Once We Were Brothers
Page 7
Catherine responded flatly. “He had a broken leg.”
Ben shook his head. “Once again, Catherine, it’s not so simple. It wasn’t just a broken leg.” Turning to Liam, Ben said, “I wish she wasn’t in such a rush. Why does she have to be in such a hurry? How can a person understand something when she’s only interested in getting to the last paragraph?”
“She knows her business, Ben. Give her some credit.”
“I’m sorry,” Catherine said. “I’m trying to keep us on task, that’s all.”
“Well, it wasn’t just a broken leg or I wouldn’t have brought it up. To me, it was a critical part of the story.” Ben stood up. He turned to Liam. “Earlier today Catherine and I made an agreement. But we didn’t shake on it, so I guess it’s not official. So now, we’ll make a formal agreement and you’ll witness it.” He held up his right hand to take an oath. “I promise to be mindful of the demands of Catherine’s law practice and in return, Catherine has to give me credit for knowing what’s important in my story. Okay? Do we have a deal?” He leaned over the table and stuck out his hand.
Catherine smiled and took his hand. “Agreed. I promise.” She lifted her menu to study the entrees but Ben wasn’t quite finished making his point.
“What happened in Austria was a precursor to what happened in Poland. What happened to Uncle Joseph would eventually happen to the people in Zamość. We should have known, Catherine. Cousin Ziggy warned us and Uncle Joseph would tell us and yet all of us went about our daily routines as though nothing was going on, trapped in denial.”
“What happened to your Uncle Joseph?”
Vienna, Austria 1938
“The day of the Anschluss, the Nazis staged a military parade along Vienna’s main thoroughfares. It was pure propaganda, intended for the movie theaters. Uncle Joseph and Aunt Hilda were not allowed to stay in their home because no Jews were allowed along the parade route. They were ordered to leave the area for the day.
“Neighbors later told them that the Nazis had assigned a make-believe family to their house – healthy, blonde and smiling – character actors to be filmed cheering the German occupiers. Huge red and black Nazi flags were draped up and down the boulevards. As the parade of soldiers passed, some in cars, some on motorcycles, some on foot, their black heels hitting the pavement in goose-stepping rhythm, there were shouts of heil Hitler and seig heil coming from the balconies. Great jubilation, you know. Welcome to Austria, you wonderful conquerors. At the end of the day, when my aunt and uncle were allowed to return to their home, they found it ransacked and defaced with swastikas.
“Almost immediately the Germans instituted new rules in Vienna. Uncle Joseph and Aunt Hilda were issued identity cards stamped with a J. Jude was painted on the windows of my uncle’s grocery store and soon after the Anschluss, the store was taken from him. It was Aryanized. No Austrian Jew was allowed to own a business. They gave my uncle’s store to an Austrian municipal worker, actually a plumber, and my uncle was forced to run the store as an underpaid employee.
“Then one night, after midnight, the Gestapo came through Uncle Joseph’s neighborhood with a sound truck. ‘All Jews are to assemble on the street. Now!’ My aunt and uncle hurried down the stairs to stand on the cold cobblestones with coats wrapped around their bedclothes. Finally, hours later, they received instructions to report to the city hall at eight a.m. to turn in all their valuables: jewelry, furs, silver, musical instruments. And radios. The Nazis didn’t want Jews to have radios. Failure to comply would be met with dire consequences. Everyone knew what that meant.
“Uncle Joseph and Aunt Hilda stood in line at the city hall for most of the day. No one was permitted to leave the line for any reason, not for food or drink. Not even to go to the bathroom. No one was allowed to sit. Anyone who fell out of line was beaten. Nazi soldiers walked up and down the lines, slapping at people with their nightsticks and screaming insults. After the valuables were handed over, they were allowed to go home. People who turned in a modest amount were accused of secreting valuables. Some were whisked back to their homes where soldiers would tear the place apart looking for more.”
“After their belongings were taken from them, did your aunt and uncle leave Vienna?” Catherine said.
