The Hunt

They were a hundred yards away, hidden in the thick trees and heavy brush of the woods that hid the treacherous stockade from the main road. An area one hundred yards wide had been cleared of all foliage around the entire perimeter of the camp. Signs warned that this barren stretch was mined. A single-lane road led through the trees to the gate and beyond it, railroad tracks glistened in the morning sunlight, the tracks worn shiny from use.

The lenses of the binoculars swept slowly across the terrain, picking up first the gate, then the wire and finally the camp itself. It was a forlorn and desolate place, bleak, disheartening, oppressive; a place of long, drab wooden barracks painted gray, a place barren of foliage except for a failed attempt at a garden between two of the barracks, a sorrowful row of twisted, dead plants that hung from stakes or lay on the hard, brown earth. The earth itself was baked rock hard by the sun, earth so poor layers of it were churned to dust and swirled away by the slightest wisp of wind. The buildings were coated with the dead earth.

Then there was the wire.

Four rows of barbed wire three feet apart, humming with deadly electricity, followed by a ditch and a twelve-foot link fence, which was also electrified. Dogs snarled at the end of short leashes. Powerful searchlights were mounted on tall poles scattered about the sprawling enclosure. Gun towers loomed ominously at the corners of the compound.

As Keegan scanned the enclosure with the binoculars, he stopped suddenly. An old man in striped prison clothes dangled on his back across the inner wire; his arms, stiff in death, were outstretched. One foot barely touched the ground. His flesh was gray and had begun to rot. His white hair fluttered in the breeze.

Flies swarmed hungrily around the corpse. Fifty feet away, an elderly woman with a handkerchief pressed over her nose and mouth numbly watched the flies at work.

“Good God,” Keegan breathed.

“His name was Rosenberg. A banker from Linz. He was fifty-eight years old. That is his wife looking at him. His only crime was that he was a Jew. They took his money, his property, destroyed his family and then put them in the camp. They broke that gentle old man and he finally jumped on wire and ended it all. So they leave him there until he literally rots away. A warning to others.”

Keegan lowered the glasses and took several deep breaths.

“You wanted to see Dachau and I wanted you to see it, Keegan,” Wolffson whispered. “Now you can believe, now you can convince others that this is not just a foul rumor.”

“Oh, it’s foul all right,” Keegan groaned. “Foul beyond comprehension.”

A third man, whose name was Milton Golen, lay beside them with a camera wrapped in cloth to muffle the shutter click. The camera thunked quietly as he shot photo after photo of the ghoulish stockade. He stopped occasionally to jot down notes.

“We try to monitor the condition of the prisoners,” Golen whispered, raising the camera again. “Keep track of who has died, who is ill. It is not very effective but we do our best. Coming here is very risky as you can tell.’’

“We can’t stay but a minute,” Wolffson added. “They patrol these woods constantly with dogs.”

They had driven through the outskirts of Dachau just before dawn. It was forty minutes from 1unich, on the main road between it and Berlin. Wolffson had turned off the main road, driven through the village to Golen’s farm and parked the car in his barn. His wife had served them breakfast and strong coffee.

“Are you going to the woods today?” Wolffson had asked their host and Golen had nodded.

“Is it safe for the three of us to go?” Wolffson asked.

“As safe as for one. It is never safe. If we get caught, we will be inside, if they don’t shoot us.”

Wolffson had turned to Keegan.

“So, Ire, you want to do something to help? Gut. We will give you a memory to take back.”

He had outlined the ground rules. Follow orders. Speak only in whispers. Leave when ordered. They left just before dawn in a horse-drawn firewood cart with a hollow core, entering from underneath through a trap in the floor of the wagon. They had left the wagon a mile from the edge of the clearing in the forest and gone the rest of the way by first walking in a stream so they would not leave a scent for the dogs, then crossing beneath an open field through a sewer culvert. They had crawled the last fifty yards on the floor of the forest, dragging themselves through snarls of sticker bushes and bug-infested grass, then suddenly they were at the edge of the security clearing and the dreadful compound loomed before them.

Keegan’s mouth had gone dry at the first sight of it. He lay flat on his stomach, one hand holding back the grass, the other scanning the place with binoculars. He continued to scan the yard, hoping, praying for a glimpse of her, to know she was still alive.

The ultimate shock was the inmates themselves. Gaunt, bowed before their time, physically broken, they seemed almost hypnotized. Their eyes told the whole tale. Hope was burned out, replaced by terror and resignation. Like robots, they moved around the dirt yard surrounding the barracks, hardly speaking.

