From the Ashes

by Sandra Saidak

  Again, Adolf felt the familiar shifting of the universe beneath his feet. “So you’re saying…what? They lied about being Jews? Why would anyone do that?”

  “I don’t know.” Ilsa returned her stare to the stream, as if she could force answers from the water. “Hatred for the Reich runs strong in these parts. Maybe it’s just their way of thumbing their noses at the enemy.”

  Adolf shook his head and stood up.

  “Where are you going?” Ilsa asked.

  “To have a chat with our local rabbi. Rabbis are supposed to be teachers, right? I’m ready to learn a few things.”

  Adolf found the ruined synagogue empty when he arrived. It felt like a reprieve; he wasn’t ready to talk to anyone just then.

  The place was peaceful. Just as the crumbling façade of the Judenmuseum carried a kind of spiritual weight, so too did this centuries-old synagogue. It seemed not so much to be falling apart as seeping back into the earth; manmade and god-made holy places merging into one.

  Adolf settled into a corner of the main room. Long ago, the floor had buckled, creating a low seat. Leaning his back against charred timbers, Adolf gazed through the missing roof—economy skylighting he decided—and watched puffy white clouds float lazily in a brilliant blue sky.

  He had slept little the past few nights, nor would he have expected to, given all the recent stress. But here, he felt safe; secluded from the events that churned around him. It was very soothing.

  He wasn’t aware of when, exactly, the dream began, but he knew he was dreaming. It had the same vivid quality as the frightening nightmare he’d had on midsummer night—and at first, this seemed to be a nightmare as well.

  He saw a Jew being chased by a mob. He knew the man was a Jew, not by any physical clues, but by the shouting of the mob.

  They weren’t in Germany, he realized, nor anywhere in Europe. North America, perhaps?

  It had a grizzly ending, as mob actions usually do. As the man lay dying, he cried out to Elijah—the prophet who was to foretell the coming of the Messiah. The one, Adolf remembered explaining to Berta, had never died.

  “I call on you, Elijah, to come here, not as a witness, but that the covenant not be broken.”

  Then, it was the man’s body that was broken. Adolf watched him die, his dream-self able to block out the sounds of the cheering mob. Then, something seemed to detach from the hideously beaten corpse and rise above the scene. Adolf realized he was seeing a soul ascend to…where? That place mentioned in the Book of Daniel? Adolf hoped so.

  And curiously, as he woke up, Adolf found himself hoping that whoever that man was, he had gone to the same place as Mirielle and had been there to greet her. There was, he reflected, something strangely reassuring, almost happy, about the dream.

  He came fully to himself, and found Rabbi Sasha sitting across from him.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” said Sasha.

  “You were looking for me?” Adolf asked.

  “I knew we would have to speak eventually.” The old man moved to sit against the charred wall beside Adolf. “You seemed to be in the throes of a dream when I arrived—or was it a vision?”

  “You tell me.” Adolf related his dream to Sasha.

  For a moment, the old Russian was visibly shaken. Then he said in a quiet voice, “I believe you were a witness to an event that occurred in 1958, somewhere in the southern part of the North American Protectorate. I saw it myself in a dream, long ago. I later learned from an eye witness it was real.”

  “And what was it?”

  “The death of the last Jew on earth.” Sasha coughed uncomfortably. “You know how the Party loves closure. Real or not, they had to have some kind of official ending to the Jewish Question. Over the years, I have come to believe that this was it.”

  CHAPTER 27

  They were both silent for a while.

  “Well,” said Adolf at last. “That answers my first question, anyway. You people aren’t really…by birth, I mean…”

  “No.”

  “None of you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, so I guess my next question is…”

  “Why do we claim to be?” Adolf nodded.

  Sasha leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. The sunlight coming through the broken roof showed every line on his wrinkled face. “My name, when I was born,” he began, “was Vladimir Ivanovitch.”

  “Who was Sasha?”

  “I’m getting there. My father died when I was six years old. My mother had five children to feed. The State gave her a job washing linens in our new hospital, which itself was one of Stalin’s building projects.

  “She worked for a doctor, who we all knew was Jewish—not officially, of course. We were all good Communists, and thus, free from religion. This doctor was a good man. My family always seemed to be in some kind of trouble; he always helped us out. And then, when my sister became ill, and everyone said she would die—he saved her.”

  “He’d have probably done that for anyone,” Adolf said.

  “True, but it didn’t make me any less grateful. My mother, too—or so I thought.

  “Sasha was the doctor’s son; two years older than me. We became friends. Better friends than I had thought, because he trusted me with a great secret—his faith. Sasha, it seemed, was destined to be a rabbi.” The old man smiled, his eyes still closed. “I remember the day he explained to me what that meant. We were both hiding from our mothers to escape chores, and he showed me his treasure trove: a box of books he had hidden behind his house.

  “He had been studying in secret. I wanted to know what was so special about what was hidden in those books; what made it worth such a risk. So he told me—no, he showed me. He taught me Hebrew, and told me about the Kibbutz movement in Palestine, and shared his dream of someday moving there. He was going to leave this place, he said, and live where he could sing his faith to the world. And although I never told him, I was planning to go with him.

  “When Sasha turned thirteen he told me he was going to celebrate his bar mitzvah, the passage into manhood. It was a serious thing. The fact that there would be no one there but the two of us—and God, I suppose—didn’t worry him.

  “But I was worried. You see learning about his faith got me curious about my own. I knew my grandmother had had each of us baptized in secret as children, and I knew a little about the Russian Orthodox Church that my family had been a part of for generations. So I gleaned what I could.”

  “And you realized that if Sasha dedicated himself to a faith other than Christian, he’d go to hell when he died,” said Adolf.

  The grizzled old Russian opened his eyes and stared at Adolf. A grin split his wrinkled face. “You are very perceptive, young man. Of course, I shouldn’t wonder.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I feared. But when I told Sasha, he only laughed, and asked me again to be present for the ceremony. So I thought about it, and finally thought to ask if he wasn’t worried that that I would go to hell if I didn’t believe the way he did. I suppose I was just fishing for an invitation to come with him—to Palestine, to Heaven, who knows?

  “But I’ll never forget his response: ‘What kind of god would send someone to hell just for just for worshiping in a different way? It’s what you do that matters; how you follow the laws God wrote on your heart in the beginning of time.’

  “So, I witnessed his bar mitzvah, and made up my mind that I would have one of my own someday.

  “That was the year the Germans came.

  “My grandfather was mayor of our little town. It never really meant very much—until the soldiers marched in, and gathered us all together. They ‘explained’ things to us; shouted many frightening orders. Then they told my grandfather to tell them who the Jews were.

  “And my grandfather said no.

  “So they shot my grandfather, and made another man mayor, and told him to hand over the Jews. He did.

  “I hid Sasha and his family in our house. But when they
began searching houses, my mother panicked. She led the soldiers to them and they took them away.

  “Later, as a courier for the Russian Army, I came across a mass grave, not far from our town. It was the week before my thirteenth birthday.

  “So I left a stone by the grave, because Sasha had told me that’s what Jews do, and I wondered why heroes like Sasha and my grandfather were dead, while cowards like my mother and myself still lived.”

  “You were hardly a coward,” Adolf interrupted. “You were a child, and you took a huge risk, hiding those people at all.”

  “But I couldn’t save them.”

  “Neither could your grandfather.”

  “I know. It seems foolish now, but I simply didn’t want to be Vladimir Ivanovitch anymore. I wanted to be Sasha—and everything he might have become.

  “And as the years went by, and the people around me faced an endless war, without the comfort of faith or the hope of victory, they needed something. So I gave it to them.”

  “And here we are,” said Adolf.

  “Here we are,” said Sasha.

  “And the chain was truly broken.” Adolf brooded.

  “Maybe not,” said Sasha. “Did you notice something unusual about the dream you had just now?”

  “Other than the fact that I had it at all? Not really.”

  “Traditionally, most Jews recite the Sh’ma when faced with death. In your dream, the man—possibly the last Jew on earth—called out to Elijah. The prophet who didn’t die. If Elijah did, in fact, come down to earth at that man’s summons, then there is still one living descendant of Abraham among us. And if what you and I and the others are doing is truly righteous in the sight of God…” Sasha shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “It’s possible,” Adolf admitted. “He’s been seen just about everywhere, lately. Of course, I can’t tell you what he looks like, since he’s never seen fit to show himself to me!” Adolf hurled a stone across the temple foundations in sudden furry. He didn’t know why, but suddenly, all he could feel was anger.

  There was a commotion in the woods behind them. Adolf and Sasha hurried from the synagogue. They found nearly all of the visiting rebels, along with several Free Russians, gathered around yet another small party of foreigners.

  “This place is getting too crowded,” muttered one of the Russians.

  From what Adolf could gather in those first few moments, the newcomers had come in search of the conference, with vital information.

  Members of both the conference and the Free Russians were suspiciously interrogating the newcomers, who were, in turn demanding proof that everyone here wasn’t a Gestapo spy.

  Ilsa solved the problem easily enough by stepping forward and calling out a phrase in a language Adolf was sure no one there understood. One of the men responded in the same tongue.

  “It’s okay,” said Ilsa. “They’re supposed to be here.”

  “But what happened to the conference?” asked the woman beside him. The blood stains on their clothing helped to explain why they were late.

  While Thoresten and Marla hurried to explain, and Father Bernardo offered water and rations to the newcomers, Ilsa and the man she obviously knew were anxiously conferring. Suddenly, she signaled for Adolf to join them.

  “This is Brun,” she told Adolf. “A renegade Party scientist. Until now, I was afraid he had died in the attack four days ago.”

  “There was some trouble just as we were trying to leave,” Brun said. “We were stuck in a safe house three extra days, then had to fight our way through an ambush—which I see now was actually a good thing…” The young man looked like he was about to dissolve into hysterical laughter. Adolf knew the feeling well.

  “This is Rabbi Adolf,” Ilsa said to Brun. “It’s okay, you can trust him.”

  “I know,” said Brun, awe calming the fevered look in his eyes. He produced a metal tube from a pouch inside his shirt and gave it to Adolf. “I stole this from the lab I’d been forced to work in for the past two years. It contains a toxin that the Party has been developing—or perhaps perfected. I don’t know what part of the process this sample is from. I don’t even know for sure what it does.

  “But I believe that it is a genetically coded virus, designed to attack only non-Aryans.”

  “Attack how?” asked Adolf.

  “Fatally,” said Brun. “That much, at least, I’m sure of. You have to get this back to Finland. It’s the only place with the resources to analyze this thing, and God help us, find a cure.”

  “Do you know anything about the Party’s plans for this thing?” asked Adolf. “Timetable? Distribution? Anything?”

  Brun shook his head. “Nothing. All I know is that over the last few weeks, everything’s been stepped up. More staff brought in, round the clock shifts, you know what I’m saying?”

  Adolf knew what he was saying. They had to get back to Finland now.

  He left Ilsa to learn whatever else could be gotten from the group, and hurried off to find Thoresten and Rika.

  When it was assembled, Adolf found he was leading a different party than the one he left Finland with. Thoresten, Rika, and the silent bodyguard were there, but most of their Polish companions would be staying here—some to work on repairing the bomb, some to train with the Russians. Father Bernardo and Rabbi William would be joining them, as well as Brun and some of his team.

  They were packed and provisioned so quickly, Adolf barely had time to say goodbye to Rabbi Sasha.

  “Safe journey, Rabbi,” Sasha said.

  “For you as well, Rabbi,” Adolf replied. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected relief in the other man’s face at Adolf’s use of the title. “I hope we will meet again, someday. There’s still a lot I’d like to discuss.”

  They embraced, and Adolf hurried after his friends.

  They traveled in silence through the thick dark forests. It was only after they had emerged into open meadowlands that Adolf drew Ilsa aside for private conversation, leaving security to the others. “What do you think, so far?” he asked her.

