Leon Uris (15 page)

At night Karen asked herself the same question that every Jew had asked of himself since the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed and the Jews were dispersed to the four corners of the earth as eternal drifters two thousand years before. Karen asked herself, “Why me?” Each day brought her closer to that moment when she would write the Hansens and ask to return to them forever.

Then one morning Galil rushed into Karen’s barrack and half dragged her to the administration building, where she was introduced to a Dr. Brenner, a new refugee at La Ciotat.

“Oh, God!” Karen cried as she heard the news. “Are you certain?”

“Yes,” Brenner answered, “I am absolutely positive. You see, I knew your father in the old days. I was a teacher in Berlin. We often exchanged correspondence and met at conventions. Yes, my dear, we were in Theresienstadt together and I saw him last only a few weeks before the war ended.”

A
WEEK LATER
Karen received a letter from the Hansens stating that there had been inquiries from the Refugee Organization as to her whereabouts, as well as questions as to whether the Hansens had any information about her mother or brothers.

It was assumed that the inquiries came from Johann Clement or from someone in his behalf. Karen surmised from this that her father and mother had been separated and he was unaware of her death and the death of the brothers. The next letter from the Hansens stated that they had replied but the Refugee Organization had lost contact with Clement.

But he was alive! Every horrible moment of the months in the camps in Sweden, Belgium, and La Ciotat was worth it now! Once again she found the courage to search for her past.

Karen wondered why La Ciotat was being supported by money from Jews in America. After all, there was everything in the camp but Americans. She asked Galil, who shrugged. “Zionism is a first person asking money from a second person to give to a third person to send a fourth person to Palestine.”

“It is good,” Karen said, “that we have friends who stick together.”

“We also have enemies who stick together,” Galil answered.

The people at La Ciotat certainly looked and acted much like any other people, Karen thought. Most of them seemed just as confused by being Jewish as she was.

When she had learned enough Hebrew to handle herself she ventured into the religious compound to observe the weird rituals, the dress and prayer of those people who were truly different. The vastness of the sea of Judaism can drown a girl of fifteen. The religion was based on a complex set of laws. Some were written and some were oral. They covered the most minute of subjects, such as how to pray on a camel. The holiest of the holy were the five books of Moses, the Torah.

Once again Karen turned to her Bible. This time what she read seemed to throw new light and have new meaning for her and she would think for hours about lines like the cry of the prophet Isaiah: “
We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noon day as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men. We roar like bears, and mourn sore like doves ... we look for salvation, but it is far off from us
...”

These words seemed to fit the situation at La Ciotat. Her Bible was filled with stories of bondage and freedom, and she tried to apply these things to herself and her family.

“
Look from heaven and see how we have become a scorn and a derision among the nations; we are accounted as sheep and brought the slaughter to be slain and destroyed or to be smitten and reproached. Yet, despite all this, we have not forgotten thy Name; we beseech thee, forget us not ...
”

And again the path would end in confusion. Why would God let six million of His people be killed? Karen concluded that only the experiences of life would bring her the answer, someday.

The inmates of La Ciotat seethed with a terrible desire to leave Europe behind them and get to Palestine. The only force that kept them from turning into a wild mob was the presence of the Palmachniks from Palestine.

They cared little about the war of intrigue that raged about them between the British and the Mossad Aliyah Bet. They did not care about British desperation to hold onto the Middle East or oil or canals or traditional co-operation with the Arabs.

For a brief instant a year earlier everyone’s hopes had soared as the Labour party swept into power and with it promises to turn Palestine into a model mandate with open immigration. Talk was even revived of making Palestine a member of the British Commonwealth.

The promises exploded as the Labour Government listened to the voice of black gold that bubbled beneath Arab sand. The decisions were delayed for more study, more commissions, more talk, as it had been for twenty-five years.

