(FROM “FEBRUARY 1946,” A POEM BY MICHAEL ESHBAL, 1946)
The year had come to an end, and 1946 was looming. Few of Jerusalem’s Jews recognized New Year’s Eve—or Sylvester’s Day, as it was called locally—but Shoshana and I decided to celebrate the way we had in Belarus, where the New Year was welcomed with banquets and dances. We spent a romantic evening at Café Wien on Jaffa Street, not far from Café Pinsk.
Sitting at a small table, lit by a candle in the center, I felt myself sinking into Shoshana’s large green eyes as I gently caressed her hand. She placed her watch on the table.
“We have to kiss at exactly midnight,” she said, blushing slightly.
When midnight came, Shoshana kissed me on the lips. Desire welled up inside me as her tongue slipped into my mouth, but I remembered Brigita Shlaufer’s insistence that I let Shoshana take the lead. Her kiss was long and passionate, and when she finally broke away, she gazed tenderly into my eyes and said, “I love you very much.”
I longed for her to take me to her bed, but when we stopped in front of her apartment, she gave me another long kiss and said, “I had a wonderful evening. Thank you.”
Despite the elegant dinner and Shoshana’s company, after I went to bed that night, I couldn’t sleep. Shoshana’s kiss had been wonderful, but it was difficult not to want more. Shoshana was the woman I loved, the woman meant for me. I pushed the desire from my mind and turned my thoughts to other matters.
As I lay staring at the ceiling, missing Shoshana, my thoughts drifted to more existential things. Was I truly at the helm of my life and steering its course? Or had I become some kind of machine following a predetermined path? Perhaps Brigita could help me see more clearly. And with that on my mind, I drifted off to sleep.
TUESDAY CAME, AND WITH IT, breakfast with Avrum and Hannah. As usual, Avrum left the women in the kitchen and ushered me into his study.
“David,” he said, “I’m so discouraged. The British are becoming increasingly hateful toward the Jews. Sergeant Perry is no longer content with simply tracking down and arresting underground members. His hatred for Jews is starting to consume him. He’s saying things like ‘It’s a shame Hitler didn’t wipe out all the Jews before the war ended.’ And making sick remarks like ‘All of them should be put into concentration camps, except the young women, whom we should keep for ourselves.’ And it’s not just him. It was wrong to believe cooperation between the Haganah and the British could work. Let’s call it off.”
I was happy to learn of this change in attitude, but I thought to agree too readily might seem suspicious. Instead of voicing my satisfaction, I hedged a bit.
“Avrum,” I said, “while I agree with what you’re saying, you’re putting me in a very difficult position. I’ve put a lot of effort into developing a relationship with Yaakov and the Haganah.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I’ve thought about that too, and I’ll try to make up for my mistake by getting you some information Yaakov can use that has nothing to do with getting along with the British.”
“Great,” I said. “If you hear anything that’s urgent, come find me at Café Pinsk.”
We went back to the kitchen and ate breakfast, and when Hannah went to the sink with the dishes, she turned to me and mouthed the word “tomorrow.” I nodded my head slightly.
When I returned the next morning, Hannah opened the door with tears in her eyes. “I think about being with you all week long,” she said. “Let’s go back to twice a week—please? And I want us to go away together, somewhere out of the city. I can arrange an alibi with a friend.”
“Hannah,” I said after a short pause, “you have to remember that you’re a married woman and that I have a girlfriend I care about deeply. We must keep things as they are.”
“I thought I could do this at first,” she responded, her words broken by sobs, “but I’ve fallen in love with you.”
“We have two options, Hannah. We either keep things as they are or break it off completely.”
Her sobs intensified. “I can’t even imagine not seeing you anymore. Our relationship is the most important thing in my life.”
I reassured her that I cared about her too and wanted to continue seeing her, and we went to bed. But it felt different. It wasn’t fun anymore; it had become a liability. I lay there pondering how to get out of this mess without hurting Hannah too badly.
As I began my shift at Café Pinsk that evening, Avrum walked in and asked to talk to me in private. “He’s a friend who needs a favor,” I said to Max, who waved me off like he was shooing away a mosquito. Avrum and I stepped outside.
“My boss told me that Sergeant Perry is planning a major operation aimed at all the underground organizations, including the Haganah,” Avrum said. “And Perry will be leading these raids himself. He may not be a high-ranking officer, but he’s been incredibly successful. He must have informants feeding him intelligence.”
“This is huge,” I said. “I’ll pass it on immediately. You know anything else about him?”
