In His Father's Footsteps: A Novel

Chapter 1

On April 6, 1945, the Nazis began evacuating Buchenwald concentration camp, on the Ettersberg Mountain, near Weimar, Germany. The camp had been in operation for eight years, since 1937, and two hundred and thirty-eight thousand prisoners, men, women, and children, had passed through the camp by then. Fifty-six thousand prisoners had died there: Czechs, Poles, French, Germans.

On the sixth of April, U.S. troops had been in the area for two days, and the Nazis wanted all the prisoners out of the camp before the Allied forces arrived. It was a labor camp, with a crematorium, a medical facility where horrific medical experiments were conducted, and horse barracks to house the prisoners. Stables which had once held up to eighty horses were lived in by twelve hundred men, five to a bunk. There were additional buildings for the men. And a single barracks for the women, which could accommodate up to a thousand female inmates.

On the sixth of April, most of the women prisoners were sent to Theresienstadt, once considered a model camp, used as a showplace for visitors and the Red Cross. The women who were mobile enough to go were moved by train or on foot. Those who weren’t remained in the barracks, ignored at the end. As many male prisoners as could be handled were evacuated too. They were to be moved deeper into Germany, or sent to other camps farther away. The evacuation continued for two days, as the prisoners wondered what would happen next.

On April 8, Gwidon Damazyn, a Polish engineer who had been at the camp for four years, used the hidden shortwave transmitter he had built, and sent a message in Morse code in German and English. To the Allies. To the army of General Patton. This is the Buchenwald concentration camp. SOS. We request help. They want to evacuate us. The SS wants to destroy us. Working with Damazyn, Konstantin Leonov sent the same Morse code message in Russian.

Three minutes later, they received a response. Kz Bu. Hold out. Rushing to your aid. Staff of Third Army.

As soon as the message was received, Russian inmates stormed the watchtowers with weapons they had hidden and killed the guards. The others in charge rapidly retreated and fled rather than face the advancing U.S. Army. There were twenty-one thousand prisoners left in the camp after the evacuation, only a few hundred of them women.

Three days later, on April 11, 1945, troops from the U.S. Ninth Armored Infantry Battalion, from the Sixth Armored Division, part of the U.S. Third Army, entered Buchenwald. It was the first concentration camp to be liberated by American forces. Other camps had already been liberated by Russian forces advancing through Poland.

Later in the day, the U.S. Eighty-Third Infantry Division arrived at the camp. None of the U.S. soldiers were prepared for what they found there, walking skeletons staring at them, some too weak to move or stand, others cheering and shouting as tears ran down their cheeks. Their liberators cried too. The prisoners attempted to lift them to their shoulders but were too weak. Several died as the Allies rolled into the camp, or minutes later. Starvation and the illnesses resulting from it, as well as the Nazis, had been their enemy for years.

The American soldiers entered the barracks and were horrified by what they found, the stench and the filth, the decaying bodies too weak to leave their beds, the people the retreating Germans had intended to kill, but hadn’t had time to.

As the soldiers entered the main barracks, a tall, ghoulishly skeletal man staggered toward them waving his arms. His head had been shaved, the filthy camp uniform he wore was torn, which showed his ribs. He looked like a corpse and it was impossible to determine his age. He was desperate as he approached them.

The women…where are the women…are they all gone? he asked.

We don’t know yet. We haven’t found them. We just got here. Where are they?

The man pointed in the direction of another barracks and started to stumble toward it.

Hang on, a young sergeant put out a hand to stop him, and then caught the man as he began to fall. How long since you’ve had food or water?

Five days.

The sergeant gave an order to two of his men standing near him and they hurried off to comply. The mayor of nearby Langenstein was to be commanded to supply food and water to the camp immediately. Another officer had already radioed for medical personnel. Every single member of the camp looked like the walking dead. I’ll take you to the women’s barracks, the newly liberated prisoner volunteered although he could barely stand up. Two soldiers helped him into a jeep. He was almost weightless as they lifted him. They tried not to react to the stench. His boots had the toes cut out and the soles were worn through. They were from the body of a dead man, killed by the Nazis. He directed them toward the women’s barracks, and when they got there, the women looked even worse than the men. Some women were being carried by others, and as many of them as could were coming out of the building to watch the American troops explore the camp. They had no idea what to expect now, but they knew it could be no worse than what they had lived through so far. Some had been transferred from other camps, all had been assigned to hard labor, and several had undergone unimaginable medical experiments. Many of them had died.

