A Ritchie Boy Read online

  It felt good to be in open space, breathing in the crisp air. Eli stretched his head to one side, almost touching his shoulder, then to the other. The fading light of dusk had a calming effect on him. The villa was a safe haven, far from the battlefield and the fear they all harbored in wartime. He felt the ground, hard beneath his feet, the earth frozen solid by the frigid temperatures. Snapping sounds startled him for a moment—gunshots?—but they morphed into the crunching of footsteps just as Henry White appeared around the corner.

  “How’s it goin’ in there?” Officially a technical specialist, White was Eli’s MI partner when the two picked up Malcolm on the Paris streets.

  “It … it’s interesting.” Eli stopped himself from saying more. “Can you bring us two plates from the mess hall?” Eli patted his comrade’s shoulder in thanks, like a father to his son, even though Henry was less than two years younger.

  He watched White’s silhouette disappear into the main house, a sprawling structure shaped like a wide V. The central foyer fed into a large dining area on one side and what had become the combat regiment’s main office on the other. Much of the villa’s furniture had been removed and the place repurposed when Eli’s MI team arrived, including the separate brick building that may have served as storage and servant quarters but was now a series of interrogation suites.

  He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. As he drew the tobacco into his lungs, he thought back to when he first arrived in France. His MI team bonded well despite the clear hierarchy. Now a staff sergeant, Eli ranked below First Lieutenant Greene, Master Sergeant Landenberger, and Captain Higgins but above Henry, a T/4, and above Max Schultz, a corporal—Henry and Max were already Eli’s friends from their months of training at Camp Ritchie alongside thousands of GIs, many whose native tongues were also not English. Men being groomed into interrogators of prisoners of war. It was then that Eli began to realize his knowledge of German language and culture, so long a liability, was suddenly viewed by the U.S. Army as a valuable asset. And this isolated villa became a welcome respite from the military camp in Manchester, an old, grimy textile mill town full of ancient brick factory buildings, where his unit was deployed last June. The pressure then was much higher for all of them in intelligence to help turn the tide of the war. Eli played his part; his interrogations and analysis of aerial photographs led to the identification of fortifications along the Siegfried Line and allowed U.S. troops to breech those bunkers and advance from France to Germany.

  Eli exhaled smoke into the winter air. He hadn’t had the luxury of private reflection, but tonight he found himself dwelling on his role as both an Austrian Jew and an Allied officer. It was easier to work steadily within the parameters of his MI training—the physical, the technical, the linguistic: interpretation of aerial codes, weeding out liars and killers, finding the enemy’s secrets of war—rather than exploring his own emotions or reconciling his feelings about returning to the European fray just six years after escaping it. How he and his parents just picked up and left, how they had to abandon his grandmother in the midst of the crisis. The tears. The promises to find a way to get her later. The sadness he’d seen in his mother’s eyes ever since.

  Back then, Eli didn’t register the finality of the family’s predicament. He didn’t consider that he’d never see Gramma Jenny again. Now, Malcolm Schlick was pulling him backward, to all the bullying and insults and fear of that time—but also to the lovely parts of his childhood and his special friendship with Toby. Eli had been Toby’s protector, and then in that final year Toby became Eli’s. Once Eli moved to the Midwest and began a new life where he was safe, he somehow let that part of his life fade away like an old photograph.

  Eli had a sudden impulse and pulled out his wallet, quickly rifling through identification cards, a few American dollars, a cropped family portrait. And there it was—the discolored photo of him and Toby in Tyrol. It was so sunny that Eli had to squint to avoid the glare off the snow. Toby was in the middle of a laugh, his head tilted up toward Eli. It hit Eli then: he escaped, and Toby was left to fight as a German.

  “I’M A JEW,” ELI said evenly.

  Malcolm chewed a piece of beef, his head lowered over his plate. He took another bite before responding. “You were lucky. How’d you get out?”

  “A childhood friend of my mother’s lived in New York with her husband. They were poor. Didn’t know the kind of people who could vouch for us.” Eli hesitated, random thoughts coursing through his mind. Also an Austrian. Also a non-Jew. “She found a generous Jewish businessman and convinced him to take a chance on us. My parents and I got out in the nick of time. What about your family?”