“No. They stayed in their home.”
“I don’t understand that,” Catherine said. “After the Anschluss, why didn’t your aunt and uncle leave Austria? Certainly, I can understand why Jews didn’t resist armed German soldiers. But after the confiscation, when they were allowed to go home, and when the soldiers weren’t around, why didn’t they escape? Why would they choose to stay in Austria and live in subjugation?”
Ben took a deep breath. He looked around the upscale restaurant, at the flocked walls, at the oil paintings in their golden frames, at the well-dressed diners enjoying their bone-in rib eyes and California cabernets, at the fireplace glowing warm and comfortable, and he said with a pained expression, “You’re sitting here tonight in the lap of luxury, in a realm of comfort, a prominent lawyer, secure in every facet of her life, in a country where such madness seems inconceivable. Today, we look back at the Nazi scourge and shake our heads in disbelief. How could such a thing happen? Why were the Jews so meek? It’s incomprehensible. Miss Lockhart, don’t ask me, with all your presumptions, to explain why the Viennese Jews didn’t leave their homes, their community, everything they knew and loved and respond rationally to a world bereft of reason.”
Catherine sat back. “I apologize. I have no right to judge.”
Ben nodded. “They chip away and they chip away, taking your rights and your dignity a piece at a time, and you think, ‘God, give me strength and I can endure this until the world is righted, until evil is vanquished, as it always is.’”
“I’m sorry,” Catherine said.
“They broke his leg. One day, without any warning whatsoever, German soldiers burst into the store and grabbed my uncle from behind the counter. They yanked Jewish doctors out of hospitals, Jewish professors from the schools, old women from their homes, it didn’t matter, and corralled them all out on the street. The Nazis gave them toothbrushes and pails of cold water and ordered them to scrub the cobblestones on their hands and knees, standing over them with automatic weapons, laughing and tormenting them. You see, Miss Lockhart, torture was amusement to the Nazis. Humiliation, battery and even murder were acceptable forms of entertainment.
“One young thug in a shiny, creased uniform screamed at my uncle. ‘That’s not scrubbing,’ he barked in German. ‘Scrub harder, you Jewish swine.’ My uncle cowered, like the others, scrubbing as hard as he could, waiting for the madness to pass and the storm troopers to withdraw so he could return to what was left of the normalcy of his home. ‘After all,’ he later said to us, ‘we weren’t enemy combatants. We had no weapons, we made no threats and we had declared no wars. This was supposed to be a peacetime annexation.’
“Nevertheless, this young sadist, who probably never had a job in his life before joining the Nazi army, pushed my uncle to the ground with his rifle butt and stomped on him with the heel of his boot, shattering his tibia. Then he turned his attention on some other poor soul and left my uncle lying on the street. After the Nazis left, neighbors carried my uncle home in a cart.”
“It makes me sick that a man could do such a thing to another human being,” whispered Catherine.
Ben leaned forward and stared into her eyes. “This was not a man, Miss Lockhart. It was a demon.”
Catherine shifted uncomfortably. “I suppose you could call them demons. Anyone who could treat another so cruelly, without regard….”
Ben’s lower jaw quivered. “They were demons in the literal sense, Miss Lockhart. Humans are incapable of planning and propagating mass genocide unless prompted by external evil. There is inherent goodness in the soul of man. God put it there. These Nazis were minions of the devil, recruited among the weak and those inclined to evil.”
He leaned back in his chair and paused for a
moment. “These monsters weren’t just bad humans, Catherine, they had become missionaries, dispatched to spread the most heinous evil the world has ever seen.”
Catherine said, “Dispatched by….”
“The archangel Samael. Satan. The devil. Whomever you choose. At the base of Mount Moriah there is darkness, wherein evil dwells. For me, there is no other explanation.”
Catherine raised her eyebrows.
“Doubtful, Catherine? Too allegorical for you?”
“You have a right to believe such a theory.”
“Not a theory. I have seen it.”
Liam asked the waitress for the check.
