“No problem at all,” Brad responded. “Today is Sunday. I don’t have to work, and I don’t teach my class. And Miri’s the guide. If she suggests Caesarea, Caesarea it is. Hop in.”
Miri climbed into the back seat, and Nathan handed her his bag and weapon and got in next to Brad.
“Where am I going?” Brad asked, putting the VW into gear.
“Straight ahead and then left at the first intersection,” Nathan commanded. He glanced at Brad as they started to move. “Would you mind if I join you at Yad Vashem?”
“Of course not.”
“Good. I want to see your reaction.”
* * * * * *
Brad’s reaction was one of profound somberness and a growing sense of horror. He had seen his share of Nazi war movies and even a documentary or two on the Jewish persecutions, but this wasn’t the movies. There were no Hollywood trappings to glorify things, just the grim documentation of an incomprehensible tragedy.
They had walked up the long driveway to the memorial in the bright sunshine, already hot at eight o’clock. It belied any sense of tragedy that Yad Vashem—”The Hill of Remembrance”—might hold. But when they entered the modern building that housed the archives of the Holocaust, the awful reality of the Nazi nightmare began to hit Brad.
They stopped in the entry foyer, where a huge relief sculpture took up the entire wall. Miri briefly explained its symbolic significance, and then they entered the museum itself. “This is the ‘Hall of Warning and Witness,’ ” Nathan said quietly, and he stepped back to let Brad enter first.
The walls, ceilings, and numerous partitions were painted black. Only the enlarged photos and documents and an occasional display case broke the solid blackness. It was all there. Brad was quickly absorbed as he moved slowly through the hallways, reading every document, studying each picture.
The exhibits were arranged chronologically, starting in the early 1930s with Hitler’s rise to power. Even madness is implemented step by step, Brad thought. At first there were “minor” harassments and persecutions—the call for Germans to avoid the Jewish shops, the amusement of the soldiers as they cut the beards and earlocks of the Orthodox Jews or made them scrub streets on hands and knees. Then came the book burnings, the requirement that all Jews wear the yellow star of David on their clothing, and Hitler’s brownshirts racing through Berlin smashing windows and burning synagogues.
It took Brad nearly an hour to come to the mid-1940s, and his mind was reeling under the shock. Virtually every photo now stunned the senses with brutal savagery. A line of naked men, standing in front of a trench already filled with the dead, patiently awaited the next volley from the firing squad. Ten limp bodies hung from a gallows, the star of David on their coats. A mountain of emaciated, twisted corpses of Dachau waited for the lime pits. Two grotesque figures hung on the barbed wire of Auschwitz, having preferred the swift suicide of electrocution to the “shower rooms” with their Zyklon-B gas. A storeroom was crammed with eyeglasses and shoes, spoils of the victors. A woman exhibited an eight-inch gaping wound in her leg, surgery performed without anesthetic by Nazi doctors in “scientific research” to see how much pain the human body can tolerate. A father huddled over his six-year-old son as an S.S. officer put a pistol to the back of his head.
Brad found himself swallowing hard as he read the eyewitness account of a German engineer who witnessed a mass execution in October 1942. “The people—men, women, and children of all ages—were forced to strip by order of an S.S. wielding a horse whip or dog whip. The people undressed without a cry or tear, stood together family by family, kissed each other and said goodbye, and waited for a signal from another S.S. man who stood near the trench, also whip in hand.
“During the fifteen minutes I stood there I did not hear a single complaint or plea for mercy. I looked at a family of about eight people, a man and his wife, both about fifty, with children with them, aged one, eight and ten, and two grown-up daughters aged about twenty and twentyfour. An old woman with snow white hair held the yearold child in her arms, singing to it and tickling it. The child laughed with pleasure. The husband and wife watched them with tears in their eyes. The father held the hand of a boy about ten and spoke to him gently; the boy tried to keep back the tears. The father pointed toward heaven, and stroked the child’s hand, and appeared to be explaining something to him.”
Brad turned away, deeply touched. He thought of his own family—of Susan, his older sister, and her toddler who gurgled happily whenever he saw Brad; of Kathy, now at BYU; of Craig, a sophomore tailback at East High School; of Jimmy, proudly ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood just three months ago; of Barbara and Brenda, so much like twins even though they were six and eight. Brad had baptized Brenda the week before he left. And he thought of his parents, herding them all naked to an open trench, and he felt physically ill.
Neither Nathan nor Miri commented when they moved to the hall documenting the world’s response to this horror. There was no need to. Brad felt the shame in every fiber of his soul. The document in front of him read: “We knew in Washington, from August, 1942, on, that the Nazis were planning to exterminate all the Jews of Europe. Yet, for nearly eighteen months after the first reports of the Nazi horror plan, the State Department did practically nothing…” It was signed by Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
It was a sober threesome that finally walked to the car. Miri quietly directed Brad to the freeway to Tel Aviv, but other than that they were silent, lost in their own thoughts.
As they pulled onto the four-lane freeway and started down the steep canyon that led to the Mediterranean plains from Jerusalem, Nathan began to speak. He was staring out the front windshield; his voice had a faraway quality, almost as though he were speaking to himself. He spoke softly, and Brad had to strain to hear him. Miri leaned forward so she also could hear.
“After the Six Day War, I was sick in my soul. My eyes had been filled with the blood and horror of battle. My heart was full of sorrow for David, my brother, who was killed in the Sinai. I needed to get away, to let my spirit heal.”
Brad glanced quickly at Nathan, noting that his hands were clenched into tight fists.
“I went to Europe. I began in Scandinavia, absorbing the beauty of the mountains and the fjords, and then I worked my way south until I came to Germany.”
He stopped. The silence stretched on for so long that Brad decided he wasn’t going to finish. But finally the soft voice continued.
“I found myself walking around Germany. I felt so strange there, because on the one hand it was a beautiful country, but every German sound, every German voice reminded me instinctively of the movies I had seen of the Holocaust. The discipline and the order of everything frightened me. Everything was neat and clean and in its place, with no mistakes. I saw the soldiers at the airports dressed exactly as in the pictures you just saw at Yad Vashem.”
Nathan’s voice had an almost ghostly quality to it, and Brad could tell he was deeply moved. “I felt very strange, as though I had gone back in time to World War II. I went to Munich and visited Dachau, where my grandfather died. And I was shocked. It was not horrible. It was not ugly. It was like walking around a Japanese garden. Everything was white, surrounded by green grass, with little stones lining the paths—everything fixed in its place. The gas chambers were all cleaned and painted. And there was a room over by the gas chamber—white and neat.”
Nathan stopped again and swallowed hard, angry at himself for his emotions. “It was the room where they made the Jews strip naked, and prepare for the ‘showers.’ In the room was a group of tourists from Italy. They stood quietly, not speaking or saying anything.”
Brad glanced back at Miri, who stared at her brother, totally captivated by his words. Her eyes were shining, her mouth tight, and Brad knew she was hearing this for the first time too.
Nathan sighed, a sound of tremendous inner pain. “And I felt very bad at their silence, that no words were being spoken. I felt like c
rying. But instead I shouted, ‘If you don’t hear the blood of my brothers screaming from the earth in this neat garden and from this neat room, I will scream so you will hear!’ And I screamed out with all my heart, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God he is one God.’ It is the prayer of every dying Jew. And then I turned and ran. I ran into the gardens. I wanted to get away, but the fences were still there.”
For the first time he turned to Brad, staring at him, his dark eyes like pools of immense sorrow. Finally he spoke. “And I raised my face there in that garden. I looked into heaven, and I shouted again. And this time I shouted ‘O God of Israel, why do you not hear the cries of your people?’ And then I knew. I knew that if there is a God up there, he couldn’t hear.” There was a long pause. “Or he didn’t care. I left Dachau, and I left Germany. I came home to Israel, where every Jew is welcome, where every Jew can hold up his head with pride, where our children will never again wear the yellow star. I came home to Israel, where we do not wait for help from a god who neither hears nor cares.”
