Jacob's Oath: A Novel Read online

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  For Hagar of course, forever

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks, Cheryl Gould. Chatting over a bottle of wine, you said, “I wonder why some German Holocaust survivors chose to live in Germany?” And I said, “What a great question. That’s my next book.” And here it is.

  I was cheered along, as always, by my great friend and insightful first reader, Robbie Anna Hare, whose early comments, along with those of my editor, Marcia Markland; my agents, Carol Mann and Eliza Dreier; and my wife, Hagar, helped shape the telling of this story.

  I had the great fortune to spend a week browsing through the library of the University of Heidelberg, and was also greatly helped in my research by the Jüdische Kultusgemeinde there.

  One slim volume was particularly useful: Heidelberg zur Stunde Null (Heidelberg: Hour Zero), by Werner Pieper, a collection of photos, documents, and eyewitness reports of life in Heidelberg at war’s end.

  And I’d like to thank Monika Jäger and her father, Hans, for their generous help in Heidelberg with local logistics, and for sharing their memories.

  Also the ever-helpful Gail Shirazi at the Library of Congress in Washington, the German historian Dr. Thomas Rahe, and Dr. Robert Rozett, head of the library at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

  For the history of the secretive Jewish assassins I drew heavily on published accounts, especially excellent books by Morris Beckman, Rich Cohen, Michael Elkins, Joseph Harmatz, and, in particular, Howard Blum’s The Brigade. Blum quotes one of the Avengers, Israel Carmi, as always killing with these words on his lips: “In the name of the Jewish people, I sentence you to death.”

  Jonathan Freedland of London’s The Guardian, who writes thrillers under the name of Sam Bourne, also wrote fascinating reports on the deeds of the Jewish death squads.

  And if you want to know more about the horrors faced by women in Berlin at war’s end, read A Woman in Berlin, a diary by Anonymous.

  The New Yorker’s reporting from Germany in 1944, 1945, and 1946 was another great resource, especially the editions of July 23 and August 4, 1945, on bartering and the black market.

  All this was for the geographical, historical, political, and military context of my story.

  For the tale itself, there were no specific sources. European Jews absorb their heritage with their mother’s milk, and when it came time to write, the story poured out.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part Two

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Also by Martin Fletcher

  About the Author

  Copyright

  “Everyone goes home. One day. Where else would you go when the war ends? When the camps shut down. You’ll come home. And I’ll find you.”

  PART ONE

  ONE

  Bergen-Belsen,

  April 22, 1945

  In the Human Laundry at Camp 2 they barely knew they were naked, man or woman. Laid out like corpses on shiny metal tables, washed, shaved, and disinfected by German nurses, their hips and shoulders jutted out like knives.

  Murky water sloshed to the floor and drained away in the central gutter that ran between the stalls of the stable.

  Nurses in white coats and white kerchiefs, shrouded in steam, ethereal, scrubbed in silence, one hand resting on an arm or a leg or a head. Helpless inmates squirmed as soap burned their sores and scabs.

  Jacob’s sunken eyes were screwed tight. He didn’t want to open them. He didn’t want to see these Nazis with their pursed lips, their frowns and busy hands. Who are you to help, now that you lost? It’s a bit late, you bastards.

  Gently, the nurse gestured that he turn over. She smiled and cupped his shoulder and pushed lightly with her hand. He was less bony than her others that morning. He opened his eyes and winced, scalded in the sudden heat. Through a haze of burning tears he saw her big chest, big hips, blond hair pulled back into a bun, sweat pouring from her puckered brow. Flushed cheeks. Her name must be Brunhilde, he thought, and remembered: Warrior Woman, from the old Norse. How perfect. How ironic. The cow.

  His penis flopped as he turned. He lay on it. He hadn’t thought about it in months and now he did. It pressed against him in the warm dampness. Whoa, he thought. It’s still there.

  And then he stiffened.

