Brothers Beyond Blood (2 page)

Sammy helped her and the turnout was larger than expected. Pop had had a lot of friends and a lot of Uncle Hans’ friends showed up too. The big house was filled with people eating, drinking and talking. As I made the rounds, I kept hearing folks telling stories about the Gruesome Twosome, as they called my Pop and his brother.

Pop’s lawyer, Saul Goldman, was there and he pulled me aside, “Ancel, come and see me in a couple of days.” He looked at the calendar on his watch, “Say, Thursday around three and we’ll go over the will, O.K.?”

I nodded. Nobody but Saul ever called me by my given name. When I was growing up, our neighborhood had been heavily Italian and a kid with a name like Ancel would have been beaten up a lot. So I shortened it to Al. My Social Security card even listed me as Al. The Social Security lady wanted to know if it was Albert or Alfred or what, but I insisted, just Al and she finally gave in. It took my parents longer to accept the name change, but when I wouldn’t answer to Ancel, they got used to it.

Thursday came, and Sammy and I picked up Mim to go to the lawyer’s office. My brother was staying with Syl and me. We’d taken a couple of long walks, remembering Pop and Uncle Hans. We even went to the little park where they liked to sit on a bench and ogle the young mothers and nannies in the summer.

Saul’s office was in a tall, imposing building down near Market Street in the heart of the financial district. It had beautifully gilded doors that were curved at the tops like doors in the old cathedrals. That always impressed me whenever I’d gone there with Pop. It was funny, Saul was normally a very respectable corporate lawyer. I could never figure out what caused him to accept Pop as a client. Pop and Uncle Hans just owned a hardware store, and it wasn’t even incorporated, as far as I knew.

After we were shown into his office and seated, Saul’s secretary brought us coffee. After the usual amenities were concluded, I asked, “Saul, you and Pop were friends for a long time but you were always a big shot, and Pop, well, Pop was always, for lack of a better word, a little shot.”

“Yeah, Saul, what’s up with that?” asked Sammy.

Saul just looked at us for a minute. Then he pulled back the sleeve of his expensive suit jacket and removed the heavy gold cufflink from his crisp broadcloth shirt. He shoved the sleeve back and turned his arm so we could see the faded blue tattooed number inside his forearm. “I was in Auschwitz. Your father and Uncle Hans were in the camps too. That’s why.”

Sammy and I nodded. Saul pulled his sleeve down, inserted the cufflink and replaced his coat sleeve. A bond like that can be stronger than family.

Saul cleared his throat and read the will. Pop’s estate was to be divided equally among us, the house was to be sold and profits also divided among us. I was appointed executor, then Miriam, and then Sammy, in that order. Pop wasn’t rich just very comfortable, but the amount of the bequest was more money than I’d expected. Then Saul handed me a thick manila envelope, almost an inch thick. “Herschel wanted you three to have this. You’re supposed to read it together.”

“What’s it about, Saul?” Sammy asked.

Saul shrugged, “I don’t know. Your father and Uncle Hans asked me not to read it, so I didn’t.” He sat back, and his chair creaked. Saul folded his thick hands across his ample belly. “Any questions?” He looked from one to the other of us. Nothing. Smiling, he said, “No? Then get the hell out of here and let me get some work done!”

We decided to go back to Mim’s place. Joanie was at school, and the house was empty. I phoned my wife, told her what happened and that I’d be home later. She was at the hospital and couldn’t talk. So what else was new?

Mim made coffee for the three of us and brought out a plate of homemade apple strudel cut into pieces. When we were all seated, I opened the envelope.

My Dear Children: Miriam, Ancel, and Sammy,

If you are reading this, I am dead. Dead, not ‘passed away’ or ‘deceased’. Let’s call it what it is. Your Uncle Hans is dead too, but we felt that there is something you ought to know. As they say on the television, things aren’t always as they seem. I leave it to you if you should share this information with Hans’ children, your cousins Ruthie and Nathan, though we felt that we’d leave it to you three, to decide if they should know too. My lawyer, Saul, has held this letter for many years. It’s sealed so he doesn’t know what’s in it. This is a story, your Uncle Hans’, and mine. I imagine you’re going to get upset because this story is quite different from what we told you when you were growing up. If so, please forgive us. The truth? Well, you’ll see for yourself.

First of all, your Uncle Hans is not really your uncle. What I mean is that he’s not really my brother, though a better brother in this entire world I could never hope to have. I once had an older brother named Isaac. I also had a sister named Miriam. Yes, Miriam, you are named after her. I was the youngest child of three and we lived in a nice town in Eastern Germany called Teplice. My father and his father had been jewelers. The Nazis killed my family during the war. I saw my father and grandfather shot out front of our shop. My mother and sister were raped, and sent to the women’s’ extermination camp in Ravensbruck where I later learned they were gassed and burned. I’m telling you this in brutal terms so you will get a feeling for what we all went through.

I was separated from my brother and sent to the concentration camp at Kefferstadt. This was a sub-camp of Dachau. Being older, he went to a different camp. I never did find out what happened to him.

