THE MEN HAD talked at first, the irrepressible chatter of the terrified, but that had long since fallen off as the minutes turned into hours. Abel said little, not even his name. His name was more dangerous than being a Jew and that was what got him in the boxcar in the first place. That and some foolish choices.
But the choices weren’t only his. A young man named Herschel Grynszpan murdered a German official in Paris, not realizing the Nazis would take revenge. In truth, they were only waiting for an excuse and Grynszpan gave them a good one, but Abel never imagined it would be this bad. He didn’t think the SA would attack people in the street, drag them out of their beds and beat them, or arrest hundreds of men like himself and shove them into freezing cold boxcars, many without shoes or coats. No. He never imagined that.
The old man beside him patted his knee and said in soothing tones, “We will be there soon.” He said that every few minutes, whether it was for Abel’s benefit or his own Abel didn’t know, but there was such kindness in his voice that Abel got a pang in his chest each time he said it.
“Yes,” said Abel, but he didn’t think it would be an improvement. People came back from Dachau, but when they did, they weren’t the same as when they went in.
He and the old man were huddled up with fifty other men wondering what would happen next. The only options seemed to be terrible or horrific. If only he hadn’t come back to Vienna. If only he’d stayed in his flat. If only he had listened. If only he had believed. It could’ve been different. He could’ve gotten away.
Instead, he’d dropped off his clients, Stella and Nicky Lawrence, at their hotel, gone to his shop, and begun answering the correspondence that had piled up in the two months of his absence. Without any inkling of what was about to happen, he’d gone to bed in his little flat above the shop only to be woken up a short time later by his maid, Lettie, on the telephone.
“Oh, Mr. Herschmann, you are there. How I hoped you wouldn’t be,” she said in a rush, her strong Slavic accent muddling her words.
“What is it, Lettie?” It paid to be calm with Lettie. She got excited by a late milk delivery.
“They’re coming. Now. Now. Now.”
“Who is coming?”
“The brown shirts. You must go now. Hide.”
Abel sat on the edge of his bed with the heavy black receiver in his hand, unable to think.
“Mr. Herschmann. Mr. Herschmann. Are you there?”
“Yes, Lettie.”
“You must go. Hide.”
“Why?” he asked sounding thick-headed and none too bright. “What are they doing?”
“They’ve set fire to your churches and they are arresting men. They are beating them. Come here. We keep you safe.”
The thought of his little Bulgarian maid fending off the SA brought him to his senses.
“Lettie, it’s all right. I’ll be fine,” Abel said, but he was already up and getting dressed. “It’s Albert’s shop. We changed the sign, the deed, everything.”
“You think they are stupid?” she asked, her accent growing stronger.
“Not exactly.”
“They came to the shop looking for you. Mr. Moore, he tells them that you are traveling, but they don’t believe him.”
“Who came? When?”
“The other ones. The ones in black.”
The SS.
Abel slipped on his shoes. “When was that?”
“Last week. Mr. Herschmann, you must go. They were very angry. They know your name. You’re not just another Jew.”
Not just another Jew. Lettie was more right than she knew. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.”
“You come here.”
“Thank you, Lettie. I appreciate it.” He hung up and tied his shoes. Was Lettie right? Did he have to go? When the SS were told that he wasn’t there, he really wasn’t and not due to return for weeks. He hadn’t contacted anyone about going home to Vienna instead of Greece, not even his business partner, Albert Moore, whose Aryan name was painted over the shop’s door. But the Dutch historian, Dr. Van Wijk, had seen him on the train with Stella and Nicky, and Van Wijk was rumored to be working for the SS. He may have already informed them that Abel was back in Vienna.
He went to the window and peered out to find his street quiet. Some windows were lit up, but there were certainly no torches or pitchforks parading down the street and there wasn’t much reason to target his area. Mainly gentiles lived and worked there with just a handful of Jewish shops and homes. Maybe it was fine.
But then he caught a glimpse of light far off to the right, a faint glow over a rooftop. Abel opened the window and leaned out. As soon as he did, he smelled a hint of smoke. The fire wasn’t close. That was good. It probably wouldn’t reach the shop.
He waited, listening for the sound of sirens. None came, but screams did. Across the street, his neighbor Mr. Nelböck leered out at him between lace curtains. The gruff old man was a bastard on the best of days. He’d welcomed the annexation of Austria and the loss of their independence with unrestrained joy, but he’d never said a word to Abel about it.
Mr. Nelböck wasn’t content to stay silent for long. Lit by a dim streetlamp, he leaned out of his window, waving a hideous Nazi flag and pointing a plump finger at Abel, who he barely knew. “Now it’s your turn, you fucking Jew chiseler!”
