Brothers Beyond Blood (9 page)

I was overwhelmed seeing Herschel. I had thought I would never see him again. I was sure the American military courts would hang us all. Now, I might have a reprieve. Herschel had it worked out, a plan to free me, I hoped. To free me, but what of my friends? All I could do was help them get through the fence. After that, they were on their own. I knew I must make a plan to free myself from this camp. Herschel could only help me after I was on the outside.

The fence was the problem. The Americans had built a very tight compound. Around our camp was a fence made up of many strands of barbed wire, taller than my head. There was a gap of possibly three meters and then another barbed wire fence, just as high, surrounding the first fence. If we walked to the front of our camp near the gate and looked across the street, there we could see the other camp, this one surrounded by a single fence, not as high. I’d heard it was a camp for displaced persons from all over the Reich.

I went to our tent and got Karl, Josef and Heinrich. We walked the fence line, stopping behind a large canvas tent in the rear, and I whispered to them, “I am going to escape from here in two nights. I am not going to wait for them to hang me for something I did not do.”

Karl looked at me, shocked, “If the Americans catch you, they will shoot you. Are you insane?”

“Yes, Hans, you do not know if they will hang us. Don’t they have to give us a trial first?” asked Josef.

Josef was the youngest of us, barely sixteen years, short with curly black hair and a slender build. His father had been a fighter pilot and Josef had not heard from him in more than two years. His mother and two younger sisters had lived in Dresden. None of us mentioned what happened to that poor city. He was naïve, had only been in Dachau two or three months before the camp was overtaken by the American soldiers.

I rounded on him. “Every man here was a guard at a camp that killed thousands of innocent people! You think the Amis care about a fair trial? Do not be a simpleton.”

Karl grabbed my arm, pulling me back. He stood at my side and said to the others, “Hans is right. Any trial will be a farce.” He looked from one to the other, “I will go with you, Hans.”

I felt a hand gripping my shoulder. Karl and Heinrich and Josef stiffened, almost standing to attention.

A voice behind me whispered, “So, young man, you and your little friends are going to try to escape?” The Sergeant-major came around and stood before us, hands on hips. He had on a clean uniform, a tall cap and a sneer on his face. He was much older than any of us, with short, graying hair, a deep scar under one eye and thick wrists. A tattoo of a chain was around one of those wrists. He laughed, a short bark.

“I, I don’t know what you are talking about, sir.”

”Oh, come, come now, young private. I overheard everything you said.” He eyed me as if he were used to using a monocle, “And just how do you propose getting through the wire?”

I pulled my shirt up slightly. Tucked into my trousers was a wire cutter. I let the shirt drop. “I was helping a soldier on the new building and found these. One of the working men must have left it behind.” I shrugged. “I thought that I would need it someday, perhaps.”

He held out his hand, “Give.”

“Nein,” I replied, stepping back.

The Sergeant Major came at me and attempted to grab the cutter, and I slapped his hand away. He looked at me in amazement. Once again he came at me and I struck him in the stomach with all my force. He expelled a huge rush of air and clutched his sides, nearly falling.

I’d held my ground against this supposedly superior non-commissioned officer. The other lads moved up beside me and stiffened. “The night after this one, I am going out through that fence there.” I nodded toward the fence as it ran behind the large tent. “If you want to escape also, be here after midnight. The moon is small then, and it will be quite dark. If you have two or three others, bring them with you.”

He nodded and smiled craftily, chagrined, hoping no one had seen a private strike him.

“You are not my superior any longer. The war is over, Sergeant-Major.”

“No, not yet, Private. The Fuehrer may still survive. Survive to begin again.”

I shook my head, “No, sir, our war is kaput, again. I suggest that if you get out of here, you just disappear. That is what I am going to do.” I turned to my mates, “Come, let us go plan.” I turned one last time to the older man. “Remember, midnight, tomorrow night. Good day, sir.”

Back at our tent, I assisted Karl in removing all insignia from what was left of his uniform. Since we were not allowed knives, we used a small piece of glass Karl had found on the ground near the construction site. We worked methodically removing the epaulets also and mending the blouse as best we could.

