Brothers Beyond Blood

by Don Kafrissen

  Before Chief Hawk could answer, I jumped in. “Give us two days and let us bring some men to meet you. If you are not pleased with them, then we will not object for you to hire men from the town.” I held out my hand. “Are we agreed?”

  Hawk considered, “All right. You bring me ten men tomorrow right here after lunch, and we’ll put them to work. But,” he admonished us, “if they don’t work out, I have to get townspeople. I have a schedule, you know.” With that he gave us a mock salute and walked out.

  I whirled on Herschel, “Mein Gott! Herschel, where are we going to find ten men who will be able to do the work?”

  “Relax, Hans, we have a thousand men, more, in this camp. Surely there must be some who have the trades. We just have to find them.”

  There were over two hundred men eating lunch right now. We rushed up to the Rabbi and put our problem to him. He nodded, understanding immediately.

  In a moment, he mounted a bench at the nearest table and banged a mug on it for quiet. “Achtung! Bitte!” As the vast tent fell silent, the Reb quickly told the men what we needed and asked them to spread the word, admonishing them, “Ten men only for a start. Perhaps woodworkers and masons. Later electrical men and plumbers. Tomorrow, after the noon meal.” He smiled down at us, “Anything more?”

  I shook my head, and the Rabbi thanked the men and told them to continue eating. We helped him down from the bench and went to eat also.

  Chapter 22 - Herschel’s Story

  That night, the four of us sat in our tent while the good Rabbi quietly said the Kaddish. The almost forgotten words whispered in the night air. They were comforting, and if I closed my eyes I could remember my Rabbi from home saying the words when my grandmother died.

  We fell silent and Hans wept. He just sat while the tears ran down his strong cheeks. I went to sit beside him, putting an arm around his shoulders. After a few minutes, he wiped his face on his sleeve and asked, “Why do you not weep, Herschel?”

  I thought for a moment, “It was a long time ago, my friend. I think I wept all my tears away. There are none left.”

  Across the tent, Mendel nodded, saying nothing. Then he brightened, “I almost forgot, comrades, I have presents for you both.” He rummaged in a bag he had acquired and pulled out two knitted yarmulkes. These were skullcaps worn by Orthodox Jews worldwide. Grinning, he handed them to us and exclaimed, “Wear this, Hans, and you will officially be a Jew!”

  I agreed, “Once you place this on your head, there is no going back.” I enjoyed teasing him.

  Hans turned it round in his hand, examining it, “You know, I used to see these on the heads of children I played with as a youngster but I never knew what they were. When I was in the Hitler Youth, we used to knock them from the heads of every Jew we saw. I never thought I would wear one.” He looked round at each of us, “I will spend the rest of my life atoning for my sins as a foolish youth.” He placed it on top of his head, and I helped him move it to the back.

  “There, you are now Reb Hans!” This brought a laugh from all of us.

  The Rabbi leaned forward, “You know, young Hans, accepting the Jewish faith is not to be taken lightly. With the responsibilities comes great danger, as you know.”

  Hans hesitated, “I am aware of that, sir, and decided some time ago that I would convert, not just to save my life or for Herschel but because it is the right thing for me to do.” He patted the skullcap and added, “That is, if you’ll have me?”

  The Rabbi stood and solemnly placed a hand on Hans’ head, “By the authority vested in me by, well, me, I now declare you an official Jew.” He turned to me and said, “Herschel, you may now kiss the bride!”

  We all laughed, and each had a small glass of wine from a bottle that Mendel had somehow found.

  The next day, after the Rabbi’s lecture on self-sacrifice and helping ones’ neighbors, I heard a commotion outside the mess tent.

  Chief Hawk came striding in, straightening his uniform. He strode up to Hans and me and said indignantly, “What the hell is going on, you two?”

  I frowned and said, “What are you talking about, Chief? We’ve been here with the Rabbi waiting for lunch.”

  He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the doorway. Pushing the flap aside, he pointed at the huge crowd outside, men jostling each other, trying to get to the front. As soon as they saw us a cry went up in several languages, “Me, me!”