  Malcolm’s deep-set eyes darkened. “I haven’t seen them in over a year.”

  “Have you been in touch at all?”

  “No. I was deployed as part of the Twelfth SS Panzer Division.”

  Eli took a deep breath as Malcolm’s words sunk in. Hitler-Jugend had become Germany’s military reserve. At sixteen, Malcolm was at the front line fighting a grueling war counter to his beliefs and against his will. When Eli was that age, he was completing his final year at a public high school in Columbus, Ohio.

  “You said you joined the movement when you were twelve. Were there tests you had to pass? Training to become a member?”

  “We had to recite all the verses of the Horst Wessel song.” Malcolm began to sing, mockingly: Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen! SA marschiert mit ruhig festem Schritt. (The flag on high! The ranks tightly closed! The SA marches with quiet, steady step.) His voice was low-pitched, guttural.

  “And …?”

  “We had to answer a bunch of questions about Hitler’s life and about Nazi ideology and history. We ran sprints to show we were physically fit. They made us take courage tests.”

  “Like what?”

  “I had to jump from a second-story ledge.”

  Eli clenched his jaw, holding back his outrage at the harsh tactics Nazis employed with mere children. He tried shutting off his anger, thinking about something else. The Camp Ritchie classroom instruction. The times they role-played to hone their skills as interrogators. Each had taken turns acting the part of a German, provoking one another with coarse words or flagrant taunts, or compelling anguish that could compromise their objectivity as they extracted information from the man facing them across the table.

  “And if you refused?”

  “I told you—refusal was not a choice. Failure wasn’t an option.” Malcolm pushed away his plate, half-eaten, placed both his hands on the table, and leaned toward Eli. “My father was severely beaten, his print shop ransacked. Just because he refused to become a member of the Nazi Party.” At that, Malcolm let out a contemptuous laugh that sent a shiver down Eli’s spine. “At least it kept him from being drafted. The thugs broke his leg, and it never healed properly. He was lame … and ineligible.”

  An Austrian worker persecuted in the preamble to this war. His son forced to fight against his will. Eli tried to be skeptical about what Malcolm had told him, but he kept asking himself, How can he make up this kind of detail? He committed to memory all the facts to include in the report. Even though the write-ups were typically brief and perfunctory, he suspected his peers shared his own ignorance.

  “Tell me more about your HJ activities.”

  “By 1940 it became an auxiliary force that performed war duties. For a while I was active in fire brigades, assisted with recovery efforts. Around the Salzburg train station, mostly. Plenty of devastation resulted from Allied bombings. It kept me busy.”

  “So where were you deployed once you became part of the Nazi fighting forces?”

  “The first major action we saw was last June during the Normandy campaign. We started with more than twenty thousand. Left with less than fourteen. As casualties mounted, members of Hitler-Jugend were recruited at younger and younger ages. Some twelve-year-olds were among the Germans’ fiercest fighters.”

  Eli was incredulous—all his co
mrades would be. The Allies were fighting an army filled with virtually every teenage male in the German Reich, and some even younger. He asked himself why he trusted Malcolm. Because he was a fellow Austrian? Because he reminded Eli of Toby?

  He jotted down key words in his notepad. “What happened after Normandy?”

  “We were sent back to Germany, refitted; then back for the Ardennes Counteroffensive. It was brutal. Last week, after I barely dodged a bullet, I broke down. My superior officer found me huddled inside a bunker, shaking and crying. I’d wet my pants. He screamed in my ear, said to toughen up.” Schlick’s face was expressionless at first. Then his eyes misted over. “I was ready to die. Escape was my only hope.”

  Through the small window, Eli watched the evening sun sink into the horizon, a hollowness filling him. There were no rules of engagement in war. Just human beings killing one another, shooting into the darkness, and, perhaps, hitting not a man but a boy. He was glad that Malcolm had fled and their paths had crossed. His detailed report would differentiate the young Austrian from the true infiltrators and spies swarming around Paris but would likely have no consequences. Regardless, the boy would be treated well as a POW because that was the American way. Malcolm would have a future when all this was over; that knowledge gave Eli a sense of peace.

