Escape

ESCAPE

A Novel Based on a True Story About Jewish Refugees

Herb Horowitz

Published by Herb Horowitz at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Herb Horowitz

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For my parents

Their foresight, courage and strength

gave me my life and allowed me to thrive

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Afterword

About the author

Short Description

CHAPTER ONE

He can't tell if he's shaking with rage or fear. This kind of confusion is new for him. When it comes to rage, he's an experienced navigator. With fear it's different. It tosses him into alien emotional waters.

That bastard, sitting smugly with that self-satisfied smile pasted on his face. Doesn't he have something else to do but sit there sipping his demitasse, just watching, watching? Saul is desperate to get away from those eyes. They're frightening him. But he's also annoyed, more than annoyed - he'd like to... No, he can't handle that now.

If they had left on time, that man wouldn't be there. A couple of hours earlier Saul was busy doing everything that needed doing. People depend on him to be responsible and he always is. He loves being in charge. People have always looked up to him. He soaks it up, even if their respect is sometimes mixed with fear of him. He's always been smart, persistent and responsible. He's proud of those qualities and he depends on them to make him a leader. It's a role he wears like an old suit he never tires of.

Earlier this morning he had a number of administrative tasks to do, but he delayed those because he first wanted to say goodbye to all the people he'd become close to. Being the social creature he is, that meant saying a lot of goodbyes, including some that left him churning with deep sadness. When that got to be overwhelming, he got to work attending to the practicalities. He's very experienced with making that kind of switch. He had made sure all of them had their exit and transit visas; he'd checked to see they all had the document validating their submission of the list of their possessions; he'd supervised loading baggage on the truck; he'd confirmed the three drivers knew the route (and didn't care that one got insulted for being asked). He had also wanted to check that they had the necessary vouchers for getting gas, but decided it was best not to question the sergeant about that, at least not yet.

Right now there's no more for him to do. He just has to wait while all of them finish saying their own good-byes. He knows all too well why it is so hard for them. That's exactly what he was feeling a little while ago. In the last couple of years these four hundred people have been together constantly. It was inevitable that they became a community. That it couldn't be a continuously harmonious community was, of course, inevitable. Like constantly shifting geological plates, each of them felt the undercurrent of tension stemming from the endless uncertainty about whether they really would be able to escape.

That anxiety would have made it bad enough, but layered on top was persistent clashing about their cultural differences. All of them spoke German, but that wasn't nearly enough to bond them. The Germans and the Austrians had always been at odds. They always will be. Cultural differences with long, thick roots created insurmountable barriers. The Germans held their noses up believing the air they breathe was purer while the Austrians are always jabbing at them for that.

People had no choice but to sit together at tables eating with others they sometimes liked and often didn't. Whole families had to sleep together in single rooms, and those adjoined other equally crowded rooms. They didn't have much choice about their neighbors. While they were glad to have any food to eat there were many complaints about how few choices they had and how badly it was cooked. Although they developed a workable system for sharing laundry facilities, there was no way to avoid squabbling when one of them didn't follow the protocol.

The men, not allowed to work, were often bored, leaving most of them with one choice: cards or billiards. Inevitably, conflicts arose among them about how they were playing or whether someone had cheated. Many of the women were also bored. A few of them played cards. Some, like Miriam, used their knitting skills to fill their time, even managing to earn a little bit of money. That left many of the others with nothing to do except gossip or fight with the ones gossiping about them. If there were complaints about their kids, parents became defensive and brief skirmishes would develop among them.

All these things were going on while pushing away from consciousness the profound sense of the loss they all had. They have all come to know about each other's histories, what kind of work they had done, what kinds of education they had and where they had lived. People were always observing signs of social class in others in order to keep that taxonomy accurate. They also knew a great deal about whom each of them had left behind. The sense of loss was a constant emotional accompaniment as they conducted their lives. They needed to distract themselves in whatever way they could because, if they didn't, they would either drown in grief or be suffocated by the fear of a future with a floor of eggshells.

Now some of them are departing, and that means leaving more people. As they wait to board their buses, they brace for these additional losses. In the glare of that reality animosities dissolve. The common denominator of uncertainty about the future is now a powerful binding force. Both the ones leaving - there are forty-seven of them - and the hundreds remaining face the possibility they would not see each other ever again. They discover all that practice with those earlier separations doesn't help them deal with the one about to happen. It makes it harder.

He feels tightness in his forehead, a signal to stop thinking about all of this. He'll deal with it later. He looks at his watch and has another spurt of impatience. It's now almost two hours later than when they were scheduled to leave. He has no tolerance for failure to follow plans, but he hates even more the feeling there's absolutely nothing to do about it. As he scans the scene in front of him, his eyes are snagged by the fool drinking his espresso over there.

He's got to get his mind off him. He'll think about what's ahead. Like magnets pulled together at their poles, he reaches for his most reliable lifeline - his conviction that life will be better in America. Like a child playing with his favorite toy, he enjoys rummaging through his imaginings. The pictures he forms in his head soothe and relax him. What he sees is very seductive: They will be living in an elegant two-story house with large rooms. It sits on a big green expanse of land with no other house near it. Close to the house is a garage with a shiny black sedan parked in it. There would be a big lawn in front with tall trees coating the grass with ample shade. They would be sitting around drinking good beer with numerous friends.

Thinking about all this gives him a sense of self-satisfaction, as if he's soaking in a warm bath. He stumbles over the stray thought that this is a pipe dream. But then he immediately reminds himself of his father-in-law who is his model for what is possible when you're an immigrant. They lived in a large comfortable house, had a garden he loved to sit in. He drove a big black Mercedes kept shiny by their chauffeur. And they had a fabulous Czech cook who baked the best Viennese pastries he had ever eaten.

As he envisions what his in-laws had, he remembers all those fun times in their back yard with all those friends and relatives he enjoyed schmoozing with. What a good life it was. His father-in-law had achieved all that in only 20 years of living in Vienna. And he was able to do it after enduring some horrendous hardships and almost dying while separated from his family during the war years. Now it's his turn, he tells himself. He's going to be the immigrant, but it will happen in a country where there isn't any anti-Semitism. Quite the opposite. From everything he's heard, they practice real democracy and treat everyone equally. Why couldn't he do the same as his father-in-law? He can. He will. He must.

GOD DAMMIT! He's still looking at me. He can see him taking in the whole scene with a contemptuous look on his face. Then his eyes lock onto Saul's over the rim of his coffee cup. They are like daggers. Saul feels as if he's his prey. He may look like an ordinary well-dressed businessman, but to him he's a stalking predator poised at the opening of a narrow cave from which Saul is trying to escape. He guesses the guy is probably one of those locals who had all along been a closet Nazi sympathizer. Now that the Nazis controlled Luxembourg, he doesn't need to hide those sentiments. Saul hates being trapped by those eyes. It feels to him as if there's a powerful beam being transmitted through them that magnetically locks on to his own. And that smirk...oh, how he'd like to twist it off his face and stuff it down his throat.

These days Saul has to struggle every second to keep control. How easy it would be to go over there, grab the collar of that fancy suit, yank him to his feet and ram his fist into one of those damned staring eyes. Nothing else. Not even a word. Just one solid punch. He can imagine the way his fist would feel as it made contact.

It's been a long time since he's fought a Nazi. Remembering the exciting buildup to those fights gets his heart beating wildly. But it's different now. This man isn't a Brown Shirt and he hasn't said one Jew-bating word. To Saul his eyes are saying it just as clearly. But no, no, no. He can't let himself go after him. Not this time. He has to maintain control, especially today.

Saul knows how to restrain himself. He has had to teach himself that. It hasn't been easy. Friends and relatives had told him for years he needed to get some control over his temper, that, if he didn't, he would end up paying heavily. A couple of terrifying experiences, just a few months apart, finally convinced him they were right. When he gets that strong urge to take on someone, he consciously reminds himself of one or the other of these events.

This time he replays the first of those. By the time of the Anschluss he had a well-established reputation for being one of those Viennese Jewish toughs who liked taking on Nazis. One day in April of 1938 two burley Brown Shirts had