Pursuit (13 page)

“I work in Celle,” he began.

The guard regarded him with a thoughtful frown. “I know.”

“Where I work, in Celle, we make pots and pans …”

“I know.”

“From shell casings …”

“So?”

“From new shell casings. Not used.”

“So?” The guard's frown became dangerous. “What are you getting at?”

Max Brodsky knew he had to take the chance.

“There must be someone in this camp,” he said quickly, before he lost his nerve, “some officer, some official, who doesn't know about this. Someone in authority, who knows shell casings are needed for the war—” He saw the look in the guard's eye and added quickly, “When the war is over, there will be inquiries, responsibility for the killing of prisoners, or for torture …”

The guard considered him for a long, long time, and then tried to smile.

“Has anyone tried to murder you, Brodsky? You look healthy enough to me. Have I ever tortured you? Or tried to kill you? All I ever did was to give you a few tins of food from time to time. And—like an idiot—get you reassigned to Celle. Was that bad?”

“No.”

“Then, what do you want?”

Victory! “I want to be assigned to the Labor-Assignment Office,” Max said quickly. “Is that so much?”

The guard shook his head almost admiringly.

“Brodsky, how have you lived so long? Although,” he added, “knowing you, that's a stupid question. You're the living proof that what the Fuehrer said of you Jews was the truth. You'd have the teeth from a chicken!”

“Well?”

“I'll have to go through channels …”

Five days later Max Brodsky received his new assignment, and the very following day Benjamin Grossman, scarcely aware of what was happening to him or where Brodsky was taking him, was put to the task of stirring the soup in one of the cookhouses in Camp One. It was no great position, and the prisoner-cook, out of pity, often had to interrupt his work and come to put his hand over the skinny fingers of his helper and move the large ladle through the thin mixture, but the cookhouse was warm and protected against the rain, and when one had the strength one could also dip into the soup and taste it. There were even the vegetable tops and the bones, after everything seemingly had been boiled out of them, to stow in one's blouse and secretly chew when unobserved. Or even to share, once one began to gain one's strength.

Ben's hands stopped shaking, although he seemed to have been bent into a permanent stoop. His ears even seemed to be approaching his head again, although he would have been the first to acknowledge this as a physiological impossibility; but his teeth remained loose and painful for a long time, and he had to have Max's help to crawl into his bunk at night. But he was once again beginning to believe in eventual survival, which Max felt was a hopeful sign.

It was a short-lived triumph.

A new batch of prisoners arrived one day from a camp called Neuengamme, and of those assigned to Max and Ben's barrack was a certain Anatole Yashinko, a
musselman
—the lowest of the low in the camps—who bragged loudly in poor German of how he had outsmarted the delousing squad.

“That
dreck
is not for me,” said Yeshinko, his voice throbbing with admiration for his own brilliance. “For the others, maybe, but not for Anatole Yashinko. That stinking powder? Who knows what the bastards may put into it? And if I'm going to scratch, at least I want to know what I'm scratching for. Not because some idiot pours that stinking powder on me!”

“So sleep outside!”

Willing and eager hands opened the door while other hands shoved the man out into the rain and held the door against his return. For a while he pounded as softly as he could, not wishing to cry out and make any disturbance that would bring the guards and their wrath upon him; then at last the pounding ceased and eventually the inmates of Barrack Thirty-eight returned to their tiers. Moments later there was the sudden chatter of a machine gun, and in the morning the brilliant Anatole Yashinko was found within the forbidden perimeter near the wire, where he had wandered in the dark. Two prisoners were assigned to take the body to the burial pit; they held him carefully by the sleeves, dragging him all the way, shoving him into the pit with their feet, and then wiping their fingers furiously in the mud to clean them.

After a week, however, everyone had forgotten the unfortunate Russian and his distaste for delousing. When, in fact, ten days after Yashinko had died, Ben Grossman, working over a pot of thin soup, suddenly felt a chill and the beginnings of a headache, he assumed it was probably the fumes from the miserable concoction he was preparing, and only hoped he would not be up all night with loose bowels. But when, only minutes later, the chill disappeared to be replaced by a sudden flush of unbearable heat and the beginnings of dizziness, he had a cold premonition that Anatole Yashinko had left his mark. He was sure he had typhus.

