Isaac's Beacon Read online

  “I wasn’t on the Patria.”

  “But you were on the way. You were in a boat. That’s not right. I’ll speak to them. I’ll speak to the police.”

  Mrs. Pappel covered her mouth and spoke through her fingers.

  “Oy no. And my son.”

  Éva took Mrs. Pappel in her arms. “You’ve been very kind to me.”

  “You’re a good girl.”

  “I’ll see you again.” Éva pushed out of the embrace. “I will.”

  “Here.” Mrs. Pappel scooped up the spilled clothes. “Take these.”

  Éva retreated as Mrs. Pappel held out the clothes. The other women in the yard clustered around Mrs. Pappel. What did the policeman say in English?

  The commandant’s announcement boomed from loudspeakers. The Patria would stay. The Atlantic must leave. The old men by the kitchen dropped their heads. Women collected their children out of the open spaces to hustle them inside. Those with cause to rejoice did not, not openly.

  Éva walked past her quarters. The girls inside cried and tore up their paper flowers. Éva went to find Emile.

  Chapter 6

  Éva

  That evening, Emile came to Éva’s barrack. The girls wanted to moon over him. They paid attention to his ashen grey eyes and his plan.

  “It’s hard to say the people on the Patria were lucky. Two hundred drowned. Maybe some of you lost friends. I’m sorry. But sixteen hundred Jews get to stay in Palestine. I don’t know about you, but I wish I’d been on that ship. I wish I’d had the chance.”

  The boy moved among the cots and the sitting girls.

  “You’re all like me. You’re alone. And you’ll stay alone if they throw us out. You might think you’ve got people around you right now, you think these are your sisters and I’m your brother. In Palestine, you’re right, we are. But if we’re put in another camp on some island off Africa, you’re alone again. There, we’re all just people looking out for ourselves. We’ll live one at a time, no matter how many of us there are. The only place you’ll ever have a real home is here. The only place you’ll have a family again is here. In Palestine, we’re a tribe. I am your brother, and these are your sisters. Here, we can work and die for each other. Anywhere else, we’re alone.”

  Some of the girls joined hands. Emile walked to Éva’s cot, took her hand, and let go.

  “Tomorrow morning at five, the guards will come for you. They want you ready, packed and dressed. They’ll put you on buses and take you to Haifa. You’ll be on boats by sunrise and out of Palestine before the Yishuv can find out you’re gone. So when the guards come in the morning, you won’t be ready. Hundreds of us are going to bed naked tonight. We won’t be packed. and we won’t be dressed. We won’t get out of bed when they try to make us. And they will try. You understand?”

  A few girls answered yes. Emile repeated, “You understand?”, to make the others answer yes.

  “A message has been smuggled to Haifa. We’re letting them know what’s going on. We’ll stall as long as we can, to give them a chance to stop the British. Maybe they’ll talk them out of it in London, maybe they’ll do something here, I don’t know. But at five tomorrow morning, we resist.”

  The girls bit their lips. A few were convinced and said so. One, the oldest, was their leader. She might have been a wife in another place, but no one talked of their past. She rose.

  “Won’t we be making it worse for ourselves if we start trouble?”

  Emile cocked his head. “Worse?”

  “Yes. Worse.”

  “You sound like my parents.”

  Éva stood. “Emile, thank you. We’ll be ready.”

  The boy left. When the door closed, Éva remained standing.

  With all eyes on her, she stepped out of her mother’s shoes and set them beside the cot. Éva tugged down her skirt and pulled her sweater over her head. She let these fall on the shoes, untidy. Last, she pushed down her underpants to stand naked and wait. One by one, the girls stood and disrobed, even the older one, the leader. None folded their clothes; some opened their suitcases, mussed them about and left them in disarray.

  Together, they climbed into their cots. The leader walked about the barrack nude, blowing out the lanterns before she got under her covers.

  Éva slept like a skipping stone, touching rest only briefly. She awoke in darkness to a pair of policemen coming through the door.

  “Wake up, Jews. Wake up!”

