The Barbed Crown

by Rick Jones

  “And the girl?”

  “Still alive. At least I hope so. But I promised to return and take her away from that godforsaken place.”

  “You’re hardly in the condition to get out of bed, let alone to go up against legions of German soldiers.”

  Becher winced at the pain. “How bad am I?” he asked.

  “When I found you on the road you were nearly dead. I did what I could to keep the fever down until we made it to the infirmary. Though it’s going to take time to heal properly. Your shoulder blade was broken by a bullet, but doing well. The hip, however, is the concern of the doctors.”

  Becher lifted the sheet to glance at his injury. “Will it cripple me?” he asked, lowering the sheet.

  “Not sure,” said the priest. “You’re young and resilient. There’s a fifty-fifty chance that you’ll rebound fully from this.”

  “How long?”

  The priest shrugged. “A year or two with the proper therapy.”

  Becher shook his head. “Impossible. Ayana will be dead by then. I promised to—” When Becher tried to get up from the bed, a sweeping pain reminded him that this would be an impossibility, so he fell back, exhausted by the effort. A moment later a tear slipped from the corner of his eye as he stared ceilingward. He had failed Ayana once again.

  The priest laid a gentle hand on Becher’s shoulder, and Becher reached up to place his hand over the priest’s, the touching one of union and understanding that would last for nearly seventy years.

  And Becher finally broke, sobbing between words. “I promised that I would come back to protect her and those who cannot protect themselves.”

  “And perhaps there lies your road to the Light of Redemption,” said the priest. “Maybe you cannot save her, but you can save others.”

  “But my Ayana…”

  “Perhaps she was a catalyst,” the priest told him, “a message from God showing you the way. Ayana will always serve as your beacon of hope—that Light at the end.”

  Becher regained himself. “If I spent my life keeping my promise to protect those who cannot protect themselves, she would be so proud of me.”

  The priest smiled. “I believe she would.”

  “But I am one man with a hip that may never heal properly.”

  “If you have the heart,” said the priest, “if you have the conviction with Ayana burning deep within your soul, then you can move mountains.”

  Becher nodded. “But it’ll be a long road. And I have no idea where to begin.”

  “I do,” said the priest. “In three weeks I travel to the Vatican on a mission to seek the position of the cardinal. Since the war has taken a toll on the membership over the years, I have been asked to hold council with the pontiff, along with a few others throughout parts of Europe.”

  “Council with the pope?”

  The priest nodded. “He might be interested with what you have to say about these camps, since the pontiff has intervened in the transportation of Jews from various countries since 1942. Though he comes up short in condemning the Nazis due to potential retaliation. But that would not stop him from acting secretly with operations, should they better humanity.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Becher.

  The priest leaned forward. “There has been talk since the war began, about the power of the Swiss Guard. They are the Vatican’s private army and remain so. But the church has diplomatic ties with more than ninety percent of the countries worldwide. The question is: How does the Vatican deploy a unit to protect those outside of Vatican City?” He leaned back into his chair. “There is none.”

  “So the Vatican creates one?”

  The priest nodded. “It’s been in the talks for a while now. But there was nothing to push it completely into the light as an absolute necessity. Your talk of these camps may be enough to do so. You can establish an elite unit who can protect those who cannot protect themselves. Their specialties will be to work covertly outside the borders of the Vatican. They’ll be an attachment to the Swiss Guard, but a unit that works independent of them.”

  Becher nodded. “And my place in the scheme of things?”

  “If you push this matter with urgency, then you can be the means to establish the first unit.”

  “But my hip?”

  “Your hip would have to heal, of course, to serve as a combatant. But there will be so much more involved such as recruitment, training and schooling. This will not be an overnight creation.”

  “Will we be called the Swiss Guard?”

  “No,” said the priest. “Like a said before, it’ll be a unit completely independent from them.”

  Becher offered almost sheepishly, “A revival of the Templar Knights?”

  Another ‘no’ from the priest who eased forward in his seat with a slight smile. “Close,” he said. “They’ll be called the Vatican Knights.”

  Becher smiled at this. “The Vatican Knights. I like it.”

  “There’ll be a lot involved to get this going,” added the priest. “Years of preparation, in fact. Right now many factors have to fall in line, with the first being how you heal.”

  Becher was certain that he would, perhaps the misplaced confidence of a seventeen-year-old who was on the cusp of becoming a man. But the priest was right about Ayana serving as the stimulus that would motivate him for the rest of his life. Though he would never see her again and always wonder if she was dead or alive, even when the camp was liberated on January 27, 1945, he would always keep the photo of her with him, often looking at it from time to time to remind him of his mission goal, which was to serve the church and blaze a path toward the Light of Redemption.

  “Ayana would be so proud of me,” he thought out loud.

  “Yes she would,” said the priest.

  Becher appeared embarrassed by this. “I didn’t mean to speak openly.”

  “It’s fine. But keep in mind,” said the priest, rising from the chair, “that this is the first step in a thousand-mile journey.”

  “Confucius,” Becher returned with a half-smile.

