Chapter 8 – Aron: Will You Remember?

My Dearest Brother,

If this is a difficult letter for me to write, I can only imagine the agony of its receipt.

There is no easy way to convey this...

“You can’t possibly send that, you realize.” Sean lay on my bed, his golden curls propped on one bare arm.

The winter sunlight peeked meekly through the slatted blinds, lacking the brazenness of its summer compatriot. Given the chilly air, the heater would have been comforting, but it was difficult to find kerosene, so it remained unlit.

Sean padded over to me, barefoot and shivering slightly in the morning chill. He gently removed the pen from my hand, crumpled the letter into a tight ball, and threw it into the bin. He put his arms around me and kissed the back of my neck lightly.

“You don’t know anything yet,” he said. “You only suspect. By the time this letter reaches Samuel—if it ever even does reach him—Danuta may be sitting in this very room, writing her own letter to him. Let this resolve itself, before you intervene.” As his voice became more insistent, his Aussie twang became more grating than endearing.

Sean reached for his uniform. “I need to get to work. His Majesty’s Mandatory Government in Palestine, as you know, grinds to a halt in my absence. And yes, I won’t forget to leave through the back. We can’t have the neighbors talking—nor the Hagana leadership, for that matter. Consorting with the Mandate... what would they say?” He laughed lightly at this and kissed the back of my neck again, then asked if we could meet again that evening for drinks in the Armon Hotel bar, our usual spot.

Now smartly dressed in his khaki uniform, he came back across the room and took my face in his broad hands. “Tell me the truth.” He looked deep into my eyes, with just a hint of a twinkle in his own. “When you’re a senior minister-of-financial-drivel in the first independent Jewish State in 2000 years, in between finding funding to house droves of refugees and single-handedly holding off Arab hoards, will you still let me do that....”

It had been four months since we met, and he seemed to know me well. He was good-natured and gentle, beautiful, and wiser than me in many ways. He was also an officer in the British Army Recruitment Office in Jaffa, and a closet Zionist unafraid of bending the rules to help our cause.

As the door clicked closed behind him, I turned back to my desk and took out another sheet of paper to write to Samuel. I resolved to tell him what I knew, and then decide later whether to add the letter to the growing pile of unsent letters next to my desk, or actually to post this one.

And what did I know, exactly? News came to me secondhand, conveyed by Moshe, who’d settled in a small flat I arranged for him and worked in the Carmel market carrying crates of vegetables. He was part of the group of Polish Jews who’d traveled together from Soviet Lithuania to Palestine, by way of Istanbul.

Two days ago, as planned, I met the Bella-Chita, which arrived on time from Istanbul at the Haifa port.

It was a miserable, rainy day. Heavy clouds shrouded the grey Mediterranean, which had dropped its summer guise of friendly warmth and bared foam-flecked winter teeth. Waves smacked the concrete pier. The spray slowly soaked through my trousers, socks, and shoes as I watched the passengers disembark onto the rain-slick dock for over an hour, freezing under my wind-whipped umbrella.

Danuta was not among them. Fighting panic, I worked my way through the line of passengers, all Poles, questioning each until I found Moshe and his young son Daniel. They had been on the Vatan, the ship on which I’d booked Danuta from Sventoji, Lithuania to Istanbul. They had been witnesses to—and nearly the victims of—the treachery.

Not bothering to introduce myself, I drew them out of the long Jewish Agency processing line, promising to assist with all their bureaucratic details.

Moshe seemed convinced by my fluent Polish and Hebrew. When he read the name on my Palestine Police Force credentials, he gasped. “You are Aron Katz? Do you live at 8 Buki Ben Yagli Street, in Tel Aviv?”

We sat in the cramped conference room of the small Jewish Agency Haifa Port office. Three cups of tea steamed in glass cups between us. Moshe had a long equine face, topped by sad eyes that remained largely downcast when he spoke, as if either too travel-weary or ashamed to meet my own. He was traveling alone with his son, he said, and made no mention of the fate of his wife. He said they’d met Danuta in the Vilnius Central Train Station.

She had found them, in fact, approaching them unabashedly as they stood next to the information window in the crowded station, as instructed. “Are you my brave traveling companions to Palestine, then?” she chirped. She smiled at Moshe, introduced herself as Lea, and then bent to warmly shake Daniel’s hand and cup his smooth cheek with a chilly but tender hand.

The child had basked in the sudden feminine attention, smiling shyly yet sincerely.

It was just the three of them departing Vilnius that day, but they’d be joining a large group of Jewish emigrants in Kaunas. It was 8:30 a.m. and the train to Kaunas was scheduled for 9:05 a.m. By the time they settled into their hard-benched third class seats, Moshe conveyed with some joy, Daniel was deep in animated conversation with his new-found friend. Moshe watched incredulously as this gregarious boy, whom he had not seen for many months, miraculously emerged from his cocoon of grief. He’d smiled gratefully at Danuta over the boy’s head, and helped her with her bags when they arrived in Kaunas.

They found the Jewish Agency representative in Kaunas, a small man determinedly holding a discrete Star of David sign, around noon. At least a hundred other travelers had crowded around him, all asking questions at once, as he raised his hands for silence. Daniel clutched Danuta’s hand tightly in the crush, and Moshe rested one hand on the boy’s shoulder protectively. The Jewish Agency representative explained that their train to Sventoji would leave late that afternoon, and that they would arrive the following morning, just in time to embark on the small Turkish freighter on which they would spend the coming weeks en route to Istanbul.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the agency representative began, his small voice rising above the din of the station hall. “Ladies and gentlemen, please understand that our accommodations on the ship, as well as this evening’s train trip, are not exactly first class. I don’t have to explain to you that there is a war on, and that conditions—”

The man’s speech was abruptly cut off by a large apple core that flew from nowhere and struck him squarely between the eyes. A cheer arose from the group of young Lithuanian men just across the station hall. Calls of “Well done!” and “Serves the Jewish Communist right!” echoed among the group. A tense hush fell over the station.

A blue-uniformed policeman looked up from his newspaper, smiled conspiratorially, and turned ostentatiously away to study the cars pulling up to the curb.

“Why would we Jews ever want to leave Lithuania?” a lone female voice resounded across the station, filling the silence. It was, of course, Danuta’s. “Why indeed, when we are so clearly welcome here? But fear not, good people of Lithuania! Sleep soundly in your beds! For in our absence, your valiant youth—like the young heroes over there—will bravely defend you with discarded fruit if you are ever again threatened by vicious, unarmed women and children!”

The shocked silence that ensued was finally broken by a guffaw from the ticket seller’s window. Another laugh sounded from a woman with a baby carriage, followed by a nasal snort from a man sitting in the shoeshine stand. Within seconds, the entire hall was roaring derisively and pointing at the young perpetrators as they slunk away, with the policeman following close on their heels.

Two long days later, Moshe, Daniel, and Danuta lay ensconced deep in the rusting belly of the Vatan, a 4000-ton Turkish freighter hastily converted for passengers, and chartered by the Jewish Agency to convey the Kaunas refugees to Istanbul. Four hundred and seven Polish Jews crowded the cargo hold in narrow, three-tiered bunks, and the surly captain had initially confined them below decks. Following tough negotiations with him, though, and a sizable bribe collected from the passengers themselves, he grudgingly allowed them to roam the deck for six hours a day, weather permitting.

The sea was blessedly smooth. A freezing diesel-tinged wind clawed at the faces of the three travelers—who had been inseparable since their initial meeting in Vilnius—the moment they summited the winding spiral stairway that led up and out of the hold. Fighting this invisible tyranny, they pushed their way to the rail. Their gloved fingers clutched the corroded metal, and they marveled at the moonlight’s sparkling path to infinity, which spread below them on the flat sea. The thrum of the engines below created an illusion of warmth that traveled upward from the soles of their feet, but was arrested below knee-level by the reality of the December cold.

“Where does the path lead? The moon path?” Daniel’s small voice battled the wind and reached Danuta’s reddening ears only after a short delay.

She bent to share the child’s perspective. Her small hands covered his, and she marveled at how different it was to peek through the rail, instead of looking over it. “A child’s view of the world,” Moshe heard her whisper to herself, “so drastically confined, yet so incredibly focused because of it. Adults see so much more, yet are in wonder of so much less.”

She turned to the boy. “I think a moon path leads everyone to a different place, Daniel. That’s what’s so magic about them. They always take you exactly where you most need to go.”

A hoarse shout in Turkish sliced the icy air, cutting her off mid-sentence. In seconds, the vibration of the engines ceased, taking the illusory warmth in their feet with it. The eerie silence that ensued was broken with growing frequency and increasing urgency by whispers among the passengers. Long and tense minutes passed as the wind grew stronger, pulling more insistently at scarves and hats and whistling in ears.

Over the wind, a remote thrumming became audible, quickly growing closer. The ship appeared so quickly, and its searchlights flipped on with such cruel suddenness, that Moshe thought perhaps it had always been there, just waiting for the chance to show itself.

“This is the Captain of the Emden of the Kriegsmarine. Prepare to be boarded. Heil Hitler!” The harsh tone of the voice left little room for doubt even among those who didn’t understand German.

The passengers at the rail gasped collectively, blinded by the eye-searing searchlight and paralyzed with fear.

Danuta grabbed Daniel’s hand, shook Moshe’s shoulder roughly, and whispered to him urgently. “We need to hide. Now! And quietly.”

Moshe nodded. She led them quickly and inconspicuously away from the rail, away from the knot of passengers that now thronged the deck, away from the cloud of dread that hung so heavily over all their heads as to be nearly visible. They made their way toward the stern, and entered the first port they encountered.

Behind them, a voice in Turkish-accented English protested over a loudspeaker. “This is the Vatan. We fly the flag of Turkey, a neutral and non-belligerent nation. You have no legal right to—”

The gun’s roar made the three of them jump in such perfect synchronization that Danuta choked back a laugh. She turned to smile at Daniel. “We could go into the circus with an act like that, could we not?”

They followed her ever deeper into the ship’s bowels, even as the clang of grappling hooks resonated through the hull above. They neared the engine room, and the temperature rose noticeably. Danuta took off her heavy winter coat, and Moshe took it from her in a gentlemanly gesture so incongruous with their dank surroundings that Danuta again nearly laughed. Finally, she found a small room, packed nearly to bursting with burlap sacks full of something vaguely leafy.

They squeezed past the sacks, which were thankfully easy to move, and Moshe closed the door behind them. They built a small hollow and moved the bags in front of them to block the entrance.

Then, they sat. A sliver of light made its way from the hall, through the door’s ventilation slats, and through a tiny gap that they’d left between the sacks. Moshe watched the dust dancing in it. It was their own private moon path, leading... to where? What hope would they find at its end—in the hall beyond this room, on the deck above, in the pulsating sea below?

As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Danuta and Moshe could see the outlines of each other’s fear.

“Now,” she said, “we must all be as quiet as possible for a little while. Can you do that, little mouse?”

Danuta’s voice visibly soothed Daniel, who trembled as the adrenalin of their flight continued to course through his small body. He nodded weakly, shuddered, and laid his head back against Moshe’s shoulder.

No sounds from the deck above penetrated their fortress. Neither had a watch, and there was no way to tell how much time had gone by. An hour passed, perhaps two. They slept, woke, slept again. They began to feel faint hope. Perhaps the Germans had left the ship. Perhaps the engines would restart any moment, and they could rejoin the other passengers watching the moon path from the cold rail. Perhaps the danger had passed.

Danuta had just started to whisper a story she recalled from King Matt the First when the footsteps sounded, loud on the metal floor, moving closer.

The voice came not far behind. “Raus! There is no point in hiding. We shall find you. Raus!”

Danuta held her finger gently to her lips, and Daniel nodded in understanding, his eyes wide with fear.

From the hall, the sounds of a door being opened roughly, and objects crashing to the floor, made them cringe. They pressed themselves more tightly against the metal wall behind them, as if willing it to swallow them. Another door opened, followed by more crashing and a single voice cursing in German.

Daniel drew his knees up against his chest. His buried his face in Danuta’s bosom, and she held him tightly. Another door opened, this one right across the hall from their own, by the sound of it. More cursing ensued, followed by the sounds of something being viciously kicked, as if in growing frustration.

After releasing a long and quiet sigh, Danuta gently but rapidly disengaged herself from Daniel, and passed him quietly to Moshe. She removed her shoes, touched Moshe lightly on the head and Daniel lovingly on the cheek, and stood. She straightened her skirt, smoothed her hair, and unbuttoned the two top buttons of her blouse.

She turned to Moshe. “Aron Katz, 8 Buki Ben Yagli Street, Tel Aviv. Tell him. Will you remember?”

Moshe nodded, and she nodded back. Then, wordlessly and without looking back, she pushed through the sacks, closing the gap behind her as she made her way to the door.

Moshe heard the door open, and her voice call out in German. “I’m here. You have found me. I’m all alone, and now we are all alone together, are we not? My goodness, you are quite tall, are you not?”

Her laugh sounded nearly genuine, her breathy voice convincingly seductive, but Moshe could hear the fear just beneath its surface.

The footsteps sounded louder. He heard a gruff grunt of surprise, and the door to their room slammed brutally closed. This time, it left them without the hope of a private moon path to an infinitely better future.

Moshe and Daniel stayed hidden in their sack haven for two full days, long after the engines had restarted their rhythmic thrumming. They emerged ashen, thirsty, and blinking, and made their way to the passenger hold. It was significantly less crowded.

The savvy captain, it turned out, had traded half the refugees, plus a select part of his cargo, to the Germans in exchange for safe passage. The Germans had insisted on searching the ship in any case, turning up a number of hidden Jews. All of these had been taken, along with the others. No one knew anything of their fate.

Their tea had long ago cooled. Daniel took a tentative sip, smiled at the sweetness, and looked up at Aron with innocent eyes. “Do you know Lea? Are you her friend?”

“I am her friend, little man,” he answered sincerely. “And I only hope that I know her well enough....”