  He raised his head, his neck muscles flexed. He looked at the back of the naked man a few tables away who had rolled onto his side, placed one leg on the floor, and stood up. Jacob had glimpsed the side of his face. He was standing now, the nurse was handing him a towel. He took it, wiped his face, pulled it across his shoulders, quickly rubbed his body, and turned again to walk away.

  The nurse put her hand on Jacob’s head, saying, “Relax, relax.” She pushed him down so that she could scrub his neck but he pushed back. “Sorry, did I hurt you?” the nurse asked. Now his whole back arched and he stretched to see better.

  The man looked different. He didn’t fit in. Not as skinny. Not skinny at all. Lean, yes. Broad. Tall. As he turned and Jacob readied to see his face, a British doctor stopped to talk to a nurse, blocking Jacob’s view. The man raised his arm to rub his hair with the towel; his bare arm seemed to emerge from the doctor’s white sleeve.

  Jacob strained his eyes, not shut this time, but to peer through the damp mist of the Laundry. The man’s left armpit was black with wisps and curls, but there it was. Even at three meters, in this bad light, Jacob saw it.

  A blue stain. He couldn’t see what it said but he could see that it was there. A tattoo? His SS blood group?

  Yes. It was him. It must be. Those ears, those stiff round ears sticking out like a rat. A shiver shook Jacob, his neck hairs stood. He opened his mouth to shout but nothing came out. His body stiffened and he tried again, but he only shuddered.

  Alarmed, the nurse pushed him down, harder this time. “Relax,” she said, “please relax, there is nothing to worry about, I just need to spray the DDT, you will come out of here nice and clean. No more itching.”

  Now Jacob bellowed, at least he wanted to, but all that came out were high-pitched gasps, one after another, as if he were panting, choking.

  The man was walking toward the door, rubbing his hair. Most inmates had to be carried on stretchers, others hobbled in pain or took it step by breathless step. He was striding. It flashed through Jacob’s mind: He could be whistling. The marc
hing song, the Horst Wessel song: “Die Fahne hoch, die Reihen fest geschlossen…”

  Jacob’s eyes darkened, a flash of memory. Maxie. His brother, his baby brother. Murdered.

  Jacob screamed with his little might: “Stop!”

  “You stop it now,” the nurse said, and she called for help. Two nurses rushed to her side, the doctor too, they pushed Jacob to the table while the nurse pressed the plunger and a spray of DDT powder made him cough and his eyes water.

  “That’s better. That’ll kill the lice. You’ll feel better, no more scratching.”

  “Stop, you bastard,” he yelled. “Stop!”

  “Hey, be quiet,” the doctor said. “That’s no way to talk. She’s only trying to help.”

  “It’s all right, I don’t mind, after all they’ve been through,” the nurse said in German, stroking Jacob’s head, trying to calm him. “You’ll feel better very soon. No typhus.”

  “Stop,” Jacob yelled, straining against them. “Hans, you rat!”

  At the door the lean man turned. He took in the struggle on the table, the naked stringy Jew yelling, his little head straining forward like a tortoise, the nurses and doctor pushing him down. He saw into Jacob’s crazed eyes. Smirked, spat, and left.

  TWO

  Bergen-Belsen,

  April 28, 1945

  Black smoke billowed upward in a cloud that blocked the sun. Flashes of light filtered through, to be blocked again as another one-second burst of fire whooshed into the wooden hut. Flames swept through the open door while columns of smoke escaped through the windows. They curled upward like black puffs from a dragon. The late-spring breeze stank of burning fuel. The only sound was of crackling wood, until someone shouted in English, “Good riddance!”

  Another burst of flame, the hut exploded into a fireball, and the converted machine gun on the British tank swung slowly toward Square 9, Block 2.

  An unfamiliar curling of the lips began to stretch Jacob’s mouth, he felt his cheek muscles respond, his eyes seemed to narrow as he waited for his prison to go up in flames. His face crinkled, just a bit. Jacob thought, So I still know how to smile. It was hard to grasp: It’s really over.

  “So what do you think?” Benno Lazansky said at Jacob’s shoulder, behind the barbed wire fence that ringed Camp 1 of Bergen-Belsen.

  “I don’t.”

  “How long were you there?” Benno asked.

  “Drei verdammte Jahren.”

  Benno snorted. “Three years.”

  “Yes. Three damn years.” The tight smile vanished. Jacob’s jaw muscles twitched. He’d made it. Who else had survived? Anyone?

  The Churchill Crocodile spat out another four gallons of fuel, propelled by a burst of liquid nitrogen, and for one second a jet of flame shot from the tank-mounted flamethrower into the next hut.

  “It stank in there,” Jacob said. “You could throw up just from the smell.”

  A fifth burst from the flamethrower was sucked into the structure. There was a moment of calm, as if the hut had swallowed the flame, as if it resisted, followed by a loud crack, and the hut exploded in a ball of fire and heat that made them flinch from fifty meters.

  “So are you really off, then?” Benno said, blinking away the embers in the air.

  “Oh, yes,” Jacob said, turning away. “I just needed to see this. Be sure it’s really over. Those lice are frying now.”

  “What about getting some kind of permit to get through the lines? You don’t have anything. What will you do, walk? If you wait a few days I can get you something. A piece of paper. Anything. It’ll help.” Jacob was striding now, Benno at his side.

  “How? Anyway, I already told you, I won’t be the only one. Everyone’s walking, there isn’t any other way, and nobody’s got papers. And I must get home to Heidelberg quickly, or it’ll be too late.”

  “Home?” Benno pulled his elbow, forced him to a halt. “Don’t be stupid. What home? There’s no one left, you know that. You got lucky in the Star Camp, that’s all.” He pointed into Jacob’s face, grazed his nose. “We need you. Come with me. In a week or two we’ll be organized, the boys from the Jewish Brigade are working it out.” Benno paused as two British soldiers strolled by, heading toward the camp gate. He looked after them as they passed, and turned back to Jacob.

  “I’m in contact with their special units. Secret ones. We’ll get to Palestine, they want us there. Here, it’s over. Home! You must be joking. You think anyone wants you in Germany? There’s nothing for us here.”

  Jacob pulled his arm away. He looked over his shoulder. The flamethrower had moved on to the next hut as the others erupted in a ball of fire. When one wall collapsed inward, sparks jumped. An officer was hosing down the trees nearby to prevent the fire from spreading. A crowd of British soldiers and nurses were cheering and laughing, celebrating. And why not? Their war was over. While Allied forces fought through Germany, mopping up the last Nazi resistance, their only battle now was against typhus and typhoid.

  Inmates—Jews, Gypsies, politicals—huddled at the barbed wire in silence, staring into the inferno. Jacob thought: What’s on their minds? Those stinking, fetid, typhus-diseased bunks we shared, two or three in each, head to toe, in the freezing, leaky huts, where we clung to life and fought over scraps of food, those of us who didn’t give up and die. Still. It had been home. All we had. A broken brush. A matchbox with a cube of sugar. Two cubes and you were rich. A filthy rag for a pillow. And now, all going up in smoke. Well, better than going up in smoke yourself.

  Or was it? Jacob shivered. He put his hand on Benno’s shoulder. He’d only known him a few days. Benno had been transferred to Bergen-Belsen a week before liberation with a small group of prisoners who seemed in good health. The Germans had caught them in the south only a month earlier. They were Zionists. Benno had made that pretty clear: He was recruiting for Palestine.

  “There is something for me,” Jacob said. “Listen, thanks for your concern but I’m going home. Now. Or it’ll be too late. There’s someone I must find.”

  “Don’t you get it? There’s no one left. After what you’ve been through in the camp, torture, murders, you want to stay in Germany? How could you? After what they’ve done to us? How could anyone want to stay in this hellhole?”

  Jacob took his hand from Benno’s shoulder and stared into his eyes. “You don’t get it. There is someone. I know it. And I promised. Afterwards? Who knows where I’ll end up? But first, I’m going home. I swore an oath.”

