Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  In the kibbutz there were no leaders, decisions were made by majority vote, after having been discussed by each member of the community. After a decision had been made, it was carried out without protest.

  As for tasks, they were done in rotation. You would be in charge of the kitchen one week, in charge of cleaning the next, in charge of the farm work the third; and every member of the kibbutz, absolutely everyone, received self-defense lessons.

  Who would have thought that Daniel would have become a good teacher for the younger members of the community? My brother had learned the techniques of hand-to-hand combat well; he had been taught by some of the leaders of the Haganah, whose job it was to prepare people to enter the kibbutz. Daniel knew how to load a gun with his eyes closed, and he was a good shot, too. He had authority over the younger members of the community, and was demanding in what he asked of them, but also affectionate and fair.

  As I said, neither Ben nor I was given preferential treatment. We slept in a wooden barracks where there were several beds in a row, and we kept them in perfect condition. I spent the first week peeling potatoes in the kitchen, as well as cleaning the common dining room. I spent the few free hours I had in learning how to fight. I knew that Daniel was a member of the Haganah, and that he was in the Palmach, but I had never imagined that he would be such a formidable warrior. The British, whose relationship with the Jews could be classed as schizophrenic, had trained the Palmach.

  As the kibbutz was situated in an area where Arab attacks were frequent, we were on the alert twenty-four hours a day. Everyone, including women and children, no matter their age, all took part in the defense of the kibbutz.

  Now I understood what my mother had said when she told me that life in a kibbutz was no bed of roses. The men and the women who had established the first communal farms were from Russia, and they brought communist and socialist ideas with them and put them into practice unhesitatingly. The only advantage was one of freedom. No one was forced to stay or forced to share everything with everyone. You were allowed to stay in the kibbutz forever, or else, if you decided that this voluntary collectivism was too much, then you could leave without receiving the slightest reproach from your fellows.

  The closest the world ever got to socialism was the kibbutz system during those years.

  The most difficult part of life in this kibbutz at the edge of the Negev Desert was getting the ground to bear fruit. The community had planted vegetables and trees that would take a long time to produce their first crop. Ben was happier than I was. He enjoyed learning how to fight, and was always the first to volunteer for any job. Had I not been scared of disappointing Louis, Mikhail, my mother, Marinna, even Ben himself, I would have gone back to Jerusalem once the summer was over. But I didn’t dare make that decision. There were other reasons of course: I fell in love for the first time.

  Ben and I had been in the kibbutz for a month when Paula arrived. I felt attracted to her immediately. Her father was a German and her mother was a Pole. An explosive mixture, they told me, because the Poles and the Germans have so much history of conflict.

  Paula’s father was the conductor of an orchestra and her mother played the cello; they had met in an orchestra before the Great War, they had fallen in love, they had married, and the result was Paula. They lived in Berlin, but they were able to escape before the massive arrests of Jewish citizens began. For a brief time they lived in Istanbul, where they barely managed to survive.

  “My father gave music lessons and that made enough for us to eat, but little more,” Paula told me.

  A few months earlier, her father had decided that their place was in Palestine, and they decided to head there.

  “It was difficult to live in Istanbul, but at least no one treated us like we were monsters there. You can’t understand the shame I felt the first day I had to go to school with a Star of David sewn onto my overcoat. In Germany, it had become something bad to be a Jew. Only two of my classmates were brave enough to still be friends with me and invite me to their houses in spite of their parents’ protests. They were afraid of being accused of being too kind to the Jews.”

  Paula dreamed of becoming a musician, and if the Nazis had not interposed themselves into her life, she would have continued with the piano lessons that she had taken ever since she could barely walk. But they had no money in Istanbul to buy a piano, and she had to resign herself to learning from her mother how to play the cello.

  “But I don’t like it, I wish I could go back to studying the piano one day.”

  I didn’t want to disappoint her, but I thought that it would be impossible for a piano ever to get to this corner of the desert. Also, I did not think it would be voted for as being one of the key necessities of the kibbutz. They didn’t spend a single penny there unless the community authorized it, and the necessary goods were so many that it was impossible that anyone would ever propose buying a piano.

  I saw that it was hard for Paula to adapt herself to life on the kibbutz, as it had been for me. She didn’t complain, but I saw that an expression of confusion, sometimes hurt, often appeared in her large blue eyes. To the difficulties inherent in sharing a barracks with other girls or cleaning the latrines, which was the job she was given the first week, one had to add the problem that she didn’t speak any Hebrew. She had learned Turkish in Istanbul, and she could speak English, which was the language we used to communicate with each other.

  I offered to teach her Hebrew if she would teach me German. It was a way of helping her, but also of being close to her.

  At night, if neither of us was required to patrol the perimeter fences, we found time to give each other lessons.

  In the summer of 1942 I received a letter from Wädi announcing that he had decided to enlist in the British army. They were forming mixed Palestinian battalions, made up of both Arabs and Jews, and he had decided to fight. His letter to me made me cry:

  I have made this decision because I think that we cannot remain indifferent in this war. Some of my friends justify the support Mufti Amin al-Husseini gives to Hitler by saying that when Germany beats England then they will help us be free of the English. I am sure that they are mistaken, and that if Germany were to win the war, then we would become merely another part of Hitler’s empire.

