The Far Side of the Sky (44 page)

A soft knock drew Franz’s attention. He opened the door to Simon. Franz knew that Hannah would be pleased to see her uncle. As much as his daughter enjoyed living at Sunny’s house, where she had her own bedroom, she missed her aunt and uncle, who now lived in their old flat on Avenue Joffre.

But Franz saw at a glance that there was nothing social about Simon’s visit. His expression was dark and his eyes unusually grave. “What is it?” Franz demanded. “Is Esther all right?”

Stone-faced, Simon nodded. “I need you to come meet someone.”

“Right now? Who?”

“Aaron Grodenzki.” The name meant nothing to Franz. “Just come, Franz. Please.”

Outside, Simon explained further. “Grodenzki showed up out of the blue. He told his story to Chaim Adelman, who sits on what’s left of the CFA committee. Chaim summoned an emergency council meeting last night. Several refugees were invited. Reuben was there too.”

Whether or not the Reubens were the source of the collaborator rumours concerning him, Franz knew that they had perpetuated them. He found himself shunned by former friends at the temple and excluded from meetings. Franz had tried to defend himself, but the gossip fed on itself. His marriage to a woman outside his religion and race only compounded his isolation.

Franz and Simon arrived at the small Russian café a few blocks from Franz’s old apartment. Franz immediately noticed the haggard man sitting alone in the corner. He was hunched over and clasping a coffee cup in both hands. A jagged scar ran across his forehead. At first glance, Franz thought that Aaron Grodenzki was middle-aged or older but soon realized that the man was still in his twenties. Struck by Grodenzki’s skeletal appearance, Franz didn’t notice his mangled hands until he reached the table. Grodenzki’s left hand was fingerless beyond the knuckles, and he had only a thumb and part of a forefinger on his right.

Grodenzki studied Franz with suspicion. “You were not there last night.” His German was tinged with a Polish accent.

“Some people think I co-operate with the Japanese,” Franz said.

“Do you?”

“Only when they threaten my family,” Franz said. Grodenzki accepted the explanation with a shrug. “Aaron, tell Franz about the place,” Simon encouraged. “Chelmno.”

Grodenzki looked from Simon to Franz. “My family is from
Ló
dz. You have heard of it?”

Franz nodded. “In central Poland?”

“Poland’s third-largest city, or it used to be, anyway.” Grodenzki grunted. “After
Ló
dz fell, in September of ‘39, the Nazis herded us into a walled ghetto with hundreds of thousands of other Jews. The conditions …” he exhaled.

“I’ve heard,” Franz said.

Grodenzki shot him a look that suggested Franz had no inkling of how awful it was. “Two and a half years, we manage to survive in this ghetto. But just after New Year’s Day, the SS begins to round up the Jews. Whole families—old people, children, babies—doesn’t matter to them. They tell us only they are taking us to ‘relocation camps’ in Germany.”

A chill ran up Franz’s spine as he remembered Max using the same term regarding his daughter’s family.

“They take us to a little town, seventy kilometres away, called Chelmno.” Still clutching his cup, Grodenzki stopped for another sip of coffee. “My
family’s turn came on the twentieth of January. My older brother, my little sister and my parents.” And then, as though speaking to himself, he added, “Standing in that stinking, frozen cattle car. We are—hundreds of us—jammed in too tight to sit. Even the old and sick have to stand for the entire trip. Hour after hour. At the train station, they unload us into the backs of big transport trucks and drive us into the town. Chelmno. To a big, old manor house.” He grunted. “It is quite pretty, actually. But none of us are so stupid as to believe the Nazis might let us stay in a castle.”

Franz glanced over to Simon, whose eyes were glued to the table.

“But there they are—the SS brutes—leading a long line of Jews into the castle,” Grodenzki continued. “We know there has to be trouble because they aren’t shrieking or beating us like usual. Right before we get to the doors, two Nazi guards pull my brother and me out of the lineup, along with a few other young men. We watch my parents, and my little sister, Perla, disappear inside.” He paused a moment. “The Nazis drive us men—many are boys, actually—out to Waldlager. The forest camp.” Grodenzki stared out past the others and fell silent.

“Forest camp?” Franz asked with a shake of his head.

