Pursuit (10 page)

“Maidanek fell to the Russians yesterday,” he said softly. “You were right; the camp was captured almost intact.” He wondered even as he spoke whatever had happened to the girl Sarah; had he known, he may or may not have been concerned. She had been stoned to death by the inmates of Field V the day she appeared there after von Schraeder's leaving. “The gas chambers and the ovens hadn't been touched; the burial pits were as they were. Oh, someone tried to burn the ovens and managed to destroy the wooden shed over them, but that was about all. Most of the prisoners were still there, and even six SS guards, and they were hung by the Russians on the spot. Mittendorf got away, of course, but six of the lesser men were caught.”

There was a strange sound from the bandaged face on the stained pillow. Benjamin Grossman was chuckling.

Chapter 5

The boxcar stank with the combined smells of manure, human excrement, vomit, urine, and the sweat of the eighty-four men packed into it. By dint of his greater energy and strength, Grossman had managed a spot on the floor near the door, so that he could press his nose against the crack and get an occasional breath of the hot September air, although more often it was a choking blast of smoke from the engine ahead. How the others managed to survive in the depths of the car he neither knew nor cared; he had long felt that any concentration camp inmate truly dedicated to survival would survive; only the weak, he was convinced, actually perished.

He swayed with the jostling of the car, scarcely aware of the pressure of knees on his back, slightly lightheaded from hunger and the heat, and thought back on the moment he had first seen his new face in a mirror. Schlossberg had unwrapped the bandages carefully and then stood back, unable to hide his pleasure in his work. The shaven-headed man in the striped prisoner's pajama uniform that stared back at Grossman from the glass looked fearful, as if dreading the sight, and then slowly relaxed. It seemed unbelievable that he was looking at himself; Schlossberg had produced a miracle! True, he had always been fond of his old face; it had pleased women and that was important, still, his present face was not ugly except in the sense that all Jews were ugly. Schlossberg had given him a rather interesting nose, nothing at all like the huge hooked nose so characteristic of the cartoon Jew in the national press. And it was amazing the difference created by the changed eyebrow alignment, and the small insertion in his cheeks. And the scar was truly a work of genius, covering as it did most of the tiny stitches along the jaw. The only worry was his penis; he had heard that circumcision greatly reduced the pleasures of sex. He could only hope this was merely a rumor.

He shoved his head closer to the crack of the door, trying to get more air, scratching automatically at the bed sores he had developed in Ward Forty-six, and calculated they should be nearly halfway to the Natzweiler camp by now. And that was another brilliant part of his plan, the selection of Natzweiler. To begin with, it was neither a labor camp nor an extermination camp; it was a detention camp where a good deal of experimental work went on under Professor Hirt; and with his papers he was assured a safe and soft job as an orderly. For in addition to the strong letter in his folder signed with the authority of none other than the late Colonel Helmut von Schraeder, Dr. Schlossberg had spoken to Hirt on the phone, hinting at monetary reward from the prisoner Grossman, once the unpleasantness of the war was concluded.

But equally important with his treatment at the hands of Natzweiler personnel was the fact that he calculated the Allies should liberate Natzweiler in a month at the most, if not in mere weeks. And there he would be, with his new identity, an object of pity to the Allied troops, and with almost assured co-operation for a rapid visit to Switzerland and his money there. One thing was sure; now that Hitler had escaped the assassination plot, the war would go on for a long, long time. But Natzweiler—and Benjamin Grossman—would be out of it in short order.

There was a sudden jolt as the train began slowing down; then it crept awhile, its engine heaving, and finally braked to a stop. There was a rattle as the door was being opened, but after being released for a mere several inches, a bar was jammed behind it, limiting its aperture. But at least air could flow in a bit, and those inside who had been silent began to revive.

“Where are we?”

Grossman tried to get his bearings. “Frankfurt, I think.”

A head pressed into the welcome air above him.

“Yes, it's Frankfurt. I used to live in Keisterbach; it's a suburb. We're in the freight yard.” The man tried to twist his head to see better. “They're unhooking the engine.”

“
What!
Why, for God's sake!”