Seventeen
For most of the ten-minute trip from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, the conversation had been light, rambling, and punctuated with smiles and occasional laughter. Now as they crested the last hill and the walls of the Old City lay before them, the color of a field of autumn wheat in the late afternoon sunshine, Brad, Ali, and Miri had all fallen silent.
As he guided the battered old Volkswagen through the light Sabbath-day traffic, Brad estimated they were about three or four minutes from the hotel where the branch held its sacrament meetings. He felt the faint tuggings of nervousness in his stomach. He checked the rearview mirror to see Ali’s face, but his friend was gazing out the car window with almost hypnotic concentration.
Miri gave Brad a warm smile as their eyes met briefly, and Brad decided she didn’t share his concern about the next couple of hours. Her hands were lying quietly in her lap, her long fingers toying absently with the ring she wore on her right hand. In a cool mint-green dress of soft crepe, Miri was as lovely as Brad had ever seen her. She had brushed her hair until the soft curls had the sheen of polished obsidian, and her tanned skin glowed like amber honey in the sunlight. A tiny star of David hung at the base of her throat on a delicate filigree chain. She wore it often, but now he wondered if she had not subconsciously chosen it to visibly maintain her Jewish identity in a crowd of Mormons. With that thought he fell to worrying again how the branch members would receive Miri, how she would react to the sacrament meeting, what she would say when it was over.
Suddenly he was aware of soft chuckling from the back seat. He glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Ali’s eyes, sparkling with amusement.
“What’s so funny?” Brad asked.
“You two.”
Miri half turned in her seat and looked at the handsome young Arab. “Us two? What is so funny about us two?”
“The way you are both playing it so cool and casual. Why don’t you just admit how nervous you are? Look at me, for example. I keep telling myself, ‘Ali, so what if this is the first time you’ve ever spoken in sacrament meeting. There is nothing to be afraid of. Relax.’ ”
“And does it help?” Brad asked.
“Of course. Instead of being absolutely petrified, I’m only in a mild state of sheer terror!”
“Okay,” Miri said, “I admit it. I am very nervous.”
“You are?” Brad exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes, I am.”
“Listen, Ali won’t be that bad. He has prepared for this talk for the last ten days.”
“Yeah, thanks a lot, Miri,” Ali chimed in. “Nothing like a solid vote of confidence with which to send a man into the jaws of death.”
“If he really bombs,” Brad said soberly, “we’ll sneak out the back and pretend we don’t know him. He can catch a taxi home.”
“Stop it you two,” she cried. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Then why are you nervous?” Ali demanded.
The smile gradually faded, and she gave Brad a long, searching look. “Because I have never attended a Christian church meeting before.”
Brad’s eyes softened as he nodded. “I know, Miri. I know.” Then the teasing note crept back into his voice. “I understand that Daniel felt the same way about going to the meeting with those Babylonian lions.”
“You are hopeless, Brad Kennison!” she laughed.
“I came to the same conclusion weeks ago,” Ali said. “But being greatly given to Christian charity, I have reluctantly agreed to work with him a while longer.”
“Ha!” Brad snorted. “Some charity.”
Miri watched the two friends as they bantered on for a moment more, sensing the deep affection that had developed between them. As they stopped for the signal at the Damascus gate, they both fell silent, and Miri quickly turned to Brad.
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Come on. Ali laughed at both of us for pretending to be so nonchalant. I have admitted I am nervous about going to a Christian meeting. Ali confessed he is worried about his talk. What about you?”
Brad grinned in surrender. “I haven’t had butterflies like this since I played the part of a potato bug in the third grade school play.”
“Really?” Miri said, her eyes widening. “Why?”
He pondered that for a moment, and finally a slow, almost boyish smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Because,” he said gently, “I have never taken a Jewish girl to a Christian meeting before.” Nor tried to convert one to Mormonism, he added to himself, which, had he been totally honest with himself as well as Miri, was the greatest cause of the butterflies doing power dives in his stomach.
