When We Were Brave

by Karla M Jay

  He searched for Eduard and Christoph and found them seated on deck, waiting for sundown and the ragtag concert to begin. Someone discovered a few musical instruments on board, and the last two nights running under a star-spattered sky, German military and folk songs floated out over the far-stretching waters.

  For Falk, the upbeat songs brought back horrible memories of the death camps, the ruse of a lively band playing as the trains dislodged its victims while the scent of ash was in the air. The bored SS guards often toyed with the deportees, betting on who could tell the most outrageous lie:

  “The men will stay to the right and will work in the fields and receive extra food.”

  “We very much need a woman’s expertise in our kitchens. As you can smell, our current cooks seem to burn everything that goes into the ovens.”

  “Your young children will go to school. Please have them line up on the left for their room assignments.”

  Fury burned through Falk that day. The SS men entertained themselves by pointing the Jews to their deaths with false assurances. Although he never contributed, neither had he attempted to say anything to discourage the cruel lies, as that would lead to his end, too.

  “Enjoy the music,” he said to Eduard and Christoph. The German tunes turned his stomach. He chose to pace the deck. The dark, smelly hold below his only other option for escape. “I’m going to keep walking. I’ll meet you later.”

  Falk backed away from the growing crowd and bumped into Hartmann, who was in the 10th Army with Klaus Stern. The POW still wore the British pilot’s heavy boots he cooked off the airman’s feet.

  “Evening, Stern.”

  “Hartmann.” Falk flicked his chin, intending to walk past him until the man grabbed his arm. “Hold up.” Hartmann whistled and another soldier turned and headed their way.

  Falk yanked his arm free. “What’s up?”

  “Give it a minute.” He wore a smirk Falk couldn’t read. A soldier arrived at Hartmann’s side. A thick mustache overhung his lip, his beard scruffy like the rest of the POWs. Hartmann tapped the other soldier’s chest. “Stern. You remember Ziegler, don’t you? A fellow buddy from the Tenth?”

  Falk shrugged, stalling. If they reported him for traveling under false papers, his plan to reach America would be over. He’d be sent to a prison for German officers. There, it would be his compatriots he needed to worry about when they found out he defected. The cyanide pill seemed to grow in his pocket, and he felt the weight of its purpose. “Like I told you. I’d barely joined the Tenth when it all went to hell.”

  Ziegler spoke. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. Stern and I drank beer together when we weren’t looking for whores”—he jabbed at Falk’s chest—“and although you look like him, you’re not Stern.”

  Falk stepped back and raised his hands. “Let’s just leave it at that.” He turned, cursing his bad luck. Thousands captured, hundreds on board, and this man was Stern’s whoring buddy.

  “I think we should hear what some of the other men say.” Hartmann’s eyes said he was enjoying himself.

  He would be ganged up on and although he might be able to say Hartmann was crazy, Ziegler had truth to corroborate his story.

  Falk turned and darted to a sentry he knew spoke German. The soldier had a duty to protect the POWs and Falk needed to be convincing. Upon reaching the guard, he said, “Put me in solitary. Some men are trying to kill me for criticizing Hitler.”

  The sentry moved his rifle in front of him, at the ready, while he looked over Falk’s shoulder. “Which men?”

  Falk glanced back. Zeigler and Hartmann were closing in. He silently swore. Marshalling the fear of a doomed man with nothing to lose, he cocked his fist and punched the sentry in the face.

  The other guards rushed him. Blows landed on his back and head, mixed with curses and shouts in both languages. But above it all, someone spoke the words he hoped for. “Take him to the brig.”

  Under guard, Falk was nudged along a narrow passageway toward a small cabin. He was limping and stumbled twice. “Lie down,” said a sentry as he pointed to a cot. The sharp scents of antiseptics and rubbing alcohol filled the room. A medic, with a white gown over his uniform, pressed a cloth pad over the cut on Falk’s right cheek where a guard with heavy boots kicked him. The relief to be off deck and away from his accusers proved so great, he hadn’t registered his injuries until now.

