Brothers Beyond Blood Read online

  I watched Rabbi Shmuel take a pan of water in shaking hands to the dog kennel. We used to have five large and aggressive Alsatians, the breed you call German Shepherds. There were only two skinny dogs left now and no food. As if we would use what little food we had to feed the dogs.

  We wanted to kill the dogs and eat them, but the Rabbi asked us to please not kill his kinder. There wasn’t much meat on them anyway. He placed the bowl down on the ground and sat with the dogs. They looked longingly at him, hoping for some food, but all he had was a small brush, which he slowly stroked over their filthy coats. We were all prisoners.

  Hans urged me to the storehouse, and we entered, and then sat on a rough bench against the wall.

  I turned to my friend and again said, “You saved my life, Hans. I will never forget that.” I was an empty shell. I had come close to being exterminated so many times, but for some reason, the events of the past night loomed large in my mind. I was a prisoner in a concentration camp, and a guard had saved my life. Unheard of. We continued our jewelry lessons. It seemed pointless, but it passed the time.

  By mid afternoon, my stomach was groaning. I was so hungry, I ached. Suddenly we heard a shot, then another. We lurched toward the door and stumbled outside. A light rain was falling, and the prisoners were gathered by the fence on the south side. Two guards squatted over an object. I hoped it wasn’t another one of my fellows.

  Hans and I rushed through the gate and over to them. They were looking at a pig. It must have wandered out of the forest. Hans said to the men, “Why don’t you bring the pig to the cook house, and we will butcher it.” He sounded plaintive. A trickle of saliva ran down his chin.

  I felt my own mouth moisten. A whole pig. Of course I knew pork was verboten to Orthodox Jews but I was so hungry. We hefted the carcass and carried it to the kitchen. It looked like it might weigh perhaps fifty kilos. One of the guards, Karl, I think, ran and got a length of rope. In short order the guards hoisted the dead pig up by a pulley hooked to a corner of the building’s roof. Everyone gathered round. Rabbi Shmuel said a short prayer and nodded. Two of the guards, both former farm boys, butchered the pig and cut it up into small pieces.

  One of the prisoners, a man named David, edged forward and grabbed a small piece of flesh. The Rabbi struck his hand and knocked it to the ground. “You know why pork is forbidden. If we must eat it, it must be cooked through.” He raised his eyebrows to the guards. They nodded.

  Jurgen went to the kitchen storeroom and returned with a large kettle. While the guards threw in every edible piece of the pig, two prisoners brought buckets of water and poured them into the pot. Soon it was bubbling over a wood fire we’d built between several rocks.

  More water was added, and a guard and a prisoner went into the nearby wood and returned with a mound of white roots. They, too, went into the pot along with the last of the salt. In an hour, everyone was lined up with his tin cup.

  Even the guards took their place in line with their utensils. We were all in the same boat now.

  My children, I have eaten many wonderful meals since that day, but no food ever tasted as sweet as that thin, watery stew. And pork, no less. I had never tasted pork. It was wonderful. Everyone had a cupful and though most wolfed it down, some, like Hans and I, savored every mouthful, trying to make it last. We had intended on saving some for another meal, but we were so hungry that before we knew it, the pot was empty.

  Ah well, I felt human again. Hans and I and another guard, Helmut, sat on a bench against one wall of the administrative building.

  “We need food, Hans. We need a regular supply. How can we get food?” There was no answer from either of them. We watched idly as Rabbi Shmuel patted the dogs and, with a smile for each of them, gently slumped to one side. One of the dogs whined and laid his head on the old man’s lap. The other one just lay down next to the rabbi, nose under his hand. I nudged Hans and pointed.

  Hans nodded. We stood and walked through the dust to the kennel. I leaned down and felt the old man’s neck for a pulse. Nothing. He was dead. Just another old Jew dead in a Nazi camp. When I looked up, most of the other prisoners were standing behind us. A murmur lay over us like a blanket. I bent and closed the old man’s eyes.

  Hans nudged the dog next to the rabbi. Again, nothing. The dogs had been the rabbi’s responsibility for so long that they died with him.

  We wrapped Rabbi Shmuel in an old blanket and carefully laid him in the mass grave with a dog on either side of him. I mumbled a few words; a few of the others said some words, and we all said the Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer for the dead. And that was the end. We were now ninety-six. I wondered if it would ever end. Perhaps when, one by one, we were all laid in that deep trench beside the kind old man.

  Chapter 7 - Hans’ Story

  So the days went by and no one came. We took turns going to the village to try to trade for food. Though the trek was long, if we got an early start, we would warm up. The winter had been mild with only small patches of snow remaining beneath the trees. The other guards and prisoners foraged in the wood. It was late in the year and there had been some harvesting on the nearby farms and we were able to trade jewelry and gold teeth for some cattle corn and oats. It was meager fare, but we survived. Once in a while a guard would shoot a rabbit or a rodent to add to the pot.

  We were standing in line one day, stamping our feet to stay warm, when two soldiers came down the road and stopped at our gate, which was left open these days. No one was going anywhere.

  We just stood and stared. It had been so long since anyone had come through our gate. No one knew what to do.

  The taller soldier made a fist and held it over his head. I saw a red star on his helmet and wondered if he was a Russian. I hoped not.

  Herschel nudged me with an elbow. “Go see who they are,” he hissed.

  I looked around for my rifle and found it leaning against the wall of the cookhouse. I picked it up and, though it held no ammunition, I put it on my shoulder and walked to the gate.

  “Who are you gentlemen?” I asked in German. I held the rifle across my chest as I’d been taught, at the ready.

  The shorter soldier said something in what I thought was English. I smiled in relief and lowered my weapon. Then he hit me in the stomach with the butt of his rifle and screamed at me. I fell to the ground holding myself while the other soldier tore my weapon away and threw it out the gate. Herschel and two of the other guards, Helmut and Karl, came running up. The soldier fired his rifle into the air and Helmut and Karl dropped their weapons in fright, holding their arms up high. Herschel knelt in the dust beside me.

  “Hans, Hans, are you all right?” he asked, feeling for broken ribs.

  I pushed his hands away and gasped, “Yes, I am all right. Why did they hit me?”

  Herschel looked up and screamed at them to go away, to leave us alone. The shot must have alerted more soldiers, for suddenly many were coming out of the wood on each side of the road, rifles pointed at us. There were nearly as many of them as there were of us. Herschel helped me to my feet and said something to the shorter soldier, the one who had hit me. His voice was now softer, in control.

  “Why did you hit him?” he said in halting, school English.

  The soldier smiled and laughed and said something to the other soldier. I noted that their uniforms were dirty, and the sleeve of one’s shirt was nearly torn off. He had stubble of a beard but he was smiling at Herschel.

  In a few moments a tall man, whom I assumed was an officer, pushed his way through the men surrounding us. I looked over my shoulder and saw that none of our people had moved. They were still in line with their tin cups or cans, watching raptly. The officer spoke to Herschel who shook his head.

  “Slowly, please. It has been many years and I speak only small English. You are English?” Herschel asked, puzzling over the words.

  The officer looked at this thin, brown-haired boy, “American. Does anyone else here speak English?”

  Herschel slowl
y shook his head, “I do not think so. American. Is the war over, Mein Herr?”

  The officer smiled and pulled a cigar out of his breast pocket, bit the end off and spit it in the dust. Then he jammed it into the corner of his mouth and lit it with a shiny silver lighter, “Almost, son, almost.” Then he said something with a sneer in his voice but the only word I could understand was Nazis. He turned to another soldier, this one with several stripes on his sleeve, and in a moment the other soldier had shouted something and the American soldiers fanned out across the compound. They first collected the rifles from us guards and from the guards’ quarters, and then they rounded up the seven of us and took us to our barracks.

  Herschel tried to intervene but didn’t have the words. One soldier put an arm over his shoulder and led him to the kitchen area. Herschel shouted to me but I could not understand what he said. The American soldiers shoved us roughly into the barracks and made us sit on two of the bunks. They kept their rifles ready as if we were going to overpower them. What a joke. I noted that some of them seemed no older than we were.

  Karl asked for some water, but either the soldiers didn’t understand or didn’t care. I tried speaking to one of the men, a young fellow who looked little older than myself, but he shook his head and sneered at me, saying something guttural. What was the matter with these men? Did not one of them speak German?

  An hour passed and Helmut asked to use the latrine. When a soldier looked at him questioningly, he pointed toward his crotch and made motions with his hand. The guard nodded and pointed to a bucket in a corner that was used for cigarette butts back when there was anything to smoke. He looked at me and I shrugged, “It’s either that or in your trousers, Helmut.”

  Helmut sheepishly went into the corner and pissed into the bucket, trying to be as quiet as possible. The soldiers snickered but kept their rifles at the ready.

  About one hour later a small, dark haired man my father’s age came in. He had thick glasses and a battered leather briefcase under his arm. His uniform was rumpled and, though his rank appeared to be a lieutenant, the soldiers deferred to him. The soldiers had moved our battered desk into the center of the room. He sat there, lit a cigarette and surveyed us.

  I watched as he withdrew several items from the briefcase and placed them carefully on the desktop. Then he barked in German, “You!” and gestured at Karl. “Who is in charge here?”

  Karl looked at each of us in turn. We all shrugged. No one had been, as they say, in charge, since Granski had left. Actually, no one had been in charge since the commandant had driven away one night many months ago. “Excuse me, sir, but no one is in charge. We’ve just stayed here.”

  He looked bewildered. No one in charge? Inconceivable. “Who is the senior man then?” he asked.

  After some discussion amongst us, it was decided that Karl was the oldest, having turned eighteen just three weeks previously. We pointed at Karl.

  I wondered what they were doing to Herschel and the other men.

  Chapter 8 - Herschel’s Story

  The soldier held me by my arm. I hollered over my shoulder to Hans, but the other soldiers pushed him and the other guards roughly into their barracks. I struggled to get free, but the soldier was much stronger than I. He must have thought I wanted to kill the guards. What was going to happen to us, all of us?

  One of the prisoners stepped forward. I knew his name was Shlomo, but everyone called him Sy. I seemed to recall that he’d been a teacher or a professor at a university near Hamburg. He held his hands over his head, palms out and walked toward the soldiers. He was thin and wobbled on toothpick legs. What rags he wore hung on him like so much dirty laundry. His few teeth garbled his words at first but one of the soldiers came forward and listened to him. I could tell he didn’t understand what Sy was saying, but he listened patiently, nodding. He pulled Sy’s hands down, but Sy was afraid and kept raising them. The soldier gave up. He dropped the butt of his rifle next to his foot and a little puff of dust rose and then settled. For some reason I remember that little puff of dust. I think it marked the end, or maybe a new beginning.

  The soldier reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked to us like a green stick and handed it to Sy. The soldier watched as Sy smelled it, threw his head back and laughed. Cackled was more like it. He tore the olive drab wrapper and broke a piece off, and popped it reverently into his mouth. A look of joy suffused his wrinkled face. He turned and shuffled back to the others who still stood in line waiting their turn for the corn meal mush. Tears ran down his weathered face as he broke off small pieces and handed them to those near him. There were only six or eight pieces, so I didn’t get one, but the looks on the faces of those that did was absolutely amazing.

  Sy whispered to himself, “It’s chocolate.” We who had been living on next to nothing for so long, we who had lost at least one third of our body weight, we who had been systematically starved and worked to near death by the Nazi guards had the first taste of food from outside in the form of a chocolate bar. It was transforming. It lit up faces that hadn’t smiled in years.

  Sy threw his arms up in the air and shouted loudly in German, “It is chocolate! These soldiers are Americans! We are saved!” The crowd of men started to surge forward toward the soldiers who looked nervous, but held their ground. These soldiers who had fought their way across Europe and into the heartland of Nazi Germany looked frightened of a rag-tag band of walking scarecrows. Many years later I saw a movie called “Night of the Living Dead”. It was about zombies. The way they shuffled toward the camera, that is what the crowd of prisoners must have looked like to the soldiers.

  The big officer stepped forward and held up a hand. My fellow prisoners stopped. The officer said out of the corner of his mouth, “Come here, kid.”

  The soldier gently pushed me toward him, and I stumbled. “What do you wish, sir?”

  “Listen carefully, kid.” He leaned toward me and put a huge hand on my shoulder, “Tell them to relax. In a little while a couple of trucks will show up with food. We’ll feed them all and get them into some decent clothes. You understand me?”

  I didn’t understand all the words, but I got the gist of what he said. Stepping forward, I motioned to my fellows. “These American soldiers are going to get us some food and clean clothes. We are not prisoners any more. We are. . .” I turned to the officer with a frown. “Sir, if we are no longer prisoners, what are we?”

  He shrugged, “Free men.” He smiled and shouted, “You’re now free men!” A sergeant came up to him and whispered something. The officer nodded and turned to me. “The food trucks are on the way, kid. So’s a medical truck with a doc and a couple of more medics.” He frowned and looked toward the guards’ barracks. “I suppose we have to feed those assholes too,” he muttered, rubbing his bristled jaw.

  “Sir,” I asked, “are you going to food, I mean feed us with the, the…” I waved my arm in the direction in which he was looking.

  It took him a couple of seconds but then he realized what I was asking. “No, no, kid, if I had my way, we’d hang those bastards right now. We may yet.”

  “Sir, those men only guards. They have help us. Bad guards gone away long time now. Please, sir, only boys, um, like me. Do not hang.” It was everything I could remember from my schooling many years before. I likened it to starting up a rusted old motor and trying to get it working again. My mind was numb from all the new faces, the new language and now, men running around invading our spaces and giving us orders. It was a lot to absorb in such a short time. I hoped they were treating the guards well. They were our friends by now. Helmut and Karl were just farm boys pressed into service. Jurgen was a cook and had nothing to do with the killing. Riger was from a village outside Dusseldorf and, I think, nearly a half-wit - a likeable lad who forgot more that he remembered. And Hans. That’s who were left of the guards, if you could call them that.

  None of us knew where we were supposed to go or what we were to do once this horrible war was over. M
y family was dead, my home destroyed. Perhaps I would go to Palestine, like the bible taught. I remember my father toasting, “Next year in Jerusalem!” Though I barely remembered where Jerusalem was, it was as good a place as any, and perhaps without war and killing. If I only knew at the time how ironic that statement would be. I wondered what Hans would do.

  It was nearing spring in southern Germany, and the weather was just starting to get warm in the late afternoons. The nearby forest was greening, and there were birds on the barracks roofs and in the trees.

  “Sir,” I tugged on the officer’s sleeve. “What you want us to do now?”

  He scratched his head and looked at the confusion around him. I could tell he’d never seen a camp like ours. I knew we were a sub-camp of the larger one at Dachau, but his unit, I found out later, was from the 45th infantry division, which must have bypassed that hellish camp to our north. I took him on a tour of our camp and explained what each of the buildings was used for. He asked how many of us lived in each barracks. I told him that there were supposed to be two hundred and fifty men in each but now they only held about fifty. When we went into one and he saw the pallets three high, he was appalled.

  Swiftly counting our pallet holes, he asked, “You mean that in each of these holes slept three men?”

  I shrugged, “Yes, sir. Sometimes when a new truckload came we had four, but the SS guards, um, eliminated them quickly.”

  When I pointed out the gas building, the Colonel asked, “What was its purpose?”

  I described how the guards herded new prisoners into it, telling them it was for showers, but how when the doors were closed, the men in the truck turned on engines and pumped exhaust smoke into the building, and the prisoners died. Later, they just dropped in Zyklon B, a pesticide that killed quicker and used no petrol or diesel fuel. I told him that my job, with some others, was to strip the bodies, then take them on a cart to the long pit out back of the camp.