Abel went icy with shock. What turn was he supposed to be having? Mr. Nelböck imported fine French cheese and wine. As a historian and travel guide, Abel was hardly in competition with the man.
He reached up to close the window as Mr. Nelböck began screaming obscenities with his red-faced wife trying to drag him away. Abel slammed the window and locked it with a loud metallic snap as if that could keep hatred out. He had to go. No doubt now.
And that was when his foolishness took hold. He had three choices as he saw it. Lettie was too far away so that left Albert, Stella and Nicky, and Ho Feng Shan, the Chinese consul general. Ho was a lovely man, who looked upon the annexation with horror and the Nazis, in general, with growing trepidation. He would let Abel into the consul. The two men had become good friends after crossing paths at the Café Central. He was the first to suggest that Abel take steps to protect the business by transferring his half to Albert and putting his money in a Swiss bank account. But Ho was in the embassy district, nearly as far as Lettie.
Stella and Nicky were the closest. The young honeymooners were members of prominent families and Americans, as well. He could go to them. They were his friends and Stella, in particular, would certainly help him without a thought to her own safety.
Last was Albert, his business partner and closest friend. As the son of a British ambassador and a member of the nobility, Albert was untouchable, but he was farther from the shop than Stella and Nicky’s hotel. The possibilities raced through his mind. Distance, time, safety. Arrest, prison. Escape, success. Failure, loss. Albert or Stella?
He thought he could make it to Albert. On balance, it was worth the risk, just in case Dr. Van Wijk did tell the SS about Stella and Nicky. He didn’t know what would happen if he were found in their room. They could be arrested. If they touched Stella…no, it didn’t bear thinking about. Albert would be fine, even if he was found there. The SS wouldn’t dare harm him.
Abel threw on his coat and opened his dresser. In the false bottom of the third drawer he uncovered the diary written by his ancestor, Johannes Gutenberg, wrapped up tight in brown paper and string to disguise its worth. Besides the diary’s intrinsic value it also contained the inventor’s carefully guarded secret. The most famous German inventor had loved and married a Jew, Nissa, and she’d been instrumental to the invention of moveable type.
Abel’s family had begun to suspect that the Nazi hierarchy was aware of the diary’s existence and what it said. To Abel, Van Wijk’s presence on the train confirmed it. The last thing the Nazis would want was Gutenberg’s secret revealed. Gutenberg was a hero, proof of Germanic superiority. A Jew couldn’t be part of the greatest invention of all time. That didn’t fit the Nazi dogma and what didn’t fit must be destroyed.
Abel slipped on his coat and hesitated. Nothing was guaranteed. He might have to give the book to Albert or his doorman or some stranger if he were desperate. He grabbed his fountain pen and unscrewed the top. Greece or France? Paris was closer. His cousins, the Sorkines, would know how to act. Abel quickly scribbled their address on the brown paper and tucked the book into the interior pocket of his coat. He left behind his mother’s jewelry and his father’s precious books, taking only a wad of reichsmarks, his passport, his parents’ wedding photo slipped out of its silver frame, his favorite picture of Stella, and the diary.
Dashing out the back into the night, he’d made his way towards Albert’s flat using back alleys and neatly avoiding crowds of SA ruffians roaming the streets looking for hapless victims and randomly attacking shops and homes. The sound of breaking glass and screaming accompanied him everywhere. The smoke choked him and made his eyes burn. He couldn’t escape it, only ignore it as best he could. At one point, he nearly ran into a group chanting, “Burn it down! Burn it down!” in front of a synagogue and found himself cut off. It would be easier to go to Stella and Nicky, but he stubbornly stuck to his plan, taking extra time to go around the mob.
What had he been thinking? So foolish not to adapt to circumstances. Abel tugged at his pant legs, trying in vain to cover his frozen ankles. He wrapped his arms around himself and wondered if he hadn’t decided to stay on his chosen path would he be safe? And more importantly, would Stella be safe?
He almost couldn’t bear to think about her. Stella Bled Lawrence. In the last two months they’d become deep friends. He’d never known anyone quite like her. Although predictably young and pretty, Stella was nothing like the other women Abel knew, a curious combination of naive and knowledgeable that he found both intriguing and endearing. She was the one who insisted they come to Vienna, claiming that she wanted to see everything on her grand tour honeymoon, but something in her eyes told Abel there was more to it. That was why he’d agreed to go, even with all his misgivings. He wondered if he would ever know what Stella was up to. She wasn’t as flighty as she appeared and allowed others to believe. She was a Bled through and through, and Bleds were always up to something. He learned that from her Uncle Josiah.
