The Last Witness (33 page)

“Oh my God. Oh my dear God.”

The Lodz Ghetto, September 1, 1942

46

Jacob’s parents knew another
Kinderaktion
could happen at any time. It had been two years since the last one. Jewish children were still allowed to live in the ghetto with their family, and while it wasn’t a good life at least they were together. But they knew it wouldn’t last. Today, however, Jacob’s mother Bela was really excited. Her sister-in-law Miriam, Samuel’s youngest sister, had just given birth to her first child.

“Jacob, we’re going to the hospital to see the baby,” she told him. “You, me and your father. Get your good shoes.”

In three months Jacob would be three years old and he was looking forward to it. He knew his birthday was on December 1
^st
and his father kept telling him how far away that was. He remembered him saying it was six months away, then five months, then four and now it was only three. Every day it got a little closer. But today they were going out, which was always an event, and it was even more than that because they were going to see a baby. Jacob’s new cousin. A little girl. She was only a few days old.

“Her name is Esther and she’s very tiny,” Jacob’s mother said. “Like a doll.”

Jacob had never seen a newborn baby before.

The three of them put on their best clothes and marched out the door of their building at
Basargasse 24
. It used to be called Bazarowa Street, but now it was
Basargasse
. Jacob didn’t know why the name changed, and when he asked his father Samuel just shrugged and told him to learn the new one. The hospital was a few blocks away and they had to walk, but it was a long
way for Jacob. He fussed and fidgeted and kept saying it was too far and they should turn around and go home.

“We’re going to see a baby,” his mother insisted. “Your new cousin Esther. Don’t you want to meet her?”

Once they began walking Jacob didn’t care if he met her or not, and after two blocks he started complaining. He was too tired and couldn’t go on, so his father picked him up. Jacob wrapped his arms around his father’s neck, and he liked that. It felt safe. His father carried him the rest of the way and Jacob hoped that after they saw the baby and left the hospital he would carry him home, too.

When they got to the hospital, they found it cordoned off and there was a big commotion out in front. A lot of people were standing on the street behind a line of ropes, wanting to go inside, but no one was allowed. German soldiers and SS were shouting commands and screaming at everyone. They looked angry.

Trucks pulled up to the entrance and stopped. People were coming out of the hospital and the soldiers were pushing them into the back of the trucks. Some of the people they were pushing were old – old men and women – and they all looked sick. One old man could barely walk, another had his arm in a sling, and a woman with frizzy white hair was hunched over, her hand on her back.

Someone said they were emptying the hospital of all the patients and that the people were going to Chelmno. There was crying and moaning, and Jacob was scared. Then shots were fired and with each one he cringed. He was standing on the street outside the hospital with his parents, tugging on his mother’s leg. Then he saw doctors and nurses being herded out the front door and loaded onto one of the waiting trucks.

“There is my sister!” said Jacob’s father and he began calling her. “Miriam! Miriam!”

Jacob recognized his aunt who was in a pink nightgown. She heard her brother’s voice and started looking for him, and Samuel was about to call her again when one of the soldiers told him to shut up. The soldier nudged him in the side with his rifle. At the tip was a bayonet.

“She just had a baby,” Samuel told him. “Why are they making her leave the hospital?”

The soldier nudged him again and told him to shut up. He pointed the bayonet at him. He said if he didn’t shut up he would shoot him.

Jacob watched as his aunt, still frantically looking for the familiar voice of her brother, was loaded onto a truck. She was with other young women and one of them was crying for her baby. She wanted her baby. A soldier told her to shut up.

Soon only one truck remained. It stood but a few feet from the hospital building. There were lots of young soldiers in uniform standing around. Then all the people who were bunched up beyond the rope looked up. Someone pointed and yelled.

“What are they doing?”

Two soldiers were on the third floor by an open window. A second later and something fell out the window and dropped into the truck below. It was a baby. The soldiers had pushed it out the window. Its tiny, naked body crashed into the metal frame of the back of the truck with a thud. Women standing behind the ropes started screaming, and Jacob never heard screams like that before. Never. He squeezed his mother’s leg.