“Are either of you fellows coming with us?” I looked at Josef and Heinrich.

Josef shook his head, looking at the floor. “I cannot, Hans. I am too afraid. I am sorry.” He looked up with a tear in his eye.

“Heinrich?” I queried the taller boy. He looked from Josef to me. I could almost see the wheels turning.

Finally he stood. “I’ll come too. I do not like it here.” He put a hand to Josef’s shoulder. “You will be all right, my friend. You are young and Amis will see that.”

The next night was cloudy. Even better. We were all tense. We had been sitting on our cots for hours, speaking quietly of our homes and families. No one had a watch, but Karl assured us that it was time to go. I did not know how he knew but we were all eager to depart. We had reconnoitered the camp the last few days and knew that the area behind the large tent in the rear was the darkest and least guarded. We hoped the Amis assumed the barbed wire fences would discourage any attempt at escape.

Josef wept
openly as he hugged each of us. He kept mumbling over and over how sorry he was. We assured him that we understood. Heinrich clutched the small bag of food we’d managed to put aside, and Karl extinguished the small lantern we had been issued.

“Let us go, my friends. We’ll meet again in Stuttgart.” I slipped out the tent flap into the darkened compound, staying in the shadows. A
few
star
s
shone here and there between the clouds. I waited for my eyes to get accustomed to the dark. Against the sky I could see a watchtower in one corner of the compound. Atop it, two moving red dots suggested
soldiers smoking.

In a few moments we reached the large tent. I felt, rather than heard, the lads behind me. I stood quietly by the rear tent corner. A voice hissed from the other side.

“Is that you, Private?”

“Ya. Just wait until the cloud covers the moon,” I hissed back. A few minutes passed. As soon as I saw the edge of the moon darkening, I moved quickly to the fence and knelt, feeling for the wire. The lowest strand parted with a nearly audible twang. I felt the barb on the second wire and snipped between it and the next. I felt the third but couldn’t feel the barb. I ran my hand back and forth. No barbs. Curious. Had they run out of barbed wire? No, the next was barbed. Just as I was about to snip it, a large hand reached out tore the cutter from me.

“Let me do that, you clumsy boy.” The Sergeant Major quickly snipped the bare wire before I could warn him. I saw a flash of light as the searchlight came on and a deep voiced siren began to moan. He had cut a trip wire connected to an alarm system. The Sergeant roughly shoved me aside, and he and two more men pushed past and into the gap between the fences. It would take the American guards some time to find the break in the fence, I knew, but that still only gave us seconds.

“Come,” said Karl, lifting me to my feet and pushing through the cut wire. Ahead I saw the next fence wires were cut and the older men were running for the nearby wood.

“Go!” I pushed Karl, then Heinrich through the fence as the searchlight swept in our direction. I barely had time to run the opposite way, toward the other fence corner, toward the road. “Good luck,” I whispered at my friends.

Parked ahead was a truck with one axle on a stand. I threw myself on the ground beside it, hoping that the searchlight would pass over me. It did, and I immediately jumped up and ran for a small clump of bushes. They cast a dark shadow offering cover. Behind me I heard the pop, pop, pop of a machine gun opening fire. Before me I heard jeeps roaring out of the compound. When I took a chance and looked up, I saw soldiers with weapons at the ready. The drivers growled through the gears. I quickly covered my head, not wanting my pale face to expose my position. The searchlight swept over them and momentarily stopped, making sure it was American soldiers in the jeeps. I knew that they would be blinded for a few seconds and that the area outside the light circle would appear darker than the surrounding landscape, so I drew myself to my feet and ran again. Behind me I heard screams as some of the heavy bullets found their marks. I hoped that it was not Karl or Heinrich for they were good boys and had never harmed anyone.

The road lay like a pale streak before me. I crawled toward it, then rose to my feet and deliberately walked backward, hoping that anyone who saw me or my footprints in the dust would assume I was walking toward the disturbance, not away from it.

