The Entertainer and the Dybbuk (7 page)

T
he former SS officer took the witness stand as if it were a fortress to be defended. The desert sun now shot through the single window and threw a white hot spotlight on him. The defendant snapped up his right hand, eager to take the oath again. He stood under the ceiling fan, straight and almost tall enough for the blades to crop his yellow hair.

The defense lawyer fixed a fist on his hip. “Tell us, sir, in your own words, how you found the body.”

“Dead,” replied the German, with a sharp shrug. “Dead, and holding his stomach. What a stupid boy, eh? I knew he was stealing stamps. Trash stamps. I was glad to be rid of them, yes? Not even my worst enemy thinks I would poison the boy over a pocketful of wastepaper.”

“You have enemies, Mr. Goldstein?” asked the attorney.

“Not a single one in the whole world.
Nein. Non.
”

“Why would the boy take poison and commit suicide?”

“You ask me? All I know, he chose my backyard to die. Rat poison. An accident, eh?”

The attorney hoisted a confident smile. “So you are innocent?”

Before the defendant could answer, he gave a sort of hiccup and out came
“Heil Hitler!”

Involuntarily, his right arm rose in the beginning of a stiff-armed Nazi salute. Regaining his composure, the former officer clapped his arm back to his side.

It was clear that he was stunned. Where had that voice come from?

Freddie was the only person in the courtroom whose face burst into a smile. He knew where the voice had come from! He knew what the cunning Avrom Amos was
up to. The dybbuk was possessing SS Officer Gerhard Junker-Strupp!

The judge said, “You are declaring your confounded innocence?”

“Certainly!” cried out the German.

“—
Not
,” added the dybbuk.
“Certainly not!”

The courtroom seemed to catch its breath. The defendant went pale. His jaw fell open. He was struck dumb. He couldn't grasp what was happening to his voice; he tried to clear it.

“Are you pleading guilty?” asked the judge, astonished.

Again, the dybbuk's voice came blustering out. “Do I look innocent? Guilty, a hundred percent!”

“I object!” cried out the defense attorney. “My client declares his innocence!”

“Let him declare for himself,” said the judge.

The former officer tried to pull himself together, but he seemed frozen by panic, and the dybbuk overrode his voice.

“What kind of a donkey trial is this, eh? I said I was guilty. I hired my lawyer to lie for me.
Achtung!
Here is some truth. My name is not Goldstein. I had those Auschwitz numbers tattooed on my wrist to fool you. I am Colonel Gerhard Junker-Strupp,
hauptscharführer-SS
of the proud death heads of Germany!
Heil Hitler!
”

“I object, I object,” the defense attorney
bellowed. “The defendant is suddenly talking nonsense!”

“You object?” said the dybbuk. “I object. I am under oath. You are not. Sit down.”

“Well put,” remarked the judge. “Continue, Mr. Goldstein.”

“Junker-Strupp, sir. My stamp assistant was murdered! You want an eyewitness? You are looking at an eyewitness. Me! You want experience? I had orders to hunt down Jewkids and wipe them off the face of the earth. We used to pull that same poisoning trick in Germany. Why waste a bullet on the non-Aryan garbage? I confess I poisoned my stamp assistant!”

By this time, the former officer was
jerking around as if pulled by strings. He covered his mouth with his arm, but still words came tripping forth. His eyes rolled in a surging panic.

Freddie sat back, folded his arms, and enjoyed the show. How adroit the dybbuk was! And what a hopeless fool the mass murderer appeared to be, now trying to stuff his mouth with a clenched fist. Bravo, Avrom Amos! Out through the German's ram's horn of a nose came his confession. “So, jury! So, Judge! What was my motive? What else? The boy discovered papers. He learned who I really am, a war criminal with a noose waiting for me. Why else would I kill the boy? Why else?”

“Is that your sworn testimony?” asked the judge, hunching forward.

The defendant pulled his knuckles free of his mouth to protest, but the dybbuk drowned him out. “I'm guilty! You, at the typing machine—are you getting this down? I, Colonel Gerhard Junker-Strupp, former SS officer, I poisoned the boy! In my native Germany, I directed the murder of whole trainloads of children. Some by my own hand. I remember a redheaded kid, Avrom Amos Poliakov by name. I shot him. His sister, Sulka. She, we poisoned. For those petty crimes alone, I should have your death penalty twice over! For the other little Jews, a million times over! Guilty! Guilty, jury, from
top to bottom! I'm late for my own hanging. So kindly hurry it up, Judge.”

As if struck by lightning, the newspapermen went flying to telephones to get this bombshell of a story in print. The judge sat back. He seemed to enjoy the chaos in his courtroom as a refreshment from dreary shoplifting and burglary trials.

The SS officer collapsed in his chair, a gaze of profound confusion and vagueness in his eyes. Had he suddenly gone mad? Who had known these darkest war secrets of his?

Freddie gazed at him and could see his future more clearly than any crystal ball could reveal. Until his last day on earth, the German was going to be possessed by a
Jewish dybbuk. Avrom Amos was going to drive him crazy.

Freddie sent a flick of a wave toward the witness stand. He felt sure the dybbuk was looking at him.

“Mazel tov, pal,” Freddie said. “L'chaim!”

He didn't move his lips.

W
ho could have imagined that the witch's oven in Hansel and Gretel would leap out of the storybooks and into real life? It happened in Germany, during the 1930s and 1940s.

Jewish children by the cattle carloads were delivered to the gas ovens and death factories during World War II. Why the hunt
for children? Among Nazi calculations at the highest level was a fear that the Jewish young, if allowed to grow up, would seek revenge for the slaughter of their parents. No Jewish child was to be left breathing. Europe was to become
Judenfrie
—free of Jews.

Before being crushed and surrendering in 1945, the Nazis came close to succeeding. The human butchery and smoking crematoria were unprecedented in history. The events have come to be known as the Holocaust. The word is from the Greek, meaning to be burned whole.

For a few coins, bounty hunters searched out children in hiding and delivered them to the Nazis. There were special
days set aside to rid the cities and villages of Jewish kids, as in this story. Collecting the terrified young in sacks, like stray cats, really happened, too. And yes, painting childish lips with poisons happened. Poison was cheaper than bullets, and what was a mere Jewish child worth?

It is surprising how many fragmentary diaries kept by children of the Holocaust have survived and been published. Here and there, I have slipped into this narrative a few trembling words still fresh from the tragic past.

It has taken me a long lifetime of novel writing to finally feel prepared to grapple with the Holocaust. But what tale to tell? There was a horror story in every victim. At the
same time, the indomitable Jewish sense of humor somehow survived.

It was only when I began wondering about a dybbuk, the ghost of a murdered child, perhaps, that I found a spotlight to shine on the nightmare of the centuries. Could I allow in the occasional shaft of sunlight—the tough Jewish sense of humor?

History is easy to forget. Does it matter in our contemporary lives if we toss aside what happened so long ago? If we forget—
poof!
—history vanishes. The Holocaust vanishes. If we don't know where we have been, how wise will we be in the future?

I remember as a child of eight being told by a young friend that I had killed Christ.
That was news to me. It's a common experience for the Jewish young. Should later generations of Germans be burdened with the guilt arising from the profound inhumanity of their ancestors? Revenge may be sweet, but guilt is nontransferable. Still, hatreds survive with the persistence of cockroaches.

Do I believe in dybbuks, misty ghosts, imps, and other ancient and fabled creatures? Only if it turns out that the earth is, indeed, flat.

L'chaim!

—Sid Fleischman
Santa Monica, California

Jacket art © 2007 by Tim O'Brien

Jacket design by Sylvie Le Floc'h