“Keep an eye out for the girl. Did you see her with me when we came in?”
“Yes.”
“You remember what she looks like? Dark reddish-brown hair?”
“I remember her exactly.”
“Good. I will be back as quickly as I can,” Ido said.
Bari Lynn was mortified. She’d made a fool of herself, and now she would have to see Ido every day for the rest of this trip. There was no way to leave early. Besides, she wouldn’t do that to Marilyn, even though right now she was blaming Marilyn for encouraging her to make a fool of herself.
A sick feeling in the pit of her stomach nagged at her. She was alone in the hotel room as she took off her shorts and stood in the bathing suit she’d purchased at the hotel gift shop. Scrunching up her forehead, and frowning, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her breasts were too small, but she had to admit she wasn’t flabby. Thank God for the martial arts that Lucas had taught her. At least she wasn’t fat anymore.
When she was young, she was fat. That was a terrible time in her life. People had made her life miserable when she was overweight. Now whenever Bari spotted a heavyset girl on the street, Bari’s heart went out to her. Bari hated her sensitivity because she could easily feel and relate to other people’s pain, and the problem was that often she took it on as her own.
Frowning, Bari Lynn scrutinized ever part of her body. Her skin was so pale and chalky. Next to Ido’s Israeli wife, she looked sickly. And wouldn’t Ido have to be married to the prettiest of the Israeli soldiers? To Bari, Ima looked as if she’d lead a charmed life. She had probably been popular and had her choice of men, not like Bari, a girl nobody wanted. And although makeup covered the freckles on Bari’s nose, she still had a sprinkling across her cream-colored chest.
It had taken two hours, but Marilyn had tamed her curly hair with an iron and now it laid straight down her back. As long as her hair didn’t get wet, she would be all right. But like Cinderella at midnight, if water touched Bari’s hair, it would turn back into a frizzy mess.
Friends of Bari’s parents said she was cute. Of course, they were family friends. What were they going to say, that she was ugly? Bari studied herself in the mirror. Why did some girls have it so easy while she had to work hard to be considered somewhat attractive? No matter what she did, Bari knew she was not beautiful. She would never be beautiful, not like Ima, not like Ido’s wife.
Bari flung herself on the bed and began to condemn herself with a barrage of self-hatred and criticism. Why would she think a guy like Ido would even want to go out with her? She was stupid—ugly and stupid.
She wished she could call her stepfather. Lucas would know what to say. If she could only talk to him, he would find the right worlds to make it possible for her to face Ido again. But she knew she couldn’t call Chicago. There was nothing to do but lie there and wait for Marilyn, to come back to the room.
When the other four girls, Marilynn included, returned from the beach, they all gathered around Bari Lynn.
“How are you feeling?” one of the girls asked, putting her hand on Bari’s forehead.
“Everyone was worried about you…”
“I’m fine. I’m doing much better. Thanks for your concern,” Bari said, a little too curt. She wanted them all to go away so she could talk to Marilyn alone.
“Are you going to come down to dinner?”
“No, I’m not feeling well enough to eat yet,” Bari said, hoping that when the others went down for dinner, she and Marilyn could have a private conversation.
“Can I bring something up for you? Maybe you’ll want to eat later?” one of the others asked.
“No, thanks. Really, I appreciate it, but I’ll be okay.” Bari forced a smile.
After they showered and got dressed, the others went down for dinner. Bari and Marilyn stayed in the room.
“What the hell happened?” Marilyn asked.
“He’s married to Ima.”
“The pretty one?”
“Yeah, of course. Of course, it would have to be the pretty one.”
“Hey, Bari… you’re pretty, too.”
“No, not really. With a hell of a lot of work, I’m okay. Not really pretty, just okay.”
“Bari,” Marilyn said, touching her back.
“Let’s face it. I wasn’t blessed with great beauty, or a great personality, or anything…”
For a few minutes, Marilyn rubbed Bari’s back.
