Soon he saw the others arrive, one by one. They gathered and quickly went back over the plan, though they didn’t dare speak above a whisper. Then Jacob decided it was too dangerous to be anywhere near each other and ordered everyone to retreat to their predetermined positions and wait.
When Jacob’s watch struck ten, he climbed down from his lookout in a tall pine tree and sprinted the fifty yards or so between the edge of the woods and the tracks. At a point just past the bend, Jacob pulled the hurricane lamp from his backpack, lit it, set it in the middle of the tracks, and wrapped it with the red scarf he’d brought. Then he walked back along the tracks about twenty yards and turned to look at the lamp. It wasn’t bad, he thought. It might even work.
Jacob stood there longer than he should have, taking in the beauty of the pastoral scene around him. For a moment, it was possible to forget the world was gripped in a terrible, bloody war. Here there were no tanks or troops or bombers or barbed wire. The moon above was full. The stars were out in all their twinkling glory. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the temperature was falling quickly. Jacob figured it was hovering around the freezing mark and was likely to drop further over the next few hours. He drank in the lovely scent of the pines, swaying in the breeze now coming from the east, and then he thought he detected a trace of smoke in the air. It was faint at first, then grew stronger, and as it did, his thoughts drifted back to Siegen.
He closed his eyes and remembered hiking in the mountains with his uncle. He could suddenly see and smell and taste all the wonderful meals his mother and Ruthie used to prepare, the roasts and the pastries, and the life he had grown up with—the life he cherished so dearly—all came rushing back.
Then he heard the piercing wail of the train whistle. His eyes opened instantly. His heart began to race. He looked behind him. He couldn’t see the engine yet, but he could feel the ground trembling ever so slightly beneath his feet.
He glanced at his watch, not understanding what was happening. Train 801 was too early. How was that possible? German trains were never early, never late, always exactly on time. In his peripheral vision he saw Micah waving frantically for him to get moving. He immediately jumped off the tracks, ran down the slight embankment and across the field to the forest’s edge. There he retook his position as the shrill whistle grew louder and the ground shook all the more.
Hiding behind a tree, Jacob saw in the distance a single engine pulling a single tender. This wasn’t the 801. It was a false alarm. But he just stood there, fixated on the wrong train, frozen with fear.
The lamp.
He couldn’t leave it on the tracks. They didn’t want this train to stop. They needed it to roll through, and quickly. He was too far away. Could he get to the lamp and get it off the tracks and get back into the woods in time? Suddenly, as he was about to move, he saw Micah save the day. He sprinted to the tracks, grabbed the hurricane lamp, and then sprinted back for the woods, just in the nick of time. Moments later, the train rushed past. It slowed, but thank God, it did not stop.
Drenched in sweat and freezing in the breeze, Jacob castigated himself for the mistake he’d just made. He’d nearly blown the entire mission. He’d nearly cost Avi and 1,600 other people their lives. A wave of guilt and depression washed over him, but before he knew it, another train whistle cut through the night.
Turning to his left, he now saw the enormous steam engine that had to be the 801. To his relief, Micah was ready. Once again, Micah ran up the embankment and put the lamp on the tracks, then disappeared back into the trees.
Less than twenty seconds later, train 801 came barreling down the line, huffing and puffing and sending great belches of soot into the night sky. Jacob tried to push his failures out of his mind, but now he feared the ruse wouldn’t work after all. What if the train slowed but didn’t stop? What if the SS troops on the train saw the lamp for what it was—a Resistance plot—and radioed for backup? The forest could soon be crawling with troops. They would all be dead within the hour.
Yet even as those thoughts flickered across the transom of his mind, the train began to brake right in front of him. The horrendous screeching of metal on metal grated upon Jacob’s already-frayed nerves. It took longer than he’d expected for all thirty cattle cars to come to a stop, but the instant they did, gunfire erupted from his right. That was it. That was the signal.
Jacob put his head down and bolted for the train as more shots rang out in the night.
Micah’s job was to use the one pistol they had and keep firing in hopes that he could stun the SS guards in the lead cars into thinking they were being attacked by a superior force spread out through the woods. Hopefully that would buy the rest of the team just enough time to free the prisoners in the cattle cars before the soldiers, armed with machine guns, began to return fire.
To his left, Jacob saw Henri reach the last car in the line. Seconds later, Jacob scrambled up the embankment and reached his designated car, six from the rear. He immediately set about cutting the wires, then slid the cattle car door open. Turning on his flashlight, he peered at the stunned, pale faces huddled inside.
“Get up—now!” he shouted in Dutch and then in French. “Run for the woods! We are the Resistance, come to set you free! Run, you fools—run now or die!”
He could see the panic and confusion in their eyes. But he remembered Avi’s words not to wait for them to move. They had to open as many cars as possible before the counterattack began. There was not time to tell the people that Jacques was in the woods, ready to give them each a fifty-franc note and directions to public transportation that would get them to Brussels, Antwerp, Charleroi, and beyond. If they obeyed Jacob’s commands, jumped off the train, and began running into the woods, they would find Jacques, or Jacques would find them. For now, Jacob had to keep moving.
