Kersten was disappointed initially. But Niska’s strategy seemed like a wise one. He wouldn’t push the doctor any further.
“I thank you for your time, Dr. Singer.”
“I am sorry I could not be more helpful, Dr. Kersten.”
Kersten shook the frail doctor's hand, turned toward the door, and headed toward it.
“I can tell you this, however, Dr. Kersten,” Singer called out before Kersten had opened the door to leave. “I do know that he is out of the country at present. I don’t know exactly where. But I am confident that he is engaging, as you put it, in the life-preserving enterprise you say you share with him.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Litomerice, Czechoslovakia: February 17, 1939
In September of the previous year, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French President Edouard Daladier traveled to Munich in an effort to convince Hitler to rein in his alarming expansionist tendencies. The leaders of the two Western nations still had fresh, painful memories of the bloodshed of the Great War, and so were eager to maintain peace in Europe, or at least some semblance of the status quo.
They, it turned out, were prepared to sacrifice the western corner of Czechoslovakia bordering Germany in their wager for peace. With what Hitler saw clearly as their consent, he marched virtually unopposed into the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The pretext given was that he was moving in to offer protection for the German-speaking population. It was unveiled as a ruse six months later when the Nazis marched beyond the Sudetenland and occupied the entirety of Czechoslovakia.
Niska was infuriated by those developments. His mind was on fire with his native skepticism.
Can Hitler be anything but contemptuously cynical when he announced to the German people and the world that the country’s name now was “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia”? Does he really expect the people to swallow as truth that von Neurath is now to be addressed as Reichsprotektor?
I must say I am rather surprised at the credulity of the German people. They seem to be convinced that something is a verifiable, historical fact, just because their Führer tells them it is, and that is that. If they don’t hear directly over the radio from their Führer, his twisted version of the truth is promulgated through his mouthpiece Göbbels. What a brilliant manipulator of facts, half-truths, and outright lies until the gullible Volk digests them as absolute truth. What insanity and plague of make-believe has taken over this nation?
The day after the Nazis rolled into Czechoslovakia, German newspapers boasted of measures the Nazis would be taking there to “keep the Jews in line.” When Niska read about them, he hated to imagine what some of those measures might be.
The news troubled Niska because by no means had he forgotten Jiri Hudak. The young man believed he was returning to a country where he could live as a free human being again. The Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia negated Niska’s smuggling of his first Jew to safety. He couldn’t sleep at night knowing that his job had been rendered null and void. Was it time now for an unscheduled trip to Czechoslovakia to try to rescue Hudak once more?
Since one of the ten Finnish passports he had secured for Bruno Altmann’s Jewish associates in the previous month had fallen into the hands of the SS, his Finnish passport would be suspect now. He communicated with a friendly contact in Sweden from his smuggling days. Several weeks later, a new forged Swedish passport arrived. His new travel identity was Sven Ovesen. He got on another Prague-bound train, telling the wary border agents he was going to Czechoslovakia to reestablish his interrupted business dealings now that this nation was under German rule.
Niska went to the address he had for Hudak, not at all certain he would still be residing there. Fortunately, when Niska knocked on his door, Hudak himself answered warily, opening it only part-way. Hudak looked as though he had lost ten kilos. His face was thin and gaunt despite his youth. Not a split second had elapsed, however, before Hudak’s face erupted into a smile. He swung both of his arms around Niska and almost smothered him in a bear hug of an embrace at the threshold to his less than modest flat.
“Herr Niska, how relieved I am to see you! I was afraid of contacting you in Berlin, lest the Germans are opening my outgoing mail or tapping my telephone, or yours, for that matter.”
“That’s prudent of you, Jiri,” Niska said, stepping into the flat. “But unfortunately, the Nazis have been made aware of Algot Niska’s activities already. I’m Sven Ovesen now.” He opened his passport to the identity page and held it up for Hudak to see.
