The United States Immigration and Naturalization service—INS—ceased to exist in 2003 when its duties were turned over to the Department of Homeland Security. But the truth was, I did contact INS in the early 1970’s but without any luck. For openers, the records are confidential and not accessible to just anyone. So I struck out there.
Over the years, I searched the records of the Liberty Ellis Foundation and other organizations like it, and while I found the surname Heiss, I found no Janich or "J" first names, and of course had no idea, again, what name had actually been used, if he had actually come to the United States.
Then a miracle happened.
In 1977, I was living in Skokie, Illinois. I had moved in from the horse farm, giving myself a more favorable commute daily to downtown Chicago. Skokie was overrun with people like me—Jews—and, almost unbelievably, one out of every six of us was a Holocaust survivor. As you might imagine, discovering a Nazi in our midst would've had horrendous consequences.
So what happened was in 1977 the Chicago Nazi Party decided to hold a march in downtown Skokie, complete with Nazi uniforms from World War II, a marching band playing Nazi favorites, and all of the usual flags and swastikas and other hateful paraphernalia.
Making a long story short, the Nazis were denied a permit for their parade, and a protest erupted in a downtown park. A photograph was taken of the protest and was published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, my daily newspaper.
Imagine my surprise, then, when one morning, over my bagel and cream cheese, I came face-to-face with none other than Captain Janich Heiss. There he stood with several other members of the Chicago Nazi Party, holding one end of a banner, across which was inscribed the legend, "Chicago Nazi Party."
I was stunned! With shaking hands I dropped my bagel down the front of my clean shirt, knocked over my coffee cup, and began weeping all in one breath.
Three days later I had his name. My law firm investigator had a contact in the FBI, who of course had a man in the Chicago Nazi Party in Chicago. John E. Meekins, age unknown, living in Palatine, Illinois, previous ID: Janich Heiss.
My investigator followed up and even obtained Meekins' street address, which was an apartment complex in Palatine. The apartment was second floor, two-bedroom, with deck, walking distance to the Metra train station.
My investigator persisted. It turned out Meekins taught history and political science at the local community college. He was a member of Rotary, the Midtown Lutheran Church, married—two daughters and one son—presently separated, wife living in the family residence.
When I located Meekins in 1977, he was sixty-one years old, which would have made him mid-twenties when he was serving as a captain in the Schutzstaffel at Treblinka in Poland. But let there be no mistake: John E. Meekins was Janich Heiss.
I then doubled back in my investigation. With the help of a Freedom Of Information Act request, I located John E. Meekins at Ellis Island in 1944. He had deserted his Führer, the Fatherland, his commission in the SS, and his wife Marta. For he came alone on the Dutch vessel Nieuw Amsterdam. Whether his present wife was the same person as Marta, remained up in the air. We never were able to figure it out.
But I had my man, John E. Meekins.
And I had my gun.
Chapter Twenty-Three
LODZI STORY 4
In December 1977, I paid a call on Janich Heiss, who had assumed the name John E. Meekins.
I remember it was December, because downtown Palatine was fully lit up with Christmas lights in the shape of angels with trumpets, Christmas trees, crosses, snowmen, and there were bell ringers on every corner, soliciting for the Salvation Army.
There had been a terrific snow the night before, and the plows had left a small hillock of snow down the center of Main Street. The shoppers were out in force and you could see long white plumes of their breath as they trudged through the snow to the next shop on their list. All the way through downtown, I could hear the sound of Christmas music inveigling the shoppers to part with their paychecks and savings. Beside me in the seat of my Volvo was a map I had made of the location of Heiss’s apartment complex. I followed Main Street to the far end of town and came to Palatine Road, where I took a left and then a right on Summit Street. I slowed down, looking for the Cove Apartments.