  When Eli spoke again, his voice was gentle. “What do you see yourself doing? That is, if there wasn’t a war.”

  “You know, for those of us living under Hitler, duty to the Fuhrer, the Fatherland—that was all that mattered. One’s life was nothing. It’s almost hard to imagine myself as separate, apart from that.” Malcolm had a dreamy look in his eyes as he leaned back in his chair, his body looser, his face no longer prematurely lined. “I might be a writer. Or a musician. I guess I never had a chance to consider this. What about you?”

  “When I got to America, a future opened up for me. There were many possibilities even though we were poor. Before I joined the Army, I attended a university. Studied the American system of law and the country’s history.”

  “Will you continue your education after the war?”

  Eli’s life in Ohio suddenly felt like a distant memory, out of step with his reality as an MI officer. “I guess I haven’t thought that far ahead. Learning about your experiences got me thinking more about my childhood … all the memories.” He turned away from Malcolm. “It was difficult to be a Jew in Austria.”

  Malcolm’s mouth tightened. “My parents sent me to a private Catholic school. Our neighbors were like us. I never got close to any Jews. Hadn’t ever thought about what it might be like to be persecuted. But I didn’t like to be told how to think … or what to think.” Schlick fell silent, and several moments passed. “It was more about what was ethical. I was uncomfortable belittling any group—Jews, Gypsies, whoever was different. I never really considered how they … how someone like you might feel. And I saw no way to fight it.” He nodded his head as if affirming this disclosure before he continued. “If I have a future, I want to live in a better world.”

  Malcolm’s words rose into the space like smoke, lifting but lingering as Eli hung onto the boy’s hopes. “Turns out we were both persecuted, weren’t we?” Eli looked expectantly at Malcolm as he searched for a way to express his aspirations. “I want to get back to Ohio and my new life there. You know, when I lived in Vienna, I skied slopes west of Salzburg. They were beautiful. But that was when I lived in a different world. After this war ends, I may never come back to Austria or Germany.” He’d never said this aloud before, had never thought this way until that moment. “And I will finally search out and meet the generous businessman who gave me my freedom.”

  He turned toward the room’s tiny window as their silence was broken by the sound of steps—close, then moving farther away, softening into tranquil background noises. Voices, too, with muted tones of admonishments and appeals to hurry up, mingling like the din of childhood. Above it all arose a gravelly humming—sober and restrained—to the tune “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

  Eli stood and walked to the window, lifting it up, the cold air seeping inside. He motioned Malcolm to come look. It was pitch-black outside but for the whirls of snowflakes descending, filling the crevices of the hard earth. A white sheen blanketed the Army quarters, transforming it into the villa of its past. Stars flickered through the clouds, their glimmer brief, transient.

  The hollow whoosh of wintry wind dissipated into darkness. Eli felt very small and alone. The war stood between him and his family. Between him and his dreams.

  Malcolm Schlick, in custody, was now safe.

  Part Three

  MEETING JOHN BRANDEIS

  November 1946

  ELI STILL CLEARLY REMEMBERED the first time he heard the name that would come to obsess him—John Brandeis. They’d arrived at Ellis Island, the redolence of the sea still heavy in the air despite the sweaty odor of the hundreds of immigrants disembarking shoulder to shoulder and filling the building where they were eventually examined and questioned. Afterward, they were whisked back to gather their belongings in the grand hall, where a wild scene ensued. Everyone seemed to be shouting at once, hugging one another just like his parents did with Mama’s childhood friend, Zelda Muni, patiently waiting to greet them at the end of their journey to America.

