Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  General McCreery, commander of the British Eighth Army, had planned an operation with the Americans. Our brigade was supposed to remove the Germans from nearby Fantaguzzi Mill. If all went well, we would meet other Allied forces and continue to Bologna.

  The American planes bombed the area to make our path easier.

  The generals use maps to plan their objectives, but it is the soldiers who put their lives at risk to attain them, and those little lines of rivers on the maps became black water that swallowed everything.

  In those months, David Rosen became the best comrade that one could want in a war. He was always brave, always prepared, always generous. The more tired we were, the greater effort he made to cheer us up.

  “I’m ashamed of being German,” he said one day.

  “Well, you’re not German, you’re Jewish,” Ben replied.

  “I’m German, Ben, I’m German. I think, I dream, I cry, I love, I laugh in German. And I’m fighting in this war not because I’m a Jew but because I’m a German. I want to get my homeland back, my future, my life.”

  This declaration moved us all. Ben slapped him on the back and I sat in silence. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Time moves strangely slowly in a war. You cannot stop thinking about death, because death is all that surrounds you. But the time comes when even that thought stops being bitter.

  You are there to kill, and to die, if it comes down to it, and so you end up behaving like an automaton. It was in Italy that I understood why discipline is so necessary in the army. They prepare you to obey, and so you end up repeating all the gestures mechanically, all the actions and routines, including the routine of killing.

  A captain comes along, or a sergeant, and he tells you to get ready, you’re heading off on patrol. It doesn’t matter how tired you are, or if you’re in pain. You get up, check your equipment, and obey. No one will ask you your opinion, and it’s better if you don’t fall into the trap of offering it.

  Some nights I spoke with Ben about Wädi. Where had they sent him? They had said that the Palestinian Arabs were in North Africa, fighting bravely. I was sure of that. But there was also a sense of resentment at the fact that the mufti had not only allied himself to Hitler, but had also managed to attract men to take up his cause. The Thirteenth Waffen-SS Mountain Division “Handschar” was made up of Muslim volunteers from various countries, above all Croatia and Bosnia.

  There was a point when the fighting stopped. The war was in its last throes. We received the news of Benito Mussolini’s and Clara Petacci’s deaths, followed by the suicide of Hitler in his bunker. The Führer had shot himself through the mouth. The only thing I regretted was that the Soviets had not been able to take him alive when they took Berlin.

  All the remaining Germans in Italy surrendered on May 2. The war was over for us, and we could see the moment in the near future when we would go home, although I still had to carry out the task given me by my mother, to find out what had happened to my father and to my sister Dalida.

  David Rosen, for his part, wanted to go back to Munich.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to find there. My parents and I were lucky because we got out in time, but lots of my friends and family got stuck there.”

  By now we knew about the existence of the extermination camps. The Soviets had been the first to enter these death camps, and, as the English and the Americans did later, what they found were people whom the Nazis had deprived of their humanity. The survivors were more dead than alive, and all of them had the horror of their descent into hell written in their eyes. The question was whether they would ever be ready to return to life, to think themselves human again, to be capable of loving, feeling, dreaming, being moved, being touched.

  Months later I met a Russian soldier in Berlin and became friends with him. His name was Boris and he told me in detail how they had liberated Majdanek, a camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland.

  Before I met Boris, or even went to Berlin, Ben had told me that we should put off our plan of returning to Palestine.

  “We have to do something to help the survivors. We can’t leave them in the Red Cross camps.”

  He had already decided to help the Brihah, the organization that was helping thousands of Jewish survivors to find new homes.

  I agreed with him. For us to have left at this point would have been a betrayal of the thousands of poor wretches who had been freed from hell, and who had become a problem for the victorious powers. This was the day after the war in Europe had ended, and on such a day, all the powers that had been allied up until that point now had their own problems and their own needs.

  The Americans didn’t want there to be a massive exodus of Jews to the United States. The British wanted to stop large numbers of Jews from going to Palestine at any cost, as that would mean renewed problems with the Arabs. As for the Soviet Union, Jews were not well received there either.

  After the first shock of discovery at what they found in the concentration camps, the political leaders returned to their normal pragmatism, the same old Realpolitik as usual.

  “They are Jews, and so we need to face up to the problem. We will take all the Jews to Palestine who want to go,” Ben said.

  Before setting out on this adventure I asked for permission to go to Paris. I had to find my father and Dalida. I never thought that anything had happened to them. They must have stuck out the war in the Goldanskis’ house. My father had even thought about marrying Katia.

  I saw the euphoria of triumph when I arrived in Paris. The city belonged to the Parisians once again. The American and British soldiers gave a touch of joy to the capital.

  I went straight to my father’s house, and to my surprise a woman whom I didn’t know opened the door.

  “What do you want?” this elderly woman asked in a friendly voice.

  “I’m looking for Samuel Zucker, I’m Ezekiel Zucker.”

  The woman looked me up and down and there was a glint of fear in her eyes.

  “No Samuel Zucker lives here,” she said quickly and tried to close the door.

  “I’m sorry, Madame, but this is my father’s house, my house, so tell me who you are and what you are doing here.”

  I heard a man’s voice call from inside the house.

  “Brigitte, who’s there?”

  “Someone who says that this is his house,” the woman shouted.

  A man appeared, older and fatter than I was, dressed in a sweat-stained shirt and trousers without a belt. I looked at his hands and thought that they were the hands of a killer.

  “Who are you?” His voice was a challenge.

  “You need to tell me who you are and explain yourselves. Tell me what you are doing in my father’s house.”

  “This is our house and I do not need to give you any explanation.” The man slammed the door as he said this.

  I stood in front of the door without knowing what to do. I thought I should ring the bell again, but I realized that with such a rascal the most that could happen would be that he would break my nose.

  I remembered that Irina’s husband had also lived in this building, the husband of that woman about whom my father and Mikhail spoke so much. But I couldn’t remember where the Beauvoirs lived.

  I went down to the entrance to see if I could find the concierge, hoping that the woman, old as she might be, would remember me. But there was no one there.

  A middle-aged woman entered at that moment and I recognized her immediately.

  “Agnès!” I said, pleased to see the concierge’s niece, who had looked after me and Dalida when we lived in Paris.

  She looked at me in fright without recognizing me.

  “I’m Ezekiel! Samuel Zucker’s son!”

  “My God! But yes . . . It’s true! You’re not a child anymore, you’re a man . . . My God! My God!” and she took a step backward
s as if she wanted me to get out of her way.

  “Come on, Agnès, it’s like you’ve seen a ghost. Tell me, what do you know about my father? Why is there another family in our apartment?”

  Agnès looked at me in even greater fright. Had she been able to, I think she would have run away.

  “Monsieur, I know nothing, I swear.”

  This was enough for me to realize that she was lying, so I grabbed her by the arm.

  “Where is your aunt? Is she still the concierge?”

  “No, Monsieur, I am the concierge now, my aunt is very old and has gone back to our village, to Normandy.”

  “You worked in my father’s house, so you must tell me what happened.”

  I followed her to the concierge’s office, which she unlocked. She unwillingly invited me to sit down in a rickety chair.

  “I . . . I was always good to Monsieur Zucker, I swear! Then, when . . . Well, when it became a problem to be a Jew I stopped working for your father . . . You have to understand that these were difficult times, and if you had dealings with Jews then you drew suspicion onto yourself . . .”

  Agnès’s words hit me in the stomach. I looked at her with disgust and she gave a start.

  “Monsieur, don’t get angry, I . . .”

  “Tell me what happened to my father! And my sister, what do you know about Dalida?”

  “I don’t know anything. Your father and your sister abandoned the apartment at the beginning of the war. I don’t know where they went, they didn’t tell me, I was only the maid. I don’t know anything else . . . I swear!”

  “Who are the people who are living in our house?”

  “They’re a good family, he’s a policeman, I think he’s an important man. They have two children.”

  “Why are they living in my house?”

  “Well, I don’t really know, Monsieur . . . I think that some Jewish houses were confiscated and . . . Of course, now they say that if the owners come back and prove that the houses were theirs . . . It’s all so confused, Monsieur; the war has only just finished and we don’t really know what’s going to happen.”

  It was difficult for me to recognize in this woman the young girl who had looked after Dalida and me when we were children. The Agnès of those days was a carefree young woman who took us to play in the Luxembourg Gardens, who got lost with us in the streets of Paris, who turned a blind eye to our naughty behavior. The Agnès I had before me now was a survivor, one of those people who think only of themselves while the world is falling to pieces around them. The war had brought out the worst in her.

  “And the Beauvoirs?”

  “He died a year ago, I think that some nephews inherited the apartment, you know that Monsieur Beauvoir had no children.”

  “And our furniture, our paintings, all our things? Who has them now?”

  “I don’t know anything, Monsieur, only what I have just told you. Please, I don’t want any problems!”

  I left without knowing where to go or whom I could ask about my father and my sister. What if they had been arrested? No, that couldn’t be, why arrest them? I answered the question myself—they were Jews, there was no other reason. What I didn’t understand was why my father and my sister had stayed in Paris. They could have taken refuge in London with the Goldanskis, I always thought that was what they would have done, and my mother thought the same, I think.

  I did everything I could to get an answer from the French authorities. I gave them the names of my sister and my father and they promised to send me an answer in a few days. They were not on file as having disappeared.

  I sent a telegram to Ben telling him I couldn’t join him or David Rosen at the moment to help them with the Brihah organization, whose aim was to help the Jews who had survived.

  I went to London, convinced that the Goldanskis could give me the answers I needed. Konstantin was my father’s best friend and business partner, and Katia . . . Well, I imagined that Katia must have married my father.

  I didn’t even try to find a hotel when I got to London: I went straight to the Goldanskis’ house.

  London felt like a city more bitter than Paris. The English capital had suffered badly from the continued bombing of the German airplanes, whereas Paris had largely been protected. It had been the rearguard for Hitler’s troops.

  The Goldanskis’ house was still standing, although its wings seemed to have been destroyed. I approached in fear, praying for them to be alive. A maid opened the door and invited me to come in and wait in the hall while she told “the mistress” I was there. I was preparing myself to meet Katia, whom I hated for having taken my father away from me. But it was not Katia who received me, but Vera, Konstantin’s wife.

  “Ezekiel! What a surprise! You’re alive!”

  Vera hugged me with affection and signs of joy. I responded similarly, as I had always been captivated by her sweet nature. Vera had changed. Her hair was completely white and she was thinner than before; so thin that I felt her bones as I hugged her.

  We sat in what had previously been a drawing room, a small room with a stove where the family used to meet when they didn’t have guests. I was upset to see that the porcelain figures were gone, the ones we had not been allowed to touch when we were children.

  “My son Gustav is about to come, please have lunch with us. My God, what a pleasant surprise to have you here!”

  Vera asked me about my mother and wanted to know how I had spent the war. She crossed herself when she found out that I had fought in France and then in Italy.

  I don’t know why I had the impression that she was trying to forestall all my questions with questions of her own.

  “And Konstantin?” I finally managed to ask.

  She let drop a few tears that she immediately caught up in a handkerchief.

  “He died here. You see how the house is now. That day . . . It was not yet dawn when the German planes started to bombard London. Gustav and I were not at home. As soon as he was old enough and we gave him our permission, Gustav joined the army. They sent him to serve in the General Staff office. He wanted to fight, but his superiors thought that they would take advantage of the fact that he spoke Russian, French, and German perfectly. And I . . . well, I collaborated as much as I could; I was a volunteer in the Nursing Service. I was at the hospital almost before dawn broke. I had just left the house when I heard the sirens and ran to the closest shelter and hoped that Konstantin would do the same. When I left he was taking a cup of tea in his office, which was . . . Well, you know, it was in the wing that is now as you see it. A bomb fell on the neighboring house, but it was such a powerful explosion that our house got it as well. Konstantin died in the explosion, under a shower of rubble that destroyed his body.”

  This time Vera could not hold back her tears and started to cry. I sat next to her and tried to embrace her and comfort her.

  “I am sorry, Ezekiel . . . I couldn’t get over the loss. You see, we ran away from Russia to survive, but evil has even followed us here.”

  “I am sorry, Vera, I truly am. I . . . Well, my sister and I thought of you and Konstantin as another uncle and aunt to us.”

  “And we loved you as if that’s what we truly were,” Vera replied.

  The moment had come to ask about my father and Dalida, and, although it hurt me to do so, about Katia as well.

  “And Katia? How is she?”

  Vera looked at me with an infinite sorrow in her huge grey eyes.

  “I don’t know, Ezekiel, I don’t know. The war only finished three weeks ago. Gustav is doing all he can to find out about what happened to Katia and your father, but . . .”

  I felt tense, alert, but at the same time I also felt a slight sense of relief at the idea that they might be somewhere together, somewhere unknown, but both of them alive.

  “Do you know where they were during the war? Here with you, no
?”

  Vera twisted her hands, trying to find an answer to my question that would not hurt me too much.

  “Konstantin asked your father to stay in London, but he . . . Samuel is very stubborn and he said he was not going to stand idly by while the Germans persecuted the Jews. For Samuel it was like the pogroms were starting all over again. He never got over the loss of his mother and his brother and sister. Your father thought that two wars were taking place at the same time: the war of democracy against Nazism, and the war of the Jews for their own survival. He was prepared to fight on both fronts.”

  “Where is my father, Vera?”

  “I don’t know, Ezekiel. He decided to stay in France, and started to work with a Resistance group made up of Spanish Republicans and Frenchmen. Gustav will explain it better than I can, he knows more of the details. You know that Konstantin tried to keep me from getting upset about things, he thought I had suffered enough during the October Revolution. I got annoyed and said that I didn’t want to be treated like a child, but he tried to hide things from me that he knew would affect me. Even so, I found out that your father was a member of the Resistance and that Katia, in spite of Konstantin’s pleading with her, had decided to stay with him in France. She also worked with the Resistance. We did what we could from here. I assure you that not one single day went by when Konstantin and I did not try to help Jewish citizens.”

  “And Dalida? Where is my sister?”

  “Gustav is trying to find out what became of her, but there is a lot of confusion around the subject. Apparently the Gestapo took her. Dalida was also in the Resistance,” Vera added.

  Just hearing that word, “Gestapo,” was still enough to provoke fear. You know about their crimes, their extreme cruelty, how they enjoyed torturing people.

  Vera answered my questions and at the same time tried to calm the anxiety that was taking hold of me. When Gustav came home, I already had a more or less clear idea of how my father and sister had spent the war.