Once We Were Brothers (24 page)

“I watched her bring linens out to make up the couch for Hannah. I figured I’d sleep on the floor.

“She finished and inclined her head toward the back bedroom. ‘You two take the bed,’ she said. ‘I’ll sleep out here.’

“I protested and declined. I blushed. I told her I’d be happy on the couch, but Elzbieta waved me off. ‘She needs you tonight,’ she said.

“Hannah hugged her. ‘Elzie, you’re such a good friend.’

“‘Some day this will all be over and pigs like Frank will roast.’

Ben paused his narrative and drifted away again, his eyes seeing Elzbieta in her Zamość apartment. “What a sweetheart she was,” he whispered.

Chapter Twenty-six

Zamość, Poland 1941

“In the morning, Hannah and I made our way back into New Town. It looked even more crowded than I remembered. People were out and about, walking everywhere, but they had no purpose, no place to go. Employment, education, commerce and professional activities were essentially non-existent. Hundreds of uprooted families from other cities, arriving daily, were trying to assimilate and were wandering about, adding to the confusion.

“Hannah went to find her father at the hospital and I walked directly to the Judenrat. Father was surprised to see me, but he was also very troubled over demands that had been passed on by the new SS commandant Gotthard Schubert.

“‘I need to talk to you, right away,’ I said.

“‘We’ve been ordered to fill large work requisitions daily,’ he said to me as we walked out into the street. ‘Hundreds per day are being lined up and marched out of here to Izbica. Those few who return report that the Germans are building another ghetto. Sadly, Ben, most do not return.’”

“Can I ask an ignorant question?” interrupted Catherine.

Ben smiled. “Is there any other reason to ask a question? If you knew the answer, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“Exactly what is a ghetto?”

Ben nodded and wagged his index finger. “You ask a good question. It has a different connotation today than it had many years ago. Today we speak of a ghetto pejoratively, when we mean to address the poorer, depressed parts of town. It didn’t always have such a meaning. There are many theories about the origin of the term. Some say it comes from the Jewish section in 14th century Venice, which was located on the grounds of an iron foundry.
Ghetto
is Italian for foundry. Others say it comes from the Italian word
borghetto
, which means small neighborhood, and that’s what we generally mean by ghetto.

“The European ghettoes, into which ethnic groups were forced, were generally abolished following the Age of Enlightenment at the turn of the 19th century. There were no forced ghettoes in Poland until the Nazis arrived.

“The Jewish ghettos that were established in Poland were the brainchild of Reinhard Heydrich, Ilse’s boss. In September 1939, right after the occupation, Heydrich told the army that the first step would be to concentrate the Jews from the countryside into the cities and compress them into ghettoes. That’s why Grandpa Yaakov was forced to give up his farm and move into Zamość.”

“Wasn’t one of the reasons for concentrating the Jews to supply workers for the German war effort?”

“No, Catherine, the purpose was always elimination. Heydrich declared that the Jewish ghettoes were to be located as close as possible to rail connections. Heydrich saw this as a temporary situation, until the Jews could be moved to extermination camps, because his stated goal was the elimination of all European Jews.

“Others in Germany, especially the industrialists, saw the ghetto as a source of free labor. They gleefully rubbed their hands together at the thought of increasing their profits by eliminating labor costs, having a free and motivated work force. The productionists were sadistically clever. Jews were good workers because bad workers were transferred to the death camps.

“Ghettoization was essentially accomplished throughout Poland in 1941. The Industrialists had their free labor force but of course, it didn’t last. Heydrich, Eichmann and the mass murderers prevailed, and without remonstrance from German industry. Even during Aktion Reinhard, when thousands and thousands of Jews were being carted off to die, there was little or no protest from I. G. Farben and the rest of the industrial community. It seemed to them that the stream of workers was inexhaustible.”

“Didn’t the German war effort benefit from Jewish labor?”

“Minimally. It could have been substantial, but that was one of Hitler’s great blunders. Despite the availability of a huge slave workforce, the Germans starved the Jews and kept them on minimum subsistence. Thousands died of malnutrition and disease. But then, this was no unfortunate mistake. Death by attrition served Heydrich’s mass murder purpose, even though the by-product was to deprive the German industrialists of their endless supply of slave labor.”

