The peasant had a suit of clothes. Only one suit, he explained, but Lodzi would be disguised by wearing it. Lodzi was told to get dressed with a clean white shirt, starched collar, and necktie, followed by the suit of clothes. The peasant even gave him a pearl tie tack that had come all the way from France.
When he was dressed, Lodzi stared at himself in the mirror. A man stood there before him he thought he had never seen before. He looked again and realized he was staring back at himself. The peasant, standing behind him, clasped him on the shoulder, and told him he would never be recognized as anyone but a local on his way to a business meeting. With the blessing of the peasant couple, Lodzi was presented with a sack lunch and a hand-drawn map directing him to the train station.
He made his way out to the main road and a man in a truck stopped to give him a ride. As they made their way into town there was nothing said. No one wanted to know anything about the next person, really, because knowledge was a dangerous thing where a non-Jew knew of a Jew and didn't turn him in. The man let him out directly across the street from the train station and Lodzi thanked him and climbed out.
A ticket was purchased with the zlotys given him by the peasant in exchange for gold. Then his currency and coins were gone. He had gold, however. Always the gold.
Without incident he boarded the train and then collapsed across a seat in exhaustion. He slept all the way to Warsaw and then to Werchnz, where his friend Stanislav, a Pole, resided.
Stanislav lived in a walk-up flat in an ancient building in Old Town. His door was still painted red, as it was last time Lodzi had visited there. A small nameplate under glass was printed above the doorknocker, “S. Smizi."
Lodzi clapped the doorknocker three times against the red wooden door. He tried to stand upright but the hundreds of beatings had weakened his spine and hips. He was bent forward at the waist, his head turned sideways, peering up.
Then the door opened. Stanislav stood there, blinking, his heavy gray beard another inch longer since their last visit two years earlier. He was wearing blue pants and a white shirt rolled at the sleeves. On his nose his eyeglasses perched, lending him a quizzical, headmaster’s look. He peered down across the threshold, and then said, "Yes? Can I help you?"
Lodzi was speechless. He had been expecting warm hugs and being immediately swept inside by his dear friend.
But Stanislav did not recognize Lodzi. He thought he was disabled, perhaps another casualty of Nazi brutality. He tried to give him a handout of ten zlotys.
Lodzi told him, "Wait! It is Lodzi, your friend, Lodzi!"
Stanislav suddenly broke into tears and threw his arms around Lodzi’s shoulders in a bear hug.
"My dear friend! We all thought you were dead!"
But now Lodzi was crying and totally lost control of his composure. He was overwhelmed with grief and the knowledge he had survived when so many millions had perished.
* * *
For two days they ate and said very little about Lodzi's experience. Instead they compared notes on mutual acquaintances, discussing who had disappeared in the middle of the night and who was still present among them.
Then, on the third day, Lodzi began weeping and his friend knew it was time to talk. Which they did, for the next twenty-four hours, almost non-stop.
When it was done and everything had been said, Stanislav wept with his friend and said a prayer of thanksgiving. While his friend prayed, Lodzi only stared at the floor. That part of his mind, the spiritual corner, had been swept clean by the Nazis. He couldn't shine light in there anymore and wanted nothing to do with it. So he smiled when his friend was finished with prayer. Stanislav suggested they go out for sandwiches, which they did. Along the way they ducked into a notary's office and were shown into the back room. In exchange for raw gold, the proprietor would prepare false papers for Lodzi. The papers were Aryan papers, proof that Lodzi was a non-Jew.
When they left an hour later, Lodzi had his Aryan papers and now bore very little fear of being stopped by the SS. He was still wearing his suit of clothes as well, the gift from the peasant whose name he never asked for and who now was a sweet memory. Silently Lodzi had thanked the peasant a hundred times when the police on the trains had looked directly at him, seen how he was dressed, and continued their inquiry elsewhere among the passengers. The suit of clothes made him look like any other successful businessman and was enough to guarantee safe passage. Or had so far.