Jiri looked a little confused initially. “Pardon me? Sven who?”
Almost immediately, however, Jiri’s face registered comprehension.
“We have to get you out of here,” Niska said, to which Jiri was nodding his head in fervent agreement. “The SS are pissed off when a Jew escapes their clutches from Germany. They must be doubly pissed off when he tries to evade them a second time from an occupied country. I warn you: If we’re caught, the consequences would be twice as unpleasant, to say the least.”
“Once again, Herr Niska…”
“Ovesen.”
“Yes, of course. Herr Ovesen. I have nothing, no shop, no job, no freedom, no future here now. So what have I got to lose?”
Niska cautioned Jiri that he would have to exit Czechoslovakia somehow with no papers. He couldn’t risk using one of the Niska’s false Finnish passports. An alert had been disseminated to all the Nazi border patrols in Germany, Austria, and now Czechoslovakia.
“Well, aren’t you and I old hands now at slinking through border patrol with no passport at all?”
“I don’t know for how long, but Poland is still independent,” Niska said. “We’ll try to slip through the border there. But I wouldn’t advise staying in Poland. The Poles don’t exactly have a sparkling record in their treatment of Jews. And besides, we can’t know how much longer Hitler can resist the temptation to march into Poland in search of Lebensraum.”
Jiri let out a sarcastic snort. “Is that what he’s calling his voracious hunger for conquest?”
“Once we get you to Poland, you can continue on your way to Danzig and catch a ship to Finland. I can arrange for one of my contacts in Helsinki to meet you there. It’s just that right now I don’t have any idea of how to get us into Poland in the first place.”
“Maybe we’ll run into a Polish border guard this time who also happens to have been to a cross-country ski meet in Finland,” Hudak joked.
“I’m glad that under the circumstances you can still laugh.”
“We Jews have learned the hard way over the centuries to laugh whatever our plight. Otherwise, we’d die of despair. But Herr Ovesen, whatever we have to do, I’d rather be laughing in Finland, or even Poland, than here or Germany.”
Indeed, Niska thought. This Jiri had seemed as cool as a cucumber back in Berlin when they first discussed possible escape. He had seemed earnest but patient, almost serene, when Niska had described the process and explained the obvious risks. But today, here in Czechoslovakia, he seemed more agitated and desperate, almost bursting with a frantic doggedness to get as far from the Nazis as he could. Yesterday wasn’t soon enough to leave.
They boarded a train bound for Krakow at the central station in Prague. This one would take them only as far as the border, where they would have to transfer to a Polish train. Once again, the two men were fellow travelers on a train bound for what they hoped was freedom.
After several hours of uneventful travel, the train came to a stop at the border to allow Nazi border agents to board and begin the process of inspecting passengers’ paperwork.
“Reisepasskontrolle!”
The Nazis had in such a short time trained the Czech guards to bark their orders in German. Jiri looked anxiously at Niska.
Niska handed him a package of cigarettes adding, “I see you’re still a non-smoker, Jiri.” He was hoping some humor might reduce Hudak’s obvious anxiety that could give them away.
Hudak didn’t b
other to answer other than by taking the package into his hand almost greedily. Niska maintained his familiar Finnish stoical face, not letting on that beneath his stony exterior, his veins and arteries were coursing with a rush of adrenaline.
Niska and Hudak sat deliberately in the last row of seats once again, just in case there were instances such as this one. As the border guards made their way down the center aisle, they were preoccupied with their official duties. Niska grabbed Jiri lightly by the elbow of his right arm and made a subtle nodding gesture with his head in the direction of the door at the rear of the coach. These two border agents must have been new to the job, because they hadn’t posted one of them at the rear door to prevent a passenger from making a hasty exit.
