Eli's Promise

by Ronald H. Balson

  Bernard coughed hard. A spot of blood hit his pillow. “Good work, Eli.”

  “It was all you, Bernard, from the very beginning. You were the driving force, the man who did what had to be done. Like everything you’ve ever done for us. You set up the operation and made the contacts with General Clay and Colonel Bivens. You spearheaded the whole thing. I was simply there at the end to mop up.”

  Bernard suppressed another cough, and his pain was palpable. “Thank you for coming to see me today. You have an important job ahead of you, Eli. You must keep working to rebuild our community. They may not express it often enough, but they depend on you. Our people have been devastated, nearly annihilated, and every single surviving Jew is important.”

  Eli nodded. “I know. I learned that from you.”

  “I have treasured your company, Eli. You are a good man. You take care of yourself, your son and that nice young lady. She needs a hand.”

  “I know. She’s a terrific girl.”

  “And she’s very fond of you.”

  “Bernard, I can’t let my mind go there.”

  He coughed again and wiped blood from his lips. “I understand, and I truly hope you find Esther. I won’t be around to know either way, but I’ll be looking down on you and wishing you the best.”

  Eli struggled to hold back his tears. “It has been an honor to know you, Bernard, and I will think of you often. May God be with you.” He started to bend over to hug Bernard, but the nurse stopped him.

  Bernard smiled and nodded. “Goodbye, my friend,” he whispered. “The honor was all mine.”

  * * *

  “I lied to him this morning, Adinah,” Eli said as the two sat at the table late that night. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell him that there would be no trial, that Maximilian had slithered away. It was more important for me to leave Bernard with a smile on his face than it was to tell him the truth. Now I feel guilty that the last words I ever said to my good friend were a lie.”

  “You did the right thing. They said he died peacefully this evening.”

  Eli took a sip of tea. His hand was shaking, and he set the cup down. “In his last hours,” Eli said, with a catch in his throat, “Bernard thought of you as well. He told me to take care of you. He said, ‘Take care of that nice young lady.’” Eli hung his head and turned away to hide his tears. Adinah reached over and put her arm around him.

  “It’s okay,” she said softly. “It’s okay to be sad. Lord knows our people have learned that lesson. Bernard was a great leader who was here right when we needed him. I will miss him as well. I remember the first night we met, when he asked me if I knew ‘Tumbalalaika.’ I am honored that he thought of me in his last hours, but it’s not your responsibility to take care of me.”

  “It’s not a matter of responsibility; we care for each other out of love, and it seems to me that you are the one who ministers the most around here. You take care of Izzie, you take care of our home, you make our meals and you do it all with love. You’ve given our home a woman’s touch, and you’ve filled the role that’s been missing from Izzie’s life for a long time.”

  “Thank you. It is all done with love for you both, I assure you. I love that boy with all my heart.”

  “And he loves you.” Eli sat back. “Adinah, I need to say something.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Esther could be alive, and Izzie and I pray that we will find her somewhere in Europe. If we do…”

  “Eli, don’t you think I understand that? I’ve always understood that. I know my place here, and I pray for Esther, too. Her return would mean so much to you and Izzie, and your happiness would be mine as well. But if you feel like my presence here is a betrayal, if I make you uncomfortable, I will understand, and I will go. And I will still love you both.”

  “No, it’s not like that at all. I don’t feel a sense of betrayal. Izzie and I are very lucky to have you in our lives. We love you, too. I just thought I should say…”

  “You don’t have to say any more.”

  “Major Donnelly told me about the Central Tracing Bureau and the work they are doing. They’ve been collecting information about people missing in the war since 1943. The offices are in Bad Arolsen, where the three occupying zones come together. They have records from the concentration camps. They may have answers. I’m going to go up there.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  FÖHRENWALD DP CAMP

  AMERICAN ZONE

  FEBRUARY 1947

  The memorial service for Bernard Schwartz drew the attendance of the entire camp. His accomplishments were praised, along with his leadership, his guidance and his steadfast integrity. Death had visited this community so many times in the past few years that eulogies had ceased questioning the fairness of it all. It was what it was. The residents simply came to laud the goodness of the man. Föhrenwald was fortunate to have had him for as long as it did.

  At the gravesite, after prayers were offered and when the last of the mourners had stepped away, Eli remained. “I have a confession, Bernard,” he said to the mound of dirt. “I lied to you, and I’m feeling bad about it. You deserved to know the truth, though perhaps now, in some mystical way, you do. We did not send Maximilian to jail, nor did we expose his pipeline. He got away, just like he did in Föhrenwald, just like he did in Lodz. Just like he always does. I didn’t stop him. I failed. I didn’t have the courage to tell you that. I wanted you to leave this world in peace.

  “I’m headed up to Bad Arolsen today. I’ve been told that the Central Tracing Bureau has the most recent information about missing people. If anyone would have information about Esther, they would. Pray for me, Bernard.”

  * * *

  The offices of the Central Tracing Bureau were staffed with dozens of women—many in white bonnets and Red Cross nurses’ smocks. Others were dressed in civilian clothing, as they would be in any London office. One large room was filled with rows of typing stations, and their Olivetti typewriters clicked away. There were rooms of steel shelving filled with boxes of records—boxes with names like BERGEN-BELSEN, DACHAU, AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU, CHELMNO, BELZEC, and RAVENSBRÜCK.

  There were correspondence rooms where women opened letters from people searching for missing relatives. The letters described the lost loved ones in rich detail and told of their last known location. The women dutifully answered those letters and then retained them in permanently indexed files.

  Eli asked for Ann Stewart, the name given to him by Major Donnelly. She was a tall, thin British woman dressed in a white blouse and a fitted dark blue skirt. Her brown hair was pulled back and styled in a low ballerina bun. She had a businesslike way about her.

  “Major Donnelly gave me your name,” Eli said. “He thought you might be able to help me find my wife, Esther Rosen. I think she was sent to Ravensbrück.”

  She shook Eli’s hand with a strong grip. And then, curiously, she chuckled. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I don’t mean to make light of your request or to be disrespectful. It’s just that the mention of Wild Bill Donnelly makes me smile.”

  “Wild Bill?”

  “Oh yes. Most definitely so. Wild Bill.”

  “I guess I don’t know that side of him. I worked an operation with him at the Landsberg camp. When I told him about my wife, he suggested that I talk to you.”

  “I could give you stories about Bill Donnelly that would make your ears burn. He’s one of a kind. Where is he now?”

  “Garmisch.”

  Together they walked down the hall toward a records room. She waved her hand at a wall of boxes and said, “That’s the children’s wall. There are two hundred and fifty boxes of records. Parents seeking missing children. Children found without their parents. We’re trying to reconnect two hundred fifty thousand children. In the next room will be the boxes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. You know, it wasn’t originally designed to be a death camp. It was a work camp built exclusively for women. Some worked in textile shops; some, in munitions and rocket-buil
ding factories. It was overcrowded, with very little room to sleep, and provisions were paltry. Many were beaten, poisoned or subject to depraved medical experiments. I’m sorry, but that’s the sad truth. One hundred and thirty thousand women passed through that camp, and the majority of them were Polish.” She looked at Eli, whose lips were tightly clamped. “Really, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to…”

  “It’s okay. I was at Buchenwald. I know what the camps were like.”

  She nodded. “I was just trying to say that the conditions were quite bitter, and that most of the women who the Germans recorded as entering Ravensbrück did not survive.” She pulled a Ravensbrück box off the shelf and opened it. “Unfortunately, the Germans destroyed some of the records right before the camp was evacuated, as if destroying the documents would destroy the truth.” Inside the box was a dark red book labeled TOTENBUCH.

  “In this book, the Germans listed the names of deceased prisoners, their date of death and the cause of death. Each page lists thirty to forty names. As you can see, most of them say ‘cardiac failure,’ ‘intestinal inflammation’ or ‘tuberculosis.’ Near the end, before the Ravensbrück death march, the Nazis constructed a gas chamber, because Himmler said they weren’t killing the prisoners quickly enough. For obvious reasons, the book does not attribute any death to poison gas.”

  Chills went through Eli’s body. He began to think that maybe this was a mistake. Maybe it was better for him to hope that Esther had survived and was living somewhere in Europe than to know that she had died a torturous death at Ravensbrück.

  Ann walked Eli into another, smaller room where there were boxes and boxes of alphabetized cards. She pulled out a box and rifled through cards. “We list several women named Rosen as deceased, but none named Esther. There is a Ruth, a Golda, a Fanny, a Vera. But we don’t have a deceased record for Esther Rosen. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean…”

  “Understood.” Eli breathed a slight sigh. “If Esther did survive and she is living somewhere…”

  Ann smiled. “Then you get to the heart of what we are trying to do here at Bad Arolsen. On the one hand, for the families of the deceased, we are trying to give closure, but on the other, for the survivors, we are trying to put families together. There are a million displaced persons on the Continent. People looking for people. Let me take some information from you, and we’ll put it into the system.”

  Eli looked around at the hundreds of workers and thousands of documents and thought, Into the system, a million people, what’s the chance? Nevertheless, he spent the next few minutes telling Ann everything he thought would be important. Esther was a seamstress. She would have entered the camp with the women when the Lipowa camp was closed. “She was a strong woman, and if anyone could survive, it would be my Esther.”

  Eli was about to leave when Ann said, “At the end, when the Russians were closing in on Ravensbrück and there was no more time to use the gas chambers, the guards marched twenty-five thousand women into northern Mecklenburg. After a time, the march broke down, and some women escaped. Some found their way into Denmark. We heard recently that one was working in a hospital there.”

  Eli’s heart leapt. “Hospital? My Esther is a nurse. What hospital?”

  Ann smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry. It’s not Esther; it’s a different woman, but we’ll make inquiries of the hospitals in that area. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  FÖHRENWALD DP CAMP

  AMERICAN ZONE

  MAY 1947

  By the time warm weather arrived in Bavaria and daylight lingered a little longer, Eli was able to find more time to spend with Izaak, who was once again back on the football field. Or, as he would remind Eli, the soccer field. With Adinah on the sidelines, Izzie’s cheering section had doubled. The Föhrenwald tuberculosis contagion had slowed considerably, and there had been no new cases reported in the past four weeks.

