For Such a Time (20 page)

They nodded and smiled in agreement. Morty shifted uncertainly. “I was . . . right?”

“Come, sit down, you poor man. Eat, eat,” Mrs. Brenner said, herding him into a chair. She placed the steaming bowl and biscuits in front of him. “What’s the matter with your legs, Morty?” she asked. “And your face!” Before he could answer, she added, “We heard about the Kleine Festung. You’re lucky to be alive.” She leaned to inspect his swollen jaw, clucking her tongue in concern.

“Ja,” Morty murmured, his attention completely absorbed by the smells of beef lard and spices rising from the bowl. He ripped off a chunk of biscuit and stuffed it into his mouth. “They beat the soles of my feet,” he managed between painful chews.

“That commandant is a devil!”

Morty shook his head. “I heard him order Sergeant Koch to
keep me intact for questioning—no abuse. But Koch chose to disobey those orders.”

“Ja, and just see where that got him,” Mrs. Brenner huffed in a righteous tone.

The bread turned to a dry lump in Morty’s throat. “I saw what remains of him, in the yard with Brucker. Is my girl . . . is she all right?” he asked.

“Not only all right,” Mrs. Brenner said in a conspiratorial whisper as she glanced at the other faces around the table, “she’s our salvation!”

Morty’s head jerked up. Mrs. Brenner stood beside him, smiling, her straight white teeth a startling contrast to the rest of her neglected features.

He looked around the table. Everyone grinned.

“I’m sorry I ever doubted you, my friend,” Yaakov spoke up. “I should have believed your vision from God, especially after our food improved. But then she saved them—one hundred and sixty of them—including Mrs. Brenner’s daughter, Clara.” He nodded toward the beaming aproned woman.

Morty gaped at them, confused. “My . . . maideleh . . . saved . . . ?”

“The lists, Morty!” Mrs. Brenner’s excited tone filled his ears. “Ask Lenny, he’ll tell you!”

“Lenny . . . ?” Helplessly, Morty turned to the lanky twenty-five-year-old seated at the table. Lenny Buszak had been an engineer’s apprentice with the railroad in Krakow. Tall and sallow-faced, the young Pole’s oversized Adam’s apple made him look skinnier than he actually was.

“Ja, what she says is true, Elder,” Lenny said, doffing his cap in respect. “I was cleaning the toilet down the hall from Captain Hermann’s office on the day his sergeant’s typewriter broke. Herr Captain was very upset—I think it was the same day the phone lines fell down.”

Lenny swallowed, and his Adam’s apple slid along the column
of his throat like a bobber tugged beneath the water. “I heard the captain say he would take the cards to Herr Kommandant’s secretary to be typed.”

“Don’t you see?” Yaakov interjected. “One hundred sixty people who were originally notified to transport never got called to actually board the train!” He slammed his hand down against the table. “I don’t know how she did it, my friend, but your girl even fooled that motherless whelp Hermann!”

Yaakov seemed to gurgle with pleasure. The spoonful of stew Morty had raised to his lips fell back into the bowl with a loud
plop
. “You think she . . . my niece . . . purposely shaved the lists?”

They nodded at him in unison.

“Oi!” Morty launched from his chair to gape at each of them. Fear squeezed his chest like a vise. “Dear God, what if she’s caught? What if they deport her?” His memory flashed to the two men at the gallows. “Or worse!”

Narrowed glances rebounded at him from around the table. Mrs. Brenner snatched away his half-eaten bowl of stew. “Which is worse, Morty Benjamin, your maideleh or my Clara?” Her voice turned acrid. “It’s no secret you’re the one who makes up the lists. You get to decide who stays and who goes.”

She tried grabbing the remaining biscuit. Morty was faster. He popped it whole into his mouth and glared at her.

Mrs. Brenner gave an indifferent shrug. “So if she wants to be brave and save you the trouble of a few more names on your conscience, who are you to stop her?”