“Sonderkommando labour detachment.” Grodenzki laughed bitterly. “That’s what they call us slaves who work at the forest camp. Our job is to empty the trucks.” Grodenzki pointed to Franz with the nubs of his left hand. “You see, inside the castle, the new arrivals—little children with their dolls, old men with canes, women carrying babies—all of them—are led down a grand hallway. Beautiful paintings hang on the wall. Soft carpets. Heated, even. At the end of the hallway, they stop in front of a desk. A Polish man tells them they need to change for a doctor’s medical examination and that they have to check all their valuables in at the desk. The man even writes a receipt for their possessions.” He snorted with disgust. “From there, the Jews are led through a doorway, along a dark passageway and into an empty room with plywood for walls and metal grates on the floor. When the room is full—more crowded than the cattle cars leaving
Ló
dz—the door is slammed shut. Only when the engine turns over do people realize that they have been packed into the back of a truck.”

“Oh,
mein Gott,”
Franz murmured.

“God is nowhere near Chelmno, Herr Doktor, trust me,” Grodenzki said. “One of the SS men connects the truck’s exhaust pipe to the only vent inside the back of the truck. And the driver runs the engine until the screams stop.” He glanced from Simon to Franz. “Then the guard unhooks the exhaust pipe, and the driver heads off with his load of fresh corpses out to the forest camp. To us waiting Sonderkommandos. We carry the bodies to mass graves—pits, not graves. And we dig others while we wait for more trucks. There are SS guards at the forest camp too. They don’t help unload the bodies, of course, but if anyone from the truck is still moving, they put a bullet in the back of his or her head.” He shook his head. “Then the guards … they always laugh.”

Grodenzki took one more slow sip of his coffee. “Day and night, the trucks make the four-kilometre trip between the forest camp and the castle, leaving empty and always returning full. Perhaps a thousand Jews are murdered every day. Maybe more.” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

Franz brought a hand to his mouth. “And you, Aaron. How did you escape?”

“One day, my brother, Szmul, and I are sent with a bunch of others into the forest to cut trees. The Nazis are running out of space to stuff all the victims.” Grodenzki rubbed his forehead with his palm. “Szmul knows we have little time left. Every two or three months the Nazis replace the Sonderkommandos with new recruits. They retire the previous ones with machine guns.” He put his shortened forefinger to his temple. “So we work extra hard, sawing down as many trees as we can and moving deeper into the forest. At dusk, right before the SS come to round us up, we run. The guards don’t notice us missing right away. By the time they release the dogs, it’s dark and we’re hiding high in a tree. The Nazis don’t worry much about us. They assume the Polish winter will save them the bullets. And the cold almost did finish us off.” Grodenzki held up his hands with the eight missing fingers. “Frostbite.”

“Awful,” Franz muttered.

“No, doctor.” He grunted. “Frostbite saved my life!”

“How is that possible?”

“Szmul and I would have died quickly if we did not stumble across a group of partisan guerrillas. Polish Resistance fighters.” Grodenzki wiggled his stubs again. “The leader takes pity on us. He feeds us and lets us sleep in their camp. He shows us maps and the best route eastward. Takes us three months, but Szmul and I reach Soviet territory. As soon as we do, Szmul is recruited—at gunpoint—into the Red Army. But me?” Grodenzki raised his hands again. “What good am I as a soldier?

“I tell everyone who will listen about Chelmno. But they don’t believe me or they don’t care.” He nodded to himself. “I realize that I have to tell them in America. But how? Then I remember Shanghai, where my aunt and uncle live. The travel through China was even harder than behind enemy lines in Poland, but somehow I arrive here.”

Simon gaped at Franz. “It’s even worse than the wildest rumours, isn’t it?”

Franz was too shocked to speak. He didn’t doubt a word of Grodenzki’s story, but despite all he had seen and heard in the past few years, he still could not digest the idea of a human slaughterhouse.

Simon’s expression hardened and he tapped the tabletop with his finger. “We can’t ignore this, Franz. The world needs to hear what the hell the Nazis are up to in Chelmno!”

Franz had hardly spoken since returning home two hours earlier. Sunny had never seen him as preoccupied or as shaken. As soon as Hannah left to visit a friend, Sunny sat him down on the sofa. “Franz, tell me what happened this morning.”

He rubbed his temples. “I do not want to discuss it. Not today, Sunny.”

“I thought we shared everything now. Good and bad.”

“Not this, Sunny.” His voice faltered. “I wish to God I had never heard a word of it.”

Sunny leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him. She tilted her face up and kissed him tenderly on the lips. “I can wait until you are ready to talk.”

