When We Were Brave

by Karla M Jay

  Other people came forward and asked him to draw their family members, the ones they hoped to find. Papa’s phrase ran through his head—“A man’s true wealth is the good he does in this world”—as his hand ached on some days from gripping a pencil for hours. But it gave him a happy feeling in his chest. He’d lose himself in the scent of pencil shavings and heavy paper, the soft scraping sound of lead filling a new page with a slippery memory.

  Jewish religious workers from Israel asked the adults to tell their stories of what happened to them. Those workers, busy day and night in one corner of the library room scribbling in notebooks, made sure they had their story details all correct for a book they were writing. Izaak remembered how he wrote dates in his notebook early on in the war. He would have filled a dozen books by now if he’d kept any with him.

  The camp had an extra big celebration the night before. The war was over! Someone in the nearby town shot off fireworks, and cars along the road blew their horns and flashed their lights. Izaak and the children stayed up late and were allowed an extra serving of cookies.

  He’d prayed for this day and even heard that the German leader, Hitler, was dead and camp prisoners were freed. Now, he only needed to wait for Mama and Papa to figure out where he was.

  Today was the first time in weeks the cold rains stayed away from their camp, and everything smelled warm, green, and clean. Clean was now his favorite scent.

  When the weather cleared, he and the other children were allowed onto the sports field to kick a soccer ball around. He ran alongside his three pals, boys from different countries who learned they didn’t need to speak the same language to enjoy playing together. Just like back at Terezín.

  One of his favorite adults walked to them across the grassy field. He played ball with them for hours. Chased them, tickled them, and showed them how to make swords and airplanes out of sticks. But no matter how much they were together, the man never smiled. His eyes looked as if they would be sad forever. When he saw the man staring at a photo one day, through a translator, he offered to draw the two children and the woman pictured there. But the man quickly put the photo away, wiped his eyes and shook his head. And before he walked away, he gave Izaak a quick hug.

  The camp leaders helped search for everyone’s family members. Now that he was almost ten, he learned to write letters. Every week, with the camp leaders’ help, he wrote to Mama and Papa. The post office put stamps on the letters and sent them off. A mean girl named Cora, whose mama worked at the postal building, said the letters were dumped into big bags and taken to the refuse pile. But Cora also picked her nose and pulled babies’ ears to make them cry, so he didn’t believe her.

  The sad man had a Dutch-German name—Müller. Today, he and three other men took turns lifting the children onto their backs. In the warm spring breeze, in just shirtsleeves, they chased each other around having chicken fights, or tossing a balled-up cloth at each other. Izaak liked riding on Mr. Müller’s shoulders because he had a bad leg and sitting on him was like being on a real horse. They rocked side to side when he ran. The leg didn’t seem to hurt him, but he noticed the man usually chose the smaller children as riders.

  Just as the sun was dropping behind the big mountains in the distance, a military officer jogged onto the field. He ran up to Mr. Müller and spoke rapidly in English, a language Izaak was trying to learn. At this point, he knew polite words, but nothing more.

  The military man left. Mr. Müller stood alone with his head bowed as if praying. He ran his hands through his hair, stood up straight, and crossed to Izaak and his friends.

  Mr. Müller bent over and hugged each of them for a long time and said, “Goodbye,” one of the English words Izaak understood. He didn’t want the man to leave, although he believed sooner or later, they would all get to go home. He forced himself to smile, knowing he needed to be happy for Mr. Müller because he must have found the people in his photo. Mr. Müller looked around the camp one more time, and then shoved his hands in his pockets and walked to the gate where the lucky people going home left.

  Just before he disappeared, he hesitated and turned around. His eyes found Izaak watching him with his hand raised. The man didn’t move for a moment, but eventually raised his hand in return and dropped his head and left.

