“Bastard,” someone said.
“Ari was old and slow,” someone else said. “He had it coming.”
Yes, Netanel thought, he did. It was the least cruel thing he had seen in two and a half years inside the camp. The guard shot him because he was slowing the pace of the march. That was all. He did not do it out of spite, just because he was a Jew.
They reached the siding at dawn.
Netanel slumped to the ground, and scooped a handful of snow into his mouth to slake his thirst. A grey light seeped into the sky from the east.
Chaim fell to his knees beside him. “Herrgottsacrament,” he murmured. “How much further?”
The silhouette of a train emerged from the darkness. There were a dozen empty flatcars behind it.
“They’re taking us back to Germany,” Netanel said.
SS men worked their way along the line of slumped figures, hitting out indiscriminately with their rifles. “Get in!” One of the guards fired his Schmeisser into the air. All along the line men rose to their feet and staggered towards the flatcars.
Chaim was about to swing up on to one of them, but a guard caught him and pulled him back. “You! Come here!”
“I am a kapo!” Chaim protested.
The guard pulled the rucksack off his back. “I don’t care if you’re the Reichsführer himself!”
Chaim tried to reclaim the food. “It’s mine! I stole it!”
The guard lifted the butt of his rifle in one swift movement and Chaim’s head snapped back. Chaim put his hand to his mouth and when he took it away two of his teeth were cupped in his palm.
“Now you,” the guard said to Netanel. “Or you get the same treatment.”
Netanel pulled the rucksack off his back and handed it over. The press of the crowd carried him into the flatcar. The men closest to him were leering at him. So much for you Prominenz, they seemed to say. Now you’re just another piece of shit, like us.
There was hardly space enough to breathe inside. The stench was overpowering; a cocktail of sweat and sores and fear. The metal floors of the flatcars were crusted with ice. Netanel was shivering violently from the cold.
Chaim squatted next to him. He had his right hand cupped against his mouth, and blood was oozing between his fingers. He uncupped his other hand and stared at the two broken teeth.
He started to cry. “Bastard ...”
“What did you expect?”
“. . . knew him,” he mumbled. “. . . kapo six years . . . knew that bastard ...”
“You’re still a Jew, Chaim.”
The train started to move. No one spoke. Men stared unblinking like corpses. The only sounds were the rhythmic clatter of the wheels and the moan of the wind. The sky was the color of lead.
Near Lübben, Germany
The Gasthaus was full but Rolf commandeered three rooms in the name of the SS; one for Colonel Hauptmann, one for Major Schenke, and one for himself and Marie. Their driver, Sergeant Netzer, was told he would have to sleep in the car. Someone had to guard it, anyway.
They had driven right through the night; during daylight there was danger from enemy fighters..
Rolf led Marie up the stairs ignoring the hostile looks from the innkeeper and his wife. She was in handcuffs, as befitting an important SS prisoner. When they reached the room, Rolf sat her down on the bed and locked the door. He threw off his uniform jacket and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking.
“How far are we from Berlin?” Marie said.
“We’re not going to Berlin.” He started pacing the room. “The war is going badly. The whole eastern front is collapsing.”
“I’m so sorry, Rolf. Is there anything I can do?”
“Shut up!” He slapped her hard across the face, but was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry,” he said. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the handcuffs. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He massaged her wrists. “These are necessary. You are our prisoner.”
“Four SS to guard one girl. Are you sure it’s enough?”
Sweat shone on his cheeks like a glaze. He got up and went to the fire, threw his cigarette into the coals. “Colonel Hauptmann wants to go west, and surrender to the British.”
“And me?”
“You can be a great help to us. You can tell them how we looked after you, helped you escape. How I saved you from the gas chambers.”
She stared at him. “You really mean it, don’t you?”
“Don’t make jokes, Marie. Try and be grateful, for once.”
“Don’t worry. I shall not forget a single thing you have done for me.”
“If you are going to be difficult, perhaps it’s better we don’t take you with us.”
“I don’t give a damn what you do.” After the Frauenblock, after seeing the caricature that was once her lover beating one of his fellow inmates to death with a wooden club, why would he think that life still remained so precious?
“I think we can do it,” Rolf was saying. “We have all the right papers. It will be easy enough until we get near the front lines.”
“And if we do make it? What will you do after the war, Rolf? Cart beer?”
There was a soft knock on the door. Rolf opened it. It was Colonel Hauptmann. There was a whispered conversation.
“I will see you later,” Rolf said.
“What is happening?”
“The Colonel asked if he might be alone with you for a while. Be nice to him, hein?”
Major Schenke was waiting outside in the corridor. He leered past Rolf at the locked bedroom door. “I had her once when she was in the Frauenblock.”
“Shut up.”
Schenke’s face reddened. Who did the bastard think he was? They were all in the shit together now. “Will she help us?”
Rolf shook his head. “We’ll have to get rid of the little bitch. Tonight, after Hauptmann’s had his fun.”
Bielawa, Poland
Day turned to night, night turned to day. The train was stopped, had been stopped for hours. They had travelled slowly ever since leaving Oswiecim, stopping often to let other trains past, supply trains or troop transports. There was no toilet so they sat in each other’s filth and no one spoke because it was too cold and it required too much effort. When dawn broke the SS guards were still staring at them over the muzzle of the machine-gun set up on the flatcar in front. Idiots, Netanel thought. Even if we had the strength to run, where could we go?
It was impossible to stand up, or even to move. Men slept or gazed in trance-like exhaustion at the sky.
He fought sleep. If he slept he might not have the strength to fight his way back to consciousness, and then it would be the end. He had come too far to surrender now.
He thought about Marie. In his mind he composed a hundred eloquent soliloquies to explain to her what she thought she had seen; but none of them would make any difference, he knew that. He had joined the damned.
He heard boots crunching on the snow and the bolt on the flatcar door was thrown back. A guard barked at them to get out. A few men rose stiffly from their haunches, gasping at the pain of stiff and frozen joints.
“We’re here,” Netanel whispered to Chaim.
The man in front of him started to crawl towards the open door. Netanel reached up and grabbed the edge of the car with numb fingers. Herrgottsacrament! His knees would not unbend.
"Raus! Raus!”
“Help me, Chaim,” he whispered.
He forced himself upright, groaning at the agony in his joints. “Chaim?” He shoved him with his left fist. Chaim fell on to his side, hard as a statue, his striped cap pulled down over his ears. Auschwitz was his home, that was what he said. Now he will wear its stripes forever.
Chapter 24
Near Lübben
They set off late in the afternoon.
Hauptmann sat in the front seat next to the driver, Netzer. Marie was in the back between Rolf and Schenke. She was handcuffed again. Schenke was leering at her.
The road was choked
with army traffic. A long line of troop transports lumbered east towards the Russians.
“Poor bastards,” Schenke said. “Look at them. Not one of them is over seventeen.”
The youths cheered and waved at them as they passed.
“Idiots,” Rolf muttered.
They did not see the fighters. They came low out of the sun, rushing across the plain at less than a hundred feet, their wingtips almost brushing the tops of the plane trees. Their first warning came when a grey Volkswagen jeep a hundred yards in front of them burst into flame. The bullets skittered down the road towards them, devils of snow skidding into the air as they came.
“Get off the road!” Hauptmann screamed.
Netzer did not have time to react. Marie instinctively threw herself forward, heard the windscreen shatter into fragments. Someone screamed. The Mercedes lurched off the road into a ditch and stopped.
She blacked out.
When she came to, the door was open and Schenke was gone. There was blood over the shattered windshield. Hauptmann was hunched forward in the front seat, gurgling. Marie felt something pressing down on her right shoulder.
Rolf.
His head was a pulpy mess. She rolled away from him and he slumped face down on the floor.
