Eli's Promise

by Ronald H. Balson

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  For Monica.

  Promises kept.

  He who does not oppose evil commands it to be done.

  —LEONARDO DA VINCI

  PART I

  CHAPTER ONE

  CENTRAL GERMANY

  1945

  In the waning weeks of the Second World War, as the German defenses retreated into ever-shrinking circles around Berlin, the Nazi concentration camps sitting in the outer reaches, once heavily fortified, lay pregnable in the path of the Allies’ advance. The German high command knew that liberation of those camps was imminent, but they steadfastly refused to release their grip on the Jewish prisoners. They intended to finish implementing their Final Solution of the Jewish Question. In pursuance thereof, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler ordered the SS to transfer the Jews from the outlying camps to locations inside Germany.

  Just before abandoning each of those camps, the SS guards corralled as many prisoners as they could and marched them deep into Germany in what came to be known as the Nazi death marches. Already weakened by disease and malnutrition, tens of thousands of men, women and children were forced to walk long distances in the throes of winter to other camps within Germany’s interior. Buchenwald was the largest of those camps.

  On the eighth day of April 1945, at approximately the noon hour, a frantic message went out from the underground resistance in the camp. It was sent by Morse code and repeated several times in English, German and Russian.

  “To the Allies. To the army of General Patton. This is the Buchenwald concentration camp. SOS. We request help. They want to evacuate us. The SS wants to destroy us.”

  The response came quickly. “KZ Bu. Hold out. Rushing to your aid. Staff of Third Army.”

  The Sixth Armored Division, proudly known as the Super Sixth, was the first division of Patton’s Third to reach Buchenwald. The soldiers entered the vast complex through the main gate and were shocked to find inmates but no guards. They quickly discovered that a contingent of SS had marched some prisoners north. Other guards had fled and were scattering through the woods like rats from a foundering ship. In their wake, thousands of inmates had been abandoned and left alone to fend for themselves with no food and very little water. Some had found clothing. Some had not. Some were too weak to do much more than lean against a wall, sit on the ground or lie on the wooden slabs that served as beds. Some were merely apparitions. Ghosts and skeletons.

  The bewildered GIs, their helmet straps hanging loosely, their field jackets partially unzipped, their trousers bloused above their leather boots, had come upon a vision of human deprivation that would haunt each of them for the rest of their lives. These were not weak men. They were battle-hardened soldiers. They had landed on the Normandy beaches, secured a bridgehead across the Seine, cut across France for seven hundred miles and reached the German border on December 6. They were a tough, confident bunch. But they were not prepared for what they saw.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BUCHENWALD, GERMANY

  APRIL 11, 1945

  Corporal Reilly swallowed hard and softly uttered, “Jesus, Captain, these fellows…” He stopped. He couldn’t find the words to finish.

  The soldiers of the Fourth Platoon had entered a long wooden building, formerly designed for eighty horses but later configured to hold 1,200 prisoners on five levels of wooden shelves they called bunks. No heat, no water, no toilets. Inmates, too weak to rise, lay on their wooden slabs watching the GIs. They strained to lift their heads. They smiled and nodded. Many expressed their gratitude in languages the GIs didn’t understand.

  The men of the Fourth Platoon were seasoned soldiers. They fought and defeated the German offensive at the Battle of the Bulge. They were Patton’s boys. They won the decisive battles in the European theater. Just ask them, they’d tell you. But standing in the rancid air of the Buchenwald barracks, amidst the dead and dying, a soldier’s knees could weaken. Many couldn’t hold their lunch.

  “All right, men,” the captain barked, “let’s get these people out of here. Williams: the ones that can walk, lead them to the train. The ones that can’t, the rest of you get them onto the stretchers and out to the hospital trucks. Pronto!” To his adjutant, he said quietly, “Take the strongest ones first. Some of these poor fellows are more dead than alive. They won’t make it.”

  One man, little more than bones held in place by a thin wrapping of skin, lay with two others on a third-level bunk. He reached out and grabbed a fistful of Reilly’s jacket. “Whoa, fella,” Reilly said. “Take it easy. We’re going to help you, I promise. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

  The man shook his head and uttered words Reilly didn’t understand. “Don’t worry, buddy,” Reilly said, patting the man’s bony hand, still tightly clenched on his coat. “We’ll get to you real quick, I promise.”

  Mustering all of his strength, the inmate shouted, “Nein, nein,” followed by a long string of incomprehensible phrases. Tears ran from the man’s sunken eyes, and his body shook in desperation. “Captain,” Reilly said, “this fella’s trying to tell me something pretty important, but I don’t know what the hell he’s saying. I think he’s talkin’ Kraut.”

  The captain motioned to a tall soldier at the other end of the building. “Steiner, what’s this man saying?”

  Corporal Steiner walked over and listened to the inmate’s pleas. He nodded. “I don’t think he’s speaking German, Captain. It could be Yiddish. They’re similar. I think he’s saying his name is Eli. He’s saying we have to find Izaak. That’s his son. He says Izaak is in the children’s building. He says there’s a thousand children in that building.”

  “A thousand children? Holy shit, where are these children? Which one of these buildings?”

  “He says Block Eight.”

  The captain stood in the doorway and looked out over the huge complex. “Hell if I know which one’s Block Eight. Can he show us?”

  “I don’t think he can get up.”

  The captain nodded his head and started to walk away when Eli spoke again. Steiner translated. “He says he can take us there, Captain. He just needs a little help.”

  The captain sighed. “I don’t know how much help we can give him. He’s barely alive.”

  “Izaak, Izaak,” the man cried. “Meyn zun.”

  Reilly looked at Eli, at the desperation on his face, and said, “Captain, I can lift him. He’s okay. He needs to find his son. I’ll take him. I’ll carry him if I have to. He can lead us to Izaak and the rest of the children.”

  Eli grasped the meaning and smiled. Reilly lifted him down off the bunk, conscious that the man weighed less than a field pack. He helped him to his feet. With his arm around Eli’s back and under his shoulder, he started to slowly lead him out but stopped abruptly. “Jesus, he’s got no shoes on. He’s got rags wrapped around his feet. Anybody see any shoes?”

  Eli looked at his feet and waved it off. “Nein, nein, nein.” He pointed sharply to the door.
“Izaak,” he said. “Der kinder.” The captain nodded. “All right, Reilly, take him out. Find those kids.” The corporal unzipped his coat, placed it over Eli’s shoulders and walked him out the door.

  Other soldiers of the Super Sixth were converging at Block 8 and were starting to attend to the children. All sizes, all ages. Some as young as six. Some of the children were being gathered into groups for transport out. Eli’s eyes scanned the hundreds of children. His fear was palpable. What were the chances he’d find his son? There were so many. Suddenly, his whole body stiffened. “Izaak, Izaak!” he screamed, and stumbled forward. A boy, no more than ten or eleven, came running. “Papa! Papa!” Eli dropped to his knees as the boy ran into his arms. Reilly watched the two hug each other, and the hardened soldier broke into tears.

  “Come on, Eli, Izaak,” Reilly said, bending down. “We gotta get you out of this cold, muddy prison camp and let some doctors fix you up.”

  Reilly waved for a stretcher, and two corpsmen were quick to respond. One of them patted Izaak on the head and said, “You go with the other kids, little guy. We’ll take care of your pops.” But Izaak wouldn’t leave his father.

  Reilly placed his hand on the corpsman’s shoulder. “Martin, how many of these kids still have a parent? This boy needs to stay with his father. Let’s make an exception this time.”

  Martin pulled Reilly aside and whispered, “His father’s in bad shape. He’s probably not going to make it. A lot of them aren’t.”

  “All the more reason to let his son stay with him,” Reilly answered.

  The corpsman shrugged and placed Eli on the stretcher. Eli looked up at Reilly and in little more than a hoarse whisper, through cracked lips, he said, “A dank, a sheynem dank.” The two corpsmen carried Eli with little Izaak in tow toward a line of white canvas-covered trucks bearing Swiss license plates with Red Cross stenciled on the transom. Reilly smiled and rejoined his squad.

  CHAPTER THREE

  REIMS, FRANCE

  MAY 1945

  On the seventh day of May, 1945, at 2:41 Central European Time, Generaloberst Alfred Jodl sat on a wooden chair in a redbrick schoolhouse and signed his name to a two-page document. He paused for a moment, lifted his eyes and passed the document across the table to General Walter “Beetle” Smith, General Eisenhower’s chief of staff. The paper, entitled Act of Military Surrender, recited, “We the undersigned, acting with authority of the German High Command, hereby surrender unconditionally to the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and to the Soviet High Command, all forces on land, sea and in the air who are at this date under German control.” Beneath the signature line, he simply scribbled “Jodl.”

  In Europe, the war had ended. Inmates of the concentration camps, like those liberated from Buchenwald, found themselves free from their prisons but adrift in unfamiliar and disparate locales. The Allies, in anticipation of this day, had formed an organization entitled United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) to provide housing, food, clothing, medicine and basic necessities to the war’s displaced survivors. It was primarily an American undertaking. It called for camps and housing areas to be established in Germany, Italy and Austria.

  The great majority of the Jews who were liberated from Nazi prisons and concentration camps sought the protection of the United States Army and gravitated to the displaced persons camps established in the American Zone. Föhrenwald, meaning Pine Forest, set in the wooded foothills of Bavaria, was one of the largest American camps.

  FÖHRENWALD DISPLACED PERSONS CAMP

  AMERICAN ZONE

  JUNE 1946

  The door of the small wooden house on Florida Street swung open, and a twelve-year-old boy with a mop of brown hair burst into the room. Thin as a stick but full of energy, he yelled, “Papa, guess what?”

  Eli smiled. “What is it, Izaak?”

  “Mr. Abrams came to school today to teach us about writing and stuff, and after class he asked if Josh and I could help him deliver his newspapers tomorrow afternoon.”

  “The camp newspaper? You mean the Bamidbar?”

  “Yes, the Bamidbar. We’re hoping he pays us with chocolate like he did last time.”

  Eli laughed and patted him on the head. “Chocolate. My businessman. You can go with Mr. Abrams, but don’t eat all the chocolate at once and come home as soon as you’re finished. Homework, you know?”

  Izaak sighed. “I know, I know.”

  “How do you like your new teacher?”

  “She’s okay, I guess. She says she’s from Eretz Israel. She speaks Hebrew and Yiddish. And English, of course. The lessons are hard.”

  “Well, you understand Yiddish, don’t you?”

  “Sure, but not much English or Hebrew. Those languages are strange to me, but Mrs. Klein says I’m doing well. The English letters are a lot like the Polish letters, so I can write them. I can even draw some of the Hebrew letters. Better than a lot of kids. Some of the kids in my class can’t read or write anything. They’ve never been to school. Especially the ones who were hiding.”

  Eli proudly hugged his son. He had been through so much and was rebounding so well. “Okay, deliver Mr. Abrams’s newspapers and come right home. I’ll leave a sandwich for you. I have a camp committee meeting tomorrow night, so I’ll be home late.”

  “But you’ll tuck me in when you get home, no matter what time it is, right?”

  “Absolutely. Always do.”

  * * *

  The Föhrenwald camp committee convened in the assembly hall on Roosevelt Place. On the agenda this evening was the troubling housing shortage. Meetings were attended by the camp’s administrators, an UNRRA representative and several interested residents. There was always an opportunity for people to raise grievances and it was often a spicy affair. On this night, though the news was generally disturbing, a certain revelation would rock Eli to his core.

  Camp Director Bernard Schwartz, a burly man from eastern Poland, gaveled the meeting to order. “All right, settle down, everyone. We have serious matters to discuss tonight. Let’s get right to the housing issue. Harry?”

  A tall thin man with tufts of white hair rose with a sheaf of papers in his hand. He rattled the papers for all to see. “We are now up to 5,600 residents, and even with the additional structures we’ve converted from commercial space, we’re 2,000 over our capacity. All of you know this little village was originally built to house workers for I. G. Farben’s factory, and they had 2,500 residents. Some of our families are now sleeping five in a room, double-decker beds. We desperately need to construct more housing.”

  The UNRRA delegate shook his head. “I’m sorry, Harry, but expansion is not in our plans. Föhrenwald is meant to be a temporary solution to house survivors until they find their permanent home.”

  Harry stood his ground. “Tell the U.S., Canada and Britain to issue visas, Martin, and there wouldn’t be a single person left at Föhrenwald. In the interim, we need building supplies and materials. We can’t have our people sleeping on top of each other; we need to expand our housing. I know that Eli Rosen has the experience to manage new construction projects, but UNRRA has to supply the materials.”

  The delegate answered solemnly. “I’ll take the matter up with my superiors, but I know what they’re going to say; it’s not in the UNRRA budget to build cities in Germany. And they will tell me that the camp population is increasing far beyond expectations. They’ll tell me the birth rate is out of control.”

  “Oh, come on, Martin.”

  “He has a point,” said a voice in the back. “At the hospital we are delivering six to nine babies a month. There are two hundred women currently pregnant in this camp. Our population is increasing rapidly. We must make accommodation for them.”

  “It’s inevitable,” Bernard said. “Our people have been liberated and they want nothing more than to rebuild normal lives. They’re finding partners, relationships, marriages—all those aspects of humanity which were denied to them in the camps. And normal liv
es mean children. We should all appreciate that children are essential to reconstructing our personal and collective identities. I agree with Harry. We need to build more housing.”

  Martin shook his head. “Look, I’m just the UNRRA rep. I don’t set budgets or the policies. I’ll go and beg for it, but I’m telling you the sad truth: there’s no current funding for residential expansion. The solution is to get everyone out of the camp and to their final destinations.”

  Harry scoffed. “You can’t emigrate without a visa, Martin. Tell Truman to issue more visas.”

  On the side of the room a stocky man with a barrel chest, a square jaw and tousled black hair leaned against a wall. He breathed heavily through his nose, and when he spoke it was in a deep gravelly voice. “I want to say something,” he growled. People turned their heads. “I hear rumors, Bernard. Bad rumors. Someone is out there selling visas.”

  “Selling?”

  “On the black market.”

  “Seriously, Daniel? Visas to what country? Real or counterfeit?”

  “From what I hear, they’re genuine visas to the United States. For money or jewelry, this man will deliver a genuine U.S. visa. Pay him what he wants, and you can jump the immigration line.”

  Muffled comments skittered through the room.

  “Who is this man?” Bernard demanded.

  Daniel shook his head. “I don’t know him personally. They say he’s tall, has short black hair and he’s a slick dresser. He goes by the name of Max.”

  Eli’s jaw dropped. The color drained from his face. “Impossible! He’s dead.”

  Daniel shook his head. “The guy I’m talking about is definitely not dead. Frau Helstein knows him. She’s the one who told me.”

  “Well, that might explain it,” Bernard said. “She’s a gossiper and she’s always spreading one crazy rumor or another. It’s probably nonsense.”