Warburg, together with WRB officials operating from Turkey, Portugal, and, lately, from Germany itself, had been blocked at every turn in their attempts to bring more displaced persons to the United States. And “DPs” was how Warburg’s workers had taken to speaking of their refugees, since they had learned not to draw Washington’s attention to the overwhelmingly Jewish character of those in need.
The British, meanwhile, had effectively shut off the only other avenue of Jewish escape. Within weeks of the European war’s end, Churchill had shockingly been ousted as Prime Minister in a snap election, and Clement Attlee’s new Labour government showed signs of sticking to the anti-Jewish restrictions of the 1939 White Paper. The Royal Navy had clamped the flow of immigration to Palestine by seizing the Jewish-sponsored ships that had managed to sail from Mediterranean ports. The British were interning intercepted passengers in camps on Cyprus. Jews making it to Palestine were counted in the hundreds.
Thus the WRB, along with other relief agencies, had been reduced to the static management of tin-and-canvas asylums in Europe and North Africa. Most infuriating to Warburg, though, was being required by an utter absence of alternatives to maintain most of the German concentration camps, even if rechristened as temporary “transit” points. But not temporary enough. Nearly four months after the end of the war in Europe, Jews were still living behind barbed wire that the Nazis had strung, still wearing rags, and, in all too many cases, still starving. And Warburg was one of those in charge of this disgrace.
But with Roosevelt’s death, the truly unthinkable had happened. Before President Truman had set off for the July summit meeting of Allied leaders in Potsdam—last week—murmurs had rumbled through Washington about presidential succession. Since the newly appointed secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, was to travel with Truman, the next-in-line official was the secretary of the treasury. If something happened to Truman and Byrnes, flying into the still hot war zone on the same airplane, the new President of the United States would be a Jew.
Was it coincidence, then, that just before departing for Berlin, Truman had startled the nation, to say nothing of an unsuspecting Henry Morgenthau, by abruptly announcing the appointment of a new treasury secretary? Snap: Truman’s poker pal from Kentucky, Fred Vinson, was in; Morgenthau was out. If the presidential plane went down, no Jew would succeed to the White House.
Soon enough, Morgenthau’s personal project, the War Refugee Board, more needed than ever, was abolished by executive order.
The sun was high in the sky, and the canvas sprawl behind Warburg and Deane was quiet, siesta hour, with most of the refugees having sought out the shade of trees or tent flaps. In this heat, even the children were quiet, except for the inevitable knot of boys huddled around a soccer ball on a patch of open grass.
The two bareheaded Americans were dressed as always, the priest in his red-trimmed cassock and collar, the Treasury official in his gray suit and tie. Former Treasury official, actually, since Warburg had cabled his resignation to Washington that morning. Their bench faced a sea of weathered red clay roof tiles. Between the men on the bench lay Deane’s breviary. He had been at prayer when Warburg interrupted him. Knowing that the monsignor was habitually in the camp at this hour to help serve the midday meal, Warburg had come up here directly. Deane was the first with whom Warburg had to share the news.
“Jesus H. Christ, Monsignor?” Warburg asked.
“For How the Hell can Washington shut you down?” Deane was red-faced. “I don’t get it.”
“The ease with which the hatred comes, that is what astonishes me,” Warburg said. “And the universality. Not to equate this with Hitler, but in the beginning I thought his anti-Semitism was unique.”
“Hitler was unique, David. No point in mitigating that.”
“But in this one regard he was the world’s instrument. Your Church’s. Our country’s. My government’s. Why are Jews still behind barbed wire? Why haven’t the Jews in this camp been taken to the States? Welcomed to the States! You know why. Don’t we owe it to what you and I have seen this year to face the fact of it?”
“Facts. Not fact. Don’t reduce it to one thing.”
“It is one thing.”
“The Jews in this camp, David, are children of God. You see that. So do I.”
“The Vatican begrudges their being here. You see that, too. These Jews wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
“I am the Vatican, David. Don’t reduce us to one thing, either. For every Tardini there are a dozen Sister Thomases. As for what you and I have seen this year”—Deane paused and touched Warburg’s forearm, lightly resting his fingers there, a gesture of such fraternal tenderness that the agitated Warburg was able to take it in—“remember that line from Dostoyevsky? ‘Men love the downfall of the righteous.’ I think that’s it in a nutshell, the source of anti-Semitism, why Washington could do this.”
“Jews are righteous?” Warburg said. “I thought ‘perfidious’ was the word in the Catholic prayer book.”
“Yeah, well, some of us omit that adjective. I prefer ‘righteous.’”
“Why not ‘human’?” Warburg asked. “Let it go at that?”
Out of nowhere, the soccer ball flew toward their bench with two or three boys in pursuit. Deane jumped to his feet, hiked the skirts of his cassock, and deftly kicked it back to them. “Andiamo, scimmie!” he cried, and they threw him familiar waves. He sat down, laughing.
Warburg said, “With your bad leg, no less.”
“Right. Bad thanks to you.” In fact, Deane’s leg had fully healed. He had welcomed the ball’s interruption. For some moments the two men sat watching the scramble of monkeys. Then the priest said, “What will you do, David?”
“Morgenthau and I exchanged cables back and forth,” Warburg said. “When the announcement was made that he’d been fired as secretary, he immediately heard from Jewish leaders in New York. He was asked to take over the top job at the JDC.”
“Jewish Distribution Committee.”
“Joint Distribution Committee. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Boils down to Jewish fundraising. Morgenthau told me that, if he took the job, he’d love to be able to drop the name Warburg in his shnorring.” Warburg laughed. “I said fine with me. That used to drive me nuts, being taken as Sutton Place. No more. Whatever’s necessary, I say now. I told him, if he took the job, I’d work for him. He did, and I will.”
“Where?”
“Here. Relief in the short term, resettlement in the long. I’m not quitting Rome. The JDC needs to be here.”
“The JDC in Tel Aviv is pure Zionist. What will it be in Rome?” Deane had to speak carefully. They rarely touched on this subject anymore, it was so loaded. “You say ‘resettlement.’ To the JDC that means Palestine. You know that. It’s their main thrust. JDC funds illegal Jewish immigration.”
“Illegal according to whom? I’m a lawyer, Kevin. Everyone needs an advocate.”
“Isn’t that what lawyers say when their clients are guilty?”
“Guilty of what?”
“All I’m saying is that the JDC represents a shift for you.”
“Food, clothing, medicine, here. That’s still got to be the priority. But resettlement has to feature, too. Shift, Kevin? What, Jews should just stay behind wire in Bavaria? Die there? The hell with that. And what the hell, maybe London will shift, too—make the aliyah legal.”
“Someday, over the rainbow.”
“No, think about it. A newly elected Prime Minister has scope for maneuver. We have a legion of homeless Jews, and there is a Jewish homeland.”
“There are Arabs in Palestine, David. The British have to think of Arabs, too.”
“Like the Vatican has to think of Christians? The Arabs supported Hitler, Kevin. Including Christian Arabs. Palestinian Jews joined the British Army.”
“And now they assassinate British officers in Jerusalem.”
“You’re quick to see the Brit point of view,” Warbur
g said. “I still don’t get it—why the Vatican is deadly hostile to the Jewish return?”
“You just half said it. The Vatican has to protect the Christian holy places in Palestine. Not for Arabs, but for the whole Christian world. It’s that simple.” Deane’s face had reddened, but there was more sadness in his voice than anger.
Warburg asked, “Where else do you propose they go? ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ Kevin. Maybe it was for this moment that we kept saying that.”
“My friend, you’re referring to Jews both ways, as ‘they’ and as ‘we.’ You’re all over the place.”
“No, I’m not. For the first time in a year, I know right where I am. Look, it never occurred to me to want Jews back in Jerusalem. But guess what? America’s golden door has been closing in their faces. My orders from the Treasury Department were to slam the door shut once and for all. ‘Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .’ What bullshit! Well, the hell with that. So I quit.”
“You haven’t quit, not by a long shot.”
