So when I went to Vienna in 1972, I went as one who was taking back control of his life and I was determined to produce an event of my own doing.
In Vienna, I learned at Simon Wiesenthal's office Heiss had undoubtedly assumed a new identity and in all likelihood could not be traced. At least it’s what the contents of the Heiss file had to say, “Heiss in all likelihood cannot be traced.”
But there was a dynamic at work here the correspondent writing the Heiss file most likely did not foresee. For it wasn't Lodzi Ashstein, Jewish inmate, who was in pursuit. Instead it was Lodzi Ashstein, maniac, who had taken up the trail. Where ordinary mortals might have been dismayed by this person's complete disappearance from the face of the earth, I, the maniac, thought nothing of it. If need be, I would have pursued him to Hell itself to have my justice.
So I left Simon Wiesenthal's office late that afternoon, and returned to my hotel. I took out my yellow notepad and where I had previously written “Simon Wiesenthal” I placed a check mark beside the name. I had done what I came to do.
After dinner, I went for a walk through the ancient streets of Vienna. I gazed up into the warmly lit windows and I knew I was looking backwards in time, for Adolf Hitler himself had moved here in 1908. During that time, he was actually homeless.
One year after his arrival in Vienna, Hitler had nickeled and dimed away a fairly generous inheritance from his parents. Totally ignoring suggestions he follow his father's footsteps in the civil service, Hitler found himself destitute and living in homeless shelters and begging hot food in soup kitchens. As I strolled around Vienna, I saw the ghost of him everywhere I looked. The eyes were red and angry and would have devoured me whole except for the fact that ghosts are harmless.
By the end of 1909, Hitler knew real poverty. Then his aunt stepped in and helped him financially and he took to painting watercolors, fancying himself in pursuit of a career in the fine arts. So I asked myself, what of the fine arts in Vienna? Were traces of evil still hung on anyone's wall?
That night, I found myself inside a small museum in which various oils and watercolors from local nobodies were hung. I remember thinking to myself, what if he had actually made it as an artist? Would six million Jews have been spared? Would the world have been required to keep spinning even without the Holocaust?
I fled that museum, running halfway down the block before finding a local coffee shop still open and going inside. The waitress came over and asked me what I was having. In my very poor German, I ordered a Sachertorte and coffee. When I was finished, I decided I had seen enough of Vienna and Austria and Hitler's ghosts, and returned to my hotel. Several times during the night I came awake and shot straight up in bed, the old dreams coming around again for one more visit.
I knew, while I had taken up the sword for the first time in my life, I was in for one hell of a fight. My best nature wanted to harm or kill nothing and no one. But my past wanted them all dead, especially the one named Janich Heiss. This part of me wouldn't rest until the world was rid of him.
Would I kill him myself? I didn't know.
I only knew I had to try and see whether I could.
Chapter Twenty
It was decided Turquoise would spend thirty days in-patient at The Mesquite in Wickenburg, Arizona. Katy flew out west with her while Sarai stayed behind with her nanny and Thaddeus. Thaddeus took the following morning off to be with Sarai.
Flying into the early morning light, Katy considered her situation. She wasn't happy with her job at the clinic. It was a contract position and she wasn't especially comfortable with the midwestern staff. She was more suited to the free-range discussions of the staff on the Navajo reservation, where the presenting illnesses were much more difficult to manage than what she was seeing in Chicago. She considered Turquoise, ahead of her one seat in the plane, her iPhone buds in her ears, her foot jiggling beside the aisle. Rap, probably, thought Katy, and grimaced. Rap hadn't made its inroad on her ear yet. And she was convinced it never would. She didn't like electronic beat tracks and she didn't like the anti-female bent of so much of the genre. But Turquoise seemed to get something out of it. So be it.
She watched below the starboard wing of the plane as the green croplands began turning brown somewhere over Oklahoma. The nurturing rain belt was trailing off the further west the plane moved. It was like watching a slow-moving topographical map below. Always a scientist, she had to admit she found it interesting and it kept her attention watching the details below.
All while she considered her own details. Married, mother of two, physician and unhappy with her work. Not only was she becoming increasingly engaged in a small charity, it was winning more and more of her attention. It started as nothing noteworthy—a call to some friends in the neighborhood where they lived in Evanston. She told them she was getting together some warm clothes for the homeless. It was winter and Katy had never known cold like she encountered in the Midwest. Especially downtown Chicago. The saying had it the "the hawk flies," meaning the dark streets where the icy Lake Michigan blasted sheets of arctic air 24/7. Katy couldn't imagine how the homeless survived against the onslaught. One day she had pulled abruptly to the curb and handed her North Face goose down coat to a homeless woman at a corner, holding a sign, something illegible about food. Illegible or not, Katy knew what it said. She knew what was needed. And in that instant, without forethought, she had met that need, had given the woman her own coat for warmth. Driving away, she realized she hadn't felt as happy as she did right then since leaving the reservation.
“Was that all it took?” she had wondered. “Just giving stuff away to the homeless?”
Later in the evening, she began calling neighbors on the Neighborhood Watch list. This was a list produced by the Evanston police so neighbors could get acquainted and adopt the habit of looking out for one another.
She introduced herself, gave her address, and asked for any warm clothing they might be willing to contribute to help Chicago's homeless. Before she knew it, the family room in their large house was overflowing with wool sweaters, polypropylene inner wear, hiking boots, mufflers and scarves, hats (mostly Chicago Bears watch caps), and gloves, gloves, gloves. Thank God, because none of the homeless ever wore gloves. Not any she had seen.
She began calling around town. What charity or institution could use all the stuff she had collected?
It seemed most of the places she called were focused on helping the homeless get housing, first and last month's rent, kitchen utensils and cookware, blankets, and furniture. After six calls she had yet to find the charity she was looking for, the one which welcomed the homeless, gave them a hot meal, and loaded them down with cold weather clothes. Katy wanted everyone warm, damn it, and she felt blocked from the one-on-one she sought with the street people.
So, she purchased a second-hand dually van and began loading up. Then she found a side street on the Chicago Loop where it paralleled Lake Michigan. She parked and fastened the magnetic signs on the van. "All You Can Wear," said the signs. "Free. Inquire Within." Yes, it was done tongue-in-cheek, she had to admit, but the purpose was dead serious. She wanted to help at least one person make it through the night, each time she went there and set up.
At first the cops hassled her. A call from Thaddeus to the Mayor's office immediately backed them off. The CPD didn't want its name on the front page of the Tribune as the city agency determined to see the homeless freeze.
Word got around. More homeless showed up. More neighbors in Evanston responded. Some began making cash donations. It was a very affluent neighborhood and it wasn't unusual for Katy to get gifts from the hundreds of dollars clear up to five thousand dollars. One man even contributed ten thousand dollars and three fur coats. His wife had passed on and he had never believed in taking fur from animals anyway, but they were warm.
The goodness of the givers outpaced the needs of the takers. Soon there was far more to give away than there was room in the van to haul it all downtown. So Katy found a small storef
ront just down from the Sallie—Salvation Army. She signed a ninety-day lease, did no reno, but set up sawhorses with doors to hold the loot. The homeless immediately found her. A soup line was added—literally soup, huge cans of it from Costco. Hot plates followed. Then the churches in Evanston pitched in and were making huge sheets of casseroles and sandwiches and fruit. The lunch line extended from front to back. The dinner line extended out the front door and down the sidewalk.
People poured in from all over the Loop. The cops began dropping the homeless at "All You Can Wear." Three cots were acquired for afternoon naps. Only the very ill got those. But one day a very ill woman lay there after dinner, coughing and rasping. Katy examined her, diagnosing at minimum an upper respiratory infection, and kept the woman overnight on the cot. The other two cots were let the next night, for the ill as well.
By the end of February, Katy was feeding four hundred people noon and night, and sixteen cots had been crowded in around the walls. Space heaters were purchased, as the landlord turned the steam heat down at night. Another call from Thaddeus' office put an end to that practice. But then the landlord rebelled. He had never intended for his rooms to be used for habitation. His lawyer called Thaddeus. A deal was struck. Katy agreed to a one-year lease on an adjoining twenty-five-hundred square feet. A doorway was punched through, more cots acquired, blankets begged by the hundreds, and All You Can Wear became known as All You Can Wear, Eat, Sleep.
Chapter Twenty-One
LODZI STORY 2
After Vienna in 1972, I took the train up to Warsaw. It was time to find out whatever I could about Heiss’s scheme back where the trail was lost.
By the time the train pulled into the Warsaw station, I had the very strange feeling I was going to need to revisit Treblinka. This same feeling compelled me to rent a car, find a hotel, and prepare for the two-hour drive to Treblinka in the morning. That evening I stayed in my hotel room and had little desire to see the new Warsaw, a place I didn't know.
In the morning the sun came out. I went downstairs to the hotel restaurant and was given a seat overlooking a patio and a terraced garden. I sat in the soft sunlight and ate my breakfast, listening to the strange language being spoken around me that I understood, but which now sounded complicated and foreign. Then I went out to the visitors’ parking area and found my rental car. The drive to Treblinka took all of two hours, and I stopped at a restaurant and obtained a coffee to go before driving on out to the actual site of the extermination camp.
Treblinka itself is still pretty much a backwater town, very primitive and very 1950-ish. The people at the restaurant and the visitor center were warm and friendly, however, and were polite enough not to engage in conversation about why I was there. I drove out to the camp itself, or rather, the location of where the camp had once stood, and found a small exhibition house. I went inside and viewed the literature. They also had on display several items which had been recovered from the camp itself, including Torah scrolls, cutlery, coins and other keepsakes. There were also some photographs under glass that portrayed life at the camp during my internment there. Much to my surprise, someone had built a model of the camp and I spent a good fifteen minutes studying it and in my mind reliving events which had occurred at various locations. Included in the model were the zoo which had been built for the SS and their families, a Disneyland type of tower for the SS children to play on, and the neatly trimmed flowerbeds I remembered, past which Jews would have run on their way to the gas chambers. I was astonished at the accuracy of the model and quite honestly it brought tears to my eyes.