“We'll worry about that later,” another voice said, a deep voice, and with it a large, knotted hand gripped Ben's shoulder tightly, dragging him away from the opening with small effort. “Here! Let someone else get some air.”

The man who had spoken, rather than taking the place he had cleared, pushed a small boy into the opening, holding him firmly by the arm to prevent his collapsing. In the shaft of early-morning daylight that slotted into the car, growing in intensity, Ben took one look at the face of the man who had pulled him from the door, and decided against objecting. This one, definitely, was a survivor! How had a man like this ever permitted the door crack to be usurped the night before when they had left Weimar? He looked at the pale face of the boy, breathing deeply, and then up to the face above him.

“Your son?”

“No. Does it make any difference?”

“Of course not.”

“That's right,” the man said flatly. The boy seemed to be reviving; the man dragged Grossman back by the shoulder a few more inches to give the boy room to sit on the floor next to the opening. As he bent over the boy his face came close to Ben's. It was a battered face, like that of a boxer, with fine hairline cracks and scars throughout. The sharp gray eyes studied the scar along Ben's jaw, then moved to look Ben in the eye.

“Ward Forty-six?”

For a second a chill ran through Ben Grossman; then he realized the tone had been sympathetic, and he knew he had been foolish to fear this man.

“Yes,” he said simply. “Were you?”

There was a raucous laugh from someone in the rear.

“Brodsky? If Max Brodsky had been in Ward Forty-six, in two weeks he would have called it a health spa and charged admission!”

“That's the reason they transferred him,” another voice said at Ben's side. “One more month in Buchenwald and Brodsky would have owned the camp. He was getting ready to charge the SS rent when they shipped him out.”

Ben looked at the speaker. He was a small man with extraordinarily large luminous eyes that seemed to take up a major portion of his thin expressive face. His oversized pajama uniform hung on his emaciated frame in a manner almost humorous, like the garb of a clown or a stage comic. Little spikes of hair jutted from the top of his small head; he was smiling as he spoke, showing gaps where teeth had rotted out, making his clown-like appearance more evident.

“Wolf, shut up,” Brodsky said without rancor. He checked the boy carefully and then looked down at Ben Grossman. Ward Forty-six, eh? He felt a sudden kinship with this blue-eyed, scarred man. In Ward Forty-six Brodsky had lost his best friend in the camp, and he somehow felt the man beside him might possibly have been sent him as a replacement. “Are you all right? Do you want to get back to the door?”

“No, I'm all right.”

Brodsky nodded and raised his deep voice. “Let's have someone here from the rear!” His hand rested on Grossman's shoulder; somehow there was something companionable about the slight pressure. “All right! Let him through!”

There was a rough shifting of bodies and an old man was thrust to the front. Brodsky pulled the boy slightly to one side, still allowing him breathing space, and tucked the old man's head near the opening. The old man gasped in thankful relief and nestled on the floor, sniffing the fresh air like a dog at a rat hole. There was a restless shifting of bodies. Someone said querulously, “How much longer are we going to be kept here?”

As if in answer to his question, there was the sound of boots crunching on cinders and two SS officers appeared in the slot of light. Brodsky held up his hand for silence but few could see him. He raised his voice in a bellow.

“Shut up! Shut up!” And when his roar was met by startled silence he added more quietly, “Let's hear what they're saying.”

The two officers on the track made no attempt to lower their voices, nor did they even glance at the column of anxious eyes staring at them from the narrow slit.

“… evacuated,” one was saying.

“What!”

“Natzweiler, I said. Evacuated.”

“I heard what you said! When?”

“Two days ago.” The speaker sounded bitter. “You'd think they would know these things before they send out a string of cars, wouldn't you? You would think at least they might check. Good God! Nancy was cleared out a week ago, they knew that, didn't they?” He stared at the line of boxcars as if they represented a personal affront to him and the papers in his hand. “Cars from six camps, some of them three days on the road, over eight hundred men, and what do we do with them?”

Inside the boxcar voices were breaking out in the darkness.

“What's going on? Who are you listening to? What are they saying? Anything about where we're going? Tell them to open the door more, we need air in here for God's sake—!”

