by Ehud Diskin
“It’s natural to have disagreements among us,” Yaakov said in an effort to ease the tension, “and it’s good for everyone to speak their mind. The most important thing for us to remember is that we are all Zionists supporting the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in this land.”
With this, the meeting adjourned. I left, not knowing if my words had had any effect on the men of the Haganah or not.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, WHEN I met Shoshana to walk her to work, she kissed me on my lips and offered me her hand. “I’ve had a few sessions with Brigita, the psychologist Hannah referred me to,” she said. “I feel like she’s really helping me. She said she’d like to meet you too. Would you mind?”
“Not at all,” I said, raising my brows in surprise. This was the first I’d heard of Shoshana beginning her therapy.
“Great. I was hoping you’d say that, so I made an appointment for you next Tuesday morning at nine.” She produced a note with the name of the psychologist, Brigita Shlaufer, and her address, at the edge of the Tel Arza neighborhood.
On the day of the appointment, I walked to the psychologist’s building, climbed the stairs to the second floor, and knocked on the door. A diminutive woman in her sixties opened it. Her short hair was white and curly, her face was wrinkled, and her nose was broad and pudgy. The most prominent features of her face were her piercing blue-gray eyes. When she looked at me, I could feel her gaze peering deep into my mind and soul.
“Good morning, David,” she said in a German accent. “I was hoping that you’d come.” We sat down in her living room, her gaze still fixed on me. She offered me tea, which I politely refused, and then after a couple of moments of silence, she spoke.
“I’m very taken with Shoshana, and I’m trying to help her come to terms with her trauma. You’re very special to her, so it’s important for us to discuss her problems and try to help her together. Does that sound good to you?”
“Certainly,” I replied. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“I must point out,” Brigita said, “that our session is a deviation from accepted practice. In principle, a psychologist doesn’t work with two halves of a couple at the same time. But in this case, I see my role not as a professional psychologist but as a friend with psychological knowledge. I’m going to be frank with you. Shoshana has asked me to share intimate details you are unaware of at this time.”
I nodded, and Brigita went on, her voice growing more serious. “I know that Shoshana has told you that she witnessed the rape of her mother and other women before they were murdered, but you may not realize that Shoshana was also raped by those policemen. She also suffered terrible and prolonged sexual abuse at the hands of one of the sons of the family that adopted her after she fled the Nazis. She hasn’t been able to tell you about these things, and she asked me to do it.”
My throat tightened, and I could not prevent the horrible images her words brought to my mind. I sat quietly, dumbfounded. I realized Brigita was waiting on a response from me. I cleared my throat and nodded for her to continue.
“Trauma of this kind can reoccur when an individual feels trapped, helpless, and incapable of protecting herself. It’s a side effect of a defense mechanism, a hypervigilance against future dangers. This is exactly what has happened to Shoshana. Her self-preservation mechanism is constantly switched on, as if the threat could resurface at any given moment, and those past experiences are never far from her mind. Shoshana has lost all faith in the world; her fundamental sense of security has been crushed, and this has given rise to feelings of alienation and disconnection. She lives in constant fear of the return of the horrors she experienced.”
At that moment, I just wanted to hold Shoshana in my arms and comfort her. I felt sick at how selfish I had been. “Is there any way I can help her?” I asked.
“Yes, certainly,” Brigita said. “The most important thing is to allow her to feel safe with you and to give her your full support at all times. Never try to pressure her physically. Let her initiate any physical contact between you. She has to be the one to discover the healthy and enjoyable aspects of an intimate relationship, in a safe and protected environment, with someone who cares about her and loves her. She loves you very much, you know.”
“I understand,” I said, “and I will follow your advice.”
“Excellent,” Brigita said. “I will continue to treat Shoshana, and together we will try, very carefully, to reconstruct the traumatic events, with the aim of helping her let go of the negative feelings that have built up inside of her.”