The prisoner-cook excused him and he went back to his wooden tier, once again freezing, and tried to draw a bit of warmth from his blanket, only to throw it off and try to get some respite from the heat the next moment. After that he hung his head over the edge of the tier and vomited up the little he had in his stomach, and then tried to bring up all the imaginary foods he had stuffed himself with in his dreams for so long, but a slight trickle of bile was all he could produce. He lay back and laughed. It was really comical when one thought about it. He had died once from typhus in Ward Forty-six and been cremated; now it appeared he was about to die again, again from typhus, only this time they would bury him in one of the large pits. He wondered if he were ever to be reincarnated and come back a third time, so to speak, if he would again die of typhus. That would really be funny; the ultimate joke. Eight long months he had been at Bergen-Belsen, and now he was about to die. Why hadn't he died at once, before the humiliations, the pains, the suffering? Obviously because it wouldn't have been as funny as it was now.

He was still laughing when Max and the others came in from evening roll call and found him.

The wards in the prisoners' hospital were attended to by a few German doctors as well as by prisoners who had had some medical experience in their prior lives. Ben Grossman was assigned a cot whose previous occupant had starved to death; he lay on the filthy sheets and stared at the ceiling, too weary of life even to think. And woke from a fevered sleep to find Max Brodsky sitting next to him, holding a cup out to him. He brought it to his lips and tasted it. It was soup, good, rich, thick delicious soup. He drank it eagerly and immediately gagged; his trembling hands tried to hold the cup steady as he vomited into it, but much of the hot vomit splashed onto the bed. Max dumped the cup into the pail at the foot of the cot and frowned at his own stupidity.

“It's too rich. You must take a sip, just a sip, next time.”

He took a dirty sheet from the adjoining bed and began to wipe up the mess. Ben stared at him, his eyes bright with fever.

“What … are you doing … here?” His throat felt as if a hot hand were pressing on it, making each word a painful rasp, but he felt he had to know. He dropped his voice automatically to the standard camp whisper although the other three beds in the small ward were empty. “And the … the soup …?”

Brodsky shrugged elaborately. “I help make the assignments, so for a few days I'll be a hospital orderly. The doctors don't argue, any help they can get, they're happy to take.”

“But … the … soup …?”

“It's from the SS stores. Mendelsohn from our barracks is the new storekeeper there. I got him the assignment yesterday. Wait—I'll get some more.”

“A waste …” Grossman wet his lips and tried not to think of the lovely taste of the soup for those precious few seconds he had been able to keep it down, before it had come up. “A … waste. I'll never … leave here.…”

“Why not?” Brodsky said cheerfully. “I'll admit it isn't Mount Scopus Hospital, but you'll still get well.” He tried to smile encouragingly. “You have to. We need you in Palestine.”

Brodsky and his Palestine again. Every day more and more about Zionism and Palestine! But it made no difference anymore. Nothing made any difference anymore. He wasn't going to Palestine; he wasn't even going to Switzerland. He was going to the burial pits, to lay on the dead and have more dead lie on him in turn. Stacks and stacks of dead and he would be somewhere in the middle.… He closed his eyes and let the dizziness sweep him.

“Here—”

He felt another cup pressed to his lips, the same delicious aroma in his nostrils, and then the cup was withdrawn after only a sip, but this time he couldn't even swallow. The soup dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He lay there and began to cry.

“Maybe later,” Max said with an encouragement he did not feel and then paused. From outside the hospital there was the sound of a distant cry, a swelling sound of many voices, a frightening sound. Max frowned. He put the cup on the floor and went to the window, staring down. Ben's anxious tear-filled eyes followed him.

“What …? What …?”

“I don't know. I don't see anyone.” Suddenly Max's eyes widened in disbelief. “I wonder!
No
…!”

A military car was approaching the hospital through the mud from the direction of Camp Two, driving slowly past the lake. In the front seat a soldier in an unfamiliar uniform was bellowing something unintelligible through a bullhorn. The car disappeared around the far side of the hospital, circled the building, and started back toward Camp Two. As it came to their side of the building the clipped words in schoolboy German were suddenly clearly heard, echoing on the air, fading and strengthening as the soldier turned his head.