They ate meat sandwiches at a diner and consumed four cups of coffee each while they continued to talk. They began to conceive of a way for Lodzi to leave Poland, maybe even to go to America. They decided the train was best, so they packed a few items, stuffed two sandwiches inside a lunch pail, and Lodzi bought a ticket to Warsaw.
* * *
Lodzi's escape from Treblinka was the same day Hauptsturmführer Heiss was returning from Sobibór, a death camp where he had gone to oversee the construction of larger ovens. When he arrived back at Treblinka, casually driving along in a staff car and humming to himself, he found the fence cut wide open, guards scurrying in and out, and troops massing to join in the hunt for the escaped Jews.
He parked at his bungalow and a passing Colonel barked an order at him to report immediately to Stangl. They had been looking for him. He answered and appeared to head in that direction immediately, only to circle back inside his own house and go straight to Marta.
"Drop everything," he ordered. "We're walking out the front door this very minute."
"Let me pack. I have things—"
He seized her hand and began pulling her toward the door.
"Outside, in the car, now!"
While she ran out, leaving the front door wide open, Heiss double-timed upstairs to his bedroom and slid aside the picture disguising the wall safe. He spun the black knob twice right, twice left, right, and twice left. Finally he twisted the short handle and pulled. The door came open and he began scooping the sacks of gold into his knapsack. This took but minutes. He slipped the bag's straps over his arm and ran for the stairs. Just then, the same colonel appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
“Captain!” he cried. "I gave you an order to report! What are you doing here?"
Heiss continued double-timing down the stairs. He lifted his arms as if to assuage his superior then suddenly released the cover on his holster and drew the gun. He pointed it without wavering at the Colonel's forehead.
"Move aside, now," he said calmly.
The colonel went for his own sidearm, but he was slow in freeing it from his holster. It cost him his life, because Heiss without hesitation squeezed off a round catching the Nazi officer in his right eye, and then Heiss reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped over the fallen comrade.
"Fool," muttered Heiss, and he ran out to the still-warm staff car.
Inserting the key, he pulled Marta low in the seat and headed for the camp gate. The security arm was down and he tossed off a Sieg Heil to the private in the security booth and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as the checkered gate slowly lifted.
The couple passed through and headed for the highway. Along the way they could hear shouts and gunfire coming from the surrounding forest. They dared not look back, for the uprising and escape would see all roads blockaded and inquiries made within the next hour. They had long planned this escape, in terms of what they would do if this or that happened at the camp, and with the escape, the worst-case scenario was upon them.
* * *
Lodzi left Stanislav and began making his way across Poland to Warsaw.
He boarded the train in Werchnz and fell asleep until Ursus, when the train suddenly applied its brakes and made a tortured stop.
Passengers got off and passengers got on. There was a rustling sound at the door to his car and Lodzi opened his eyes. He moved his hat away from his face, where it had been covering him while he slept. He was shocked beyond anything he'd ever felt: standing in the doorway to the car was Janich Heiss himself. He was struggling with a knapsack that had beco
me entangled in a door handle, and a young woman was holding the door open while Heiss wrested his bag free. His head was turned a quarter-turn away from Lodzi so there was no recognition, and by the time the bag was freed and the new passengers made their way back into his car, Lodzi's face was again covered by his hat and he was shrinking down into his seat. He knew it was Heiss; there was no doubt about it. He was not wearing the SS uniform with the gun on the utility belt, but Lodzi felt sure the gun wasn't far from reach. The SS agent was dressed in a nondescript chocolate brown suit with lapels ten years out of style and a cheap tie clasp inserted at a haphazard angle across the tie. He looked unkempt, all told, as well as unshaven. His face was haggard and there was a desperate look within his darting eyes. The woman with him was likewise harried and rushed and her face was flushed as if she might be feverish. Lodzi thought instantly of typhoid but couldn't imagine how someone in her elite position would have contracted a disease that thrived on open sewage systems—which she had obviously never known. Lodzi had no doubt if Heiss had spotted him he—Lodzi—would even now be a corpse they were dragging from the train to be taken away and burned somewhere.
