The One Man

by Andrew Gross

  Strauss put down the phone. It was hard to stop his heart from pounding. He had a good feeling inside him. Hell with the odds, he smiled. He felt certain tonight they were going to buck them.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  At just before 1930 hours, the work line formed under the clock near the main gate. About thirty to forty prisoners stood in an irregular formation. Most, including many who had already worked a full day and had been roused from their naps, showed little desire to be there. Blum came up with Leisa and settled into the ragtag line. On Blum’s instructions, she kept her eyes down and her cap low on her brow. With her dark features and dirt smeared on her cheeks, she didn’t look much different than any teenage boy. Darkness had fallen. Four or five of the SS guards stood around, keeping order. Others ringed the area around the front gate armed with submachine guns. Dogs barked and tugged at their leashes, as if the scent of Jews trudging off to work reminded them that it was mealtime.

  Alfred and his nephew came up and melded into the queue.

  “Is everything done?” Blum asked.

  Mendl nodded. “But who is this?” he asked, surprised to see Blum with someone else. His face reflected what Blum already knew: That three was one thing, but now four, whoever this addition was … Four would be harder to conceal as they tried to lose themselves in the attack. Four was one too many.

  “You said you wouldn’t leave behind your own flesh and blood,” Blum said, gesturing to Leo.

  “Yes, but…”

  “Well, neither would I. Leisa, this is the man I came here to rescue.”

  “Leisa?” Mendl stared at her, his eyes widening in confusion.

  “My sister,” Blum said under his breath. “An unanticipated development. But she’s coming along. Any issues?”

  “Your sister?” Mendl saw there was no wavering on Blum’s face. “No issues at all,” he replied. And no time to argue anyway.

  “I’m Leo,” Mendl’s nephew said. “We’ll all watch out for each other.”

  Leisa nodded back a nervous smile.

  Blum pressed some bills in Alfred’s hand. “Here. At the going rate, enough for four.”

  A few stragglers arrived. “Stay in line!” Guards and kapos pushed everyone together. Slowly the line began to move forward. The dogs barked, snarling at prisoners as they shuffled past, held back only by their straining handlers. Blum watched as Mendl made eye contact with a kapo who was traveling down the line wielding a truncheon.

  “Ready for a hard night’s work, Professor?” The shifty-eyed kapo seemed to recognize him.

  “Hopefully, it won’t be as bad as all that. This line is for the rail tracks, right?”

  “Yes, the rail tracks.” The kapo nodded.

  Alfred reached out and pressed the bills Blum had given him into the kapo’s palm. Zinchenko shifted his eyes down and seemed surprised. “It’s now four of us,” Alfred said.

  “Four?”

  “Why do you care? Someone else came along. It’s all been paid for.”

  The kapo glared at him with contempt but put the cash in his pocket. “Stay in line or I’ll make sure your bell is rung good.” He raised his club at a prisoner in the row behind them.

  Trucks pulled up outside the front gate. The camp labor fed various work sites. Some for the rail tracks that went up to Birkenau and various ditches beyond the camp gates, used both for sewage or as a mass grave for those who didn’t make it to the ovens, which were only a short ride away. Others—the IG Farben facility and a munitions plant—were situated a mile or two to the west by Auschwitz 3. The trick, as when Blum first arrived here, was to make sure they were positioned in the proper line; otherwise it all was pointless. The attack would come and they’d be in a different location. They’d be stranded here.

  “Remember, run toward the river,” Blum said into Alfred’s ear. “As soon as the shooting starts. Not to the woods. They will provide cover for us.”

  “I will get him there,” Leo said.

  “You will do just as we discussed,” Alfred rebuked him sharply. For the first time Blum saw just how doubtful the old man was that he’d be able to run amid the shooting. Still, everything depended on him getting there. And alive.

  “You stay by me,” Blum said, posting himself between Alfred and Leisa. Now he had two to protect.

  “What if we are out there and the attack doesn’t come?” Alfred asked. “What if all we get is our ladle of soup and then we’re marched back in?”