  The Chief quickly lowered the flap. “I almost got killed on the way in. Do you mean to tell me they are all tradesmen?”

  I shrugged, at a loss, “I don’t know, sir. Let me talk to them. I will find out.” I turned back before going outside, “What trades will you need first?”

  He thought for a moment, “Carpenters and cement workers.”

  Meanwhile, behind us, men still inside, started to move toward the Chief and Hans.

  As I left, I heard the Chief mutter, “What a SNAFU.”

  Outside, I waved my arms for attention, “Men, men, who among you is a tradesman?”

  Almost every man raised an arm.

  “Sheiss,” I mumbled to myself. “I need cement workers over here,” I hollered pointing to my left. “Carpenters and woodworkers over there, to the right.” Groups of men and boys moved to each side, leaving a large number in the center.

  “The rest of you, we will call you when we get to your specialty.” I went to the first group.

  “Who is a cement worker here?” Every hand went up. I walked down the line and selected one fellow, “You, what experience do you have?” He was at least twenty years older than me, slim from malnutrition, yet strong looking with curly hair just starting to grow in. A lumpy, bulbous nose and puffy, scarred ears, gave his face character.

  “I built three synagogues and several brick buildings in Dusseldorf and Frankfort before the war,” he explained. Then he hung his head, “I also helped build ovens in Bergen-Belsen. I’m sorry.” He mumbled, “I did not know what they were for until later.”

  “I understand, my friend. Would you select five more good men and bring them inside when you are done?”

  He nodded. I told him my name, and he said his name was Sam Katz. We shook hands and I walked to the other group and found an older man who described some of his past work. I also asked him to select five men and bring them inside.

  In the tent, the Chief and Hans were compiling a list of the men before them and their trades. The Chief looked exasperated. He was talking to a cadaverous fellow, bald with a croupy cough.

  “Buddy, I don’t need a furrier, or a teacher. I need good, strong carpenters.” Finally he eased up and, with Hans translating, said, “Get well. Get that cough taken care of and then come back. We’ll see if we can find something for you.”

  The man grinned toothlessly, and bobbed his head in thanks.

  I told Chief Hawk what I had done and he sighed with relief. “Hans, would you please get a list of names of the men who will be working for me and their trades? We’ll start tomorrow morning at the main tent near the gate. Zero seven hundred sharp!”

  The next morning, while the Rabbi taught, Hans and I met Chief Hawk by an open space that had been cleared near the gate and the main tent. He had a roll of drawings in his hand and behind him stood a table made of planks set atop saw horses.

  “Good morning, men.” He shook our hands and then indicated two men in blue denim trousers and lighter blue shirts standing behind him. They both wore dark blue caps. “This ugly mutt here is Nowicki. You can call him Pete. This other guy is Nate Rosen. Yeah, he’s a Jew. The only one I could find with some training.” He unrolled the drawings on the table, placing a stone on each corner. Behind us, the selected men milled around, waiting for instructions.

  “Okay, we’re going to build a one-story frame building with a cement floor and a corrugated metal roof. It’s going to be eighty feet long and twenty feet wide. You got that?”

  I looked at the drawings and did the arithmetic in my head. Approximately 24 meters by six
and a half meters. I looked at Hans and could tell that he was doing the same thing.

  “Could we bring Mr. Sam Katz up to look at these drawings, please?” I asked innocently. “He is our best cement worker,”

  The Chief frowned, “What? You don’t think my guys know what they’re doing?”

  “Oh, no, not at all, sir. But if you are going to use these men, it would be better if they all knew what we are going to do. Besides Mr. Katz will be able to explain to the other men, and there will be less confusion,” I hastily reasoned.

  “Okay, okay, bring him up,” sighed the Chief.

  “Sam,” I beckoned. When he came to the table, I showed him the drawings.