“He looks like something out of a Goebbels poster with his blond hair and blue eyes. Except for his ears. It looks like he’s got a couple of mug handles stuck to the sides of his head.”
My mind was made up. Sergeant Perry would be my next target. I’d tell Avrum that I’d passed on the information to Yaakov Dover, and Avrum would think the Haganah was responsible for the assassination. And even if he were to suspect me, he wouldn’t dare say a word, since he had provided the information.
I SHOWED UP FOR MY appointment with Brigita Shlaufer as scheduled. She greeted me with a friendly smile and offered me a cup of tea. As we sipped our drinks, she asked about my life in the ghetto and with the partisans and about my relationship with my parents.
I felt somewhat reluctant to talk openly, but I managed to share a little. After a short while, she tapped the pencil she held on the notebook in her lap and leaned forward slightly.
“Your life until now has not been easy. I think outwardly you wanted to play a part in the war effort against the Germans, and the deep driving force was your desire for revenge.”
I thought her conclusion rang true, even though I had left out the explicit acts of vengeance I had participated in against the Germans and their collaborators.
She paused for a moment and then asked me, “With the situation in this land today, do you feel driven to fight the British, to kill their soldiers and policemen?”
“All I want to do right now is rest for a while,” I said.
She didn’t say a word but fixed me with a look that clearly suggested she didn’t believe me.
When I stood up to leave, I offered to pay her for the time she was devoting to Shoshana and me. She said she was simply trying to help and didn’t want any payment, but Hannah had told me she was a single woman who didn’t earn much money. I pulled a five-hundred-mil banknote from my pocket. “I’d feel better if I paid you,” I said. She hesitated briefly before taking the money, and we scheduled another appointment for the following week.
As I walked home, I thought back on the events I had yet to tell her about.
In March 1944, with the Germans retreating westward, the Russian army was advancing and had reached the borders of Romania. By the end of June, our group of partisans could hear the thunder of Russian artillery. Focused on killing as many German soldiers as possible, by any means necessary, we didn’t tackle them head-on but rather picked off straggling units as they retreated. We ended up killing close to a hundred German soldiers in this way.
The Russians liberated Minsk on July 3, 1944. We hastened to the ghetto, but all we found were ruins, along with thirteen survivors sheltered by a man named Pinchas Dubin in underground hideouts.
We had lost four men and two women in our battles with the Germans, and our group now numbered twenty-eight fighters. Almost all our loved ones had perished. We decided unanimously that we would turn our sights on the collaborators in a campaign of revenge against the Belarusians, Lithuanians, and others who had helped the Nazis massacre our people.
Our first target was a Lithuanian auxiliary battalion that had killed more than thirty thousand Jews around Minsk, but they had already fled. Instead, we moved on to the Belarusian police force that had helped the Germans patrol the ghetto. Based on the names we uncovered, we tracked down and killed thirty policemen. We also assassinated Belarusian villagers who had murdered Jews or turned them in to the Germans.
It was during this time that we learned about the Belarusian warlord Nikolai Petrov. Feared by many, he was known as Nikolai the Butcher. During the war, his mercenaries had stolen vast amounts of Jewish property, but he hadn’t been afraid to get his own hands dirty, joining raids and personally killing entire Jewish families.
Our group of partisans had grown weary in recent days. When Alec and I brought up the subject of Nikolai Petrov, the men agreed to do it, but several said this would be their last mission. Others joined in, and all at once, I realized that I, too, was ready for my own personal war to be over.
Alec didn’t say much during the discussion that followed. He remained silent when we decided that this monster would be the target of our final operation. He didn’t protest and agreed that if successful, we would divide the spoils among all of us evenly and go our separate ways, in an effort to finally begin our lives again.
Alec made a deal with Nikolai’s brother-in-law to sell them a large stockpile of weapons and ammunition that we had taken from the German army. The arrangement was to bring the arms to Nikolai’s estate and make a deal. Nikolai lived in a luxurious house with expensive furniture, and even in this time of famine, we were told he had a private chef.
With a well-placed bribe, we acquired vital information about the layout of his property and the positions of the armed security guards who protected it. When it was time to meet, Alec and three other partisans made their way to the gate with bags containing the promised armaments. The rest of our group waited nearby. When the four partisans reached the gate, they struck up a conversation with the guard and two individuals who had arrived to usher them in.
While they were talking, Alec and his men drew knives and killed the three men with barely a struggle. They signaled to us, and we joined them, slipping through the gate. Our partisans went methodically to the positions of each guard, picking them off one by one. Alec and I headed for Nikolai’s residential wing, killing two guards along the way.