Did you know that the British General Herbert Kitchener, before he was awarded his Lordship, invented concentration camps during the Second Boer war? He rounded up guerilla fighters and civilians and concentrated them into large camps. Interesting, no?

Anyway, I met your Uncle Hans in the camp where I was a prisoner. At the time I was fifteen years old and he was sixteen. I’d been at the camp for almost three years before he showed up. This happened near the end of the war, as it turned out, only five months until the American army liberated us.

At the time, I was a Sonderkommando or Special Command Unit. These units were comprised of Jews whose job was to remove the corpses from the gas houses, transport them to the trenches and bury them. We also collected their possessions, pulled gold teeth and a sorted and catalogued the belongings. Yes, my job was as a Sonderkommando.

In the early days, when the camps were being set up, the people were told that they were going to shower. They were instructed to pile their clothes and possessions in bins we had made. The Nazi guards even went so far as to allow the men and women to be sent in separately. Later they stopped being so nice and we Sonderkommando had to strip both the men and the women of all their clothing. I had never even seen a woman naked. For years afterward I had terrible flashback images of all those naked women’s bodies. I even had bad dreams when I saw your mother naked, as beautiful as she was.

Several of us younger and stronger fellows, loaded the corpses onto low-wheeled trolleys and took them to the trenches. After we dumped our fellow Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and ‘enemies of the state’ into the trenches, we ran back to the gas building and gathered up the piles of goods and took them to a central warehouse where we distributed them into the appropriate bins. We stole and hid what we could, which wasn’t much because we were guarded closely, especially in the early days. In the evenings, before we were sent back to our barracks, the guards stripped us and inspected our clothes, often beating us with clubs and short whips for no reason. It got to be routine and I hated the guards who did this. Hated them with a passion that burns in me to this day. I still bear the scars on my back and in my joints from the brutality. Not all guards were so brutal though, and towards the end of the war, youngsters replaced the older guards nearly my own age. This lessened the number of beatings as the younger guards saw us as nearly like them. I sometimes slipped a gold tooth to one particular guard. He rarely hit me. I don’t know if he shared with the other guards or with the commandant, a Major Boettcher. I suspect he didn’t, but who can say? Those were terrible times and nothing really made any sense. We worked hard. The trains kept coming, bringing more and more people until I wondered if there was anyone left in Europe. Perhaps the young guards were frightened as the war’s end approached.

But the trains grew fewer, perhaps due to increased Allied bombings, lack of fuel or a scarcity of enemies of the state. Soon they stopped altogether. Many of the other inmates died from diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, scurvy, or just wore out. As the guards, who still of fighting age, were rounded up and sent to the fronts, this left just a couple of old men, pensioners from the last war, as if there were any more pensions to collect; and finally, towards the end, some of the Hitler Youth lads. Most of these were too young to fight in regular army units, but they were the only ones left to guard the camps.

I hope you’re sitting down when you read this. Your Uncle Hans was a member of the Hitler Youth
(Hitler-Jugend or HJ) and a camp guard.

I know what you’re thinking. How could that be? He was such a good Jew. He was my brother and your uncle. Yes, yes, that was what you were supposed to think. Wait, Hans wants to say something here.

***

Oy, your father simply runs on and on, doesn’t he? Now for my story, if anyone is interested. You know all the old tales about how your father and I fought in the Warsaw Ghetto together, how we were in a camp and came to America after the war? O.K., so it’s partly true, only not the part about the Warsaw Ghetto. We were in a camp and did come to America together.

Didn’t you children once ask why we had no tattoos on our forearms? Do you remember what I said? That I was a latecomer and that there was no one to run the tattoo needle on the day I came to the camp? Well, your Pop and I weren’t at Auschwitz, and that was the only camp that tattooed prisoners. But the real reason is because I wasn’t a prisoner. I was a guard.

I was born and brought up in a town near the Black Forest close by the Austrian border. I had a normal childhood. I went to school, joined the Boy Scouts, had a sister named Ilsa and a father who was a middle manager at a nearby Daimler Benz factory. My mother was sickly and died when I was eight. Ilsa and I were close, and it was she who introduced me to the Deutsches Jungvolk, the junior version of the
Hitler Youth. I loved it. We went camping and I learned to shoot a gun and ride a horse. We sang songs and took part in rallies. By the time I was fourteen, I was head of my cell. I tried to enlist in the Waffen SS, but I was too young and my father, who was a good member of the party, wouldn’t lie for me. Instead, I helped the local police. We watched for saboteurs and made sure that people used their blackout curtains. To my everlasting shame, I also helped round up Jews and vandalized their shops and homes. In other words, I was a good little Nazi boy.

We all knew the war was ending and not in a good way for the German people again. So I was surprised when I got a call from our district commander. He was an older man named Strichcher, who had lost an arm and one eye in the last war. He told me to pack a bag and take a train to Kefferstadt, a camp near Dachau. I was excited. I was going to war! I bade my father and sister goodbye, and went off the next day. Shortly after that, our town was bombed, and my father and sister were killed. I didn’t find this out until much later.