They were answered by a variety of languages from those near the slot.

“Shut up! Keep quiet!” Ears replaced eyes at the slot to catch the words more clearly.

“… good question. What
do
we do with this lot? Shoot them?”

“Without orders? I can imagine the result.” The officer sounded disgusted.

The second officer shrugged. “Why not send them back where they came from?”

“Six camps in six different places? Still, that's what we ought to do.” The bitterness had returned to the officer's voice. “Serve them right for not checking before they ship them out. They're the ones at fault, but they'd be sure to manage to blame us.” There was a rustling of paper as the man consulted a list. “Here. We'll shift them to Celle. To the Bergen-Belsen camp. I'll get in touch with them and say those were the orders. They won't know the difference, things are so fouled up these days.” The two men started to walk back down the track.

Grossman peered up at the shadowy figure of Brodsky between him and the door. “What was it? What did they say?”

Brodsky raised his voice so everyone in the car could hear.

“Two SS, apparently discussing where we're going. It seems we were headed for a place called Natzweiler, but Natzweiler was evacuated a few days ago. I guess the Allies are getting too close for our friends' comfort.” There was a weak attempt at a cheer from someone, instantly put down by the man's neighbors.

Grossman felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. This was certainly no part of his precious scheme! Why hadn't he considered the possibility that the camp might be evacuated before he reached there? Still, it didn't neccessarily mean that all was lost—

“What else did they say?”

“Something about a camp called Bergen-Belsen, near Celle.” Brodsky raised his voice. “Who knows anything about a camp called Bergen-Belsen?”

No one answered. Crouched in his little niche, Grossman felt himself getting physically ill. Bergen-Belsen! A
Krankenlager
—a sick camp! A camp where they send people to die. No gas chambers and the ovens are a joke. They bury their dead in huge pits and why not? There are no gas burns on them, no gunshot wounds, except for those the guards shoot for entertainment. The vast majority die of natural causes, like typhus or dysentery or starvation. Nothing for the SS to be ashamed of should the Allies uncover the pits. Bergen-Belsen! A hellhole of the worst sort, and I've sentenced myself to that! Idiot! Imbecile! Fool! Better the Strasbourg Group. Better even the chances of a war-crimes trial! Better
anything
than Belsenlager!

There was a sudden jar as a new engine was coupled onto the string of cars. There was a harsh rasp as the bar that had been allowing the slot to furnish at least a little air was suddenly withdrawn. The door slammed shut; then there was the sound of a spike being hammered into the hasp, locking them in. The cars began to move, gradually picking up speed until once more they were bumping and jostling about, and the stifling heat began to build up, together with the overpowering stench. Men began to faint, taking others down with them; those above took advantage of the additional room to sit on the fallen, crushing them with their weight. Grossman sensed rather than saw the large body of Max Brodsky braced against the side of the car, forming a shelter for him, the boy, and the old man against the pressure of the others in the car. He heard Brodsky's voice.

“We've come through other camps, we'll come through this one, too.” There was grim promise in the deep voice. “Next year in Jerusalem …”

More likely next year in hell, Grossman thought. He closed his eyes and listened to the clack of the wheels over the rail joints. Bergen, they said. Ber-gen, Bel-sen, ber-gen, bel-sen, bergen, belsen, bergen belsen, bergen belsen, bergenbelsen, bergenbelsen, bergenbelsen bergenbelsenbergenbelsenbergenbelsen …

God!

They arrived in Celle in midafternoon. There was a hammering on the door, the same deafening clangor they had heard before, a muffled cry of
Zuruckbehalten! Zuruckbehalten!
from outside. The door was quickly run back. Those inside near the door fought to keep their balance, gulping the sweet air, staring blindly outside, made sightless by the sudden light, fighting the pressure from behind. The old man, dead many hours, tilted forward slowly into the door opening and toppled to the tracks. The chatter of a machine gun responded instantly, making the scrawny body jerk in almost life-like imitation. The guard who had fired the gun swept the muzzle upward, fanning it across the opening threateningly. An officer walked quickly down the line, calling out: