Brothers Beyond Blood (5 page)

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. My 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 45
th
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.

We walked there too. The last corpses were showing an occasional foot or hand where they’d been poorly covered. He shook his head, rubbing a hand across his face, the horror showing in his battle-hardened eyes.

“Does this bother you, son?” he faced me.

I shrugged. I had seen too much for it to affect me.

“How old are you?”

I frowned and tried to do the math, “I think I must be sixteen now, sir. My birthday was in the winter.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Three years, sir. I came here three springs past.” I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. Three long years since the train dropped us in the town and the trucks brought us to this camp. I wondered if any of my friends, my classmates, or my family were still alive.

A soldier strode up and said something to the officer, whom he called Colonel. He turned to me and introduced himself as Sergeant Heinrich Small. He spoke excellent German, though he wore an American army uniform. “I am the Colonel’s interpreter. The Colonel would like me to tell you how sorry he is and ask you to please come back and speak to your fellow, um, men, so we will tell you what is about to happen.” He gestured for me to follow him.

I did. What else was there to do?

We walked back to the kitchen area, where the prisoners were now milling about. I shouted for them to listen to me.

I again explained how these men were Americans. “They will give us food. Doctors will treat us and help make us better.” I also told them, with help from Mr. Small, how the war was not over yet and that we were advised to stay in this camp until it was safe to travel to our homes or wherever we wanted to go. Some of the soldiers would stay with us.

It sounded like a very good plan.

Chapter 9
-
Hans’ Story

After about one hour an officer came into our barracks and spoke to the soldiers. A tall boy with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth motioned for us to stand. Then another soldier told us to put our hands on top of our heads. He showed us what he wanted and then shoved us in a line against a wall. I felt so scared that they were going to shoot us that my hands started shaking and I think I started to cry. Helmut stood up from the table where the sergeant interpreter was questioning him. He began shouting, “Don’t shoot us! Please don’t shoot us!”

The soldiers were nervous and cocked their rifles. They yelled back but we didn’t know what they said. Now Karl joined Helmut. They both waved their arms and walked toward the soldiers.

The interpreter jumped up and stepped between the two groups, “Stop, stop!” he told the soldiers. Then he turned and faced us. “Wait, we are not going to shoot you. These men have been ordered to search you for weapons and then take you outside to feed you. That is all.”

We looked at each other, and I said, “Do we have your word that you will not shoot us, sir? Your word as an officer?”

“Yes, yes, you have my word. Just don’t give us a reason to shoot you.”

Once again, we put our hands on our heads and lined up. One of the soldiers patted us down and emptied our pockets. Wallets, pictures, a few coins and not much else piled on the table.

“Where is your ammunition?” the interpreter asked.

“We were not issued any, sir,” Karl said. “There is a box in the Commandant’s office. It wasn’t necessary, except for hunting in the forest.”

“You hunted them in the forest? You sick bastards.” The interpreter turned to one of the soldiers, a corporal, I think and said something. It could not have been something good because the corporal’s eyes narrowed and his face grew hard. I saw his trigger finger twitch. He motioned us outside. What had Karl said?

We were ordered to sit on the edge of our porch and keep our hands in our laps. Across the compound we could see three trucks that had just pulled in. I counted ten wheels on the front one. It was piled high with boxes and several soldiers unloaded it. The next was a smaller one heaped with uniforms, weapons, ammunition and duffle bags. The last vehicle had huge red crosses painted on it. I supposed it was an ambulance. Three people unloaded boxes from the rear and carried them to the vacant Commandant’s office. All the vehicles looked battle-worn but the boxes of supplies looked new or at least unused. The war had come to Kefferstadt.

The prisoners were herded back behind the fence that separated their compound from the entry gate. A table had been set up and the sergeant who had interrogated us was now talking to the prisoners one by one, probably taking down their names and home towns. Meanwhile, three soldiers, obviously cooks, prepared food on two tables set up beside the large truck. Several of the prisoners helped unpack and lay out the food. A sergeant ladled the corn mush we were going to eat into dented steel mugs. Another soldier brought the food to us.

I was puzzled. I thought the sergeant who had interpreted for us said we would be fed, but this was not fair. The soldiers had brought plenty of food. The smell was starting to drift across to us. Karl stood and asked one of the soldiers for more food. He was hit in the face with a rifle butt and knocked back onto the porch. Helmut and I scrambled to help him. Behind us I could hear the bolts on rifles slamming home. A soldier was screaming at us and suddenly a bullet punched through the door just over my head. Everyone stopped moving. The only sound was Karl moaning.

An officer ran up and pushed the soldier’s rifle upward before leading him

away. He yelled some orders over his shoulder at the other soldiers, who lowered their weapons. Slowly people started moving again and we helped Karl back to his place on the porch. I ate my mush with a spoon and motioned for more. A private took my cup to the rear of the truck, filled it with water and returned it to me. So that was my first meal in captivity. I suppose it was more than the Jews had been given for their first, and for many, their last. I strained for a look at Herschel but could not see him amidst the confusion.

Just before sunset the sergeant interpreter came up to us. He stood with his hands on his hips looking down at us. “You men will be confined to your barracks for now. You will only be allowed to come out to eat right here. You will have no contact with the men who were formerly your prisoners. In two or three days you will be taken by truck to a prison camp south of here. Once you are there, a military commission will decide what to do with you. You are now prisoners of the United States of America and Allied Forces in Europe.” He looked at us with disgust and kept kicking up dirt with the toe of his boot.