  He looked at them and shrugged. He spoke to me for a few minutes in Yiddish and waited while I translated. “He says that it looks pretty easy. The forms first, some men to mix the cement, unless you are going to truck it in. He says it looks like about fifty cubic meters of cement.” I turned to the Chief and his men. “Is that correct?”

  Nate was scribbling on a piece of paper with the stub of a pencil he kept behind his ear. “Yup, that’s about right, Chief. Guy knows his shit.” Nate was a short, fireplug of a man with curly black hair, bushy eyebrows and a tattoo of an old sailing ship on his left forearm.

  A Jew with a tattoo? How unusual, I thought.

  The other fellow, Peter Nowicki, was about my height but heavier, older and with a large belly that hung over his belt. He seemed to have a cigar stuck in the corner of his fleshy mouth at all times. He had the brightest blue eyes I had ever seen.

  Both men were good-natured and not nearly as taciturn as the Chief. But the Chief had the responsibility, and they just followed orders.

  Soon, Nate was speaking with the cement workers and Peter was unloading some long lengths of lumber from a truck. Hans went with the lumber, people and I stayed with the cement workers. In short order, Chief Hawk had a device out on a tripod and had men hammering pointed pieces of wood into the ground.

  After about one hour, Miss Maria came out and asked if she could borrow Hans for a short while to move some files. After wiping the dust from his face, he gladly went with her. I went with my fellows and unloaded bags of cement from another truck. We stacked them on slabs of wood and then covered them with a large canvas tarpaulin.

  “We should have a mixer here tomorrow morning, men. The forms should be ready, and we can start pouring.” He indicated several shovels and said, “Give me a trench about a half meter wide by about a half meter deep around the edge, will you?”

  I was about to translate for Sam Katz, but he told me that he’d already explained that this was called footer and the men were already going to their jobs.

  I just looked at Chief Hawk and Nate and shrugged.

  The Chief came over to me and clapped a big hand on my shoulder. “You’ve done a good job picking these guys, Hersch. This building ought to go up easy.” And it did.

  Chapter 23 - Hans’ Story

  Miss Maria came and got me from the worksite. Mr. Peter had just explained that the lumber we were unloading was “liberated” from the yard in the nearby town and would be used for the forms to delineate where the cement would be poured. One of the other men explained that we would spread it in sections and put pieces of iron or steel mesh into it for strength.

  “Come, Hans. I would like some help with these new cabinets.” She indicated four large boxes in a row by the office partition.

  “I will uncase them and wipe them down, Miss.” I looked longingly at her. Miss Maria was not a tall woman, but sturdy, as a good German woman should be, like my long-lost sister. She had brown hair pulled back and tucked behind each ear. I liked that she wore trousers, quite unusual at this time.

  She stood leaning on the wooden partition while I used a small pry bar to uncase the filing cabinets. “Are you going to go to Palestine, Hans?” she asked.

  I stopped and faced her, “I do not think so, Miss Maria. Herschel and I would like to go someplace where we can just be two people who came back from the war and wish to continue our lives.”

  “And where do you think that will be?”

  I shrugged, “Perhaps America. Perhaps Canada, though I hear that it is very cold there.” I sat on the top of one box and smiled at her. “And where will you go after you are finished here? Back to America to your family?”

  Maria looked at the floor. In a small voice, she said, “I have no family anymore. My husband died in the war, and my parents passed away while I was young. My grandmother raised me, and now she is dead also.”

  She seemed so distraught that I went to her side, took her in my arms and stroked her hair. She stiffened and then started sobbing into my shirt. I just held her and whispered that everything would be better soon.

  Maria looked up at me, and I could not help but lean down and kiss her softly. I had never kissed a woman before and it was quite different from the kiss I had once stolen from my sister’s friend, Karen. Then Maria put her arms around my neck and kissed me back for a long time, pressing her body against mine.

  A voice called from the other side of the partition, “Maria, are you back there? There are men coming in.”

  She broke away and dried her eyes on a scrap of a handkerchief she took from a pocket in her trousers. “I, I’m sorry, Hans I….”

  I held both of her hands and said, “I am not. I will be here whenever you need me, Miss Maria.”

  “Hey, Maria, you coming?” The voice called again, this time more urgently.

  “Be right there!” she called brightly. Hesitating for another second, she quickly kissed me on the corner of my mouth and ran out.

  That was a very different turn of events than I expected. Much food for thought, I mused as I uncased the rest of the cabinets. As I was gathering up the wood scraps and cardboard, I heard a man’s voice, louder than the others. It was a voice I thought I recognized. A voice from the past, from the camp.

  I peered around the corner of the partition. Mein Gott, it was Granski, in civilian clothes. Thinner and scruffier, but I recognized that voice and those wild eyes. I listened as intently as I could.

  He was fawning over Maria, “Yes, Miss, I am a Jew, yes, from Camp Kefferstadt. I have been hiding in forest for long time.” Granski’s German was more broken than I remembered.

  She said something I didn’t hear. Then he replied, “No, no, all comrades dead. Nazis kill them all. I only man left.” He attempted a grin. Suddenly his gaze lifted to mine.

  I jerked back. Had he seen me? Would he have recognized me? I ran out the rear of the tent to find Herschel.

  Chief Hawk stopped me, “Are you finally coming back to work, kid?”

  “Yes, sir, but I need to find my brother, Herschel, right away. It is very important, sir.”

  He looked about and said, “He’s probably with that group over there, digging the last corner.” He indicated three men knee-deep in a trench with three others standing and laughing at some small joke.

  “Thank you, sir. I will be back in one minute.” I ran toward Herschel. What would I tell him? I had been thinking of telling him about Miss Maria, but now I had a much bigger tale to tell.

  I skidded to a stop and reached down and clutched Herschel’s sweaty shirt. “Herschel, Herschel, you must come out now. I have something very important to tell you.”

  He tried to pull free, saying, “Hans, we are engaged in a contest and I am winning!” Again he tried to pull free.

  I clutched tighter and nearly lifted him out of the trench. “Come now!” I shouted in his face. He must have seen the fear in my eyes because he handed the shovel to one of the other men and scrambled out.

  I dragged him over to the other side of the worksite, out of range of the other workmen. “Something very bad has happened, Herschel.”

  He frowned and slowly unclasped my fingers where they were still gripping his shirt. “What, for God’s sake? What is wrong? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “That
is as good a description as any. I was just in the main tent with Miss Maria. Some new refugees had arrived. I thought I heard a familiar voice so I peeked around the corner.” I gripped Herschel’s upper arm tightly. “It was Granski. And he was passing himself off as a Jew!”

  Herschel was stunned, as stunned as I. He stood there with his mouth trying to form words but nothing came out. Finally he was able to ask, “Are you sure?”

  I nodded and replied, “Yes, it was he.”

  “Mein Gott in Himmel, we must tell the Amis. He cannot get away with this.”

  “No, you must not,” I said in a panic. “I think he saw me. If we tell on him, he will tell on me. No, we cannot tell anyone.”

  Herschel ran a hand through his hair, deep in thought, “But you never killed anyone. He has killed many. I, myself, saw him shoot those three in the kitchen, and he was one who ran our people into the gas building.” He was frantic, “We have to do something!”

  “Wait, wait. We cannot make a decision now. Let us go talk to the Rabbi.” I had him by the arms again. “Herschel, you are the brain. Think. How are we going to solve this?”

  He pulled free and barked, “I am thinking. Wait, we must keep calm. Let us finish our work here.” He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Hans, I will not let them take you back. We will run if we have to.”

  In two more hours, we had finished our trench for the footings, and the Chief told us that we were done for today. Tomorrow we would mix and spread the cement. In the meantime, his men would go back to the town and acquire some steel mesh or reinforcing bars.

  Only once did Miss Maria come back out looking for me. I spoke to her for a few minutes and told her I would be back here tomorrow. She asked me to come back this evening after mealtime, but I told her that Herschel and the Rabbi and I had something very important that we had to do.