  “Then you are no worse off than when you woke up this morning.” Blum shrugged philosophically. “But I won’t be able to say the same.”

  Leo pointed toward the front. “We’re going.”

  The line began to move, an officer at the front counting off those who passed before him. Alfred and Leo merged in behind.

  “There is something I must tell you,” Mendl said close to Blum’s ear, “in case I don’t make it.”

  “You’ll make it.”

  “It’s about Leo.”

  “Your nephew? Don’t worry, I’ll do my best to watch out for him as well. I give you my—”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I—”

  Suddenly the officer taking numbers at the front of the line yelled, “Vierzig! Vierzig nur. Nicht mehr.”

  Forty. Forty only.

  He counted each prisoner and tapped them on the head as they went by.

  Blum froze. He scanned up ahead. Maybe fifteen or twenty had already passed through. There had to be an equal number still in front of them. A knot twisted in his stomach. “We’re going to be left behind,” he said to Mendl, worry setting in. If they were sure to make it through, they’d have to move up three or four rows in line.

  “Zinchenko…” Mendl got the eye of the kapo he had bribed. “They said just forty only…”

  “A meal’s a meal, Professor,” the kapo replied indifferently. “There are other lines.”

  “Those other details are more like death marches,” Mendl pressed him. “We paid your price. A deal’s a deal, Zinchenko. Honor it.”

  “You want to argue, Professor?” The kapo reared his club. “Here’s the court of appeals.” The bastard clearly didn’t like to be challenged.

  Panic reared up as Blum looked ahead and saw the work line nearing its last ten, the officer counting aloud. “Thirty-one, thirty-two…” He tapped the head of each prisoner he let through.

  Fifteen or so were still in front of them.

  “We’re not going to make it,” Blum said, his alarm mounting. Could it now be all for nothing? The plane might already be in the air. The attack … It was tonight or never. They had to move up.

  “There’s more where that came from, Zinchenko,” Mendl whispered to the kapo, seeing the same outcome taking shape. “I can get it for you.”

  “Dreiunddreißig, vierunddreißig…” the officer called. Thirty-three, thirty-four.

  Ten still in front of them. And only six more spots.

  “Zinchenko…” Alfred hissed.

  “Here! More grist for the mill tonight,” the kapo called out, pushing the professor and Leo forward and grabbing Blum by the neck of his uniform. Blum held onto Leisa. The kapo threw the four of them forward toward the front of the line, grunting to the officer who was counting them off. “These four are on me tonight. Top workers, all of them.”

  “None of them look like they can even hold a spade,” the German replied, looking them over. Then, back to his counting as if it was no matter. “Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight…” The officer pushed each of them on the shoulder until they passed. “Only two more,” he said to the row behind them. “Everyone else, keep your lines. There will be more details.”

  They’d made it through.

  Relieved, Blum squeezed Leisa’s arm as they made their way slowly through the main gate, which was ringed by guards staring blankly ahead as if the prisoners were cattle, not men. Many in line grumbled about their rotten fate. Roused out of their bunks, deprived of a night’s sleep. And just
their luck, Hauptscharführer Scharf was in charge; he had a hair trigger even when he’d had a good night’s sleep. Tarps were cleared from the bays of the trucks and those in the front of the line began to climb in, guards checking numbers and pushing them along, dogs snarling, barking loudly, a reminder to anyone who might have a thought of escape outside the wires.

  Blum’s heart pounded with anticipation. It was one thing for him to sneak through with only Mendl, but Leo and Leisa made it far more challenging. But they were almost there. Only one more checkpoint. Ahead, another guard was taking down workers’ numbers. Getting Leisa through would be the final hurdle. With her hair shaved and dirt smeared on her cheeks, in truth, she looked no less a man than Leo. “Just say your name and show your arm,” Blum whispered in her ear. “And don’t look him in the eye. Keep your head down. You’ll be fine.” She nodded bravely, but Blum could feel her nervous heart beating briskly.

  Mendl was first up. He recited his name and number. The guard dutifully waved him past. Then Leo. The same result. Blum was up next. He pushed Leisa in front of him and held onto her arm.

  “Blum,” she muttered in a low voice, showing her forearm.

  “A390207,” the guard read off. Leisa kept her eyes down.

  Blum eyed the Luger strapped to the guard’s side. If he stopped Leisa, if this was it, that was where Nathan would lunge. They would be dead in an instant, of course. But he wouldn’t let them be taken, tortured. He would not go without a fight like his parents.

  “Next.”

  Leisa stepped through.

  It was done.

  “Mirek. A22327,” Blum said.

  “Mirek. A22327…” the guard confirmed. Then his gaze went past Blum to the one in back of him. “And you…”

  They had made it. Their line was now climbing up into the truck. Blum squeezed Leisa’s shoulder. It was all going as planned. All they would have to do was work the line for a couple of hours and wait for the attack. When it came, with machine gun fire and maybe a grenade or two, there would be chaos. Smoke. People running about. There was always the last hurdle, of course, to sneak away amid the pandemonium and make it to the river. And now with four of them, that would be a harder feat. But if he had to, Blum was prepared to disable one of the guards; everyone would be distracted in the confusion. It would be risky, of course, that was clear. But the hardest part had passed. He had made it inside, managed to find Mendl, and Leisa too. It was all going to work, he was sure. He felt it in his heart. In a few hours, the plane would land and they’d be on their way to London. And then to America. The thought of Orpheus bringing Eurydice back from the dead came into his head—he was going to do it. And then Hades’s own warning passed through his mind:

  Whatever you do, Leisa, don’t look behind.

  Just a few seconds more.

  About half the work team had climbed into Truck Number One. The tarp was lowered and secured, and the rest were directed to the one next to it. Slowly they began to file in. Five, then ten, guards herding them quickly into the cargo bay. “Schnell! Schnell!”

  It was almost their time now. Blum’s heart surged. A guard pushed each one up who stepped forward. “You. You.” Now it was their turn. Leo put his foot on the step and jumped in first. He reached back to help Alfred, who awkwardly put a foot on the step, took Leo’s hand, and hoisted himself up with a quick but satisfied look that seemed to say, Thus far, so good. Blum put his face close to Leisa’s ear and whispered, “I’ll help you up. We’re almost there. It’s only—”

  The guard blocked them with his arm. “Alt!”

  An instant later, bright lights flared on; everything was flooded in a blinding glare. Blum shielded his eyes, dogs barking, lunging out of the darkness, all teeth and gnashing jowls. The piercing wail of a warning siren.

  What was going on?

  To Blum’s horror, the commandant he had seen at roll call this morning came around the side of the truck. Closely followed by the Abwehr colonel he had seen as well, his Mauser drawn.

  How were they here? What the hell had gone wrong?

  Someone pinned him by the shoulders, amid voices in German shouting. “These four!”

  The intelligence colonel stood in front of him, his eyes alight with satisfaction. “So our truffle hunter, at last…” he said in English. “And which of you is the prize?”

  The commandant greeted Alfred. “Herr Professor.”

  In that instant Blum saw in a flash that everything was lost. The mission. Mendl. Leisa. All lost. His blood surging, he lunged for the colonel’s pistol, trying to rip it from his hand. He knew it was a futile act. At any second, he would likely be shredded by machine gun fire. He knew he had cost his sister her life, just as he had tried so valiantly to save it. But still he leaped. He got his hands as far as grasping the colonel’s gun, focused only on the fact that he would not go like his parents had gone, accepting and scared, when someone struck him in the back with a hard, blunt object and, knees buckling, he fell to the ground.

  Leisa ran over to him and screamed, covering Nathan and shouting his name.

  “Leisa, no, no…” Blum pleaded. He looked up at her with heartbreak in his eyes, knowing he had failed her. Failed them all.

  “Ah, and our missing clarinet player as well…!” the commandant said. Leisa’s cap was off her head now and she was totally exposed. “You can be sure you will be properly serenaded by your friends on your way to the gallows.” He nodded and a guard struck her in the back with a rifle stock. With a whimper, she crumpled to the ground.

  “Leisa, no! Don’t hurt her. Please!” Blum reached out for her.