  He sat on the grass. His drawing supplies were in his room, so he’d draw the idea he had in his head. Mr. Müller wouldn’t see this drawing of himself, but he really needed to sketch his grown-up friend. Today, he drew Mr. Müller stepping from a train and looking around at the big crowd. He looked lost and then something amazing happened in his imagined picture. Mr. Müller’s eyes grew big and he finally smiled.

  Epilogue

  Herbert Müller

  Tulpehocken, Pennsylvania - September 1945

  Herbert drove the tractor with the mower through the rows between the apple trees. Earlier that morning, he cut the grass in the peach and apple orchards. The apples hung ready for harvest, and the trucks filled with pickers would arrive in the next few days.

  He left the orchard and let the machine idle at the edge of the field as he watched Jutta and Frieda hang sheets on the line. Their voices carried as they laughed about something. It was a sound he never thought he’d hear again. He vowed that if his family returned home, he would show gratitude every day. And he worked hard to do that. Inside, he carried the lasting ache of losing Otto and Alfred. Some moments, and they usually flared out of nowhere, the crushing weight of heartbreak nearly dragged him under. He had lost two people he loved but had to remember that so many had lost everyone.

  His family was reunited when a return message from Jutta reached the Displaced Persons Camp, and he received permission—with the Red Cross’s help—to join Jutta and Frieda in Wiesbaden.

  They explained they’d traveled the final leg of their journey to Wiesbaden in a lorry filled with onion sacks. A farmer braved retribution and took pity on them. Although Elke didn’t have the means to take them into her home, and had not received notification they were arriving, she welcomed them. They slept in a chilly attic but were safe. Food was sparse and simple, but they were fed. She would accept none of the money in Graf’s envelope to help with expenses.

  But their reunion in Wiesbaden was bittersweet. His family was wracked with deep sorrow and disbelief when he first told them of Alfred’s death. To add to their profound sadness, he explained he had no choice but to have Alfred buried next to a thousand-year-old Protestant Church on the Laufen Castle grounds. Otto’s ashes were to be shipped home with the help of the U.S. Embassy in France. One day, Herbert would save enough to bring Alfred home to be buried in the family plot.

  He drove the mower to the barn. Overhead, white buffaloes of clouds floated across the deep-blue sky. The day warmed and the rays were infused with the sweet scent of cut grass rising off the tractor’s back tires. He breathed in the intoxicating smells of turned dirt, wild flowers, and the wash flapping on the line. A gift like so many others he recognized and would never take for granted again. He’d been a broken man after Alfred died, believing he had nothing to live for. Jutta and Frieda would go on without him. He’d failed them all. Pastor Graf once encouraged him to reach out and help others to find happiness, and the good Father was right. In the Displaced Persons Camp, he put Graf’s words into action. Before leaving the camp, Herbert filled out additional papers. Four sets of them.

  After parking the tractor in the barn, he brushed the grass clippings from his pants and rolled the barn door shut.

  It took time to obtain reissued U.S. passports and new visas, but within a month, the seven of them boarded a passenger liner bound for America. All paid for by the United States military and Pastor Graf’s surprise gift.

  Upon reaching Tulpehocken in June, just as the war ended, Herbert learned his property was up for sale again. The couple who bought it at auction was selling, overwhelmed by the work required to run a mill. Pastor
Graf’s money was used as a down payment to buy back Herbert’s land holdings. The pastor had really known his way around the pony track because he had amassed $7,500.

  He had no way to thank Graf though. The Red Cross notified him of the pastor’s fate. Graf and a dozen U.S. airmen were to be moved to a less crowded prison. Due to the demolished rail lines, they were forced to walk through the heavily bombed city of Rüsselsheim. The prisoners were escorted by two German soldiers. In Rüsselsheim, the townspeople, assuming the fliers were the men who wiped out their town and killed their family members, quickly turned into an uncontrollable angry mob. The citizens beat them to death while the two escorts did nothing to stop the assault. And Graf did not receive a Christian burial.

  He crossed the yard to Jutta and Frieda, just as they pinned the last shirt to the line.