The cove in Cove Apartments was a small pond frozen over. Maybe a dozen small children from the complex were skating on its surface and there was a roaring fire along its banks in one of the barbecue pits. Marshmallows were being roasted and the kids would skate by, receive a marshmallow, skate around the perimeter of the pond, and then repeat the marshmallow handout. It was a normal scene, and looked busy enough that I wouldn't be noticed.
I pulled into the parking lot adjacent to the pond and killed my lights. Beside me on the seat, neatly lettered on the map I had drawn, was the apartment number: A-220. This meant to me I was looking for "A" building, second floor.
I got out of my car and walked up to the pond. One of the parents was standing there with her arms crossed, watching the children. I asked her which building was "A" building and she pointed across the pond to the units at the far right. I thanked her and moved on.
On that particular night I was wearing blue jeans, a Chicago Bears sweatshirt, snow boots, hat and gloves, and I was carrying a pizza in a pizza box I had brought with me from Skokie. Thanks to the heater in the car, the box was still somewhat warm, and a sweet odor of fresh pizza was emanating from the inside. My coat was a navy peacoat I wore on weekends, with an inside pocket in which I had hidden my gun. The gun was heavy against my chest and felt bulky as my boots crushed the snow underfoot when I headed toward "A" building.
At the entrance to the building was a small patio that had been cleared of snow. I stamped my feet there and pulled open the door to the interior stairwell.
To my immediate right was an apartment that said on the door A-100. Perry Como could be heard singing on the other side of the door about sleigh bells and a ride through the snow. I listened for a moment then headed upstairs.
Inside the hall and down to the far end I went, arriving at A-220. Again, the Christmas music coming through the door and voices inside. More than one voice, it was very obvious. Every few seconds, laughter would erupt and a call would be made for drinks. My heart fell, because I wanted no witnesses.
I removed the glove from my right hand and rapped my knuckles against the wood door. I heard a shout from within and suddenly the door was pulled wide open.
As an apparition within a nightmare, there stood Janich Heiss. He was much older, of course, as many decades had passed, but let there be no doubt: it was Janich Heiss in the flesh. From the first moment, it was very clear he did not recognize me. Of course I was wearing my hat, I too was thirty years older, and I was wearing a full beard that was partially gray, and eyeglasses. At the extermination camp I had no beard and no eyeglasses and was sixty pounds lighter. "Yes?" He said with a smile I had never seen before.
"I have the pizza you ordered," I managed to say. Just then, I felt the gun inside my coat, weighing heavily against my chest, and ten-thousand images flew through my mind of my fellow Jews marching to their deaths and being shot one-by-one by this very man standing before me.
He turned his head and shouted to the room behind him, “Who ordered the pizza?"
As he turned away, I was able to snatch a look at the room behind him. It was a typical apartment room, couch, two stuffed chairs, and a raft of sling chairs, all occupied. But that was where typical ended, because stretched across the far wall was a six foot flag in red with a black swastika the size of a basketball. Which was when I realized: I was viewing members of the Chicago Nazi Party at their Christmas celebration. I was absolutely certain of it. There was no doubt in my mind who these people were. When no one responded to Heiss’s inquiry about the pizza, he turned back to me.
"Are you sure you have the right apartment?"
"It says on the door 220," I said.
"This is definitely the right number, so I suppose we will accept the gift. Do I need to give you a tip?"
I handed over the pizza. "A tip won’t be necessary," I said, "it was included in the charge."
Without another word, Heiss then closed the door. Frustrated beyond anything I had ever felt before, I slipped my hand inside my coat pocket and my fingers curled around the gun. I was just about ready to knock again, when a young couple came around the corner at the far end and began walking toward me. I released my grip on the gun and turned away from the door. They watched as I began walking toward them, beyond them, and found myself once again at the top of the stairs.
As I sped eastbound on Interstate 90 headed back to Skokie, I was both elated and depressed in the same moment. Elated I had found him and had my confirmation; depressed I hadn't shot him in the face the instant he opened the door. But I had known better, because I would've been found out, maybe even pursued. Who knew what armament those monsters might have with them even at an event as harmless as a small Christmas celebration? At Arlington Heights I took the off-ramp and found a diner. I needed coffee and protein to steady my shaking hands.