  Flashlight beams knifed across the cots. The police knocked batons against bed frames. One stood over Éva, flashlight in her face. The cot rocked when he kicked it.

  “Up.”

  When she made no move, he played his light across her bare shoulders above the blanket. The policeman slipped his truncheon under the edge in an attempt to peel back the blanket. Éva clutched the hem.

  “Raus,” she said. Get out.

  He winked, then turned into the barrack to shout. “Up, you bloody Jews, get packed. Get moving. Up!”

  “Nein,” one of the girls yelled. Others took up her call, shouting “Nein, nein.” The police bellowed back, “Jews, get up!”

  The leader of the girls was the first to be struck by a truncheon, on her hip through the blanket and another on her shoulder. The girl in the cot beside her screamed, “Nein,” and took a shot on the arm for it.

  Both police were young men, fair and slender, neither was impressive. Their willingness to do violence was what made them powerful. The pair leveled nightsticks at the girls, daring the next one to shout nein.

  “Right,” said one when no one answered.

  He pulled back the blanket of the leader, exposing her naked on the cot. The policeman was too angry to be lewd, he only waggled the tip of his baton under her nose to ask wordlessly if she wanted another taste of it. Slowly and sore, the girl got to her bare feet. With the other girls watching and the two British boys tapping batons against their palms, she dressed.

  December 9

  Éva sat on her cot in underpants and blouse. An orange sun crested the hills and glowed inside the barrack like the light of a fireplace. The girls packed slowly, singly, without talk. Each was locked inside the camp of herself, in her own expulsion.

  Two more policemen came to hurry them along, as threatening as the first. In Britain these were shoemakers and barkeeps; in Palestine they wielded batons.

  The girls took their bags and blankets to shuffle outdoors. A few lagged behind, staying on their cots. Éva stayed with them. The police lifted two girls by the collars of their coats, dragged them to the door and cast them out. The other girls grabbed up the luggage of the evicted pair and left the barrack on their own. Éva waited until a policeman stood over her, buying another minute. He tapped his truncheon on her shoulder.

  “Move. Now.”

  She rose. He stood menacingly close. Éva took her time gathering her skirt off the cool floor, then her mother’s shoes and father’s coat. The policeman’s thin patience snapped. He balled a fist in her hair. Éva tried to resist but he towed her to the door then heaved her out. She stumbled down the steps, barefoot in underpants and a sky-blue blouse.

  The policeman stood in the doorway, barring Éva’s return back to her clothes. He pointed his baton to say, You’ll go to Africa like that.

  On the unpaved lane in a breezeless sunrise, people emerged only from half the camp. The other barracks, fifty of them, housed the passengers of the Patria. They kept behind windows and closed doors.

  Hundreds filed past Éva, herded by the bats and jeers of the guards. She was not the only Jew partially clothed; dozens who’d held out even longer than she, young and old alike, men and women, trudged barefoot to the main gate and the buses, some naked beneath blankets. Blood stained some heads. Éva left behind her mother’s shoes and her father’s coat and joined the procession.

  She treaded on her hope,
feeling it grow shorter with each stride to the gate and the line of buses. A hundred British troopers waited with rifles, bayonets fixed, against any intervention from outside Atlit.

  A commotion swelled on the path. Two boys, the twins who’d kissed her on the head aboard the Atlantic, galloped past. They ran stark naked, all ribcages and knees, penises swinging as they stayed ahead of a half-dozen police. The boys yelled, “Don’t go! Wait! Wait for the Yishuv!” The two disappeared into an alley, British cops in close pursuit.

  The Jews ground to a halt. This confounded the guards, who couldn’t beat all of them. More yelling came from the crowd; another round of naked boys, eight of them, pinker than the dawn, sprinted ahead of red-faced police; the boys flew past calling for rebellion, patience. The cops trapped one of the boys between barracks and beat him while he cowered in the dirt. The crowd raised no sound in the boy’s defense, but they did not walk on.