We burst into Nikolai’s dining room, where he was having dinner. I took out the head of his security detail with a burst from my machine gun and then turned to Nikolai.
“I know where your vault is,” I said. “If you don’t open it, I promise you a slow and torturous death.”
Nikolai was a bastard, but he wasn’t a fool. He looked at me and Alec. “Come with me,” he said. Alec and I walked right behind him, with my gun stuck in his back. He led us to an adjacent room, moved a cabinet aside, and opened the vault door.
I knew that Nikolai had robbed and murdered extensively, yet I was stunned to see the vast contents of his vault: jewelry, diamonds, banknotes—primarily US dollars and Swiss francs—and gold coins. As we stared at the pile of loot, Nikolai made his move—he grabbed the barrel of the machine gun I held and tried to wrestle it from my hands. Alec instantly shot him dead.
Our crew had managed to take out all the guards, but we’d lost two men during the assault. The survivors assembled in the dining room, and I divided up the treasure. Alec was guarding the hallway, so I took his share for him.
When we left the estate, I turned to my men, knowing what I was about to say wouldn’t be easy. “My brothers,” I began, “our mission is complete, and it’s time to go our own ways. I plan to leave this cursed land and go live in Jerusalem to help our brothers and sisters there build an independent Jewish state. It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve alongside all of you. I hope we meet again under happier circumstances.”
We buried our two dead and prayed for their souls. A quick embrace brought the years we had fought together to an end, and our group began to disperse.
Alec came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “I want to immigrate to Israel too, but I have unfinished business here. If I make it, I will look for you.”
I understood what he meant—he hadn’t finished exacting his revenge. I wished him luck, and we embraced. “I hope to see you in Israel,” I said.
He walked a few steps and then stopped, looked back over one shoulder, and saluted me. Something tightened in my chest. Pushing away the sentimental reaction, I nevertheless smiled and returned his salute, and then I quickly turned away to face my next task.
I walked over to Misha, Leah’s brother. He sat against the wall, brooding, stroking the barrel of his rifle. He had no doubt overheard my conversation with Alec.
“Do you want to join me?” I asked.
Misha remained silent and then finally began to speak, still staring down at his gun. “David, before we part ways, there is something that has troubled me for a long time that I must get off of my chest.” He paused, and then his blue eyes flashed up at me. “I’m angry that you didn’t protect Leah.”
I met his gaze without flinching. Of course, I had suspected he felt this way, but it was hard to hear it spoken aloud, since I blamed myself for Leah’s death. His next words seemed to echo my thoughts and surprised me.
“I don’t blame you for her death,” he went on, “but you were there, and you survived. Leah was the only family I had left. While we were fighting the Nazis, I could push it all down, but now I want you to know that I don’t ever want to see you again.”
I nodded, unable to speak for a moment. “I wish you luck” was all that I could manage to say. I had never told anyone exactly what happened when Leah was killed, and to do so at that moment would have sounded like an excuse and probably made matters worse. He didn’t respond, simply stood and walked away.
With the fighting over, the Russians occupied Minsk, and the Communist regime of the Soviet Union regained control over the region. They bulldozed all signs of Jewish life in the city, including the synagogues and rabbinical seminaries. I wanted to get out of there, and the sooner the better, but before I could make my way to Israel through Western Europe, I had to wait until the Germans were completely defeated. Leaving the war behind would mean leaving everything I had ever known behind as well, but I had a new goal, and I was eager to start working toward it.
Getting to Israel was not easy. I planned to make my way through Poland to Germany’s displaced persons camps. I had heard that the Jewish community in Israel was trying to bring Jews from these camps to their ancestral homeland, despite the objections of the British.
I reached Lublin, Poland, in August 1944, just weeks after the Russians had invaded. All I carried was a knapsack filled with my share of the spoils from Nikolai’s vault, a commando knife, and the Russian pistol my father had given me on the day we’d said goodbye. It was the only tangible memento I had from him.
I was in much better physical and mental condition than most of the Jews I encountered on the way to Poland. Those poor Jews, survivors of death camps, most of whom had lost their entire families, were stricken with hunger and illness, and their spirits were shattered. Society—the Germans’ perversion of it, at least—had completely broken down, and brigands were everywhere. But they left me alone, perhaps preferring easier targets. Once in the city, I used some of my newfound wealth to rent an apartment with three young Jewish men.
