When We Were Brave

by Karla M Jay

  So far, he neither saw nor heard signs of a search. If they cared about capturing him, the FBI would try to figure out where Klaus Stern headed. They’d first check to see if Stern had family or other connections in the United States.

  Once he left the forest, he guessed he had three, maybe four, days of traversing rural farm communities before reaching Pastor Graf. He smiled, imagining the reunion with his longtime friend. More than that, six long months after he’d traded uniforms with Stern, he could finally achieve his goal. He’d grab his package of information and have Graf drive him to Washington, D.C.

  He climbed around a jumble of boulders and sat down to rest. Something stirred behind him, and the overhead orchestra of birdsongs suddenly stopped. He tensed. A large bird, possibly a crow, took to the sky in a flash of gunmetal black, turning in a slow circle, perhaps to better assess him. Then, catching a warm thermal, the bird rose and flew off.

  The scent from the crushed leaves of wild basil reached his nose, making him hunger for Ilse’s wild mushroom and basil soup. He missed her—and his sons—terribly.

  Falk first noticed Ilse in 1930 when he was twenty. He was touring the Romanesque church ruins outside Bad Hersfeld and also attending the Lutheran World Convention at Eichhof Castle. Both his and Ilse’s youth organizations were on a summer tour, and stopped to visit the spot where Martin Luther once preached as he traveled through Hessen in 1552.

  A friend was taking Ilse’s photograph against an ancient rock wall. The valley breezes lifted her light brown hair off her neck, and she held her hat with one hand to keep it from blowing away. She was laughing, an intoxicating sound.

  He approached her friend and asked if he might take a photo of the two of them together. Shortly after, she gave him her name and phone number. She was seventeen and just graduated from school. A kind, yet spunky girl. Irresistible.

  Six months later they married, and within a year, Hans was born. Two years later, she gave birth to Dietrich. They made big plans to travel around Europe, to show their sons different cultures. They even talked of someday seeing America.

  When he delivered his information to the most powerful men in this country, he would ask that his family be allowed to immigrate to the United States. They’d understand that a man who committed treason must protect his family. Nazis would eagerly question or imprison family members, German heritage be damned, if they thought the family was somehow involved. He’d purposefully kept Ilse in the dark about all his plans.

  He scanned the valley below. According to the map, he was looking at the northwestern corner of Massachusetts and the Taconic Ridge State Forest bridging the border into New York. Just past the forest lay Troy.

  The trail to the valley below was precipitous, a rocky face with steep inclines. The mountains seemed to fulfill a purpose, laid out like a giant amphitheater. Here and there, ribbons of deep blue sliced the lush greenery, the high cascading waterfalls of clean snowmelt reaching the townsfolk below.

  Falk usually traveled after dark, but tonight he’d find a place on the mountaintop to sleep and then pick his way down at first light. He backed off the rocky escarpment and followed a moss-carpeted trail into a dense stand of maples. The leafy canopy allowed only flashes of sunlight onto the spongy floor, the perfect cover from a spotter plane. He bent and ducked under crisscrossing branches, eventually discovering a perfect hiding spot. Covered and surrounded by heavy limbs, the natural enclosure was three meters long. Ferns spread a little over a meter in each direction. He made a bed under them where he would sleep, safely hidden away.

  From the rucksack, he took out a pack of dried meat and a small jar of honey and ate it, dipping the meat into the sweet sticky goo.

  The sky faded to twilight, and the brightest stars appeared between the branches. He crawled under the awning of ferns and leveled his bed. Then he lay on his back surrounded by funereal silence. Nothing stirred the underbrush, nothing buzzed, nothing sang.

  Fireflies hovered like sparks from a campfire in the deep dusk, just chips of light that disappeared between blinks.

  He closed his eyes, but sleep eluded him.