  Then naked Emile ran past. No one chased him. He might have been the fastest, he might have outfoxed his pursuers. Emile skidded to a halt near the beating to throw a stone at the khaki backs of the cops. He threw another rock and curses. All three police left the bloodied boy to light out after Emile, who challenged the people in the street to hold out before he dashed away. People hurried to the battered boy.

  Éva stood motionless. A wizened old woman with a bent spine approached. If this woman boarded another ship, she’d never see Palestine again. She gazed quizzically at Éva, as if wondering what she would do right now if she had Éva’s youth.

  The shouts of the British trying to catch Emile and his boys bounded around the camp. With batons the guards prodded the Jews of the Atlantic to get moving to the buses. Éva peeled off her blouse and handed it to the old woman. She slid down her underpants and left them in the dirt street.

  Éva raised her white arms to catch the attention of the hundreds around her.

  “We have to wait. Someone will come, something will happen! Don’t go. People! Don’t go!”

  The old woman pressed a hand to Éva’s naked belly. She pushed Éva away. “Run, girl.”

  Two policemen jogged forward. One was a fat boy, the other shorter than Éva. She let them get close, shouting until she almost shouted in their faces. Before bolting, Éva danced four steps of the hora and snapped her fingers at the guards.

  She left them clutching at air. Éva ran through Jews who stepped aside to let her tear by, then closed behind her to hinder the police. With every other breath she called to the people, “Don’t go!” Éva hurtled down the street, into the slender spaces between barracks. She searched for Emile, for him to see her running, too.

  Éva collected five cops chasing her. The fat one fell away, but the others had stamina and scarlet, irate faces. She vaulted back into the street, past the main gate and the buses, then led her pursuers into the rows of barracks filled with the people of the Patria.

  The soles of her feet hurt, but she pumped her arms harder. The guards would spot her only briefly, scamper to corner her, then watch her run another way.

  Éva kept this up for long minutes. The guards grew closer, her escapes narrower. The Patria people pressed to their windows to see her loping past. Ahead, two policemen came around a corner, then two more behind to block her in. She was done, her legs and lungs finished.

  Éva slowed to a walk; the policemen broke into a trot, raising batons and voices. Another voice, a woman’s, came from the barracks beside her.

  “Rivkah!”

  Mrs. Pappel came out, holding a blanket.

  “Rivkah, come here!”

  Éva stopped. The agony in her feet groped up her legs; she was close to buckling. Mrs. Pappel broke into a waddling run, still calling, “Rivkah.”

  She reached Éva moments before the guards, wrapped her in the blanket, then surrounded her with a heavy arm. The other arm she held up to the approaching guards.

  “No! No!”

  The policemen came up, huffing. One tried to grab Éva away. Mrs. Pappel protected her with a scolding tone and a firm hand that did not come down until she’d pushed one of the guards aside. She guided Éva away, tugging the blanket tight. The muttering cops let them go, so long as Éva was off the street.

  Mrs. Pappel clucked her tongue over the blood between Éva’s toes. She led Éva to her barrack; the door was held open for them.

  Mrs. Pappel spun Éva to face her. The thirty others in the cabin, all elderly women, gathered around.

  “Listen to me, girl. Do you want to stay in Palestine?”

  Éva fought to catch her breath and her senses. She’d been moments away from a pummeling. Now she was being told she might stay in Palestine.

  “I wasn’t on the Patria. I’m not in the ship’s manifest. You are.”

  “Again. Do you want to stay?” Mrs. Pappel gave her a quick shove. “Éva.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  Mrs. Pappel gripped her by the shoulders. “You are Rivkah. Do you understand? Rivkah. From this point on.”

  Mrs. Pappel took away the blanket and left her naked again. Mrs. Pappel carried the blanket to a cot where an old woman lay, eyes shut. A white sheet covered her to the folds of her neck, her face and hair were as pallid as the pillow. Mrs. Pappel spread Éva’s blanket to cover all of her.

  “Her name was Rivkah Gellerman.”

  1945

  As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others, they must have been over sixty, were crawling toward the latrine. I saw it but will not describe it.

