting over the edge, but some mornings I struggled to get out of bed. I just wanted to curl up and go to sleep and never dream again. Finally, when it seemed we were getting nowhere, Eli suggested I talk to Abraham Meir, the rabbi at the Great Synagogue just up the street from the café. We met in the sanctuary one afternoon. I wasted little time on small talk and got right to the point.

  “I understand that evil exists, but God knows everything. He sees everything. Where was He when the soldiers sent us to the camps?”

  “You have a profound sense of justice,” he observed. “I have seen that in you since you first started attending services here.”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “I want justice.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that these dreams you are having are not a problem?”

  “No,” I shook my head. “I dread the night.” I was barely able to contain my sense of indignation. “I never want to get in the bed. Of course they’re a problem.”

  “Do you take naps?”

  “Sometimes,” I nodded. “When I get a chance. Our son naps in the afternoon. When I’m with him I take a nap.”

  “And when you nap, do you have these dreams?”

  “No,” I replied, suddenly realizing it for the first time.

  “I’m certainly no psychologist, but I think that’s an important point. You only have these dreams at night. Not when you nap.”

  “But I have no idea what that means.”

  Rabbi Meir stroked his chin. “I think it might mean the dreams aren’t a sign of a problem. They’re a sign of something more.”

  I was intrigued but still a little irked that he wasn’t identifying with my pain. “And that more would be what?”

  “I don’t know,” he shook his head. “But I would not be surprised if it had something to do with your desire for justice. Maybe a way to remind you, because deep down inside you’re afraid you’ll forget what happened and you don’t really want to do that. Maybe you think that if you continue to relive those things you will become so distressed that you might do something about the things you actually saw.” Then he smiled. “Or maybe it’s God.”

  “God?” I frowned.

  “Many times God communicated to the prophets of old through dreams. Maybe He’s communicating with you. Maybe He doesn’t want you to forget because there’s something you must do.”

  “Justice?”

  “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God. Justice isn’t merely an idea. Justice can’t only be a thought. It must be done.”

  “Micah,” I whispered.

  “Yes,” he nodded. “The prophet Micah, from Moresheth.”

  As I talked to Rabbi Meir, I sensed the truth of what he was saying, and a great weight rolled off my back. I didn’t want to forget. Someone had to remember, and I was that person. I didn’t know all that happened to every Jew caught in the Shoah, what the world called the Holocaust, but I knew what happened to me and to those around me. I would seek justice. I would do justice. I would remember their stories and write them down.

  On the way back to the café, I stopped at a shop and purchased a notebook. That evening, after everyone else was asleep I sat at the kitchen table and began to write. The first thing I thought of was Grandma, lying in bed on the day she died. And that’s where I began. I wrote in the notebook until two in the morning and when I finally went to bed, I slept the remainder of the night without the slightest interruption.

  While I was absorbed with the war crimes trials, David Ben-Gurion had pressed forward with his efforts to establish a Jewish state. He succeeded in uniting the Zionist factions behind a single effort and formed the Moetzet HaAm, the People’s Council, to prepare the way for creation of a new government. They met in a building across the street from the café. We served them lunch almost every day.

  In 1948, after heated debate and a series of complicated diplomatic maneuvers, Ben-Gurion won approval of a United Nations resolution calling for the creation of the state of Israel as a homeland for Jews. On the day before the British commission for Palestine expired, Ben-Gurion and Moetzet HaAm announced our independence in a ceremony at the Tel Aviv Museum.

  Almost immediately, war broke out with the surrounding Arab nations attacking from every direction. Eli was called up for service in the army. Not long after that, Yohai was called up, too. With the men gone, Chana and I worked the café alone.

