Beware of God

by Shalom Auslander

  —CBS news, seven years later, in 1945

  The character of Karl Weiss was played by James Woods, who also played one of the Israeli Air Force pilots in the movie Raid on Entebbe. In that movie his name was Captain Sammy Berg.

  John Saxon was also a pilot in Raid on Entebbe. He has a Black Belt in karate. He was in Enter the Dragon.

  I’ll leave right after the next Kristallnacht, and I’ll take Deena with me. Her parents won’t want her to leave, but if we want to live, we’ll have to go right away. There will be no time to waste. We can walk to the highway and hitchhike from there. It’s not that far. Maybe Kevin’s mom will give us a ride.

  We’ll probably go to Florida and stay in the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. Deena goes there every January with her family. They have a tennis court and a pool.

  Florida is 1,330 miles from New York. You need to get to a highway called I-95 South. From there it’s a straight drive all the way to Miami.

  Kevin isn’t Jewish. In the summer, we ride bicycles together. My mother says his mother is a no-good anti-Semite.

  In 1934, The New York Times described the news that Nazis planned to massacre the Jews as “wild rumors.”

  Nazis always come in through the front door. They knock loudly. “Shnell!” they shout. That means “quick” in German. Then one of them will kick the door in with his boot. Nazis always wear shiny boots.

  When Rabbi Akiva was being tortured to death by the Romans, his students saw him saying the Shema with joy, oblivious to the pain he was enduring. “How can you be saying Shema with joy,” asked his students, “oblivious to the pain you are enduring?” Rabbi Akiva said he was happy to be able to obey God with all his life.

  There are three ways out of my house other than the front door, depending on where you are when the Nazis break in:

  The back door, which leads to the backyard.

  The door in the living room, which leads onto the deck.

  The fire escape ladder beside my bedroom window.

  (Note: My bedroom window faces the front of the house, so make sure all the Nazis have already gone into the house before going down the ladder or they’ll see you.)

  The best hiding places in my house are: at the top of the tall linen closet at the end of the hallway, inside the clothing hamper in the laundry room (try to cover yourself with the clothes), upstairs in the attic behind the summer boxes and under the green couch in the den (if you can fit).

  Anne Frank hid in her attic for over two years.

  Maybe I should pack more food.

  You can also hide in the tree house in my backyard. I doubt the Nazis will check every tree house in America.

  It will probably be difficult for them to climb trees in those boots.

  Ninjas could make themselves invisible.

  “Absorb whatever is useful.”—Bruce Lee

  Maybe Kevin will let me and Deena hide in his attic.

  Anna Weiss was the daughter in the movie Holocaust. She was sixteen, and she and her mother hid from the Nazis in a room in Inga’s house. Inga was married to Karl (Anna’s brother) who got sent to Buchenwald. Anyway, one night, Anna got angry at her mother for not leaving Germany when she had the chance. She yelled at her mother and ran outside. Then the Nazis raped her.

  In Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee’s sister is about to be raped by some gangsters so she kills herself. Bruce Lee finds out that a guy named Han was behind the attack on his sister, so he kills Han and beats up Han’s army.

  Anna Weiss had a point.

  These are some of the things in your house you could use as weapons: pens, pencils, scissors, a handsaw, screwdrivers, a baseball bat, a rolling pin from the kitchen, salt for throwing in Nazis’ eyes, knives, forks, a hammer, toothpicks for stabbing, a blowtorch, lightbulbs for throwing, the hard end of a toothbrush, a pointy-handled comb, an ice pick, the ax, a sledgehammer, the lighter fluid from behind the barbecue that you could spray on them and then throw a match at, a shovel, the pick, a trowel, the cultivator rake, nails, screws, razor blades, sewing needles, safety pins, chisels and knitting needles.

  Jews were expelled from England in 1290, France in 1306, Hungary in 1349, France again in 1394, Austria in 1421, Lithuania in 1445, Spain in 1492, Portugal in 1497 and Moravia in 1744.

  Some ballpoint pens have replaceable ink cartridges. If you take the cartridge out and put a sewing needle in, you can shoot it out like a Ninja blowgun.

  Rabbi Brier says that the Holocaust happened because the Jews assimilated.

  That’s also why Hashem made the Jews slaves in Egypt.

  And why He let the Holy Temple be destroyed by the Romans.

  King Solomon built the first Holy Temple. Then the Babylonians destroyed it and deported all the Jews. Seventy years later, a second temple was built. Then the Romans destroyed it and deported all the Jews.

  There was no third temple.

  Assimilating is when you stop being Jewish, like Woody Allen.

  My mother says Woody Allen is a self-hating Jew.

  The Talmud teaches that every tear that is shed by a Jew contributes in heaven to the building of the next temple.