“Be calm. Be calm. You are liberated. We are the British Army. You are all very ill and infectious. Quarantine will be necessary. Be calm. Be calm. You are liberated. We are the British Army. You are all very ill and infectious. Quarantine will be necessary. Be calm. Be calm. You are—”

The voice echo died in the distance as the car passed the lake and disappeared once again into Camp Two. Max Brodsky turned from the window, tears streaming uncontrollably down his seamed cheeks, a stunned look of hope, of disbelief, of joy begging to believe, sweeping across his young-old worn battered face.

“Did you hear? Did you hear?”

“What …?”

“We're free. It's the British Army! They're here. We're free.” He stared about the room as if he could see through the walls to the fields and roads and endless spaces that surrounded the camp, and then back to the bed where his friend lay. “It's over, Ben. We're free. We did it.” He suddenly really realized the truth. He raised his eyes. “We're free! We did it! We did it! Oh, God, thank you, we're free!”

Benjamin Grossman felt his heart contract. He closed his eyes, feeling the tears start again under the lids. Then the trembling began. No! He would not go to the pits! He would live! There would be proper medicine, proper care.

He would survive!

But then, that had been the object of his plan all along, hadn't it?

Chapter 7

On May 21, 1945, thirty-six days after liberation and twelve days after the German unconditional surrender that finally put an end to the war, the British burned the three camps that had constituted the monstrosity known as Bergen-Belsen. The flamethrowers licked at the ugly wooden buildings a few moments and then they caught fire, flaming quickly into ash. The soldiers wielding the tubular torches expected some greater reaction from those watching—a cheer, perhaps, cries of delight, of vengeance, something, anything—but the inmates merely stood back and stared dully, still stunned by the enormity of their terrible experience, and by the deaths that continued to mount in the thirty-two casualty clearing stations established by the British. It had taken those thirty-six days for the three camps to be cleared and for the survivors to be housed in the former German Army quarters a mile away; over three hundred men, women, and children had continued to die each day during that period. Starvation had advanced too far for many; they could not tolerate food, and so they died. And typhus had continued to take its toll of the weakened inmates despite the best efforts of the dedicated British doctors, and so they died. And many had waited just for the day of liberation, and now they had nothing left to wait for. And so they died.

Morris Wolf was keeping a list.

Morris Wolf had come back from the hospital and the dead; he had located Brodsky and Grossman in the former German Army headquarters and had moved in with them, being greeted with great enthusiasm by Max Brodsky.

His list began when Hans Frank, the ex-governor general of Poland, appointed to that position by the leaders of the Third Reich, was picked up in a routine sweep that netted the 30th Infantry Division of the American Seventh Army several thousand prisoners at Berchtesgaden. That night Frank, the “Hangman of Poland,” brought attention to himself by attempting suicide; otherwise he might well have been released as most of the others were once the war ended a few days later. Wolf, scribbling the name and date at the head of a sheet of paper and posting it on the wall next to his cot, claimed that Hans Frank had been in Poland too long; he had begun to act like a Pole.

His list continued as the days passed: Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian quisling, May 7; Hermann Goering, number two man in Nazi Germany, May 9; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, successor to Heydrich as head of the SD, the Security Service, May 15; Robert Lay, in charge of labor recruitment, May 16; Albert Rosenberg, the so-called theoritician of the Nazi Party, May 19 …

The prize, of course, especially to the inmates of the camps, was Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS. Himmler had shaved off his mustache, adopted a black eye patch, and furnished himself with false papers in the name of one Heinrich Hitzinger, somehow imagining this would constitute a valid disguise. In the crowd of ex-prisoners of war, discharged soldiers, foreign workers, and refugees that pressed across the bridge spanning the Oste River at Meinstadt on May 21, only Himmler stopped at the control point to demonstrate his suspiciously new identity card; most of the others had no papers and simply crossed the bridge unimpeded. Himmler had also made the rather simplistic mistake of forging his new identity as a member of the Secret Military Police, apparently unaware that all members of that organization were being arrested. As Max Brodsky gleefully watched Wolf add the name to his list, he remarked loftily that Himmler had apparently been in Germany too long; he had begun acting like a German. It was, however, a short-lived joke; there was shocked silence the following day when it became known that Himmler had managed to commit suicide and thus escape what all had hoped would be a more fitting justice.