The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  His mother, who would have been sent to the camps, along with every member of her family, to starve and be abused and humiliated and tortured and gassed and burned.

  His mother and every member of her mysterious family.

  Charley O’Brien wished he was drunk. He was more sober than he’d ever been in his life, and every part of him ached and he didn’t know what to do. He wished he could see her, talk to her, his mother. The Jew.

  He and Ben Herskel hung around together every night when they had free time. But Charley didn’t drink anymore, and no amount of Scotch seemed to affect Ben.

  They talked about home, childhood friends, neighbors—who was where, what branch of the service, what theater of war. And finally, who of their friends and neighbors would be lying in those enormous, unreal, unhuman heaps of barely covered bones, with staring dead eyes.

  They named neighbors. And then Ben stretched his arms over his head, then wrapped them around his knees.

  “My family, of course. My mother and father and kid sister, my aunt and uncle and cousins.”

  Then he studied Charley, his face expressionless, and nodded as though Charley had asked him a question.

  “Yes, pal. You. Your brothers and sisters. Even Eugene, the priest. It wouldn’t matter.”

  As though he had always known, Charley said, “Because of my mother.”

  “Born of a Jewish mother, kid. To them, that makes you a Jew. If it had been the other way around, your father the Jew, it would have saved you. For a while, anyway.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Benny reached over and tousled Charley’s cropped head. “Just a little bit of nasty Jewish thought, kid, that the Nazis adopted. Hey, when a baby is born, you know who the mother is. There’s the kid right from her. Now, you can assume who the father is, but you don’t really know, not the way you know the mother. Therefore, mother is a Jew, child is a Jew.”

  “The Catholics revere the mother …”

  “Well, the Jews say a prayer every morning—the men do—‘Thank God I was born a man, not a woman.’ When did you find out about your mother? Did she sit down and tell each kid when you reached a certain age, or what? I always wondered.”

  Charley rubbed his face roughly, up and down, scratched his head. “How did you know that my mother was a Jew?” It was a peculiar thing to say, yet somehow it came easily to him, as though, yes, he’d always known this.

  “Ah, Charley. You know our neighborhood is like a small town. Everybody up and down the block knows everybody’s secrets and—”

  “I didn’t know, Ben.”

  “What?”

  Charley shook his head.

  “Charley? You didn’t know? She didn’t tell you? Then how …”

  “Being here. Remembering things I’d heard all my life, when I was a kid. Hearing things late at night and then forgetting them, not asking about anything, not thinking about it. Then, last night, the words came back and somehow I wasn’t surprised. It made sense, the nuns coming on to my mother, her getting so mad, throwing them out. Never letting them whack any of us kids around. Jeez, they are afraid of her. Benny, how did you know?”

  “Charley, your mother was the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi. They were a big family, from Poland, living down on the lower East Side. He went through three wives, your grandfather; they all died giving birth. God, I think twelve or fourteen kids and—”

  “My grandfather?” The very concept of an unknown grandfather, a rabbi, an old Jew with a beard. What did this have to do with him. Charley O’Brien?

  “Your mother used to come in and have coffee with my mom at the end of a day, when your father worked late, and you kids were off to basketball or whatever. And one Friday afternoon my mother asked her if she’d like to come in the back, to the apartment, that she and my sister were going to light the sabbath candles, and your mother came, and she covered her head and her face, and she recited the prayer along with my mother and sister. And then she started to cry, and she and my mother hugged each other, and little by little she told my mother about herself, her family, the mourning ceremony that turned her into a dead daughter. I wasn’t there, but … I guess the way you pick things up, little by little, I just knew about your mother. And that it was a very special, private thing and that I wasn’t allowed to talk about it with anyone at all. Not even you kids. Especially you kids. I just grew up assuming you knew.”

  “It was never discussed. We never were allowed to ask my mother why she didn’t take communion. She came to church, but just to bring us.” Charley dropped his head into his hands and hunched forward. His voice was muffled, thick and painful. “Oh, Christ, oh, God Almighty. They’d have taken my mother … my mom, and turned her into one of those … and my brothers and sisters and me and … Oh, Christ, Benny. When you look at them, don’t you see yourself, your family, your …”

  Ben waited, wordless, as Charley sobbed into his hands. Finally, when Charley looked up and nodded to indicate he was okay, Benny said in a low, soft, firm voice, “That’s why I’m taking care of as many of these bastards as I can. In my own way. What about you?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THERE WAS AN ELECTRIC EXCITEMENT sweeping the camp. Rumor followed rumor, and they were all true. They were coming to view the camp for themselves. Eisenhower had decided on the spur of the moment, with hardly a two-hour warning—he and Bradley, and oh-my-God Patton.

  The colonel in charge of the officer-prisoner sector, old and haggard at thirty-three, with hollow cheeks and reddened eyes, gave the order. There was to be no spit and polish, no ceremony, that was the word. But at least, for Christ’s sake, shave, tuck your shirttails in. A minimum honor guard. It was going to be a quick tour.

  The Germans, the SS officers, heard the news almost as soon as the GIs did. They snapped into formation. In their tattered, dirty, incomplete uniforms, they stood stiffly at attention, waiting in perfect military formation, the smartness of their ranks somehow evident. They were, after all German officers, and they knew how to behave not only in victory but in defeat.

  Some of the GIs ran to get their cameras, knowing they’d never get copies of the official photos. God, this was something they could tell their grandchildren about, if they ever got home and married that girl back there and had kids, and lived long enough.

  The entourage arrived a few minutes before the announced time in a battered group of vehicles; dirty command cars, jeeps. The escorts arrived in a truck, battlefield-disheveled, but looking soldierly and proud.

  Salutes were exchanged, quick; a minimum of army ritual. Charley watched as the colonel conferred with Eisenhower. God, it really was the general. The meeting was brief; the general was anxious to get on with it. A curt nod, and Eisenhower strode behind the colonel, flanked by Bradley and Patton.

  As they passed the prisoner compound, the SS stood as rigid as picture-book soldiers. They saluted smartly, held the salute. Eisenhower never acknowledged their presence. Bradley glanced at them quickly, then looked straight ahead.

  Patton, spit and polish, Christ, really wearing those pearl-handled sidearms, looked sharply to his right, snapped his hand up, nodded abruptly, and released the prisoners from their salute.

  He, at least, knew how to act in the presence of the fallen enemy.

  Without breaking stride or changing expression, Eisenhower viewed the barracks, then the stacked bodies, then the hospital quarters for those still barely alive, then the excavations readied for graves. He seemed unaffected by the death smells; the lime smells; the odors of unbelievable corruption.

  He knew exactly what he wanted to see and spoke quickly, abruptly, to the colonel who escorted them to the warehouses where the Germans had carefully stored what they could use of the leftovers from the dead prisoners.

  Great barrels of hair, carefully divided as to length and color, filled one room. A ledger itemized the amounts of hair collected each day.

  There were cartons, their contents carefully itemized, containing denta
l gold, some still attached to the wrenched-out teeth of the dead, taken either before or after the gassing. There was a smaller amount of gold jewrelry, a few rings and watches; God alone knew how these things had been concealed for so long. Small quantities of currency, bills and coins had been found hidden in naked bodies, alive or dead.

  Everything was accounted for in individual ledgers, neatly itemized, a line for everything, an explanation. Spectacles, dentures, everything cataloged.

  The last room was the worst. There were huge piles of shoes: tiny shoes with barely worn soles ranging from infant sizes to the shoes of children of four or five years old. The ledger was actually titled “Infant Shoes.” The condition of the various sizes was neatly described. The younger the child, the better the condition of the shoe. After all, how much walking could a one-year-old have done? The smaller shoes were practically brand-new. Adult shoes were generally in poor condition.

  The clothing, cataloged by size—men’s, women’s, children’s, babies’—was mostly worthless. These Jews had long since been reduced to rags.

  Finally the colonel handed General Eisenhower a piece of paper explaining the financial arrangements made between the commandant of Auschwitz and the I.G. Farben chemical company, whose plant had been built in proximity to the camp to take advantage of the continuing supply of slave labor. Prisoners who were reasonably able-bodied, whether male or female, who fit certain criteria of age, condition, or anticipated stamina, were not immediately killed. As long as they could meet the average life expectancy of nine months established by both the company and the commandant, they were sent to work at the plant.

  Eisenhower read the accounting arrangements, and his expressionless face grew pale, but he said nothing.

  Table of Profits (or Yield) per Prisoner in Concentration Camps (Established by SS)

  Rental Accounting

  Average income from

  rental of prisoner, per day Reichsmark 6.00

  Deduction for nourishment per day RM 0.60

  Average life expectancy 9 months: 270 days by RM 5.30= RM 1,431.00

  Minus amortization on clothing RM 0.10

  Profits from rational utilization of corpse:

  1. Gold Teeth 3. Articles of value

  2. Clothing 4. Money

  Minus cost of cremation RM 2.00

  Average net profit RM 200.00

  Total profit after 9 months RM 1,631.00

  (This estimate does not include profits from sale of bone and ashes.)

  Eisenhower handed the statement back to the colonel without a word. Bradley scanned it, shook his head.

  Patton read it quickly. “Got to hand it to the bastards,” he said, almost to himself. “They sure were efficient.”

  Apparently no one but the colonel heard him.

  The generals left the camp after a brief exchange of salutes with the GIs. They barely stopped for official photographs, which would show a stiff, furious Eisenhower, a stunned Bradley, and an impressed Patton.

  Their tour was so quickly accomplished it was almost as though it had never happened.

  The SS captain dismissed his troops, but first he complimented his men on their behavior. The Americans had a great deal to learn about military conduct. They were the same barbarian mongrels they had always been.

  Captain Benjamin Herskel’s main assignment was the interrogation of the SS officer-prisoners, his reports to be evaluated in determining what was to be done with each officer. Almost from the first day, Ben knew that something special was going on. These men had been separated from the others who had run the camps. It was evident from their attitude and behavior that they were being treated, and expected to be treated, with special consideration.

