Measure of a Man (8 page)
Trust me. People knew.
In the days after liberation, I pondered these enraging facts. I desperately wanted to heal my body and locate my family. But my spirit needed mending too. When the Americans announced a U.S. Army chaplain would perform the first Jewish religious ceremony inside Buchenwald, I attended.
On April 20, 1945, Rabbi Herschel Schacter conducted the first Friday night Sabbath service. There was singing, reciting of blessings, prayer, and much weeping. It was moving. Yet all through the service the question I could not escape that night on the Death March to Gleiwitz haunted me still.
The next day Rabbi Schacter was mulling about outside the Czech barracks. In Yiddish he said, “Is there a Jew around here who can speak Yiddish?”
“I can,” I said in Yiddish.
“Thank you,” he said. “Where are the Jews around here?”
“This is the Czech barracks,” I told him. “I’m one of the few Jews here. They let me stay here because I’m from Czechoslovakia.”
“I see,” he said.
“Rabbi, I attended your service last night. It was very beautiful. But may I please ask you a question?”
“Of course,” he said.
“Rabbi, I must know: Where was God?”
He stood still and silent.
“Look what happened!” I pleaded. “Where was God? Where?”
“There are no answers to certain questions,” he said staring off in the distance. “That is a question for which there is no answer.” I lowered my head and cried. Rabbi Schacter wrapped his arms around me and held me.
Not everyone who was alive the day the Americans rolled into camp lived to tell about it. Five days after liberation, the Americans counted the prisoners again. Despite the Allies’ heroic military and medical relief efforts, a thousand prisoners had
already died. I still think about them, people who touched but could not clasp freedom.
Today the Buchenwald clock tower’s hands are permanently set to 3:15, the time of our liberation. But what of those who met their fate just moments prior? Like the men who died on the death marches when the Nazis evacuated Buchenwald days before. Or the prisoners whom the Nazis shot for their striped uniforms only hours before the Americans arrived. Or the infirmed who died in the racks minutes before liberation’s dawn. They died in that shadowless moment just beyond the speed of grace. They died as terror’s last eyewitnesses.
To have been so close, to have persevered so much, to have escaped the gas and the guns and the ovens, yet never to have been granted the chance to live free—I cry for them.
I cry for the six million innocents who died in the clutch of darkness without warrant or repose.
I cry for Mother.
I cry for Father.
I cry for Grandmother Geitel.
I cry for Grandfather Abraham.
I cry for Simcha.
I cry for Rivka.
I cry for the baby, Sruel Baer.
I cry.
P
hysically, I was free. Emotionally, I was in chains.
The SS at Buchenwald had surrendered and fled. The German army had not. That meant we were free to leave and reenter the camp as we pleased, but our safety was far from certain.
The Allies brought in caring people and organizations to help us piece together our shattered lives. But I couldn’t get my mind off the mayor’s wife. I couldn’t let go of my rage and lust for revenge. I’d made a promise to myself. And I intended to keep it. I would return to Weimar and kill her.
I located two Jewish boys who were well enough to make the walk to Weimar. I told them what the woman did and what I was prepared to do about it. We could rummage machine guns from
the mountain of German weapons seized by the inmates and Americans that lay in piles on the
Appelplatz
. The boys vowed solidarity. Having survived hell, they too were eager to see justice administered.
We left Buchenwald on foot and set out toward Weimar. The newfound freedom was odd and unsettling. No longer were marches marked by insults, beatings, and killings. Indeed, we were not “marching” at all but walking, and of our own accord. The transition from slave back to civilian disoriented me. Captivity had made freedom feel disorderly, vulnerable. Even simple things, like hearing someone call your name instead of a number, took some getting used to.
The streets outside camp were electric with an ominous sense of disquiet. A smattering of prisoners in striped pajamas ambled in search of noncamp food. I kept my eyes open for SS. We gripped our guns and got to Weimar as quickly as possible.
None of us had ever fired a machine gun. I knew my way around a basic pistol from my father’s training before he tried to hide me in the forest. This gun, however, was a different matter.
My heartbeat quickened the closer we got to the mayor’s house. Pent-up rage from all I had seen and experienced surged through me. Killing the mayor’s wife could not repay the Nazis for the terror they had inflicted on us. But it was a start.
We walked a few miles before turning down the street the mayor’s home was on. I pointed to a house several paces down the road: “I think that’s it.” The big black Mercedes was not out front. It took me a moment to make sure I had the right house.
“You sure this is it?” one of the boys asked.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“What’s the plan?” the other boy asked.
“The car isn’t here. Looks like the house is empty,” I said. “The plan is we take our guns and go in through the side door. Then we hide and wait so I can kill the blond bitch that had me beaten.”