And so I came to the camp known as Kefferstadt. It was a small, remote camp out in the country, almost five miles from the nearby town of Keffer. Along the front of the camp was a tall row of barbed wire stretching between two high guard towers, with a gate in the center. The barbed wire was nailed to posts set about two meters apart. In the rear was only one guard tower but it had a powerful searchlight and was always manned. Inside the gate was a long building. This contained Commandant Boettcher’s office and quarters, the guard’s barracks, and the mess hall. These buildings were made of wood, whitewashed with green trim, very neat, very German. In the compound were two stone buildings that looked like cottages and a row of six wooden buildings. These were the barracks for the prisoners. They were also made of wood, though not painted or trimmed. The roofs were corrugated tin and leaked when it rained, I learned later. Inside were rows of wooden shelving racks, three high, with no bedding. The men slept on the bare wood.

There were no provisions for women. They were gassed as soon as they arrived at the camp. I thank God I never had to witness this shameful deed. Off to the side was a smaller building that I learned was the kitchen for the prisoners. It was almost a lean to with one side open to the wind. They had no mess hall and ate their two - sometimes one meal - per day outdoors or, in the winter, in the barracks.

I was given a uniform that was too large and a rifle and told that we were to operate the camp as before and await orders. I met your father one day when we were both ordered to sort through the valuables in the storeroom. I assumed they were getting ready to ship these things to Berlin. At first I spoke harshly to him, after all, I was older and a good Nazi and he, a despised Jew.

Chapter 2 - Herschel’s Story

I have to tell you what my life was like, my beautiful children. Up until the time I was about eight, it was idyllic. We lived in town, in a big apartment behind the jewelry store. My father and grandfather would go out front each day and open the shop that had been in the family for years. My sister Miriam, my brother Isaac and I would go off to school. My mother would clean the house and make some jewelry designs for the shop. My Bubby had died while I was a baby. Miriam said she remembered her, but I think she was just referring to the picture that hung in our parlor.

The first time I remembered things not being good was a day when I was walking home from school and some boys started yelling at me. They hollered, “Jew, Jew!” and threw rocks at Isaac and me. We ran, Isaac pulling on my hand to make me run faster. When we got to the shop, my Papa, who was a big man, strode outside and shook his fist at the boys and yelled back at them.

After that day, it got worse. Over the next two years, we took a different route home from school each day until the groups of boys got larger. Soon they were waiting at all of our routes. Isaac sometimes got into fistfights, but there were too many of them. He was slight yet wiry, like my Mama, and full of fire. He beat them back lots of times, especially when he called them cowards and took them on one at a time. I tried to help him and though I was tall for my age, was slim and might have filled out like my Papa if I’d had the chance. At the time, however, I was too little to fight.

Then one night in 1938 a large group of men and boys, people we knew and had never had any problems with, came down our street in what was called the Jewish Quarter. They started throwing rocks through windows as they walked, chanting and yelling. By the time they got to our shop, they had worked themselves into an angry mob. What was even more disturbing is that they were joined by some policemen, men who were supposed to protect us.

Why were they angry with us? I spotted Mr. Bruger and his son Leny there. They were yelling very loudly and holding torches. Just two weeks before, Mr. Bruger had bought a pin for his wife’s birthday from Papa. My brother and Leny were in the same classes. When Papa and Grandpapa came out front and stood before the door, they each had long sticks in their hands.

Papa tried to talk to them, saying that whatever they were angry at, it wasn’t anything he had done. He pointed to Mr. Bruger and Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Westergarten and asked what they wanted. I stood in the doorway with Isaac. Mama and Miriam stood way back in the dark shop, keeping very quiet. Papa and Grandpapa had told them to do so.

Mr. Bruger yelled, “You are Jews!”

“Yes,” my Papa answered. “You’ve known that all our lives. Why does that make a difference now?” He stood erect, tapping the stout stick against his boot. My Grandpapa leaned on his, hat pulled low on his face. I thought he looked like one of those cowboys in the American movies.

In answer, Mr. Bruger threw a stone that hit my father in the chest and bounced off. To his credit, Mr. Bruger, a slim and balding fellow, looked sheepish. Then a policeman drew his pistol and shot the large front window out. It shattered into millions of pieces. Most fell inward, while some large pieces dropped and exploded into the street. Everyone was quiet for a minute not knowing what to do next.

Papa strode up to the policeman and, towering over him, asked in a loud voice, “What the hell did you do that for? You’ll pay for that glass.”

Then, to the astonishment of all, the policeman shot my father point blank into his chest. Papa stared at the hole in his shirt, the red spreading. Then he looked up and hit the policeman with his stick so hard that the side of the policeman’s face just crumpled. He fell at my Papa’s feet and then Papa fell to his knees, one hand over his chest and finally collapsed on top of the policeman.

My grandpapa ran to my father and another policeman shot him in the head. He, too, fell forward. My mother and Miriam screamed and ran out of the shop, pushing past Isaac and me. I wanted to run too, but Isaac’s grip on my shoulder was like an iron vise.