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Kibbutz Beit Oren, Tuesday, June 23, 1942
“Goddammit Bert, don’t you see?” Yochanan Ratner’s voice rose dramatically over the background noise of the dining hall porch in Kibbutz Beit Oren. “There is no other choice! There is nowhere left to run! It will be here, and soon. There’s no more room for your doubts. The leadership has approved it. You have to get me that funding! We need to move forward now!” The room fell silent as, his heavy brows furrowed, Ratner hurried out through the open wooden door.
I looked up from Davar. Yesterday we’d heard the news of Tobruk, and I’d not seen or heard from Sean since he left my flat. Now, I sat in Beit Oren, just southeast of Haifa, eating a bowl of cottage cheese and reading a report in Davar quoting “reliable sources” in the Mandatory government, who warned of a real danger of German advance troops being parachuted into Palestine. These troops would be only too welcome by the Arab population, most of whom secretly anticipated the arrival of Abu Ali, as they referred to Rommel surreptitiously. The British, Davar reported, urged “extreme vigilance” on the part of the populace, especially in remote areas.
We left Tel Aviv well before dawn in Hacohen’s Mercury convertible, which he’d imported from the US—one of those luxuries the CEO of a major construction company like Solel Boneh could afford. Next to him sat Aharon Bert, my boss and the Chairman of Kofer HaYishuv, the fund set up to finance overt and covert Jewish defense activities in Mandatory Palestine.
“With those bald heads shining up there, this car would be an easy target for a German bomber, don’t you agree?” My companion in the back seat, and partner in follicular prowess, was Yohanan Ratner—architect by trade, renowned expert in static defenses, and the creator of the Hagana’s Northern Plan. He was the reason we were heading to Beit Oren at this ungodly hour—for it was still moonlight that reflected on the bald pates of Hacohen and Bert, not sunlight.
I tagged along as Bert’s assistant on this official review of progress made on the defenses below Beit Oren, and the findings of the elite Palmach unit scouts, who’d been tasked with locating, fortifying, and stocking guerilla bases in the caves of the Carmel. The thinking was that a relatively small force of Hagana guerillas, if properly supplied and hidden, could seriously augment the physical defenses being put into place. This would perhaps buy the Jews of Palestine enough time for the Allies to regroup and counter-attack, ultimately pushing the Axis forces back south.
The Yishuv leadership knew the Northern Plan was a gamble, but I agreed with Ratner: with Jews being slaughtered throughout Axis-controlled Europe and North Africa, and given two thousand years of antisemitism that had only relented for short periods before being renewed each time with greater ferocity—there was nowhere left for Jews to run. I was not alone on this thinking. The Northern Plan was already being referred to on the street as Masada on the Carmel—named after the desert fortress in which Jewish rebels held out against the relentless Roman army, until its residents committed mass suicide in the face of defeat and enslavement. While Ratner and the Hagana had no overt plans for mass suicide in the face of a Nazi victory, I knew—as did every Jew in Palestine—what the Nazis had in store for us, and thus what the cost of failure would be. The name Masada on the Carmel was apt, I believed.
I followed Ratner out of the dining hall, and found him brooding on the porch outside. I turned to take in the spectacular view over the Oren Stream, which the Arabs called Wadi Fallah. Countless scrub Palestine Oaks clotted together into a bumpy wave of green felt, which flowed over and melded with the landscape, engulfing boulders and concealing paths. One could truly lose one’s self in this landscape. It was the incarnation of surreptitious hope, and I knew the power of the shadows.
***
“I am not simultaneously contemplating the destruction of the Jewish people and watching this man’s ass,” I told myself repeatedly. But I was. On its dusty black fabric strap, our Palmach guide’s STEN submachine gun bumped rhythmically and beguilingly against his tight posterior. Step, bump. Step, bump. It was hard to ignore, especially given the muscles of his sweat-streaked bare back, which glistened below the neck shade of his visor cap, only a meter ahead of me on the narrow path. I tore my eyes away, and tried to think of Sean.
By the time all were ready to set out from Beit Oren, the sun had already climbed high in the sky. The tension between Ratner and Bert remained as palpable and oppressive as the June heat. The path, completely hidden from our former lookout above, led across the dry streambed, in and out of deep Oak shade where crazy whirlpools of flies buzzed aimlessly. We were on our way to inspect the pillbox under construction on the south side of the winding, tamped dirt track that led up from the coast to Beit Oren, and thereafter to see one of several caves already being provisioned for the Palmach fighters.
Behind me, Bert and Hacohen puffed heavily, taking turns wiping their bald pates with white handkerchiefs, sweat stains spreading under the arms of their dress shirts. At their request, we’d scaled back the length of our hike and now planned on visiting only one cave. It was, they had both argued, only a formal inspection, after all.
Ratner walked far out in front of the Palmach guide, a man named Maxim, whose strongly Russian-accented Hebrew showed utter disdain for articles and prepositions. I’d started to breathe hard myself from the unaccustomed exertion of the march, and between breaths I asked him why he hadn’t Hebraized his name, as many immigrants—and especially Palmach fighters—did.
“No need,” was his curt answer. “I still me, here or Russia, name this or name that. Why need bother?”
I smiled and nodded in agreement. I too had kept my name, after considering it seriously, because so few ties remained to my father that I couldn’t bring myself to destroy this last one.
We completed our cursory inspection of the pillbox, which commanded an impressive view of the approach to Beit Oren, in about ten minutes. Bert and Hacohen, still breathless and sipping from Maxim’s canteen, seemed unimpressed with the view that stretched all the way to the Mediterranean.
“So, this is what will stop the entire Wermacht, Ratner?” growled Bert, making no attempt to hide his derision. “This pillbox is what will tip the scales in favor of the survival of the Jewish people?”
Ratner would not be baited. “Don’t be ridiculous, Aharon. You’ve heard the details of the plan numerous times, and you of all people know our limitations, as well as our imperatives. The trick is using the latter to overcome the former. Let’s move on to the cave, shall we?”
We set off uphill, following Maxim’s bouncing gun. My tired mind had settled into the rhythm of that gun, which made a small metallic rattle at every bounce on Maxim’s rear quarters. Step, bounce, click. The heat faded into the background, as did the thorny brush that grabbed at my legs with every uphill step. Step, bounce, click. For chunks of blessed minutes at a time, only that step, bounce, click resonated, and my mind slipped back to another hot hike, through very different vegetation, many years previously.
***
I grew up only a block from the Vistula, where the thin strip of undeveloped yet not quite wild forest along its banks served as playground, refuge, and treasure trove throughout my childhood. Together, my playmates and I scoured its ever-changing banks for items the river regurgitated, created forts among the piles of brush brought high by its swollen spring flow, raced our bicycles along smooth and occasionally muddy dirt paths. Thus, when I snuck out of the house that late summer day in 1920, I set my seven-year-old feet in motion directly towards the cool shade of the forest.
Samuel was napping, and with him our babysitter, Mrs. Chlebek. Her name meant “little loaf of bread” in Polish, and with her wrinkled face, round body and stubby neck, she did indeed resemble a loaf of the brown bread Mother now regularly purchased, when she could get it. The war had caused shortages.
Mother had rushed back out the door to the Praski Hospital, just down the street from our flat, to help soldiers that were hurt. She’d said we must be good and mind Mrs. Chlebek, and stay in the house, no matter what, because no one knew what would happen if the cursed Russians broke through. Only later would I understand that this was the peak of the Soviet-Polish war, and the Battle of Warsaw raged literally kilometers from our home.
Mrs. Chlebek snored in the armchair by the window, as I gazed out at the sunny day. I was bored, and the distant booms that had scared me at first had now settled in with the rest of the background noise, so I closed the door behind me and strolled down to the riverbank.
The hot sun reached down through the foliage, tickling the back of my neck with its golden hands and prompting me forward towards the cool water’s edge. The water was low, and I had to pick my way carefully through the crusty mud to reach it. I fastidiously removed my shoes and socks, just as Mother had demanded the last time we’d walked on the bank, and walked barefoot upstream in the cool water, feeling the sand between my toes. Squinting into the sun, I watched the ducks riding the swirling eddies created by the giant brick pilings of the Poniatowski Bridge, still being rebuilt, and heard the gulls complaining overhead.
I found an off-green, peaked cap with a red star sewn on it bobbing gently in a small pile of foam, which the river mysteriously produced on hot days like this one. I fished it out with a stick and wrung it out. Only when I placed it on my head did I notice the two holes on either side of the cap, with edges so smooth they might have been cut with my mother’s sharp sewing scissors—which I was never to touch. I took the hat off and inserted my fingers into the holes, wondering who would wear a cap so oddly perforated.
That’s when the sun caught something shiny on the water, and I looked up to see the logs.
The river lapped at my toes more hungrily, it seemed, as the logs bobbed gently in the slow current, twisting and turning gracefully, bumping into one another and politely separating. This strange dance reminded me of the ballroom event Mother and Father had once taken me to see. I watched, mesmerized and smiling, as the logs put on a show just for me—a charming river ballet.
Then one log drifted closer to the shore, and lazily rolled as it passed me. This puzzled me because, even at age seven, I knew logs didn’t have faces. I knew logs didn’t have hands so bloated that they looked like the chubby cheeks of the little boy in The Land of the Midgets, which Father sometimes read to me. My stomach dropped, as did the cap from my hands. These logs wore uniforms, and left trails of red in the water as they floated by. The river mud grabbed at my toes as I began to run.
I arrived, scratched and barefoot—my socks and shoes utterly forgotten—at the door to our building, and threw one last glance over my shoulder at the hundreds of bodies of Russian soldiers making their deliberate way downstream. Beyond the profound horror which had yet to manifest itself in tears, I felt such a deep sense of betrayal. How could the beauty and charm I witnessed in the graceful river ballet have been something so tainted? How could such grace mask such horror?
***
Step, bounce, click. Step, bounce, click.
We rounded a corner in the path, yet my focus on this mantra remained so intense that Maxim’s elbow nearly caught me under the chin when he abruptly stopped and swung the gun up, at the ready.
Snapping out of my reverie, I looked up and spotted a magnificent Griffon Vulture riding a thermal high above us to the west. Momentarily confused as to why this bird of prey should cause Maxim such alarm, I shifted my gaze earthward, and started violently.
I’d never had the opportunity to see a Wermacht uniform up close, but there was no mistaking the identity of the five khaki-clad soldiers who now stood, having appeared as if from nowhere, on both sides of the path.
Maxim slowly lowered his weapon and raised his hands. Bert, Hacohen and I followed suit.
The German soldiers, apparently unfazed at this encounter, looked curiously at Maxim, their rifles raised. The unmistakable sound of a safety catch sounded, and I felt my bowels loosen.
When I left Poland in late 1931, the name Adolf Hitler had been a sidebar, mostly the subject of ridicule in the Polish press. In fact, the last thing I recalled reading of him in Poland was sordid gossip about a lover’s quarrel with a young half-niece, who had killed herself after he shunned her—or so the rumors claimed. No one had taken seriously the short and violent man that had led the then-forgotten Beer Hall Putsch, and spent less than a year in prison for his treason—perhaps a lesson for governments everywhere, in perpetuity.
Things have changed, I reflected through my fear. Things have changed drastically.
The German soldiers motioned for us to get to our knees, hands behind our heads, and we complied. I could see the sweat stains spreading farther down the sides of Hacohen’s dress shirt, and could smell the fear dripping from Bert’s sideburns next to me. Ratner had vanished.
The officer of the group, his field insignias clearly visible, approached Maxim with pistol in hand. He picked up the STEN gun, turned it over in curiosity, and surveyed the Palmach soldier. He used his own Mauser to tip Maxim’s hat back and get a better view of his defiant face.
Then he bent close to Maxim, caressing the side of his face with the barrel of the pistol, and whispered something into his ear.
The effect was dramatic. Maxim jumped to his feet and shoved the German officer hard in the chest, first cursing in Russian and then yelling, “You son of a bitch!” in Hebrew.
The officer holstered his weapon. His soldiers looked on and lowered their rifles, but did not interfere. A tense moment of silence ensued, and the German soldiers looked to their officer for guidance.
Then, Maxim snatched his rifle back from the officer, yelled, “Not funny, asshole!” in Hebrew, and promptly broke into hysterical laughter.
The giggles spread to the German soldiers. As Bert, Hacohen and I watched incredulously, the officer and soldiers collapsed into utterly incapacitating laughter. One soldier literally rolled on the ground in hysteria, while another put his feet up on a boulder and lit a cigarette, watching the scene with a broad smile. The officer remained doubled over in paroxysms of laughter.
Finally, Maxim turned to us and motioned for us to lower our hands. “German unit. Palmach soldiers,” he managed to choke out, wiping his streaming eyes. “They very good, no? This officer Shimon Koch. He chief yeke putz, in charge these bastards.”
We all relaxed and got to our feet, and I brushed the gravel and dirt from my knees.
The German Unit was a minor Hagana legend, comprised of German immigrants, many with Reichswehr military service experience. Outfitted and trained with such attention to detail that its members spoke only German among themselves, the small German Unit would infiltrate Wermacht units in the event of a German invasion.
From his hiding place behind a boulder some meters beyond, Ratner emerged. “I see you’ve met reality, Bert. Sorry if it was a bit harsh, but perhaps you now appreciate what exactly we’re facing. The fear you just felt was not abstract, and neither is the threat facing the Jews of Palestine. It will not be blown away by the electric fan in your Ramat Gan office. It is out there, waiting to pounce, hiding behind the façade of your theatres, your bank vaults, your red-tile roofs. We can either choose to face it, as our colleague Maxim has done, or stand petrified in its face, pissing down our legs, as you appear to have done. Which do you think grants us a better chance of survival?”
Bert could only glare, red-faced and shaking his damp trouser legs.
I thought again of the logs that were not logs, the power of shadows, the freedom that comes with accepting the ugliness that grace and beauty so often mask.
Realizing what lies behind the world’s gilded façade is liberating. Only when we look squarely at the evil behind the beauty can we begin to hope to vanquish it.