  “You’ve finished,” Jutta said. Silver streaks showed in her hair, revealing what stress and mourning could do to a thirty-six-year-old. Her positive spirit returned, although she would never laugh as freely as she used to. “Can you round up the children for the noon meal?”

  “What experiment are we trying today, Frieda?” Herbert only teased. Frieda had immersed herself in the art of creating traditional Jewish dishes, all delicious.

  “Potato and cheese bourekas.” Frieda tucked her short hair behind one ear, her pigtails long gone.

  “Sounds good.” His daughter’s innocent view of the world was lost. She was still tenderhearted but practical. She accepted her role as a big sister with gusto. Alfred once protected her. She in turn protected her four adopted brothers.

  And the new family members?

  Alfred once remarked when they were walking through Germany that his family would surely take in refugees if the need ever arose. And it had. Language was still a barrier, but the adopted children picked up English quickly. School was about to start and that would certainly help.

  Herbert watched the oldest boy, Mikolaj, twelve and orphaned from Poland, trying to teach their new hunting dog to fetch. The Labrador, happy to run alongside the boy, never returned with the stick and sometimes needed to be fetched himself. Emil, age ten, another child from Poland, had not yet to overcome the nightmares that woke him during the early morning hours.

  Each child carried a shadow of grief, for which there would most likely be darker days, no matter what he and Jutta did. But they were safe and loved. He and Jutta would keep the boys’ Jewish traditions alive, a promise they’d made to the adoption board.

  The third boy, Gabek came from Prague and turned ten aboard ship. All his relatives were murdered in Auschwitz. The child had a natural penchant for music, and Frieda enjoyed the long hours she spent teaching him to play the saxophone.

  As Herbert stepped out of the barn, he surveyed his land. Surprisingly, several neighbors showed up at the start of summer to help plant the gardens. Now it looked as though he would have a bumper crop, big enough to share with the war widows in the area. No apologies or explanations were given by the neighbors who originally turned against him, but he didn’t need one. Their willingness to help mattered most, and he now understood war caused strange behavior patterns that echoed in ways no one could guess.

  Herbert wrote to the U.S. government several times asking about restitution for their losses. No price was high enough to compensate for Otto’s and Alfred’s deaths, but he kept trying. He held out little hope.

  He walked to the orchard and picked his favorite apple, a crisp, almost spicy variety called Fortune. He took a bite and shut his eyes, enjoying the sweetness. Someone tugged on his shirt, and he opened his eyes and smiled down at his fourth adopted son.

  The boy was brought to the Displaced Persons Camp at about the same time Herbert arrived. He first spotted the child sitting on a bench, buttoned up and stiff, but alert to everyone passing by. When the child wasn’t drawing everything and everyone, he seemed to desperately study the starlit sky each clear night.

  He played with the boy and his other adopted sons during his confinement. The Red Cross workers told him the boy’s mother and father, both Dutch, perished in Auschwitz and that no extended family had survived.

  Herbert’s house blossomed with drawings and paintings made by this fourth son. One picture was a fragile drawing the boy carried with him throughout the camps. It was of his father. Now framed and under glass, the image was so worn it was indecipherable. The boy’s most astounding painting, however, was called “Poppy Field,” modeled after a famous artist’s landscape. The painting was full of greens in the background with vaguely outlined trees and fields with orange and red splotches.

  Herbert rubbed the boy’s curly hair, picked another apple, and handed it to him. “Never saw a child who loved apples as much as you do, Izaak.”

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  As World War II raged, when Africa and Italy were retaken, Allies such as Great Britain were running short of prison space to house captured POWs. From 1942 through 1945, more than 400,000 German and Italian prisoners were shipped to the United States and detained in camps in rural areas across the country. Some five hundred POW facilities existed, mainly in areas facing a labor shortage since most American males were away, fighting the war, which meant industries struggled to fill positions.