The SS officer and his wife brushed past him as they made their way toward seats further in the rear of the train car. Lodzi sat in his chair, terrified to look behind and try to see what had become of them. The train started moving again and the countryside began slipping past his window.
In the seat next to Lodzi sat a woman holding a brown shopping bag with two long loaves of bread sprouting out the top. Her look was implacable and she met no eyes and returned no stares, an island to herself. Ten minutes later the train was click clacking along when she suddenly dug her elbow into Lodzi's side.
"Toilet," she said, and gave him an angry look.
He didn't move. He didn't dare, as he didn't want to draw attention to himself.
She dug her elbow in again.
"Toilet!" she repeated.
He leaned as far back in his seat as possible and indicated with his hand she should stand and move across him, that he wasn't going to stand and let her by.
She shoved up to her feet, still leaning backward for the seat in front of her, and began a clumsy climb over Lodzi's legs and knees. She turned halfway there and was now facing him, her hands planted on his armrests and her mouth inches from his nostrils. Her breath was heavy with garlic and he turned his face to the side and held his breath. One-two-three he counted, praying she would suddenly grow wings and sail away. But it was not to be an answered prayer. She stood, thus, rooted across him, tugging at her right leg as if it was caught in a trap. Lodzi turned his knees to the right side and made himself as small as possible in his seat, whereupon with a great grunt and upward thrust she came up on her feet and stood in the aisle, collecting herself, when she suddenly turned to Lodzi and pointed an accusing finger at him and cried, "Juden!"
Lodzi didn't dare look up.
Again she cried out. "Juden!"
Lodzi kept his seat. He stared straight ahead, looking neither right nor left, and ignoring the woman and her efforts to draw official attention to him. At that time in Poland, as in all Nazi occupied countries, it was a criminal act for a Jew to ride on public transportation. This close in to Warsaw it was a criminal act punishable by death without further inquiry. Ever so slightly, he moved his right hand and patted his breast pocket. The papers were still in place.
The woman was jabbering even louder now and her call was passed from car to car until it reached the ear of the Gestapo. Two agents came trotting, automatic weapons slung across their shoulders, and they crashed through the door forward of Lodzi. The woman immediately pointed him out, and said over and over, "Juden," until there was no doubt who she meant.
The Gestapo agents were each a good six feet tall, blonde, and scowling as the nearer one clasped Lodzi on the shoulder and demanded to see papers. Lodzi retrieved his official papers—forged, of course—and passed them up to the officer. The Gestapo officer held the papers up to the light and Lodzi looked away. Just then, SS officer Heiss strode to the front of the car and stopped. Lodzi viewed this out the corner of his eye, and for an instant feared he was going to throw up where he sat. The pulse was pounding in his wrist and throat and he began seeing spots. Then he realized what he was hearing. The SS man was explaining he wanted to pass by and use the toilet himself. Lodzi was dumbfounded. He almost pinched himself to make sure he was awake and not dreaming the SS officer's appearance was after all innocent. The two officers stood aside and allowed Heiss to pass by. As he got to the door, Heiss paused, and when he was certain the officers were not watching him, he looked directly at Lodzi. He gave just a hint of a smile before turning and disappearing on through the door.
After several minutes, the officer refolded the papers, and handed them back to Lodzi. "Danka," he said and ordered the woman to continue to the toilet and be about her own business. With an officious air, the officers then looked over the rest of the crowd and, evidently satisfied all was well, turned and exited back through the door.
Now he shut his eyes and let out a long sigh of relief. He could feel the urine spot warm against his inner thigh. His underwear was sopping wet and he lifted his balled left fist and bit the first knuckle until it turned white and very nearly bled. There were tears in his eyes and it was all he could do not to shudder. With a silent whimper, he drew a deep breath and forced himself to relax back against the seat. He inserted his shaking hands between his legs to hide them and prayed the couple across the aisle were not paying attention.
