Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 80 of a new online serial novel, Nine A.M., by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
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The last page in Babbe’s notepad:
Dear Mamme,
Please don’t be angry at me, and you also, Zeide and Babbe.
I will make every effort to come back alive, with siyata d’Shmaya, with simchah and shalom.
But even if chalilah I do not— I wanted only the best for you.
Please be happy always, and I hope someone can try to learn as an aliyah for my neshamah.
Love, Binyamin
P.S. I don’t want to part with anger, and I don’t know if Naomi really did carry out her threat and went to Sherer, the way it looks. In any case, what happened now isn’t really connected to her; Wangel heard a conversation that was made at an inopportune time.
So tell her that I will try to forgive.
And that she should also forgive me.
And that she shouldn’t give up on any of her dreams.
Iszak Zuretzky scratched the edge of his nose just as voices were heard outside. He quickly stuffed the notepad back into the pocket of Sarah Liba Einhorn’s white coat, ran to his bed, leaped into it, and pulled the blanket up over his head.
Leo Sherer entered, flanked by his two sons-in-law. “So he really went?” He looked around. “Irwin, check under his bed.”
“He went,” David Elkovitz said. “I’m telling you he went there, Papa. You can tell the people who have gathered that they can go back to work.”
“But I want to ask them a few questions,” Leo said. “Maybe someone knows something other than what you are telling—”
Their eyes locked for a moment. “If you don’t believe me, I have nothing else to say,” David said. He spread his hands in resignation. “But I will say it again: Binyamin went to the manor house to turn himself in. So it is needless to keep those people there, all gathered in one place… It might be dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Yes. In the event that, chalilah, Wangel will try to take revenge on them all, why make the job easier for him?”
“Why should he take revenge? I don’t even believe this whole insane story of yours, David. Do you really believe that the Nazis no longer control the world?”
“I don’t know for exactly how many years it is the case,” Elkovitz said cautiously, wondering to what extent his father-in-law was as innocent as he sounded. “But based on the people we have made phone contact with…it is decades. You can ask Suzy too.”
“Suzy?! She’s also involved in …all this?” He grabbed his son-in-law by the shirt, his eyes flashing with fury—and terrible fear.
“I want to ask you something else, Papa. Did you, the older ones, really never suspect anything over the years? Did you really think that Wangel built this place only to save us?”
“Of course not for that.” Leo’s breaths were short and shallow. “It was toward the end of the war, when the Nazis thought they were going to lose.”
“Which indeed happened.”
“Not for sure. In any case, in the Wehrmacht, they began to prepare for defeat, and they appointed officers to be in charge of guerilla warfare, in case the Allies would capture all of Europe. They planned to establish bases in a few places, and Ludwig Heidrich and Klaus Wangel were the two who were sent to this region to prepare a military base. They needed prisoners to actually build the place, and in April 1945, they came to Matthausen, where they met me and my brother Max. Heidrich, Katarina’s father, knew our family, and most importantly our huge factory that we had on the outskirts of Budapest… I was about eighteen years old at the time.”
“Very young.”
“Yes, but I had spent almost my entire life with the furs and the production, so I had lots of knowhow and knowledge. During the war itself, I was also busy a bit with it, together with Max, and I helped him produce furs for senior officials. Heidrich had apparently heard about it.”
“And then they brought you here on the train.”
“The train didn’t get all the way here, of course. We walked and climbed a large part of the way, including places where no human foot had ever stepped. We were a group of a few dozen Hungarian and Polish Jews.” He sat down on one of the unmade beds. “Anyway, after that, things turned around, and the Nazis took control over the world. But Wangel and Heidrich, who knew what a treasure they were sitting on, decided to continue hiding us here, and we would pay them with efficient work.
“In any case, there’s no time for memories of the past now, David. I still don’t think you are right, and even if these are not Schvirtz’s delusions, then it must be intentional deceit by someone on the outside. Maybe it’s someone on the receiving end of your attempts to communicate, and they wanted to get you to give away our hiding place. Is it any wonder that Wangel feels threatened? Do you know what will happen to them if we are discovered here?”
David didn’t continue the argument. “Can I disperse the people?” he asked instead.
Leo hesitated and then said, “Yes. Let Irwin or someone else tell everyone that they can go back to work. You are staying here, and we need to think about what we are doing.”
“Well, we should be praying, no?” David sat down on the bed as well.
“Yes, maybe you should do that. But what are you going to do now? Hide? Where, and until when? What will be if they try to threaten Suzy and the children?”
“You think I should hide?”
“If you decided to claim that Schvirtz spoke to someone at the office, and that someone is you, they might take revenge on you too!”
“There is a certain risk,” Elkovitz concurred, “but if we present it as if I answered the call innocently, it won’t be so bad.”