  In a mishmash of English and German, the doctor explained he needed to examine him. By the look of the instruments on the metal tray beside the bed, stitches were in Falk’s future. Two armed sentries stood inside the door of the examination room. He clearly proved himself to be a danger. Perhaps he would be held in the brig until they reached the United States. He’d come too far to be caught as an SS officer in an enlisted man’s clothes.

  Falk gingerly unbuttoned his shirt and the doctor helped him pull it off and then set it on a chair. He gently pushed on Falk’s abdomen and then asked him to move his arms and legs. When he touched his injured ribs on the right side, he jerked and gritted his teeth as razor-sharp pain tore through him there. His breath stuck in his lungs, and he didn’t dare let it out for fear more movement would prolong the pain. He noticed a purple splotch bloom across his side.

  “Broken,” the doctor said and pulled a roll of adhesive wrap from a metal cabinet. He helped Falk sit up and then tightly wrapped his ribs, which felt like death by suffocation. Would he be able to inhale at all?

  The doctor pointed to the cut on his cheek and once again helped him lie back. “Sewing time.” An injection of morphine burned a cold path up Falk’s arm, but the drug hadn’t completely begun its job when the doctor cleaned his wound with alcohol and a cloth pad. His eyes watered and he clenched his jaws against the pain that shot through his whole head. The medic reached for items on a metal tray and soon dropped in eight stitches. Within minutes, it was all over.

  “All fixed.” The doctor moved on to another patient.

  He’d be taken to the ship’s brig now where he hoped for a cell of his own. The two guards helped him stand, handed him his shirt, and then walked him to a large sickbay, and not a jail cell. The room was dimly lit, crowded with evenly spaced beds with white curtains drawn around each. One guard motioned Falk to follow him to the back of the room. The other patients were German POWs, almost all with bandaged wounds.

  The guard pulled aside a curtain. The rasp of the rings on the overhead rail was loud in the quiet room. Falk laid his clothes over the bedside chair and carefully rolled onto the bed. Even with the tape and morphine, his ribs made it difficult to breathe as he lowered himself to the pillow. The guard said in German, “Tomorrow you go in front of our master-at-arms to explain your actions on deck.”

  After the guard left, Falk floated in and out of shifting, drug–addled thoughts, detaching him from reality for minutes at a time.

  Hitler. That tyrant was never far from his thoughts. What did other world leaders think of him? It seemed the dictator’s atrocities only recently dawned on some of Germany’s citizens, those who witnessed them firsthand. Hitler declared that everything decent people believed in was evil—the press, foreign trade, and world religions. Rational men must shake their heads. How had this man come to such power in a country known for culture, music, and art?

  Hitler convinced people that lying for the better good of the country was not a sin. It was a necessity. Then he attacked religious traditions held for centuries. Years earlier, seven hundred leading churchmen were thrown out of the country or arrested. Many of those were now dead. Pastor Graf made the right decision to immigrate to the United States before the ruthlessness began.

  An injured POW moaned in the room. Footsteps hurried toward the sound. Falk drifted along on the winding road of images that brought him this far.

  Before deciding to take advantage of the battle in Italy and fake his death, he had begun to quietly work
against the Führer. He’d written to His Holy See, explaining the humiliation and degradation facing the nuns and priests. Falk hoped the letter—posted with no return address from a small town in Austria—would cause the pontiff to do something to protect the men and women of the cloth. Yet nothing came from the Vatican to suggest the pope spoke out. Hitler continued to proudly build his pagan master race, seemingly unabated.

  Falk readjusted his pillow and sheet, their clean crispness a foreign fabric in stark contrast to life in the ship’s hold, where luxury was using his boots for a pillow. He breathed in the linen’s freshness, his mind conjuring up a summer day at home near Düsseldorf. His sons, Hans and Dietrich, were playing hide-and-seek in the clotheslines behind their home. Chasing each other, they enjoyed the feel of flapping layers of cotton dropping damp caresses on their sun-warmed arms and shoulders as they ducked under the sheets. He had done the same when he was a child.