Niska and Jiri rose from their seats slowly and quietly in an effort not to attract the attention of the agents. When they were sure that the agents were sufficiently focused on the paperwork of another passenger, first Jiri, and then Niska stepped into the aisle as casually as someone rising to go to the restroom. Only they scampered past the restroom door, quietly opened the exit door, and jumped the meter and a half or so down to the ground. Niska’s wasn’t a smooth landing and tore the left knee of his trousers.
“Saatana!”
“I don’t know what that means,” Jiri said slightly above a whisper, “but it sounds obscene enough.”
“You’ll learn a bunch of such helpful expressions once you get to Finland, believe me, Jiri.” They both chuckled.
While jumping, Jiri had managed to hold on to his suitcase. Niska pointed to the scrub woods lining the tracks. The two men crouched so as to avoid being seen and crawled into the shelter of the trees.
Fortunately for them, spring had come early to Czechoslovakia and Poland that year. Their passage through the woods was not hindered by remnants of the winter’s snowfall. There were fallen branches and limbs everywhere, but they proceeded as silently as possible. The early morning sun was still low above the horizon. There was little reason to fear any unwanted encounters, at least until the agents on the train noticed that two passengers were missing, and alerted their colleagues in the tiny border station.
Niska had made it a point to study a detailed topographic map of this particular border region in the central library in Prague before they left. He recalled that if they made their way down the steep embankment, they would soon come to a small river, just a creek really, that formed the natural boundary between Czechoslovakia and Poland.
But now, Niska began to think that his memory was misleading him. The closer they came to the creek, the stronger the sound of rushing water. Standing at the brink, they realized that the creek had accumulated a lot of water from the winter snowmelt. Its current had become rapid and deep; it was impassible, and there was no footbridge in sight. Only the call of a cuckoo accompanied the sound of the angrily gushing rapids.
The men discussed their situation.
“I think we have to wait out the day until evening,” Niska offered. “We can move under the cover of darkness.”
“But we can’t just wait here in broad daylight like sitting ducks.” It was the first time in their relationship that Hudak had dared to contradict Niska. “At any moment, a border patrol alerted to our disappearance can greet us with an unpleasant surprise.”
So they hatched a new plan.
Jiri looked upstream. “I’ll go along the edge upstream. You go in the opposite direction, downstream. If I come upon a bridge or a ford, I’ll find a large piece of birch bark and throw in the stream as a sign.”
“You’re assuming my aging eyes can see it in a rushing river,” Niska said. “But yes, that might work. Now, if I should discover a place to cross over into Poland, I’ll imitate the call of the cuckoo four times. You know, that bird we keep hearing. Hear it?”
“Yes.”
Niska chanted an approximate facsimile.
“Your imitation is not that perfect that I won’t confuse it with the call of an actual cuckoo and get confused,” Jiri said, almost laughing despite their situation.
“We have lots of cuckoos in Finland. They never let out four calls in a row. Once you hear four calls, you’ll know it’s me, signaling you to come back toward me. Answer my call with an imitation of your own so I know you got the message. Let me hear one now.”
Jiri tried a couple of times.
“No, it’s got to be the imitation of a healthy cuckoo, not a sick one. Like this.”
Niska made the sound again “Now, try that.”
Jiri’s next imitation was closer.
“Now, if we lose track of each other,” Niska continued, “we each have to do the best we can independently. Figure out a way to enter Poland undetected. Then make your way to the train station in Katowice. It’s just a few miles inside Poland, within a moderate walking distance. I’ll meet you there. We’ll board the next train together for Krakow.”
“Then what?”
“Don’t get too far ahead of yourself,” Niska said. “In the meantime, I assume that a fresh shipment of Finnish passports will have arrived in my post office box in Berlin, I’ve left a key to the box with a trusted contact in Berlin. I’ll call him from Krakow and instruct him to put your name in it and then to mail it to us in care of Sven Ovesen at the Finnish consulate in Krakow. We’ll get it right, Niska.”
“And make up the rest as we go along.”
Hudak seemed satisfied with the plan and started slinking upstream along the bank.
“Leave your suitcase here,” Niska said, grabbing Hudak’s arm. “It’ll just weigh you down as you negotiate the creekbank.”
Niska watched as Jiri disappeared empty-handed among the trees along the creek. Niska was just about to head in his appointed direction when, instead, he encountered another obstacle. His heart stopped.
“Aufstieg! Stand up!” came a crisp, insistent voice in German. “What are you doing here by the border?”
Niska turned around slowly and saw two border guards staring at him.
Should I say that I am fishing? No, that won’t wash. I’m wearing a business suit and shiny black shoes, for Christ’s sake. Besides, I’m not carrying the requisite equipment. Just Jiri’s suitcase.
“There can’t be more obvious evidence that our friend here was on his way to cross the border into Poland illegally, can there?” the cynical border guard said to his partner, pointing to the suitcase.
Niska had nothing to say.
“Come with us.”
That evening, Niska was escorted by two SS men on a train to Ostrava, a nearby market town where the SS had set up district headquarters. The following morning, he was interrogated.
“I was lost,” Niska answered in German to the interrogator’s questions. “I belong to a small group of Swedish tourists from Prague on our way to Krakow. It’s a beautiful city, I’m told.”
The beefy interrogator looked doubtful.
“The others had gone with the car to get petrol while I waited,” Niska continued hopefully, although he could feel the water leaking out of his alibi. “They were delayed for some reason. I was thirsty and hungry. I heard the sound of the stream down below. So I made my way down the slope to the creek. I thought maybe I could drink the water. I was overcome by the beauty of the place and lingered. Just about then, the guards arrived.”
The interrogator looked no more convinced than before.
He motioned to a subordinate to inspect the suitcase. Niska held his breath. His eyes followed the suitcase while trying to appear casual.
“It appears from the contents of your luggage that you are a Jew,” the interrogator confronted Niska. “And yet, I don’t get it. Maybe you can help me understand. It seems strange that these photos are obviously of a much younger man, a Jew, to be sure, but a slimmer one than the man who stands before me. I must deduce that you have some kind of connection to Jews. Perhaps you have an explanation, Herr Ovesen.”
Niska’s mind fumbled for an answer. He found none. He was growing resigned that t
he grains of sand were almost finished sifting through the neck of his hourglass.
The interrogation over, Niska was taken by two SS to a camp of some sort out in the woods not far from Ostrava. It was clear that most of the inhabitants of the camp were Jews.
The camp Kommandant came to Niska’s small barrack at the camp around midday and introduced himself gruffly.
“I understand you are claiming that you are not a Jew. Certainly, Herr Ovesen, your passport confirms this. It says here that your occupation is international business. In Czechoslovakia on business, were you, Herr Ovesen?”
“You’ll notice that I possess a Swedish passport, Sir. You cannot hold the citizen of a neutral country against his will like this. I protest.”
“For the time being, you may protest all you want, for all I care. But we will hold anyone we choose. You haven’t answered my question. Citizen of Sweden?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I was in Czechoslovakia on business. The recent occupation of Prague had caused an interruption in my operations—a very inconvenient one, I need to add. I was in Prague to get things up and rolling again.”
“That may be so. However, is it not rather strange that on a business trip to Prague, you, by coincidence, were found in the woods near the border between Czechoslovakia and Poland?
The Kommandant didn’t wait for Niska to reply. “And that a couple of our border guards caught you sitting on a suitcase? Is that the kind of place where you are accustomed to conducting your business? Furthermore, the suitcase does not belong to you, but to a Jew who seems to have disappeared. How do you explain that strange fact, Herr Ovesen?”
“The suitcase was by the creek where I found it. Someone else must have come down to get a drink and left it there by mistake.” Niska felt he was losing track of his concocted alibi.
The commandant gave a faint, skeptical smile. “I’m afraid your story is not very imaginative, Herr Ovesen. Why do I sense that you are making it up as you go along?”
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