Then I went outside for a look around. There was a large board, and beneath its Plexiglas were maps showing the route the trains from Warsaw would've followed before terminating at the Treblinka platform. I myself traveled the exact same route in the exact same cattle cars portrayed in the photographs with the maps.
I walked beyond this emplacement and looked out across where the camp had once stood and saw literally hundreds of jagged memorial stones and walked up for a closer look. I found the stones had been inscribed with the name of the lost community. At the exact location where the larger of the two gas chambers stood, there was a monument that said it was designed by Franciszek Duszenki, and on that monument it said, simply, "Never again."
Just then, I felt compressed inside, an overwhelming sadness and sorrow I hadn't felt since leaving the horrible place in 1943. I fought back a very panicky feeling someone was approaching me from behind and meant me harm. In my mind's eye, I knew it was Janich Heiss and I knew the panic had always been with me, was still with me lurking just below the surface of my everyday normal feelings, and the panic wouldn't go away as long as Heiss walked the face of the earth.
I knew, without further question, I would kill Heiss and put an end to the evil dream pursuing me even when I was awake.
In the next moment, I was finished with Treblinka. I had come here and faced the greatest horror of anyone's life and I was still sane and composed and carried the keys to a rental car in my pocket. The rental car was especially significant to me that morning, because it meant I was free to leave the place anytime I chose.
I went back inside the small visitor's center and left a donation in the quart jar atop the first glass case as you entered the room. The woman behind the counter neither made eye contact with me nor acknowledged me, as experience had taught her most of us who would come there would arrive having nothing to say and would leave there having said nothing.
I then drove back to Warsaw. I already understood the history facing me there. Following the Warsaw uprising, and the Nazi victory, Hitler was ecstatic. With the uprising out of the way, he was free to raze Warsaw. The Germans then set about obliterating what remained of the city. "No stone can remain standing," Himmler demanded and what followed was the complete and utter murder of a city. I knew the Germans had numbered buildings according to their importance to Polish culture and teams of engineers had then dynamited them, while less important areas were simply burned to the ground. General Eisenhower himself, visiting Warsaw after the war, proclaimed he had never seen such evil and malicious destruction of a city by war. If Janich Heiss had made contact with someone in Warsaw and had obtained false identification papers and a new identity, it would be impossible for me to even begin to connect those dots. The dots had simply been erased from the page and were gone. My heart fell, because I knew the trail had come to an end.
If Heiss had left Europe, there were any of a number of seaports he might've used. It would be impossible for me to uncover his trail by visiting each and every one and asking questions. You must remember, I didn't even know the name of the person I would be inquiring about. Moreover, this entire undertaking would be based on the assumption Heiss had left Europe. Even that assumption could be faulty. In a word, I was done with Europe.
As I checked out of my hotel, I determined my next stop would be New York City. Ellis Island just might offer a clue. But again, my hopes were at a low point. As I went out the front door of the hotel, it had just started raining, and by the time the taxi arrived to take me to the airport, it was a downpour.
This was a fitting farewell from the city of my youth and the portal through which I entered hell itself.
* * *
Thaddeus finished reading through Lodzi’s Story 2.
Thaddeus felt like he had just been allowed inside a man's historic journey, true enough. But it was more than that, he thought, as he watched the old man step from the room. In truth, he had just been allowed inside a spiritual journey. And a very sacred one. He was grateful to Lodzi Ashstein for allowing him the insight. And he swore he would do everything he could to ensure the old man escaped from the jaws of the legal system that now threatened to chew him up and swallow him down. He had already paid the price. It was time for someone to listen and to lend a sympathetic ear, an ear attuned to justice. If that someone was a jury then so be it. He would be ready.
After all, Lodzi Ashstein was charged with the mu
rder of Janich Heiss. He deserved the very best game Thaddeus could bring.
And he would get no less.
Chapter Twenty-Two
LODZI STORY 3
My visit to New York City was based entirely on a guess. That is, I was guessing Heiss had even come there. He could just as well have gone to Brazil like so many other Nazis had done or he could even have taken on an English persona and settled in London or even a small town in the English countryside where he kept to himself and took up a trade and disappeared. In other words, anything was possible, but just then it was strictly up to me to follow through with this man and so I guessed New York City.
I purchased a gun in New York City. This act startled me. Was I a killer? I honestly didn't know the answer. While I was searching for Heiss, I was also searching for myself.
Did Heiss deserve to die? Next question, please.
In 1973, I boarded the ferry from Manhattan out to Ellis Island. As an immigration center, Ellis Island had ceased operating in 1954 but was now a museum. Thinking I might, through some great stroke of fortune, stumble across an ancient photograph taken of arrivals and containing Janich Heiss, I searched through the museum. The photographs there were old, of course, and grainy, and produced nothing useful. Moreover, as I looked from wall-to-wall, it began to occur to me Heiss might have even been wily enough to disguise himself. He might've dyed his hair, he might've grown a beard—abhorrent to the SS—he might have donned eyeglasses or any number of things in becoming someone else.
Unspeakable Prayers: WW II to Present Day (Thaddeus Murfee Series of Legal Thrillers) Page 15