“But I am at a new door, and I am jumping at the chance to help pry it open.” Warburg stood, turned to face the tent city behind them. He threw his arms out as if to embrace the people on the plain. “A door to life, Kevin. Food. Shelter. Basic decency. The continent of Europe tried to kill these folks, and still has no place for them. Goddammit, would you notice that, please!”
Warburg whipped back to face Deane, who now was staring at his hands. Warburg lowered his voice, slowed down. “You’re a good man, Kevin, and you’ve given these Jews a few precious acres on this lovely hilltop, a real gift. And I can tell you that I have loved you for it. But even here the clock is running. The U.S. seminarians are coming back to North American College. This door, too, is closing. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You aren’t wrong,” Deane said, chastened. He remained seated, with Warburg towering over him. Deane added, “I do notice.”
Warburg went on, unaware that his voice was growing louder. “Do you know what it means to me that I never got another boatload of Jewish refugees to the States? Not one! Nazi POWs shipped across the ocean by the fleet. Thousands already! Goddamn Nazis! But not one more boat for Jews! Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Deane said. “They hear you across the Tiber.”
“And now the War Refugee Board abolished. So—the JDC. That’s it. I have no other moves to make.”
“I see that,” Deane said.
Warburg was silent a moment, then said, “I know this isn’t your game and I don’t expect it to be. But I need you for this. I need you more than ever.”
“Visas.”
“Exactly.” Warburg’s tone had shifted. He was a lawyer now, reviewing his brief. “What makes British interventions legal is Jews arriving at Jaffa or Caesarea without passports. Stateless, they have no rights. With passports, they have landing rights, and they must be given due process. In other words, no unadjudicated internment on Cyprus. Vatican visas mean Red Cross DP passports. Which mean, at least, a hearing before a Mandate magistrate, rules set by the United Nations.”
“And Vatican complicity in Jewish immigration to Palestine adds to the pressure on Clement Attlee.”
“Also exactly.”
“But you still say ‘they’ more than ‘we.’ I’m thinking of your own refusal to be a bar mitzvah. To be a Jew.”
What was this, Deane’s way of deflecting the obvious problem—the Vatican’s legendary opposition to Jews in Jerusalem? Warburg said, “I’ve discussed it with you, and I’ve continued to attend synagogue.”
Warburg flashed back to the winter night when, having donned a yarmulke for the first time in his life, he’d found himself urgently wanting to talk with Deane, of all people. They’d met in a café and sat over coffee and cigarettes until midnight. Warburg had described both his impulses to embrace the religion of his ancestors and the feelings of hesitation that made him distrust those impulses. Deane had listened with an air of quiet kindness, good confessor that he was. But in truth Warburg had been left feeling that the priest, so certain in his own faith, had not really understood.
Now Warburg said, “I thought speaking Italian was my big challenge.” He laughed. “It’s been Hebrew.”
“You told me that you’re not so sure about God,” Deane said. “Not even about God’s existence.”
“Yes. And you seemed, that night, to think that was disqualifying. I thought so, too. But now I see that being unsure is also a way of being Jewish. A year ago, all the reason I needed was that Hitler said I was a Jew. But no longer. I started out thinking of Jews as victims, pure and simple. No more. Not ‘perfidious.’ Not ‘righteous.’ Not victims, either. We Jews are human beings, Kevin. That’s enough. It saddens me that not even you see that.”
“I do see victims, that’s true.”
“As long as that’s all we are, Hitler wins.”
“Jews are like everybody else only more so? Like that? A continent strewn with victims, but Jews only more so?”
“You are missing something, Kevin. Jewish refusal over the centuries has been refusal to be reduced like that. Don’t sentimentalize the survivors. Victims, yes. But maybe they’re victimizers, too.” Warburg fell silent, looking out across the tents. Then he said quietly, “To survive the camps, who knows what some Jews had to do?”
Warburg waited for Deane to comment. Deane said nothing. So Warburg continued, “This camp here, and a hundred others like it, are telling the story. Jews can’t wait for someone else to rescue them—rescue us. Kevin, the British are unrolling barbed wire for new concentration camps.”