“Chelmno,” he croaked.

Sunny pulled free of the embrace. “What is Chelmno?”

“A village in Poland. Or it used to be. Now it’s an extermination factory.” He swallowed. “I met a Polish Jew this morning. He only had two fingers …”

By the time Franz finished recounting Grodenzki’s tale of the asphyxiation trucks, tears rolled down Sunny’s cheeks. “Gassing whole families?” she sputtered. “Can this really be true?”

“The local Jewish leaders are skeptical, but I know he is telling the truth.” Franz nodded to himself. “It was not his words or even his missing fingers. His eyes. They held the look of a cancer patient near the very end. His eyes were dead, Sunny.”

Sunny wrapped her arms around him again. “Thank God you, Hannah and Essie are here in Shanghai. So far away from them.”

“I hope we are far enough.”

Sunny insisted on accompanying Franz to the hospital. Hand in hand, they walked the sidewalk in the blistering July heat.

“Simon wants me to help him find a radio transmitter,” Franz said. “So Aaron can tell Jewish leaders in America and Palestine about Chelmno.”

Sunny’s chest tightened with dread. “You know how the Japanese treat spies! If they caught you with a transmitter …”

“I can still see them dragging Heng away.” Though no one had heard what had become of his neighbour, he, like everyone else, assumed the worst. “But this is worth the risk. Someone has to tell the rest of the world.”

“The world is already at war with Germany. What more can be done?”

“The war is not going well for the Allies,” he said. “What if they negotiate a ceasefire or a peace treaty with the Nazis?”

Sunny racked her brain for some way to talk Franz out of such high-risk espionage. “Would Churchill or Roosevelt really agree to peace with Hitler?”

“They can be replaced by leaders who might,” Franz said. “Besides, think of all the countries from France to Belarus already overrun by the Nazis. Imagine how many Jews are caught in their clutches? Millions of women, children, old people …”

“It hurts to even think about it, Franz. But how will risking your life on a transmitter possibly help them?”

“If the Nazis see that the world knows about Chelmno, perhaps they would stop killing people. Or if the Jews themselves know what awaits them in such camps, maybe they would resist more?” He looked at her helplessly. “Sunny, I have to do something. You understand?”

She did. “I want to help too, Franz.”

Franz broke into the first smile she had seen since his visit with Grodenzki. “I love you so much, Sunny Adler. Your support is all that I need.”

At the refugee hospital, Max beckoned to them from inside his lab. “I went to a meeting last night,” he said in lieu of a greeting. “We met a man. A Polish Jew—”

“Aaron Grodenzki,” Franz said. “I spoke to him this morning.”

“Grodenzki’s story. The trucks and the carbon monoxide …” Max wrung his hands together. “You don’t believe him, do you, Franz?”

Franz looked down and shrugged.

“Those Nazis are as uncivilized as they come,” Max continued. “Capable of cruelty beyond belief. But a camp built for no purpose other than murder?”

“I agree that it makes no sense, Max,” Franz said, choosing his words carefully.

Sunny saw how hard Max was struggling to convince himself that his daughter and her family would not meet the same fate as the Jews at Chelmno. “No doubt there are camps,” Max said. “Terrible ones like Buchenwald and Dachau. But I think Grodenzki exaggerated his story in order to play upon our sympathy. We can’t allow him to spread such irresponsible stories. To panic people with these rumours. If my wife heard this …”

Franz laid a hand on his friend’s arm. “I believe him, Max.”

Max’s face fell and his shoulders slumped.

“Listen, my friend,” Franz hurried to add. “The Nazis have always held a particular hatred for the Polish Jews. Remember Herschel Grynszpan? It does not mean they will treat German Jews the same way. Not at all.”

Max shrugged off Franz’s hand. “I don’t believe him.”

“But if it were true, would you not agree that silence might only encourage the Nazis?”

“I won’t believe it!” Max’s voice cracked as he groped for the handkerchief in his pocket. “I won’t. I can’t.” Without another word, he jumped to his feet and rushed out of the lab.

From the grim faces of the staff and patients on the ward, Sunny recognized that the word of Chelmno had already spread. To distract herself, she set to work.

She was checking the temperature of a patient, a woman recovering from malaria, when she heard a commotion in the hallway. She looked up and saw Berta waving frantically to her from the doorway. Abandoning the thermometer in the patient’s mouth, Sunny hurried over to her. Franz arrived from the opposite direction.