“Well, anyway,” Ben concluded as he stood and placed his napkin on the table, “eventually friends arranged for Uncle Joseph and Aunt Hilda to travel to Poland. They had to leave everything behind. That was the price of freedom. They were driven to the Polish border where they caught a train to Lublin.
“By the time Uncle Joseph arrived in Zamość, infection had set in. It was a bad compound fracture. My father immediately sent for Doctor Weissbaum but despite the care that was given to him, Uncle Joseph lost his right leg.”
“Did they move into your home?” Catherine asked.
“Of course. There was some talk of their going to live in their mountain cabin, but with his disability it was out of the question. They had lost everything except each other.”
Catherine folded her napkin, laid it on the table and stood. “Excuse me, please,” she said and walked in the direction of the ladies room.
Ben and Liam watched her walk away. “She’s upset,” said Liam.
“Honest emotion. That’s not a bad thing,” Ben said. “She’s dropping her barriers and maybe this case is just what she needs.”
“Are you a psychologist now, Ben?”
He smiled. “Just an old man who reads too much.”
Liam paid the check, waited for Catherine and the three walked down the street to where the car was parked. “Can we drop you at home?” Liam said.
“If you’re going my way, otherwise I’ll take the bus.”
“Hop in, Ben. It would be my pleasure.”
Chapter Thirteen
Chicago, Illinois October 2004
They dropped Ben at the entrance to his apartment building, a twenty-four story blond brick structure on Bittersweet Place, a block off the lakefront in the Belmont Harbor neighborhood. Built in the 1930s, the building still had outdoor fire escapes and indoor radiators. Room air conditioners protruded from the windows. But despite its age, the proximity to the harbor and the twelve hundred acres of Lincoln Park made the rental units desirable and vacancies were rare.
Liam and Catherine said goodnight to Ben and drove off in the direction of Catherine’s townhome. No sooner had they turned onto Marine Drive than Liam’s cell phone rang.
“It’s Ben. I got a big problem.”
“You need me to come back?”
“Yeah. Apartment 1708.”
The doorman buzzed them through and they took the elevator to the seventeenth floor, where they found Ben standing in the hallway outside his open door.
The apartment had been torn asunder. Bureau drawers were overturned, their contents scattered. Kitchen appliances and pots and pans lay on the floor. The bedroom closet had been emptied of its contents and piles of hangers and pants and coats were tossed about in rumpled heaps.
Thirty minutes later two investigators and an evidence technician from the Belmont District headquarters arrived and surveyed the mess. They dusted for prints and took pictures. One of them took a statement from Ben as he leaned against his kitchen wall, shaking his head at the disarray.
“Are any valuables missing?” Catherine said.
“Like what? What’s a valuable to you?”
“Jewelry. Money. Silver. Collectibles.”
“Nothing that would attract burglars. Anything in this apartment has value only to me. These weren’t thieves, they were Nazis looking for evidence.”
“Evidence?”
“Of course. That I might have on Piatek. Or, something they could later use to discredit me in my lawsuit.”
“Are there such things? Do you have such evidence?”
“I have notes.” Ben picked up the open cardboard cigar box that had previously held his gun and showed it to Catherine. “They’re gone. The notes are gone.”
“Tell me about the notes, Ben,” Liam said. “Where did they come from?”
“I made them from my memory over the past several days, to help me tell my story. About twenty pages or so.”
“Were there any references to Catherine or her law firm? Did you write about a lawsuit?”
“I think so. I probably noted that a certain person would make a good witness or that we should seek out evidence from Rosenzweig’s house or something like that. I’m pretty sure I did.”
“Did you make a copy?”
“No.”
Ben stood in the midst of his strewn apartment. “Damn. They sure beat the hell out of this place.”
A Chicago Police Department evidence technician approached them. “There’s no sign of forced entry. We lifted some prints, we have some fibers, but I don’t know if anything’ll come of it.”
He handed a CPD card to Ben on his way out. “Sergeant Quinlan will be following the case.”
