All God's Children (37 page)

“So this holy spirit—it is like any part of us—heart, brain, muscle?”

“Oh, Rabbi, I am not as educated as you are. You tell me.”

“But what do you think, child?”

Beth could answer this easily, for both her parents had instilled the answer in her from childhood. “I think that if we do not feed and nurture that spirit in the same ways that we care for every other part of our being, then it will wither…and in some cases die.”

The three of them sat for a long time staring at the glow of the fires and barely noticing anymore the stench of burned bodies that permeated the camp day and night. After a while Rabbi Weiss stood up. “You have given me renewed hope, Elizabeth, and I am grateful.” He walked back toward the men’s barracks, and Beth saw that despite his gratitude he still walked as if he carried the burdens of the world on his bony shoulders.

As each day and week passed with stupefying sameness, the man who slept above Josef scratched a mark into the side of his bunk. Using that as his abacus, Josef knew that more than two months had passed since he and Beth had arrived in the camp. The idea that they had been sent to this place to use their skills as doctor and nursemaid had long since been abandoned. Josef worked in the dispensary handing out medicines to their captors while Beth sorted through the mountains of clothing, shoes, purses, and other effects of the dead. Josef spent every waking minute thinking about how he and Beth might get out of this place. He took every opportunity to study the terrain beyond the wire fences. The area behind the barracks for men had been doubly secured with the tall fences and a deep ditch filled with water, but outside of Lager II near the main tower and opposite the main gate was a vegetable garden.

In spite of the fact that—even now that it was May—there was still the possibility of a frost, the onions and radishes and other vegetables the prisoners planted were beginning to flourish. Of course most of the produce went to feed the officers and Ukrainian guards. The prisoners still received their daily ration of bread and coffee, and on special occasions they might get a cup of watery soup. But when the commandant had called for volunteers to tend the garden during roll call a few weeks earlier, Josef had been the first to step forward. As he did, he had nodded to Beth and was relieved when she stepped forward as well. Then so did Anja and finally Rabbi Weiss.

“Well, well, well,” Reichleitner had remarked. “So eager to help. Let me be clear that any one of you caught stealing so much as a kernel of corn will be shot.”

But it was not the bounty of the garden that interested Josef. It was its position close to the fence. It was the fact that the space was partially blocked by the shoe warehouse and the stables. It was his observation that if he and Beth could somehow make it from the garden past the stables and on to the trees that ran along one side of Himmelstrasse, they might be able to cut through the three wire fences and make it to the woods beyond.

One evening as he took his time setting up a small trellis for the beans to climb, he stared at the trees beyond the fence, trying to estimate the distance they would have to run to take cover.

“Don’t,” a voice said softly. “Others have tried. You’ll never make it, and others will pay the price.”

Josef glanced sideways and saw that his counselor was a Kapo— one of the few that he knew the other prisoners trusted. The Kapo walked on, pacing around the perimeter of the garden, occasionally reprimanding the rabbi or Anja in a loud voice meant to assure the guard watching from the tower that he had everything under control.

The next day as they went off to their assigned jobs, the prisoners noticed a flurry of activity outside the triple fence on three sides of the camp. Earlier that week the train had arrived, but the passengers had not cooperated when ordered to assemble in two groups. Instead they had panicked and begun running in all directions, throwing themselves against the gates and fencing, crawling beneath the cars of the train, only to face more fencing.

Those working in the various shops and storerooms were ordered to remain at their posts away from windows. Outside they heard the staccato firing of multiple machine guns punctuated by the pop of individual bullets fired from a handgun or rifle and the shrieks of the newly arrived prisoners. It took less than an hour to restore order. Afterward the battered and wounded prisoners were shuttled through the usual routine and ordered to leave their belongings with no pretense that these items would be returned to them later.

That night the glow coming from Lager III had appeared brighter than ever, taunting them. As he now did every evening, Rabbi Weiss gathered the other prisoners together in the yard to say kaddish or the prayer of mourning.

“They are mining the fields around the camp with explosives,” Josef’s bunkmate told him that night. “Three sides.”

“What about the fourth?” Josef whispered.

“I don’t know—too close to the main railroad tracks and the road to the village maybe.”

“I heard there were partisans in the woods, and that worries them,” another voice added from the dark. “They don’t want those who might come to our rescue to get close enough to do anything.”

The next day, ordered to put on the blue coveralls of a railway worker and stand at the track for the next shipment of Jews to arrive, Josef focused all of his attention on the area that lay beyond the siding. He saw there were only two fences and a guard tower positioned at either end. Beyond that was the main track and the road. And beyond that lay farmland and woods…and freedom.