In January 1945, the Russian army reached Krakow. My three roommates and I left Lublin and made our way to that city, where we rented another apartment together. One day, I noticed a woman wrapped in a shabby blue coat, standing on the street and crying. She looked about forty years old and was short and thin, with brown hair that was starting to gray.
“Can I help you?” I asked her in Russian.
She sobbed louder. “No one will help me,” she said in broken Russian. “I’m a Jew.”
“I’m a Jew too. My name is David,” I said in Yiddish. Her eyes widened. An able-bodied, well-nourished, and well-dressed Jew was not a common sight.
“I’m Nelka,” she said. “I returned here just a few days ago, after spending several months at the Auschwitz death camp. When the Germans fled, they took with them any Jews still alive, with the intention of killing them elsewhere. I’m one of the very few who managed to escape. My husband and two children were murdered in the gas chambers.” Her face contorted for a moment, and I looked away. Her story was one I had heard many times before. She regained her composure and went on, her voice trembling.
“We had a beautiful apartment here in Krakow before the war. When I went to the apartment yesterday, a young Polish couple was living there. I told them that the apartment used to be mine and asked if I could spend a few nights there, as I was homeless.” Her lower lip began to quiver. “The woman yelled at me, ‘Beat it, dirty Jew!’ Her husband said it was a shame the Germans didn’t kill us all; then he said he was going to get an ax to kill me himself.”
I asked her to point out the apartment to me.
“What for?” she asked.
“Maybe I can do something to help you,” I said.
She hesitated for a moment and said, “You look like a strong young man. Perhaps they’ll have more respect for you than for a weeping Jewish woman.”
She showed me her building and pointed out her apartment, which faced the street. I convinced her to come with me to my apartment to get warm. There I introduced her to my roommates and told her to wait for my return.
I walked back to the building Nelka had shown me and knocked on the door of her apartment. “Do you understand Russian?” I asked the man who answered.
“Yes,” he said, “but I have no use for Russians. I suggest you get out of here before I beat you bloody.”
“This apartment belongs to Jews who lived here before the war,” I began, and as he picked up an ax from behind the door, I kicked him in the knee. He crumpled to the floor.
Before he could get up, I drew my pistol and fired at him twice. He fell dead on the floor. His wife came running from the kitchen with a big knife, shouting hysterically, “I’ll kill you, filthy Jew!” I shot her too.
I stared down at the two, feeling little, except perhaps a sense of justice for Nelka and others like her. After a moment, I roused and went through the man’s pockets. I found a set of keys and left the apartment, locking the door behind me.
As I walked down the stairs, I thought about what I would do with the two dead bodies. I headed around the back of the building and, surveying the backyard, decided I could bury them there. I planned to come back that night with a shovel.
When I returned to my apartment, Nelka ran to me as soon as I walked in the door. “Where have you been?” she asked, her eyes wide with fright.
“I had a long talk with the couple who chased you away,” I said. “I told them you have connections with the police and that they’ll be showing up there tomorrow to force them out. It seemed to scare them, so I offered to pay for their move if they left willingly. They agreed and asked for two days to get packed. You can stay with us until then.”
Nelka’s face lit up, and she hugged me. “It’s a miracle, and you are a real angel! I hope I can repay you one day. After all I’ve been through, I didn’t think I’d ever meet someone like you.”
That night, I returned to Nelka’s apartment with a shovel to bury the bodies, but when I approached the building, I spotted a Russian-made ZIS truck parked on the street and changed my mind. During my three years as a partisan, I had taught myself to drive using stolen German vehicles and had become an expert at hot-wiring them.
I opened the truck’s door and leaned under the steering wheel to cut and strip the wires. In a matter of moments, I got the vehicle running. I moved the truck to the front of the building and went up to Nelka’s apartment. I wrapped each of the corpses in a rug, tied them with rope, and loaded them into the truck. I also grabbed four large bricks from the courtyard.
From there, I drove to the Vistula River. It was late at night, and the riverbank was deserted. I stuffed two heavy bricks into each roll of carpet and threw the bodies into the river. Then I drove back to Nelka’s neighborhood, parked the truck a few blocks from her apartment, let myself back into her place, and cleaned up the bloodstains. I got home just in time to go to bed for an hour.
When I got up in the morning, Nelka served me a breakfast of bread and margarine. She was giddy with anticipation. After she’d spent another day with us, I offered to escort her back to her old home.