  Tangled in dark emotions, he lay on his spongy bed ruminating about the complexity of the hatred he harbored. He loved the Germany where he grew up, but despised what it became. A country that took it upon itself to eradicate all races they considered inferior. A madman’s decree. A singular decision that entire segments of the populace were no longer worthy to live. He had an enduring love for his homeland but had learned to hate her sons.

  And it was funny how forms of hatred sprang into existence only after they were named. Eugenics. Ethnic cleansing. Extermination. Before, in other parts of the world, when he heard those words, sadly they were mere letters slung together around the tears and deaths of others.

  Cruelty now stalked the European continent, camouflaged in military uniforms. Surely, the Devil raised his hand and asked, “Who is with me?” and thousands rushed to the cause. The part he couldn’t wrap his head around was how any military personnel who saw what was really happening—and those numbers increased as the war lingered—could stomach the horrors. Why hadn’t the generals remained organized and followed through with their desire to take out Hitler? This madness would all be over by now.

  Images of Hiam invaded his thoughts.

  Before the boy disappeared from the train platform, he caught the attention of Dr. Josef Mengele. Mengele’s genetic interests were cited at every SS gathering. Himmler pinned great expectations on the outcomes of Mengele’s experiments. The doctor used Auschwitz for his anthropological research on heredity. Daily, he met the trains and selected his favorite types of children—sets of twins his first choice. He housed them together, providing better food and living conditions. The children had a playground and activities. And Mengele, a handsome, meticulously dressed man, did not instill fear in them. When the doctor visited the children, he introduced himself as “Uncle Josef” and offered sweets. This was the best thing that happened to these children since they were torn from their homelands.

  But deep down, Mengele was a coldhearted Jew-hater. He experimented on the twins, hoping to identify the elusive genetic doubling factor that one day could be used to replicate the perfect German.

  When Falk returned to check on Hiam and found him gone, he threatened the prisoner assigned to care for Mengele’s children. The prisoner, rather than take a bullet to his head, explained what happened to Hiam.

  They brought the child to live with other selected children in Mengele’s special dormitory because of his uniquely-colored eyes. He lived there for a good two months until Mengele injected dye and other chemicals into Hiam’s eyes to see if they would change color. Hiam went blind, and having served his purpose, was shot to death.

  Falk barely made it out of Auschwitz that day. His legs trembled uncontrollably as he imagined the pain Hiam suffered. It was all he could do not to pull his Walther and shoot every guard he passed. Instead, he vowed to get out of the Wehrmacht and do something to stop the brutality.

  A hoot owl sounded in the distance and then something rustled nearby in the leaves. Something small. He stared up through a slit in the ferns to where silvery stars lit the clear night sky. At first, the enormity of his task overwhelmed him. He was one man, and not a wholly innocent one at that. But with the time he had left in the world, he wanted more than anything to know Mengele died a slow, horrible death, and that the exterminations had ended.

  Izaak Tauber

  Terezín Concentration Camp, Czechoslovakia - May 1944

  Mama called their latest home in Terezín the Upper Fortress. Workers sometimes crossed the Ohre River to the Lower Fortress, but he didn’t know much about that place. Fortress meant a safe place, and so far, this town seemed safe from mean men like Commandant Goeth but not protected from the fleas and lice which followed them there three weeks earlier.

  Upon arriv
al, they were allowed to change out of the dirty, striped clothes into a clean set of used clothing. Izaak didn’t know what had happened to the boy who used to wear the pants and shirt he now wore. To push away bad possibilities, he drew the boy in his head, imagining he had returned home. He decided he was a farmer’s son and surrounded by sheep and cows which were at a white fence to greet him.

  Terezín was a whole village hidden on top of the slight hill with a tall-steepled church. Long yellow-brick buildings with red roofs were neatly laid out along the wide streets lined with large trees, just getting their full summer leaves. The town had walls around it and a grassy moat, like in stories about castles and dragons. He counted over two hundred houses in the village. He and Mama lived in a part of the city renamed The Ghetto, in one of eleven soldier barracks. Theirs was named Dresden, a building so big it filled a whole block, with an open courtyard in the center where he played with other children.