Then another baby came down and this one was wailing as it fell. When it hit the truck it stopped wailing. Then there was another one and another one after that. More women were screaming now and the screams were even worse than before.

“Murderers!” someone cried.

A few SS were with the soldiers and the SS were young. Just boys. One of them said something to a soldier, who nodded his head up and down. Then the SS planted his feet on the sidewalk and stuck out the bayonet of his rifle. He looked up to the open window.

A baby came down and it was wailing louder than the others. The SS pointed his rifle in the air and caught the baby right on the tip of his bayonet. Blood poured all over his bayonet, down the barrel of his gun, and onto his sleeve before dripping onto the sidewalk. He cursed, gave his bayonet a jerk, and tossed the bleeding baby – what was left of it – into the back of the truck. There was a signal from the window, the SS said to go ahead and another baby came down. It, too, was wailing. Again he pointed his rifle in the air and caught the baby on the tip. The blood streamed out and just like before he deposited what remained of the baby into the back of the truck. They dropped yet another baby, but this time the SS missed and the baby landed on the pavement with a dull thud. Jacob shook when he heard the sound. The baby didn’t move. It stopped crying. One of the soldiers picked it up by a leg and threw it into the back of the truck as if it were a chicken.

“Where is Esther? Where is Esther?” screamed Jacob’s father. “My sister’s baby!” He was getting hysterical and Jacob never saw his father like that before. His mother yes, but not his father. Jacob was shivering with fear and he couldn’t stop it.

The same soldier who spoke to his father earlier glared at the Jew who was standing on the sidewalk with his wife and son. He marched up to him and told him to shut up. He said this was the last time he would tell him. Then he pointed his rifle at Jacob and cocked the trigger. The soldier said if he didn’t shut up, he was going to shoot his little boy in the head.

47

Jack heard some racket from the hall. He opened his door, and saw a group of doctors and nurses a few doors down. A woman was crying and two of the nurses were consoling her. Jack had never seen the woman before. He went down the hall and no one paid him any attention, but Trudy’s door was half-open, so he looked in. Trudy was on her bed with a sheet over her, the tips of her toes sticking out the end.

Jack walked into the room. On the wall over a dresser were family photographs, and there was one of a young Trudy – Jack recognized her right away – and her husband. The date across the bottom said July 18, 1972. There was a cross on the wall with a picture of the Virgin Mary, the baby Jesus on her lap. The dresser was full of pages scattered about with scribbling all over them. Every page had a saying.

Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway
.

We don’t stop playing because we are old. We grow old because we stop playing
.

If you are 19 and lie in bed for a year and don’t do anything, you’ll turn 20. If you are 87 and stay in bed for a year and don’t do anything, you’ll turn 88
.

These were the sayings Trudy put on her door every day, and along with them were the sources where she got them from. In the middle of the dresser was a page with today’s date and saying.

The elderly don’t have regrets for what they did but for what they didn’t do
.

“Excuse me,” said a doctor.

Jack didn’t know him.

“Are you a friend of Trudy’s?”

“I’m just down the hall,” said Jack. “What happened?”

“Massive heart attack. It was very sudden.”

“When?”

“About an hour ago. Maybe less. Her daughter found her in the bed. It looks like she died in her sleep.” The doctor put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “She was a friend of yours?”

“I knew her.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jack headed for the door and a moment later they were wheeling Trudy out on a stretcher. The woman, Trudy’s daughter, was still crying. Jack stood in the middle of the hallway feeling numb, but this kind of thing happened all the time. Old people lived here. Trudy’s door was still half open. He looked at today’s message again.

The elderly don’t have regrets for what they did but for what they didn’t do
.

Jack stood there thinking about it. He stood there a long time. Trudy was right.

“Thank you Trudy,” he said.

48

“Lieutenant?”

It was Kathy.

“What is it?” said Hodgson. He was in his office, his face buried in paperwork. All this technology and still they could never get rid of paper. It had been going on for years. Decades even. As long as he’d been on the force.

“I have more on our friend Jon Creeley.”

Hodgson motioned for her to come in and said to shut the door. She remained on her feet.

“Well,” said Hodgson. “What’ve you got?”

All she did was smile.

“Is it something funny?” he said.

The smile disappeared.

“No Lieutenant. It’s not funny. In fact it’s pretty scary. But here it is.”

She handed him a file. More paper. He sighed.

“Can’t you just tell me what it says?”

“Sure,” she said.

Kathy picked up the file and opened it.

“The other day I told you about Albert Freedman. The old man? Ninety-five? The holocaust survivor?”

“Yes. I’ve been thinking about him ever since.”

“Well there was another case, Lieutenant. More recent. Two years ago an old woman drowned in the Hudson River. They called it suicide. They said she jumped from the George
Washington Bridge. Jon Creeley was questioned for that too. Same guy. He was driving a cab and gave the woman a lift the night she died. According to the statement he gave to police she told him to stop halfway across the bridge so she could get out and look at the lights from Manhattan and then she told him to leave so he did. That’s what he said. Later that night they found her body in the river.”

Kathy put the report down.

“Lieutenant, there were stories about it with the woman’s name and age. She was ninety-seven. Her name was Miriam Abraham.”

“Hold on, Kathy,” said Hodgson. “The GW Bridge? There are railings on that thing five feet high. How does a ninety-seven-year-old woman climb up on a railing and jump off?”

“I have no idea.”

“And you’re saying Creeley was questioned in this case
and
the other one?”

She nodded.

“So how come no one picked up on it?”

“Two police forces. Here and Jersey. But here’s the thing, Lieutenant.
The Jewish Post
did a piece on her too. This woman … Miriam Abraham … was also a holocaust survivor.”

“What!”

“She was a holocaust survivor too. Ninety-seven years old. Then there was Shirley Rosen.”

“Who’s that?”

“Another woman. A hundred and one years old. She lived at the Jewish Home for the Aged not far from here and was murdered last year. By another resident. Some guy with
dementia named Eustace Smith. He put a pillow over her head and suffocated her in her own bed.”

“I remember that one.”

“Yes.”

“So what’s that got to do with …”

“Their 3D surveillance caught the image of a man who came to visit her the night she died. I think it’s Jon Creeley.”

“What do you mean you think?”

“There was no police report or record of him or anything like that but after the first two I looked into … Albert Freedman and Miriam Abraham … I found some digital images of him so I started looking for anything I could find about holocaust survivors …
Jewish holocaust survivors
… who were either murdered or died under unusual circumstances and Shirley Rosen’s name came up. I read about what happened to her and called the Jewish Home for the Aged. I told their security people about our investigation and they let me look at their surveillance video from the night she died.”

“And?”

“Lieutenant, all I have to go on is the image but I’m pretty sure the man who came to see her that night was Jon Creeley.”

“It was?”

“Yes. And another thing. Shirley Rosen was a holocaust survivor too.”

49

Hodgson didn’t want Jack going anywhere alone. A man his age shouldn’t go anywhere alone at the best of times. But certainly not now. Hodgson knew about the incident in the basement and how Jack got disoriented. It happened at night, a few hours after he had told him about Christine. Jack was on frail ground, and always at the back of Hodgson’s mind was the fact that he was a hundred years old.

“You got that hate letter and then you find a swastika on your door,” Hodgson said. “That’s two things that have happened to you. And then there’s Christine. Have you considered the possibility that all these things might be connected somehow?”

“What are you talking about?” said Jack.

“This Brett Krust … who pushed Christine into the gorge …”

“They caught him, didn’t they?”

“Yes. He’s in custody now.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“It’s just that …”

“What?”

“Hell Jack! I don’t want you to get yourself killed!”

It was the first time Hodgson had ever raised his voice with him, but Jack was a stubborn old coot. And now he wanted to take the ferry to Liberty Island. He said there was a news report about the planned rally at the base of the statue, he was mentioned, and now someone wanted to interview him down there. Jack had arranged to meet the person that afternoon.