Beware of God (4 page)

He wondered if the rabbis were right.

He wondered if Heimish was watching him from heaven.

“You're disgusting,” said Heimish, peering down from the sky. “If it weren't so sinful, it'd be pathetic.”

Shlomo switched off the light. He closed his eyes and thought of Candy Cantaloupes. And Mrs. Malinowitz. And the blond porn star car driver

He topped off his afterlife pot of boiling semen and fell asleep.

I
F
the Nazis come in the middle of the night and try to take me away to a concentration camp, these are the things I plan to take with me: some food, my allowance money, a sleeping bag, my Walkman, a toothbrush, a knife from the kitchen, my nunchucks, some Ninja throwing stars, a flashlight and my comic books.

 

Holocaust
means “burned up.”

 

Kristallnacht
means “The Night of Broken Glass.”

 

On November 10, 1938, the Nazis broke the Jews' store windows and burned down the shuls. That's why it's called “The Night of Broken Glass.”

 

If ever there's a Night of Broken Glass where you live, leave.

 

In the movie
Holocaust
, the Weisses waited too long after Kristallnacht to leave. Then they all died, except for their son Rudy. Their other son Karl was sent to Buchenwald.

 

Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. It was opened in 1937.

 

“If you are at lunch, or if you have no appetite to hear what the Germans have done, now is a good time to switch off the radio, for I propose to tell you of Buchenwald.”

—CBS news, seven years later, in 1945

 

The character of Karl Weiss was played by James Woods, who also played one of the Israeli Air Force pilots in the movie
Raid on Entebbe
. In that movie his name was Captain Sammy Berg.

 

John Saxon was also a pilot in
Raid on Entebbe
. He has a Black Belt in karate. He was in
Enter the Dragon
.

 

I'll leave right after the next Kristallnacht, and I'll take Deena with me. Her parents won't want her to leave, but if we want to live, we'll have to go right away. There will be no time to waste. We can walk to the highway and hitchhike from there. It's not that far. Maybe Kevin's mom will give us a ride.

 

We'll probably go to Florida and stay in the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. Deena goes there every January with her family. They have a tennis court and a pool.

Florida is 1,330 miles from New York. You need to get to a highway called I-95 South. From there it's a straight drive all the way to Miami.

 

Kevin isn't Jewish. In the summer, we ride bicycles together. My mother says his mother is a no-good anti-Semite.

 

In 1934
, The New York Times
described the news that Nazis planned to massacre the Jews as “wild rumors.”

 

Nazis always come in through the front door. They knock loudly. “Shnell!” they shout. That means “quick” in German. Then one of them will kick the door in with his boot. Nazis always wear shiny boots.

 

When Rabbi Akiva was being tortured to death by the Romans, his students saw him saying the Shema with joy, oblivious to the pain he was enduring. “How can you be saying Shema with joy,” asked his students, “oblivious to the pain you are enduring?” Rabbi Akiva said he was happy to be able to obey God with all his life.

 

There are three ways out of my house other than the front door, depending on where you are when the Nazis break in:

 

1. The back door, which leads to the backyard.
   
2. The door in the living room, which leads onto the deck.
   
3. The fire escape ladder beside my bedroom window.
   (Note: My bedroom window faces the front of the house, so make sure all the Nazis have already gone into the house before going down the ladder or they'll see you.)
   

The best hiding places in my house are: at the top of the tall linen closet at the end of the hallway, inside the clothing hamper in the laundry room (try to cover yourself with the clothes), upstairs in the attic behind the summer boxes and under the green couch in the den (if you can fit).

 

Anne Frank hid in her attic for over two years.

 

Maybe I should pack more food.

 

You can also hide in the tree house in my backyard. I doubt the Nazis will check every tree house in America.

 

It will probably be difficult for them to climb trees in those boots.

 

Ninjas could make themselves invisible.

 

“Absorb whatever is useful.”—Bruce Lee

 

Maybe Kevin will let me and Deena hide in his attic.