  The temple in China where they taught karate was called the Shaolin Temple. In The Chinese Connection, Bruce Lee plays a student who goes back to his school and finds his teacher dead. He finds out the Japanese did it and he goes to their school; he beats them all up and kills anyone who had anything to do with the killing. The best parts are when he fights a big Russian guy and also when he smashes a Japanese sign that says NO DOGS OR CHINESE ALLOWED.

  My favorite Bruce Lee movie is Game of Death, where Bruce Lee fights Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a Muslim.

  Muslims say that Jews are the sons of dogs and pigs.

  Between 1938 and 1944, over 1.5 million children under the age of sixteen were murdered by the Nazis.

  HOW TO BUILD NUNCHUCKS:

  Take an old broomstick and cut off two sixteen-inch pieces.

  Drill a hole through each one roughly one inch down from the end.

  Put a string through the two holes and tie the ends together.

  James Caan is Jewish. He was Sonny in the movie The Godfather.

  Art Garfunkel from Simon and Garfunkel looks a lot like Sonny, and he’s also Jewish.

  Mercedes and BMW used Jewish prisoners from Buchenwald to build their cars.

  So did Ford.

  Bayer gave chemicals to Josef Mengele to use for the experiments he was doing to the Jews. He would cut your leg open and put dirt and pieces of glass into the cut just to see what happened to you.

  Jews shouldn’t buy Mercedes or BMWs. Or Fords.

  Sometimes, though, we buy Bayer aspirin.

  Deena’s parents have two Mercedes and a pool. Last year, her sister and mother both had nose jobs.

  Deena also wants a nose job but her mother says not until she’s sixteen.

  My mother says nose jobs are for people who are ashamed to be Jewish.

  If you put double-sided tape around the top of your penis and pull the skin up around it, you can tell the Nazis that you’re not a Jew.

  During the Inquisition, thousands of Jews were murdered simply for refusing to convert to Christianity.

  “And now,” says Rabbi Brier, “you’re going to violate the Shabbos?”

  Houdini was also Jewish. His real name was Erich Weiss. He was an escape artist. One time they locked him in a box and put him underwater and he still managed to escape. The box was even locked from the outside.

  They called him the King of Handcuffs.

  To make yourself look like a Nazi, you can dye your hair blond. Your hair will still be black underneath, so you’re not really assimilating.

  After Kristallnacht, 30,000 Jews were put on cattle cars and sent to concentration camps. Many people suffocated before they even got there.

  When they put you in a cattle car, try to get a spot near a window.

  Cattle cars are locked from the outside.


  Houdini’s father was a rabbi. He had his own synagogue in Wisconsin.

  When the cattle car comes to a stop, the Nazis will make you get out. If you are sick, they will send you to the death camps; if you are healthy, they will send you to the work camps.

  You need to be in good shape for the Holocaust.

  Houdini ran ten miles every day.

  Bruce Lee ran six miles every day. For meals he mixed milk, eggs, meat and the blood of cows in a blender.

  If you’re kosher you can’t have meat in your milkshake.

  A famous rabbi was taken from his home by the Nazis and sent to a slave labor camp. The Nazis decided to make an example of him. In front of all the Jews, they took him outside and ordered him to eat a piece of nonkosher meat or they would kill him. “I will not eat this meat,” the rabbi said. The Nazis shot him in the head.

  “And you,” says Rabbi Brier, “you want to eat a cheeseburger.”

  Fifty thousand Jews were murdered in Austria. Three hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Romania. One hundred and forty thousand Jews were murdered in Germany. Three million Jews were murdered in Poland.

  Kevin’s family is originally from Poland.

  HOW TO MAKE A BOMB FROM A TENNIS BALL:

  Drill a hole in the tennis ball.

  Fill the tennis ball with lots of broken-off match heads.

  When you throw the ball, the match heads rub together and ignite, and the ball explodes.

  Sandy Koufax was a Jew. He was a pitcher for the Dodgers.

  Q: How do you know if the firing squad is Polish?

  A: They’re standing in a circle.

  One way to survive a firing squad is to fall into the ditch just a split second before the Nazis start shooting. Then, just wait until dark and climb out.

  A lot of the people in the Holocaust movies moan and groan in the pit; if you do that they’ll come over and shoot you, so just be quiet and act dead.

  Bruce Lee could kill a man three different ways with just one blow:

  A karate punch to the temple.

  A karate chop to the throat.

  An uppercut to the nose.

  The ancient Egyptians said that all Jews were lepers. Two thousand years later, so did Voltaire. A hundred years later, so did Karl Marx.

  Rabbi Brier said that when the Jews were fleeing Egypt, the dogs didn’t bark at them and that’s why dogs are rewarded with heaven.

  The Nazis trained their dogs to bite the Jews.

  Hitler’s dog was named Blondie.

  Voltaire was a founder of something called the Enlightenment.

  Nazi dogs don’t go to heaven.

  You have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct, and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny.—Voltaire

  Karl Marx’s father was Jewish.

  Groucho Marx was Jewish. His real name was Julius Henry Marx. Chico’s name was Leonard.

