‘So we travelled a few seats apart, me reading a paper, him staring rigidly into space. And after we changed at Stadtmitte he kept the same distance on the second train, still looking like a frightened rabbit.
‘The Gestapo got on at Potsdamer Platz. Four of them, two through each end door. All in their stupid leather coats. I turned to give the boy a reassuring look — it was only a routine check, and our papers were as good as they got — but it was too late. He was already halfway through the doors.
‘And once he was out he had nowhere to go. He just jerked his head this way and that as the four of them closed in.’ Effi shook her own head in sympathy. ‘And then he just threw himself at one of them. Like I said, he was a big boy. The man went down with the boy half on top of him, and a gun skidded across the platform.
‘The boy looked at it. We could all see him — the train was still standing there with its doors open. He looked at the gun. He didn’t even reach out a hand, but you could see him thinking about it.
‘And then one of the Gestapo shot him. Not just once, but four times, and the boy just slumped down on his side. One of them knelt down beside him and went through his pockets, and I was sitting there thanking God that I’d kept his papers with my own. The other three just stood around making small-talk.
‘The one who did the shooting was smiling as he reloaded his gun. He was the man I saw tonight.’
Leon and Esther
Russell watched as the two open lorries were loaded, around twenty people to each. A dozen of them were children, and all but one had left Poland as orphans. All had since been adopted, temporarily at least, by one or more of the adults. Russell had spoken to most of the latter that day, sometimes alone, sometimes with Lidovsky acting as an interpreter. They had all impressed him with their singularity of purpose, some more than others with their outlook on the world. Their Palestine would not lack for solidarity, but it might have trouble loving its neighbour.
The quarter-moon lighting the scene was the reason for their early departure. It was due to set soon after midnight, and without it, as Lidovsky explained, the obligatory detour through the forest would be very dark.
It was five past nine when they set off, the two lorries rolling quietly down towards the River Gail, and drumming their way across the girders. There were sometimes British spot checks at the bridge, but thanks to a Jewish lieutenant at the local British HQ, they knew that none were arranged for that night.
The lorries started climbing, their engines noisy in the clear mountain air. Most of the passengers were standing, hands clutching the sides for balance as they stared out at the moonlit landscape. The phrase ‘shining eyes’ came to Russell, which sounded romantic but fitted the bill. A night this beautiful would cause most eyes to shine, and these people had a vision to live for. He thanked fate and Isendahl for letting him share their journey.
The lorries rumbled down the cobbled street of a small and almost lightless town, where a swaying drunk sidestepped the leading lorry with a matador’s aplomb, then sunk gracelessly back against the kerb. The road was now sharing the valley with a river and railway, the three of them intertwining their southerly course as the slopes above them steepened.
Two more towns followed, each darker than the last. A few minutes after leaving the second, the lorries drew to a halt in a passing place above the noisy river. It felt like the middle of nowhere, but was, as Lidovsky told Russell, just three kilometres from the Italian frontier. ‘We used to get nearer, but the British started moving their checkpoints towards us. So now we have a longer walk.’
Once everyone was off the lorries, Lidovsky’s partner Kempner gathered them in a circle and stressed the need for silence, before leading them across the road and up the bank beyond. Soon a long column was winding its way up through the trees, grateful for what little illumination the quarter-moon could offer. Behind and below them, the sound of the returning lorries slowly faded into silence.
About fifty metres above the road a parallel path wound through the pines. They followed this for what seemed a long way, with only an occasional whisper disturbing the silence. The valley below was lost in shadow, but they could hear the river rushing over the stones, and the moon still hung above the opposite ridge, threading the forest with a wash of pale light. It was bitterly cold, and despite the risk of stumbling Russell had both hands buried in his sleeves.
They’d been walking about half an hour when Lidovsky appeared, working his way down the column. He was warning everyone to be extra careful — they would soon be passing above a British checkpoint.
Russell heard it before he saw it, the sounds of laughter rising above the ferment of the river. And then he could see the glow of the brazier, and the jeep it illuminated. Four of them stood round the fire, evenly spaced like points of the compass, holding their hands out to warm them, first the palms, then the backs.
The column trekked on in silence, the light of the fire disappearing from view. It was another half an hour before they stopped, and then for no apparent reason. Russell’s curiosity got the better of him, and he worked his way up the stationary column to where the trees abruptly ended. About seventy metres in front of him, across a wide stretch of snow-dusted meadow, smoke was drifting from the chimney of a small building. This, he presumed, was the Italian guardhouse that Lidovsky had told him about, one of many built in the mid-1930s, when the Duce still had doubts about Hitler.
And someone had got there before them, someone who soon would get a surprise. As Russell watched, two shadowy figures — presumably Lidovsky and Kempner — arrived beside the door, where they paused for a second before entering in quick succession. There were no sudden shots, which had to be good, but a long couple of minutes elapsed before one man emerged and waved the rest of them forward.
It was Kempner. ‘It’s a man and his son,’ he said. ‘They have papers from the Rothschild.’
‘But what are they doing out here alone?’ one woman asked.
Russell didn’t hear the answer. He was staring at the man who’d followed Kempner out. The last time he’d seen that face it had been a good deal chubbier, and the body had been encased in the black cloth and leather of Heydrich’s Sicherheitsdienst — the SS foreign intelligence service. Hauptsturmfuhrer Hirth had been his handler in the summer of 1939, when the SS had employed him as a double against the Soviets. It had been either that or see Effi dispatched to a concentration camp.
The son had now emerged, a boy of about ten. He held his father’s hand and stared at the assembled Jews.
Then Hirth saw Russell. The eyes blinked in disbelief, the lips opened and closed, then mouthed the word bitte. Please. And as if to strengthen the plea, he glanced down at the boy beside him.
Hirth’s other hand, Russell noticed, was thrust deep in his pocket. Did he have a gun?
Russell hesitated. If he exposed the man now, people might get shot. And there seemed no urgency — Hirth had nowhere to run.
People were squeezing into the guardhouse, drawn by the warmth of the fire. Russell left Hirth hanging, and went in search of Lidovsky. They’d be there for several hours, the Haganah man told him. Until dawn. Then an hour’s walk back to the road, where their transport would be waiting.
Russell asked him where the man in the hut was from.
‘Danzig originally. His wife was Polish, a shiksa. They spent the war on a Polish farm, but she died in the summer. Why do you ask?’
‘Just a journalist’s curiosity. I thought I’d seen him somewhere before.’ He watched Lidovsky disappear inside, and felt Hirth arrive at his shoulder.
‘Please,’ the former Hauptsturmfuhrer pleaded in a whisper, ‘don’t give me away. For my son’s sake. He’s already lost his mother. Don’t…’
‘The shiksa,’ Russell said sarcastically.
‘No, his real mother. She was killed last year in the bombing.’
Which was probably the truth, Russell thought. He asked Hirth where he was going.
‘Rome. Then, well, there are people there who will help me. South America, I expect. A new life. Look, if you give us away, they’ll turn us over to the authorities. They’ll shoot me, and then they’ll have to shoot the boy. And he’s done nothing to deserve that.’
He probably hadn’t. Neither had the millions that Hirth and his kind had sent to their deaths, but Russell had to admit that wreaking vengeance unto the last generation seemed a touch medieval for 1945.