In a minute I was across the road and running alongside the fence, opposite the direction my comrades had run. I dared to stop and look behind me. The spotlight illuminated a broad swath of the open ground between the fence and the nearby wood. One jeep had stopped, and soldiers with lanterns were inspecting the cut wires. Other soldiers were looking at crumpled shapes, and at another, a soldier knelt and was attending a wounded man who was screaming. I hoped again that the wounded man was either Karl or Heinrich or that they had escaped.

Lights were coming on all over both camps. Up ahead a hand waved through the fence. “Hans, Hans, here!” A voice hoarsely whispered, trying to be quiet.

I ran and stopped by this disembodied hand. It pulled me down to the ground.

“Hans, crawl under here.” Herschel had a long pole, which he was using to pry the wire up from the ground. I squirmed under, and he helped me to my feet.

We watched the action across the road. The fence line was well lit by spotlights and running soldiers who held hand lanterns. I saw some soldiers wrapping two limp bodies beside one jeep.

“Come,” Herschel said, pulling on my blouse.

I became Herschel’s brother Hans that night.

I grabbed Hans under his arm and helped him to his feet. In the dim moonlight we embraced.

“Thank you, Herschel,” he said simply.

We stepped back into the shadows and watched what was happening across the street. A jeep carrying a single wounded man sped back toward the road, turned left and sped toward the medical clinic I had been released from a short time ago. A medic bent over the rear where a stretcher was secured. We couldn’t make out the wounded figure or his attire.

“Was that someone you knew, Hans?”

He shrugged, “I do not know. I hope not. I mean, I hope my friends were not the two bodies they are loading now.” A 4x4 truck had come out and slowly made its way to where the bodies lay. We saw several soldiers climb out of the truck and begin to hoist them inside in their blankets.

I pulled on Hans’ arm. “Come, we need to lose you in the camp.”

Silently we slipped from shadow to shadow. Near the front of the camp, a crowd had gathered trying to see what was happening in the prison camp across the road. We skirted the rear of the crowd and found my tent. Inside, Reb Horowitz and Mendel were reading a book they’d borrowed from the small library the Red Cross people had started. The Reb had reverted to his role of teacher, as both Mendel and I were eager to continue our schooling.

I entered the tent, tugging Hans in behind me. Mendel looked up, and then struggled to his feet, or rather, his foot. The artificial leg was propped against his bunk. Reb Horowitz cocked an eyebrow; his spectacles perched on the end of his nose.

“My friends, this is my brother, Hans.” I shoved him before me and into the light of the kerosene lantern.

Reb Horowitz turned it brighter and squinted, looking up. “I know you,” he said.

“Yes, sir, you do.” Hans sat heavily on the edge of my bunk and leaned forward toward the old man. “I am Hans Rothberg. I was a guard at your camp. I am sorry, sir, for everything I did there.”

I interrupted them. “Reb, Mendel, Hans saved my life. Now I have to save his. I need your help. We both do.”

The Reb studied him, and then said slowly, “You arrived only a few months before the Americans came. The gassings were over by then, were they not?”

“Yes, sir. I had no part in that, nor would I have.”

“Do you remember when Sergeant Granski shot the three cooks in the kitchen?” I asked.

The Reb nodded.

“I was there. Granski was just about to shoot me when Hans here stepped between us. I am alive because of a camp guard.” I took a deep breath. “He is now my brother. I ask you both to accept him.”

The Reb looked at each of us, at Hans the longest. “How old are you, young man?”

“I am seventeen years, sir. Why?”

“I want to insure that you have a long life, my son.” He held out his hand, and they shook. Now he looked at Mendel and nodded.

Mendel held out a hand, though with some reluctance, “If Rabbi Horowitz and Herschel say you are a good man, then I also welcome you.” He grinned. “I am Mendel.”

He gestured at the tent. “Such as it is, this is our home. Tomorrow we will get you some new clothes and papers. Then? We shall see what the future will bring.” Mendel brightened. “Perhaps you will come to Palestine with us?”

“First you will have to make me a Jew, Mendel!”

I laughed. “That is a job for the Rabbi here. He is trying to make good Jews of all of us.”