  The priest nodded. “We have a long way to go, my friend. But it can be done.” Then: “It will be done.”

  Becher studied the youthful-looking priest, could feel incredible power coming off him at so young of an age. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Since we’re about to join league with one another, and with all due respect, I don’t want to keep calling you Father. You have a name?”

  The priest smiled. “It’s Vessucci,” he told him. “Bonasero… Vessucci.”

  * * *

  Once the camp had been liberated by the Russian forces, people like Mengele and Höss escaped. Höss, however, was captured a year later under an assumed name. During his trial, when confronted with the charge that he was responsible for the killings of more than 3,500,000 Jews, he disputed that, saying that he was only responsible for the deaths of 2,500,000 Jews. The other million had starved to death. After his trial, Rudolph Höss had been shown the gallows.

  Mengele, however, had managed to escape the clutches of the law and died in 1979, when suffering a stroke as he swam along the shores of a coastal resort in Bertioga, Brazil. He was 67.

  As for those who were liberated, many had gone on to countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and other lands where family members resided. Others stayed the course and became the first occupants of Israel, which was founded on May 14, 1948, just three years after their liberation. On May 11th, 1949, Israel was recognized by the United Nations as a governing power and the 59th member of the union, a phenomenal feat nearly four years removed from near annihilation as an ethnic race.

  And through the years, as Becher became well enough to serve as the first Vatican Knight and the leading commander, he always wondered about Ayana Berkowitz, a Jewish girl he had come to adore in a time when a German loving a Jew was forbidden, was still alive. Unfortunately, his hope of finding out if Ayana lived or died inside the
camp would always remain a mystery to him.

  But in the end, as he chose his path toward the Light of Redemption, he did so with a smile because he knew that she would be proud of him.

  PART III

  BACK TO THE FUTURE

  Epilogue

  Washington, D.C.

  A Few Years Ago

  When Shari Cohen’s grandmother was confined to Auschwitz, the sky always rained ashes.

  At the peak of the camp’s existence, 2,000 Jews were summarily executed on a daily basis and burned in the ovens, a tragedy that was memorialized by the photos lining the walls, galleries and glass cases of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

  People milled noiselessly about, zigzagging across the hall from one display to another, regaled by iron crosses and German Lugers. Beneath recessed lighting hung German and Hebrew banners, which included the framed paintings that the Nazi regime had appropriated from Jewish owners.

  At the end of a corridor, Shari walked along a memorial wall that was lined with numerous black-and-white photos, and studied each one carefully.

  And then she found it, a grainy black-and-white print that had been discovered behind a filing cabinet by Allied forces of a woman standing in front of an SS guard who was holding a carbine in display, the soldier smiling.

  With the tips of her fingers, Shari traced the image of the young woman who stood with her chin raised in defiance. The points of her shoulders, her cheeks, the paleness of her flesh and the death-rings surrounding her eyes—still, everything bore the testament of the woman’s will and courage in the face of adversity. It was also the photo of Shari’s grandmother.

  Shari immediately felt the sting of tears, her grief mixing with overwhelming pride.

  She moved slowly along the cases, examining every photo and imagining the atrocities behind them. In one picture she noted lifeless bodies hanging from the gallows. And Shari remembered her grandmother saying that the bodies would swing there for days as a reminder to Jews within the camp of their impending fate.

  To be a person of Jewish faith, her grandmother told her, was a fate that assured death and never a reprieve.

  Even at this moment within her mind, Shari could hear the slight accent of her grandmother’s voice and the sweet clip of her tone. The way she spoke, with the courage and pride of making it through one of the blackest moments of history, was in itself a demonstration of the old woman’s fortitude.

  When Shari was too young to understand the reality of her grandmother’s suffering but was on the cusp of learning, her grandmother showed her the stenciled numerals on her left forearm. Viewing the numbers from one side read 100681, but when the forearm was viewed from the opposite side, the numbers became inverted, reading 189001. Same tattoo but different numbers. Her grandmother always referred to these as the magic numbers.

  Shari smiled. In her mind’s eye she could see her grandmother smiling back, the woman always amused at the astonishment on Shari’s young face, as the numbers changed before her eyes.

  And then Shari’s smile slowly faded, the corners of her lips faltering to a straight line. The woman who was so brave and cavalier about her struggles in Auschwitz had died of heart failure a week ago in a D.C. hospital, at the age of seventy-nine.

  And Shari missed her deeply.

  Moving along the displays, Shari observed more photographs, which included pictures of the ovens along with countless rows of urns filled with ashes—another constant reminder to the Jews of their imminent fate.

  How her grandmother was able to maintain her sanity was beyond Shari’s understanding. How could anybody live under the mantle of an Auschwitz sky, wondering on a daily basis if her ashes would one day rain down and cover the landscape with a horrible grayness?

  She could not even begin to fathom the terror of not knowing.

  Through the museum’s photos, Shari witnessed a chronology of events that reminded her that even though she was a Jew in a land of tolerance, her country, too, was not entirely without its prejudices. She recalled her grandmother’s words from two years before, when Shari turned sixteen.