* * * * * *
But if he had planned the entire meeting himself, manipulated the setting in every way possible, and orchestrated every word, Brad could not have asked for a more appropriate introduction to Mormonism for Miri. The Jerusalem Branch met in the basement of the Jerusalem Star Hotel, since they had no building of their own as yet. Brad had not noticed before how simple and unadorned the room was until he walked inside with Miri, worrying how she would respond. But the branch members gave her no chance to study the surroundings. Brad had been tempted to warn them about Miri’s visit, but now he was grateful he had not.
The Jerusalem Branch had about ninety members. There were sixty or so Study Abroad students who rotated each six months from BYU, and five families—almost all Americans—who were permanent residents of Jerusalem. The response to Miri was spontaneous and warm without being overdone. Within two minutes President Marks engaged her in a conversation more like that between close friends than recent acquaintances.
The opening song and prayer were normal enough, but as the congregation began the sacrament hymn, a change took place. It was at first very subtle, elusive, almost undefinable. Later Brad decided it was the result of the sunrise service earlier in the day.
The BYU students—with Ali and Brad joining them—had met in the Garden Tomb at six o’clock that morning. They had moved quietly to the eastern end of the lovely garden in the center of Jerusalem and had stood somberly gazing at the small hillock known in Hebrew as Golgotha, “the place of the skull.” And indeed the small cavelike holes in the face of the cliff did look like the gaping sockets of a human skull. Here the Master had come, infinitely exhausted from his ordeal during the night when blood had oozed from every pore, when a kiss had betrayed, when Jewish hands had buffeted and pummeled him, when the Roman lash had left his back criss-crossed with bleeding stripes, when a Procurator had sought in vain to wash away the stain of guilt. Here the nails had been pounded home. Here the cross beam with its agonized burden had been lifted into place. Here the spear had been thrust deep into his side. A God had come to earth, and here men had tried in vain to put him away from them for good. Here Jesus Christ had died.
Deeply sobered, the group had moved to rows of benches overlooking the tomb cut into the side of a limestone hill.
From where he had sat, Brad could clearly see the stone track cut to hold the massive sealing stone. For the next half hour, with President Marks leading them, they had immersed themselves in the scriptural accounts of that morning when crushing, devastating despair had turned to incredulous, blazing, overwhelming joy. The sunlight had filtered through the trees, and behind them a bird greeted the morning with joyous abandon, as though this were the very morning of the resurrection.
President Marks had closed the Bible slowly, and after a long pause, had turned and gazed down at the tomb. “There, in that small, insignificant grotto of stone, they brought Jesus and hastily wrapped his body for burial. Little did they know that within a few short hours, he would be back for that body, would raise it up from the cold stone, fold up those burial clothes, and lay them aside.”
He had turned back and searched the eyes of those who sat before him. “And because Christ did so, someday you and I will come back to where our bodies have lain in wait, put there with care by those who love us, and we too shall rise up and put aside our burial clothes.”
Now, as the congregation began the sacrament hymn, “I Stand All Amazed,” it began to happen. What had begun as ninety separate voices singing a hymn accompanied by a rather tinny and slightly out-of-tune piano was suddenly transformed into a single heartfelt cry of supplication that sent chills coursing up and down Brad’s spine. I tremble to know that for me he was crucified. The image of Golgotha, with its haunting face of death, flashed into Brad’s mind. He could almost hear the chilling ring of the mallet as it drove the nails home, and the tortured voice crying at that moment when others cursed and raged at their executioners, “Father, forgive them.” That for me, a sinner, he suffered, he bled and died. The chorister stood with tears streaming down her cheeks. The voice of the boy next to him suddenly faltered and dropped into silence.
I marvel—Brad bit his own lip as his heart poured out the words with all the fervency of his soul—that he would descend from his throne divine to rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine. He ducked his head, blinking rapidly, unable to say the last few words.