No matter how much Jan Gruber looked forward to the end of each day, when night fell, he could never fall asleep. During the day, the other broken souls around him kept their silence about the horrors of the past. At night though, they were betrayed by the world of the subconscious. Their dreams rattled their being, and details of their unimaginable ordeals were released bit by bit. For any human being with a shred of emotion remaining, falling asleep was no simple exercise.
The first night amongst the cots in Amsterdam’s once-grand Portuguese Synagogue was tense. Jan lay awake in the middle of the night surrounded by various other lost souls with nowhere else to turn. The ray of moonlight beaming through a cracked stained-glass window provided enough illumination for Jan to notice that the young man across from him was awake as well.
He whispered carefully, “I’m Jan. Does anyone ever fall asleep here?”
“I’m Samuel,” the man whispered back. “I don’t know. I’ve only been here a few days. But I haven’t fallen asleep here yet. Well, actually, I do get tired during the day, and sometimes I daydream about Palestine and where I am going…”
“Where you are going to what?” Jan asked, eager for Samuel to finish his thought. But it was no use. Samuel was in a daze. Even though his eyes were open, he was lost in another world.
Jan looked around to see if there was anyone else with whom he could make conversation. He wanted to talk but was afraid to wake any of the lucky survivors who had succeeded in falling asleep. Instead, his only option was to stare at the artistry on the synagogue ceiling until the sun rose.
In the breakfast line the next morning, Jan again encountered Samuel, but Samuel did not seem to remember him. Nevertheless, Jan engaged him in conversation, and the two sat down together. At a long table where others were drinking coffee and eating pastries and fruit provided by the Red Cross, Jan and Samuel skirted around their pasts. They didn’t need to ask each other much. Without one question, Samuel had a good idea of where Jan had been. The tattoo on his forearm also betrayed his past.
No other background was needed. It wasn’t necessary for Jan to tell Samuel about his first deportation to Westerbork, the transit camp in the northeastern part of the Netherlands where Jews worked as forced laborers. Or that after that he was sent to Auschwitz just in time for his sixteenth birthday. Or that after that he was shipped to another hellhole known as Mauthausen.
Normal people might have asked about each other’s families and the cities that they came from, but Jan and Samuel knew that the past was off-limits. It was a lot easier to discuss the future. Remembering what Samuel was saying before he lost consciousness, Jan asked, “So where do you want to go from here?”
“There’s only one place for us now: Palestine. I am going to go there and become a farmer and a soldier and help to build a country,” Samuel explained with color returning to his cheeks. As he spoke, his tall, lanky frame came to life, and he began to use his hands to express himself.
“I am fascinated about Palestine too,” Jan added. “My father always used to talk about what it would mean for Jews to have a home of their own.”
Samuel was about to inquire about Jan’s father and the rest of his family, but then remembered that subject was off-limits. After all, what did he expect to hear? Did he really want to make Jan tell him what had really happened to them? Did he really want to hear that the last time Jan saw his father was very early after the Nazi invasion? Did he want to know that Jan’s father Aharon was a tailor whose shop served Amsterdam’s Jewish elite until it was shut down by the Nazis? Did he want to hear about his father’s non-Jewish friend who offered him odd jobs as a maintenance worker for very low pay? Certainly, he did not want to hear about the one night Jan’s father was walking home from work and was attacked and killed by a few Nazi hoodlums out playing drinking games with Jewish skulls. Certainly, he didn’t need to ask about Jan’s mother, who died in Auschwitz, or about his gentle and sweet ten-year-old sister, Aliza, who was murdered as well.
Instead, they talked about Palestine, and football, and after getting to know each other, they talked about women and what it might be like to have a relationship someday. “Do you think people like us could ever get married?” Samuel pondered.
“I don’t know,” said Jan. “Maybe to someone who is one of us, but I am not sure anyone else would understand…” Jan caught himself before accidentally stumbling into what had actually happened to them, and instead of referring to themselves as camp survivors, he simply said, “I am not sure anyone else would understand the war the way we do.” Samuel’s gentle smile acknowledged the bond that these two young men shared, without even having to delve into the trauma and devastation they had each endured.
For the next couple of days, Jan spent most of his time regaining his strength. He spent time each day walking aimlessly around the interior of the large, beautiful synagogue. Most of the young Jews who made their way back to Amsterdam like Jan spent the majority of their time in and around the Portuguese Synagogue. In better times, the synagogue, which had housed the oldest Jewish library in Europe, had been a testimony to the vibrant and successful Jewish community in the city. The synagogue had been built by Spanish Jews who fled the Inquisition, first in Spain and later in Portugal. In the seventeenth century, when oppression from the Portuguese Inquisition chased the Jews out of the region once again, some of them emigrated to Amsterdam. In 1675, the Portuguese Synagogue was completed by some of those refugees. It remained as a testament to the survival of the Jewish community in the face of incessant oppression for nearly three centuries. By some miracle, the Nazis decided not to destroy it, and after the war it served as a triage center for lost Jews with nowhere else to go.
In between his walks around the synagogue, and the occasional meaningless conversations he would have with Red Cross staff, Jan took daytime naps that made up for his lost sleep at night. He had only been in Amsterdam a few days when Jan was awakened by a squeeze on his right shoulder.
“Get your paw off me. Who the hell are you?” Jan cried as he opened his eyes and made out a khaki-clad soldier standing before him. As Jan shook himself out of his fog, he noticed that the soldier was not alone. He quickly noted the British uniforms, and his fear transformed instantaneously into awe. On the shoulder of the soldiers’ jackets, Jan saw something he’d never thought was possible. Sewn hastily onto their sleeves were blue Star of David patches. Jan was not aware that Jewish soldiers from Palestine had been fighting alongside the British against the Nazis, but when he saw the Star of David, he knew something was unique about the men who were staring at him.
“Do you have a place to go? You have family in Holland?” the soldier asked in Yiddish.
“Does anyone anymore?” Jan replied wryly.
“Then I think you should come with us,” the solider pronounced with a sense of pride and independence.
As he spoke, the solider turned to his mates. Each one of them was distinctly battle-hardened with experience fighting the Nazis. For many years, their only purpose in life had been to fight the enemy, but recently their will to fight in Europe had waned. They had achieved a drop of revenge, finding former SS officials and concentration camp guards and assassinating them in their homes. But that couldn’t go on forever, especially when a greater cause was emerging. Instead of chasing the devil, they would rescue the angels, and bring them back home.
The soldier stood over Jan and looked back at his fellow soldiers. Jan heard him say to them that he found a Jew who looked healthy enough to travel. Jan looked up at him and asked, “Where are you going?”
“Palestine” was the only word Jan needed to hear.