  “You’re a young woman now,” she told her. “Old enough to understand the things a young woman should know. So what I’m about to give you, my littlest one, is the most wonderful gift of all. The gift of insight and wisdom.” It was then that her grandmother leaned in and beckoned her to join her in close counsel, as if what she was about to say could only be passed on in whispers. “I’m one of Jewish faith,” she added, “as you are. But I was proud and refused to give up. To be a Jew in Auschwitz was certain death. But if you fight from here,” she said, placing an open hand over her heart, “if you’re truly proud of who and what you are, then you will survive. But never forget this one thing: there are terrible people out there willing to destroy you simply because evil has its place. If you want evil to take hold, then stand back and do nothing. But if you want to make a difference, then fight, so that all can live in the Light. Does this make any sense what I’m telling you?”

  Shari could remember giving her a quizzical look. So her grandmother held her forearm out, the ink of the magic numbers having faded to an olive-green color.

  “Because I was a Jew, I was given this mark—even though I was a good girl who never hurt anybody. My parents, your great-grand parents, were good people who never received a mark because they were told to go to “the left,” which, in Auschwitz, meant a quick death in the gas chambers. I never saw them again.” She smiled—the creases of her face many—but the lines so warm and beautiful, the lines of a person who truly loved life.

  Then she reached for Shari’s hand and embraced it with maternal gentleness. “There is goodness in you,” she told her. “I can feel it. And it is people like you who can make a difference in the lives of all, whether they be that of Jewish faith or not. These marks on my arm are a constant reminder of good people who turned a blind eye and did nothing to help me or others when life was at its darkest. And because of it many people died unnecessarily because evil was allowed to succeed. But in you, my littlest one, is a fire so bright I can see it in your eyes. You want to do good for those who can’t protect themselves, yes?”

  At that moment Shari realized that she did, though her newfound zeal may have been motivated as much by a desire to please her grandmother. Nevertheless, this was a new feeling for her since she was, after all, only sixteen, and her greatest concerns thus far had involved boys.

  Then her grandmother’s smile widened as if intuiting the child’s thoughts. “Not to worry,” she told her. “Just remember that when the time comes there will be obstacles. But don’t give up. Determination and perseverance will get you there all the time. I was determined to survive Auschwitz. And I did. Now it’s your turn to make sure what happened to me never happens to anyone else ever again.”

  Shari lifted her grandmother’s forearm and turned it over, then traced her fingers softly over the washed-out tattoo. “No one should’ve suffered like you, Grandmama. And I’ll make sure no one ever will.”

  Her grandmother maintained an even smile.

  And Shari often wondered if her grandmother believed that her promises were merely the offhand remarks of a sixteen-year-old girl telling the old woman what she wanted to hear, or if she believed that Shari had true conviction. But Shari could not have been more sincere since her love for her grandmother trumped everything at that moment, even if she was sixteen and preoccupied with boys. Good people like her grandmother deserved better.

  “This is my gift to you, my dear. Sometimes the best presents don’t come in a box, but as a lesson. So take it and use it well.”

  Shari had never forgotten the lesson taught to her by her grandmother on her sixteenth birthday.

  Now that Shari had been accepted into Georgetown University on a full scholarship and was less into boys and more career-minded, she was working toward her pledge to never let atrocities happen to “those who could not help themselves” by enrolling in Criminal J
ustice courses, with an eye on greater achievements.

  To her right, Shari noticed three teenagers who were entirely clad in black, wore matching black lipstick and fingernail polish, and dyed their hair raven. They chattered excitedly and referred to the photographs with adjectives such as “sweet” and “awesome” and “cool,” words that bit her deeply.

  And Shari had to wonder: If they were subjected to the same tortures and suffering as those in the photos, would they still think it was sweet and awesome and cool?

  She thought not.

  Moving along and leaving her unenlightened peers behind, Shari thought about her grandmother and the way she carried herself courageously through the remainder of her life. By surviving Auschwitz, her lineage continued. Her grandmother gave birth to three children who extended the line further with seven grandchildren, Shari being the youngest. Without her grandmother’s will to continue on in one of history’s most notorious travesties, none of them would be alive today.

  Thank you, Grandmama.

  Shari stood over a glass case with her reflection staring back. She was attractive with an errant lock of hair curling over her brow like an inverted question mark, which was just to the left of her widow’s peak. And her eyes, a dazzling copper brown that shined with the luster of newly minted pennies, gazed back with something inquisitive about them. Why was there such fanaticism in the world to warrant the murder of more than six million Jews? In Shari’s mind it seemed all so tragic that mankind had not matured enough to see its own downfall.

  Sighing, she looked beyond her reflection and saw the Nazi flag resting within the case. The red and white colors were crisp and clean as if new, and the swastika stared back at her as the symbol of intolerance.

  “Because you’re one of Jewish faith,” her grandmother told her, “you’ll always be persecuted. But never forget who you are and always be proud, because one day you will be reminded of what you are, and you’ll need to fight back to survive. Never forget that, my littlest one.”