  “Hard to say. The Party deliberately starts rumors, just to keep us chasing false leads. But this…? Who knows? I agree we need to get back to Finland in a hurry. But I’d like to stop at my old base and get Alina first.”

  “Alina?” Adolf had nearly forgotten about the crazed prophetess he’d met in Poland. Suddenly, she didn’t seem so crazed. “She described the plague as yellow locusts. The only people who survived were wearing special survival gear. Brun!” The young scientist hurried over. They were traveling through the rocky gorge of overlapping craters created by an old carpet-bombing campaign. The bleak landscape suited Adolf’s mood. “Was anyone working on new types of survival gear, while you were working on the toxin?”

  “Possibly. They were bringing in a lot of engineers before I left.” He rubbed the several days growth of beard on his chin. “But I don’t see why they’d need survival gear, when the toxin’s harmless to Aryans.”

  “Maybe it’s for select members of other races,” said Adolf. ‘Protected Status’ was the old term.”

  “Or maybe just a back up if something went wrong during testing,” said Ilsa.

  The three fell to pondering in silence. Adolf’s instincts told him of Thoresten’s approach, and he glanced at the younger man, who, grinning, pointed at William, Bernardo and Gregor walking quietly ahead.

  “So a rabbi, a priest and a Russian bodyguard walk into a bar…”

  Adolf’s smile at Thoresten’s joke turned to a look of horror as William, Bernardo and Gregor’s bodies danced in death to the sound of submachine guns. Ilsa leapt into the nearest crater, and unslung her Mauser sniper’s rifle. Thoresten knocked Adolf down in the crater in which they were standing.

  “Sheisse!! Now what?” grunted Thoresten.

  Adolf raised his head, finding himself fascinated that of the group that been in front, he could only see a worn boot resting against the far side of the crater where their bodies had fallen. He j
umped at the crack of Ilsa’s rifle.

  A fusillade of submachine gun fire pinned down everyone’s heads for a minute.

  “There! She got one!” Thoresten pointed, grinning. Adolf raised his head, and looked. A gray haired man lay slumped against a tree, his helmet sitting in his lap.

  “Adolf! See him?” called Ilsa.

  “Yes.” Adolf looked about cautiously.

  “Look at his hair – he’s old!”

  “So? You got a Feldwebel?”

  “No Adolf, I can see his rank – he’s just an Obershutze!” Adolf jumped again as Ilsa fired her Mauser. Again, the Nazi soldiers tried to pin Ilsa with submachine gun fire.

  Shouting over the sound of weapons fire, Thoresten called, “Great Ilsa, so we get killed by grandpa today. How does this make today different?”

  “Don’t you see – it’s a Volkssturm unit! Nothing but kids and old men!”

  Adolf’s stomach turned at the thought of having to kill children in order to escape. If he could just think of another way…”

  “How do we get out of here?” Thoresten was asking.

  “Crawl.” Adolf looked behind him, and saw Rika, several craters closer to the woods they had left, push Brun over a crater lip.

  “Won’t they shoot us?

  “No, those old submachine guns they have don’t aim worth a damn. I can keep them pinned down from here.”

  Adolf and Thoresten turned and followed Ilsa’s advise. It was the hardest 100 meters Adolf had traveled, interspersed with hundreds of submachine gun rounds blindly fired over their heads as the Nazis tried to kill Ilsa and her sniper rifle.

  “Ilsa! Come!”

  Adolf was rewarded by the sight of Ilsa throwing herself over the lip of a crater, and then staying down as the soldiers fired their submachine guns. Grinning, Thoresten pounded Adolf on the back.

  “See! She’ll make it!”

  Ilsa had covered 20 meters and four craters in her retreat back to the woods when the sound of ripping cloth was heard. Instinctively, Adolf and Thoresten looked up towards the sound and then covered their heads. The earth around them heaved as artillery fire exploded. Just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Adolf pushed Thoresten towards the woods “Go, while their adjusting their aim! I’ll cover Ilsa.” Thoresten jumped up and in ten seconds was back in the woods.