  My father has helped me resolve my doubts and above all he has encouraged me to make this decision. You know that sometimes he says that there are times in life when the only way to save yourself is by dying, or killing. In this case, if I die it will be in the cause of stopping Hitler becoming the ruler of the world. And if I kill it will be for the same reason.

  I am being trained in Tel Aviv at the moment, but not for much longer. I think they will send us to Egypt.

  Look after yourself, Ezekiel.

  So Wädi was off to fight Hitler. This made my respect for him increase all the more, and I wanted to be a couple of years older and to be able to go to the front myself.

  Finally, on November 4, 1942, the British Army defeated the Germans in Egypt, at the Second Battle of El Alamein. When we heard the news we celebrated. It was decided that we would have a special dinner and sing songs around some bonfires that we would build on the road to the kibbutz.

  My brother praised my ability to learn languages. While it was difficult for Paula to make any headway with Hebrew, I was rapidly becoming able to speak German well.

  Every now and then I would go with Daniel to deal with some of the leaders of the local Arab villages, to buy food or materials that we needed in the kibbutz. Daniel and I both spoke Arabic well. I had learned to speak Hebrew and Arabic at the same point in my childhood, and even today I can’t say which is my mother tongue, although for family matters it is Hebrew.

  My mother visited me every now and then. She would come with Louis or Mikhail and I was worried for her, as it seemed that on every visit she had aged a little more. Her hair was streaked with white and her
eyes were dull. She asked me if I was happy, I suppose hoping that I would say I was coming home. But I was too much in love with Paula, and was not planning anything that didn’t mean spending time by her side.

  It was Ben, after a visit from Mikhail, who managed to convince me that the time had come for another change of scenery. It was at the end of 1943 and I had just turned eighteen.

  “I’m going to join the British Army. Mikhail has promised me that he’ll sort it out. When he tells me to, I’ll go back to Jerusalem and from there to Tel Aviv. I want to fight in Europe, I don’t want to stay here knowing that millions of Jews are kept prisoner in those Nazi camps. Mikhail says that they tell terrible stories of what goes on in them . . . ,” Ben said.

  “But we are fighting here. Imagine what would have happened if Rommel had reached Palestine . . . ,” I replied.

  “But the English managed to defeat him. The Germans have already lost here,” he replied.

  I had no desire to separate from Paula. We had even thought about getting married. My mother knew of my relationship with Paula and approved. She said that now that she could no longer look after me at least someone would, although she tried to convince us to go back to Hope Orchard to live. But Paula said that our place was in the kibbutz and I didn’t feel any urge to contradict her.

  Ben was impatient to hear from Mikhail and to go back to Jerusalem to join the British Army.

  I started to wonder if maybe I should do the same. I thought that if I stayed where I was then I was betraying the thousands of Jews who were doubtless praying for the Allies to defeat Germany.

  Without knowing it, Paula helped me make the decision. One night we were on patrol together and she told me of the anguish that she and her parents had felt to know that hundreds of their friends had been taken to labor camps and that nothing was ever heard of them again. This knowledge was one of the things that encouraged them to escape, so that they could avoid a similar fate.

  Suddenly she asked me:

  “Has it really been so many years that you have heard nothing from your father and your sister?”

  These words exploded in my brain. I had begun to remove Samuel and Dalida from my life and thought about them less and less.

  The next day I found Ben, who was digging a ditch.

  “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?” he said as soon as he saw me.

  We had grown up together, we were like brothers and we knew each other too well, so that sometimes a single glance was enough to know what was going through the other’s head.

  “You’re right, we need to defeat the Germans over there. We will have time later to help here.”

  When we got to Jerusalem, Mikhail and Louis arranged with the English that we be allowed to enlist and sent to the front. We came from a kibbutz, we had been taught how to fight and use a gun, and for all their negative behavior toward us in the past, the British now needed all the men they could find who were willing to fight. There were Jews fighting in British battalions in Greece, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. They worked the supply lines for the British Army in Tunisia, Libya, and all over the Middle East. There were also some Jews in the RAF, and deployed in other capacities on other fronts.

  The worst of it was saying goodbye to my mother. Ben said that it had been the same for him, although we both acknowledged that neither Miriam nor Marinna had shed a single tear, and that the only thing that they had asked was that we come back alive. Igor could not hide the apprehension he felt, and when he said goodbye to Ben, he held him in an embrace that seemed to last forever.

  I also went to say goodbye to the Ziad family. Mohammed gave me all kinds of advice; he had fought in a desert war and he knew that there was not an ounce of romanticism in dying or in killing, whatever the cause.

  Naima asked me if they would send me to be with her brother Wädi, of whom they had heard nothing for a few weeks. Rami, my former playmate, the son of Aya and Yusuf, made me promise that I would take care.