The Rabbi shrugged. “It is my job.” He waved a hand, peering at us with mock severity. “Sometimes a curse.”

Mendel and I grinned. We’d not been the best of students.

Hans said, “I have just escaped from the camp across the road with two friends, and several other men. Two were killed and one was wounded. I hope that my friends are all right. Do you hate us?”

The Rabbi carefully replied, “It is for God to decide if you are a hateful boy. We can only forgive. Are you worth forgiving?”

Hans frowned, “I never killed or hurt anyone, sir. What the Reich did was wrong, and I will try to make up for that.”

I indicated Mendel, “And you, Mendel?”

“I do not know enough about what went on in your life, Hans. Right now I will have to trust Herschel’s word. Over the next weeks, we will talk, and then I can make up my mind. Until then, your secret is safe with me.” He held out a hand, and they shook.

The next day, I walked down to the main tent with Hans. The American woman I had met before, Maria, was at the desk. I stuck a big smile on my face and took Hans by the arm. “Excuse me, Miss Maria? Do you remember me? Herschel?”

She frowned, studying me, then Hans, “Of course, I do. Herschel, uh, Herschel…”

“Rothberg, Miss Maria. I have found my brother, Hans. He has been here in the camp for more than a week.”

Her frown deepened, “I don’t remember you coming in, Herr Rothberg. Do you have your papers?” She held out a hand.

Herschel and I had rehearsed this before we came. “I am sorry, but my coat with the papers inside was stolen yesterday.” He hung his head, “I am sorry, Miss Maria. I would have come sooner, but when Herschel and I discovered each other, we just spent the night discussing the past few years.”

You could see her soften, the frown fading. She scribbled some notes on her large pad and filled out some cards for her file before making out a green card with Hans’ name and description. It would allow him to come and go in our camp, eat in the mess tent and get some clean clothes from the supply office.

We thanked her warmly and turned to leave. Just as we got to the doorway, she called, “Rothberg brothers.”

We turned apprehensively. We had almost made it. Had we been caught? Would Hans now be sent back across the street? I said, “Yes, Miss Maria?”

“Will Hans be staying in your tent with you?”

I just nodded.

“Then I suggest you get another cot from supply for him.” She smiled and cocked an eyebrow. “So I’ll know where to find you. If I need you, of course.”

“Of course. Thank you, Miss Maria.” I said.

“And, Herschel, have you found your other brother yet?”

I gloomily shook my head, “Not yet, Miss Maria.” And we left.

Standing outside the tent, I whispered to Hans, “I think she knows something is not right. We must be careful.” He nodded.

We stopped at the supply tent and were issued a folding cot, bedding, a metal cup and clothing the Amis had confiscated from local civilians. Hans received a very nice pair of dress trousers, a pale yellow shirt and a waistcoat. Next we found him some shoes, brown brogans. We thanked the gaunt woman standing behind the counter. I glanced down. She had a tattoo on the inside of her lower arm. An Auschwitz survivor.

I helped Hans carry everything back to our tent. Mendel and Reb Horowitz had made room for him next to my cot. Between us was a small table and another lamp. These were new and I was amazed what Mendel was able to acquire in the camp.

I complained to him, “What, Mendel? No books?”

He grinned and swept my blanket back. Two books lay under it.

I hugged him warmly. “Thank you, King Mendel. You will be Palestine’s first Prime Minister, at the very least!”

Hans smiled and gripped his shoulder. “Thank you, my friend.”
“All right, gentlemen, please finish what you are doing so class can begin.” Rabbi Horowitz was in full teacher mode.

After setting up the cot and arranging the bedding and clothing, we sat attentively awaiting the Rabbi’s instructions. “Young men, as long as you are in this tent, we will be having instruction for at least one hour a day in various subjects. Since I am no secular teacher and am not very good in mathematics, we will discuss history,” he ticked these off on thin, crooked fingers, “the Talmud, morality, ethics and almost anything else we feel is necessary.” He looked at each of us and we nodded in turn.

