The Barbed Crown

by Rick Jones

  By tonight, as word got around about stopping the transport of gunpowder, the entire Network would know it was due to a man by the name of Moshe Chapiro, who was betraying his own people.

  And unknowingly to Chapiro, this had made him a marked man.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Ayana had kept her word to Roza about limiting her time with Frederic Becher, telling him that their time together was making her fall short on her work demands, which Becher accepted. But whenever he walked away, she always felt an emotional sting in the wake of his absence. Then she wondered if he felt the same.

  Returning to her station moments after Becher’s visit, she could sense all eyes on her as if she had become the enemy, with many alleging that she was handing off damning information to Becher during their times together, which, of course, wasn’t true. In fact, it was Roza who rallied against this rumor mongering and laid all fears to rest. She further added that Ayana Berkowitz was the reason why the supply was getting to the Sonderkommandos without detection by the SS guards, and that the immediate order to cease and desist the Network was not the fault of Ayana, but from another who shared their ethnicity, a man by the name of Moshe Chapiro.

  Nevertheless, Ayana could feel the biting glares and the hateful sidelong glances. And throughout it all she held her chin high. It mattered not that she had become the focus of another’s adoration, or that she had reciprocated with flashes of her teeth and smiles. Her crime in the eyes of her kind was that she was a Jew whose admiration had extended to a soldier of the Reich. And that was an offense they believed to be just as equal to the German mandate that Germans and Jews could no longer pair up as couples. Not only was it a sin in the eyes of the Nazi administration, it was a wrongdoing in the eyes of the Jews as well.

  But he’s not like the others, she kept telling herself. I wish everyone could see this.

  Sensing the mistrust of those around her, Ayana continued her job in silence.

  * * *

  Frederic Becher felt wounded by Ayana’s recent and quick dismissals, their conversations clipped and stunted, her manner cold and distant. As he performed his rounds, his mind appeared to be elsewhere, his eyes becoming vacant. His emotions for her had peaked, the young woman finally taking him over. He was almost consumed by her, and found himself desperately wanting to see her face or hear her voice, the simple things that gave him the most pleasure. But she had been curt with him over the past couple of weeks, and was definitely quick with monosyllable answers like ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ And of course he wondered if he’d done something wrong to promote such adjustments in Ayana, from sharing moments and talking about walking the streets of Paris wearing tailored dresses, to cold and abrupt encounters.

  He looked at his uniform, at the insignias of the swastikas that adorned it. Then he compared it to the insignia of Ayana’s yellow star, which was the brand of a lesser creature.

  I don’t care, he told himself. I… don’t… care.

  And it was here that he wanted to rip away the insignias, the swastikas, his anger rising because of forced divisions which he did not agree to, between the Germans and the Jews. But deep down he was afraid to do so, the Nazi machine powerful, unforgiving and certainly without mercy.

  Slowly, his shoulders sloped with a defeatist’s attitude while wishing for an alternate reality, one that allowed the communion between two people despite who or what they were.

  And without her, Frederic Becher felt completely hollow.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Two days had passed and tensions grew between the Sonderkommandos. Moshe Chapiro was like a disease that needed to be sliced away, a cancer that was a constant and debilitating presence that was going unchecked. He watched the Sonderkommandos from a distance, and usually with a lop-sided grin.

  “We can’t make a move,” Ephraim whispered to Dror, lifting a body onto a tray. “Dror, we may have days at the most, and we’re far from what we need to pull this off.”

  “I know.”

  “Let me draw Chapiro in so that you can take him out. We’ll put him up-the-chimney and commence the escape plans tonight, before the guards discover his absence.”

  “Too soon,” was the answer.

  “Then when?”

  “Three days from now,” Dror said. “We’ll inform the others to be prepared. We’ll get the work crew to sabotage the pumps by the armory and get them situated. We take down this crematorium, set the urns by the motor pool, the towers, and the gate.”

  “That’s two urns to take down the chimney. Five to take out what you just mentioned. That won’t be enough.”

  “With Chapiro watching every move we make,” said Dror, “we have no alternative. We have to make this move, regardless. I wish I had two more urns to assure that this chimney will come down. But we’re going to have to make do with what we have, Ephraim. Get word to Weiner and Avraham. Have them get the work detail in motion since timing is everything. Everyone will need to be appropriately positioned when this crematory goes up.”

  “Understood.”

  “The best time to do this is when most of the trucks leave for the fields. We’ll take out the rest in the motor-pool. Then we’ll take down the guard towers after we raid the armory. We’ll plant charges along the base of the towers under cover fire, and then we’ll blow them. Once down, then we take out the gate. This has to be quick, Ephraim, if this is going to work. Five minutes.”

  Both Sonderkommandos gave Chapiro a sidelong look. The kapo was smiling at them while slapping his truncheon against his palm.

  “That’s right, you little prick,” said Ephraim. “Keep smiling all the way up to the time when I knock that grin right off your face.”