“Extraordinary, your knowledge of the war.”

“For a time, I taught a course at the university. There are many reasons to study and teach about the Holocaust, and maybe the most important reason is to prevent re-occurrences. We are sentries, Catherine. We stand on the wall, on guard against any hint that the minions of genocide are reassembling. As the 1945 Nuremburg trials would establish, crimes against humanity must never again go unpunished. That is why Otto must be exposed and publicly prosecuted. We must never allow the world to forget.”

Catherine sat back and laced her fingers around her knee. There was a wistful tone in her speech. “I’m not sure how to say this, but…all of your zeal, your extraordinary quest for knowledge, it makes me feel inadequate. I look back at what I’ve accomplished in my life, and it has comparatively no significance. My legal work doesn’t serve any social good. I represent big companies against other big companies in a commercial arena. Nothing I do has enduring worth. Nothing in my life impassions me to any comparable degree.”

“My, my. Aren’t we hard on ourselves? First of all, you’re not even forty. It seems to me that you don’t have all that much life to look back on. Secondly, it seems to me that you took quite a moral stand a few years ago.”

Catherine twisted her lips. “So Liam opened his big mouth, did he?”

“We had a short talk. It was my fault. I persuaded him to tell me a little about you.”

“He told you what happened a few years ago?”

Ben nodded.

“What else did Liam tell you?”

“That you are a wonderful person. He’s quite fond of you, you know. You could do a lot worse.”

“I see. In addition to all of your other callings, are you also a matchmaker?”

“Would it be so bad? He’s a very good man.”

Catherine smiled and shook her head. “All right. All right. Let’s get back to your story. You were telling me about your father when I interrupted you.”

“Right. I was trying to tell him about Beka and he was upset over new orders he had received. The Judenrat was charged with supplying hundreds of Jews daily to be sent to do construction on the new camps.

“I told him again that I needed to talk to him and Mother privately as soon as possible. He said he’d meet me back at the apartment in an hour.

“I found Mother at the clinic. She looked so thin and tired, tending to other thin and tired people. We walked back to the apartment together. I didn’t want to say anything until my father was present.

“‘How is Aunt Hilda?’ I asked as we walked.

“A sad look came over her pretty face. ‘Oh, Benjamin,’ she said with her hand on my arm, ‘she has typhus. Dr. Weissbaum is treating her at the hospital, but he’s overwhelmed. They have very few medicines and typhus is so hard to treat.’

“We arrived at the massive, crumbling building that my family now called home, walked up the darkened stairway and down the hall. As I looked around, the building appeared roomier than it had previously. No, I should say more empty. Some of the furnishings were gone. There was less clothing hanging on lines, fewer pieces of furniture.

“‘What’s been happening here?’ I asked.

“‘Food, Benjamin. We don’t get enough food to keep us going. People trade their belongings to the townsfolk for food. A coat will bring bread and vegetables. A beautiful chair might fetch a roast. The Germans suspect that most of us have squirreled away a little money or jewelry. It wasn’t all turned in to the Gestapo. So they reason, if they starve us, sooner or later, people will have to spend the money and cash in their belongings for food. The Germans will impoverish us one way or another.’

“Father arrived soon afterward. I gestured for them to sit in the chairs and I sat on the edge of the bed.

“I swallowed hard and began. ‘There’s no easy way to say this. When I got back to the cabin the girls were gone. Mr. Kozlowski told me the Germans had taken them.’ My mother gasped. She held her hands over her mouth. ‘I came back as fast as I could and asked Otto for his help. He went to Zakopane and was successful in bringing Hannah back last night, but not Beka.’

“My mother grabbed my arms and squeezed. I felt her fingernails. She put a hand on her mouth to stifle her hysteria.

“‘She’s alive,’ I added quickly, ‘and I know where they’re keeping her. I’m going to get her myself. One way or another, I’ll get her out.’

“‘And Hannah?’ Father said.

“‘She’s here. She’s with Dr. Weissbaum.’