“Don’t confuse Attlee with Stalin.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t,” Warburg said. “Stalin is why a lot of Jews are still running. He makes my point.” Warburg looked down at his friend and, trying a shift toward levity, said, “Too bad you guys didn’t pull off that Habsburg ploy last year. A way to stop the bastard.”
Deane shrugged. “Not even close.” Warburg sensed a hint of the priest’s defensiveness, as if he, too, knew how cracked the Habsburg idea had been. And sure enough, with an air of This is going nowhere, Deane stood. He faced Warburg and said, “I’ll see what I can do about refugee documentation. I agree with you about the camps. Intolerable. We have to find another way.”
“Get in touch with Archbishop Roncalli.”
“The legate in Istanbul? Why?”
“He’s helping us. I went to Turkey and met with him. But the Holy See’s put a quota on visas he can supply. He’s hit the limit.”
“If Roncalli is enabling Palestinian immigration,” Deane said carefully, “he’s acting on his own.”
“Shows it can be done, Kevin. Get the quota lifted. Start there.”
It took a moment, but Deane nodded.
Warburg said, “Oh, and get word to Archbishop Spellman in New York that Secretary Morgenthau is going to be calling on him.”
“The archbishop no doubt expects as much. You can tell Mr. Morgenthau, on the QT, that a consistory is about to be announced, and the archbishop is going to be named a cardinal.”
Warburg slapped Deane’s shoulder. “That’s good for you, right?”
Deane looked away.
Warburg said, “And then Spellman’s up for Vatican secretary of state?”
“Not so far,” Deane replied. “Gossip is that the late Cardinal Maglione won’t be replaced.”
“Oh. Too bad. Not good for you.”
Deane returned the shoulder slap. “Not good for you, you mean. You thought Spellman, riding high here, with me at his elbow, would get these folks to Tel Aviv, if not Jerusalem.” Deane let his gaze linger on the sprawling tent city.
“Yes,” Warburg said, as he, too, took in the scene before them. “Spellman would help, if only to clear the Jews off his college football field. What’s college without football?”
Deane looked at Warburg deadpan. “There’s basketball,” he said.
An hour later, Warburg was back at the large, nondescript bu
ilding that had housed the WRB headquarters. In the beginning, he’d had just three garret rooms, but over the past fourteen months he had taken over the entire top floor. Now, of the two dozen people who had worked for him—half were Americans assigned by the Army and half were Italians—only the Italians were there, packing up files, camp surveys, records of names, lists of the missing—material he would still need. None of the workers made eye contact with him, a measure of their disappointment. He didn’t know yet which of them he could take along. Warburg went to his office, where he found Sergeant Rossini bent over the cabinet drawer he was emptying.
“Hi, Sarge,” Warburg said. “Surprised to see you still here.”
Rossini straightened up, grinning. “I spoke to the general. Good news. He said he could pull strings. I can stay with you.”
“You mean General Mates?”
“Yes. On loan, he said. The jeep, too. I can still be your driver. Not that you need me for translating anymore.”
“I don’t know, Sarge. This is outside General Mates’s chain of command. He doesn’t have the authority to cut your orders. My orders are crystal clear. No U.S. government support. As of yesterday.”
“But Civil Affairs,” the sergeant said, “that’s General Mates, right? You’ll be really civilian now, outside the Army altogether.”
“Which is why he needs you at my side, I guess, eh? More than ever?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, Sarge. We’re friends, so we can level with each other.” Warburg moved to his desk, opened the top drawer, and pulled out a flask and two shot glasses. He poured a finger of bourbon into each, then picked them up. “Here you go.”
Rossini took the glass uneasily.
Warburg toasted him. “You’ve been great. Thanks.” They clinked and each threw his shot. Then Warburg said, “Now Mates will have to find some other way of keeping track of me.”
“Jeez, Mr. Warburg . . .”
“Don’t worry about it, Sarge. I know you had no choice. And it never hurt us that Mates knew what we were up to. But that’s over.”
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