Morty nearly choked on the biscuit. “You think I like the responsibility they have given me?” he questioned, spraying bits of dough across the table. “What would you have me do, give Hermann blank cards?” He slid back into his chair, feeling the old misery weigh like a stone against his heart. Selection was the most agonizing, offensive chore he’d ever performed. He culled first from those too ill to survive any length of time, then
chose from the elderly—husbands and wives often wishing to accompany each other.

They were never enough to fill the train. So the rest of the names he pulled at random from the card file in his office, until the body count Captain Hermann demanded had been met.

Morty thought of the times afterward, when such impotent rage filled him that even the most ardent prayers failed to bring him peace; the days, oftentimes weeks, that would pass before he could look into the shard of glass above his cot and tell himself there was nothing he could do, that it was God’s will. “At least I try to keep the healthy ones here,” he said on a ragged breath. “At least I try to save the children.”

Through a blur of unexpected tears, he saw the bowl of stew reappear in front of him. Mrs. Brenner pushed another biscuit in his direction. “We know, Morty.” She let out a weary sigh. “But if your maideleh wishes to lighten your burden, if she desires to be our salvation, then we think . . .” She looked to the other faces, receiving their nodded agreement. “We think you should let her.”

 23 

When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged.

Esther 3:5

C
aptain Hermann stood at his office window, letter opener still in hand as he carefully traced a finger along its honed edge. It galled him to set the Jew free. Even now the old goat was likely laughing over Hermann’s empty threat to send him back to the Little Fortress. But the commandant had ordered his release, stating that as sole Elder of the Judenrat, he must be kept alive to speak with the Red Cross delegation should they desire it.

Hermann left the window and returned to his desk—the size of a footlocker compared to the one burned to ashes. Tossing the blade aside, he pressed his palms against the wood and fought to curb his anger . . . and uncertainty.

Nothing had gone as planned. The commandant not only lived, but somehow he had foreknowledge of the attempt on his life.

Koch and Brucker dangled outside like
Rindfleisch
for the butcher.

Who had warned the commandant? Obviously the Jew was
involved; he must have been inside the room when Hermann and his men held their little conference. Hidden behind the food crates stacked along the wall? A daring feat, but not so dangerous to one who had earned a Grand Cross.

Hermann thought of his own encouragement in the murder scheme and flinched. Did the commandant know the truth and merely waited for the arrival of General Feldman? Or worse, Himmler and Eichmann? Charges made in front of such illustrious personages of the Reich would kill Hermann’s hard-won career . . . perhaps even his life. “Sonntag!” he bellowed.

“Good news, Herr Captain!” The young corporal rushed into his office and offered a crisp salute. “The telephone lines are working.” Sonntag hesitated, apparently realizing Hermann’s black mood. He dropped his arm to his side. “I . . . I thought you would be pleased, Herr Captain.”

“Pleased?” Hermann bared his teeth. “When I don’t even have a phone available to me in this broom closet?” Grabbing up the letter opener, he pointed toward the window. “When I must stand here and watch my troops as they gawk all day on two of their comrades swinging by their necks and stinking up the place? You think that should please me, Corporal?” Furious, he hurled the miniature sword at the open doorway.

It caught a surprised Sonntag on the chin, nicking his flesh.

Hermann’s face heated with rage and humiliation. How dare the commandant censure him like some green boy in short pants before the schoolmaster’s whip!

A single crimson bead rose against Sonntag’s milk-white flesh and dribbled along his jaw. Hermann took a deep breath and clutched the back of his chair, absorbing the cold steel against his palms. “Follow that Jew, Benjamin. Find out who he talks to—Jew and German alike. I want to know who he eats with and sleeps with. Report back to me every twelve hours.”

Wide-eyed, Sonntag stood transfixed.

“Go!” Hermann roared.

Sonntag jerked from his stupor. He spun and fled the small office without a salute or backward glance.

Hermann eased into his chair. He now had a plan. He could only hope it proved successful. Torturing the Jew would have been preferable, but instinct told him the old man would die before giving up any secrets. There must be someone else—and once Hermann received Sonntag’s report, he could eliminate the loose end before Himmler and Eichmann arrived. The commandant wouldn’t dare accuse him without more reliable corroboration than the word of an old Jew.