When the waitress brought my coffee and cheeseburger, I suddenly could not help the smile that broke across my face. Satan was mine. Which meant I was left with a choice to make: how should he die? Drowning? Electrocution? Poison? Or a single bullet in the head?
Decisions, decisions, I chided myself. Always with the decisions.
Chapter Twenty-Four
LODZI STORY 5
The Monday after Christmas, I announced at the office I would be taking a thirty-day leave of absence "for personal reasons." My secretary was alarmed, but I explained to her my health and marriage were perfect, I would be out West looking into some investments in Colorado and Montana. That seemed to assuage her and she managed to let me go despite her longtime proclivity to manage every instant of every one of my days.
Kaleb Rajski and I met over Christmas weekend. Our target grew larger. We wanted to kill as many as we could. Like me, Rajski had taken leave of work. We met at Jerry's Corner, a neighborhood tavern in Skokie, just south of the mall. It was large enough voices wouldn't carry across the room and each booth was outfitted with a privacy panel.
Over the next two weeks, we followed Heiss and we began to develop a graphic schema of the Chicago Nazi Party as it existed in Chicago. While Heiss wasn't a leader, he was important enough he had at least a dozen others reporting to him.
We took to following him day and night. Ordinarily I would take the days and Rajski the nights. Heiss taught freshmen at Harper Community College on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Mornings at nine o'clock were political science; afternoons at one p.m. were European history.
He had a small office in the liberal arts building and had taped butcher paper over the office windows. Very mysterious. Office hours worked out to be afternoons on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But those were not the only days the office was used.
Of course, I bribed a janitor in the liberal arts building. This allowed me to place a hidden broadcast microphone, which I would monitor over a small receiver in my car, as I sat outside the building in the parking lot.
Nothing had changed with Heiss. He and his conspirators were plotting against Jews as if it was 1942 and they were operating in Germany. Assassinations were planned against a student Dean at the University of Chicago, a hospital administrator in Chicago, and a political writer with the Chicago Tribune. The student Dean was a Jew, a woman in her mid-forties. The hospital administrator was, like myself, a Holocaust survivor. He had spent three years in Auschwitz and was a leader in the Jewish Defense League. The writer was a flaming liberal who loathed any- and everything totalitarian. He also served as the recording secretary for the Cook County Young Democrats. I have no doubt these people would all be dead today if it were not for the intercession of Rajski and myself.
The FBI had its man—or woman—or men and women—inside the Chicago Nazi party, we were never sure which. Also, we were never sure who, but however it worked we refused to let it interfere with our efforts.
The student Dean was to be immolated in her car in the parking lot where she worked. The plan was for a young looking student type—a Nazi, of course—to approach her car carrying what would appear to be a thirty-ounce diet Pepsi. He would knock on her window, and when she rolled it down he would throw the contents of the Pepsi on her. The contents were, of course, gasoline, then a BIC lighter would follow. Rajski, ever the volunteer, entered the student type’s apartment that morning before the assassination was to take place, and put a bullet in his brain. His gun was equipped with a silencer we had purchased for the tidy sum of eight-hundred-dollars. It had proven to be a bargain.
The hospital administrator's assassination was a horse of a different color. As I have mentioned, he was a survivor of Auschwitz, and extremely nervous and aware of every change of light around him. In a word, he was on guard. The Nazis schemed to blow up the TWA 707 jet he would be flying in from Chicago to Los Angeles in February for a hospital administrators' conference. There were two conspirators involved this time, one of whom worked the luggage conveyor belt at O'Hare and one of whom—almost unbelievably—worked with the bomb disposal squad of the Chicago Police Department. Both were Nazis, both were high-ranking, and both were men.