  Within weeks, Jerusalem, already the scene of civil strife the year before, became the focus of both armies. Arabs seized much of the city to our east and later moved into the old quarter near the temple ruins, not far from the café. Through the café window I watched the troops march past. One day they were Israeli soldiers headed in one direction, and the next day Arabs going in the opposite. Day and night, artillery shells exploded all over the city. Commerce all but stopped and food quickly was in short supply. We cooked what we had and fed most of it to the soldiers for free. It was the least we could do and it would have spoiled anyway.

  In addition to soldiers, bands of Arab and Jewish thugs roamed the streets taking what they wanted. During the first few weeks, when business was still possible, Chana and I took turns sleeping at the café each night. It wasn’t safe but we didn’t want to leave the business unguarded. As fighting intensified, I brought David, our son, to the café and we lived there with Chana. He liked playing in the water so we placed a stool by the sink in the kitchen, tied an apron under his arms, and put him to work washing dishes.

  A few months later, forces from Jordan fought their way into our neighborhood and came up the alley behind the store. Chana snatched David from his place at the sink and ran with him upstairs to the apartment. When she returned, she held a pistol in her hand.

  My mouth fell open. “What are you doing with that?”

  “I will not let them take us without a fight.” Her voice was calm and she had a determined look. “This is our café. We live our lives. No one decides how I shall die except for me.”

  Moments later I heard the sound of footsteps and then the back door flew open. Chana stood in the hallway between the stoves and the sink with the pistol firmly in her grip. The soldier, wearing an Arab headdress, grinned at her. “You are mine, old woman,” he taunted. “After I rape you, I will kill you with that pistol.”

  Chana squeezed the trigger and the gun fired, instantly ripping a hole in the soldier’s chest. He clutched at the wound, eyes opened wide in a look of disbelief. Then he dropped to his knees and fell face down on the floor. When the man behind him raised his rifle, Chana squeezed off a second shot, striking him in the neck. He clutched at the hole, gasping for breath, and staggered backward, colliding with two men who stood in the alley. Startled by the commotion, they ducked to the side to get out of the way.

  Suddenly the front door of the café flew open and Tobin Halutz appeared wit
h a small band of Israeli soldiers. They rushed past us into the alley while we ran upstairs. I scooped up David and we all hid in the bathroom while fighting raged in the alley.

  Thirty minutes later, Tobin came to find us. We followed him downstairs and peeked out the back door. Six Arabs lay dead in the alley and a dozen more were held prisoner by Tobin’s men.

  “You should leave,” he suggested. “My men will escort you out of the neighborhood and you can get a ride to Haifa or Tel Aviv. It’s much safer there.”

  “No,” Chana replied. “I will not leave. This is my store. My business.” “The fighting is only going to get worse. You could be killed.” He glanced down at David. “All of you.”

  “And we could lose the store,” Chana countered. “Better it than your lives.”

  Chana shook her head. “Without it, we have no life.”

  “Suit yourself.” Tobin’s eyes met mine. “You sure about this?”

  I squared my shoulders. “Whatever Chana says, that’s what we will do.”

  Chana walked to the back for a broom and while she was gone, Tobin took my hand. “You should think about your son. We can stay here tonight. Just to make sure things are quiet.”

  “No.” I drew back my hand from him. “If you stay tonight, they will surely return.”

  Tobin glanced again at David, who stood beside him, arms wrapped around my leg. “You can’t stay here with him.”

  “He is my son. Where am I supposed to send him?”

  “Away,” Tobin said with a wave of his hand. “Send him away.”

  “His father is fighting in the army. His grandfather, too. Am I supposed to say to my son that while others stand and fight, he must turn and run?”

  “He is a child.”

  “And I am his mother.”

  “Well,” Tobin sighed, “I can’t protect you.”

  “Protecting me is not your job. Your job is to win the war.”

  “Maybe so, but I’ll send someone around to check on you just the same.” Tobin was a man who let his emotions guide him to places he should not go, and I saw again the look in his eye I had seen before. I wanted him to know, and to remind myself, that I was Eli’s wife and loyal to none other. It was a loyalty that would soon meet a much more serious test.