“Listen, I have an idea. While everyone else is at dinner, let’s go out and have some fun. We can sneak out of the hotel and check out some of the bars here in Tel Aviv. I’ve heard that they won’t card us. We can get away with ordering drinks. I think when some cute guys hit on you, you’ll realize that you really are pretty,” Marilyn said, smiling.
“Do you think we’ll get caught?” Bari Lynn asked.
“Nah. Everyone is going out as a group tonight. They won’t be back until late. We can stuff our bed with pillows, and then cover the pillows so it looks like we’re sleeping. When the other girls get back to the room, they’ll be too tired to try and wake us. Then we’ll be back in our beds before morning. Nobody will know that we ever left.”
“Okay.”
“Hurry up. Let’s get ready. I want to get out of here as soon as they leave.”
“What time did they say the bus was leaving the hotel?”
“Seven.”
“So far, every time the bus is going somewhere, it always leaves at least fifteen minutes late. I guess it takes that long to get everyone together. Let’s wait until we’re sure they are gone, and then we can sneak out at about seven thirty,” Bari said.
CHAPTER 23
Gerhard Helmut stretched out his long, gangly legs. It had been a stressful flight for him from Germany to Israel. Another notorious Nazi criminal was going on trial. This one had earned himself the horrific nickname of “Ivan the Terrible,” but his given name was John Demjanjuk. It was just a name, John Demjanjuk.
When Gerhard saw Demjanjuk’s picture, he remembered him. Demjanjuk had visited Gerhard’s house as his father’s guest when Gerhard was just a boy. The strangest thing was when Gerhard tried to jog his memory of the man, all he could remember was a kind, smiling face, a man who reminded him a great deal of his father.
There was nothing exceptional at all about Demjanjuk. He could be a man who you might sit beside on the subway, or pass on the street or in the market, and you would never know he had the black heart of a mass murderer. Gerhard could not comprehend how it was that these ordinary men could have been able to commit such atrocities. What kind of evil possessed them? No matter how hard he tried, he could not understand their cruelty.
His mind ran constantly with a thousand unanswerable questions. Of course, he questioned. Every day of his life was a reminder of the shame that weighed on his shoulders because of his father. His father, the man who had spawned him—the man whose blood ran through his veins was one of them, but not just one of them, but a murderer of innocent human beings.
Papa, Gerhard had called him. Papa had smiled and lifted him high in the air when he returned home from work. They’d played ball outside and gone fishing together. It wasn’t until later, later after Papa was dead, that Gerhard learned the truth.
His gentle, adoring father was SS Obersturmfuhrer Hans Helmut that killed women and children in cold blood. Every morning, looking polished and handsome in his uniform, Gerhard’s father had kissed his mother gently, then touched the baby’s cheek and ruffled Gerhard’s hair tenderly before leaving for work.
How foolish Gerhard had been. After all, he was only a child. But the name of the place where his father was employed, Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, sounded to him like it was an outdoor retreat: a camp, like a summer camp, perhaps a place where people went to enjoy the country.
When Gerhard learned that his father had spent his days viciously killing people, mostly women, Gerhard had denied that it could be true. His college professor had been the one to
tell him what had really gone on at Ravensbrück, and his initial response towards his teacher was anger. He’d immediately dropped the class.
How do you turn your back on a man whom you loved and admired? A man who stayed up all night with you when you were running a fever, or who proudly shook your hand when you excelled in your sports challenges in the Hitler Jugend, a man who taught you to respect women the way that he respected your mother? Who were you, Papa? Did I ever really know you?
The very idea that the man who’d raised him was a stranger gave Gerhard pangs of anxiety. It was true that when Gerhard was growing up he had heard all about the Jews, all about the wickedness that they brought to the world, all about how dangerous they were. In fact, he’d been told that they were known to kidnap Christian children and drain the blood and drink it. There had been speeches given to the boys in the Jugend and then the same warning had been reinforced every day in school. His parents, too, had told him to beware of Jews, but there was no need for them to worry.