“‘Where are they keeping Beka?’

“‘In a place called Rabka.’ I omitted the lurid details. ‘It’s like a compound.’

“‘I’m going to see Otto,’ said Father. ‘He’ll get her out if I have anything to say about it.’ With that he stood and strode from the room, looking every bit like a father going to read the riot act to a teenager.

“Later that evening, Father returned to the apartment. ‘It’s worse than I imagined,’ he said, choking back his rage. ‘Beka is being kept prisoner at a bordello. She’s being forced….’ He looked at me and shook his head. ‘Otto says you can’t go there Ben, the place is full of SS and Gestapo and there are Ukrainian guards patrolling the grounds. Since there are highly ranked officers at the villa, the security is air tight.’

“‘What will Otto do for us?’ I said.

“Father shook his head. ‘He says there’s nothing he can do. He’d be recognized, especially by Dr. Frank, if he went there. Maybe they’ll let her go when the officers leave.’

“‘Otto’s a coward!’ I snapped. ‘He’s afraid to jeopardize his prestigious position.’

“‘He did rescue Hannah. That took courage.’

“‘How much courage? He’s an officer in full uniform who walks into a detention area and takes a young girl. What kind of risk was he taking?’

“My father stood. That was his way of ending a conversation. ‘We shall think about this for a while. Something will come to us.’”

“And did something come to you, Ben?” asked Catherine.

“An angel came to us. An angel named Elzbieta. She came to the ghetto a couple of days later and met with Hannah and me. We held a secret, whispered meeting in a stairwell – you could never be too careful, a starving person would sell his grandmother for food.

“‘I have a car and Otto’s extra uniform back at my apartment,’ she said to us. I smiled and gave Elzbieta a big hug and a kiss.

“‘When did Otto agree to do this?’ I said.

“‘Well, he didn’t agree exactly,’ she answered with a mischievous smile. ‘I kinda took them last night in exchange for services rendered. He said to tell you, if you’re caught, he won’t help you and he’ll say that his uniform was stolen. He also said to tell you that Dr. Frank is in the area and he may be at the villa.’

“‘I need Otto to tell me where the villa is and to give me a layout.’

“Elzbieta shook her head. ‘He’ll have nothing to do with this. But, truthfully, I don’t think there’s much he can tell you. He hasn’t been to the villa. He told me it’s on the River Raba, midway between Zakopane and Krakow.’”

“Don’t tell me that you went alone to the Nazi villa,” Catherine said, leaning forward on her elbows, forgoing her note-taking.

“I did. I left that afternoon with my money and a small picture of Beka. Wearing the uniform of an SS hauptscharfuhrer, I drove straight to Krakow and south to Rabka, a distance of about 200 miles.”

“Did you have papers? What would happen if you were stopped?”

Ben shrugged. “I had no Nazi papers. Otto wouldn’t allow Elzbieta to loan me his identification but I only faced a single road block east of Krakow. Thankfully, when they saw my uniform, they saluted and waved me through.

“It was early evening when I arrived at the villa, a gracious Polish estate set back several hundred meters from the road, reachable on a winding stone pathway built long before there were cars. True to the warning, there were several guards patrolling the estate and two sentries at the portico. As I pulled up to the columned entryway, I was welcomed by the guards who deferentially gave me the
Heil Hitler
salute, and opened my car door. I had to leave my car with an adjutant to park in the grass field below. That worried me. If I needed to make a quick exit, I’d have to find the car and hope the keys were in the ignition. But I had no choice.

“The villa once belonged to a Polish aristocrat, a prince I think. It was three stories of brick and stone with balconied windows and a pitched slate roof. In more congenial times it would have hosted Krakow’s elite but on this night it was crawling with Nazis. Some were passed out in overstuffed chairs. Others, running about in their underwear, were chasing women through the halls. I feigned intoxication and weaved unsteadily as I walked through the foyer, past the guard who was checking the guest list, pretending that I was already checked and had gone out for a breath of fresh air. I also figured if I appeared to be drunk I could get by with choppy German sentences and my accent would be less noticeable.”