  The Nazis did not discern between observant and nonobservant Jews. Anyone with three Jewish grandparents was considered a Jew.

  “And you,” says Rabbi Brier, “you think you can just take off your yarmulke.”

  Kevin calls my yarmulke a beanie. I am a Beanie Boy.

  If Kevin becomes a Nazi, the first place he’ll tell the SS to look for me and Deena is in his attic. But we’ll be in Florida.

  Anne Frank was murdered in Bergen-Belsen after someone reported the family to the Nazis, so really—don’t tell anyone where you are going.

  They’re not really showers.

  They’ll probably make New York City into a ghetto, like the Warsaw Ghetto. If you live in a big city where there are Jews and one day there’s a Holocaust, you should leave right away.

  These are the other cities I think they’ll make into ghettos: Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco.

  London, too, if they take over England.

  America in German is ‘Amerika.’

  The rabbis showed us a movie called Ambulance. Some Jewish kids and their schoolteacher are forced into the back of an ambulance. The doctors lock them in, attach a hose from the exhaust pipe of the truck to the back door of the ambulance and drive away.

  The world record for holding your breath is eight minutes and six seconds. Some people said Houdini could hold his breath for twelve minutes.

  If you take a glass bottle, fill it with gasoline, shove a rag into the bottle and light it, you can throw it and it explodes like a bomb.

  Before the Romans burned Rabbi Chananya at the stake, they wrapped his body in a Torah scroll and placed tufts of water-soaked cotton around his heart to delay his death and prolong his suffering.

  Houdini’s cousin was married to Moe from The Three Stooges. Moe’s real name was Moses Horowitz. He was Jewish.

  So were Larry and Curly.

  The Mishnah says that it was our forefather Isaac who asked God to bring suffering to the world, since suffering is a great thing. God replied that it is indeed a wonderful idea and so He made Isaac blind.

  Who would want to kill the Stooges?

  Sometimes the Nazis set their dogs loose on the Jews who weren’t dead yet.

  To stop a dog from attacking you, shove a finger up its butt.

  Ninjas called that the Hidden Leaf Technique.

  I heard that Billy Idol is a Nazi.

  David Bowie, too.

  Houdini’s father was fired from his congregation for being too religious.

  Cuba turned away a boat full of 1,000 Jewish refugees. So did the United States. And Turkey. Switzerland sent back 30,000.

  In 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain. The Moors turned them away, too.

  At the end of the war, Hitler killed himself.

  When the Americans liberated Dachau, the bodies in the ovens were still burning.

  A lot of the American soldiers who freed the camps were black.

  If you are black and Nazis take over, they’ll make you get sterilized. That means you can’t have children.

  Before Hitler killed himself, he killed his dog Blondie because he didn’t want her to suffer.

  In a 1943 Gallup poll, 30 percent of people dismissed the news that 2 million Jews had been killed in Europe as a rumor.

  Karl Brandt was a Nazi doctor. They hung him for war crimes. “It is no shame to stand on this scaffold,” he said.

  During the Holocaust, a Nazi doctor named Klaus Schilling infected a thousand Jews with malaria. “Please,” he said at the Nuremberg trials, “let me finish my experiments.”

  A German officer once went to the Passover Seder of a local rabbi. The Seder service was very long, and the German officer was getting very hungry. Finally, the rabbi’s wife brought out a tray full of food. The German took one bite and spat it out. “What a stupid people!” he shouted. “Waiting all this time, just to eat bitter herbs!” The German officer walked angrily out the door. “What a fool,” said the rabbi. “If only he had waited a moment more, the bitter herbs would have been followed by a delicious meal.”

  “And that,” says Rabbi Brier, “is the whole history of the Jews.”

  Our families will come to Miami, too, if they haven’t all been murdered in the camps. Then we’ll buy a big house with a tennis court and a pool and a car that’s not a Mercedes or a Ford, and maybe if Kevin isn’t a Nazi he can come visit us and we can ride bikes on the beach or something.

  Seven years after the Holocaust, 400,000 Russian Jews were sent to labor camps in Siberia.

  Today, Mein Kampf is a bestseller in the Middle East.

  Most of the time, Houdini had the keys.

  Most of Game of Death where Bruce Lee fights Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wasn’t really Bruce Lee. He was already dead.

  TIPS FOR HITCHHIKING:

  Make a big sign.

  Stand at the entrance to a highway.

  Smile.

  Stand where there’s space for a car to pull over.

  If you can, bring a girl along, like Deena.

  Fl
orida is 6,600 miles from Israel. We’ll probably go to Jerusalem and stay in the King David Hotel. Deena goes there every Passover with her family. They have a tennis court and a pool.

  Waiting for Joe

  IN the beginning, he was always on time. But it had been a long time since the beginning, longer than either Doughnut or Danish could remember.

  “I don’t get it,” complained Danish. “Isn’t it time?”