  …Thwack…

  …Thwack…

  …Thwack…

  “But I’m the one that’s going to shove that truncheon right up his ass when the time comes,” said Dror

  Neither man could hold back their laughter, which earned them both a small beating from Chapiro’s truncheon.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Benjamin Kleinberg was an engineer who inspected the pumps that kept Auschwitz running with fresh water for the Nazi’s; and passable drinking water for the Jews, though the liquid was often brown and unfiltered.

  He, along with his son and two others, manned carts filled with pipes, tubing, and the parts necessary to maintain adequate functioning of the water system, often using methods of jury-rigging.

  Word had come from Weiner that the operation was going to transpire in three days, when the vehicles were transporting those to the fields for execution. This would at least guarantee fewer troops to deal with, and elevate the odds to favor the insurrectionists. Once the chimney came down, that would mark the time for everyone to exercise their assigned duties.

  Benjamin and his team immediately invented the opportunity to be at the proper place at the proper time by damaging the main pump next to the German’s quarters close to the armory. The engineer had damaged the line so that dirt and sludge would make its way into the system, the water for the Germans becoming as unclean and unfiltered as the Jews. Since this would be unacceptable, a service order would be created immediately—though it would take two days for Benjamin’s team to bleed the lines, scour them clean, and repair them.

  In their carts placed among the debris of pipes and tubing necessary for the operation, would be five urns hidden among the wild tangle. It would be up to Benjamin’s team, after they overpowered the guards and raided the armory, to strategically place these shells along the gate, inside the motor-pool, and along the bases of the two guard towers.

  Dror and Ephraim, after taking out Chapiro, would join them.

  And those in the Network, the number now amounting close to sixty, would be positioned to make a run at the armory, gear up, and take to the woods where they would meet up at a particular location on a given set of coordinates, which would be west of their position.

  By the end of the day the damage to the water syst
em was done. Benjamin had done his job. And like clockwork and on the following morning, Benjamin’s work detail had received his service orders to repair the lines close to the armory, a two-day operation.

  And it would be during these days that the process of carefully transporting the urns from the crematorium to Weiner’s and Avraham’s pushcarts, and from them to the supply carts belonging to Benjamin.

  But a major obstacle remained, one that was becoming insurmountable.

  Moshe Chapiro continued to stand sentinel and watched everything that moved.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Another sleepless night for Frederic Becher as he tossed and turned in his bunk, his thoughts centering on Ayana and trying to figure out with certainty as to why she spoke and treated him in a clipped manner. At first he made excuses for her to justify her actions, trying to make himself believe that it wasn’t him—that something else was bothering her. But the facts always reared its ugly and truthful head, telling him that he was the subject of her detachment.

  And sometimes the truth hurt, sometimes cutting all the way down to the bone.

  But she wanted to go to Paris. She wanted to wear tailored dresses.

  But here was the ugly truth: all this talk was nothing more than a different reality drummed up by impossible wishes and hopes, something Ayana had most likely come to realize and had shouldered off.

  Becher sighed as he laid there, wishing and hoping and dreaming of Ayana, a girl who struck him down with feelings that made him think irrationally, something he could not control no matter how hard he tried.

  When morning finally arrived and the guards dressed for duty, Becher’s unit was called to deal with a matter inside the Processing Center. Records, which the Germans were meticulous about, were to be gathered and destroyed, with all documents to be burned.

  This had come from Lagerkommandant Höss, spurring conversations in hushed tones amongst the soldiers, saying without evidence that these actions were the result of the Red Army drawing closer, and that nothing was to be left behind.

  And in time that would include the Jews as well, which caused Becher’s heart to skip a beat inside his chest when he thought about Ayana. Like everything else in this camp, she would be consumed to ashes and be cast to the winds, her life nothing but a memory to him. Within months, he considered, maybe within weeks, Auschwitz would be nothing but an empty shell of its former self, a ghost town.

  “Let’s go!” yelled SS Sergeant Kaiser, who was directing the unit. “Schnell! Schnell! Everything you can find! Gather them into boxes! Into piles! Get them ready for the fires!”

  Everything inside the center became a hive of activity, the soldiers working quickly and in unison.

  When Becher arrived at a bank of filing cabinets with their records listed by numbers, he recalled Ayana’s number when he first asked her name, and when she lifted her sleeve of her smock to show him her numerals: 100681.

  He began to go down the rows of the cabinets, looking.

  …100100…

  …100200…

  …100300…

  …100400…

  …100400…

  …100600…

  He ripped the drawer open and leafed through the folders. There: 100681, towards the rear of the cabinet. He pulled the file and opened it. Sure enough, it was a record of Ayana Berkowitz. Her hair was gone and her scalp was scored with bleeding lines and cuts. Below her image and stenciled into the photo was her given number: 100681. It looked like a mug shot.

  “Herr Becher!” It was SS Sergeant Kaiser. “What the Hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Becher held up the file. “Cleaning out the filing cabinets, Herr Sergeant.”

  “One file at a time? Step it up, Becher. Toss it into the pile with the others and get a move on.”

  “Yes, Herr Sergeant.”

  As SS Sergeant stood by and watched, Becher tossed the file to the floor, and then he added more files from the surrounding cabinets to join it. At the end of ten minutes, the batch of files had grown into a pyramidal pile.