The boys nodded.
“Okay, let’s go,” I said.
We crept up to the side door. I slowly turned the knob. It was unlocked. I entered the house quietly, with my gun drawn. The boys fell in behind me and eased the door shut. We stepped softly to mute the sounds of our wooden clogs on the floor.
“Hello?” a voice around a corner said. “Hello?”
Just then the beautiful blond woman turned the corner and let out a screech. She had the baby in her arms again.
“Don’t shoot!” she screamed. “Don’t shoot!”
“Remember me?!” I yelled. “Do you?!”
Her blond tresses shook violently. She hid her face behind her upraised hand as if shielding herself from the sun.
“You had me beaten because of the rabbits. I’m here to shoot you!” I said, sounding like an SS.
“No! Please!” she quavered. “The baby, please!”
I aimed the machine gun at her chest. The baby wailed. My finger hovered above the trigger.
“Shoot her!” one of the boys said. “Shoot her!” The woman’s outstretched hand trembled in the air. My heart pounded against my chest like a hammer.
“Shoot her!” the other boy yelled. “That’s what we came here for! Do it!”
I froze. I couldn’t do it. I could not pull the trigger. That was the moment I became human again. All the old teachings came
rushing back. I had been raised to believe that life was a precious gift from God, that women and children must be protected. Had I pulled the trigger, I would have been like Mengele. He too had faced mothers holding babies—
my
mother holding
my
baby brother—and sentenced both to gruesome deaths. My moral upbringing would not allow me to become an honorary member of the SS.
Still, extending mercy felt weak. I tried to save face in front of the boys. If I couldn’t be a hardened killer, I could at least be a car thief. “Where is the car?” I yelled.
“There is nothing,” she said.
“Where is it?!” I barked.
“It’s not here,” she said.
I lowered the gun and stomped out of the house and went around back.
“You made us come here for nothing?” one of the boys huffed.
“I couldn’t shoot her,” I said. “She had a baby!”
“How many babies did
they
kill?” he retorted. He had a point.
We walked to the large barn behind the house and unlatched the heavy wooden doors. There, covered with hay, sat the big black Mercedes. “That lying Nazi bitch!” one of the boys yelled. I was livid. I’d spared her life and she lied to my face.
“Wait here,” I told the boys. I marched back in the house, gun drawn, and found her. “This time I’m really going to shoot you,” I said. “Give me the keys!” She gave me the keys. I jogged back to the boys and the car. “I got them,” I said, rattling the keys in my hand.
“Who knows how to drive?” one of the boys asked.
“Don’t worry, I do,” I said. We brushed off the hay and hopped in the car.
“Hurry up! Let’s get out of here,” one of the boys said.
I set my machine gun on the floorboard and slid the key into the ignition. I was a little rusty but knew how to drive from my auto mechanic days in Budapest. The big German engine cranked loud and strong. I pulled out of the Weimar mayor’s mansion driveway and punched the gas.
What a sight we must have been: three teenage Jews in striped prisoner uniforms, armed with machine guns, driving a black Mercedes in Weimar, Germany, on our way back to the Buchenwald concentration camp. We smiled, laughed, and talked tough like the men we weren’t.
“Did you see how scared she was?” one boy said excitedly. “I bet she made in her underwear!” We chuckled and drove on.
“Look!” one of the boys said pointing out the window. “Two girls!” I pulled the car to the side of the street.
We invited the German girls to take a ride. They must have been so mesmerized by the Mercedes that our raggedy uniforms failed to give them pause. To my surprise, they hopped in. This was the closest any of us had been to attractive girls in a long, long time. They rode with us a few blocks before we dropped them off.
I contemplated ditching the car. After all, we were driving the mayor of Weimar’s Mercedes. If that didn’t give us away, the license plates would. But then I thought,
What the hell? When’s the next time you will get to drive a Mercedes?
So I drove the car all the way back to Buchenwald. In fact, I drove straight through the camp gates. Today, the irony of the slogan emblazoned across the gates—“To each what he deserves”—makes me laugh.
Prisoners stood motionless and stared as we coasted into camp. They must have assumed an important dignitary or the mayor of
Weimar himself would step out of the fancy car. When they saw our striped prisoner uniforms, they rushed us. “How did you get a Mercedes?” someone asked.
“Well,” I said smiling, “we just got it.”
Later I noticed a prisoner on a motorbike with a sidecar eyeing my big black Mercedes. I liked his bike. He liked my car. I told him we should trade. He agreed. He taught me how to crank the motorbike and unhook the sidecar. I rode my new motorbike over to the Czech barracks and parked it outside. For weeks I drove anyone who wanted a ride in and out of camp. Fine piece of German engineering, that bike.