He’d never had any opportunity to socialize with anyone who was Jewish, so he’d never given it much thought. Gerhard had been a happy, carefree child, who was kept far away from any Jewish influence. He’d been privileged to have grown up in blissful ignorance of the horrors of the Third Reich. Perhaps that was why learning the truth of what had been taking place had been such a shock. Murders, the murders of women and children committed by his father were beyond his comprehension. But his own father? It was unfathomable.
How carefully those facts had been hidden from the innocent boy Gerhard had been. He was just a child, who enjoyed the outdoor sports and the camaraderie of the Jugend, and the advantage of having grown up with a sense of entitlement to all of the benefits of having a father with an important job in the Nazi party.
But, once he discovered the truth about the Jews and the Nazis, the hideous knowledge could not be forced back into the Pandora’s Box from whence it came. No, instead it gnawed at his brain and his heart with the sharp teeth of a rat until finally he traveled to see the concentration camp where his father had worked.
He had hoped that somehow, that he would find what he’d been told was a lie, but it was there at Ravensbrück that he learned that what he feared had happened during the war was true. As a child, he’d never been allowed to visit the camp. His mother said his father was too busy and too important at his job to keep an eye on a child.
So Gerhard had not entered Ravensbrück before. Now, his first walk through the gates of Ravensbrück had taken place well after the liberation. He was led on a tour of what seemed like a horror movie.
The tour guide told Gerhard and the group that the gas chamber was destroyed a week before the camp was liberated. However, he explained how it was all done.
People were forced into the shower room. They were told that they were being given a shower that would delouse them. The shower room was filled to capacity. The people were naked and smashed together, unable to move: women, children, old men, infants. Then, as they were waiting for the water from the shower to come down over them, instead pellets of Zyklon-B were dropped into the chamber. The gas was poisonous, and its effect on human beings was hideous, resulting in painful death.
From a small window at the side of the gas chamber, the Nazi officers watched as the victims of the gas climbed over each other, pulverizing the infants in an effort to breathe.
Gerhard was appalled as he took a moment to look through the window and visualize the genocide that had taken place in this very room. Had his father stood in this very place and watched without doing anything to stop the killings? He felt the vomit rise in his throat. Even though he was with a group of people and had tried to run out before he embarrassed himself, it was too late. The vomit spewed from his lips, and he stood shocked, paralyzed, and horrified.
One of the other visitors also happened to be a child of a member of the Nazi party. She whispered, in a quiet, reassuring voice, to Gerhard that she did not believe that the gas chamber had ever existed. He could not answer her. His body was trembling, and a sick feeling in Gerhard’s heart assured him that all of the accusations against the Nazi party were true.
Along the walls of Ravensbrück, Gerhard saw pictures of dead skeletal bodies piled like garbage, their bones jutting out of their chests. There were more photos. These were of emaciated prisoners—their dark eyes stared at him. He could almost hear their cries of pain, their voices in unison asking ‘Why?’
All of the evidence that he saw that day in Ravensbrück became imprinted like a bloodstain in his mind. How many deaths had his dear papa been responsible for? How many women, mothers, sisters, and daughters had perished by his own father’s hand, that same hand that had ruffled his hair and written out arithmetic problems to help him learn to add and subtract.
Gerhard wanted to forgive his father. In fact, he could still see papa’s well-manicured nails as he held the sharpened pencil and smiled up at Gerhard. “All right, son, let’s see how fast you can solve these problems.” Then he’d handed Gerhard the pencil.
Papa. Gerhard wanted to cry out, “Papa, why? Why, Papa? How could you do it?” They were simple math problems, but for a five-year-old child they were challenging. However, Papa never made them so difficult that Gerhard could not solve them. His was a father who had helped his son to build confidence.
How could a man, so kind and loving to his family, be so cruel to others? Gerhard could find no peace in his soul. To deny his love for his father felt like a betrayal, but how could he love a man who was, in truth, a monster?
