Finding Rebecca: A Novel of Love and the Holocaust (41 page)

“Thank you. You look great too.”

 
They both looked as David popped his head
out of the studio. “They managed to find an old show to broadcast for now. All
right, you’ve got an hour, but then back here to finish the interview.” He was
still smiling, everyone was. “Now you two go and enjoy yourselves, you deserve
it.”

“Thanks, David,” Christopher said and turned to Rebecca. He
gestured towards the elevator. “Shall we?”
 

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen
you, I feel like everything I say should be brilliant or important,”
Christopher laughed.

“Life doesn’t really work like that,
does it?”

“No, not usually.” Christopher
returned her smile and pressed the button for the elevator again. “How did you
find me here today, and what are you doing in New York?”

“I’m over here on business.” Her
smile was gone.

“Oh, what do you do for a living
now?”

“I’m in marketing. I work for a firm
in Tel Aviv, where I live. I read about you in the paper on Monday. I called
the newspaper and spoke to the journalist who interviewed you and he told me
that you were doing this radio interview today, and here I am.” She shrugged.
“I can’t believe that I’d never heard of you, after all you did.”

“I was never interviewed before. I’ve
never been in the newspaper before this week and I wouldn’t have been except
for the American Jewish Committee bringing me over here.”

“How did they find out about you?”

“One of the children I brought out of
the camps wrote to them.” Christopher paused and looked at her, drinking her in
with his greedy eyes. “I’m so glad that you made it.” Christopher held out his
arms. The elevator arrived. “I’m so glad you’re alive; I thought you were dead.
I can’t believe this.”

The elevator attendant asked what
floor they were going to.

“The lobby, please,” Christopher said
before turning to Rebecca beside him. “The park is only a few blocks away, we
could walk up there.”

“Okay.” She said, a morose look on
her face.

“What’s wrong Rebecca?”

She shook her head. “I’ve hated you all
these years, ever since the war. And then I find out what you did, and the
whole reason that I hid myself from you all these years was a lie.”

Christopher looked at her, felt his
shoulders dropping. “How were you to know? You could only believe what you were
told, or what the evidence told you. How did you find out that I was in the
SS?” Christopher asked. The elevator attendant lifted an eyebrow and glanced
sideward.

“I met my father in the displaced
persons camp after I got out of Buchenwald. He told me about you. He said that
you worked in Auschwitz.”

 
“Of course.” Christopher afforded himself
a wry grin. “I should have known. Where is your father now?”

“He tried to look for my mother after
the war, but she was killed in the blitz in London.” She stared into space as
she spoke.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Christopher
extended his hand towards her.

Rebecca smiled at him, but did not
take his hand. She turned her head to look straight ahead as she spoke.
“Thanks. After he realized she was dead he found another woman. He lives in
Surrey now, as far as I know, but I haven’t seen him since ‘51.”

“He never did like me, did he?”
Christopher somehow managed to smile as he shook his head. “I suppose he got
his wish in the end.”

“I still remember the moment he told
me. I couldn’t believe it and I didn’t at first. I cried for days. I was weak.
I weighed around seventy pounds. I thought I was going to die after I found
out.” She stopped talking as if the next part of the conversation was too
painful to touch, but then started again. “The picture of you was all that had kept
me going through the camps, the thought that one day we would be together
again.” Christopher wanted to touch her but didn’t. “It didn’t tally in my mind
that you could have gone from being the man you were just a few months before
to being one of them.” She was shaking her head now and looked close to tears.
“I still went back to Jersey to look for you. I went back in April ’46, but the
house was empty.”

Christopher raised his hands to his
head. “I was still in the internment camp then. My family were all still in
Germany. Even Tom had come over to Germany to be with Alexandra then.” The
frustration of Rebecca looking for him in Jersey was almost too much for him.

“No one knew where you were.” Her
voice was leaden. “I should have kept looking for you but I had no money and
staying in Jersey was too painful for me without you. I did try. I asked and
some said that you were collaborators, but I still couldn’t believe it. It took
me a long time to accept something that wasn’t the truth. I had to. It was the
only way for me to go on.”

“My father was the first to go back,
but that wasn’t until months after you were there.” Christopher leant up
against the wall, the frustration draining him. But that was past. He brought
his head back up. “You know who I am now. It took you nine years, but you know
who I am now.”

She nodded her head and smiled, reaching
out to embrace him. It felt wonderful.

The elevator arrived at the lobby and
Christopher stood back to let Rebecca out. The elevator attendant stared around
the door as they walked towards the door and out onto Broadway.

“I think it’s up this way,” Rebecca
said as they turned up towards the park. It was a warm evening, the streets
thick with people.

“So what happened, Rebecca? Where
were you? Your father told me that you had been killed, that you had struck a
guard.”

“The part about hitting the guard was
true.” She smiled and turned to him. “We’ve spoken about my family now, but how
are yours? I’ve thought about them so much over the years.”

“They’re fine, Rebecca, we’ll get to
all that. Please, the questions about you have been burning a hole in my mind
for as long as I can remember.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather
talk about this lovely weather we’ve been having?” Rebecca smiled. Christopher
turned his head sideways to look at her, almost bumping into a large middle-aged
woman who glared at him as he edged around her. Rebecca reached across to him,
taking his elbow before she began to speak again. “After I hit the guard, I was
brought before the Commandant of the camp. I had dealt with him before,
speaking on behalf of some of the female prisoners. I was sure he was going to
execute me, but he didn’t. He liked me for some reason and decided to transfer
me rather than have me killed.”

“I can guess why he liked you.”
Christopher felt his voice thick, tried to disguise the feelings behind it, to
understand.
 
But she didn’t even
look at him, just kept talking, and he was glad.

“I was transferred to Westerbork in
Holland. Westerbork was an assembly point, a place for Jews, gypsies and
political prisoners to gather before being sent off to the concentration camps
to be killed. Many of the people that I oversaw in Westerbork would have been
sent to Auschwitz.” Christopher nodded, remembered the Dutch Jews coming
through. Two of his ladies had been Dutch. “I stayed there for a few months
before I was shipped out to Buchenwald. I arrived just after the winter ended,
in February 1944. I was there until March of ‘45 when I was shipped out with
several thousand others. We were put on a train. They were taking us to be
gassed, trying to kill us while they still could, but I managed to escape after
a few days, going back and forth between stations. I hid out in the woods until
some British troops found me. That was in April 1945.”

Christopher thought of where he was
then, being arrested in Dachau despite the protests of the prisoners, who sent
a delegation to speak to the American officers on his behalf. He looked across
at her and they walked in silence for a few seconds. The sign for 58
^th
street came into their view. Columbus Circle and the park were directly ahead.
“What was it like in Buchenwald? How bad was it?” They were crossing the street
as he asked.
 

Rebecca shook her head and
Christopher saw the tears come. “It’s hard to talk about it here on the street.
I want to tell you, Christopher, I want to tell you everything. But it’s hard.”

“I understand.” They walked across
Columbus Circle to the entrance to the park and continued through in silence.
“Why didn’t I find you? I’m sure the people I had searching for you would have
checked the camps you were in.”

“The Commandant of Biberach made me
change my name so that I couldn’t be traced by his superiors.”

“So he really did like you?” It was
hard to look at her now. Christopher had seen when officers took a liking to
female prisoners enough times in the camp himself.

“I suppose he did,” she said, looking
at the ground.

“What did you change your name to?”

“Rebecca Klein. I chose it at random,
but that was my name for the remainder of my time in the camps, not that your
name mattered.”

“So when I had your father
transferred to Auschwitz he really did think you were dead?”

“Yes, I suppose at that time he did think
so. The Commandant at Biberach had me transferred that night. He wanted the
guards to think that I had been executed too. I never saw any of the prisoners
there again, not until after the war anyway.” Rebecca looked up along the
street and took a breath and turned to Christopher. They were slowing now,
their steps languid and faint against the flow of people around them.
“Christopher, all that you did in Auschwitz, organizing the release of the
children, bribing officials, smuggling out children yourself, were you ever
scared?”

Christopher let out a laugh and shook
his head. “I was terrified, all the time, constantly afraid from the moment I
woke up in the morning to when I fell asleep at night.” He was looking at her
now as he spoke and she turned her eyes to his as they walked along, the trees
enveloping them overhead. “The worst part was not having an ally, someone to
talk to, to be able to tell someone the real reason that I was there. After a
while the Sonderkommandos and the ladies in Canada realized who I was, but I
could never truly let them in. It was just too dangerous. I had to keep them at
a distance. But was I scared? Yes, I was. The fact that I got to see my family
every two weeks was what saved me. I don’t think I could have gotten through
without their support.”

“Yes, how is your family? I think
about them all the time.”

“Not me, no?” He laughed.

“The SS officer?” Rebecca smiled.
“No, I tried to put you out of my mind, Christopher. I didn’t know what to
think.”

“But you know now. You know who I am
now.” The thought that his plan to get Rebecca back had separated them was
jagged in his heart. He tried to hide it. It was hard to tell if she noticed or
not but she must have known.

“Yes, I do, but answer the question.”
The old mischief was in her eyes, or at least a version of what was once there.

Christopher smiled and shook his
head. “It’s good to see that age hasn’t changed you, that…everything that
happened hasn’t changed you.”

“I never said that my experience
hadn’t changed me.” Her smiled faded and they were silent for a few seconds.
“Anyway, anyway, anyway, how is your family?”

“Yes, my family, they’re splendid.
They’re all back in Jersey.”

“All of them?”

“Yes, they eventually all made it
back, some later than others.” Christopher felt the words stall within him and
had to push them out. “Yes, well, they’re all back there now. Alexandra went
back to Tom after the war. They live just outside St Helier. They have six kids
now.”

“Six kids?”

“Yes, six, you could say they’re
making up for lost time. It seems every time Alex turns around these days she’s
pregnant again. I think Tom only has to look at her to impregnate her.” They
both laughed. “They deserve it though, for everything they went through.”

“They’re great people. I’d love to
see them again.” Christopher tried to jump in, but Rebecca continued. “What
about your father? I’ve missed him so much all these years. Breaking up with
you was so much harder because of him. The thought of never seeing him again
made it even more painful.”

“I never realized we broke up. I
thought we were still together after all these years.” Christopher smiled at
her again and could see she was fumbling for the right words. “I know. You
thought I was a Nazi,” he said. Her smile was the signal for him to continue.
“My father is doing very well. I saw him last week. We live together with my
daughter and my nephew Stefan.”