“And if they don’t believe it, or still want to find someone to take their anger out on?”
David stood up. “I don’t think I’m going to actually hide. I honestly don’t think the risk is so major. But just to be safe, I’ll try not to wander around under their noses.”
***
“Babbe! You’re back…baruch Hashem! We were so worried!”
“Baruch Hashem, yes, we are back. What did you give the children to eat in the meantime? They are probably hungry. My friends are bustling around the kitchen, trying to finish preparing the meal.”
“They ate bread,” Rivku piped up. “The cooked food can wait till tomorrow. We’re finishing the day soon here anyway. But what’s going on? Is everything alright? Were we the only ones not ordered to come to the factory?”
“You and some of the people in the infirmary,” Babbe replied.
“And that’s it? Now everyone is coming back?” Naomi asked, her voice shaking. She tried to hold in the tears, not wanting to cry in front of the children, but her tears betrayed her, and she fled to the end of the empty hallway.
Babbe hurried after her.
“What did they want from you?” Naomi asked through sniffles.
“They actually didn’t tell us anything. We waited there for nearly an hour and a half, until we got the order to go back to work.”
Naomi cast a tearful glance left and right. Rivku was walking out of the classroom and into the yard, watching as people scurried about the camp’s pathways. “So what was the whole thing about?”
“One of the Wangels heard on their phone a strange conversation, perhaps in Hebrew—no one seemed to know all the details. They were going wild, because they were sure that at least one of the speakers was from here, one of us. They demanded that Leo turn in the man or men involved. So he gathered all of us to try to find out if someone knows something, but neither he nor his people came to tell us anything all this time.”
She offered her granddaughter a handkerchief. “Everyone was just sitting in the courtyard of the factory, on the ground or on tree stumps, feeding on fragments of rumors… All it did was generate a lot of panic and tension.”
Naomi swallowed. “Do they know by now who the one was who was talking on the phone?”
“That’s what’s not clear to me.” Babbe sighed and glanced toward the outside. “Because he wasn’t there.”
“He stayed at the infirmary?”
“I don’t know, Naomi. He disappeared during Bilhah’s levayah, and then he came back, and I have no idea if he stayed in his bed or not.”
“Someone…” Naomi groped for the words. “Did someone…say anything about him?”
“I heard his name. Look, Naomi, the minute Leo began to treat him this way, hospitalizing him forcibly at the clinic, the rumors began to circulate. Especially when that group that he formed became a bit more well-known, and people…they talk.”
“Do they know that we made contact with Hanter’s factory?” Naomi paled.
“No. On the contrary, at first the rumors were that someone on the outside had discovered the secret of our existence, and that in a few hours, the SS might show up here.”
“Oh, no!”
“Naomi,” Babbe whispered. “I’m not the one who made contact with Jews in Vienna. You told us this story. But if it is true—and I’m among those who believe you—then why are you so frightened by the opposite rumors, about Nazis and the SS coming to the camp?”
Naomi averted her gaze. “Because in my mind, the truth is clear to me. But after living in this lie since I was born…it’s hard for me to break free all at once from everything I thought I knew, and to feel that truth. So what will be now, Babbe?”
***
“Schvirtz!”
“This was in one of the junk piles in the camp, and I decided to try to see if it works,” Binyamin said in a measured tone, as Josef Wangel, inside the room, approached the back window with a feral expression on his face. “I pressed the power button, and I guess it beeped in Sherer’s office, and someone answered me. He didn’t exactly understand what I wanted. That’s it.”
He took a deep breath and glanced at the big hole in the old device, and the wires peeking out of it. “I didn’t know if it recorded me or not, so now, when I realized that everyone was looking for me, I decided to destroy it, so they shouldn’t know what I said.”
“Why, what did you say on it?” The veins stood out on Josef Wangel’s forehead; he looked positively frightening. His hand went down to the right side of his belt in a slow motion.
Binyamin was silent for a moment. Then, “I cursed the Nazis in the world,” he said. “Not you personally, of course. We are all very grateful to you for everything.”
This addition did not particularly calm Wangel down, as he exchanged glances with his wife. But something about the hesitant way he was pulling out his gun made Binyamin wonder if he would be in a hurry to use it.
“Grateful, huh?” Katarina said with disgust. “Verfluchte Juden!”
Binyamin had only heard about this phrase, but he’d never heard anyone actually utter it, and he was stunned. But he didn’t allow the shock to paralyze him. “I’m sorry,” he said politely, and leaped to the side. Wangel, standing on the other side of the window, didn’t do anything except stare at the boy for a long moment and then at the gun in his hand. A moment later, he didn’t need to deliberate anymore—because Binyamin turned, dashed behind the bushes, and continued running toward the front yard, in the direction from where he had come.
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