When Josef told Beth of his plan, she felt a fresh wave of fear. The stories of what happened to those who tried to escape were legend throughout the camp. Even if someone succeeded, the others paid a heavy price.

“Josef, even if we could do this, what of the others?”

“We can’t save everyone,” Josef argued.

“Then we cannot do this.”

“Beth, we are prisoners of war—a war we had nothing to do with starting. A war we did what we could to stop, but nevertheless here we are. This is the price we all pay.”

“And so it is all right that others should die so that I can be free?”

She knew that Josef did not understand her. She knew that he had thought she would be as excited as he was that he had come up with a plan.

She heard him take a breath, and then he tried again. “If one of the women you work with were to make it out, would you deny her that freedom? What if that woman were Anja?”

“It does not matter who the person is, Josef. I would be thankful for the deliverance from this horrid place. But I cannot do anything that I know will endanger the lives of others. Such an action would go against everything I believe, and other than you and my love for you, the only thing I have left is my faith.”

“You would die here?”

“Josef, how do we know what God’s plan is for any of us? Was there some purpose in the deaths of Sophie and Hans and the others? I believe that we live out our lives as a tiny part of a greater plan. I will not question that.”

“I know that. It’s just that if it had not been for me, you wouldn’t be here. You could be home with your family safe in America. You
should
be,” he added as his voice broke.

“And I had no say in this at all? What a short and selective memory you have, my husband.”

“Some husband,” he grumbled, and she understood that for the first time since she’d met him that Josef doubted himself. He was a man of action—a man dedicated to doing whatever it took to make things right.

From the open door of the women’s barracks she heard Anja laughing. She took Josef’s hand and stood. “Come with me.”

She led him to the doorway where inside Anja and some of the other women were dancing to the music provided by one woman playing a battered violin. The dance was a Jewish folk dance—one that Anja and the others had taught Beth. They danced with abandon, their heads thrown back, their arms raised, their laughter only adding to the music.

“You did that,” Beth reminded Josef. “Anja would not be alive today if you had not found her and Benjamin and the children.”

“Benjamin and the baby are dead,” he reminded her.

“But Anja and hopefully Daniel are alive.”

“This is not living,” Josef told her as he walked away. She shuddered at the bitterness in his tone.

Together they walked back into the darkness and took their places on the bench they had come to think of as theirs. Beth curled into the hollow of his side, inviting him to put his arm around her. When he did, she closed her eyes and waited for words that might reassure him, that might steer him from this dangerous path.

As the others began moving back toward their respective barracks, Josef stood up. He kissed her but did not move away. “I know that you believe that if we make it out they will make Anja pay the price.”

Beth breathed a sigh of relief. Finally he understood.

“That’s why we have to take her with us,” he added as he kissed her again and then ran for his barracks to beat the curfew.

Now that Josef had the plan in mind, he realized that he had only scratched the surface of what it would take for him to execute it. So many details. How to get Beth and Anja and himself together at the same time to make their move. He would need wire cutters for the fencing. And the best time to go would be after dark. What about food and water and medical supplies in case of an emergency? In case one of them was shot or fell or was cut by the barbed wire and developed an infection?

With every new thought, his spirits plummeted. But each night after he sat with Beth, holding her hand as they closed their eyes and waited together for guidance from within, he felt a little more certain that God was indeed leading him to consider a plan for escape.

He was thinking about all of this one stifling late-July day when he had been sent to work the garden instead of his regular job. He had considered the shovel he used to dig potatoes as a possible substitute for wire cutters. The handle was already loose, and if he could secure the blade beneath his clothing somehow and bury the wooden handle in the garden, perhaps he could hack at the wire with the blade of the shovel. But that brought to mind the noise that metal on metal would make. He was beginning to feel a kind of desperation that was almost like a fever.

Suddenly the Kapo grabbed Josef’s shovel and examined it. “You have ruined this,” he shouted, waving the tool in Josef’s face as he pulled the handle free. “Take it to the carpenter now,” he ordered, thrusting the two pieces at Josef.

Josef knew better than to question the man. “Schnell!” the Kapo ordered.

Josef stepped into the shop where he saw Leon Feldhendler, a former mill owner and rabbi’s son, sanding a board. “Doktor,” he said politely as he relieved Josef of the broken tool and passed it to another man. He indicated that Josef should sit.

“Rumor has it that you are planning to try and take your wife and perhaps the Danish woman and attempt an escape.”

Josef did not reply but kept his eyes on the man repairing the shovel.

“I am asking that you not do this thing,” Leon continued. His tone was conversational, nonthreatening, and polite.

Josef glanced at him.