“What about Sarah Chava?”
“I don’t know. I never found out what happened to her.”
“So it is possible,” Emma exclaimed, “that she may have survived?”
“There is always the possibility of survival. I have never given up hope,” Max said, shaking his head and staring beyond Emma. “She would be an old woman if she did manage somehow to survive, maybe even a grandmother. I cannot imagine her as an old woman. Maybe . . .”
As he said these words, Max again began to sob.
“If that bastard Prandus walked through the door now, I could kill him with my bare hands,” Emma said, her face contorted.
“And I would help you,” Jacob said, his voice shaking with emotion.
“He, too, would be an old man,” Max said. “It is harder to kill an old man.”
“It wasn’t hard for that monster,” Emma replied.
“Did they catch him after the war?” Abe asked.
“I don’t think so,” Max replied. “I heard nothing of what happened to him. He’s probably living somewhere in Vilna. Maybe he died. I do not know.”
“What was that word your grandfather shouted?” Emma asked.
“Nekama,” Max replied. “It means take revenge. I later learned that the word nekama was written on the walls of the death camps and the ghetto bunkers. I do not know whom my grandfather was telling to take revenge, since he believed none of us would survive. Maybe he was pleading with God.”
“What happened after you were shot? How did you escape?” Rendi asked softly, uncertain if Max could continue.
Chapter 8
RESURRECTION
PONARY WOODS: 1942
I remembered nothing after being shot until I felt the dirt hitting my head. Someone was shoveling dirt over my body. Though my head was pounding with pain, I began to wonder whether I was alive or dead. I knew I was being buried. Buried alive? Maybe that will be worse than a quick death. Should I move and thus assure a coup de grâce? Or should I remain motionless, feigning death? I remembered the shallowness of the hole I had dug. Maybe I could survive the burial.
“I remained still until I could breathe no more. And then I held my breath as long as I could. When I began to feel faint, I knew I had no choice. I pushed my head to the surface, certain I would be shot.
“I tried to see, quietly shaking my head to dislodge the dirt that caked my eyes. I could make out the moving figure of a tall Lithuanian with a shovel in one hand and a gun in the other. Because only one eye was open, I could not tell whether the Lithuanian was moving toward me or away from me. After a terrified moment, I managed to open my other eye and saw that the Lithuanian was moving toward another family’s burial pit. I lay still for what seemed like an eternity, quietly blowing dirt from my nostrils, until I finally heard the truck engines turn over and leave. Then I tried to get up. I could not move my legs, or even feel them. I willed my legs to free themselves from their mudpacked crypt, and after a few moments of uncertainty, they broke through. I staggered, holding on to a tree until I could steady myself. Then I took my first full breath of the night’s air, rancid from the smell of death and blood and flesh.
“The glen was quiet. No one was visible. I could see mounds of dirt all around. I could also see rivers of blood and particles of flesh in the pale moonlight. Then I heard a sound. It was a gurgle. It came from my pit. It recurred. I dug quickly with my fingers in the direction of the sound. I felt a human body. I dug furiously, uncovering the body of my grandmother Blima. She was dead. The blood flowing from her chest wound was making the gurgling sound. It was a sound that would awaken me at night for years. Though I knew they were all dead, I continued to dig, then I heard the sound of an approaching truck. I had to escape.
“I ran in the direction of a stream in which my friends and I used to swim. I cleaned my wound—the bullet had entered the back of my head and exited below my ear. It had caused great pain, but remarkably little damage or bleeding. I used my white kittel to make bandages. I remained in the woods all the next day, my head wound causing such excruciating pain that I feared blacking out.
“At nightfall, I decided I had to take a chance and approach a farmhouse, hoping the occupants were not Nazi sympathizers. Considering the pervasiveness of pro-German feelings, I knew how risky it would be, but I had no choice. Before deciding whether to knock on the door, I watched the woman and her son through the window. I saw them at dinner, eating a simple meal of soup and bread. There was something about the woman that led me to trust her. Maybe it was that she prayed with such devotion both before and after the meal. Maybe it was that she treated her son lovingly. After watching the son go to sleep, I waited until the woman went alone to the outhouse. I did not want to alarm her, so as she left the outhouse, I whispered, ‘I’m hurt. Will you please help me?’
“The woman was startled but not frightened by the sight of me with a bandage wrapped around my head. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I will try to help you.’
“ ‘I am a Jew,’ I blurted out.
“ ‘I know that,’ she said, looking at my telltale sidelocks. ‘It is my Christian duty to help anyone in need.’ And with that she led me inside her house.
“Katrina Liatus was a forty-year-old widow who worked the land. My grandfather would have looked down on her as a peasant. Katrina would not have denied that she was a simple woman. She could not read or write, but she could certainly think. Every decision she made about me—and necessarily about herself, since if I were caught, it could mean the end of her—turned out to be brilliant. She knew exactly whom to trust, whom to flatter, whom to deceive, and even whom to kill. She lied to the local priest, describing me as a cousin from Kovno. She trusted the constable, even though he was friendly with some of Prandus’s men. She flattered the landlord. She killed a drunken neighbor who discovered my secret and threatened to disclose it unless Katrina submitted to his sexual advances. Pretending to agree, she invited him to her house, stabbed him through the heart, and told the police that he had tried to rape her. Since the drunk had a reputation for such conduct, no one made a fuss. If the constable suspected what happened, he never let on.
“Katrina also knew how to treat my wound, using folk remedies—boiling hot rags, mustard plasters, leeches, and a heavy dose of prayer—to avoid infection. I can still feel the hot mustard against my throbbing wound.
“Katrina gave me a haircut and my first shave. ‘You must not look Jewish if you are to remain here.’ I agreed and dressed myself in Lithuanian peasant clothing. Katrina gave me a cross to wear around my neck. I was nervous as I put it on.
“I lived with Katrina and her twelve-year-old son, Lukus. Our cover story was that I was a cousin from Kovno serving as a companion for Lukus, and indeed I did so for more than six months. I might have remained with Katrina and her son indefinitely, had a group of Lithuanian partisans not broken into the Liatus house one night to steal food. I woke up and heard them. I crept into Katrina’s room to warn her. ‘Let them have the food. They’re just children like you and Lukus,’ she said.
“I peeked into the kitchen and watched. A young man, who was younger than me, took some food. Suddenly I recognized a woman in the group. She was a Jewish student named Miriam who had studied with my father. Frightened, I walked into the kitchen and introduced myself. I told her of my father’s murder, and she hugged me and asked me to join them. I thought hard about what to do. I had no experience that would suit me as a partisan. But I felt I had no choice. They were fighting against the people who had killed my family. I agreed to join the group, and I bade Katrina and Lukus good-bye.
“I took the cross from around my neck and put it in my pocket as a reminder of Katrina Liatus. I still have it in a drawer at home.
“I knew nothing of fighting or guns, but I learned. During the ensuing years until the liberation, I fought the Nazis and, when I could, searched for my sister. I did not recite the Kaddish. I did not grieve. I slept so little that I did not give myself time to d
ream. The nightmares came later. Then it was a struggle to survive. I did not expect to live for long. The Nazis were invincible. Every day, it seemed, one of my friends was found dead, or failed to return after a mission. Miriam was blown up by a German grenade a few months after recruiting me.
“I had several miraculous escapes from almost certain death. Yet even these did not persuade me that it was my ‘destiny’ to live, for to believe that would require me to believe that it was the rest of my family’s destiny to die. I could not believe in a power that was capable of abetting such evil for His own unknown purposes. I preferred to believe in the unmitigated evil of Nazism and the unqualified need to fight it.
“I fought for almost two years in several ragtag partisan units. I shot one German soldier during an attack on a troop train, but I don’t know whether I killed him. I hoped that I had, though now I realize that he might just have been a youngster who was drafted into Hitler’s army.