  “And let us see who this is,” the commandant said. A guard yanked Leo down from the truck.

  “I’m sorry, young man,” Mendl said as a guard dragged him down, pummeling the old man on the back and head with the stock of his gun.

  “Alfred!” Leo ripped his arms free and ran to the old man and received a rifle butt across the head, sending him to the ground as well.

  Blum was dragged up to his feet and squinted into the bright light. “Let her go,” he said, not even able to make out the faces in front of him. “You have me. Please, let her go.”

  Then something firm and blunt made contact with the back of his head, and the sight of his sister being dragged away unconscious was flooded over by a wave of darkness.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  “In a faraway world…” Greta read to the barely conscious man on the cot who stared up blankly, “through the veil of mist you see an image of beauty…”

  She came here and read most every afternoon. Today, after what Kurt had done earlier, she couldn’t go home. As hard as it was to see the withering, disfigured shapes, more bones than flesh, many in their last throes of life, it was also one of the few places that made her feel whole. Made her believe in life again. To see a brief flicker of a smile or twinkle in the eye of someone on the edge of death, whose mind was now set free. She wasn’t permitted to tend to the sick, since she wasn’t a trained nurse, nor was it appropriate, Kurt insisted, for the wife of the Lagerkommandant to touch the Jews directly or, even more so, to try to mend them. So she did what she could.

  Which was to speak soothingly to those who were dying, assure them that they weren’t alone. No one should leave this world without someone holding their hand or sitting by their side. Once she smuggled in precious sulfanilamide to treat a patient with gangrene, which was generally a death sentence in here. And once, when a young female prisoner who tended the sick and kept her pregnancy hidden gave birth—in a state of abject fear, as it generally meant death for both mother and child, because Kurt would insist this wasn’t a nursery, and bringing a Jewish life into the world was not worth the milk it would take to feed it—she took the newborn baby and arranged for her housemaid, Hedda, to smuggle it out of camp. And she prayed with all the hope still in her that though she had not brought a child into the world herself, somewhere there was one still living because of her.

  One against
all who had died.

  Mostly she just read. Rilke. Heine. Holderlin. Most of the people she sat by were already more corpse than living. Three days, and then they shipped you to the crematorium and your fate was sealed. But she knew they liked to hear the sound of a woman’s voice, momentarily transporting them to a place of calm and rest. And as she helped a few let their final thoughts fly over the dark cloud and wire back to their homes and families, it made Greta feel, at least for a brief time, less trapped and alone herself.

  Almost free.

  “Pani…” the patient she was reading to reached out and touched her arm. His lips quivered. He indicated he would like a sip of water.

  “Just rest. I’ll be right back.” She marked the place and got up to pour him a small cup.

  That was when she heard the sound of the siren.

  An unmistakable, repeating wail, penetrating the entire camp like a blade through the ears, designed to alert the guards in the case of an escape or emergency and to signal to the prisoners that a capture had been made, since no one ever got beyond the second row of electrified wire.

  In her heart, she always cheered for those brave enough to try.

  But now she feared, from what Kurt had told her, that they had found the intelligence officer’s mole. It demoralized her that they had won again, just as Kurt had predicted.

  Still, for just a second she hoped that maybe this time they hadn’t won. Maybe this one time someone had made it free.

  She put the cup of water to the patient’s lips and let him drink, then she excused herself and went outside.

  Guards were hurrying, weapons in hand, in the direction of the front gate.

  “Rottenführer Langer,” she called, seeing the corporal coming from that direction. “What is going on?”

  “An attempted escape,” he announced.

  “Escape…?” Then maybe the mole hadn’t been caught yet. There was still hope.

  “But do not worry, Frau Ackermann,” Langer said, sarcasm showing through. “You will be pleased to know that it has not succeeded.”

  Pleased … She would have been pleased if anyone had made it beyond the wires, if only for a moment, to die there, as many did, just to end the misery for good. But whoever these escapees were, she knew they would not face such a quick death. “Excellent, Corporal,” she replied, transparently enough that even a dull rod like Langer could see right through.