  Eli continued to check on the status of his visa applications, but without a sponsor or a relative in the United States, prospects were limited, and he was constrained to consider other options. There was hope that Jewish immigration into British Mandatory Palestine, blocked by Britain’s 1939 White Paper, would soon be opened. Three months ago, Britain had announced its intention to terminate its Palestine mandate and leave the future of the region up to the United Nations. Just last week, the UN had formed a special committee to study the situation, prepare a report and make a recommendation. The newspapers reported a strong possibility that the region would be partitioned into two separate states, one for Arabs and one for a Jewish homeland. People in Föhrenwald regarded the news as a breakthrough, a reason to rejoice, and it was cause for a celebration party at the assembly hall.

  The party was well attended, and Adinah, by popular demand, led the residents in song. Eli smiled as they danced and sang, ate and drank, stood by the refreshment table loudly debating politics and breathed the free mountain air. They were reconstructing their community, reestablishing their identity. For people who had lived in a state of dependency for so long, true liberation was on the horizon. There was a palpable joy in the hall that night.

  Eli, Adinah and Izaak walked home under a clear mountain sky, ablaze with billions of stars. Izaak and Adinah held hands until Izaak stopped, pointed straight up and stated proudly, “There. Look there—that’s the Big Dipper. It points to the North Star, the bright one.”

  Adinah smiled lovingly. “You know what Jiminy Cricket says…”

  Izaak squeezed her hand, shut his eyes tight and made a silent wish. He turned to Adinah, who held her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell me, or it won’t come true.”

  Later that night, after a very tired Izaak had gone to bed, Adinah and Eli shared a small carafe of wine. In many ways, the establishment of UNSCOP and hope for a divided Palestine was a harbinger of high tide. Would it raise all ships? Would other countries now open their immigration doors to Jewish refugees? The newspapers reported vigorous debates in both chambers of the U.S. Congress.

  Adinah took a sip of wine and mused. “If the UN General Assembly approves, would you move to the new state of Israel, Eli? They say it will be a Jewish state.”

  “The U.S. would be my first choice,” Eli answered. “Izzie has been dreaming of the U.S. since the time we were on the run, before we were sent to Buchenwald, but it’s so hard to get in there. If we can’t get a U.S. visa and Israel becomes a state, I would surely consider it. How about you, Adinah? What would you do?”

  The joy slipped from Adinah’s face. She looked away.

  “What’s the matter?” Eli asked.

  She shook her head.

  “What?” Eli said again.

  When she turned around, her eyes were wet. “You just asked me where would I go?”

  “Yes, did I say something wrong?”

  She shook her head, took her wineglass and walked to the sink. “No. Nothing wrong.”

  Eli clenched his teeth. He had blundered. “Adinah, wait. Please sit down. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean…”

  “What do I prefer? Where would I go? You and Izzie are all I have. Maybe I am foolish, but I think of you as my family. You said…”

  He put his arm around her. “You are not foolish. You are family. I told you before, and I meant it, you can stay with us as long as you like. As long as you live. Wherever we go, we’ll all go together. I was asking about your preference. I didn’t mean to exclude you or to imply that we wouldn’t go altogether as a family.”

  She slowly shook her head. “I know that Esther might come back, that she is Izzie’s mother and she is your wife. But I still want to be in your lives no matter where you go. Won’t there be room for me? You ask for my preference. It is to be with my family wherever you go.”

  “Wherever we go! You are part of our family. When Esther comes back, if Esther comes back, there will always be a place for you, and she will love you as much as we do.”

  Adinah bowed her
head and wiped away a tear.

  “My wife has been missing from my life for five years, and I don’t kid myself; maybe I will never see her again. But until I know … I think about her every day.”

  Adinah softly covered Eli’s hand with hers. “And you should. Has the Central Tracing Bureau found out anything?”

  “I’ve called Ann Stewart each month since my visit, but they’ve received no response to inquiries they’ve sent. None of the hospitals reported any knowledge of Esther Rosen. It’s a bad sign; I know. But I still hold out hope.”

  “And I hope, too.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  ALBANY PARK

  CHICAGO

  ALBANY PARK NEIGHBORHOOD

  FEBRUARY 1966

  There was an urgent knock on the apartment door, and a puzzled Ruth Gold rushed to answer it. “Good morning, Mr. Rosen. You’re up early,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Gold. Did Mimi leave for work yet?”

  “I’m still here, Eli,” Mimi called, walking out of the kitchen holding a mug of coffee. “Would you care for a cup?”

  “No, thank you. I found something that might be of great interest to you, maybe for a feature article. I wonder if you might have a few minutes to stop by before you leave for work?”

  * * *

  As she suspected, Ryan and Mooney were waiting for her in Eli’s apartment. “Feature article?” she said with a grin.

  But Eli was serious. “The accountant’s room is empty, Mimi. It’s been cleaned out. Empty shelves, empty desk, empty cabinets.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “We don’t know. Maybe after the murders, maybe more recently, but when we went in last night, there wasn’t a single paper, not a single file, nothing in the back room.”