  I walked down to the end of the barracks. There was applause from the men too weak to get out of bed. It sounded like the hand-clapping of babies; they were so weak….

  I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words. If I’ve offended you by this rather mild account…I’m not in the least sorry.

  Edward R. Murrow

  April 1945

  Chapter 7

  Hugo

  April 11

  Buchenwald

  Hugo awoke. He did not know why.

  When he’d closed his eyes, he’d believed it would be for the last time. His strength had ebbed away; he lay behind his eyelids trapped with his pulse, listening to it tap like a prisoner in a cell. He slept, or did he faint? He had no idea how long he’d been on his pallet. What use was time when it measured only the living? Then his eyes opened.

  He sensed first his aloneness. Licking unwatered lips, Hugo gazed up into the grey slats of the pallet above him. No one moved there, no one crowded him left or right. His shaved head lay on the pillow of his overturned food pot. He cast his hearing out into the barracks. Only a creak returned and a scratch, perhaps a rat leaping between rafters. Or maybe the big room was full, thirty to a pallet, and all the coughing, twitching, and doomed men were blocked out because he lacked the life to hear them.

  Hugo’s fingers traced the hem of his prisoner’s coat, the spike of his emaciated hip, the corduroy of his ribs. These touches restored an awareness of himself, the thing he’d lost.

  Hugo sniffed. The smoke was there; the ovens still blazed. He would take this stench to his death no matter when it arrived. He pivoted on his hard skull, left and right. No one else occupied the bunks. Far away, as though at the wrong end of a telescope, the sun glowed in the open door, golden today.

  A rumble swelled until it trembled the walls. Voices climbed in volume and excitement. These were not at all like the sounds of Hugo’s time in the camps, when only exhaustion, grief, and the ovens had voices. Outside, men cried welcome.

  Hands fluttered around him like pigeons. Pearly teeth gave off the scent of tobacco.

  One held him upright on the pallet. Another rested on his shoulder, a third on his gaunt calf. A fourth man dashed away. A fleshy soldier talked loudly, close to his face as though Hugo were d
eaf as well as starving. The soldier said ‘American,’ similar enough to Amerikaner for Hugo to understand who they were.

  For some reason, they put Hugo on his feet. Two soldiers supported him, urged him to walk. Hugo tried, though he was confounded as to why he ought to. He managed one good step in his canvas shoes, then his lagging leg buckled. Another American, a lanky one, caught him before he could collapse. The man cradled Hugo like a child to carry him out through the door.

  The sudden sun was a shock to Hugo’s eyes. Sitting on the ground in the glaring light, he was forced to look at himself. His hands were bundles of sticks, wrists and ankles the joints of a skeleton. The pitying looks of the Americans showed him to be an unforgiving sight. Hugo marveled at the resilience of life, even his own, how hard it must be to snuff, that it could live on inside him like this.

  He sat in a circle of soldiers, some standing, some kneeling. To a man they were decked in metal: their weapons, grenades, canteens, knives, bullets, helmets, wedding rings, buckles. Hugo wore nothing but skin and tattered cloth. The soldiers spoke to him and to each other, but their voices were like birdsong, distant and meaningless.

  Too weary to lift his eyes, Hugo studied the world at his level. American soldiers strode everywhere, pants tucked inside muddy boots. The prisoners of Buchenwald dragged along in their striped garb on ragged shoes. Some ran, but even their running seemed hobbled next to the long strides of the soldiers. A great tank idled beside Hugo’s barrack, the thunder which had shaken the walls.

  All well and good. The Americans had come. Prayers had been answered.

  The stink of the smoke was stronger out here than it was inside the barrack. The Americans seemed very intent on their amazement in the camp.

  Hugo didn’t want this hunger that made him a pile of bones on the ground, didn’t want to die. This was all he could muster, what he didn’t want, too weak to recall anything more, even with Americans running about all of a sudden. Minutes ago, he lay on the brink and was done resisting. Hugo had seen a hundred thousand go to their deaths, up the chimney. His turn had come, one more. He tried to lie back to see if he might continue dying; he could do it in the sun just as well.