The Locket

by Evans, Mike

  After a moment, he leaned away. “It’s over?” “It’s over for me, and I think it’s over for him.”

  “You want something to eat? Something to drink?” “I was hoping we could sit on the steps out back.”

  Eli took my hand and led me through the kitchen to the back door. We walked outside to the alley and sat on the steps. I snuggled next to him. He put his arm around me and drew me close. “I was praying for you all week,” he said softly.

  “I know. I could feel it.”

  “You never said much about what happened. Did you have any trouble?”

  “No.”

  “What kind of questions did his lawyer ask?” “He didn’t ask a single one.”

  “None?”

  “Not a single one.”

  “He hasn’t asked any of the victims any questions.”

  “So they concede that he did what everyone says he did.”

  “They concede that it happened. But they’re arguing that he was only acting under orders.”

  “And you put that notion to rest.”

  “I hope so.” I looked up at him. “Thank you.” “For what?”

  “For being you. For being here for me. For making all this possible.” “I’m just a guy who works at a coffee shop.”

  I kissed him full on the mouth. “You are a faithful man of God. And the love of my life.”

  After four months of trial, Adolf Eichmann was convicted for his involvement in the atrocities of the Shoah. The court sentenced him to death by hanging. It had taken a year from the time of his arrest to reach that result. It would take another year of appeals and legal maneuvers before the sentence would be carried out. Many from our office attended his hanging. I was not one of them.

  At the time of his execution, just before midnight on May 31, 1962, when Eichmann was executed, I was seated alone on a pew in the darkened sanctuary at the Grand Synagogue, just up the street from the coffee shop. I was there praying for the souls of all our friends and loved ones who had died by his hand.

  Over the years, my response to him had run the gauntlet, from infatuated adolescent girl to a woman obsessed with finding justice for myself and for all on whom he imposed such misery. That later reaction involved much of my adult life. Having seen justice applied, my heart turned to forgiveness. He was but an instrument of Evil, the real culprit behind all that happened. The law gave him no reprieve.

  I continued to work at Mossad, tracking down Nazis who were wanted on war crimes charges. That effort kept me busy from early in the morning until late in the afternoon. Occasionally, however, I left the office early, usually on Fridays when I came to the coffee shop to collect Eli before the evening service, which marked the beginning of the Shabbat.

  On one of those Friday afternoons, not too long after Eichmann was hanged, I arrived at the shop and entered through the front door. After I testified in court, many of the customers at the shop wanted to talk about what I had done. They often took me aside and told me of their own experiences during the war. Articles about me appeared in the Jerusalem Post. Yohai had some of them framed and hung them on the café wall.

  That day, as I came through the dining room, a woman stopped me and began telling me about her experiences at Bergen-Belsen, a camp where thousands of Jews died, many of them from typhus. She jotted down the name of a prison guard she remembered and asked if I would look into his present location. Our office routinely received numerous requests just like hers and I told her I would check into it.

  As I rose to leave her table, Eli appeared in the doorway from the kitchen. He caught my eye and gestured for me to come to him. I excused myself and walked in that direction. When I reached him, he nodded to the right and with a smile said, “That man over there is waiting to see you.”

  I glanced in that direction and saw an older man with gray hair, olive complexion, and deep-set eyes seated at a table in the corner. “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Ask him,” Eli replied with a sly grin. “I think you’ll be surprised.” As I approached the table, I studied the man’s face, searching for a sign, a hint, something to jog my memory and remind me who he was. Then he looked up at me with a smile and I recognized him at once. He was Oscar Murillo, my cousin from Spain.

  He stood and I offered him my hand, which he shook politely. Then he pulled a chair from the table for me. “Please,” he insisted. “Have a seat.”

  “You are a long way from Cordova,” I said, unsure where to begin with him.

  “Not so far that we haven’t heard about your testimony at the Eichmann trial.” He took a sip of coffee. “That must have been difficult.” “Twenty years ago it would have been very difficult. But now, after all that has happened, it was mostly just very tiring.”

  “I never imagined you as a lawyer, but it suits you perfectly.” “Uncle Alois had something to do with that.”