Now, because he turned right when he could’ve turned around, he might never see her again. The thought pained him nearly as much as his head. Abel rubbed the side of his face where a jagged gash topped off a lump the size of a lemon. When he’d made his right turn, a ragtag group of young men had come out of the shadows and clubbed him with a brick. Stunned, he’d gone down on his knees, pressing the diary to his chest as they beat him, jeering gleefully at his pain. He managed to get the reichsmarks out of his pocket and toss them on the ground. His attackers fell on the money and Abel attempted to stagger away, but two of the younger men, boys really, noticed, throwing him to the ground and demanding his address and identification. He handed over his identity card and gave them the address of the Ministry of Justice.
So he’d avoided the SA, but ended up in the hands of a dimmed-witted mob who believed that he could possibly live on Museumstrasse and didn’t think to search him. The precious diary was safe for the moment as they herded him down the street past a group of men ransacking a clothing shop and a grocery. Eventually, they lost interest in him and gave him to a group of SA who already had fifteen prisoners and Abel was absorbed into the group. The boys tried to make off with his identity card, but the SA leader saw it in the hand of one of them. Abel held his breath, sure his name would be read and recognized, but the SA only ordered the boy to give it back to him for “accounting purposes.”
The would-be thief, a stocky boy of around seventeen with a broken front tooth and rancid breath hissed in his ear as he gave it back. “We’re going to steal all your furs and gold. You’ll have nothing. We’ll have everything. Which way to Museumstrasse?”
Abel pointed in a random direction, dumbfounded that they actually thought he had furs and gold. Nothing about him said that. He wasn’t even wearing a watch.
“Museumstrasse?” whispered a man next to him.
Abel shrugged.
“How stupid…”
“Shut up,” said the guard and cracked the man in the head with his rifle butt.
That man was now sitting slumped over on Abel’s right. It hadn’t stopped with one hit or with ten or twenty. The man, Abel didn’t know his name, had fought back, punching the guard in the throat. Rifles came out of nowhere and he went down in a flurry of kicks and butts to the head. It happened so fast, the way Abel imagined piranhas to attack in the rivers of South America. And he had stood there, watching, so shocked he stopped breathing. A guard pointed a rifle at him as a spray of blood went up, splattering the brown uniforms. “Do you have anything to say?”
Abel didn’t, to his everlasting shame. All he could see was the long dark grey barrel and thought, They are killing him. They will kill me.
When it was over, the man lay a bloody pulp in the road and the guards yelled at Abel and the other prisoners to pick him up. They silently obeyed and to Abel’s surprise the man wasn’t dead. He breathed in rasping, tight bursts, and Abel felt a little piece of his heart break. He should’ve done something, knowing all the while that he’d have ended up in the same condition and the diary lost.
After walking for what seemed like hours, they ended up at the Westbahnhof with hundreds of other prisoners. Then dawn came and the trains started coming. As soon as he heard the dreaded word Dachau, he knew there was no hope. The concentration camp was nothing if not organized. He would be cataloged and the diary discovered. He would’ve failed where fifteen generations of his family succeeded.
The beaten man was the first one in the boxcar, tossed in like garbage by the guards, angry that he hadn’t died. Abel tried to edge away from the line, looking for a place to run. A guard saw him looking and Abel readied himself for a terrible beating. But it didn’t come. The guard merely shook his head and indicated that he had to get in line. He did, but he kept looking. He could just run and take his chances. Maybe if he ran to the platform they wouldn’t shoot at him. The station was filled with people fleeing the violence, ordinary Austrians and foreigners. He had a few coins in his pockets. Maybe he could get someone to post the diary to Paris. He couldn’t take it to Dachau. Hope didn’t live there.
His eyes roamed over the crowd, readying himself and looking for the best place to run. He would die in the attempt, of that he was certain. But there or Dachau, it made no difference. He made his peace with the prospect and that’s when his eyes found her. Stella, small and disheveled in her fur, standing on the platform next to Nicky, cool and aloof as always. There was someone else with them, but that person was hidden behind the broad-shouldered American. Nicky was talking to a conductor and pulled out his wallet. They were getting out of Vienna. They could take the diary. Abel tensed and Stella turned around. He froze. She saw him. He held his breath. Should he run? Now? Nicky stepped to the side and Abel saw their companion. Albert. Bloody. Wrecked. Barely able to stand. Stella was at the edge of the platform. He shook his head. No. He couldn’t do it. They’d hurt her. The diary be damned.
