Mila 18 - Leon Uris

Warsinski, the convert, whose hatred of Jews matched the viciousness of the Reinhard Corps, also feared Alexander Brandel. The flesh on the backs of his hands were always crimson from a nervous itch. At the sight of Alex entering his office, his fingernails dug into them, turning his skin to bleeding scales.

“What do you want here?” he growled.

“I should like to go into the Umschlagplatz and I want a dozen of my nurses around the selection center.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I’ll pay for the privilege.”

“Get the hell out or you’ll be taking a train ride yourself.”

That goddamned smile on Brandel’s face! That son of a bitch! What he hated more than anything was Brandel’s calm. Brandel’s refusal to argue. When he had been sub-warden at Pawiak Prison he liked to watch the prisoners cringe, broken at his feet. Then one like Brandel would show up. Unafraid. He hated unafraid bastards. Warsinski’s itch worsened and his slitty eyes watered.

This morning he had beaten a woman prisoner to death with his hands. Women pointed up his impotence, his inability to be a man even when he paraded them around naked and made them perform obscenities with male prisoners.

He dropped his hands below the desk and tore at them with his fingernails.

“What do you want?”

“To see Haupsturmführer Kutler and Sturmbannführer Stutze. There are certain people who are taken to the Umschlagplatz whom we want to buy back.”

“What are you paying with?”

“American dollars.”

“I’ll take the message to them. How much a head?”

“Six dollars.”

“Whatever deal is made, add on another dollar for the Militia.”

“Fine,” Alex said, shoving away from the desk, hiding his revulsion. What pearls of wisdom had he gathered in a lifetime of study to pierce the heart of Piotr Warsinski? Seven dollars per life. Warsinski’s cruel eyes told him that one day he would stand on a platform and watch Alex ride off to Treblinka in a cattle car.

Haupsturmführer Kutler was sloppy drunk when Warsinski reached the SS barracks. The sight of Warsinski’s bloody hands triggered a quicker guzzling. The nightmare had been particularly bad for several days as Kutler relived the massacre of Babi-Yar and woke up screaming from a dream of drowning in blood. Now his sleep was tormented by visions of little animals tearing at his flesh. Sturmbannführer Stutze tried to pull the captain to his feet. Stutze was sickened at the weak fiber of the Germans who had been Kommandos in the Action Squads. They constantly drank themselves to the DT’s and pumped their veins full of dope. Austrians such as he and Globocnik and Hitler were made of sterner stuff. When the war was won, the Austrians would dominate the weaker German species. Kutler was in no condition to talk. Stutze had him taken to his room by a pair of guards, then turned to Warsinski.

“So,” Stutze said, “he offered you six dollars a Jew head. How much did you add on for yourself?”

“Only a dollar a Jew, Herr Sturmbannführer, and much of that must be spread among my police.”

The crippled Austrian meditated. “Hummm. What is the difference? Let them buy the Jews. We’ll get them all back anyhow. Only ... Jews barter. You are a Jew, Warsinski. Barter.”

Warsinski winced at being called a Jew.

“I want ten dollars a Jew, payable at the end of every business day,” Stutze said.

“Yes, sir.”

“And, by the way, let us keep this transaction between us.”

“Yes, sir.”

At the final price of eleven dollars and fifty cents a head, Alexander Brandel and his nurses were allowed into the Umschlagplatz. In the next few days they snatched out a few writers, scientists, musicians, poets, historians, teachers, children, engineers, doctors, actors, and rabbis from among the thousands jammed into the daily train.

The ruse of taking factory workers failed because volunteers refused to take their place any more. The next cleanup was a systematic dragnet of the ghetto to bag the thousands of beggar children, Wild Ones, and homeless for deportation. Crazy Nathan was among those picked up, but Alexander Brandel purchased his life, for he was a sentimental historian and the “crazy” one had filled his journals with hundreds of poems and anecdotes.

In these days the lines of deportees were not so orderly as in the beginning. Bribe money flashed all over the Umschlagplatz. When there was no money, the deportees offered the guards watches, rings, furs—anything—to buy their way back into the ghetto for another day, another hour. And each day the marches to the trains were halted dozens of times by frantic bursts for freedom which only intensified the brutality of the guards.

And each day when the trains pulled out at three o’clock there were leftovers in the square. These prisoners were taken to the top floor of the selection building, to be first in line for deportation the next day. Each night the Ukrainian guards stripped the prisoners, searching for valuables. Women were taken to the lower floors of the building and raped.

On the twelfth day of the Big Action, the Bathyran Council met and demanded from Alex that he stay out of the Umschlagplatz. Tolek and Ana pleaded that a whim of Kutler or Stutze would cancel their deal and threaten his own life. Alex would have none of it, not even their orders nor, finally, their threats to restrain him. For so many years he had battled to breathe life into the dying. He could not hold back the flood, but he was frantic to salvage the product of a great culture.

And on the next day he milled in the courtyard of the Umschlagplatz, as usual.

“Alex! Come quickly. Rabbi Solomon has passed from the selection center. They’re taking him to the cemetery for execution.”

Alex raced over the square, stumbling, gasping, into the building, down the corridor, past the guard, into Kutler’s office. The captain was more than halfway through his first bottle of schnapps and it was not yet noon. Alexander completely lost his composure.

“The Rabbi Solomon!” he cried.

“Don’t push your luck, Jew boy,” Kutler blurted.

Alex panicked.

“A hundred dollars!”

“Hundred?” He began to laugh. “Hundred for that old Jew carcass? God damn. The price for old Jews is good today. He’s all yours, Jew boy.”

As Alex sighed and reeled out, Kutler reared back and laughed until the tears came to his eyes.

In the middle of the night Sylvia Brandel tiptoed down to Alexander’s office. Mila 19 was asleep except for the guards. Earlier in the day she had tried to go to him, but his door was locked. He refused to answer her calls. She did not know whether to be angry or hurt or to try to approach him with sympathy or to leave him alone. It was indeed strange behavior for Alex. She rattled on the doorknob and knocked again. He opened it and walked away from her.

Sylvia stared at his back, trying to adjust to the awesome experience, for Alexander was not like other men. He had always been a strong stone lighthouse for people to look up to find light and shelter. In twenty years of marriage she could not remember him floundering or crying for help. At first she was troubled that he did not seem to need the compassion that other men needed, but she learned to revere him and to five to serve him. Alex lived in his own world, a strange mixture of ideals and ideas, and he functioned with inexhaustible reservoirs of patience and courage. It was frightening to see him derailed.

“How is Rabbi Solomon?” he asked.

“We have a cot set up for him in the Good Fellowship room in the cellar. Ervin will stay with him tonight. Alex, will you eat something? There is some soup left in the kitchen.”

“I’m not hungry,” he whispered.

“It’s almost three o’clock. Please come up to bed.”