  The bandage on his face itched and he scratched the edge of it, his hand movement sluggish, his mind slow.

  He had a hole in his heart without Ilse nearby, without his sons, and tears pricked the corners of his eyes. When they’d married, he told Ilse he wanted a half-dozen children, but was content with the two they were lucky enough to have. If he’d known there would come a time when he’d be away from them for months, he would have spent more time building model train sets with a child at each elbow, their heads nearly touching. He’d have played tin soldiers in the windowsills when they asked, thrown more balls, gone fishing all day instead of a few fleeting hours. His sons believed his officer status was admirable because they didn’t know the true function of the Schutzstaffel. Built on a culture of violence and patriotism at all costs, they operated outside the bounds of morality and were the judge, jury, and executioner all in one, with the authority to kill anyone at their discretion.

  It had to be the pain medication, but suddenly he was unsure of his plans. Would the information he delivered to Washington D.C. change anything? When Falk exposed the secret side of Hitler’s war, he hoped to persuade the U.S. military where to strike. First on the list should be Hitler’s hideouts, the Eagle’s Nest overlooking Berchtesgaden valley and the alpine-style residence he called “The Berghof.” The elite Nazis either lived or often visited there. Dropping heavy lead would solve many problems and make a quick end to the war. Falk was invited to the Eagle’s Nest once but begged off, saying he had a terrible virus. Hitler’s fear of germs undoubtedly worked in his favor that weekend. What if his efforts came to nothing?

  A soldier coughed in the next bed and Falk opened his eyes, his heart racing. There were events that twisted life’s course, and those involving the boy with the strings and Falk’s decision to turn against the Wehrmacht were just that. A sudden lump formed in his throat. The world might be too broken to be made whole again. He’d been too late to help the child, a fact that shattered him. Once he delivered his facts in America and asked for help, would he find strength in his broken places, or remain a spent man eaten away from the inside out by guilt?

  Someone shook Falk awake, and he startled upright, ready to fight, stifling a scream as his ribs ground against each other.

  He’d fallen asleep at some point in the night.

  The lights were on in the room and a wide-shouldered guard stood beside him with a tray of food. It must be morning. When Falk pushed back on the bed to sit, the man placed the metal tray on his lap. “Enjoy your meal.”

  “Thank you.” Falk’s mouth watered at the aromas of fried eggs and potatoes, food he hadn’t tasted in a long while. Another unimaginable luxury—a Hershey’s chocolate bar—was tucked beside the blue and white china plate. The coffee smelled like the real deal.

  He carefully ate the food, hoping his empty stomach could keep it down. The chorus of utensils, clacking against plates in the room, signaled that many others were also well enough to feed themselves. Falk finished and the guard returned, offering a shaving kit and a mug of warm water. “Your meeting is in thirty minutes.”

  Falk got ready and was combing his hair when a fight broke out. A German POW landed a punch on an orderly’s chin. Guards subdued and handcuffed him. He was still protesting his rights to have his war medals returned as he was dragged away.

  After he buttoned his shirt, he patted the pocket, checking for his cyanide capsule. It was gone! Last evening, Falk laid the shirt over the chair, so it must have fallen out then. A quick death was his only option if everything went wrong with his plans, and he didn’t like losing that choice. He patted the shirt pocket again. Not there. He carefully lowered to his knees and searched the floor beneath the chair. His fingers closed on the pill as the military escort entered the room.

  “Did you lose something?” the older escort asked.

  “No.” He tucked the pill in his shirt pocket, glad not to explain why he had it in the first place. Enlisted men were not offered the opportunity for an easy out. Suicide was an option reserved for officers. “I’m ready,” Falk said. He followed the men through the interior of the ship, carefully climbing a set of iron steps so as not to jar his ribs.

  They arrived at a corridor that housed several security offices. The escorts led him into an ornate room and indicated he sit in a chair facing a large wooden desk. A replica of a sailing ship, with curved copper sails holding a naval clock, sat on its edge. The plush room smelled of rich leather, books, and boot polish.

  A tall man in full military dress entered with a redheaded security guard. The guard stood just inside the closed door, rifle held in an at-ease position.

  The officer wore wire-rimmed spectacles. His neatly clipped hair, shot through with gray, framed chiseled facial features that reminded him of some of Hitler’s top men. As he sat in the leather chair behind the desk, the man introduced himself.

  “I am Officer Fitzgerald, master-at-arms of the U.S. Navy. Petty Officer Dixon, who is at your back, is your interpreter.”

  Dixon relayed the information and Falk nodded. “I am Klaus Stern.”

  Fitzgerald asked for Stern’s soldbuch, and Falk handed over the identification packet.

  The officer reviewed the pages. “What was the problem on deck last evening?”

  The guard translated, and Falk answered. “I don’t adhere to the Nazi doctrine, and I laughed at a joke about Hitler . . .” It was best to go with a portion of the truth. “When several men threatened to kill me, I punched a guard to get taken away.”

  Fitzgerald wrote on a pad. “Do you believe those men are alone in these thoughts or are other men like-minded?”

  “I believe half of the POWs on this ship still cling to the Nazi principles.”

  The officer seemed to consider those words. “These men who are devoted to Hitler . . . what do they believe will happen to them when they reach the United States?”

  The brainwashed POWs were fools. Falk smiled. “They believe they are being sent there as part of a bigger Wehrmacht plan to defeat America on her own soil. And they’ll welcome the Führer when he comes to rule.”

  Officer Fitzgerald listened to the translation and chuckled. His eyes crinkled at the sides. “I imagine they will be dismayed when they find themselves in prison camps until the war ends.”

  Falk nodded.

  “If you are released back into the POW group, will you be safe?” He absently tapped his pen on the desk.

  Falk shook his head. “I will be killed for treason.” He needed to stay alert, pretending to be Stern was dangerous business, and he was off his game. His head was thumping, his mind fuzzy.

  “We arrive in New York Harbor in two days. Until then, you will remain in sickbay,” Fitzgerald said.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’d like to hear the Hitler joke.”

  “Hitler and Goering are standing on top the Berlin radio tower surveying the city below. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on the Berliners
’ faces. Goering says, ‘Then you should jump.’”

  “Good one.” Fitzgerald nodded and a tiny smile appeared on his lips. He pulled his spectacles to the tip of his nose and scrutinized Falk over them. “Don’t make me regret this. If this is a ploy to get access to the ship for sabotage purposes, we will shoot you . . . You are dismissed.”

  At the entrance to sickbay, Dixon pulled Falk to a stop. “Remember. Special treatment or not, if you get out of line, we’ll take you topside and let the Nazis deal with you.”

  “I’d expect exactly that.” He’d kill himself long before that happened.

  Falk remained in the doorway for a moment and turned to a commotion coming toward him in the hallway. A medic pushed a gurney while two doctors ran along, one on each side. The patient moaned and twisted on the mattress. Blood spread across the soldier’s white undershirt, his uniform torn open. Falk stepped back, but clearly recognized the seriously injured POW. The scarred forehead, his barely-there beard. It was young Christoph.

  Izaak Tauber

  Westerbork Camp, Netherlands - January 1943

  Izaak didn’t like how he and Mama were pushed and shoved through the Westerbork Camp gates, but they had no choice as the guards hurried everyone inside. An older man, bent over and shaped like the crescent moon, approached Mama and said, “I am Abraham Schoenberg, the Campo of Westerbork. I heard you asking questions. I’m a Jew from Antwerp who came here for refuge. That, of course, has since changed and refuge is no longer what this camp is about.” Then he cleared his throat. “We’re a transition camp now.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t be in a hurry to board the trains going east. I will get you a job here for as long as I can.”

  Mama looked worried. “But my husband went to Poland, and we’d like to locate him.”