  They shared their room with thirty other people. This time there were no bunk beds, but mattresses laid out on the floor. A comfort he’d nearly forgotten about after all their nights on wooden-board beds. At night, rats scurried over him, but they never stopped to bite, so he stopped flinching every time he felt their tiny feet on his arms or head. The windows in the room opened to let in fresh air, another luxury.

  Everyone had a job, but the effort was nothing like hauling headstones or reburying bodies. Izaak’s job was to work in the vegetable gardens in the wide moat with other children under age ten. They pulled weeds and dug the dirt to make it soft for planting. Being outside was wonderful, and the matron in charge of his group made games out of the job, or created sing-along times even though they all spoke different languages.

  Today, the long black trains were leaving with the children who didn’t know where their mamas and papas were, like Abel who was Izaak’s friend in his art class. Just before Abel climbed the steps into the windowless coach, he waved goodbye. He hoped Abel found his mama and papa at the next camp.

  He’d finished work not long ago as the sun dropped behind the trees. After the train left, he returned to his room in Dresden and was surprised to find only six people there, not thirty. Suddenly, he was nervous. The town seemed extra quiet outside the window as he sat on their straw mattress and waited for Mama to come home from the hospital. She no longer helped deliver babies, mainly because not many women were pregnant anymore.

  Mama looked tired as she entered their room, carrying a stack of clothes. She saw him and smiled. “Nice and clean for you.” Her job in the hospital laundry room, the only building with hot water, let her wash the fleas and lice out of their clothes every day. Izaak pulled on clean pants and a shirt as she asked him about his day.

  “Matron Maria took us for a walk around town before we worked in the gardens. She pointed out her city, a small speck on the horizon, and said it was called Prague.”

  His mama smiled. “I’ve heard it’s beautiful.”

  “But the Germans got there, too. Matron Maria said they sent many families here to live.”

  Mama set the clothes next to their mattresses and pulled him close and hugged him. “We will hear many sad stories. But remember, we’re here together, love, and that’s what matters.” Her hip bone dug into his head, but he didn’t complain even though she wasn’t as soft as she used to be.

  An hour later, Izaak and Mama walked with their house group to the evening meal in a building that used to be a dress factory. Sewing machines were pushed into dark corners, along with rows of half-made cloth bodies balanced on metal poles. The headless forms frightened him as they lurked in the gloomy edges of the room. He hated the idea he was afraid of so many things that never bothered him before, like men in uniforms with lots of medals, or the sound of heavy boots walking fast. To take his mind off the headless bodies, he studied the items he carried—a food voucher, a bowl, and a spoon.

  Long tables filled the center of the room and big pots of soup waited along one wall. In line, Mama talked to another Dutch woman named Cornelia. Everyone in Ghetto wore yellow stars, but they all talked differently. He and Mama learned which ladies spoke Dutch, so they had people to talk to.

  Cornelia looked older than Mama. Her two daughters lived in the girls’ house called Heim L410 because they were over age ten. Once again, Izaak was glad he was only eight and not separated from Mama.

  “You’ve been here for months,” Mama said to Cornelia. “Have you had any contact with the men in the Lower Fortress?”

  There were more men? Only a few men worked in the Upper Fortress, but could it be that Papa was working down below? He tugged on Mama’s dress. Why hadn’t she mentioned this before?

  “They’re political prisoners”—Cornelia lowered her voice—“used in mining and other dangerous jobs.”

  Mama ignored Izaak’s tugging. “But I heard there are professionals, men with skills and talents deliberately sent here.”

  Cornelia made a snorting noise and laughed, but her next words didn’t seem all that funny. “Some of the best composers, artists, and tailors are here to entertain or work for the SS. It’s like they had a spare-your-favorite-Jew day and brought them here.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Mama said.

