By the time they reached the warehouse in Thessaloniki, Jan had gotten to know the Jewish warriors who were his travel companions as well as anyone ever could. They were all battle-hardened soldiers of the Jewish Brigade. Most of them came from Palestine and had petitioned the British to allow them to join the fight against the Nazis. In 1944, politicians in London finally acceded to their request to join the battle and to help save at least a remnant of their people. They saw heavy action in Italy and incurred significant losses. But they also experienced some victories, including the liberation of Bologna in 1945. Jan drank up stories of their heroism like a man dying of thirst yearns for water. He could not get enough of their exploits, and he desperately desired to join their ranks. These soldiers knew that the success of the Zionist enterprise was dependent on boys like Jan helping them build the new Jewish state, so they were happy to oblige. Jan too wanted to become a Jewish warrior. A few of them took a real liking to Jan, and he was captivated by their stories of battle. He also wanted a taste of revenge for all the people who had been lost.
Jan continued to marvel at the notion that there were Jews who were not afraid to fight. There were Jews who could acquire the arms and the means necessary to defeat their enemies. He knew he wanted to be one of them, and that he would do everything he could to help defend his people in Palestine. The soldiers admired his tenacity and will to carry on after all he had been through. His will and desire exceeded that of the other survivors in the group. Most of them, even the younger ones, had significant injuries. All of them were scarred emotionally, and were in need of serious pastoral support. The good news was that some of them looked like their bodies were coming back to life. It was an amazing thing, the human body. The unspeakable abuse and deprivation they’d suffered should have left even the strongest physical specimens broken down forever. Some of the survivors had lost fingers and toes to frostbite. Others were recovering from cholera and other diseases that ran rampant in the camps. One man was blind in one eye from blows he received by a Nazi guard. Another walked with a pronounced limp courtesy of a beating with a shovel by one of his cruel overseers. It was unlikely their minds would ever really work properly again after what they had been through. Nevertheless, the members of the Jewish Brigade were thoroughly amazed that the bodies of these once frail walking corpses were coming back to life just as the biblical Ezekiel once imagined. And so long as there was a breath left in their bodies, they were coming home.
Heading home, in this case, meant one more leg of the journey. They had come a long way to get from Amsterdam to Thessaloniki. It was in that Greek port city where they would board the ship that would bring them to Palestine. The Brigade had been disassembled, but these Palestinian Jewish men recognized the value of their old British uniforms and found that they opened many doors now throughout the occupied Allied zones of Europe. The irony of their representation was not lost on them. On one hand, their star conveyed a belonging to the most vulnerable and abandoned group of people in Europe’s dubious history. On the other hand, representing Her Majesty’s Armed Forces meant that they belonged to the world’s most powerful force, the victorious Allied Army. They were in a very unique position to complete a task that virtually no one else in Europe could or wanted to do. They could move freely from country to country, gather Jews wherever they could find them, and bring them back to Palestine.
This particular mission had culled together 372 Jews ranging from age twelve to fifty. The twelve-year-old looked like a man three times his age. A man of thirty could have passed for a grandfather. The last few years had aged these survivors by decades. Every hope and dream they had ever had had been dashed. Not one of them, as far as they knew, had any family left to speak of. All of them were impoverished beyond imagination. But perhaps for the first time in their lives, because of their Jewishness, there were people who wanted to help them. People who wanted nothing more than to bring them home, to give them a new life and to help them build a country.
It was in the late afternoon when 372 souls gathered together around tables filled with fresh fruit, breads, olives, and cheese. A Brigade member called Uri briefed the whole group for the first time. Uri was a proud thirty-year-old sabra with golden brown hair and movie-star looks. His muscular appearance and perfectly pressed khaki uniform conveyed an air of self-confidence and pride. Uri had been to Poland and knew all about the camps and the ghettoes. He knew what these Jews had suffered, but he also knew that if they were to have any future at all, they needed to pay careful attention to every detail that came out of his mouth.
Uri was prepared to offer the survivors a vision of hope they had not seen in many years, and probably never thought they would ever see again. He would describe for them the opportunities and freedom that awaited them in Palestine. Their faces would light up after every sentence he uttered. What he would not tell them was that there was no guarantee they would even make it to Palestine. He would not inform them that British patrols were doing everything they could to thwart their mission. He would not tell them that the ship they were boarding was old and unreliable. He would not share how much luck was required for the crew to navigate it safely to the Bay of Haifa. And he would not tell them that if they were captured by the British, they would end up in detention camps on the island of Cyprus. Instead, he would tell them only what he hoped for. He hoped for a miracle. He hoped that their mission would succeed where so many others had failed.
Uri’s briefing was succinct. He spoke gently but sternly. He was in no mood to waste time, but he knew who he was talking to and what they had been through. “Shalom, my friends,” he began matter-of-factly.
“Tomorrow you will take your first steps back home,” he began with his voice beginning to reflect some color and emotion. “Together, we will begin to rebuild the lives that have been taken from you and put back together the pieces of our people that the Nazis tried to destroy. I know you have all lost much, but you also will be among the first to show the world that the Jewish people will never be destroyed. We will never give up, and we are now reestablishing our ancient homeland. You will all be part of this miracle. Now go get some rest, greet each other, and prepare yourselves for your journey to Eretz Yisrael, the ‘Land of Israel.’”
The crowd began to cheer and clap, and after several moments of applause, a few people began to sing together the Zionist anthem “Hatikvah.” When it was over, the rejuvenated crowd began to disperse. They spread out leisurely throughout the empty interior of the warehouse. A sense of hope pervaded the space, and everyone’s thoughts were focused on a successful journey to Palestine.
Uri, however, was not so sure. He had succeeded in keeping from them the truth about the British patrols and the dangers of travel with such an old vessel. For now, let them be hopeful, Uri thought. They would need all the strength they could muster in the coming days. Hope was good for morale. There would be plenty of time later to worry about the dangers that they might encounter at any moment of their journey.
As Jan sat down on an unoccupied cot, he said hello to a young man sprawled out on the cot beside him. The other man responded in kind, and from the sound of his accent, Jan assumed he was Pole. He extended his hand and smiled.
“I’m Jan, from Amsterdam. Or at least that’s where. . .”
“I know what you mean. I’m Yitzchak. I’m also now from nowhere,” the amiable young Pole replied.
There was an understanding amongst the survivors. They didn’t need to ask certain questions. They already knew the answers. They didn’t need to ask if you had any family left, or whether you were in a camp, or how often you were beaten. They already knew you had been starved, frozen, humiliated, and had everything you had ever been taught about basic human decency disproven. They didn’t need to ask how you survived. They didn’t want to hear how you evaded the gas chamber or typhus or a bullet. They didn’t need to look into your eyes to see that human emotion would never be the same for you again. No one wanted to discuss the things that no human should ever discuss. But for Jan, there was one thing he and Yitzchak could talk about that those who were slaughtered in the ghettoes and the camps could never allow themselves to contemplate. There was one question that could now, after all that had happened, be asked in the most genuine manner.
“What do you know about Palestine?”