Warsaw Requiem

by Bodie Thoene

  Little tugboats nosed the ship toward the dock, much in the way a terrier might nip at the feet of an elephant to make him move.

  Little hands clutched the railing. Wide, frightened eyes peered out and wondered what sort of people would take them in. Where would they sleep tonight? Would they be warm and well cared for as their tearful mothers had promised them? Were these English people good and pleasant? Or might they be cross if broken hearts could not remember how to laugh for a while? Would they be sorry, when the first tears came, that they had volunteered to take children into their homes?

  Elisa looked back at them. She smiled and waved as though they were all old friends. She called out loudly in German, “Guten Abend, Kinderlach! Wilkommen! Willkommen!”

  With that, she turned back to the group of ten musicians who had traveled from London to Southampton for this occasion. And they began to play their instruments. Classical musicians all, they played the brightest snippets of Mozart that they could think of. And finally that drew hesitant smiles from the children.

  All the while, the child Elisa carried within her rested quietly, as though sensing the nearness of heartache. These little visits of welcome to Southampton seemed to be the only time the baby was still.

  Anna Lindheim and Helen Ibsen had come to assist as interpreters for the homeless children. But they also came with the hope—the prayer—that Helen’s children might somehow be found among these who had managed to escape. Lori Ibsen, age sixteen..No, she just had a birthday, didn’t she? That is, if . . . if she is still alive. And Jamie Ibsen, ten years old. Last seen being carted off to a Hitler Youth school. That was the last time his mother saw him. Nearly six months ago, it was.

  Aunt Helen showed the photographs of her missing children to several workers who had made the crossing with the few lucky ones. “No, Mrs. Ibsen. So very sorry . . .” Aunt Helen looked at the photograph one more time—a longing look, a look that made Elisa put her hand on the baby in her womb and pray that her own life would never come to such a moment.

  And each of these little ones who walked down the gangplank represented a mother like Helen who had said good-bye!

  All the ships had come quietly into England in exactly the same way. And every arrival caused a lump of gratitude to hand in Elisa’s throat. These few are safe, at least! But coupled with that gratitude was the uneasiness that comes when grief is very near and real . . . when something in the world is terribly, terribly wrong!

  Helen Ibsen had never cried before tonight. But she knew there was only one boat left that could bring her children from the Reich to the haven of England. Only one more chance for Jamie and Lori to be on that boat. One more chance.

  Elisa studied the face of her aunt Helen and thought how much she looked like Anna. Sisters. And she remembered how very much Lori Ibsen resembled Elisa when Elisa was that age. Cousins. There were still whole chunks of their hearts that Adolf Hitler held captive. That was true for these little ones, as well. They brought their lives and a future with them tonight. They would start all over again at the age of five or six or ten. But could anyone ever know what great love they left behind?

  Only the mothers who let them go could answer such a question. Love had loaded them on the great ship; love had waved good-bye and thrown the final kisses. Love remained behind and watched the ship drift out of sight.

  No one on this side of the Channel could replace that.

  Elisa had some idea of what it meant. Love like iron!

  Someone else to tuck him in. Someone else to braid her hair. Someone else to kiss the hurt away.

  But these were hurts that could not be kissed away.

  ***

  The moon was full, bright as a searchlight over the Mediterranean. If he could have done it, Captain Samuel Orde would have shot it out of the sky in order to bring the lads into the shore under cover of total darkness. The freighter was supposed to bring them in when there was no moon at all. But engine trouble and endless delays had resulted in the exact opposite result.

  Orde and a dozen other members of his Special Night Squad huddled behind the doors. Just below the lip of moon-drenched sand, a shadow curled over them like a dark wave. There they waited for the signal from the tiny lifeboat that had cast off from the freighter several miles from the coastline of British Palestine.

  On the beach, a group of teenaged young people from the kibbutz sat around a roaring bonfire. They sang, they laughed, they roasted bratwurst on long sticks. Their voices seemed a strange counterpoint to the drama of thirty other young men of their own generation who struggled to guide the boat toward the signal fire.

  A British military jeep roared up over the sand. Orde thought he recognized the voices of his countrymen as they demanded to know what sort of party was going on here!

  A young, unafraid voice replied in concise English. “A birthday party! For Sasha.” Then there was laughter and applause as a girl from the kibbutz stood and bowed in acknowledgment.

  “You have no chaperone?” demanded the Englishman.

  “We left them all in Europe,” someone in the group said caustically. This was the sort of remark Orde had warned them against making. He grimaced and glared at the youthful offender from behind the dune.

  “But you can be our chaperone,” called Sasha. She skipped across the firelight and grabbed the arm of the reluctant officer. She pulled him into the group. “Come on! Give me a kiss! It’s my sixteenth birthday! No one is serious tonight!”

  Good girl! Orde silently cheered her. Smart girl! Then he prayed that the lifeboat would not choose that instant to flash its signal as it moved toward the shore!

  “No. No. Can’t join you tonight. Duty . . .” The Englishman was clearly embarrassed.

  “Are you married or something?” asked Sasha, who gave him a kiss amid more shouts of encouragement. “Afraid your general will find out you had a little fun on the beach?”

  The other soldier hung back. Orde could see the ramrod-straight back of the Englishman as he decided that he had certainly misjudged the meaning of this gathering. Just kids, you know. A little party on the beach . . .

  More taunting banter drifted on the wind, half-obscured by the heavy pounding of the waves. The tide had shifted. Not good. High tides and heavy seas would make it impossible to bring in the boat without capsizing it. And could those illegal refugees, a handful of lads from landlocked Poland, swim? He doubted it. That was a terrifying thought, added to a long list of unpleasant possibilities tonight.

  “Hey! If you come back, bring us some of your English cigarettes, will you?” The request followed the retreating military jeep down the beach to the crude road that led through the dunes.

  “They did it,” Moshe Sachar hissed and nudged Orde in the ribs.

  Orde glared at him in reply. Total silence had been the order. The only voices tonight on the dunes were to be those of young people as they tossed driftwood onto the blazing fire and pretended that they were really just a bunch of kids.

  Nearly three hundred young male refugees had been brought in illegally this way over the last four months—escaping Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and now beginning to slip out of Poland as the winds of Hitler’s ambitions shifted to blow the inferno ever nearer. But none of those young people had ever landed in this ancient homeland under such threatening circumstances. The moon. The heightened patrols. And now the tide.

  Orde let his breath out slowly, like steam escaping a pressure cooker. The scheme was to smuggle in young men over the age of sixteen. He had pictured building an army from the ground up, and these young refugees were to be his foundation. Papers could be forged once they arrived; it was much simpler than waiting for the slow wheels of governments to grind these strong, healthy lads to fine dust.

  Others were being smuggled in illegally as well, of course. But Orde pretended not to notice them. Old men and women. Little children. They were not the stuff a future fighting force was built from.

  The British government knew that
simple fact as well. That was why they made it so difficult for young males over the age of sixteen to immigrate.

  Well, here was Orde’s answer to that—and the answer of the Yishuv! Like the mother of Moses, mothers in Europe darned the socks and underwear of their sons. They kissed them tearfully on their cheeks where the beards of young manhood sprouted, and they sent them off with strangers—with men called Zionists, who spoke of the Promised Land, of the covenant of Zion!

  On leaky steamers they came. Under the scornful eyes of bribed captains, they vomited over the rails of the ocean’s most unseaworthy tubs. And then, nearing this shore, they were once again cast adrift in doubtful little scows, piloted by local fishermen, to run the gauntlet of the English patrol boats!

  Their beacon light was a bonfire, a birthday party. Their signal was the voices of other young people who could remember the same long journey.

  And when they landed, their shaky legs falling out from under them, they were greeted by men in uniform, led by a British captain named Orde, who first terrified them and then astounded them and taught them to be men and Jews returned to their homeland!

  It was all a very worthy enterprise. It was also profoundly illegal and dangerous for all involved. Especially for Orde.

  Orde did not think of his personal safety now. The voices around the bonfire suddenly grew silent. Orde lifted his head above the crest of the dune and focused across the water to where a single light flashed. One, two, three short blips and then one long. The signal for V. The code for Victory.

  One by one, those around the bonfire stood to watch. They brushed sand from their trousers and shorts. They looked at the rows of breaking waves that rolled up on the sand between the fire and the little boat.

  The lifeboat was in trouble. Orde and a dozen of the Special Night Squad joined the young men of the kibbutz at the water’s edge.

  “Who is piloting tonight?” Moshe Sachar asked the tallest of the young men, who had already stripped to his waist and pulled off his shoes.

  “Julian,” the fellow answered. The roar of waves nearly drowned his voice.

  Orde could see the silhouettes of the refugees as the boat slid down the face of a swell and into the silver reflection of the moon.

  “Julian knows what he’s doing,” Orde said, but he pulled off his shirt and shoes and stripped to his shorts as well. Yes. Julian was a good man. A fisherman, he knew the tides and currents of these waters. No doubt Julian knew his boat was in trouble.

  A dozen inner tubes from the farm tractors had been threaded through a life rope like donuts on a string. In all the landings of refugees on this beach, the inner tubes had not been needed. Run aground during low tide, the passengers of earlier boats had simply jumped out and waded the hundred yards to shore.

  Orde took up the makeshift lifeline and checked around him. Every other man had stripped as well, and now they waited only for Orde’s instructions as the lifeboat was thrust up on the boiling foam of a breaker and then spun sideways.

  Trouble! Were those cries of terror that echoed above the rumble of the surf?

  “Only the best swimmers out! The water will be chest high for fifty yards and then drop away! Hold tight to the tubes and the rope. Don’t be afraid, lads! Follow me!”

  Like a commander leaping from the safety of a trench into enemy fire, Orde plunged in. He grasped the tube beneath his arm, using it as a shield against the pounding water. He never looked back to see who had come along. They were there. His men were all there. Through hell first and now high water, they would not retreat!

  The icy water made his legs and feet and groin ache with pain. But as a boy he had always been first to dive into the frigid waters of the English Channel. Soon enough he would be numb to it.

  There were shouts from the men behind him as they jumped into the waves. Lungs and body rebelled against such cold. The mind raged against the folly of stepping into the dark force that pummeled them.

  A wave began its slow, crushing curl to Orde’s right. he spotted the white flag of its crest and was certain that the wall of water would crash down on him. “Dive under!” he shouted, hoping that the man behind had seen the wave and heard his warning. He plunged into the black wall, dragging the reluctant inner tube after him; then he bobbed up on the other side.

  Gasping for air, he could see that two men along the line had been swept back. They struggled to stand and move forward to take their place on the rope again.

  Where was Julian’s boat? Orde’s toes barely brushed the sand. The water was much deeper than he had expected this near to shore! The moon and the tides had formed an alliance against the fragile little boat and the men who fought to reach it!

  Orde let the buoyancy of the tube hold him as he searched for the boat. Had it capsized? Were they already too late?

  And then he saw it! The bow rose up and slammed down hard as it sledded down the face of an enormous swell. Water pushed it from behind, threatening to swamp and then capsize it. Still fifty yards away and to their left, the screams of terrified young men were clear above the tumult!

  Orde kicked hard, aware that he had felt the last of the sand. He dragged the lifeline under yet another bone-crunching wave and swam to where he thought the boat should be.

  He had cursed the moonlight before; now he prayed for the moon to light the scene! Julian was in trouble. Thirty young lads were in trouble. Orde was tired, but he fought on, unwilling to admit that he might also be in difficulty.

  Ten yards forward! Then the waves pushed him back eight. He caught momentary glimpses of his men, their heads bobbing along the line they grasped as desperately as any drowning man. Behind them rose the eerie orange glow of the watch fire. It spoke of light and warmth and life . . . a distant world from the swirling water!