  “Schnell! Schnell! Let’s go, people! Pick up the pace!”

  When the cabinets had been emptied, Becher went into the adjacent room that was filled with photos, along with processing equipment and chemicals. It was a dark room where the photographer had processed his film to be added to the annals. Photos were scattered all over the place without labeling or tagging, as if everything had been uprooted at a moment’s notice.

  “Herr Sergeant, what happened to the photographer?” asked Becher.

  “When his position became obsolete,” he answered, “so did he. Now get to work!”

  “Yes, Herr Sergeant.”

  More photos, all gruesome and emblematic of Nazi Germany. To Becher, the images appeared as if these bodies had cannibalized all the muscle tissue in order to sustain themselves when alive, until there was nothing left to sustain.

  Then he came across a series of a particular photo, one that made his mouth drop. It was the picture taken when he was with Ayana outside the garment factory—the one where he was holding the carbine and smiling, whereas she held her chin out in obvious defiance.

  Becher smiled. I would expect nothing different from you, Ayana.

  The photos were in two different sizes. A large one to be kept in the annals, and two smaller ones that were sizeable to be kept inside a shirt pocket, also to be slipped into the annals for historical record keeping.

  Looking around and seeing SS Sergeant Kaiser barking orders to others, Becher slipped the smaller photos into the pocket of his uniform. But when he reached for the larger picture, he accidently knocked it off the table, where it fell and slid behind a cabinet. Becher tried to reach it, couldn’t, his fingers stretching to grab the photo’s edge.

  “Herr Becher!”

  Becher surrendered what he was doing and stood at attention. “Yes, Herr Sergeant?”

  “What the Hell are you doing?”

  “Cleaning away the files as ordered, Herr Sergeant.”

  “Join the rest of the unit, Becher. There’s something about you that doesn’t ring well with me. You’re slow. And word is coming back to me that you’re out of sync when making your rounds.”

  Becher raised an inquisitive brow at this. “Out of sync?”

  SS Sergeant Kaiser slapped the baton holstered to Becher’s hip. “You need to do more than just carry a gun around as a show of authority,” he said. “Why do you carry this truncheon, Becher, if you never pull it from its hold?”

  “My gun, Herr—”

  “You were given a truncheon, Herr Becher, to use. It’s not for decoration. And don’t lie to me because I already know the answer. Have you used it at all since it was issued to you?”

  “No, Herr Sergeant.”

  “Is there a reason why?”

  “The Jews have been compliant, Herr Sergeant. There’s been no need—”

  “Compliant or not, Herr Becher,” the sergeant stepped closer, his simian features inches away from Becher’s face, the man so close Becher could smell his rancid breath, “you are to use your truncheon as a show of power and might. Compliancy matters not. You choose someone and beat them no matter the reason, even if there’s no reason at all. Is that clear?”

  “It is, Herr Sergeant.”

  SS Sergeant stood back, the stink of his breath, however, still lingering. “Join the rest of the unit, Becher. And get in line with the program.”

  “Get in line with the program! Yes, Herr Sergeant!”

  Then Becher joined the others wondering how he could continue to dodge the system. The last thing he wanted to do was to pull his truncheon free for any reason.

  But what Frederic Becher wanted and what the system required of him were two different things. And the system was far too powerful for a deluded seventeen-year-old boy who had been captivated by love of a Jewish girl.

  Reaching a hand to his pocket, Becher could feel the photos within and smiled.

  My Ayana.


  They were so close to his heart.

  My sweet, sweet Ayana.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Things were moving quickly inside the camp per the orders of the Lagerkommandant. Word had come from the Führerbunker in Berlin to destroy all records, documents and photos, anything that could point an accusing finger at the Nazi administration.

  And since Treblinka and Sobibor were to be closed down within the coming weeks, additional trainloads of those who resided within those camps, such as Roma gypsies and Polish Jews, were to be sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the remaining satellite camps for extermination. This, of course, added to the stresses of the Lagerkommandant, who was trying to adhere to the directives handed down by Berlin, who failed to understand that Auschwitz had reached its saturation point long ago, and that these mass executions did little to relieve the numbers as long as trains continued to show up. For every Jew killed in Auschwitz, two more would arrive from the eastside of Poland to take their place. The system was beginning to implode as the Red Army moved forward to claim new territory.

  Rudolph Höss poured over documents and became disgusted by them. These mandates from Berlin were making matters incredibly difficult for him, if not impossible. Setting the documents aside, he poured himself an expensive liquor from a crystal carafe into two tumblers, and drank from one while allowing the other to sit as he waited on SS Sergeant Kaiser.

  Six minutes later with Rudolph Höss now working on his second drink, Kaiser arrived with a boot stomping introduction and offered a Nazi salute with his arm straight out and angled slightly upward.

  “Have a seat,” Höss told him, pushing the glass of liquor across his desk as an offering to his sergeant. “Update.”

  Kaiser took the glass and then his seat. After taking a sip, he said, “It’s going to be a very long process. I think you need to know that. Millions of Jews over the years. Ten times that in documents and files.”