The Rabbi cleared his throat and leaned forward. “For today, I would like to discuss this unfortunate war. We’ll call today’s class, the “Morality of War”. Or maybe I should call it the “Immorality of War”?”

For the next hour, the discussion went back and forth between the Rabbi and each of us, voicing our opinions and observations on this and past wars.

Reb Horowitz concentrated on the Nazis’ dehumanizing the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Communists, labor leaders and others to the point where good men, and here he indicated Hans, could commit unspeakable acts. “If they had asked their soldiers to deal out horrible deaths to their friends and neighbors, there would have been a revolt, a mutiny. However, it was because the government of the Reich conducted a systematic campaign to declassify these groups as less than equal humans, as subhuman, that the atrocities were able to occur. Without that campaign, the Nazis would never have been able to commit the acts they did.” The Rabbi raised a finger for emphasis.

Hans nodded, “I know what you mean, sir. In the Hitler Youth, every day the instructors would tell us how the Jews were taking over our banks and how the Jews were killing German babies in their rituals.” He shook his curly head, “I knew Jews. I had gone to school with some Jewish boys my own age and never saw anything wrong or different with them. But I knew it must be true, or our leaders wouldn’t have said these things.” Here, Hans, my brother, stopped and covered his eyes. He was crying now, the sobs racking his slim frame.

The Rabbi laid a firm hand on his head and muttered a prayer of forgiveness.

I looked at Mendel. He also had tears in his eyes.

“I am so sorry, my friends, so sorry. Even my father told me these terrible things.” He looked up in anguish, “How could they all be so wrong? How could they do those terrible things? No, how could we have done these things?” Hans sniffed a couple of more times and wiped his wet face on his sleeve.

“Reb Horowitz, Mendel? How could we all have done the things we did or let them happen?” I was as bewildered as Hans.

Reb Horowitz had a much broader range of experience than any of us and told us his story. “I was born in Russia before the turn of the century in a town called Smetyko. My father was a butcher and bred mules while my mother raised three sons. When I was only thirteen years old, some Cossacks came into town drunk and killed several men who dared to oppose their pillaging. One was my father, and suddenly my brothers and I were now the town butchers. My oldest brother, Feivel, became the mule breeder. My next brother, Leib, and I operated the shop. We were fast learners and our modest prosperity allowed me to continue with my rabbinical studies. After all, to become a rabbi is what all good Jewish boys strive for. Despite continued pogroms,” he continued, “ the shop flourished. Feivel also began selling mules to the Russian Army. Ironic, no?”

The Rabbi went on, “Leib married, and then Feivel. Soon the house grew too small for the boys, their wives, my mother and me. I was now twenty and with a heavy heart, I packed a bag and boarded a train for Poland. In my pocket I had the name of a distant cousin in a town near Lubin. A cousin of my mother.

The local rabbi, an elderly man, helped me complete my training and in only two years I became the town’s rabbi when he died. The congregation grew, and in due course, the Yenta found me a bride. Her name was Rayna, and she was short, chubby, blonde and bubbly. I loved her so much,” he sighed, then chuckled. “I was tall, skinny, bearded and serious. We were quite the odd couple. Did I tell you that we were the pride of the small Jewish community in a corner of Lubin, Poland? Well, we were for many years.”

The Rabbi was openly weeping now. After a few moments, he sighed, wiped his eyes, scratched his beard and continued, “Rayna died in childbirth along with the baby, a boy, our first after trying for a long time. I just fell apart. I packed a bag and began wandering, wandering, wandering.” He snorted, “It is good that Jews, no matter how poor, are always willing to take a rabbi in, feed him, and then, of course, send him on his way. You know the Yiddish word for what I was?” He looked from one to the other of us, eyebrows raised. “No? A shnorer. Means a freeloader. I walked through Poland, western Russia and into Germany, until I was picked up by a squad of brown shirts near Munich, and taken to a work camp. After a while, I was sent to Dachau, then Kefferstadt where I met you boys.” He smacked his hands down on his thighs and said, “That is my story. Now, could I have done anything to change the course of the war?”

We all shook our heads no. No one could have stopped the Nazi juggernaut.