Gunfire again filled the night. Micah was doing his job flawlessly, and Jacob found himself intoxicated by the adrenaline surging through his system. He broke open a second cattle car and then a third. He screamed at the people to flee, and mostly they did. But when the latest group of prisoners heard the SS machine guns open fire, everyone froze in place.
Knowing they had only moments to break free, Jacob jumped up into the train car, yelling, “Snel, snel, springen, vluchten!” He grabbed some of the younger men in the car, pulled them to their feet, and pushed them toward the door, yelling at them to jump and run for their lives. He moved through the train car, turning to the older folks and begging them to move quickly, for there was not much time. He knew they were scared, but if they wanted to live, they had to run. Deeper into the cattle car Jacob moved, and just then he heard someone behind him shout his name.
The sound took a second to register, but when he turned, Jacob began beaming. “Uncle!” he yelled, seeing Avi standing outside the cattle car. “You’re safe!”
“I am, and I’m so proud of you,” Avi shouted back over the intensifying gunfire. “Any chance you’ve got some extra pliers?”
Jacob smiled wider. He did, in fact, have an extra pair, and he now tossed them to his uncle, thrilled to see him again and glad to have extra hands. They still had some twenty cars to open. It didn’t seem possible, but Avi’s help would make a huge difference.
Just then, however, Jacob saw an SS soldier swing around the side of the cattle car. He heard a burst of machine-gun fire. He saw the flash from the muzzle, and then he watched helplessly as Avi was repeatedly hit by bullets and fell down the embankment and out of sight.
“Get back!” the soldier screamed in German, his voice brutal and guttural. “Get back, all of you, or you will be shot like dogs!”
And then, before Jacob fully realized what was happening, the door of the cattle car was being slammed shut and locked, and before long, the train started moving again. The people around him huddled in fear, but Jacob ran to the door and struggled frantically to open it. He began hacking away at the door with the wire cutters in his hands, but it was in vain.
Panic-stricke
n, he pulled himself up to look through a tiny opening near the roof of the car. He could hear more shooting. He could see Jewish prisoners running. Some were falling, cut down by the SS. But he couldn’t see Avi. He couldn’t see Micah, Henri, or Jacques.
And then they were in darkness, and he couldn’t see anything at all, and a terrible, sick feeling permeated Jacob’s body.
He was trapped and alone, and headed for Auschwitz.
25
APRIL 19, 1943
LA ROCHELLE, FRANCE
Hundreds of kilometers away, Jean-Luc Leclerc was also on a train.
His journey from Le Chambon to the seaside port city of La Rochelle, overlooking the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, had already taken him the better part of a day. It was a risk to travel so far from the safety of his home, away from Claire and the girls, away from the church and the hundreds of Jews who depended on them for their very lives. It was an especially great risk to travel to a city that housed a U-boat base and thus was crawling with Nazi soldiers and Gestapo agents.
Luc had become the overseer of the clandestine refugee project that now engulfed the entire town. It was he who greeted the new Jewish families that seemed to arrive every few days on the one o’clock train through the once-sleepy hollow of Le Chambon. It was he who learned their stories, made them feel welcome, and assigned them to someone’s home. It was he who then took them there personally and introduced them to the owners of that home and made sure they got settled quickly and quietly and discreetly.
It was Luc who arranged for the families to get new identity papers and who briefed them on the protocols he and the other pastors had developed to help the refugees become integrated into the schools and the shops and the patterns of life in the little French village. It was he who got them different clothes to wear and gave them pointers on looking and sounding like Gentiles—like Protestants.
He was always respectful of their faith, or lack thereof, and their habits and customs and traditions. The fact was, he was completely fascinated with God’s chosen people, and he did everything he could to make them feel comfortable and safe. But to make them truly safe, he told them candidly, was to erase any evidence that they were Jews. Not for the sake of the people of Le Chambon, but to prevent the Vichy police from finding them and turning them over to the Nazis.
Quite simply, Luc loved what he did, and he was good at it. That was why it was dangerous for him to leave. He knew so much. He knew the people personally. He loved to visit them and talk with them and learn their stories and introduce them to his family and invite them over for picnics and hikes and other family events. Luc knew how to make the system work. He was methodical and detailed and could anticipate problems and try to solve them before they metastasized. He was artful at mediating conflicts, and he was—usually—rather patient and good-humored about it all. This was why the elders at the church didn’t want him to leave. Not on this trip. Not on any. It was Claire who had insisted, and after much prayer, including several days of fasting, he concluded that she was right.
It was dark and late, and there was nothing to see out the window of the steam-propelled train as it chugged ever closer to its destination. As the whistle shrieked into the night, signaling their imminent approach to the station in La Rochelle, Luc closed his eyes and thought back to the meeting in the basement of the church building just twenty-four hours earlier.
“We are reaching our capacity,” Luc had explained. “It’s a true miracle what has happened so far. But I’m not sure we can sustain this.”
“What do you mean?” Chrétien, the senior pastor, asked. “I’ve heard no complaints so far.”
Luc laughed. “That’s because we have a town full of saints. You keep preaching Christ’s command that we love our neighbors, and everyone is trying to obey. You keep preaching through passages about caring for the widows and the orphans and feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, and people want to be found faithful to our Savior. But with all due respect, sir, there is a point of no return. We’re a town of three thousand people. So far, we’ve given shelter and care to more than five thousand people over the last three years. They haven’t all been Jews. But most of them have. And they haven’t all stayed here. But a lot of them have. And our people, God bless them, have quietly done their bit, and much, much more, because they want to. Because they know it’s the right thing to do. And the last thing they want to do is complain. But we’re reaching the breaking point. We need help.”
“What kind of help?” asked Émile, who in addition to his duties as a pastor also filled the role of director of the elementary and secondary school run by the church. “Chrétien has raised money from our brothers and sisters in Marseilles and elsewhere. But money is tight. You know that.”
“Yes, of course,” Luc said. “Actually, I’m not speaking of money. We grow our own food, and God has surely provided abundantly, beyond what we could ask or desire. And we sew our own clothes, so it hasn’t been hard to give our surplus to the new families. That is all well and good, truly.”
“Then what?” Chrétien asked.
“We need to find another community, somewhere in France, that will partner with us,” Luc explained. “We need a place that truly loves the Lord and loves his Word and loves his people and will welcome them with open arms. We need to be able to send people who come to us to this other community, a community full of people who aren’t already overworked and overwhelmed.”
“You’re saying the people of Le Chambon don’t want to do this anymore?” Chrétien asked pointedly.
“No, sir,” Luc replied. “They are honored to do what they do. But we cannot ask them to do more. We need to find a partner community, a place where we can send those who come to us, a place where we can be sure that these dear people will get the same kind of love and prayer and attention that we give them. To be frank, gentlemen, I fear many more Jews are coming. We’ve already seen a pickup in the numbers in recent months, and I think that’s only going to accelerate. We need to reproduce what we’re doing here. We need to do it fast. And we need to do it quietly, without the Vichy government catching wind of it.”
The two elders sighed.
“You may be right, Luc,” Chrétien conceded. “So what do you propose?”
Another sharp blast of the train whistle, and Luc could feel the train slowing. He opened his eyes and saw the deserted and poorly lit platform approaching. A thick fog had rolled in off the ocean, giving the streetlamps an eerie, unnatural glow. Luc used his sleeve to wipe moisture from the window. He peered out into the night and hoped Claire’s brother was there to meet him. He, too, was a pastor. His congregation was located in a wooded hamlet about thirty kilometers south of La Rochelle. Having grown up there, Claire was convinced it was a perfect place to set up another operation to rescue Jews fleeing from der Führer. Luc thought she just might be right. They would know soon enough.
The train lurched to a stop. Luc grabbed his overnight bag and stepped out into the sultry night air. He strolled slowly along the wooden platform, letting the other passengers—not that there were many of them—pass him by, meet those who had come to receive them, and depart. Not seeing Claire’s brother, he worked his way down a flight of stairs to the parking lot.
He never saw them coming.
He was jumped from behind by two men whose faces he couldn’t see. They threw him to the ground, kicked him repeatedly, nearly breaking several of his ribs. Then a black hood was thrown over his head, and someone smashed a large blunt object into the back of his skull.
When he awoke, he was bound and gagged and blindfolded, with no idea how long he had been unconscious, who had grabbed him, or where he was.
Someone pulled the rag out of his mouth, and Luc coughed and sputtered and then began to breathe deeply of the salty night air. They were still in La Rochelle, he concluded, not far from the coast.
“How long have you been harboring kikes?” a voice demanded.
The language was French,
but the accent was most decidedly German, which told him he was in the hands of the Gestapo. Luc said nothing.
“How many filthy Jews have you stashed away?”
Still Luc remained silent.
“How many Jews have you hidden from der Führer? Who paid you to do it? How much?”
The questions kept coming, one after another, one after another, like bursts from a machine gun. When Luc refused to answer, someone punched him squarely in the nose. He could hear the crunch as he felt excruciating pain explode through his entire head and radiate throughout his body. He felt blood running down his face. But still he refused to talk.
“When did Pastor Chrétien start harboring Jews? When did Pastor Émile start helping? Why do you do it? Why did you choose to betray your race? What’s in it for you?”
Luc was determined to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t want to lie, and he certainly did not want to tell the Gestapo the truth. But he was rattled at the unexpected mention of his fellow pastors in Le Chambon. These were his elders, his mentors. How did the Germans know about any of them? They had all worked so hard to be discreet. The whole town had. They didn’t talk to outsiders about what they were doing. Why would anyone say a word? And to whom would they say it? How, then, had the Gestapo zeroed in on them?
Suddenly it occurred to Luc that Chrétien and Émile had probably been arrested as well. Indeed, it might not just be the three of them, he realized. There were so many others in Le Chambon who were intimately involved in rescuing the people of God from the labor camps or even just from the humiliation of being run out of their towns and villages for being different. Some were doing much more than he and Claire, Luc thought. Surely if he had been dragged in by the Gestapo, others far more important than he had been arrested too.