Without further incident or misfortune, the train delivered Lodzi to the station inside the shell at Warsaw. He immediately went into the toilet, found an empty stall, and stuffed his underwear with discarded newsprint. Then he wept. He threw his head back and with his eyes tightly clenched lifted his arms imploringly and wept without a sound. When he was done, he straightened himself, reset the tie tack in his necktie, and went to the basin to wash his hands.
Whatever happened to Heiss that day, he didn't know, for he never saw him again that trip.
* * *
Months later, while riding the train into a station where fruit vendors were set up along the tracks, he glimpsed a small basket of oranges and the thought came to him at once: Heiss had hidden his own identity from the Gestapo officers that day. That's why he hadn't turned Lodzi in, was because he didn't want to admit how he knew him. After all, he was out of uniform in wartime. Which could only mean one thing: Heiss was fleeing Poland, too.
While the train refueled and exchanged passengers and freight, Lodzi got off to stretch his legs. He made his way back to the fruit vendors near the opening of the station, where he purchased one of the five remaining oranges. The winter fruit was acrid and real in his mouth. With his fingers he slowly tooled away the rind and, finally, smiled; Heiss was as much a fugitive from the Nazis as he, Lodzi. It would be a race to see who made it out of Europe first.
Then he prayed. For the first time in over a year he prayed: “Please, let me find that man.” Standing there, in the swirling steam and noise from the panting engines of the locomotives, he turned his prayer loose, looked up, saw it pierce the glass roof of the station, and sail heavenward. “Please let me find that man.”
* * *
Lodzi wandered for two months, riding trains and mindlessly staring out yellowed train windows, finally returning and settling in Warsaw, where he lived for a year as a Pole with false papers. After the Warsaw Uprising he hid in an attic for three and a half months until he was liberated on 17 January 1945.
With his remaining gold, he made an exchange and used his small wealth for travel to America. His uncle lived in America, in a city called Chicago. Lodzi determined he would join his uncle where, he was certain, he would be helped to make a new life.
Chapter Nine
Lodzi boarded the Danish ship Struma for passage to America. He had no visa, no invitation to visit, and had no inking how he would be received. Nevertheless, he looked f
orward to starting over in a new country, a country of his choice.
His accommodations were a large engine room two decks below waterline, which had been retrofitted when new engines were installed. The room was dark, dank, and the temporary home of fifty other Jewish immigrants who had managed to scrape together enough money to purchase passage.
The first several days at sea were days of seasickness and extreme loneliness. As near as Lodzi could tell, everyone onboard was seasick. The railings on the main deck were constantly lined with people throwing up into the ocean, white-faced and still unsteady standing on the deck of a ship in high seas. Lodzi made his way among them, and several times a day found himself at the railing, throwing up with total strangers on either side. During the rest of the day, he would either stroll the main deck, or curl up on the pallet he had been issued in the engine room he now called home.
On the third day, as he was standing in line at the breakfast bar, he thought he recognized a face. The man was about his height, six feet, and, like Lodzi, still somewhat emaciated. Lodzi immediately thought he knew why. The man was two ahead of him in line and Lodzi made every effort to catch a glimpse of the man's face.
The man took a seat at the fourth table from the wall, and as luck would have it, there was an empty chair next to him, which Lodzi immediately claimed as his own. Watching the man sidewise out of his eye, Lodzi saw it was indeed a man he had known at Treblinka.
"Rajski, is that you?"
The man turned and looked at Lodzi.
"Lodzi? Lodzi from Barracks One?"
"Rajski, it is you!"
The men jumped to their feet, and threw arms around each other. Hugs were exchanged, and tears flowed. Lodzi felt like he had found a long-lost family member. The man Rajski was equally moved.
From that day on, the men became inseparable. They took their meals together, strolled the decks together, and talked about everything except hell. There had arisen between them an unspoken agreement concerning Treblinka. It was off-limits. It simply wasn't a topic. Besides, both men were young and anxious to move on, to make a new life in America.
Unspeakable Prayers: WW II to Present Day (Thaddeus Murfee Series of Legal Thrillers) Page 8