“I’m impressed with you and your approach,” I said. “And I am grateful for the help you are giving Shoshana.”
Brigita gave me a long appraising look before speaking again. “David,” she finally said, “I know that you have gone through tough times as well, and I can see that you are keeping it bottled up inside you. Shoshana told me that you were a partisan fighter and that now you want to take a break from everything. But the look in your eyes doesn’t say the same. I’m guessing that you’ve learned to hide your emotions well.”
I shrugged and smiled at her. “I’ve been a fighter for a very long time. Now all I want is to live without strife.” Well, in a sense it was true. I didn’t want strife between myself and Shoshana. Between me and the British—that was another thing entirely.
Brigita returned my smile. “You’d be a good poker player, though not if you were at the table with Brigita Shlaufer. If one day you feel that you’d like to speak openly to me about yourself, I’d be happy to oblige. Of course, it would remain between us.”
I thought about it for a moment. It was true that my past still disturbed me. That was evident from the intensity of my dreams and my frequent inability to sleep because of the memories running through my mind.
I had recently begun to feel somewhat fatigued, and my mission required me to have my wits about me. Perhaps Brigita could help me learn how to “turn off” the feelings these memories provoked.
“I wouldn’t be averse to meeting with you,” I finally said.
“In two weeks? At the same time, here at my apartment?” she asked.
“Yes, thank you,” I said. “And thank you for your work with Shoshana.”
After leaving Brigita’s home, I felt a slight lifting from my shoulders of a burden I hadn’t known was there. As I walked down the street, however, two British officers passed by me; one scowled in my direction and muttered something to the other. The two laughed, and the weight of my responsibility to my people seemed to suddenly double.
8
“INTO BATTLE GO, THE FLAME ALIGHT”
(FROM “FEBRUARY 1946,” A POEM BY MICHAEL ESHBAL, 1946)
The year had come to an end, and 1946 was looming. Few of Jerusalem’s Jews recognized New Year’s Eve—or Sylvester’s Day, as it was called locally—but Shoshana and I decided to celebrate the way we had in Belarus, where the New Year was welcomed with banquets and dances. We spent a romantic evening at Café Wien on Jaffa Street, not far from Café Pinsk.
Sitting at a small table, lit by a candle in the center, I felt myself sinking into Shoshana’s large green eyes as I gently caressed her hand. She placed her watch on the table.
“We have to kiss at exactly midnight,” she said, blushing slightly.
When midnight came, Shoshana kissed me on the lips. Desire welled up inside me as her tongue slipped into my mouth, but I remembered Brigita Shlaufer’s insistence that I let Shoshana take the lead. Her kiss was long and passionate, and when she finally broke away, she gazed tenderly into my eyes and said, “I love you very much.”
I longed for her to take me to her bed, but when we stopped in front of her apartment, she gave me another long kiss and said, “I had a wonderful evening. Thank you.”
Despite the elegant dinner and Shoshana’s company, after I went to bed that night, I couldn’t sleep. Shoshana’s kiss had been wonderful, but it was difficult not to want more. Shoshana was the woman I loved, the woman
meant for me. I pushed the desire from my mind and turned my thoughts to other matters.
As I lay staring at the ceiling, missing Shoshana, my thoughts drifted to more existential things. Was I truly at the helm of my life and steering its course? Or had I become some kind of machine following a predetermined path? Perhaps Brigita could help me see more clearly. And with that on my mind, I drifted off to sleep.
TUESDAY CAME, AND WITH IT, breakfast with Avrum and Hannah. As usual, Avrum left the women in the kitchen and ushered me into his study.
“David,” he said, “I’m so discouraged. The British are becoming increasingly hateful toward the Jews. Sergeant Perry is no longer content with simply tracking down and arresting underground members. His hatred for Jews is starting to consume him. He’s saying things like ‘It’s a shame Hitler didn’t wipe out all the Jews before the war ended.’ And making sick remarks like ‘All of them should be put into concentration camps, except the young women, whom we should keep for ourselves.’ And it’s not just him. It was wrong to believe cooperation between the Haganah and the British could work. Let’s call it off.”
