The Masada Faktor (7 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

F
i
rst things first. I went back to Haifa to wrap things up. Something was nagging me about Tajir, the Arab. I wanted to see if I could find him again and try to see if his story about being Millie’s acquaintance matched hers. Rethinking all that she said, especially that Tajir was half German, raised a red flag for me.

I had read about the younger German Templars in Israel during World War II who had become mesmerized by Hitler. They had gone back to Germany during the war to assist the Nazis in destroying the European Jews. Seventeen percent of the Templars in Palestine were members of the Nazi party by 1938.

Due to the fact that the Templars did not embrace a uniform religious ideology, they were easy prey to Hitler’s National Socialism. Official Third Reich policy included all international German communities to embrace Naziism.
Mein Kampf
was being distributed to all Templar communities and schools, including in Israel.

When World War II started, 1,000 of these Nazis were put in internment camps in Sarona, then deported to Australia and Germany.

The community house and local school,
Beit Hava’ad,
built in 1871 flew the swastika for seven years until 1943. To think that Nazi flags flew from the Templar buildings in Sarona, now a neighborhood in Tel Aviv, made me sick.

Then
Irgun
fighters, the Zionist military organization that operated from 1931-1948 planted a bomb by the building which injured the mayor of Sarona, a fanatic disciple of Hitler and the Nazi party.

My research showed that out of all the German Templars expelled during World War II, 345 had remained in Palestine. Supposedly the ones that remained in the Holy Land denounced Naziism. David Ben Gurion changed the name Sarona to The Kiryah. In 2006 the name was changed back to Sarona, when it was decided to restore all of the buildings.

I speculated about the connection between Millie and Tajir. It was a hunch but was it all connected? Millie and her German grandfather who wasn’t Jewish, and the offer of an apartment. I didn’t have enough evidence to discourage me from moving to Tel Aviv.

I made a doctor’s appointment on Moriah Street with the so-called Anglo doctor to discuss a recurring issue that I had with vertigo. I had suffered from vertigo for a long time but lately there seemed to be other happenings that were related to it. This doctor had been recommended by all the Anglo expatriates that I knew.

Arriving at the office, I was shocked to see that the receptionist had a thing for cats. Her name was Edna, and her entire office was filled with a cat collection. It contained many porcelain cat figurines, stuffed cat toys, wooden cats, stone cats, cat calendars, cat posters, framed photos and paintings of cats, and even a cat bobble head. Was she actually wearing cat earrings? I was weirded out and disgusted to see this in a doctor’s office.

The doctor had no idea what was causing my vertigo episodes. He looked in my ears and took my vitals. He told me the condition was usually attributed to inner ear problems but because I had started to black out after them, he was not certain my case was so.

He wanted me to return for some testing but I told him I was moving to Tel Aviv. He recommended that I choose another doctor over there. He also suggested that I visit a psychologist.

“Do you think this vertigo is psychosomatic?” I was taken aback by this. “Can I be imaging that I get dizzy and the room spins, and then I black out?” In my mind I thought, Screw you, doc.

“It is possible that stress is bringing this on. I think you should cover all avenues if this is something that bothers you.” The doctor concluded the appointment.

I said goodbye to the doctor and Edna and left the office.

The next morning I went over to the Haifa City Museum on Ben Gurion Street. It was in the German Colony near The Bahá’í Gardens. The museum was recently built from a grant from Germany. I sauntered through and read all the information that was in English.

I perceived anti-Zionist insinuations in the information on some of the plaques regarding what happened in 1948. One mentioned Zionist propaganda and proclaimed that the 1950’s photos by Jewish photographers depicted the Arabs as inferior and underdeveloped.

The one thing I did enjoy was a video presentation about the Carmelite Subway. It was actually a black and white cartoon of a boy traveling on it. The music was good and it made me smile.

It was quiet in there and I may have been the only visitor. I was upset by the tone of the information in the museum. There was an outdoor, interior courtyard to the museum and I went there and sat down on a bench in the shade to think.

It was quiet out there also, being an out of the way place, and not accessible from the street. I was writing some things in my spiral notebook when I looked up to see the same Arab, Tajir, standing in front of me. Oh good, I thought, I can ask him some questions.

But he abruptly grabbed me by the hair and pulled me down off the bench. He jumped on top of me and put his hands around my neck. His face was much too close to mine and what I noticed was that his breath and clothes smelled of cigarettes. Then I saw stars in my eyes.

He was speaking to me in German which I did not understand. A German Arab! Millie’s half German acquaintance. I was shocked and afraid. Confusing thoughts swirled inside my brain and it occurred to me that I could die at the hands of a German. Abruptly my fear turned to anger, which was a good thing. The anger rose up in me and gave me strength. I was able to push him off.

I started to fight back. He backed up and I came after him and scratched his face. He kept punching at me and landed a few blows but I was able to block most of them.

My karate training from the old days was still in my head and I did a roundhouse kick that landed on his chest. Wishing I had a weapon, I remembered that my house key was in the right hand pocket of my shorts.

We fell to the ground again, wrestling, and I was screaming for help but no one was coming. I pulled the key out of my shorts’ pocket and put it between my index and third fingers with the sharp end pointing out.

Somehow, with all my force and with an undercut punch that came to mind, I aimed exactly for his scrotum. He wailed like the dog he was and rolled away from me. I decided to step on his head as hard as I could and then I ran into the museum and went for the exit. I continued running without looking behind me and hailed a taxi. “Get me out of here, as fast as you can.”

Back at my place I called the police so that if anyone was watching they’d see the police car. The police came, and I told the officers I thought the perpetrator was stalking me. I asked if they would circle my place during the night, just in case I was followed. They agreed, and assured me that they would be nearby if I needed them. I iced my bruises which were mostly on my neck.

I phoned Millie to tell her what had happened and she started back peddling about her friendship with Tajir. She explained that she didn’t really know him, had met him in a bar, and only asked for a favor because he was part German and lived in Haifa. She adamantly advised me to keep my door locked and said if she heard from him she would call the police.

“I am so very sorry that I got you involved with Tajir. I can’t imagine why he came after you like that. I should have never involved someone that I met in a bar. Please come to live with me Natasha, I promise that Tajir will never bother you again!”

I wanted so badly to move to Tel Aviv that I made myself believe what Millie was saying. So I kept busy packing, and making arrangements for a mover to get my things to the new place in Tel Aviv. But the next day was
Yom HaZikaron
, Israel Memorial Day and no one was working, so I couldn’t go yet.

The movers would come in two days because the next day after Memorial Day was
Yom Ha’atzmaut
, Israel
Independence Day. I put a can of bug spray and a big kitchen knife by the door, just in case.

Perhaps it was the German Arab who had been in my place messing with my laptop. But it was too overwhelming and I had to let it go until the movers got me out of there.

I stayed up most of the night getting ready to move and then slept a few hours in the morning. That night I dreamt of cats. Undomesticated cats are everywhere in Israel living near the garbage and wherever kindly Israelis leave food out for them. They keep the rat population in control but no one limits the cat population, which is out of control.

In the dream I was back at the doctor’s office and Edna the receptionist was actually the doctor. I was in the exam room and she came in and several cats entered the room with her.

Edna said, “Take your clothes off, the cats will now examine you. They are not actually cats, they are reincarnated
Palmach
fighters, our boys that volunteered to go to Europe during World War II to fight Hitler.”

At that point the cats were not cats anymore, or
Palmach
fighters, either. They were men wearing SS uniforms, and they were all old. They encircled me on the examination table and all began to touch me at the same time. I realized I was tied down. I began to scream.