But nothing could curb the craving of the Jews in La Ciotat to get to Palestine. Mossad Aliyah Bet agents poured all over Europe looking for Jewish survivors and leading them through friendly borders with bribes, forgery, stealing, or any other means short of force.

A gigantic game was played as the scene shifted from one country to another. From the very beginning France and Italy allied themselves with the refugees in open co-operation with the Mossad. They kept their borders open to receive refugees and to establish camps. Italy, occupied by British troops, was severely hampered, so France became the major refugee center.

Soon places like La Ciotat were bulging. The Mossad answered with illegal immigration. Every seaport of Europe was covered by Mossad agents who used the money sent them by American Jews to purchase and refit boats to run the British blockade into Palestine. The British not only used their navy but their embassies and consulates as counter-spying centers against the Mossad.

Leaky little boats of the Mossad Aliyah Bet, overloaded with desperate people, set out for Palestine, only to be caught by the British as soon as they entered the three-mile zone. The refugees would be interned in yet another camp, this one in Atlit in Palestine.

After Karen learned her father was alive she, too, became swept up in the desire to get to Palestine. It seemed natural to her that her father would come to Palestine also.

Although she was only fifteen she was drawn into the Palmach group, whose members held nightly campfires and told wonderful stories of the Land of Milk and Honey and sang wonderful oriental songs right out of the Bible. They joked and spun tall yarns all night long and they would call, “Dance, Karen, dance!”

She was made a section chief to take care of a hundred children and prepare them for the moment a Mossad boat would take them to run the blockade into Palestine.

The British quota for Palestine was only fifteen hundred a month, and they always took old people or those too young to fight. Men grew beards and grayed their hair to look old, but such ruses usually didn’t work.

In April of 1946, nine months after Karen had left Denmark, Galil gave her the great news one day. “An Aliyah Bet ship is coming in in a few days and you and your section are going on it.”

Karen’s heart nearly tore through her dress.

“What is the name of it?”

“The
Star of David
,” Galil answered.

B
RITISH
CID
HAD A RUNNING
acquaintance with the Aegean tramp steamer,
Karpathos
. They knew the instant the
Karpathos
was purchased in Salonika by the Mossad Aliyah Bet. They followed the movements of the eight-hundred-ton, forty-five-year-old tramp to Piraeus, the port of Athens where an American Aliyah Bet crew boarded her and sailed her to Genoa, Italy. They observed as the
Karpathos
was refitted into an immigrant runner and they knew the exact instant she left and sailed toward the Gulf of Lions.

The entire southern coast of France was alive with CID men. A twenty-four-hour watch was thrown around La Ciotat for signs of a large-scale movement. A dozen major and minor French officials were bribed. Pressure came from Whitehall to Paris to prevent the
Karpathos
from getting inside French territorial waters. But British pressure and bribes had no effect. French co-operation with Aliyah Bet remained solid. The
Karpathos
moved inside the three-mile zone.

The next stage of the game was set. A half-dozen trial runs were made from La Ciotat to trick and divert the British. Trucks were donated by the French teamsters and driven by French drivers. When the British were thoroughly confused, the real break was made. Sixteen hundred refugees, Karen’s section included, were sped out from La Ciotat to a secret rendezvous point along the coast. The entire area was blocked off from outside traffic by the French Army. The trucks unloaded the refugees on a quiet beach and they were transferred by rubber boats to the ancient
Karpathos
, which waited offshore.

The line of rubber boats moved back and forth all night. The strong hands of the American crew lifted the anxious escapees aboard. Palmach teams on board quickly moved each boatload to a predesignated section. A knapsack, a bottle of water, and an obsession to leave Europe was all the refugees had.

Karen’s children, the youngest, were boarded first and given a special position in the hold. They were placed below deck near the ladder which ran to the deck. She worked quickly to calm them down. Fortunately most of them were too numbed with excitement and exhaustion and fell right off to sleep. A few cried, but she was right there to comfort them.