  THREE

  Berlin,

  April 29, 1945

  Sarah sensed it first in her bare feet, the faintest quivering of the ground. She looked up and cocked her head, her right hand rising to pull her shirt tight at the throat. Her left hand held a squashed tin bucket. She had been about to leave her shelter to see if the water pump on Dorfstrasse was working. It had been dry for two days.

  The tremor grew and her body trembled with it. That’s strange, she thought, observing her own body. Is it the ground moving? Is it the cold?

  Fear?

  It sounded like a cat’s purr.

  It became louder. The cracked window-frame rattled and cement flakes shook loose and fluttered to the floor. Larger bits dislodged and fell with a thud. The rumble became a growl and then a continuous roar and the basement walls shook so much Sarah cowered in a corner in case more of the ceiling crashed down on her. Her shelter was already a pile of rubble from the bombs. She had built four low walls from loose bricks and smashed wooden rafters and for two weeks had slept and hidden in the dusty space between them. A sheet of tin on top kept in some warmth.

  The mirror fell to the floor, shattering into a dozen shards.

  Sarah flinched as it fell and thought, Seven years bad luck. But: How much worse can it get?

  She looked at the trembling door-frame and knew it could get much worse, quickly. She understood now what it was.

  It was the rumble of tanks and armored cars. The Germans pulling out or the Russians moving in. Eith
er way, thousands of marching men. She knew, If they’re German, they’ll kill me, if they’re Russian, they’ll rape me. She had to stay hidden. She was safe underground. But for how long?

  Sarah looked down at the empty bucket and her tongue flickered across her dry lips. Not a drop of water had passed them for two days.

  By afternoon it was clear. She could hear loud voices with those strangled long vowels and hissing sounds, the shouted orders, the revving of engines, the dragging of equipment outside, and from upstairs, barely, the hushed voices and fearful tiptoeing of Herr and Frau Eberhardt.

  Sarah thought, I should feel happy. The Russians are here, which means the war must be over, or will be soon. And she did feel a kind of relief that washed through her body and made her blood feel heavy. It weighed her down. So tired! Now what? Still she did not emerge from her hiding place.

  Sarah lay behind her low wall of debris, dusty, thirsty, exhausted, too scared to move, every nerve on edge. Looking at the door, listening to the street, she was thinking of Hoppi, and the little one, who she had never had the joy of knowing. How hard it had been. And all she had done to survive. That had led her here, to now. Sarah closed her eyes and flopped against the wall, legs straight out, her head to one side, arms hanging to the floor. I’ll get up in a moment, she thought. Go outside and ask for water. Hope they don’t rape me. Maybe it’s safer in a crowd after all, they won’t touch me there. It’s more dangerous here, if someone finds me alone. Yes, it’s safer outside.

  Sarah made to move, but couldn’t. A few moments more, she thought, close your eyes, think of Hoppi. Her lips moved with her thoughts. She was used to talking to herself.

  Their first year or two on the run hadn’t been too bad, thanks to their friends. Gunther. Sasha. Elinora. The old lady who they hadn’t even known, who had just offered, what was her name, with white hair? Can’t remember. Peter and his wife. The ones who listened to the BBC on the wireless. They’d all risked their lives to help her and Hoppi, given them shelter.

  In the early days they could even take off the yellow star, walk across town, go to a café. It was strange, it didn’t weigh anything, that little bit of yellow cloth, but they both felt lighter without it. They didn’t have ration cards, so their hosts shared their food and helped them find ways to earn money. They had risked their lives for two terrified Jews. There were enough good Germans, in the beginning at least. They went from safe house to safe house, leaving each before Nazi neighbors could become suspicious; a week here, if they were lucky a month there. Not that it was easy. Creeping in their apartments like mice, using the toilet only when their friends did, never running water from the tap, always terrified of the nosy concierge, of a rap on the door at four in the morning. Still. A little smile of thanks played on Sarah’s lips. She licked them with her dry tongue. She’d have to get up in a minute though, find some water.