  Yet another wave exploded just in front of Orde. He ducked beneath it but was again pulled back. His inner tube bumped against the man behind him. Moshe?

  Moshe flailed a moment, then found his buoy again.

  Capsized! The refugees would not last in this! Orde could not see where the boat had gone.

  “Take the lead!” he called to Moshe, who struck out left, directly parallel to the shoreline. His stroke was sure and strong, his kick more powerful than Orde’s. Orde gratefully took his place as second on the rope.

  And then the belly of the capsized boat shone clearly in the moonlight! Julian was sprawled across it. Four others had climbed up beside him, and now they reached out to grasp the others in the water who struggled to cling to the boat. Their forms were all light and shadow, like the negative of a photograph, and yet the terror on their faces was clear.

  Then came the shout from the rescuers. “Hold on!” This was repeated in German, Czech, and Polish.

  Julian turned his head, waved, and shouted, “I told you they would come!”

  Those who could swim struck out toward the flotilla of inner tubes. A dozen still clung desperately to the boat while Julian encouraged them. “You see! Hold on! We’re almost home now, boys! Not one will be lost!”

  ***

  The dossier that linked the political resistance in Austria with connections in Prague and Danzig and Warsaw was several inches thick. Compiled by Major Alexander Hess during his long recovery after being thrown from a train at the Polish border, it was a document that impressed Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS and the Gestapo. For this reason, Himmler requested this private meeting with the Führer only two hours before Hitler’s scheduled broadcast regarding the relations between Germany and Poland.

  Major Hess, recently promoted from lieutenant, was in attendance this evening to explain the complicated web of connections between the perpetrators of what seemed to be a worldwide plot against the Führer. His facts and theories, listed in the cumbersome document on the coffee table of the Führer’s private apartment, needed concise interpretation. Adolf Hitler had no time to read through such dossiers; he had barely enough time to listen. But tonight he was well in tune to talk of plots and po
ssible coups planned against him by the German military and by foreign governments. Hitler did not need evidence to imagine that forces were intent on destroying him and his Thousand-Year Reich. He dreamed such things regularly. He listened to the voices that warned him where to go, where to walk, and whom to trust. Spirits guided him by night, and human voices like that of his Gestapo chief warned him and verified by their research that what the spirits spoke was true! For such a meeting as this, the Führer would delay his broadcast. Tonight the pieces of an unsolved puzzle continued to drop into place, clarifying the picture the Führer claimed to have glimpsed in a foggy dream.

  After his ordeal at the border of Poland some months ago, Major Hess walked haltingly, with the help of a cane. The fact that he could walk at all was impressive. The doctors of Berlin had not expected Hess to recover so quickly from the wounds inflicted on him by the guard dogs.

  Some wounds would never heal, of course. Major Hess’s left eye was gray and clouded across the iris, the result of a fang wound. Loss of vision was total on that side, and yet Hess had spent every spare minute at the pistol range improving his aim and training himself to compensate for the lack of depth perception. His progress was pronounced miraculous.

  Tonight the Führer believed that Hess had been spared for the sake of the Reich, for the sake of the Führer and the German people. It was no accident that the man had recovered to be brought to this moment! His research verified the worst fears of Hitler, and the heart of the Führer was touched by the loyalty and persistence of this man.

  Himmler adjusted his round, wire-rimmed glasses and with a wave of his hand indicated that Hess himself must share the conclusions of the report with the Führer. Hitler’s dark blue eyes were rapt with attention as the story unfolded.

  Hess removed a front-page photograph of the Führer standing beside two brothers. He smoothed it out before Hitler on the table. Hitler frowned and stared down at their faces.

  “Although the caption names the brothers as Peter and Willie Ruger,” Hess began, “these two boys are the sons of the Austrian resistance leader, Michael Wallich.” Hess then pulled out a picture of the family: Michael Wallich. Wife, Karin. Son, Peter. Daughter, Marlene. Infant, Wilhelm, a.k.a. Willie.