  “He was a good man.”

  “Yes. He was. And that reminds me. There’s something I’ve wondered about. Perhaps you can tell me.”

  “I will, if I know.”

  “When I was in Zurich, at the Spanish Embassy after I escaped, they asked me numerous questions about who I was and where I came from. They were cordial but very much like government bureaucrats until someone noticed Aunt Haya’s name on my papers. When I told them Carlos Murillo was my uncle, they got very interested in my wellbeing. Victor, the man who was questioning me, sent for his supervisor, a man named Joaquin Valdivia. I thought I was in trouble but it turns out Valdivia was friends with your father. They put me up in a hotel for two weeks, flew me to Madrid, and bought a train ticket for the trip down to Cordova.” I paused to catch his eyes. “I never knew Uncle Carlos was once minister of the interior.”

  “Yes,” Oscar nodded. “He was. And Joaquin Valdivia was his best friend.”

  “From the way they acted, it seemed as if there was more to the situation than that. The way they looked after me. When I arrived in Madrid, someone was waiting for me and took me to the train station. He stayed with me until it was time for me to leave.”

  Oscar had a knowing smile. “Valdivia wasn’t merely someone’s supervisor. He was Spain’s ambassador to Switzerland—an appointment he received on the recommendation of my father.” My mouth dropped open. Oscar grinned. “Uncle Alois introduced Valdivia to the woman who became his wife.”

  I slumped against the back of my chair. “I had no idea they were that influential.”

  “Things are very different now,” Oscar sighed. “Valdivia has retired and lives in London. Victor lives in Madrid. The monarchy is gone. My father’s generation has passed from the scene. Others are in charge now.” He took another sip of coffee. “But that is not why I came to see you.” He reached into his pocket. “I came to bring you a gift.”

  “A gift?”

  “Hold out your hand and close your eyes.” I did as he said and felt something touch my palm. When I opened my eyes I saw Grandma’s locket and chain resting on my hand. “I should have never taken it from you,” he said.

  Tears filled my eyes. “I was glad for you to have it.”

  “And I am glad for you to have it back.” His eyes were full. He blinked back a tear. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  “There is no offense to forgive.” I wiped my eyes with my free hand. “But yes, I forgive you.”

  We both sat there in silence for a moment, staring at the locket. Then I glanced over at him. “Did you look inside it?”

  “No,” he shrugged. “For some reason, the thought never crossed my mind.”

  “I used to ask Grandma about it often, but she would never say what was in it, and even after she was gone somehow I didn’t feel free to look inside.”

  Oscar smiled at me. “I don’t think she would mind now.”

  “No,” I agreed. “I suppose not.” But still, I couldn’t bring myself to flip it open.

  He took a sip of coffee and gestured with his cup. “Go ahead,” he urged. “Let’s have a look.”

&nbs
p; I slid the edge of my thumbnail into the groove between the two halves of the locket. With the slightest nudge, the top came free and I gently lifted it open on its hinge. A smile came to my face as I stared down at the hollow space in the center.

  Oscar set his cup on the saucer. “What is it?” He leaned forward to see, and with the locket resting on my palm, I turned my hand to show him its contents.

  Adolf Eichmann was born in Solingen, Germany, in 1906. When he was eight years old, his mother died and the family moved to Linz, Austria. Eichmann attended school there, but his performance was less than stellar. Eventually, his father removed him from class and sent him to work in the family mining business. His stepmother intervened and persuaded a relative to help him obtain a job with the Vacuum Oil Company, then a subsidiary of Standard Oil. While working there, Eichmann joined the Nazi Party. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, he applied for acceptance in the active-duty SS. He was admitted and assigned to the staff of Dachau concentration camp. Later he obtained a transfer to the SS security service and worked in the Jewish Section.

  When the German Army invaded Austria in 1938, Eichmann was assigned the task of removing all Jews from the newly annexed region. He initially attempted to persuade Austrian Jews simply to leave and created a streamlined emigration process that facilitated their removal but stripped them of their property. The efficiency of that effort landed Eichmann a new job as head of the Jewish Emigration Office, where it was hoped he could duplicate his success in removing Jews from other regions. But as the war expanded, and countries closed their borders to Jewish refugees, removing Jews from German territory grew problematic, and the Nazis turned to the Final Solution.