  At first Ben thought they were being interrogated and investigated prior to standing trial for war crimes. They had heard that many of the Nazis—from the top to however far down it was deemed prudent—would be held to answer for crimes against humanity. It was also evident, from the line of questioning with which he had been charged, that these prisoners were not going to stand trial.

  They were to be neutralized to the point of being considered cooperating agents. Each of these men had, or claimed to have, information regarding the future plans of the Russian high command. They were specialists in biology, physics, research, scientists and mathematicians who had been assigned to work with Russian prisoner-specialists. They had vast amounts of information that would be of great value to the Americans. They were the new allies of the Americans. Their futures would be arranged quietly, secretly. They would be given new identities after they had cooperated to the fullest extent possible.

  Their involvement with the camps, with the forced laborers and the gassed and cremated, was incidental. They had been recruited, assigned as a last measure when things had gone badly. Someone had to wind things up. Extermination was not their main function. It was only their last assignment, a matter of expediency. Their value to the Americans could not be overestimated. They knew of Russian plans that no one else had access to.

  Yes, yes, they had supervised the last exterminations. But look at the survivors. When the SS had arrived, the camp was filled with these still-breathing corpses. Their orders had been—even though they knew the war was lost—to clear out the camps, to finish what had been started. The prisoners were disease-ridden, dangerous to whoever arrived at the camps.

  In the long run, through the years, let’s be honest, the world would come to understand and appreciate what the German Reich had accomplished—or tried to accomplish: a Jew-free Europe. That had been the unachieved goal, but they had come close.

  None of these things was confided to Captain Ben Herskel. After all, he was a Jew. In fact, the highest-ranking SS prisoner, a major, had objected to his taking part in this business. He was a Jew, would he not be prejudiced? Would he really be the right person to take part in the interrogation and arrangements for the future of these officers?

  The colonel quietly told the major that he was to order his men to cooperate with any and all American officers assigned to their interrogation. Was that clear?

  It was.

  Ben’s SS informants were all captains and lieutenants, and in their relationship with him they forgot he was a Jew. His German was impeccable, and he seemed to be a good soldier.

  “I’ve selected two,” Ben told Charley. “This must be done carefully, and it must look like suicide. I’ll need your help for the last, the captain who was responsible for giving the orders to kill as many survivors as possible, after he knew it was all over. He did it with great determination, deliberately, as his final gesture for what he believed in. That’s the one I’ll need your help with, Charley. These guys are going to get away with it, kid. With all of this. They are going to disappear, with new papers, new IDs. They’re going to be slipped out of Germany, with the help of the Vatican, with the help of our government. They’re going to have new lives in South America—money, businesses. They’re going to live, Charley. What they’ve done here, all these dead people, all these damaged survivors are being traded off like they were worth nothing, for some information about the Russians, who’ve stopped being our allies and are now our enemies. Charley, I’d like to blow them all up, I’d like to …”

  Charley O’Brien stayed calm, and his soft voice brought his friend under control.

  “But we’re gonna do something about it, as much as we can, without getting our heads in a noose, right? You tell me how I can help. I’m your man.”

  “We go back, don’t we, Charley? God, things were so simple when we were kids.”

  Charley shook his head slowly. “Not really. Not if you think about it. Things were complicated at times. But, well, we’re not kids now. We know how careful we have to be. Tell me what I can do, and you got it.”

  “Charley, you were raised in a police family. What’s one of the first lessons an old-timer teaches a rookie cop?”

  “Take care of yourself. Cover your ass. At all times.”

&nbs
p; “Charley, I need a throwaway. An officer’s gun. By next week. Untraceable. And one bullet.”

  “By next week. Okay.”

  “I’ve got the cyanide for the first one. Charley, God, I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Ryer Avenue boys, right?”

  “Ryer Avenue boys.”

  The lieutenant had been a chemist working on the development of various drugs to reduce the shock effect of patients during surgery. He had to join the Nazi Party in the early thirties. He had no choice. They all had to. It had nothing to do with ideology. He’d ended up in the SS only because there was an elite unit for medical professionals. One had no idea what riffraff other areas of the party attracted. His work also involved devising medications and techniques to help victims of shock and massive battlefield wounds so as to get the wounded back on their feet as soon as possible.

  There had been certain medical experiments at certain camps. He’d heard about that, though he had never taken part in any of these things. His work was mainly in the laboratory. His involvement with Russian prisoners was exclusively with captured scientists. They had been working on certain programs that the SS scientists had also been working on. Some of their experiments in nuclear physics really were old-hat to the Germans, but here and there some bits of information seemed worthwhile.

  He looked forward to working with American physicists in the future. There were things he knew about Russian techniques. Well, all that would come later.

  And his role here, in the last weeks of this camp?

  An elegant shrug. He was, after all, a scientist. His orders were to wind things up as quickly as possible, to devise ways of speeding up the gassing and the disposal of the bodies. He actually did no more than observe. He was under orders.

  His discussion today with his interrogator, Captain Benjamin Herskel, was to center on the numbers of those still living when he arrived at Auschwitz one month before Germany surrendered, and on what part he had played in the disposal of the slave laborers still working at I.G. Farben.