Near one of the corners, an old mars in a striped jacket and pants, his white beard brushing his chest, stood in one spot and stared without moving, across the wire and through the link fence. His eyes moved neither left nor right. He said nothing. He simply stared across the twenty or so feet of tangled wire, past the tall fence and the barren perimeter, toward freedom.

There was about the place such an utterly despairing sense of futility and lost hope that Keegan seemed to collapse inside. His shoulders caved in and a pitiful moan escaped from his pressed lips.

“Shh,” Wolffson warned.

“My God,” Keegan said softly, “it looks so ... so totally hopeless.”

“And so it is for the people inside,” whispered Golen. “This place is not just for Jews. Most of these prisoners are Germans.

Political prisoners. Hitler’s enemies. God knows what they do to them.”

“Come, we cannot stay here, Keegan,’ said Wolffson. “The dogs will catch our scent.”

“Just one more minute.”

He swept the glasses across the crowded yard one more time. And then he saw her.

“There!” he breathed. “Over by the barracks. She just came out.”

Jenny seemed smaller, withered almost. Her steps were short and faltering. She hugged herself as if she were cold. Her hair was tangled and snarled and she wore a formless dress that hung down to her shins.

“She looks so.. . so frail,” he breathed. “Jesus, what’ve they done to her.”

“At least she’s still alive,” Wolffson said, locating her in his glasses.

“That’s not living. That’s torture,” Keegan answered.

He bit his fist to keep from crying her name, to let her know he was nearby, that there was hope, although in his heart he knew her situation was futile.

Is that really why Wolffson had brought him here, he wondered. So Keegan would know how utterly hopeless it was?

“Keegan, we must leave now!” Wolffson insisted.

A moment later they heard the dogs.

Wolffson grabbed Keegan by the arm and dragged him back into the trees.

“Stay low and run,” Golen said. “We must get through the culvert before they catch our scent.”

They ran stooped over, dodging through thickets that tore at their clothes like thorny hands snatching at them. Behind them they heard the deep snarling bark of the shepherd dogs drawing closer.

“Faster!” Golen demanded.

Keegan’s breath was waning, his lungs were on fire, the muscles in his legs began to knot up. But he kept running, trying to breathe with some semblance of rhythm. Ahead of them the forest grew brighter, then suddenly they were at the edge of the field. They ducked into the culvert, their footfalls echoing

in the narrow tube, dashed through it and burst out of the other end. They jumped three feet down into the stream and headed away from the camp, running through knee-deep water. Behind them they could hear the dogs barking, snarling, yipping. Their cries echoed in the culvert.

“Gut,” Golen cried out, “the dogs are confused. They are in the tube and have lost our smell. We’re almost there.”

Golen turned sharply and Keegan and Wolffson followed as he jumped out of the creek and climbed a small embankment. The firewood cart was where they left it, the horse nibbling on the grass. Wolffson dove under the cart, rolled over on his back and opened the trap door. He and Keegan crawled inside the dark compartment. Golen quickly changed from his wet pants and shoes to dry clothes and boots. He rubbed limburger cheese on the shoes and on his wrists and, leaning under the cart, rubbed the foul-smelling cheese around the edge of the trapdoor. He threw his wet clothes inside and slammed the door shut. Keegan and Wolffson lay in the dark on the rough floor gasping for breath. A moment later they heard Golen chopping wood.

“What’s he doing?” Keegan whispered.

“He is sweating. So he will cut some wood and if they follow us this far, they will not suspect him.”

Fifteen minutes passed without incident. Inside the compartment, Keegan felt the cart lean as Golen climbed into the driver’s seat. A moment later they began to move, the wagon creaking down the road toward the village.

“You will be in Switzerland before morning,” Wolffson sighed. “The rest of the trip is easy.”

“I owe you one,” said Keegan.

“Which means?”

“It means I owe you a big favor.”

In the dark, Keegan fought back tears.

“I wasn’t a hundred yards away from her,” he moaned. “A hundred stinking yards!”

His defeat, frustration, humiliation were complete. Now he fully comprehended the futility of the situation.

“Use your influence, Ire, “Wolffson said. “Go back and tell them what you saw here. Take this.”

“What is it?” Keegan asked, then felt the cool, small spool of film in his palm.

“It is the film Golen shot back there. Take the pictures back. Show them what is happening. Tell them if they do not stop this madness, the sin is theirs just as it is the sin of all Germans who turn their faces away from the truth.”