“In the days following the liberation, I wandered through the streets of Vilna in a daze. I asked everyone if they had seen a girl who fit Sarah Chava’s description. I kept looking for something, someone from the past.
“Suddenly I found myself in front of the old Menuchen house. It looked exactly the same as it had on the Passover night when Marcelus Prandus came to the door and murdered my family. Even the large wooden mezuzah was still there. Everything the Menuchen house had represented, however, was gone. It was hard to believe that so much had changed in just three years. I walked up to the front of the house and stood there—remembering. A man opened the door and asked what I wanted. When I told him it was my family’s home, he said, ‘Not any longer,’ insisting that the house had been given to him. He threatened that if I ever came to the door again, he would call the police, who would finish what Hitler had started.
“Despite the threat, I sneaked into the house one afternoon to see if I could retrieve any mementos of my family. I climbed to the attic in search of Reb Mordechai’s Passover box, but it was gone. The library, too, had vanished. I searched everywhere—for something, anything that would connect this house to its long heritage. Nothing. As I was about to leave, I spotted my old chest of drawers. I pulled frantically at each drawer. As I opened the bottom one, it broke apart. Beneath the rotting wood, I saw a single family photograph, which had fallen behind the drawer. It had been taken at Efraim’s circumcision party, less than a year before Ponary Woods. It included a smiling Sarah Chava. On the back was a note from my sister wishing Efraim mazel tov. I slipped the photograph in my pocket and climbed out the window.
“I slept in the Jewish graveyard, which had several old family mausoleums. Other Jewish survivors also found their way to the graveyard. I went up to each of them with the photograph. I didn’t have to say a word. I just pointed to my sister. The other person looked and shook his head. It became a ritual. There were rumors of Jews who had passed for Christians, or who had been hidden by Christians. Perhaps Sarah Chava. I asked everywhere. I showed everyone the picture. But I met no one who knew anything about the fate of my little sister. Finally, after a week of sleeping in the old Jewish graveyard, I met a friend from my religious school. His name was Chayim, and he, like me, had been in a partisan unit. I showed Chayim the photograph of Sarah Chava. Chayim shook his head.
“Chayim invited me to join his tiny group of survivors. ‘We need you for a minyan,’ Chayim joked. They were planning to blow up the prison that was holding the Gestapo and SS prisoners.
“I was sorely tempted, especially if Chayim’s group could help me find and kill Marcelus Prandus.
“Even so, I turned down Chayim, convinced that the Nazis would be severely punished by the Allies. Besides, in the weeks following the end of the war, I found it difficult to think about punishment. There was so much misery, poverty, and death all around that nature seemed to be exacting its own punishment. Sixteen-year-old Lithuanian girls, wearing crosses, were selling their bodies for a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk, or a chocolate bar. The Communists in Lithuania were exacting their own cruel revenge. There was talk of trials.
“I hoped that maybe someone had taken revenge against Marcelus Prandus. I looked for Prandus—not sure what I would do if I found him. I never did. Vilna is a large city, and in the months following its liberation, it was in turmoil. On several occasions, I thought I saw Prandus—on a bus, in a market, at a checkpoint—but it was always some other tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed Lithuanian. Soon all tall, young Lithuanian men began to remind me of Marcelus Prandus. I left Vilna without learning anything about Prandus. But somehow I knew that Marcelus Prandus was still alive. People like him survive.”
Chapter 9
CAMBRIDGE
THE SAME NIGHT
“Did many Jews seek revenge after the war?” Emma asked.
“A few, like Chayim. There was a small revenge movement—a few assassinations, nothing more. I sometimes wish there had been more,” Max said in a voice of frustration and mounting anger. “We were in shock. Actually, there was more revenge in the displaced persons camp to which I was sent a few months after the liberation.”
“There were Nazis in the displaced persons camps?” Abe asked incredulously.
“No. No. Of course not. Only Jews. The revenge was taken by Jews against Jews. Here, let me give you an example. The first week in the camp, I went to Sabbath services—to see if I could still pray. In the middle of the Torah reading, I noticed the man to my left, a Polish Jew, looking intently into the face of the man to my right, a Czech Jew. The man to my right turned away, as if to hide his face. Suddenly the Polish Jew let out a bestial shriek. Flinging his entire body over mine and shouting, ‘Capo, capo!’ he bit the Czech man on his throat, like a wolf trying to kill his prey. I tried to separate the men and, in the process, had my hand bitten by the Polish man. The Czech man was carried to the hospital, bleeding profusely from his neck. After receiving several stitches, he left the camp and was never heard from again.
“Almost every day one survivor of a death camp would identify another as a capo, or collaborator. There were shouted accusations, heated denials, beatings, and even one killing.”
“Why was so much anger directed against fellow Jews? Weren’t they victims, too?” Rendi asked.
“You must understand,” Max continued in an explanatory tone, “the Nazis were distant, abstract figures, whereas the collaborators were flesh-and-blood neighbors. It was easier to feel passion against someone with whom you could personally identify.”
“Were there any happy encounters at the camp?” Emma asked. “Did anyone ever find a loved one?”
“A few. Every so often a friend or relative who was presumed dead would appear. These occasional reunions encouraged me to continue my search for Sarah Chava, though I knew the chances that she had survived were slim. Every camp had a bulletin board on which photographs and descriptions of lost loved ones were placed, with pleas for information. Newsletters were circulated among the camps. But good news was rare. Even bad news was rare. Mostly, there was no news of missing loved ones.”
Max sat silently as his thoughts turned to his sister. He tried hard to mask his growing distress. It was a mistake to tell the story, he now thought. It had brought back not only the pain, but his long-suppressed need for justice—even revenge.
He had to get out of there, to be alone. He could not let his friends see his true feelings. He was ashamed of what he was thinking. He needed to say something more uplifting.
“We heard stories of incredible bravery by some young women who had been spared from death only to face sexual humiliation by Nazis. They told us of an entire class of high school girls who took poison together rather than submit to their Nazi tormentors. When I heard this, I wondered whether Sarah Chava had faced a similar choice. I dreamed of Sarah Chava, mostly nightmares, but I heard nothing about her fate. I can only hope,” Max said, looking off in the distance.
“There was one other happy encounter,” he added, “but it was short-liv
ed. I met a boyhood neighbor in the camp. Dori Bloom. We became close friends. We traveled to Palestine together. We fought in the army together. We even went back to Germany together.” Again Max began to cry.
“I cannot go on. I have subjected you to enough sadness for one night. I must stop now and go home. Please excuse me.”
Abe put his arm around Max’s shoulder as the old man made his way to the door.
It was past midnight when Max finally took leave of the Ringel home. He felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted as he made his way to his Cambridge home.
As Max walked along Brattle Street, where he had lived for nearly forty years, he thought about his life in Cambridge. His career as a Harvard professor had been as close to perfect as possible, with respect, admiration, and honors. His innovative work on the Book of Ecclesiastes, which began as his Ph.D. thesis at Hebrew University, had made him one of the leading biblical scholars in the world. He had drawn on both the religious teachings of his grandfather and the secular research of his father to help create a new genre of scholarship. But his personal life in America had been incomplete. A few friends, like Abe and his family and—of course—Haskell, but no intimate relationships. No real love. No peace of mind. Then there were the memories. During the day his work kept these memories away. At night they filled his mind. Max had never had a good night’s sleep, never experienced complete happiness even for a day. He obsessed about Marcelus Prandus, wondering whether he was alive or dead, whether he had children, whether he ever felt guilt over what he had done. Had Prandus become like Dostoyevsky’s fictional Raskolnikov, his unpunished crimes eating at him and destroying his life? Or, like the real-life Stalin, had he never given them a second thought?
About once a month, Max “saw” Prandus—in a crowd, on television, in a mirror, even in his classroom. It was always his imagination, but every time he “saw” his family’s killer, his heart skipped a beat.
Just Revenge Page 5