I was happy to learn of this change in attitude, but I thought to agree too readily might seem suspicious. Instead of voicing my satisfaction, I hedged a bit.
“Avrum,” I said, “while I agree with what you’re saying, you’re putting me in a very difficult position. I’ve put a lot of effort into developing a relationship with Yaakov and the Haganah.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I’ve thought about that too, and I’ll try to make up for my mistake by getting you some information Yaakov can use that has nothing to do with getting along with the British.”
“Great,” I said. “If you hear anything that’s urgent, come find me at Café Pinsk.”
We went back to the kitchen and ate breakfast, and when Hannah went to the sink with the dishes, she turned to me and mouthed the word “tomorrow.” I nodded my head slightly.
When I returned the next morning, Hannah opened the door with tears in her eyes. “I think about being with you all week long,” she said. “Let’s go back to twice a week—please? And I want us to go away together, somewhere out of the city. I can arrange an alibi with a friend.”
“Hannah,” I said after a short pause, “you have to remember that you’re a married woman and that I have a girlfriend I care about deeply. We must keep things as they are.”
“I thought I could do this at first,” she responded, her words broken by sobs, “but I’ve fallen in love with you.”
“We have two options, Hannah. We either keep things as they are or break it off completely.”
Her sobs intensified. “I can’t even imagine not seeing you anymore. Our relationship is the most important thing in my life.”
I reassured her that I cared about her too and wanted to continue seeing her, and we went to bed. But it felt different. It wasn’t fun anymore; it had become a liability. I lay there pondering how to get out of this mess without hurting Hannah too badly.
As I began my shift at Café Pinsk that evening, Avrum walked in and asked to talk to me in private. “He’s a friend who needs a favor,” I said to Max, who waved me off like he was shooing away a mosquito. Avrum and I stepped outside.
“My boss told me that Sergeant Perry is planning a major operation aimed at all the underground organizations, including the Haganah,” Avrum said. “And Perry will be leading these raids himself. He may not be a high-ranking officer, but he’s been incredibly successful. He must have informants feeding him intelligence.”
“This is huge,” I said. “I’ll pass it on immediately. You know anything else about him?”
“He looks like something out of a Goebbels poster with his blond hair and blue eyes. Except for his ears. It looks like he’s got a couple of mug handles stuck to the sides of his head.”
My mind was made up. Sergeant Perry would be my next target. I’d tell Avrum that I’d passed on the information to Yaakov Dover, and Avrum would think the Haganah was responsible for the assassination. And even if he were to suspect me, he wouldn’t dare say a word, since he had provided the information.
I SHOWED UP FOR MY appointment with Brigita Shlaufer as scheduled. She greeted me with a friendly smile and offered me a cup of tea. As we sipped our drinks, she asked about my life in the ghetto and with the partisans and about my relationship with my parents.
I felt somewhat reluctant to talk openly, but I managed to share a little. After a short while, she tapped the pencil she held on the notebook in her lap and leaned forward slightly.
“Your life until now has not been easy. I think outwardly you wanted to play a part in the war effort against the Germans, and the deep driving force was your desire for revenge.”
I thought her conclusion rang true, even though I had left out the explicit acts of vengeance I had participated in against the Germans and their collaborators.
She paused for a moment and then asked me, “With the situation in this land today, do you feel driven to fight the British, to kill their soldiers and policemen?”
“All I want to do right now is rest for a while,” I said.
She didn’t say a word but fixed me with a look that clearly suggested she didn’t believe me.
When I stood up to leave, I offered to pay her for the time she was devoting to Shoshana and me. She said she was simply trying to help and didn’t want any payment, but Hannah had told me she was a single woman who didn’t earn much money. I pulled a five-hundred-mil banknote from my pocket. “I’d feel better if I paid you,” I said. She hesitated briefly before taking the money, and we scheduled another appointment for the following week.