She jumped, landing hard on the gravel and running pell-mell toward him. No amount of head shaking could’ve stopped her. Stella Bled Lawrence wasn’t accustomed to the word no, but she was accustomed to love, loyalty, and getting her way. God help him. He gave her the book. If anyone could save it, it would be her.
It was done and couldn’t be undone. Abel spent hours thinking of what he should’ve chosen. Lettie, not Albert. Left, not right. He tortured himself as much as the cold tortured him. The other men were the same. There was talk of emigrating, of opportunities not taken. Most thought this madness was temporary. It couldn’t continue. How could it? The world would see what Hitler was doing and take a stand. Surely they would. Hope was still there. And if didn’t die in that boxcar, it wasn’t going to.
But not everyone felt the same way. One man panicked after the doors were bolted. He began screaming and ramming his head into the wall. They held him down, trying in vain to reassure him. When the train made the first of many stops, the man began screaming again, a high-pitched, wild shriek, and the guards pulled him out. Before they could plead for the bloody man who lay slumped next to Abel, the guards slammed the door shut. A shot rang out and the shrieking stopped. The men were silent as the train started again.
“Never ask for help,” said a gentle voice somewhere in the dark. “Be nothing. No one. If you want to survive.”
“How do you know?” asked another man. “Who are you?”
“I am nobody. Nothing. No one. But I will survive.”
Abel didn’t know how to be nothing. What was nothing? What did that look like?
Hours later, he still didn’t know. He was a man. He couldn’t let them think he was less than human, although it seemed they already believed that or they couldn’t have done what they had done.
“Are we slowing down?” someone asked.
“I hope not,” said someone else.
“How can you say that?”
One man cried softly, “We’re going to die.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“They’re going to kill us,” said another.
“No, they’re not. They’d have to explain what happened.”
“Do they? Who do they have to explain it to?”
“We have families.”
“As if they care,” said Nobody.
“Do you smell something?” said someone close to Abel.
“I smell shit.”
They all laughed, breaking the incredible tension.
“No, there’s something else,” said someone else after a minute. “What is that?”
No one answered, but Abel knew what it was. He’d gotten a whiff an hour before, not long after he’d heard a gulp and the man next to him shuddered for the last time. The body’s bowels had released, but that smell had only joined the rest of the stench for men had been urinating and defecating in the corners of the box car since their journey began. Abel was the only one close enough to sense the sticky pool spreading out across the rough wooden floor. No one else had wanted to sit next to what amounted to a corpse, so Abel volunteered. It seemed a good punishment for his folly.
“I smell it,” said another.
“Who farted?”
They all laughed again, but this time it was nervous laughter. The smell of death had begun to pervade the boxcar and they all knew it on instinct.
Quietly, the voice of Nobody asked, “Does anyone know his name?”
No one did. There were tears and prayers for the dead. Abel didn’t pray. His prayer was already answered. In the pitch black, he felt over the dead man’s chest and found in his pockets a couple of bills, a photo, and the all-important identity card.
I’m sorry, my friend. But your name can save me. I will use it well.
Abel put his own identity card, passport, and photos in the man’s pocket, kissing the photos before he tucked them away.
“We are slowing down,” said someone and they were. Up ahead the train’s whistle blew and the car jerked.
“Maybe it’s just another stop.”
“We have to get there sometime,” said Nobody.
“What will happen?”
“God knows.”
The train ground to a halt and, a few minutes later, an armed guard slid the door open. He squinted into the boxcar and made a face. “Mein Gott!”
Several guards gathered and Abel shielded his face from the beams of light from their Taschenlampen. They discussed the body in irritated Bavarian accents and then started yelling for the men to come out.
The prisoners stumbled into the darkness with rifles pointed at them. Any thoughts of making a run for it vanished as Abel stood at the door, grasping the wood to support himself, legs weak and stiff. He felt like a man of eighty-seven, not twenty-seven.
A guard screamed at him and he climbed down and then turned to help the old man. He probably wasn’t far off eighty-seven. Together they squinted at the small station with a sign that had “Dachau” painted in block letters on it.
“It really is Dachau,” someone behind them whispered. A murmur went through the group, spreading as the cars emptied their sad cargo. Abel realized some had held out hope that they weren’t really going to the infamous camp where Jakob Ehrlich died and where Alfred Haag the communist had been imprisoned for years. He, himself, had no such illusions. Dachau was where you went if you didn’t fit the Reich’s vision and, as Jews, they certainly didn’t.