  “Don’t make me have to come and find you,” he said with a smile.

  I asked him why he did not enlist like his cousin Wädi had. The question made him uncomfortable. There were not many Arabs fighting in the Allied ranks. The mufti had personally tried to convince the Muslims that they should join the Nazi forces, and in his broadcast harangues he told the Arabs to pay no attention to the Allies, whom he considered his worst enemies.

  “You know that we are not followers of the mufti in my house. If I do not come with you it is because I don’t know if this is my war,” Rami said thoughtfully, “although I do not like this Hitler. Only a madman could believe that one race is better than another. Also, once he has conquered Europe he might very well decide to take the rest. Who can say if the Germans would not decide to become our new masters? No, Ezekiel, I am not going to go, although I wish with all my heart that you come back as soon as possible, and that all your battles are victorious.”

  I knew that in spite of these words, the truth was very different: Rami had not joined up in order to protect his father. Omar Salem would have dispensed with Yusuf’s services if Yusuf’s son had decided to fight on the side of the British.

  Aya wept without hiding it, although Rami and Noor both told her not to: “Don’t make Ezekiel leave in sadness,” they said.

  The next morning, all the Ziads presented themselves to wish me luck.

  I can still remember the last words my mother whispered into my ear: “If you are going to Europe, try to find out what happened to your father and your sister Dalida. We have heard nothing from them in years.”

  I was surprised that at such a moment she would give me such a task. We had not spoken of them for years, as if they had never been a part of our lives, but I promised her that I would try.

  At the Tehran Conference, Stalin had asked the Allies to reopen a Western front. The Soviet Union was struggling hard on the Eastern front, but it now was time for Hitler to feel the pincers closing in on Germany. Ben and I joined the war just in time to be among the Allied troops who landed in Normandy. We had been trained in Tel Aviv, and now they told us we were ready for war.

  It’s not easy to kill a man, at least not the first time, especially when you see his face. After disembarking, my regiment, part of the Third Infantry Division, joined with Montgomery’s troops and went to take Caen, a city in Normandy and a strategic point at which the Twenty-First Panzer Division and the Twelfth SS Panzer Division “Hitlerjugend,” as well as the 101st SS Panzer Battalion and the Lehr-Panzer Division, had stopped us dead. I thought this was the worst place in the world and I will always remember it because it was there, not during the disembarkation, that I learned that it’s not easy to kill a man who looks you right in the eye.

  I think I remember that one of the sergeants was named O’Connors. His men seemed to like him.

  “I asked for men, not innocents. You’ve come at a bad time,” he said when our group presented itself. “They’ll attack us tomorrow.”

  Some of his men laughed nervously. I thought he was trying to impress us, so I stupidly said that we were here to fight.

  “I’ll make you lose your appetite for that,” he said, looking at me condescendingly.

  When we left the improvised officers’ station I muttered to Ben, who was by my side:

  “This guy, how does he know the Germans will attack tonight? He’s too clever by half.”

  I hadn’t realized that there was a British officer behind me, a major, although it was hard to tell because he was not wearing a recognizable uniform. I knew later that he must have belonged to the Intelligence Service.

  “He knows, he always knows. They will attack, so you should be prepared.”

  I reddened, but I stood to attention and saluted the office whose name I later found out was Matthew Williams.

  “I’m sorry . . . sir,” I said, trying to apologize.

  “Go to
your posts. The sergeant has said that they will attack at dusk, and there is not long to wait.”

  We spoke very little for almost two hours. Some of the soldiers from our platoon came up to us.

  “Odd night, this. You got any cigarettes left?”

  Ben gave him one without paying him much attention.

  “Are you Jews?” the man, whose name was David Rosen, asked.

  Ben and I went on the defensive, troubled by the question.

  “Yes, what of it?” I replied.

  David slapped my back. As he was taller and stronger than I was, I lost my balance a little, although I thought it was meant to be a sign of comradely affection.

  “I’m a Jew as well and that’s why we fight better than the rest. Why’s that? Because we’ve got more reason to do so. There are thousands of Jews rotting in labor camps waiting for us to liberate them and take them home. And that is what we’ll do.”

  I felt drawn to David from the first day, I even said to Ben that it looked as if he were Jewish like us. When I first knew him he was twenty-five years old, and so strong that we were all a little in awe of him. One day when our jeep broke down and there was no way to get it off the road, he went over to it as if it weighed nothing and moved it a few meters. He was not only strong; he was also intelligent. He had studied engineering at Cambridge, and said that the solutions to all problems could be found in mathematics.

  He had been born in Munich, although his mother was English and he had lived in England from a very early age. Every now and then he said that he felt ashamed “to have been German.”

  That evening we shared the cigarettes we had in our satchels and the cold entered into our bones.

  The rain had soaked the ground so much that it was difficult not to feel cold, although we were standing in the shelter of a trench.

  O’Connors was not mistaken. The first shadows of dusk had barely started to fall when we began to receive mortar fire. We replied in kind. For a few hours my whole world was reduced to the noise of the guns and the shouts of our officers.