As I walked home, I thought back on the events I had yet to tell her about.
In March 1944, with the Germans retreating westward, the Russian army was advancing and had reached the borders of Romania. By the end of June, our group of partisans could hear the thunder of Russian artillery. Focused on killing as many German soldiers as possible, by any means necessary, we didn’t tackle them head-on but rather picked off straggling units as they retreated. We ended up killing close to a hundred German soldiers in this way.
The Russians liberated Minsk on July 3, 1944. We hastened to the ghetto, but all we found were ruins, along with thirteen survivors sheltered by a man named Pinchas Dubin in underground hideouts.
We had lost four men and two women in our battles with the Germans, and our group now numbered twenty-eight fighters. Almost all our loved ones had perished. We decided unanimously that we would turn our sights on the collaborators in a campaign of revenge against the Belarusians, Lithuanians, and others who had helped the Nazis massacre our people.
Our first target was a Lithuanian auxiliary battalion that had killed more than thirty thousand Jews around Minsk, but they had already fled. Instead, we moved on to the Belarusian police force that had helped the Germans patrol the ghetto. Based on the names we uncovered, we tracked down and killed thirty policemen. We also assassinated Belarusian villagers who had murdered Jews or turned them in to the Germans.
It was during this time that we learned about the Belarusian warlord Nikolai Petrov. Feared by many, he was known as Nikolai the Butcher. During the war, his mercenaries had stolen vast amounts of Jewish property, but he hadn’t been afraid to get his own hands dirty, joining raids and personally killing entire Jewish families.
Our group of partisans had grown weary in recent days. When Alec and I brought up the subject of Nikolai Petrov, the men agreed to do it, but several said this would be their last mission. Others joined in, and all at once, I realized that I, too, was ready for my own personal war to be over.
Alec didn’t say much during the discussion that followed. He remained silent when we decided that this monster would be the target of our final operation. He didn’t protest and agreed that if successful, we would divide the spoils among all of us evenly and go our separate ways, in an effort to finally begin our lives again.
Alec mad
e a deal with Nikolai’s brother-in-law to sell them a large stockpile of weapons and ammunition that we had taken from the German army. The arrangement was to bring the arms to Nikolai’s estate and make a deal. Nikolai lived in a luxurious house with expensive furniture, and even in this time of famine, we were told he had a private chef.
With a well-placed bribe, we acquired vital information about the layout of his property and the positions of the armed security guards who protected it. When it was time to meet, Alec and three other partisans made their way to the gate with bags containing the promised armaments. The rest of our group waited nearby. When the four partisans reached the gate, they struck up a conversation with the guard and two individuals who had arrived to usher them in.
While they were talking, Alec and his men drew knives and killed the three men with barely a struggle. They signaled to us, and we joined them, slipping through the gate. Our partisans went methodically to the positions of each guard, picking them off one by one. Alec and I headed for Nikolai’s residential wing, killing two guards along the way.
We burst into Nikolai’s dining room, where he was having dinner. I took out the head of his security detail with a burst from my machine gun and then turned to Nikolai.
“I know where your vault is,” I said. “If you don’t open it, I promise you a slow and torturous death.”
Nikolai was a bastard, but he wasn’t a fool. He looked at me and Alec. “Come with me,” he said. Alec and I walked right behind him, with my gun stuck in his back. He led us to an adjacent room, moved a cabinet aside, and opened the vault door.
I knew that Nikolai had robbed and murdered extensively, yet I was stunned to see the vast contents of his vault: jewelry, diamonds, banknotes—primarily US dollars and Swiss francs—and gold coins. As we stared at the pile of loot, Nikolai made his move—he grabbed the barrel of the machine gun I held and tried to wrestle it from my hands. Alec instantly shot him dead.