Anna Weiss was the daughter in the movie
Holocaust
. She was sixteen, and she and her mother hid from the Nazis in a room in Inga's house. Inga was married to Karl (Anna's brother) who got sent to Buchenwald. Anyway, one night, Anna got angry at her mother for not leaving Germany when she had the chance. She yelled at her mother and ran outside. Then the Nazis raped her.

 

In
Enter the Dragon
, Bruce Lee's sister is about to be raped by some gangsters so she kills herself. Bruce Lee finds out that a guy named Han was behind the attack on his sister, so he kills Han and beats up Han's army.

 

Anna Weiss had a point.

These are some of the things in your house you could use as weapons: pens, pencils, scissors, a handsaw, screwdrivers, a baseball bat, a rolling pin from the kitchen, salt for throwing in Nazis' eyes, knives, forks, a hammer, toothpicks for stabbing, a blowtorch, lightbulbs for throwing, the hard end of a toothbrush, a pointy-handled comb, an ice pick, the ax, a sledgehammer, the lighter fluid from behind the barbecue that you could spray on them and then throw a match at, a shovel, the pick, a trowel, the cultivator rake, nails, screws, razor blades, sewing needles, safety pins, chisels and knitting needles.

 

Jews were expelled from England in 1290, France in 1306, Hungary in 1349, France again in 1394, Austria in 1421, Lithuania in 1445, Spain in 1492, Portugal in 1497 and Moravia in 1744.

 

Some ballpoint pens have replaceable ink cartridges. If you take the cartridge out and put a sewing needle in, you can shoot it out like a Ninja blowgun.

Rabbi Brier says that the Holocaust happened because the Jews assimilated.

That's also why Hashem made the Jews slaves in Egypt.

 

And why He let the Holy Temple be destroyed by the Romans.

 

King Solomon built the first Holy Temple. Then the Babylonians destroyed it and deported all the Jews. Seventy years later, a second temple was built. Then the Romans destroyed it and deported all the Jews.

 

There was no third temple.

 

Assimilating is when you stop being Jewish, like Woody Allen.

 

My mother says Woody Allen is a self-hating Jew.

 

The Talmud teaches that every tear that is shed by a Jew contributes in heaven to the building of the next temple.

 

The temple in China where they taught karate was called the Shaolin Temple. In
The Chinese Connection
, Bruce Lee plays a student who goes back to his school and finds his teacher dead. He finds out the Japanese did it and he goes to their school; he beats them all up and kills anyone who had anything to do with the killing. The best parts are when he fights a big Russian guy and also when he smashes a Japanese sign that says
NO DOGS OR CHINESE ALLOWED
.

 

My favorite Bruce Lee movie is
Game of Death
, where Bruce Lee fights Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

 

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a Muslim.

 

Muslims say that Jews are the sons of dogs and pigs.

 

Between 1938 and 1944, over 1.5 million children under the age of sixteen were murdered by the Nazis.

H
OW TO BUILD NUNCHUCKS
:

1. Take an old broomstick and cut off two sixteen-inch pieces.
   
2. Drill a hole through each one roughly one inch down from the end.
   
3. Put a string through the two holes and tie the ends together.
   

James Caan is Jewish. He was Sonny in the movie
The Godfather
.

 

Art Garfunkel from Simon and Garfunkel looks a lot like Sonny, and he's also Jewish.

 

Mercedes and BMW used Jewish prisoners from Buchenwald to build their cars.

 

So did Ford.

 

Bayer gave chemicals to Josef Mengele to use for the experiments he was doing to the Jews. He would cut your leg open and put dirt and pieces of glass into the cut just to see what happened to you.

 

Jews shouldn't buy Mercedes or BMWs. Or Fords.

 

Sometimes, though, we buy Bayer aspirin.

 

Deena's parents have two Mercedes and a pool. Last year, her sister and mother both had nose jobs.

 

Deena also wants a nose job but her mother says not until she's sixteen.

 

My mother says nose jobs are for people who are ashamed to be Jewish.

 

If you put double-sided tape around the top of your penis and pull the skin up around it, you can tell the Nazis that you're not a Jew.