“We’ll help you put your apartment back together, Ben,” Catherine said.
“No thanks,” he said, slowly shaking his head. His bearing seemed to wither. “I’d prefer to do it alone.”
He righted a tipped chair and sat down with his face in his hands. “You two can go now. Thanks for coming back.”
“Double lock the doors, Ben.” Liam started to leave and stopped at the door. “One more thing. How many ways are there to get into this building?”
“Well, there’s the front desk, the way you came in, and there’s a back door with a delivery dock that the maintenance guys use.”
“Do the tenants have a key to the back door?”
“No. There’s no reason to go out the back. There’s no parking or anything.”
* * *
They drove for a while, Liam drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Finally, he broke the silence.
“Well, what do you make of all of this, Cat? Do you still think he’s crazy?”
“What do I make of it? I know his apartment was ransacked but I’m not going to jump to any wild conclusions, like Nazis were responsible. It could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been kids, drug addicts or petty thieves.”
“Or Otto Piatek?”
“Oh, come on. An eighty-three-year-old man drove over here, slipped by security, broke into the apartment and tore it up without being noticed?”
“Rosenzweig is wealthy enough to get it done.”
“And so is Bill Gates. But I have no more proof that it was Elliot Rosenzweig than I do it was Bill Gates. Which brings me to another issue. I’ve listened to Ben for days, and I grant you, it’s a very moving story, but I have yet to hear a single piece of evidence that would tie Rosenzweig to Piatek. And I have repeatedly raised the subject. All it does is unsettle him.”
“You have to be patient. I’m sure he’ll get there.”
“Oh, I’m certain that if I devoted enough time and listened long enough, he’d eventually finish his story. Maybe I should just give up my job and take notes for the next two years. But you know what – at the end of that time, it would still come down to proof. What proof can he produce, what evidence is there that Rosenzweig is Piatek?”
“You know as well as I that his apartment was torn up because of his accusations. This was no coincidence. These weren’t kids or addicts, Cat. They were professionals. They were looking to see what he had. In your heart you know he’s right. We just have to help him get the proof.”
“You saw his apartment. There’s nothing there. How does he find proof from sixty years ago when he doesn’t have anything?”
“He had notes.”
“Please hear him out. Just a little longer. Like you said the other day, there’s something much deeper here. Do it for me. I’ll get you the proof. Cat, after all these years, they’re still violating him.”
Catherine stared straight ahead. “I can’t do it much longer, Liam.”
Chapter Fourteen
Ben spoke softly when he arrived the next morning. “I spent most of the night trying to put my home back together.”
Catherine nodded sympathetically and poured him a cup of tea. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But before we get started, I need to tell you that I have a hearing scheduled today at two p.m., which may continue through tomorrow. We can work until noon and if we don’t finish, we can get together on Friday.”
Ben shook his head. “I can’t meet on Friday. I have somewhere I have to be.”
“Is that because it’s the Sabbath?”
“Well, it is Erev Shabbat, but that’s not the reason. I have a standing commitment on Friday afternoons.”
“Then we only have a couple of hours and if you’re up to it, I’d like to forge ahead. Perhaps we can focus on how Otto took your property and how we can prove that Mr. Rosenzweig is really Otto Piatek.”
Ben took a sip of tea. “I don’t know if I can do that in two hours. I’ll do the best I can.”
Zamość, Poland 1939
“It was the summer of ‘39, a warm Saturday evening, and we were enjoying dinner with friends and family – Hannah and her parents, my aunt and uncle, Beka, Otto. We had just finished dessert and were sitting in the living room when we heard a knock on the door, a soft knock, like whoever it was didn’t want to alert anyone but us. My father looked at us, shrugged his shoulders and went to open the door. There stands Otto’s mother, Ilse, dressed in a dark cotton cloak. The hood is pulled up over her blond hair to hide most of her face. She’s a pretty woman, with her curled hair and her high cheek bones. Dark red lipstick.