Both were shot to death while they lay sleeping in separate bedrooms in the police officer's home the night before the bomb was to be placed. This time we had paid an electrical engineer who worked at Motorola, a Jew, of course, to disable the home security system belonging to the police officer. At first, our engineer refused payment. But by now our little group had grown to several members, all of whom were violent, all of whom wanted payback, and all of whom were survivors who had financially thrived in their adopted country of America. Money was no object.
It was necessary to enlist the assistance of the writer in order to save his life. Rajski and I went to his home, knocked on the door, introduced ourselves, and played a tape recording of a three-way conversation that had taken place in Heiss' office at Harper college. The tape recording outlined the attempt that would be made on the writer's life. He was immediately enraged and not at all frightened.
That assassination was thwarted when it was Rajski who answered the door of the writer's apartment when the Nazis came for him. Two dead in the hallway by silent gunfire; our group responded with transport of the corpses and they were removed and dumped in Lake Michigan. It was cold in February, but the ice was in pieces, and the frigid lake waters seemed exceptionally anxious to accept deceased Nazis the night I pushed them overboard. Like all dead men, they floated. They were found by the police, which we had hoped, as the crime sent a clear message to the Chicago Nazi party.
It was on.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Janich Heiss had a grandson. The boy’s name was Richard "Bibby" Meekins. He was age ten, an altar boy, and a member of the Boys' Club of Chicago, where he boxed in the Peewee League. He loved to fight and he loved to light the candles at the altar and assist the priests. Lately he had been hearing some very scary rumors from his older brother, Robb, about things men did to women at night in bed and, so far, Bibby wasn't buying it. He couldn't imagine the women he knew allowing something like the older boys described and he wouldn't even allow his brain to imagine the women he lived with in such a setting.
Bibby lived with his mother, Nora Meekins, his father, Douglas Meekins, his thirteen-year-old brother Robb, his eight-year-old sister Julie, and his grandfather Janich Heiss—now known as John E. Meekins. Grandfather lived with the family because he had been evicted from his apartment. At least, this was Bibby's understanding.
Bibby loved his family dearly and prayed for each and every one of them at bedtime. Especially Grandfather, whose living accommodations consisted of a garage transformed into a bedroom over one July when Bibby was much younger. Grandfather was divorced but wasn't lonely, as he seemed to have a huge circle of friend
s who were always stopping by and meeting with Grandfather and laughing and drinking beer and speaking German. Bibby understood little German, though Grandfather was going out of his way to get him to speak it. Bibby just wasn't interested. Nor was he interested in hearing about the "old country" and the Germany of Grandfather's youth. He thought the flags plastered around Grandfather's walls in his bedroom frightening in their red-and-black mystery. Worse, Bibby's closest friend, Isaac Meissman, recoiled at the flags when they had snuck into Grandfather's room while the older man was away at school, teaching.
"That's a swastika," Isaac whispered to Bibby. He grabbed Bibby by the arm, as if to pull him back out of the room. As if to pull him out of harm's way, is how Bibby would remember it forty years later.
Having heard the name of the flag—the swastika—Bibby and Isaac looked it up in Isaac's Encyclopedia Britannica. There were several articles about the swastika and the Germany of the Third Reich. Included were pictures of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and dozens of other Germans in their black uniforms and shiny boots.
"Nazis," cried Isaac.
"What's that?" asked Bibby.
"That's your Grandfather. Your Grandfather probably killed my grandfather at Auschwitz. You have your grandfather's blood. You have Nazi blood, Bibby!"
"Grandfather wouldn't kill anybody."
Isaac's eyes were wide. "Let's look in his closet."
The next afternoon, they crept inside Grandfather's closet. It was set along the back wall of the garage conversion, sharing half the length of the wall with a bathroom that featured a toilet, basin, and tub-shower. They pulled open the closet door and Isaac slipped inside and began sorting through the hanging clothes. At the far end, he found what he was looking for.
Unspeakable Prayers: WW II to Present Day (Thaddeus Murfee Series of Legal Thrillers) Page 16