“Get going. We don’t have all night,” yelled a guard and they began walking along an eight-foot-high masonry wall topped by barbed wire. Abel walked, supporting the old man, feeling as if he wasn’t really there. He wasn’t going into a prison when only twenty-four hours ago he’d been sitting on tufted cushions in first class with Stella and Nicky. Where were they now? Had they gotten away? His last glimpse had been of Stella’s agonized face as Nicky carried her off. The young American’s level head would get them away and they’d take care of poor Albert. He must’ve had some sort of accident. The Nazis wouldn’t dare attack him. That just wasn’t possible.
The old man’s legs buckled and Abel managed to keep him from going down, but a wave of dizziness came over him, blurring his vision. He hadn’t eaten in well over twenty-four hours, but he wasn’t really hungry. Fear sat in his stomach solid as a brick and taking up all the space.
“Thank you,” said the old man, his hazel eyes soft and dreamy with fatigue.
“We’re almost there.”
“Yes, but where is there?”
“Dachau,” said Abel. Perhaps he had lost his wits like the mad man on the train.
He squeezed Abel’s arm, nodding and becoming taller and stronger. “It was meant to be.”
The men stopped and clumped up as it was time to turn a corner. Being taller than everyone else, Abel could see that they were going around a curve, probably to a gate. The area wasn’t very large and obviously not designed to handle such a large influx of prisoners. He dared to look at the guards and found them looking but not seeing the men in front of them. Many were bloody or hobbling on frozen feet. A few were weeping. The guards took no notice, simply doing their jobs as they had been ordered to do. A conscience was not issued with the boots and uniform.
“What do you see?” asked the old man.
They came around the curve and Abel’s chest tightened. “A gate.”
“What is it? Why do you sound like that?”
“Arbeit macht frei,” said Abel, his voice growing hard with the words.
“What is this nonsense?”
“That’s what it says on the gate.”
The men around them read the sign and a collective shiver went through them.
“Work will set us free, eh?” asked one man. “I wonder when.”
“Who says the Nazis don’t have a sense of humor?”
“What kind of work? I’m a cobbler.”
“I’m a banker.”
“Painter.”
“Baker.”
“You’ll hammer nails into boards and like it,” said Nobody behind Abel.
“You are joking with us.”
“Damned if I am.”
“Why?” asked the banker.
“What’s the point?” asked the baker.
“Misery,” said Nobody.
None had an answer to that.
Abel squeezed through the narrow gate under the mocking words into a huge courtyard where men were lined up to go into a white-washed building to the right. On the left were rows of squat, narrow buildings.
“When do you think we can sit down?” asked the old man.
“A while yet. Don’t worry. I’ll help you. You won’t fall,” said Abel.
The old man leaned heavily on his arm and took Abel’s hand between his gnarled ones. “Your hands are very soft and elegant for a bricklayer, Adam.”
“What?” asked Abel.
The old man leaned farther into him. “Your name is Adam Stolowicki and you are from Warsaw. You were visiting your sister, Helena, in Vienna. I am Jakob Zack, her neighbor.”
Abel said nothing. He couldn’t think, only touch his chest where the identity card was concealed.
“You understand me, Adam?”
“Yes, Jakob.”
“Good. And do not forget you are a communist.”
“That’s not ideal.”
“It could be worse,” said Jakob.
“Really? How?”
“Let me think about that. First,” Jakob scratched vigorously at the back of his neck, “touch my neck.”
“I don’t…”
“Do as you are told, Adam.”
Abel slid his hand under Jakob’s heavy collar and felt the warmth of fresh blood. “You’re hurt.”
“Blood can conceal many things, can it not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fine soft hands of a teacher or doctor, for instance.”
Their eyes met again and Abel understood. Jacob would help him with his very blood.
“Let me see,” said Abel, looking at a broad gash and multiple cuts on the back of the old man’s head, pretending to tend them with a handkerchief that Jakob gave him. He got crusted and fresh blood on his pale, patrician hands and had to swallow down the agony that it cost him to do it.
“What happened?” asked a man behind them. “That is nasty.”
“I fell,” said Jakob.
“Backward?”
“And through a window.”
“I’d like to kill them,” said the man through gritted teeth.
“Maybe you’ll get your chance,” said Abel.
“You and I together,” he said, extending his hand. “Michael.”
“Adam.”
The men were separated from Michael into another line and Abel leaned over to Jakob. “It’s a big chance you’re taking. Why help me?”
“My son died here. I could do nothing for him. I can help you and you will live for him.”
“What was his name?”
“Leopold.”
“For Leopold then,” said Abel.
And Stella.