  According to the rules of the Geneva Convention, POWs were kept safe, housed, and well fed. But deaths inside the camps were a different story. Although a minority of the prisoners were Nazis, they created internal courts to accuse and convict POWs who showed disloyalty to Hitler. Dozens of prisoner “suicides” were likely murders.

  The character of Wilhelm Falk is based on Kurt Gerstein, a German SS officer who witnessed mass murders in Bełżec and Treblinka, two Nazi extermination camps. Horrified and ashamed by what he witnessed, he gathered information and wrote letters to Swedish and Swiss diplomats, as well as to Pope Pius XII, hoping to alert the international public about the atrocities that were occurring. Much to his despair, the countries didn’t think there was anything they could do. In 1945, Gerstein surrendered in France. He received a sympathetic reception and wrote the Gerstein Report. Later transferred to a prison in France, he was treated as a Nazi War criminal and found hanged in his cell. His “suicide” was questionable since the prison also housed other SS officers. His report helped convict many SS at the Nuremburg Trials, mainly officers who claimed they were merely unenthusiastic bystanders.

  Hadamar Psychiatric Institute was one of six facilities where Nazis ran the T-4 Euthanasia Programme, which resulted in mass sterilizations and mass murder of “undesirable” German citizens, specifically those with physical and mental disabilities. In total, an estimated 200,000 people were killed at these facilities, including thousands of children. Doctors and nurses involved in the program stood trial at the end of the war and several were executed. The psychiatric hospital remains in operation today.

  In addition to historic events, many of the “schemes” used by the Nazis in WHEN WE WERE BRAVE are also true. For instance, thousands of Jewish families were duped into boarding trains heading east once they received a postcard from a family member. In fact, at one time, it’s been said that every store in Germany was depleted of postcards because the Wehrmacht used them in the concentration camps to flush out more Jews hiding in neighboring countries. The concentration camp prisoners were promised extra food or favors if they would notify relatives they were doing well. The postcards were mailed from nearby towns with railway stations. Then the prisoners were gassed and the addresses on the cards were used to hunt down the recipients who would then take their relative’s place in camp.

  Many characters in the novel were real people. In Terezín, for instance, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, was an artist from Austria who taught hundreds of children the joy of escaping through art. She and her husband, Pavel, never had children, but while in Terezín, Friedl was finally able to give free rein to her maternal instincts. To nurtur
e and teach hundreds of children who viewed her as a surrogate mother.

  When Pavel was deported from Terezín in late September 1944, Friedl volunteered to take the next transport. Friedl and sixty of her students were sent on transport number EO 167 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them were murdered upon arrival. But before she left Terezín, Friedl packed 5,000 pieces of artwork into two suitcases and hid them. After the war, the suitcases were moved from Terezín to the Prague Jewish community. Ten years passed before the drawings were rediscovered and exhibited. In 1964, the artwork and poetry of the children of Terezín were brought to a worldwide audience with the publication of the book, I Never Saw Another Butterfly.

  Today, two exhibits honor her. One, titled Innovator, Activist, Healer: The Art of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis tours Jewish Museums, and in Czechoslovakia, the Memorial at the Terezín concentration camp has dedicated a two-story wall to the children’s artwork. Although Friedl herself did not sign most of the work she created in the Upper Fortress, she made sure the children signed their creations with their name and age, a testimony to their identity, and a document of their existence.

  Terezín (Theresienstadt in German) was a transit camp and then a propaganda camp. On June 23, 1944, three foreign observers—two from the Red Cross—came to Terezín to learn if the rumors of Nazi atrocities were true. They left with the impression all was well, duped by a well-planned “beautification” of the camp. The Nazis carefully choreographed every detail of the visit. The observers saw children studying in hastily built schools, and stores packed with fresh food. Children appeared happy. The prisoners were given food for weeks, so they no longer appeared emaciated. Hitler was so pleased with himself that in September 1944, he ordered the making of a film about the camp called A Town Presented to the Jews from the Führer. All but 4000 of the 87,000 inmates who passed through Terezín were exterminated or died before the war’s end.