  When they reached the food servers, Izaak accepted a slice of bread and a scoop of potato soup. It was hard to have to wait to spoon the few pieces of vegetables into his mouth. Hundreds of people ate together at long tables, but no one talked during this time. The room fell into an important silence like inside a synagogue, but here, eating replaced ritual prayers.

  He wanted to know if his papa could be in the Lower Fortress. Maybe he was chosen on favorite-Jew day. Mama put down her spoon and Izaak tapped her arm to ask his question, but at that moment, the man in charge of the Council of Elders stood and banged a metal cup against a post. Everyone turned his way as he spoke.

  Elder Eppstein was tall, and his head was not shaven like the other older boys and men.

  “The council and I bring good news. The living conditions here are about to change. The commandant, SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Rahm, has ordered this Upper Fortress to be cleaned from top to bottom. Many great improvements will be made. We will all contribute to the beautification of this once great city. We need painters, people to plant flowers and shrubs, and men and boys to repair the buildings, add electricity, and get the plumbing working.”

  As the message was repeated in other languages, people looked at each other with surprised “could-it-be-true?” eyes. Izaak hoped the Germans weren’t playing a cruel joke.

  Then Elder Eppstein said something that made Izaak sit up straight.

  “The commandant wants children’s artwork on the walls, he wants a soccer field, a café, a store, and there will be concerts and plays. If you have talent in these areas, please report to me.”

  After living in two bad camps before this, he didn’t trust this would really happen. The Germans never did anything nice to help the Jews. In fact, it seemed they spent a lot of time planning how to make their lives more miserable. Hopefully, he and Mama and the other people would get to stay when the town was all fixed up, and that it wasn’t for Germans. He needed to be positive. Terezín was already so much better than Westerbork or Płaszów.

  He’d volunteer to draw pictures. They’d shop at a real store. When he worked in the moat, he’d get brave and climb the grassy ramparts to have a peek at the Lower Fortress. Tomorrow, if he got a chance while in the gardens, he would wave like crazy to the men below. If his papa was there he would see Izaak and know where to find them.

  Herbert Müller

  Ellis Island, New York Harbor - May 1944

  Herbert sealed his letter to the Acting Assistant Commissioner for Alien Control, asking that his and his father’s reviews be expedited. He reiterated the facts of his case, pointing out he and his family were taxpaying Americans with no contact with Germans in Europe since
the war broke out. He pleaded for a quick return to his home, emphasizing the valuable service his gristmill provided to the local farmers, and hence, the war effort.

  After delivering the letter to the censorship office, he wandered the grounds. Someone owned a radio and music washed over the yard. Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey, and the Mills Brothers ruled the airwaves. Their lyrics of innocent love and walks in the moonlight and, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” all made him irritable, feel empty inside. The most popular song was an oldie from Cole Porter. The men gathered in groups and sang “Don’t Fence Me In,” a song they all related to and somehow hoped would not be their fate much longer.

  In Jutta’s recent letter, she wrote his family saved thirty dollars to help with the additional two hundred a piece they needed to hire civil rights attorneys. Not that he was bitter. The fact they’d saved thirty dollars showed frugality on their part. But at that rate, they’d be working their odd jobs for another year, and in that time, the mill would close. They’d lose everything. He never showed Alfred how to work the massive grinding stones, or talked to him about the proper storage of grain and corn. Had never needed Jutta to deal with the books or finances, or learn how he negotiated prices each year with farmers. Jutta wrote they’d purchased several dozen chickens and were selling eggs, but that wouldn’t even pay the property taxes.

  He couldn’t imagine he’d be here a year. Another month at most. If the headlines in the papers were believable, the Allies had the upper hand in Europe. Perhaps the war was nearly over. Until then, his own little war with his country dragged on. The wheels of justice barely turned, or were perhaps purposefully rusted in place.

  A rainstorm that moved through earlier left brown water pouring into the gutters from the roofs. Herbert sidestepped the cigarette butts and other trash, floating in the stream alongside the buildings, and headed for the far fence where Pastor Graf stood.