Hermann planted a fist against the desk. Koch and Brucker had screwed things up, but what did he expect? He was amazed the pair actually went through with their plan. Crippled or not, Aric von Schmidt was a seasoned warrior. They were naïve to go up against him, believing they could win.

I
would have succeeded
. He reached for the leather pistol strap at his side. While he hadn’t spouted off the way Neubach did at the commandant’s banquet, Hermann soldiered fourteen months in the Waffen-SS; he’d ranked in the top twenty percent for marksmanship in the entire B Division. Fritz Beidermann, an old schoolmate, and Lagerführer at Mauthausen, had then offered him a promotion to second lieutenant. Hermann transferred into the political SS and further promotions came swiftly—a year at the concentration camp of Mauthausen, then on to Chelmno, where he rose to the rank of SS-Obersturmführer, first lieutenant.

Theresienstadt finally won him his captain’s bars. Despite duty in a transit camp, he had no regrets. He’d surpassed the rank of his own drunkard of a father, a
Stabsgefreiter,
“career corporal” in the Great War. And he could still rid the world of Jews each time he loaded a train for Auschwitz.

I
could have taken on Aric von Schmidt last night and
won back what I lost—including the woman
. Resentment failed to wipe away the memory of her softness against him as they
danced, or the smell of her exotic perfume. And her kiss could warm more than a man’s heart during a cold, dark night . . .

She was a veritable sorceress, able to bewitch a camp commandant into becoming a Jew sympathizer. Hermann planned to be on his guard when it was his turn. And he had no doubt that after his nemesis tired of her, Stella
would
come to him. Women were weak-minded creatures, mere vessels for a man’s use. Even his own mother, after seven children, continued to breed one empty stomach after another into a house where hunger remained an unwanted guest.

Poverty was a concept the noble commandant had likely never experienced. Maybe Schmidt felt akin to the Jews, those mongering Christ-killers who bought up everything during the Great War, enjoying their rich tables while Hermann and his family starved.

He swiveled his chair around to the wall behind him and looked up at his picture of der Führer. His nostrils filled with the acrid traces of smoke still clinging to its charred frame.

His own father returned from the Front defeated. He’d chosen to face life through a haze of drink rather than work to support his family. Hermann’s mother tried to make ends meet, laundering for a Gasthaus in Leipzig, but the grueling work—and bearing so many brats—finally killed her. He’d left home after that, and at fifteen he joined the Labor Service.

Hermann had no idea what became of his father or his siblings. He didn’t care. Adolf Hitler was now his father, the men of the SS his brothers.

Had one of those brothers betrayed him?

He pushed himself up and returned to the window. Turbulent gray clouds scudded eastward, away from the camp. The only evidence of Tuesday’s storm lie in the cold, white drifts blanketing the streets.

Hermann went completely still, his mind racing. The storm had knocked out the telephone lines. Whoever warned the com
mandant of Koch and Brucker’s plan must have gone to the house to do so. Mentally he rifled through the list of his own men but couldn’t believe any of them would be in league with the Jew.

Grossman, perhaps? The sergeant
had
been in the ghetto the day of the fire. He could have forewarned the commandant and told him everything, including the fact that Hermann allowed Koch and Brucker to talk of insurrection and had done nothing to stop it.

Sweat beaded along his forehead, beneath his cap. He cursed his overactive imagination. It couldn’t be Grossman; otherwise Schmidt would have roasted Hermann on a spit
before
the attempted murder.

Impatience ate at him. Twelve hours . . . would that give the Jew enough time to hang himself? And who else would be named on Sonntag’s report? The accomplice was definitely clever. Someone who had been in the ghetto during the time of the fire but who also had access to the commandant’s house. The smaller set of prints could belong to a woman—

Shrieks of laughter from the alley below caught his attention. A cluster of ragged urchins chased each other, creating a quagmire of slush in the snow.

Dawning struck. Hermann smiled.

A woman . . . or a potato thief.