cordwood for efficiency, then burned and buried them.”
Sobelman sighed and it took a moment before he could continue. “But there were many jobs for the Sonderkommandos. Some gathered the hair in the shaving hut and sorted it by color and quality-most going to stuff mattresses, though the best was used for wigs. My job was to remove gold fillings from the teeth of the corpses before they were placed on the trolleys for the burial pits.”
Zak scowled. “Why did the Sonderkommandos go along with this?”
“Zak!” Giancarlo snapped. “That’s rude.”
“No, no, it’s a legitimate question,” Moishe responded. He turned to Zak. “The simple answer is that we had no choice. It was do as we were told or be killed, or commit suicide-and there were those who chose either of those last two options as well. However, the urge to survive is very powerful. Some because they fear death. But for others, such as myself, it was with the hope that someday I might exact revenge on my family’s murderers, as well as carry out my father’s wish that I not forget, which is why I think it is important to tell you boys my story. So that you never forget, either.”
Even being a slave laborer was no guarantee of staying alive, Moishe said. “Because of our intimate knowledge of their mass murders the Nazis and their minions considered us Geheimnistrager — the ‘bearers of secrets.’ The Sonderkommandos were kept apart from the others in the camp so that we could not tell them what we’d seen and experienced. They did not want some escapee or survivor to tell the world about their evil deeds. In fact, they were so worried that the Sonderkommandos were regularly gassed as well-their deaths being particularly cruel because they knew what was going to happen even sooner than the others.”
“Why weren’t you gassed?” Zak asked, shooting a quick glance at his brother.
Moishe shook his head sadly. “Ironically, I was spared because of my father’s occupation. One day, a German officer named Johann Klier, who had owned his own bakery before the war and ran the camp’s, sought me out. Other prisoners who had known my father had told Herr Klier that I was an experienced baker. So I went from pulling the teeth of corpses to baking bread.”
As he passed a hand over his eyes, it took the others a moment to realize that he was weeping. But when Karp offered another cup of coffee “and a chance to catch your breath,” he waved him off. “Forgive an old man his tears. No matter how many times I have told this story, the pain and grief are just as raw.”
He turned back to the boys. “By the fall of 1943, more than two hundred and fifty thousand people had been murdered at Sobibor and the Germans were starting to worry that the war wasn’t going so well and that word of their crimes would get out. They planned to wipe out all traces of the camp and every inmate in it. When word filtered to the Sonderkommandos that they were to be gassed in October, we rose up.
“On the morning of October 14, led by a man named Leon Feldhendler and a Red Army lieutenant named Alexander ‘Sasha’ Perchorsky, the Sonderkommandos and some of the other prisoners who joined in lured the SS guards in the camp to their deaths. We cut the electricity and telephone lines and broke into the camp armory. Then we began to fight the Ukrainian guards before escaping, though many of us died in the minefields surrounding the camp.
“There were six hundred of us in the camp that day,” Moishe recalled. “About a hundred and fifty were killed by guards or the mines. Three hundred of us escaped. Within a week, one hundred of us had been recaptured or killed. Everyone who’d been left behind at the camp was murdered and buried. The Germans then bulldozed the camp and turned it into farmland, as if it had never existed.”
Moishe’s eyes glittered now with anger. “But those of us who escaped and survived did not forget. I eventually met and joined up with Jewish partisans who were fighting the Germans. The ember of revenge burned deep in my chest, and I killed my enemies with great pleasure.”
The old man continued. “One day I was leading a small company of men when they captured three German SS officers whose car had broken down. I recognized them from Sobibor, including the officer who had pulled me away from my father, Hans Schultz. When I forced them to their knees on the road, Schultz started crying and begging for his life. ‘I was only doing as I was told,’ he cried. ‘You cannot imagine the nightmares I endure. The sound of people screaming and begging for their lives. The little children crying. And that horrible wailing and the sound of them crawling over each other to try to escape when the gas began to enter the room.’ That bastard looked at me like I would understand. ‘You were there, Moishe,’ he said. ‘You remember how sometimes when you opened the doors to remove them, some of them would be missing fingernails and have just bloody stumps because they had been clawing at the walls and each other.’ Terrible. Terrible.”
“What did you do?” Zak asked.
The old man sighed. “I played the part of judge, jury, and, may God forgive me, lord high executioner. With my anger raging inside, I decided that the punishment must fit the crime. I remembered how these men had laughed as all those innocent people had cried out and struggled to stay alive. So I had my men strangle them with cords, starting with Schultz’s subordinates. And while they kicked and dug at the cords with their fingernails, their faces turning purple and the blood vessels bursting in their eyes, I demanded that Schultz laugh.”
“Did he?” Giancarlo asked quietly.
“Remember what I said about the will to survive?” Moishe said. “Yes, he laughed as though at a great joke. And then I threw the cord around his neck myself and cried-which I still do at the memory-as I choked the life out of him.”
8
Felix sat at a bare table in a stark room of white washed walls and linoleum wondering when the police were going to let him go home. He was by himself and there were no sounds other than the nervous tapping of his foot.
Having lost his glasses when he fell, he could only squint at the large mirror set against one of the walls. He’d watched enough television cop shows to know that it was probably oneway glass and that he was being watched by police detectives on the other side.
Felix had already been at the precinct house for two hours. They’d taken photographs of his face, and his fingerprints. But mostly he’d been left to sit in the room. He wished they’d just tell him what they wanted him to say so that he could say it and leave.
The door clicked and then opened. A large man walked in and stood for a moment studying him. He walked over and sat in the chair across from Felix, who could then see well enough to note that he was an older man with a big, wrinkled face and icy blue eyes.
“I’m Detective Brock,” the man said. “I understand that you’ve waived your right to have an attorney present?”
Felix hesitated for a moment. The police officer who arrested him had also asked him if he wanted an attorney. He remembered that the police on the television shows asked that a lot, too, so he figured it must be important. But he didn’t know why. He did know, however, that attorneys cost money, and if his dad found out he was spending money on one, he’d get hit. He shook his head. “I don’t want an attorney.”
“And you’re willing to talk to me?” Brock asked. “No one is forcing you to answer my questions.”
Felix’s natural inclination to please kicked in. “Sure. I’ll answer your questions.”
“Good. Thank you, that helps,” the detective said. “Felix, can you tell me where you were earlier this morning, before the police officers arrested you?”
“Yes,” Felix answered, glad to start with an easy one, “I was home.”
“Was anybody else there?”
Felix cringed slightly at the memory of his father asleep on the couch. He didn’t want the police to bother Eduardo. “No.”
“What were you doing out so early on a Sunday morning?”
“I was going to Mullayly Park.”
“Why?”
“To meet my friends.”
“Felix, what would you say if I told you that you look like a man who attacked a young woman this morning near Mullayly Park?”