  It was Zelda who had identified Brandeis as the one responsible for their exodus. With everything swirling around them, Eli had only half heard the name, or maybe he heard it but just didn’t dwell on it. Zelda was the one who reached out to Brandeis, but it was Brandeis who actually got them the affidavits. Eli had just been a teenager, eight years and a lifetime ago, and he didn’t consider then how these things worked—didn’t know it took a person of financial means to sponsor immigrants. The older he got, the more he realized how lucky he was: he had his parents with him, they were safe, they had opportunities and a future. His gratitude morphed into an infatuation with a man he didn’t know, a man who became his North Star. Who was this John Brandeis? Why did he help people he didn’t know? What made him tick? When Eli returned from the war, he was determined to find a way to meet the object of his obsession.

  Eli wanted to learn more about Brandeis beyond the outward facts of his success as a leading business executive and prominent New York retailer. He started in libraries, digging for whatever he could find. He wrote to Zelda, who had become like an aunt to him, and peppered her with questions: What did Brandeis look like? How did he dress? What were the exact details of their interaction those eight years earlier? But, after getting all that information, he realized he still needed more. He sought to stand face-to-face with this man, to understand him, to thank him for saving his life.

  Uncharacteristically, Eli devised a crafty scheme. He contacted the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Using an alias, he said he was on special assignment for The Forward to write a story on Brandeis and Jewish migration from Europe. HIAS explained that a sponsorship application required a good deal of promised support for émigrés, like housing and job leads. They directed him to several sources to learn more about securing affidavits and finally divulged that Brandeis began sponsoring émigrés from Vienna, Berlin, and Munich as early as ’36. They encouraged him to talk directly with Brandeis and gave him the specific address at Stern Brothers where a letter would indeed land on his desk.

  It didn’t take long for Eli to admit to himself how strange his behavior had become, how it felt distasteful to carry on like this. All he’d wanted was an address to write to a man he viewed as omnipotent. Now he had it.

  THE COMMISSIONAIRE OPENED HIS rear door, tipping his top hat and offering his usual, “Another good day, Mr. Brandeis.” Stepping from the sedan, Brandeis felt an anticipatory flash of cheerfulness as he approached his store’s grand entrance. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and he looked forward to the next four weeks of unsurpassed sales.

  “Thank you, Hugo. Indeed.” Brandeis coasted through the revolving doors and strode across the shiny marble lobby, ta
king in the rows of floor-to-ceiling alabaster columns to his right and left, each pillar enclosing glass cases of merchandise. He slowed to admire the fine jewelry, perfumes, and cosmetics, nodding to the salesclerks he passed, noting with pride their initiative. Melva, sales lead for jewelry, stood in front of her register counting cash on hand as her assistant meticulously repositioned inventory. Another clerk wiped away smudges on display cases containing the finest of perfumes—Lucien Lelong’s Tailspin, Indiscrete, and Balalaika—and customer favorites L’Origan, Emeraude, and Parfums Bright Stars. As he resumed his pace toward the elevators, he inhaled the store’s vibrant energy as he would these delicate fragrances.

  When the tall brass doors opened, he stepped inside and pressed “B.” He entered his executive suite, delighting as he often did in its tasteful elegance. Evelyn was there to take his hat and wool overcoat. He noticed her eyes lingering on the flashy burgundy pocket square he had chosen this morning to play up his otherwise classic gray tweed suit, knowing it was a bit out of character. But he had his reasons.

  “Good Morning, Mr. Brandeis. I’ll get your coffee and come in to review your appointments.” She quickly hung up his coat and disappeared down the hall past her desk.

  He peeked over the polished mahogany surface at the calendar book, trying to make out the appointments. He had the desk custom-made earlier in the year to match the suite’s grandfather clock. When Evelyn returned carrying a steaming cup of coffee, she swooped up the datebook in her free hand. “No need to read upside down. It’ll take but a few minutes to go over your day, Mr. Brandeis.” He followed her as she stepped inside his wood-paneled office.

  Tomorrow was Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and word spread that it was to be televised by Channel 2—a first. Brandeis was aggravated that Stern Brothers hadn’t come up with this kind of promotion. All those marketing people on his staff and not a one had envisioned a creative way to connect Stern Brothers with a high-visibility event like a yearly parade. And why hadn’t he thought of it? Now, beyond the throngs in the streets, everyone throughout the New York City area owning a television set would be tuning in to learn about all of Macy’s upcoming Christmas sales.