He’d tried to talk to his mother, but she denied that his father had any involvement in the killings. In fact, she denied that the killings took place at all. She told Gerhard that the only people whom the Nazis punished were political prisoners, enemies of the state. Gerhard knew better, the voice of his soul roared at him so loudly that he could not ignore the ranting.
Finally, he’d decided that the only way he could live with his shame was to have a doctor sterilize him so that he would never have a child and thereby he could stop the bloodline of his father. Perhaps then his mind would be at rest. His younger brother, Max, thought Gerhard was crazy to act so irrationally. But it was something Gerhard felt strongly about, and he had it done.
The act of sterilization had certainly contributed to his divorce. His wife felt that he should have consulted her before acting so irrationally. She was angry, very angry. Their communication broke down. Although they lived in the same house, they did not speak or make love. That was when she began to take lovers and the marriage deteriorated. He understood how she felt, but he did what he felt he must do to make amends for his father’s sins.
Still it was not enough. He couldn’t find serenity. And so, Gerhard began to study the Holocaust with vigor. He felt he must learn as much as he possibly could, perhaps then he would find some peace. Somewhere in all of the information Gerhard gathered, must be the answers to all of the questions that were robbing him of his peace of mind and invading his sleep.
Then when Demjanjuk was extradited, Gerhard followed the old SS officer to Israel. Gerhard remembered Demjanjuk. He’d come to visit his father once. Gerhard would try to request an audience with Demjanjuk. Perhaps, if Gerhard could look directly into Demjanjuk’s eyes, if he could talk to him, ask Demjanjuk to reveal the truth about Gerhard’s father, then Gerhard might finally rest. Somehow he might understand how ordinary men, especially his own beloved papa, could be capable of these terrible things.
After taking a long, hot shower, Gerhard dressed and took the elevator down to the main floor of the hotel. It had been a long day, and he had somehow forgotten to eat.
The restaurant in the hotel looked busy, but he was far too tired to wander the streets, so he gave the host his name and sat down on the sofa in the lobby to wait until his table was available. He’d been told that it would be a half hour before he got a table, so Gerhard picked up a magazine and began to read. It was a good thing he’d studied Engl
ish in college because everything was written in Hebrew and English, and he didn’t know any Hebrew.
A pretty girl with long auburn hair sat down beside him. She seemed anxious. Gerhard smiled at her.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Hi.”
He could tell by her accent that she was American. “I’m Gerhard.”
“I’m Bari Lynn.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
She smiled. He was handsome. His features were carved like a statue of a Greek god. His hair was the color of antique brushed gold and his eyes matched his hair perfectly, a deep dark yellow, like a midnight sun. Bari looked down at the coffee table. It was hard to meet his eyes. She felt self-conscious. She felt ugly and unattractive after what happened earlier that day with Ido. “Are you visiting Israel?” she asked, not knowing what else to say to keep the conversation going.
“Yes, you could say that. And you? Are you visiting? I think I detect an American accent?”
“You’re right. I’m from the states. I’m here with a group on tour.”
He nodded. “So how do you like it here so far?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders thinking about Ido and how much she wished she’d never come to Israel.
“I’m alone. Would you like to join me for dinner?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m waiting for my girlfriend. Can she come, too?”
“Of course. Two American girls, what a treat for me.” He smiled again. He was lonesome, and having company for dinner would take his mind off of his problems at least for an hour or two. “I put my name on the list in the restaurant for a table. It might be a while.”
He was older, a little balding, but still damned handsome, Bari thought.
Just then Marilyn walked off the elevator and over to Bari Lynn.
“This is my friend, Marilyn.” Bari introduced Gerhard to Marilyn.
“My pleasure,” Gerhard said, extending his hand. Marilyn shook his hand. Bari could see her blush. “I was just asking your friend here if the two of you girls would like to join me for dinner.”
Forever, My Homeland: The Final Book in the All My Love, Detrick Series Page 11