Brothers Beyond Blood (6 page)

I stood up. One of the soldiers raised his rifle in my general direction, “But, sir, what will become of our friends?”

“Friends?” He looked confused. “What friends?”

I gestured at the large group of prisoners now being fed by the army cooks. “The men who used to be prisoners here. They have become our friends.” I didn’t know if he understood what we had been going through these last several months.

The sergeant laughed and turned to one of our guards and said something. The guard snorted and shook his head. Then he turned back to me and came close. I stood half a head taller than him but he barked in my face, “From now on you have no friends. Those men are no friends of yours, you animals! I hope you get what’s coming to you. You make me sick, the lot of you. Now get back in the barracks!
Shnell! Shnell
!” He waved his hands as if herding a flock of geese.

Two days later, the trucks pulled out, and most of the soldiers formed up and followed them through the gate. The ones who were left kept us inside. The next morning an open truck came for us. We were shackled and shoved up into the back where a chain was run through our leg shackles.

As we were sitting there, I heard a thin cry, “Hans, Hans!” It was Herschel. He was trying to push through the compound gate but a soldier blocked his way.

I stood and waved my shackled hands over my head. A soldier in the truck with us pointed his weapon at me. Now we were both prisoners.

“I’ll find you, Hans. I’ll find you,” was the last thing I heard as the truck pulled out of the camp’s gate and drove in a cloud of dust toward the nearby town.

I watched the truck drive out of the camp, our guards shackled and seated on benches on either side. I don’t know if Hans heard me yell to him. An American soldier prevented me from leaving our compound. I tried to push around him, but he blocked me forcefully with his rifle and insisted that I was to stay.

“If we are now free men, why do you still treat us as prisoners? Are we now prisoners of the Americans instead of the Nazis? Then nothing has changed!” I screamed in his face,

Abruptly I turned and tried to find the colonel’s interpreter. Yes, the Americans were feeding us better food. Yes, their medical personnel were attending to us. Yes, they had found clothing to replace the rags we wore. But we weren’t allowed to leave the former prison compound. Since Granski left, we had had more freedom with our guards than with the Americans.

After I had calmed down, I found the interpreter at the desk set up at one side of the gate on the porch of the commandant’s office. He and the sergeant interpreter were discussing something, and they brightened at the sight of me approaching.

“Herschel, can you help us explain to the men here that we can’t give them all the food they want? If they eat too much, they will die. They have to take their food slowly, building up their strength. Three men have already died just since we got here. One, we think, from eating too much, too fast.”

“And the other two?” I asked.

The sergeant rubbed the back of his neck, “Tuberculosis, I think. I see from the medics’ examinations, most of you have some sort of disease: malnutrition, rickets, lung and intestinal parasites. I could go on.”

I frowned. “Is that why you won’t let us leave? You have to help us get well first?”

The officer nodded. Looking down at his boots, he said, “Some of the diseases are very contagious, and we don’t want you to spread them to the general population. Or, for that matter, to our troops.”

“I understand, sir, and I will urge my fellows to comply. Will you tell me when some of the stronger ones can leave? I - I have no place to go now. My family is dead, except maybe a brother. He went to a different camp. What will become of me?” I felt a deep longing for my old life, but in the same vein, I didn’t ever want to go back to our shop and house. How I hated those hypocritical neighbors of ours. If I could, I would take a rifle from a soldier and go back and shoot every one of those bastards.

The officer put an arm over my shoulder and walked me away from the table, whispering to me, “Herschel, I heard of a camp in Austria that they are setting up to let you rest and recuperate, and get some training. They have people you can talk to about starting over. I have also heard that some of you Jews want to go to Palestine. Maybe that’s not too bad an idea, no? Your own place?”

I thought about it. ‘Next year in Jerusalem’. It had a certain appeal. “Sir? Where was the truck taking the camp guards?”

