11

The slope, now covered with a thick layer of snow, finally began to level off. After turning right along a narrow rising ridge, they eventually arrived at the doorless entrance of the chapel.

The exhausted group quickly filed inside.

Josef set Ilsa down. After giving him a quick look, she too darted in, leaving him to tie the mules onto a rusted metal loop set to the side of the doorway, while Kurt broke the ice in an ancient stone drinking trough of water with the hobnailed heel of his boot. With a pat on his friend’s shoulder, Josef then followed Kurt into the building.

Inside, Gunter had relit his lamp, putting it up onto a bare altar made of granite slabs that filled the end of the narrow, single room. It produced a soft, flickering light, illuminating the simple crucifix pinned above and the nine Jews collapsed onto the earthen floor and leaning back against the rough stone walls.

The three mountain troopers began to move amongst them, asking how they were, checking the bindings on their feet, telling them they were going to get half an hour’s rest, that they had earned it. They offered them bread, some water or wine to give them a little more strength for the final climb over the top.

There were appreciative mumblings in response. Josef could see they were still frightened from the surprise of the goats, but even the older ones had a faint gleam in their eyes now. They knew they were getting near.

When Josef came to Ilsa, who was huddled to the side of the altar, he produced a red tin of Scho-Ka-Kola, his army chocolate ration. It was strong and bitter, heavily caffeinated, not really for a child but it would give her some energy for the final leg over the border.

He unwrapped the round cake from its silver foil and broke it into pieces. The girl looked at the small sections with hunger but when Josef offered them to her, she struggled to pick up a piece, fingers fumbling. Josef took her hand and felt its thin woolen glove. It was soaking wet, very cold.

Peeling it off, he held the tiny hand tightly in his to warm it and with the other lifted a piece of the chocolate to her mouth so that she could eat at the same time. The chocolate was hard and he heard her small teeth trying to crack into it.

Before he could stop her, the girl suddenly reached up her other gloved hand and pulled down his scarf.

In the half-light, she studied his face intently as her mouth contorted into an exaggerated grimace to crunch the bitter chocolate.

Josef smiled back at her, but careful to keep his exposed face twisted away from Gunter’s sight.

“It’s nasty, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“The chocolate, not my face!”

Ilsa gave a tiny, gentle laugh.

“But it’s good for you. Make you strong for the next part. You’re going to make it, little Ilsa Rosenberg.”

When she heard Josef say her name, the girl seemed a little taken aback. Her small eyes met his and she asked, “What’s your name then?”

“That’s a secret,” he replied.

“Is it Adolph?”

This time Josef couldn’t help but laugh at her question as he replied with a soft yet exaggerated, “No!”

Ilsa smiled in return to show that despite her tender age she was playing with him.

Completely disarmed, Josef whispered his name.

Before Ilsa could say anything in return they both suddenly heard the cascading sound of rifle bolts being actioned.

Raising his index finger, Josef motioned Ilsa to be perfectly still.

A sharp voice outside shouted, “You are completely surrounded. You will all come out now.”

Gunter instantly extinguished the lamp.

The adult Jews began to panic.

In the darkness, Josef seized the small girl by the wrist of her exposed hand and pulled her closer to the side of the stone altar, keeping her down.

Feeling the narrowest of gaps behind the heavy stone slabs, he instinctively pushed her inside.

A shadow stepped into the faint rectangle of the chapel doorway, blocking it.

A bright light then blasted the entrance, the incandescence burning into Josef’s blinking eyes the silhouette of a man, the outline of a stick grenade hanging from his right hand, an officer’s cap on his head.

“Out! All of you! With your hands in the air or I will throw in this grenade!” the figure shouted.

One by one, the Jews slowly stepped out of the chapel into the blinding light.

There, they were met by a dark line of soldiers standing on each side of the spotlight, the glinting metal of rifles and machine pistols pointing back at them.

When Gunter, Kurt, and Josef came out, a number of the soldiers pushed forward to seize them, separating them from the Jews.

Kurt immediately started to struggle, rolling his shoulders and ripping his arms from their grip. In an instant, one of the soldiers thumped the butt of his rifle onto the side of Kurt’s neck. Another delivered a sideways stamp to his right knee. Josef heard a distinct crack of bone or cartilage as Kurt crumpled to the ground, the two soldiers falling onto him, pushing him, writhing and groaning, further into the snow. They quickly stripped him of his hunting knife and papers, which they passed up to the officer.

At the same time, the ends of cold gun barrels were shoved hard up under Gunter’s and Josef’s chins to stop them from trying anything similar. The pair of them were tugged closer to the light, a leather-gloved hand snatching at the scarf that still covered Gunter’s face, ripping it down as Josef’s and Gunter’s weapons were also removed.

Josef could smell the stink of stale coffee and tobacco on the fetid breath of his captors as they worked. It was worse than the goats. He recognized the skull-and-crossbones badge that adorned the officer’s cap and caught glimpses of the double sig runes on the side of the soldiers’ helmets as they rifled their pockets:

Finding Gunter’s and Josef’s reichpass books, the soldiers immediately passed them to the officer, who held them to the side of the light, studying them against a notebook. When satisfied with what he saw, he folded the reichpass books inside, standing back to address them in formal, Berlin-accented, high German. “I identify you three as Obergefreiter Gunter Schirnhoffer, Gefreiter Josef Becker, and Gefreiter Kurt Müller, serial numbers abt.1651/99-1, abt.1659/99-1, and abt.1663/99-1 respectively, all soldiers of the 99th Gebirgsjäger. I hereby place you under arrest for the crime of Treason against the Reich. You are to be returned to Germany for court martial and punishment. Start taking them down.”

The guns pulled away from beneath their faces, only to return with a jab to their spines, signaling they should start walking away from the chapel, back down the snowy, narrow ridge.

Two other soldiers pulled Kurt back onto his feet. His right leg immediately gave way under him and he collapsed back onto the snow with a cry of pain. Observing the fall, the officer ordered the soldiers to stop. Pointing at Josef and Gunter, he shouted, “You two, come back. You will carry your colleague down to the valley.”

Turning back for Kurt, Josef looked at the illuminated chapel, willing the tiny girl inside to stay hidden. Then, each taking an arm, he and Gunter had to lift Kurt once again. Together they began to all but carry him down the slope, his right leg dragging uselessly.

At the turn onto the steep path from the ridge, they submerged once again into the inky dark below.

Some minutes later, a rifle fired. The shot’s retort raced over them to collide with distant, invisible hills before springing back in multiple echoes.

There was another, then a third.

Josef counted four more as he struggled with Gunter to help Kurt down the steep, narrow path, all the time their captors goading them to keep moving.

With each echoing shot, a feeling of nausea grew in his stomach.

After the seventh, Gunter shouted, “You SS bastards.”

It earned him a punch in the face, but it didn’t put him down.

Gunter just scoffed at his attacker.

From behind, another soldier struck him on the back of the head with the pistol grip of his MP38 machine gun.

This time Gunter did go down. Kurt and Josef fell with him.

From somewhere far above as he lay in the snow to the side of the path, Josef heard their two mules begin to bray wildly.

A man’s voice screamed, “Ilsa! Ilsa! Ilsa!”

The desperate cries were silenced by a long burst of machine-gun fire as, under a barrage of kicking jackboots and incensed screams of “Get up! Now!” Josef was forced to pull himself up from the snow.

Standing, he looked back uphill to see the flash of an explosion illuminate the entire ridgeline bright orange.

An avalanche of masonry hurtled down the mountainside.

The sound of the blast ripped all sense from Josef’s brain, its echo continuing to sound in his numbed heart all the way to the valley floor.