She saw a flash of silver metal as the fighter roared past a second time, saw the red star painted on the fuselage. She heard the cough of the fighter’s machine-guns, felt a scalding rush of air as a truck exploded.
She had to get away.
She leaned across Rolf’s body, groped in his right-hand pocket for the keys. Her hands were shaking. Which key? The metal bracelets snapped open. She started to run.
Rolf opened his eyes. He tried to reach for the Lüger in his holster but he could not move his arm. She was getting away, damn her. A brown field, specked with white, her silhouette getting smaller and smaller.
near Bielawa
They followed winding country lanes, away from the main highways. Allied planes patrolled the skies overhead, but when one of them buzzed the column the guards would move closer to their charges for protection. They were taking no chances.
Netanel’s shoes lacerated his frozen feet. He could feel the blood squelching between his toes. What had Dov taught him? Death starts with the shoes. He took them off and tied them round his neck, and tried walking barefoot.
They found a dead horse lying by the side of the road. Netanel ran across with several others and tore off chunks of meat with his teeth and fingers. He chewed it raw, sucking out the blood and juice. The guards pointed at him and laughed. To hell with them. He had done worse.
They found a deserted farmhouse and the guards herded them into the barn. There were only a couple of hundred of them left and they collapsed exhausted into the straw, curling up beside each other for warmth. Netanel slept.
The next day they reached the highway.
It was clogged with people and abandoned vehicles. Refugees struggled along on foot with suitcases of clothes, pushed carts with bundles of furniture tied precariously on top with rope, hauled wagons piled with saucepans and books and chickens squawking in cages, dragged cows and pigs and sheep along behind them. The Poles were running once more, this time back into Germany, away from the ancient enemy Russia.
Before the guards had realized what had happened, the column of prisoners had melted into the crush. Others left the column and ran into the nearby field. Netanel joined them. Stacks of hay had been left there to rot the previous autumn and he threw himself into one of them and lay quite still.
He heard voices and realized the hay was alive with people.
“It’s all right,” someone said, “the bastards are leaving!”
Netanel peered out. The guards joined the refugees. They had given up.
He was free. He had done it.
He had survived.
Rab’allah, Palestine
Zayyad could not sleep. I am getting to be an old man. I should start to shrug aside the worries of the world. But I can’t. I can feel everything slipping away, I can feel it in my water.
This had been his father’s village, and his father’s before him, and on through many generations. He had expected it to be where his sons grew their sons. But the changes in the world had been swift and beyond comprehension. It was only in his lifetime that there had been Jews in the valley, and soon there would be many more.
If not Jews, then Arabs like Sheikh Daoud, like Izzat. Once they had paid taxes to the Turk but in their own way they were free to live as they pleased. But this was not about a new effendi in Jerusalem to pay our taxes to. This would change the village. This would change the very land.
I should like to go to Paradise knowing that my sons have inherited all that I wished for them. But I think I shall be looking over my shoulder, no matter how many virgins the Prophet brings to my holy diwan. One son is dead, the other is in Jerusalem, smiling at Satan. That only leaves Rishou.
I wonder how he will ever survive.
THE END
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Find Colin Falconer at: https://colinfalconer.wordpress.com
or on Twitter at @colin_falconer
Born in north London, Colin Falconer worked for many years in TV and radio and freelanced for many of Australia's leading newspapers and magazines. He has been a novelist for the last twenty years, with his work published widely in the UK, US and Europe. His books have been translated into seventeen languages.
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
FREEDOM
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART TWO
Chapter 5
PART THREE
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
PART FOUR
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
PART FIVE
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
PART SIX
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PART SEVEN
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Other titles by Colin Falconer available at Amazon:
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
FREEDOM
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART TWO
Chapter 5
PART THREE
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
PART FOUR
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
PART FIVE
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
PART SIX
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PART SEVEN
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Other titles by Colin Falconer available at Amazon:
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Freedom (Jerusalem) Page 18