  Although Eichmann is often called the Architect of the Holocaust, the idea of exterminating the Jews actually came from his boss, Reinhard Heydrich, in a plan announced at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. To implement that plan, Eichmann was given responsibility for transporting Jews from the occupied lands to a network of death camps, where they were murdered. By the end of the war, he had risen from the rank of lowly enlisted recruit to lieutenant colonel and had sent six million Jews on a train ride to death.

  As Germany’s defeat became obvious, many Nazi officers sought to distance themselves from Eichmann in a desperate attempt to minimize their association with the death camps. Eichmann followed that same tactic, assuming various aliases and identities in an attempt to elude Allied authorities and evade responsibility for his wartime activities. Twice captured by the US Army, first as Adolf Barth and later as Otto Eckmann, he managed to escape and lived in northern Germany under the name Otto Heninger before finally slipping away in 1950 to Italy. There, with the assistance of the Catholic Church, he obtained a refugee passport, which allowed him to travel to Argentina under the name of Ricardo Klement.

  In Argentina, Eichmann found a thriving German community that gave him a warm reception. With their help, he settled into an obscure life and a year or two later his wife and children quietly joined him.

  As time passed, the world seemed eager to forget the atrocities foisted on millions by the Nazis, but in Israel, no one forgot. Accounts of how Eichmann was located vary depending on the source. Some, who lived in Israel at the time and were closely associated with events involving the Israeli government, provide one account. Others, who lived in Europe and spent their lives tracking down Nazis both great and small, give a different account of events leading up to the Israeli government’s direct involvement. However, once the Israeli government chose to act, the story is rather clear.

  In 1960, following tips from several sources, a Mossad team was dispatched to Argentina to confirm Eichmann’s identity and location. Once that was ascertained, plans were laid for his capture and return to Israel. The details of how Eichmann was captured can be found in The House On Garibaldi Street by Isser Harel, who was instrumental in the planning and execution of that mission.

  Eichmann was returned to Israel, where he stood trial in Jerusalem on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership in an outlawed organization. He was convicted in 1961, and, after all appeals were exhausted, he was hanged. An authoritative account of the trial and execution can be found in Justice in Jerusalem, written by Gideon Hausner, the Israeli Attorney General who prosecuted the case.

  The Locket is loosely based on a compilation of events from Eichmann’s life and information drawn from varying accounts about how he was located. These events have been portrayed as realistically as possible but with an eye toward creating an entertaining and engaging story. Characters, events, and locations in The Locket are the work of fiction and have been arranged and compiled with the story of Sarah, our fictional character, to give a poignant glimpse of the devastating effect Nazi injustice and racial hatred had on so many. Our hope is that in seeing events through Sarah’s life, you will be inspired to read further on the subject of the Holocaust, the need for justice in the world today, and the healing that can only come through forgiveness.

  BOOKS BY MIKE EVANS

  Israel: America’s Key to Survival

  Save Jerusalem

  The Return

  Purity and Peace of Mind

  Who Cries for the Hurting?

  Living Fear Free

  I Shall Not Want

  Seven Years of Shaking

  Let My People Go

  Jerusalem Betrayed

  A Vision

  The Jerusalem Scroll

  The Prayer of David

  The Unanswered Prayers of Jesus

  God Wrestling

  Why Christians Should Support Israel

  The American Prophecies

  Beyond Iraq: The Next Move

  The Final Move Beyond Iraq

  Showdown with Nuclear Iran

  Jimmy Carter: The Liberal Left and World Chaos

  Atomic Iran

  Cursed

  Betrayed

  The Light

  Corrie’s Reflections and Meditations

  GameChanger Series:

  GameChanger

  Samson Option

  The Protocols Series:

  The Protocols

  The Candidate

  The Revolution

  The Final Generation

  Seven Days

  The Locket