Free Holocaust by Gerald Green

his side. “One of those Jew Bolsheviks, Weiss? Drawing lying cartoons for some Communist rag?”
    “I’m a commercial artist,” Karl said. “I don’t belong to any party. I—”
    The whip cracked across Karl’s face.
    When Weinberg told me this, all I could think of was Karl, always skinny, a kid who was naturally picked on, chased. I was four years younger, but I was always strong, fast, and my creed was, if you hit me, I’ll hit back. I wanted to weep when I spoke to Weinberg, but my wife Tamar was present, and she does not believe in tears.
    “The whore who shit you?”
    “No … my mother …”
    Crack
. The whip landed again.
    “Berta Palitz Weiss,” Karl said. “The pimp who raped her?”
    “Josef Weiss. Dr. Josef Weiss.”
    “What crime did you commit to be sent to Buchenwald?”
    “I … I did nothing.”
    “Try again, Jewboy. What crime did you commit?”
    “Nothing. Honestly. I was at home, painting. These men came for me. There are no charges filed.”
    “You’re a Jew. That’s reason enough.”
    “But … but that’s not a crime.”
    They laughed at this. The sergeant and two other louts dragged Karl into the adjacent room and beathim senseless. He awakened in a dark barracks, where he met Hirsch Weinberg, who tried to teach him some tricks of survival.
    Still unaware of where Karl was, or what was happening to him, we all went to see my father off for Poland. It was the last day of November, 1938.
    I remember the scene at the bleak railroad station. About a thousand Jews, most of them older and poorer than my father, with their miserable bundles and packages of food. There were rumors the Poles were turning them away. The Jews would be left in a no man’s land, floating between Germany and Poland.
    But my father tried to be cheerful. “If you cry, Berta,” he said to my mother, “you’ll make me angry.”
    She dabbed at her eyes. No, she would control herself. Around her, other families made no secret of their sorrows. They wept, they begged, they tried to keep their loved ones from boarding the train for the Polish border.
    “Why, this may be the best thing that’s happened to us,” my father said. He was a terrible actor. Yet who could tell? Maybe he was right.
    “My brother Moses said he’d meet me. We’ll head right for Warsaw. Moses has connections. I’m sure I can get work at the Jewish Hospital.”
    We listened to him—silent, attentive, concerned. As yet, the shock of his leaving had not sunken in. Karl gone, my father forced to leave. The blows were falling one after another.
    “I’ll go with you,” my mother said. “They’ll let me. I’ll get my papers tomorrow.”
    “No, no,” my father said. “The children need you. I’m told the Poles are being difficult about even letting Polish Jews back in, let alone Germans.” He took Inga’s hand. “And we must be optimistic. Inga will find Karl, she’ll get him freed, and you’ll all be together again.”
    As I write this, I am again appalled at how so many of us, my parents included, could have deceived themselves for so long. Tamar claims it was a form ofmass hysteria; a self-deception that spread among Jews. I argue that many were helpless, without money, with no place to go. Few countries would take them. Fighting back was unknown to them. We had been a people who accommodated, gave in, bent, tried to make arrangements, hoped that tomorrow would be better. Now, to the east of our kibbutz, Syrian guns are firing again. But this time we fire back. Morality is a marvelous, admirable thing; but I have yet to hear of a moral stance, a righteous position, that ever deflected a bomb or a bullet.
    Anna began to sob. She threw her arms around my father, crying, “Papa, Papa, don’t leave us. I’ll be afraid without you. Please, Papa, stay with us.”
    Inga took Anna aside, brushed her hair, kissed her. “Papa will be all right, Anna darling. He will come back.”
    Anna was truly bawling. “Shut up,” I said.