“Oh, you don’t have to ever worry about them hurting you again. The Allies have a big camp set up for them. Give them a taste of their own medicine, the bastards.”

“That’s good, sir, but where is this camp?’ I didn’t want him to think I was going after Hans. I had tried to explain to him two days ago about how the guards had helped feed us and keep us alive, how Hans had saved my life, but I could tell that he thought it was made up or a delusion. When he looked at me curiously, I decided to stop asking, hoping that he did not think I was a guard masquerading as a prisoner.

I then did as he asked and spoke to our fellows about the diseases and food. Most understood, but a few, Gypsies from Romania, wanted to leave as soon as possible. The major took me to them.

“Take it slowly, Milosh,” I said. He was their senior, their elder. “When the doctor thinks you are strong enough, he will issue you passes and give you food. Then you can go home.”

“I am strong enough, Herschel. Please, we want to go.”

“Just a few more days,” I said, calming him. “We are still in a war. It is not over yet. Have a bit of patience. It will be over soon, my friend.”

Grudgingly Milosh agreed to wait one more week. Especially since the food was much improved.

Perhaps the doctor knew where the guards were being taken. I entered the former commandant’s office and found two medics working on four of my fellows. Two lay on pallets on the floor. Beside them were chairs with clear bags hanging from them. Tubes led down from the bags to their arms. They seemed to be asleep. One was a boy I just knew as Yakov, from a town outside Munich. The other was an older man whose name I cannot remember. On the desk lay one of my friends, Ira. The medics were sponging off some open sores and attempting to bandage them but Ira was struggling.

I went to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, “Rest easy, Ira. They are only trying to help you.”

He looked up with fevered eyes. “Hello, Herschel. The pain is very bad and they aren’t reducing it, only making it worse. Can you talk to them, please?”

I nodded and spoke to one of the medics. He filled a syringe with a clear liquid from a small bottle and jabbed it into Ira’s arm. I watched Ira’s face. In a few moments, it relaxed. He squeezed my hand in thanks.

The doctor sat at a small side desk. Papers were piled upon it and a large ledger lay open before him. I stood by his side and waited for him to finish.

He finally looked up and smiled wearily. He was maybe as old as my father, thin and with a small moustache. Dark bags hung under his eyes like two plums and his uniform was disheveled. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “Hello, son, what can I do for you?”

I smiled back tentatively. “Hello, sir, my name is Herschel Rothberg.” I wasn’t sure how to lead into what I wanted.

Before I could say more, he said, “Good morning, Mr. Herschel Rothberg. My name is Dr. Adelman, Sam Adelman,” and he held out his hand.

I looked at the slim fingers. It had been years since I’d shaken anyone’s hand. I extended mine like a child, but he engulfed mine fully, like an adult, like a man. At sixteen years, was I truly a man? I’d never had a Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish ceremony that ushers a boy into manhood.

He motioned me to a small wooden bench by the wall, and we sat down next to each other. “Sir, Dr. Adelman, can you tell me where they took the guards, our guards?” And it all came rushing out about Hans. I told him I had to see my friend, a friend who had saved my life. The bad guards were long gone and the boys who were there at the end were our friends. They’d treated us fairly and had never killed anyone. The last bad guard, Granski, had run away months ago.

He pondered this, scratching his stubbly chin. Finally he turned to me, “Son, I’ll find out, but you know I have no authority to get him released. He was a guard at an extermination camp! I can get you his location, but the rest is up to you. In a week or so, I’ll be rejoining our outfit for the push to Berlin. I believe that you fellows, you who want to leave, can be trucked to a place in Austria called Landesberg. The Red Cross is setting this place up for refugees and former prisoners. They are calling these camps DP camps. Displaced Persons.” Then he muttered under his breath, “My God, there must be millions of you out there.”

I placed my hand over his on his knee, “No sir, not so many left. The Nazis were very efficient.”

He knew what I meant and just nodded, not looking at me. “I’ll find out where your friend was taken. Come back tomorrow, Herschel. I’ll get one of the officers to make you up a pass so you can travel through Allied lines. I’ll also see if I can get you a ride going that way. That’s about all I can do for you.”

I thanked him warmly and shook his hand again.

That night I slipped out of my barracks and found the rock under which Hans and I had buried the good jewelry. I unearthed the cache and wrapped the best pieces - a diamond brooch, a heavy pair of platinum cufflinks inset with large rubies, several stick pins with blue sapphires and three more pieces set with large stones - in a bandana one of the soldiers gave me. I reburied the jar. Maybe someone, many years from now, would unearth it and find the rest, a pirate’s treasure.

Back in the barracks, I quickly sewed the jewelry into a pouch and tied it around my waist. The rest of the day, I helped the sergeant and the officer interview the men and translate for them.

Two days later I was in the back of a truck heading south for Austria, clean clothes on my back, pockets filled with good American food and a piece of paper with the name of the camp where the Nazi guards had been taken. Best of all, I had an official looking paper Dr. Adelman had made up. It asked other American officers to please assist me.

“I am coming, Hans,” I whispered to myself.

The five of us rode in the back of the truck for three days. Fortunately the weather was dry and getting warmer. The American soldiers gave each of us a blanket and a metal dish for food, though no utensils. At night we would stop by a field and help set up a large canvas tent. The rations were cooked on two small stoves on the back of one truck. At night, the soldiers took turns keeping guard. 

They never unchained us except to take us to the toilet, and that was only one at a time, often in the late afternoon, and into the surrounding forest. The soldiers treated us like vermin, pushing and shoving us with their heavy rifles. In the beginning, when the first one of us was taken into the forest, I thought we were to be shot.

The first was Karl and he was whimpering and implored me to do something. I knew he had to go badly but when he resisted, the soldier just laughed and made gestures pointing and poking him with the rifle barrel. It was the same soldier who had struck him in the face with his rifle, and he was terrified. Who could blame him?

I learned some American language on that trip. The one thing I learned was that Nazi was followed by bastard. American soldiers didn’t know more than a few words of German.
Shnell
was one and it was usually screamed.

I learned to ask for water, food and clothing. The soldier who rode in the back of the truck with us was named Jimmy. He didn’t like it when we couldn’t pronounce the J properly. I practiced with him until I got it right. He taught me the American words for arm, leg, head, foot and some others like food and truck.

On the afternoon of the third day, we came to a hastily constructed compound that resembled Kefferstadt, only much larger. It appeared that most of the buildings had been burned and the new barbed wire fence only recently been erected as evidenced by the piles of dirt by each post. Guards patrolled the gates with dogs, much like we used to. The truck stopped by a small maze-like gate where a German- speaking American soldier wrote our names down in a book. He asked our ages, ranks, service numbers, former assignments, places of birth, heights and weights and then had another soldier take our photograph up against a piece of canvas with numbers painted on it. Then we were escorted to a tent and assigned a cot. The interpreter informed us that we’d get two meals each day, and they would interrogate us at their convenience.

I asked how many men were in this camp.

The officer sneered, “You five make just over four hundred, all former camp guards. See how you like it on the other side, Nazi bastards.”

After folding our blankets and placing them on the foot of our beds, Karl and I stepped outside and wandered over to a group of some fellows our age.

“Gutten tag,” I said, introducing us. Two of the other fellows introduced themselves as Heinrich Schmidt and Josef Keppeler. The others just turned away, whether from shame at being here or fear or what, I did not know.

“Where is your home?” I asked Heinrich. We walked over near the fence, where we found a crude wooden bench and sat down on it.

“I am from Berlin,” he said, “though I fear that I will never see it again.” His whole body sagged. He was a good-looking boy about seventeen years of age, same as my own. He also seemed to be healthier and better clothed than Karl and I, though there was a patch of blood on his tunic.

I pointed at the dried bloody patch, “Are you hurt?”

He looked down, “Ach, no. That is not my blood. One of the other guards started to run when the Ami soldiers arrived and they shot him just as he went past where I was standing. It is his blood.” He shook his head. “I was not about to run after that happened.”

“And where was this?” I asked him in a low voice.

He leaned in toward me and whispered, “Dachau. Can you believe it? I was only there for three weeks! All I did was help destroy papers, uniforms and things like that.”

He went on, “I didn’t even know what the camp was for.”

This was a story I would hear time and time again. How could they not know? How could the local townspeople not know? The smell alone was awful. They say that people who live near an abattoir get so used to the smell that the brain ignores it after a while, but they still know they live near an abattoir. When I came to Kefferstadt, within a day I knew that it was no “work camp”.

I chose to let this pass. If Heinrich wanted to live within this fantasy, who was I to question it? The war was coming to a close and, once again, Germany was on the losing side. My father fought in the Great War of 1917, and we lost. Now I was involved in my own generation’s Great War and we were defeated. When would we learn? Our people had followed the Fuehrer blindly. No one was allowed to question him and now he had brought us to this. I asked Heinrich, “Have you heard any reports of the war or Berlin?”

“Ya. Not going well. The Amis come from the West, the Russians from the East and the Allies down from the north, you know, the British and the Canadians. I have even heard that there are Italian troops coming from the South. Can you believe that? They were our allies!”

I laughed, not believing these rumors, “Next you will be telling me that the Japanese will be fighting us too!”

He looked startled, “Have you heard something I do not know?”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Relax, my friend, I am just making something up.” How much crazier could this war get?

“What else have you heard?”

“I heard our radio man say that Berlin is in ruins from constant bombings. Many of the civilians have been killed, and the noose grows tight. It will all be over in another week or two. After that, I do not know.” He grew morose again, staring down at his scuffed boots, idly swinging them back and forth in the dirt.

“Have you heard anything about the Fuehrer?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. The last time we heard was just for us to fight on to the last.” He snorted, “Easy for him to say. He didn’t have to get shot at.” This last was said in a small whisper so as not to be overheard by anyone. He looked around furtively and leaned close to me. “There are men here who would kill me for just saying that.”

I was surprised. “Aren’t there just old men and boys like us here?”

“Nein, Hans. There were still almost two hundred guards at our camp when the Amis came.”

“They didn’t run away? Most of our guards did or got sent to the front.”

“Nein, ours didn’t have a chance. The Amis parachuted in and surrounded the camp before anyone could run. My friend Horst got shot because he was frightened and ran.” He muttered, “I was just as frightened but couldn’t move with all the guns pointed at me.” He got a faraway look on his face, “ The first Amis came down shooting outside the fence, then more and more both inside and outside. After awhile, trucks and jeeps came up the road from the city.” He turned to me again, “The Amis are very well equipped, and very disciplined. They have been fighting here in Europe for a very long time, and yet their uniforms are in good condition and they seem to have plenty of ammunition.”

“Yes, they came to our camp quickly and took charge most efficiently. However, they did not kill any of our people and seemed to be genuinely helping the prisoners.”

“Ya, they do bring their medical personnel in right away. I think this is good. Do you agree?” Heinrich asked.

I nodded, and then reflected, “Do you think they will hang us or shoot us?”

Heinrich shook his head, “Nein, I do not think so. They could have done it easily by now. I understood one of the Ami soldiers say that we would be tried by a military court.”

I looked out through the wire. “What is that camp they are building? Another for our people?” I saw a large force of soldiers driving in steel posts, stringing barbed wire and putting up large tents.

Heinrich frowned and said, “I think that is for
Landsmannschaft (displaced persons), you know, refugees, homeless people and,” he leaned toward me and whispered behind his hand, “Jews, former prisoners. Even Gypsies!”

We stood and I decided to walk about the camp to get my bearings and see if there were any other boys I, perhaps, knew from my school days.