When she stepped inside, there were tears in her eyes. After checking every room, she landed in the kitchen. “Apparently, the couple living here weren’t such bad people after all,” she said. “Look how much food they left for me. Thank you so much for convincing them to leave.” Then she added, “I have an idea. Why don’t you and your friends move in with me? This is a much larger and more comfortable place than the one you’re living in now, and you’d save on rent. I’ll cook for you too.”
“That would be wonderful,” I said. “And if someone asks about the couple who used to live here, just say you paid them to move out.”
This was the beginning of a quiet and peaceful period in my life. Nelka was a wonderful cook, somehow managing to make the powdered eggs and turnips that we subsisted on palatable. But I had no intention of staying in Poland or even in Europe. I wanted to leave this cursed continent as soon as I could and begin again in Jerusalem.
I MET BRIGITA FOR MY second session two weeks later, over another cup of tea. She asked me to tell her about my experiences following the Russians’ recapture of Minsk, and I decided to answer her in detail. She listened without saying a word, but I could see the astonishment on her face.
“I’m troubled by all the killing,” she said. “You grew up in a warm home, with loving parents, and all of a sudden you and your family were treated like animals, hunted and persecuted by the Germans. Survival in a world like that requires that you fight back. The barbarism of the Germans caused many to lose all semblance of humanity and morality.”
I didn’t respond, and she continued. “You perceived your vengeance as justice for your loved ones, and meting out that justice diminished the intensity of the anger and frustration you felt as a result of your helplessness. You proved to yourself and to the Germans that you could rain down pain and suffering on them just as they had done to the people you cherished. The question is, do you want to continue living this way? Vengeance can become an obsession, a way of life. Are you still fighting?”
“All I want to do these days is rest,” I said.
I could tell from the look on her face that she wasn’t convinced. After a few moments of thought, she said, “The British have no desire to kill us merely for being Jews. They want to keep control, and so they oppose a national home for the Jewish people and they arrest those who interfere with their regime. But this is nothing like what happened under the Nazis. You must have heard about that sniper who injured three British soldiers at the Schneller Barracks a few weeks ago. I’m not a pacifist, and I can understand the need to fight one’s enemies, but we have to preserve our morality too.
“I adamantly oppose that sniper’s actions, because it’s clear to me that those three soldiers were injured only because they happened to be there, not because they did something that warranted the attacks upon them. On the other hand, this Officer Greene who was recently killed on the street had a reputation for cruelty against the underground. If you do join the underground and want to live with your conscience, my advice to you is to target only those who harm Jews and to kill only when it is an operational necessity.”
Her powers of perception were unnerving. For a moment, I imagined she could hear exactly what I was thinking and see what I had done in the past.
“Thank you for your advice,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster. “I’ll do some thinking, and I’ll be in touch with you again soon.”
As I walked home, I thought about what she had said. Anyone who hadn’t lived through the hell that my friends and I had endured would have a hard time understanding our feelings. But Brigita seemed unusually wise, and I decided to take her advice and be even more discriminating with my targets. Fortunately, Sergeant Perry fit her rules perfectly. But I had yet to locate him and was feeling frustrated. I mulled over my options.
IT HARDLY EVER SNOWED IN Jerusalem, but on February 17, 1946, snow blanketed the city, covering the roads, trees, and rooftops in thick white sheets and forcing the schools to close, much to the delight of the children. I went to the Cohens’ store that day, where I ran into a smartly dressed, auburn-haired woman. She didn’t have a particularly pretty face, but her provocative figure was most distracting.
After the woman had finished packing her shopping bag, Mr. Cohen said in a fatherly tone, “Be careful not to slip on your way home, Sarah.”
I smiled at her. “He must like you,” I said. “Mr. Cohen has never shown the slightest bit of concern for my safety.” She looked right through me and left the store.
“Hey, Don Juan!” Mrs. Cohen barked. “You flirt with every woman you meet in here, but I suggest you leave her alone. Her boyfriend is a big shot in the CID, and you may get more than you bargained for.”
I took a second to realize what she was saying, but once it clicked, I mumbled an excuse about leaving the heater on and raced out the door with my shopping basket still on the counter. When I got down the front steps, I saw Sarah strolling up Zephaniah Street.
I followed at a quick pace but kept some distance so she wouldn’t notice me. She turned left onto Amos Street, and I watched her go into a building about one hundred yards from the corner. I crossed the street and then stopped, making a show of shuffling through my wallet while actually keeping an eye on her building. After a few minutes, I saw Sarah open the curtains of one of the windows on the second floor.
My heart filled with joy. I had just been given a gift from heaven. Finally, I had gotten a break. I could now start planning my next course of action.