An hour passed, and two and three, and the hold began to get crowded. On came the refugees until the hold was so packed there was scarcely an inch to move in any direction.

Then they began filling up the deck space topside and when that was crammed they flooded over onto the bridge.

Bill Fry, an American and captain of the ship, came down the ladder and looked over the crush of humanity in the hold and whistled. He was a stocky man with a stubbly beard and an unlit cigar butt clenched between his teeth.

“You know, the Boston fire department would raise hell if they ever saw a room like this,” Bill mumbled.

He stopped talking and began to listen. From the shadows a very sweet voice was singing a lullaby. He pushed his way down the ladder and stepped over the bodies and turned a flashlight on Karen, who was holding a little boy in her arms and singing him to sleep. For an instant he thought he was looking at the Madonna! He blinked his eyes. Karen looked up and motioned him to take the flashlight off her.

“Hey, kid ... you speak English?” Bill’s gruff voice said.

“Yes.”

“Where is the section head of these kids?”

“I am the section head and I’ll thank you to lower your voice. I’ve had enough trouble getting them quieted down.”

“I’ll talk as loud as I want. I’m the captain. You ain’t no bigger than most of these kids.”

“If you run your ship as well as I run this section,” Karen snapped angrily, “then we will be in Palestine by morning.”

He scratched his bearded jaw and smiled. He certainly didn’t look like the dignified Danish ship’s captains, Karen thought, and he was only pretending to be hard.

“You’re a nice kid. If you need something you come up on the bridge and see me. And you be more respectful.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“That’s all right. Just call me Bill. We’re all from the same tribe.”

Karen watched as he climbed the ladder, and she could see the first crack of daylight. The
Karpathos
was crammed with as many people as she could hold—sixteen hundred refugees, hanging from every inch of her. The half-rusted anchor creaked up and slapped against the sides of her wooden hulk. The forty-five-year-old engines coughed and sputtered and reluctantly churned into action. A fog bank enshrouded them as though God Himself were giving cover, and the old ship chugged away from the shores of France at her top speed of seven knots an hour. In a matter of moments she was beyond the three-mile zone and into the waters of no man’s land. The first round had been won by the Mossad Aliyah Bet! A blue and white Jewish flag was struck to the mast, and the
Karpathos
changed her name to the
Star of David
.

The boat bounced miserably. The lack of ventilation in the overjammed holds turned everyone pale. Karen worked with the Palmach teams feeding lemons and applying compresses to stave off a major epidemic of vomiting. When lemons failed, she went to work quickly with the mop. She found that the best way to keep things quiet was to sing and invent games and tell funny stories.

She had the children under control but by noon the heat worsened and the air grew more rancid, and soon the stench of sweat and vomit became unbearable in the semilit hold. Men stripped to shorts and women to their brassières, and their bodies glistened with sweat. An outbreak of fainting began. Only the unconscious were taken up on deck. There was simply no room for the others.

Three doctors and four nurses, all refugees from La Ciotat, worked feverishly. “Get food into their stomachs,” they ordered. Karen coaxed, coddled, and shoved food down the mouths of her children. By evening she was passing out sedatives and giving sponge baths. She washed them sparingly, for water was very scarce.

At last the sun went down and a breath of air swept into the hold. Karen had worked herself into exhaustion, and her mind was too hazy to permit her to think sharply. She fell into only a half sleep with an instinctive reflex that brought her awake the second one of her children cried. She listened to every creak of the old ship as it labored for Palestine. Toward morning she dozed off completely into a thick dream-riddled sleep filled with annoying confusion.

A sudden roar brought her awake with a start. She looked up the ladder and it was daylight. Karen pushed her way up. Everyone was pointing to the sky where a huge four-engined bomber hovered over them.

“British! Lancaster Bomber!”

“Everyone return to your places and be calm,” the loud-speaker boomed.

Karen rushed back to the hold where the children were frightened and crying. She began singing at the top of her voice urging the children to follow: