Upon sitting down at a nearby table, Jacob stared at the bowl. Not only was it full to the top with broth, but it was chock-full of carrots, potatoes, and even pieces of cabbage. Jacob dug in immediately. It was lukewarm, as always, but he had to admit it was better than any soup he had tasted since arriving. He ate it all and pondered his good fortune.
The next morning, the same man was there. This time he was in charge of serving portions of bread to the prisoners coming through the line. When Jacob got there, the man nodded again but then looked away quickly. Then he tore off a somewhat-larger piece of bread than he was giving to the other men, though not so large that anyone else might have noticed. But Jacob noticed, and as he sat down and ate, he again wondered who this man was and why he was being shown such kindness.
The mystery continued on and off for a full week. The man wasn’t always there, but most days he was. Jacob still didn’t have the nerve to say anything to him. He didn’t want to draw undue attention to himself or to the man, and he certainly didn’t want the generous portions to stop. The man didn’t seem to be upset that Jacob wasn’t thanking him. Indeed, Jacob sensed he was nervous that Jacob might do or say something unwise. So Jacob just nodded his thanks and ate everything he was given.
Then one evening Josef came back to the bunk room after dinner, having smuggled out an apple. When he handed it over, Jacob couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Where? How . . . ?” Jacob stammered.
But Josef didn’t say. He just gestured for Jacob to eat it and do so quickly before someone else in the room spotted it and attacked him for it. They had seen worse things happen. The previous week, an older man had been attacked by two younger men who saw that he had an extra piece of bread that he had brought back to the barracks. They beat him until he was unconscious, then fought each other for the booty until Gerhard came along with several guards to break it up. The two younger men were sent away for punishment and had not returned. Jacob did not expect to ever see them again. The older man had been taken to the medical clinic. He had not returned either.
Jacob shut his mouth and devoured the apple.
Between Josef and the mysterious man in the dining hall, Jacob figured he was picking up a couple hundred extra calories a day. Given the intensity of the workload at Buna, he certainly wasn’t gaining any weight, but at least he wasn’t losing any more either.
But why? Jacob was deeply grateful, to be sure. But it was his nature to be skeptical, and he had to know who this man was and why he was showing him such favor.
– – –
August faded to September, and finally the heat wave broke.
The days became less infernal, and mercifully the breezes were picking up too. Soon most of the mosquitoes and flies had disappeared and it was becoming bearable once again—at least with regard to the weather.
The cooler temperatures did not stop men from dying all around Jacob out at the Buna camp, however. Indeed, it seemed as though he and his fellow prisoners were spending as much time handling corpses as they were pouring concrete and sawing wood and building doorframes and window frames and the like.
Then one night as Jacob was going through the line for dinner, the man ladling out the soup gave him only a regular portion. Surprised, Jacob looked down at the bowl, then back at the man.
“You need to go to the medical clinic,” the man said.
53
Jacob tensed.
No one had ever said that to him before. But there was no way he was going to the clinic. Max had warned him in no uncertain terms never to do so. People who were sent there were never heard from again. Jacob himself knew of dozens of cases in recent months that had proved Max’s counsel was accurate. Why was this man who had been so kind to him now giving him a death sentence?
“Keep moving,” the man said. “Don’t hold up the line.”
Jacob was deeply bothered by the interaction, however brief. It didn’t make any sense. At least not until he sat down at a table across from Josef and looked in his bowl. Floating on top of the soup was a small scrap of paper. Jacob glanced around to make sure no one was watching. Then he stared into his soup and saw that on the scrap of paper was written a single word: Abby. Startled, Jacob plunged his spoon into the bowl and scooped up some broth and the now-soaked piece of paper and swallowed them before anyone, including Josef, could see what had just happened.
As soon as he could, Jacob excused himself. He told Josef he would see him back at Block 18 later that night, then disappeared as the rest of the crowd exited the dining hall.
He forced himself to walk, not run, to the medical clinic. On the way it dawned on him that the man who had been so kind to him—the one who had been giving him extra soup—was the blond-haired man who had been sitting behind the desk at the medical clinic the day he and Max had gone to visit Max’s sister.
Frustrated with himself for not having made the connection sooner, Jacob picked up his pace. As he did, he also realized that he had never gone back to meet Abigail and introduce himself before Max’s death. Nor had he ever gone to express his condolences after Max was executed. He had been too consumed by his own grief. Then he had been transferred from the Canada command to the Buna work detail. How selfish could he have been? All this time he had only been thinking of himself. What was wrong with him? It was one thing to be shy, but hadn’t he at least been raised to be polite? Yet to his shame, he realized he had never once remembered that Max had one sole living sibling and that she had to be grieving far more than he was.
Jacob was so embarrassed and upset that he was literally muttering to himself as he approached the front door of the clinic. At the last moment, he stopped himself, caught his breath, and tried to calm down. Then he opened the door.
The person who greeted him took him completely by surprise.
“You’re Max’s sister?” Jacob asked, hardly believing his eyes.
Sitting behind the desk in a crisp white nurse’s uniform, albeit with a yellow triangle pinned on her chest, was the young woman who had caught his attention in the processing line the first day he had arrived at Auschwitz. While Jacob had wasted away over the past few months and now looked as emaciated as any of the other men who had not yet died but were well on their way, Abigail seemed just as attractive as he remembered her, with warm, gentle brown eyes and a shy smile.
“I am,” she said softly. “Are you Jac—I mean, are you Leonard Eliezer?”
“I am,” Jacob replied sheepishly.
“It’s an honor to finally meet you, Mr. Eliezer,” she said, standing. “Or more precisely, to meet you again. I think I handled some of your paperwork the day you arrived. Do you remember?”
“I do,” Jacob said, embarrassed at his blushing and thus blushing all the more.
“Well, it’s nice to see you again, Leonard,” she said, coming around the desk to shake his hand. “I’m Abigail Cohen. But please call me Abby. All my friends do.”
As they shook hands, Jacob realized this was the first time he had touched a woman since hugging his mother the day of her death.
Putting a finger over her lips to keep him quiet, she motioned for him to follow her down a hallway. Not sure what was happening, he reluctantly complied. She ended up leading him into the very same examination room that Max had taken him to so many months before. Jacob was suddenly seized by a terrible coughing fit, so Abby closed the door, covered the small window in the door with paper, and asked him to sit down. Then she poured him a glass of milk, which he hesitantly but gratefully accepted.
“Thank you for being such a good friend to Max, Jacob,” she began as he drank the milk. “May I call you Jacob behind closed doors?”
“Yes, of course,” he replied. “Thanks for the milk.”
She smiled. “Max spoke often of you, and highly—so highly, in fact, that several times I asked him to introduce us. He said he tried but it never worked out. Something always prevented us from meeting. That’s what he said, anyway. I guess it wasn’t mea
nt to be, until now. But I have to say, I was beginning to think that maybe you didn’t exist, that maybe Max had invented a friend to help him cope with all the stress of trying to survive in this place.”
Jacob blushed again. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” he mumbled.
Abby’s smile widened. She didn’t seem uncomfortable. Rather, she seemed to be waiting for him to say something, anything.
“Yes, well, um, I guess Max really wanted me to meet you too,” Jacob finally sputtered. “He, uh, he even brought me to this very room and we waited for you, but you . . . well . . . you never came. A doctor yelled at us. We had to leave.”
“So I heard,” Abby said. “Sorry I was delayed.”
“No, please, you have nothing to apologize for,” Jacob said. “It is I—it’s me—who’s sorry.”
“For what?” Abby asked.
Jacob looked down at his feet. “For not coming to see you after Max . . .” Jacob’s voice caught, and he could not finish the sentence. “It was very selfish and rude of me,” he eventually continued, trying to regain his composure. “I should have come to meet you before Max died. And when he passed, I should have come to see you, to tell you how sorry I am for your loss, to see if there was anything I could do for you. I’m very sorry. Really I am. My parents did not raise me to be so rude. Would you forgive me?”
“There is nothing to forgive,” she replied, now acting like a nurse and preparing to take his temperature. “You had your way to grieve; I had mine. You hadn’t met me. You didn’t owe me anything. And like Solomon once said, there is a time for every activity under the sun, and everything is beautiful in its time. God must have had his reasons.”
Jacob looked at her quizzically for a few moments.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No, it’s just that . . .”
“Just that what?” she pressed.
“Well, it’s just that . . . I’m sorry, but I . . .”
“It’s okay, Jacob,” Abby whispered gently. “You can say whatever is on your mind. Any friend of Max’s is a friend of mine.”
“Thanks,” he said, flustered by being so close to such an attractive woman. He forced himself to look away from her and to remember what he wanted to say. “I’m just surprised,” he said at last.
“At what?”
“That you still believe in God,” Jacob said.
She slipped the thermometer into his mouth. “Of course I do,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I?” She waited a minute or so, then removed the thermometer.
“Why wouldn’t you?” Jacob repeated when he could speak again. “What are you talking about? I mean, look around you. If God exists—and that’s a big if for me at the moment—it’s pretty clear that he has long since abandoned us Jews. If he’s even up there, he obviously doesn’t care about us. He might even hate us. But to be honest, I’m not sure he’s even there.”
“Oh, Jacob, you must not say such a thing,” Abby insisted, genuine hurt in her eyes. She rolled up his left sleeve, swabbed his arm with alcohol and began to give him a series of shots. “Wasn’t God with the children of Israel when we were slaves in Egypt? Wasn’t God there when the Hebrews were being tossed into the fiery furnaces in Babylon during the times of Nebuchadnezzar? Didn’t he help us then? Didn’t he save us from great evil? Yes, and he will help us now. He set us free back in ancient times, and soon I know he will set us free again. Don’t give up hope, Jacob. Of all people, with your name, please do not give up hope.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” Jacob sighed, surprised but also intrigued by the resilience of her faith, unwarranted though it seemed. Then inspiration struck. “‘No man is an island,’” he quoted, “‘entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. . . . Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’”
“That’s pretty,” she said, looking genuinely surprised as she unlocked a glass cabinet, removed a bottle of pills, and gave him several to take with what was left of the milk. “What is it?”
“John Donne,” he replied, washing down the pills without hesitation. “It somehow seems appropriate.”
Jacob couldn’t believe what he was doing. He was actually having a conversation with a girl, and a pretty girl at that. He was quoting poetry. He was talking about theology. He had no idea where this was all coming from, but somehow he felt comfortable with Abigail Cohen. Well, comfortable might be overstating it a bit. At least he didn’t feel as uncomfortable with her as he’d have expected.
“Do you really believe that?” Abby asked him. “Do you really believe that the bell is about to toll for all of us?”
“What else am I to think? You and I are Jews. There is no future for us. All our hope has perished. It’s just a matter of time before they exterminate us all, isn’t it? What happened to Max is going to happen to all of us soon. And the worst thing is, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Jacob; you seem like a nice boy, but I have to be honest with you. I don’t believe that.”
“Even after they murdered Max?”
“Especially after they murdered Max.”
“I don’t understand.”
She donned a stethoscope. “Jacob, surely you know that Max made it possible for Leszek and his friends to escape, right? The help he gave them was critical. They could never have escaped without him. That’s why Von Strassen did what he did. Because Max did his job—and did it well.”
54
Jacob was stunned.
Max had played a critical role in Leszek’s escape? And his sister knew about it? He had no idea how to respond to that. Then he realized Abby was still talking.
“Did I grieve Max’s loss? Of course I did. I still do. But don’t you see? He gave up his life so the rest of us could keep living. Isn’t that the mark of true love? Isn’t that a supreme act of faith in a God who loves us and cares for us, even though the world is trying to destroy us?”
Jacob wasn’t sure, but he was intrigued by how certain Abby was.
“Did you know his real name?” Jacob finally replied, deftly changing the subject.
“Who, Max’s?”
“No, Leszek’s.”
“Of course I did—Piotr Kubiak,” Abby replied. “I’m part of Kampfgruppe Auschwitz too, just like he was, and just like Max was.”
“Part of what?” Jacob asked.
“You know, Kampfgruppe Auschwitz,” she repeated. “Come on, Jacob, you don’t have to play dumb. Not with me. We don’t have time, and there is so much I need to tell you.”
Jacob assured her that he had never heard the term before. At first she found it hard to believe Jacob didn’t know what she was talking about, but he reminded her that he hadn’t actually been in the camp that long before Leszek escaped and Max died. He further reminded her that both men were clearly trying to protect themselves and him by not telling him too much too soon. With Leszek’s departure and Max’s death, Jacob had lost all links to the underground movement within the camp.
Abby explained that the Auschwitz Combat Group was the underground Resistance movement throughout the camp, which Kubiak and several others had formed. Their goal was to gather and then send back to the Resistance leaders on the outside as much information as possible regarding what was happening inside Auschwitz for the purpose of mobilizing a rescue.
“So now you know,” she said as she checked his pupils and took his pulse. “Now listen carefully. We know Piotr and his friends got out. We know that Von Strassen and his men didn’t catch them. If they had, they would have brought back the bodies and put them on display. Or they would have brought them back alive and hanged them in the square, like Max. The problem is, we haven’t heard whether Piotr and the others were ever able to link up with the Polish Resistance on the outside. Maybe they did. I pray to God they did. But they could have been caught by German troops elsewhere or been
tricked by Polish double agents. Maybe they caught pneumonia and died on the journey. Who knows? All we can say for sure is that it’s the middle of September and no rescue has come.”
“Forgive me,” Jacob said, “but isn’t that another reason to give up hope?”
“No, it isn’t,” Abby insisted. “The fact is, we need to try again. You’ve met Otto and Abe?”
“Yes.”
“They’re next in the queue. We had developed an elaborate plan for them to escape, but both were transferred to Birkenau. That changed everything. They didn’t know anyone over there. It took them time to get the lay of the land. Now they’re reporting that the conditions there are even worse than here. Commandant Hoess has embarked on a nonstop building spree over there. More gas chambers. More ovens. More chimneys. More of everything. It’s like the Nazis are getting ready for something. Otto and Abe don’t know what it is, but they do think they may have found a new way to escape. They want to leave soon, but they need help. And they’ve requested you.”
“Me—but why?” Jacob asked.
“You’ll have to ask them when you get there,” Abby said. “It’s not like we have a detailed correspondence. Every now and then we’re able to pass very brief coded messages through prisoners who have to do business in one camp or the other. One of them is Jean-Luc Leclerc. You’ve met him, right?”
“The blond guy who used to work here and now works at the cafeteria?”
“That’s him.”
“Yes, we’ve met, sort of.”
“Good. I’ve asked him to keep an eye out for you and make sure you were getting enough to eat.”
“That was you?”
Abby nodded.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Jacob held her gaze for a moment but then felt himself reddening again and looked away as she continued talking.