The prisoner directing the soldiers in the jeep introduced himself before they stopped at the women’s barracks.

I’m Jakob Stein, he said in fluent English, with a heavy German accent. I’m Austrian. I’ve been here for five years. They stopped at the women’s barracks then and one of the soldiers lifted him out of the jeep so he wouldn’t fall. He hobbled toward two of the women and spoke to them in German. Emmanuelle? he asked with a look of panic as the soldiers stared at the women in horror. They were ravaged and barely alive. Is she gone? Jakob asked with a grimace of terror on his gaunt face. The soldiers wondered if she was his wife but didn’t ask. They tried to smile at the women walking toward them so as not to frighten them.

She’s inside, one woman with blue-gray lips said hoarsely, pulling the shreds of an old blanket around her. They were more filthy strings than anything that could keep her warm, and her eyes blazed with fever. She was shaking and stumbled into the arms of a soldier who lifted her into the jeep.

We have medics coming, the private told her, doctors. She looked terrified as he said it and shrank away from him. They had no way of knowing what she’d been through, but a festering open wound that ran down the length of her leg was part of it. By then, Jakob had hobbled into the women’s barracks, as the officer driving the jeep radioed for medical assistance for several hundred females and described where they were.

It was a long time before Jakob emerged carrying a woman who looked close to death. He stumbled several times but didn’t drop her. She was barely larger than a child and couldn’t have weighed more than fifty or sixty pounds. One of the soldiers took her from Jakob and set her down in the jeep. She tried to smile, but was too weak.

I thought they sent you away, Jakob said with tears in his eyes. He spoke to her in French.

They didn’t see me in my bed. There are less than half of us left. It was easy to see that she would have died on the march to Moravia or been crushed on the train.

The Americans are here now, he said in a comforting voice, and she nodded and closed her eyes. Everything is going to be all right. She opened her huge green eyes and looked at him and then at the soldiers and smiled. They could see the tattoo with her camp number on the inside of her naked forearm. Jakob had one on his arm too. They all did. They were numbers here, not people. No one in the camp had been considered human. They were to be eradicated. Jakob and Emmanuelle were both Jews. She was French and had been deported from Paris with her mother and younger sister. Her little sister had been killed when they arrived at the camp and her mother had died of illness a few months later. Other women had watched their families and children murdered. They were only kept alive if they were strong enough to work. Emmanuelle’s hands were filthy, her nails broken stubs with dirt under them. She had worked in the gardens, and had given Jakob pieces of potatoes and turnips from time to time when she met him. She could have been killed for it.

I want to take these two women to get medical help, the soldier next to Jakob said, you too. We’ve got trucks coming for the others, they’ll be here in a few minutes. Our medics will take care of them. Will you tell them that? The Nazis are gone. No one is going to hurt them now. Jakob translated what he’d said in French to Emmanuelle, then German, and Russian, which he appeared to speak fluently as well. The women nodded, and the jeep took off toward the main part of the complex with Jakob, Emmanuelle, and the other woman, who had slipped into unconsciousness by then. Jakob was holding Emmanuelle’s hand, and the soldiers noticed that they all had a dead look in their eyes. They had been through an unspeakable hell for as long as they’d been there. None of the Americans could fully understand what they were seeing, and the residents of the camp didn’t have the strength to explain, but they were walking proof of what the Nazis had done to them.

A medical tent had already been set up by then, and a soldier escorted Jakob and Emmanuelle inside. Another soldier carried the unconscious woman. As soon as Emmanuelle was being tended to by an army medic, Jakob hobbled back outside to help the soldiers with explanations about the locations of the camp offices and other barracks. There was a mountain of naked corpses the Nazis had wanted to have buried before they left, but hadn’t had time to see to it. The soldiers were devastated as they entered the dormitories, and medics followed them, carrying litters to bring out the sick and the dead. Jakob stayed with them for a long time, to be as helpful as he could, translating for them. And after that, he went back to the tent to find Emmanuelle. She was his friend, and the food she had stolen for him had sustained him. More than that was unthinkable here. Having a friend was rare enough, particularly a woman. She had been very brave to give him what she did. She had almost been caught once, when a guard suspected her of putting a potato in her pocket, but she had let it drop to the ground, and it was so small and rotten, the guard hadn’t bothered with it. He had hit her with a whip on the back of the neck and moved on. She had picked it up again before she left, when she’d finished work.

The medic tending to her asked her name, and Jakob supplied it. Emmanuelle Berger. She’s twenty-three years old, from Paris. She’s been here for almost two years.

Is she your sister?

No, I’m Austrian. We’re friends. The young soldier nodded and made note. Eventually, they would have more than twenty-one thousand histories to take, but the Red Cross would help them do that. Families and survivors would have to be reunited. This was only the beginning, and just in the short time they’d been there, prisoners had continued to die. For some, the Americans had come too late. For others, like Emmanuelle, just in time. The other woman from her barracks had died while they were examining her.

The following day, April 12, the Eightieth Infantry Division came to take control of the camp. Medical units had been arriving since the day before, responding to emergency calls from the Eighty-Third Infantry. They’d never seen anything like it. It was a camp filled with living corpses who were barely clinging to life. How they had survived was beyond imagining. They were using all their translators to communicate with the freed prisoners, who spoke many languages, and after a cursory examination by the medics, Jakob had continued to help them where he could, since he spoke English, German, Russian, and French.

The next day, the press corps arrived and were photographing everything. One team was making newsreels of the freed prisoners. This was hard evidence of just how inhuman the Nazis were. These weren’t prisoners of war, although it would have been inexcusable treatment of them too. These were civilians who had been brought from all over Europe and incarcerated in the camp. The army already knew there were other camps like it but Buchenwald was the first they’d seen.

The mayor of Langenstein had done as he’d been ordered to do, and food and water were brought to the camp to feed the survivors. Both were dispensed with meticulous caution by the Red Cross and medical personnel, as too much of either could kill the starving prisoners if taken too quickly. The army had buried the corpses, there was no way to identify them, other than by their numbers, although books had been found in the camp office, with careful records the Nazis hadn’t had time to destroy before they left. And there were extensive records of experiments in the medical facility too. But all of that would be gone through later. In the early days, they were treating the survivors medically and trying to save everyone they could. Many died in the first few days, but with food and medicine, some of the sturdier young ones started to look less like the living dead. General Patton had come to visit the camp himself. And both the Red Cross and film crews had arrived in great number. Field hospitals had been set up immediately.

Emmanuelle told them that she was twenty-three years old, and the only survivor of her family. Jakob was twenty-five. His entire family had been exterminated. His grandparents and two younger sisters had been shot and killed when they arrived at the camp and his parents had died months later, unable to withstand the rigors of hard labor. Jakob was the only one left.

Within days after they were liberated, the sickest survivors had been taken from the field hospitals to army hospitals, a small number to local hospitals. The rest eventually moved to other facilities, where the Red Cross was also set up to help them get back to their countries wherever possible, or to try to locate members of their families in other camps, as the Allies liberated them. And in each camp, the conditions were as horrifying as those they’d seen at Buchenwald.

The camp survivors who had no home to return to were identified as displaced persons. Some wanted to go to Palestine, which was not an easy process. Quotas into other countries, including the United States, made leaving Germany difficult.

Jakob had requested to be transferred with Emmanuelle to a facility the army had set up for survivors, a few miles from the camp. Once there, Emmanuelle looked like a young woman again in the clothes they had given her, although she was not healthy yet. But she no longer looked like a dying child. Neither of them stood in line at the Red Cross tent for reunification. They had no one to look for and no one to go home to. They had been at the displaced persons camp for a month when they were told that Jewish American relief organizations were offering to help survivors relocate, and American sponsors were willing to pay for their transportation and help them find jobs in the United States. Immigration into the United States was complicated by quotas, but the War Refugee Board, established a year before, was working with refugee organizations that provided sponsors to give the victims of the camps new homes, whenever possible.

Jakob and Emmanuelle were talking about it one afternoon, as they sat in the May sunshine. Neither of them had any idea where to go, or what to do next. The war in Europe had ended a week before, but Jakob had nothing left in Vienna. Everything had been taken from them when they’d been deported, their money, his family’s bank, their home, a schloss near Salzburg his family had owned for two hundred years. He had nothing now. He had been forced to leave university after the Anschluss, when Jews could no longer attend classes, and his father had been made to turn over their bank to the Third Reich. Jakob was alone in the world, and he didn’t want to go back to Vienna to stand in the ashes of everything he had lost.

Emmanuelle had lost much less materially. Her father had died when she was a small child. Her mother had been a seamstress in an important fashion house in Paris and took in sewing on the side, which Emmanuelle often helped her with. Her mother had lost her job shortly before they were deported, and one by one, her private clients had stopped coming to her. They were too afraid to give her any business because she was Jewish. Their neighbors, who had been lifelong friends, had turned them in. Emmanuelle never wanted to see any of them again. The neighbors had taken over the Bergers’ apartment, with the permission of the prefecture of police. Emmanuelle had nowhere to go, and no home to return to, and she didn’t want to see Paris ever again. But they couldn’t stay in the army facility forever. They’d have to go somewhere eventually.

You don’t want to go back to Paris? Jakob asked her as they sat in the sunshine, while he smoked a cigarette the soldiers had given him. The Americans had been very generous with them, with food and chocolates. She was wrapped in a wool shawl from the Red Cross. She was so thin she was always freezing. She shook her head.

For what? Our neighbors took our apartment because it was bigger than theirs. I think that’s why they reported us. He nodded. Many Austrians had done the same thing, turned on Jews whom they had known all their lives, Jews who were often pillars of the community, like his family had been. Suddenly greed and jealousy had created a mob mentality that no one had thought possible in civilized communities and sophisticated cities. Being Jewish had become a death sentence overnight. His family had never been religious, nor had Emmanuelle’s mother, but they were Jews nonetheless.

Maybe going to America would be a good thing, Jakob said cautiously in French and she shook her head again with a terrified expression.

What would I do there? I don’t know anyone, and I don’t speak English. I couldn’t get a job.

The Red Cross workers are saying that the sponsors will help people find housing and work and be responsible for them until they can take care of themselves.

I want to stay in France, just not Paris. Are you going to America? She was sad as she asked him, since he was her only friend and had taken good care of her in the past month. They were always together and the American soldiers respected him. He had been helpful whenever he could, and he could speak to them in English, which she couldn’t.

I don’t know, he said. I don’t have anyone there either. But I have even less here. I don’t know what kind of job I could get. I was going to work at our bank after university. I’m not sure what I could do now. I didn’t finish my studies.

I stopped going to classes after the lycée. I wasn’t very good in school, she said shyly. All I know how to do is sew.

You can get a job doing that, he reassured her. And you don’t need to speak English to be a seamstress. She nodded agreement, but America seemed frightening and too far away. She had never dreamed of going there, and it sounded like a nightmare to her now, although the soldiers had all been very nice and very respectful of her. And Jakob liked them too.

In the past month, they had both gotten stronger and healthier. She had gained a few pounds with wholesome regular meals, although her stomach had revolted at first. She was no longer used to eating normally, and she frequently had stomach pains and so did he. But his body craved the food they were given and he devoured it. He was tall and thin normally, so you couldn’t see much weight gain yet, but his face looked less skeletal, and his eyes less sunken. His hair had grown out a little and was very dark.

She now had soft blond baby curls instead of her shaved head, but they both looked like people who had been to hell and back, even if they were on the road to recovery now. Jakob had trouble with his feet from the chilblains he had gotten every winter, with boots that had been falling off his feet, and had open toes and holes in the soles. Both the Red Cross and the army had provided clothes for the prisoners too. Some of it was a little odd, and none of it fit well, but they now had warm, clean clothes. All their prison garb had had to be burned. It was filled with lice and the stench was overwhelming. Jakob knew he would never forget the smell of the barracks, their bodies and their clothes, and the corpses left in mountainous piles outside, until they were buried.

Emmanuelle said she still had nightmares every night. He was the only one who understood what she’d been through. Despite what they’d seen when they arrived, the soldiers had no idea what it had been like when the Nazis were there and the camp was fully functioning. It had been hell on earth and there had been many times when she had hoped she’d die rather than have to live another day. And yet they had gotten through it, she for two years, and Jakob for five. There had been no predicting who would survive and who wouldn’t. They had found dead prisoners in their bunks every morning, sometimes lying side by side with them, with dead, unseeing eyes.

Jakob went with her to talk to one of the Red Cross workers again about the possibilities open to them. They could choose to repatriate to their own countries, but both of them had nothing but bad memories of their last days there. Emmanuelle and her mother and sister had spent three months in a stadium after they were taken from their home, before leaving for Buchenwald. And the Steins had lingered for months in a holding facility outside Vienna.

We have sponsors for both of you, if you want them, through the American relief organization I mentioned to you before. And the War Refugee Board is doing all they can for displaced persons. We have one sponsor in Chicago, and another one in New York, the Red Cross worker said kindly. She didn’t add that they had to be well-connected people to get through the red tape and quotas.

Could we go to the same place, or have the same sponsor? Jakob asked cautiously, feeling suddenly shy with Emmanuelle. He didn’t want to seem presumptuous, but he knew she’d be too afraid to go to America alone. For a brave girl who had been through the worst experience imaginable, she was fearful now about crossing the Atlantic to a new home.

Are you married? the Red Cross worker asked Jakob, and he shook his head.

No, we’re friends.

The sponsors won’t do that. Couples have to be married, or else sign up singly and be placed with whoever is able and willing to take them. We have to submit their profiles to the people offering to be responsible for them, and they choose who they want. The rules are strict about all of it. Most of these people have volunteered to help through their temples, she explained. We have sponsors in other cities too. We have a number of participating organizations in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston. Do you have relatives in any of those places? They both shook their heads.

We have no one except each other. They didn’t even have passports, and their citizenship in their respective countries had been canceled because they were Jews, but the United States had offered to give them passports as displaced persons, if American citizens were taking responsibility for them. She gave them each a sheet of information and they went back outside to talk about it some more. We can’t stay here forever, Jakob reminded her. Sooner or later they had to make a decision about where to go. He didn’t know why but he felt a strong pull to a new life in New York. He talked about it to one of the soldiers later, when he offered Jakob a cigarette.

What’s it like there? Jakob asked the private he was smoking with. He had chatted with him before.

America is a land of opportunity. I’m from Brooklyn. My uncle is a butcher, I was working for him before the war. But I think I want to move out West when I go back. There are good jobs there.

Where’s Brooklyn? Jakob had never heard of it.

It’s part of New York City. You’d like it, it’s nice. Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, the Bronx, it’s all part of New York City. Man, what I wouldn’t give right now for a hot dog and a beer in Times Square, and a night on the town. He smiled knowingly at Jakob, who laughed. They were the same age.

I’m thinking about signing up for one of the sponsors who are offering to find us jobs and lodgings through Jewish relief groups.

Can your girlfriend go with you? he asked sympathetically.

I don’t think so, unless we’re married. She can sign up too, but she might go to another city. Boston, Chicago, or Los Angeles. I don’t think she wants to go. She’s afraid to be so far away from where she grew up, but it can’t be worse than here. He glanced around them as he said it, and the soldier felt sorry for him. Jakob still looked ravaged and old before his time. He had trouble walking and had been beaten with sticks so often that he was bent over despite his youth. But at least he was alive. So many more had died in the last month, from typhoid, typhus, tuberculosis, yellow fever, dysentery, and starvation. And many were suffering from depression and delusional disorders too from what they’d been through.

Maybe you two should get married, his American friend suggested and Jakob nodded. He had thought of it himself, but had no idea what Emmanuelle would think of the idea. He hadn’t dared suggest it to her. He liked it, but it seemed too soon to offer that as a solution. It seemed extreme to him too, but leaving her in Germany would be hard. There were also some complicated opportunities to go to Palestine, but he had no desire to go there. New York sounded better to him, if they could get housing and a job from benefactors.

He ate with Emmanuelle in the mess hall that night, as they did each evening. He saw that she looked tired and worried. Most of the other women didn’t know where they were going either, and many of them were trying to get news of their relatives in other camps. All they had to go on were rumors they had heard about where they were, or clues from someone who had seen them several years before. There was still chaos in every camp once they were liberated, and most of the freed prisoners had nowhere to go.

He waited a few more days to talk to her, and finally dared to broach the subject. I was thinking, if we get married, the same sponsor will have to take us both, as a couple. And I could take care of you once we get to New York. That way you wouldn’t be alone. She looked at him in surprise.

What if we hate it there? How would we get back to Europe?

We’d have to save our money, he said, but what do we have to come back to? I have nothing left in Vienna, and how do we know our own countries would take us back? Our fellow countrymen were happy to turn us in and get rid of us. The French as much as the Austrians. Our countries were occupied, but many of our friends seemed to be willing to cooperate with the Germans. It might not be easy for us here, he said, and she nodded. She had thought of that as well.

Do you want to get married? she asked him so softly he almost didn’t hear her. He nodded and took her hand in his.

You saved my life, you stole food for me, Emma. You could have died for it. Your doing that gave me hope when I had none left. She smiled at what he said.

Is that enough reason to get married? But they both knew that if they didn’t, they might never see each other again. He was the only familiar face now in a sea of strangers, except for the women she knew from her barracks, and they would be gone soon too.

People have married for less, he said sensibly. And I promise I will protect you. He could say that now, whereas a month before he couldn’t have. He could be gallant now, which for an instant reminded him of his old life, where men took care of women, and shielded them. All they had been able to do in the camp was survive, if that.

What if you don’t want to be married to me once we get to New York? You might meet an American girl and fall in love. She looked worried and he smiled and held her hand tighter.

I don’t need an American girl, I’m already in love, he said and she blushed and looked very young, despite her still too thin face and the dark circles under her eyes.

I love you too, she said quietly. I just thought you only considered us friends.

We will grow to love each other more when we know each other better. We can have a new life in a new place where they want to help us. It’s a good beginning. She nodded agreement. They walked in silence for a while, and then she stopped and looked up at him.

Yes, she said simply, but he hadn’t spoken. He was thinking about her, and the opportunities they could share.

Yes, what? His mind had been a thousand miles away.

To what you said…what you asked me a little while ago. She didn’t want to say the words herself, and he smiled as he understood.

Emmanuelle Berger, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife? he asked her formally and dropped to one knee on the dusty path as he said it. She smiled down at him and nodded.

Yes, she said in a whisper, I will. He stood up and kissed her gently then. She was so frail he was afraid to break her if he took her in his arms. He was no sturdier than she was, but he was young and strong, and her injuries had been more severe than his from the beatings she’d been given when she didn’t work fast enough. She’d been on a burial detail before she worked in the garden.

He put an arm around her shoulders and walked her slowly back to her barracks, which was not far from his own in the army camp. We’ll go back to the Red Cross tomorrow and see what they have to offer us. Then we’ll go to the chaplain, and ask him to find us a rabbi. There had been several rabbis wandering around the camp, to talk to Jewish prisoners. Good night, Emmanuelle, he said and kissed her lightly again. Thank you. She smiled shyly at him, and then slipped into the barracks to join the other women, as Jakob smiled, put his hands in his pockets, and walked back to his own.

Chapter 2

Three weeks later, when the Red Cross and the American relief organization in New York had processed their papers, Emmanuelle and Jakob were put on a train to Calais. From there they would take a ferry to England and then another train to Southampton to board the RMS Queen Mary to make the crossing to New York. There were to be fourteen thousand troops on board returning to New York, in cabins fitted for three soldiers in each. And fifty-eight civilian passengers had been allowed to