Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

14

VIENNA

February 1943

Jora Myer was sick with worry. There was an acid sensation at the back of her throat that made her nauseous. She hadn’t felt that way since she was fourteen and had escaped the 1906 pogroms in Odessa, Ukraine, with her grandfather hanging on to her arm. She had been lucky at such a young age to find work as a servant to the Cohen family, who owned a factory in Vienna. Josef was the eldest of the children. When the shadchan, the marriage broker, eventually found him a nice Jewish wife, Jora went with him to look after their children. Their firstborn, Elan, spent his early years in a pampered and privileged environment. The younger one, Yudel, was another story.

Now the child lay curled up in a ball on his makeshift bed, which consisted of two folded blankets on the floor. Until yesterday he had shared the bed with his brother. Lying there, Yudel seemed small and sad, and without his parents, the stifling space seemed huge.

Poor Yudel. Those twelve square feet had been his entire world practically since birth. The afternoon he was born, the entire family, including Jora, had been at the hospital. None of them had returned to the luxury apartment on Rienstrasse. It was 9 November 1938, the date the world would later come to know as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Yudel’s grandparents were the first to perish. The entire building on Rienstrasse burned to the ground, together with the synagogue next door as the firemen drank and laughed. The only things that the Cohens had taken with them were some clothes and a mysterious package that Yudel’s father used in a ceremony when the baby was born. Jora didn’t know what it was, because during the ceremony, Mr Cohen had asked everyone to leave the room, including Odile, who could barely stand up.

With scarcely any money, Josef was unable to leave the country, but like many others, he believed that the trouble would eventually die down so he sought refuge with some of his Catholic friends. He did not forget about Jora either, something that, in later life, Miss Myer would never forget. Few friendships could withstand the terrible obstacles faced in occupied Austria; there was one, however, that did. The ageing Judge Rath decided to help the Cohens at great risk to his own life. Inside his house he built a hideout in one of the rooms. With his own hands he laid a brick partition, leaving a narrow hole at the base that the family could use to get in and out. Judge Rath then placed a low bookcase in front of the opening to conceal it.

The Cohen family entered their living tomb one December night in 1938, believing that the war would last only a few weeks. There wasn’t enough room for all of them to lie down at the same time, and their only comforts were a kerosene lamp and a bucket. Food and fresh air came at one in the morning, two hours after the judge’s maid went home. At about half past midnight the old judge would slowly begin to push the bookcase away from the hole. Because of his age, it could take almost half an hour, with frequent rests, before the opening was sufficiently wide to allow the Cohens through.

Together with the Cohen family the judge was also a prisoner of that life. He knew that the maid’s husband was a member of the Nazi party, so while he was constructing the hideout, he sent her on holiday to Salzburg for a few days. When she returned he told her that they had had to replace the gas pipes. He didn’t dare find another maid because it would have made people suspicious, and he had to be careful about the amount of food he bought. With rationing it became even more difficult to feed an extra five people. Jora felt pity for him since he had sold most of his valuable possessions to buy black market meat and potatoes which he hid in the attic. At night, when Jora and the Cohens came out of their hiding place, barefoot, looking like strange whispering ghosts, the old man would bring down the food from the attic for them.

The Cohens didn’t dare stay outside their hiding place for more than a few hours. While Jora made sure that the children washed and moved around a little, Josef and Odile would talk quietly with the judge. During the day they couldn’t make the slightest noise and mostly spent their time sleeping or in a state of semi-consciousness, which to Jora was like torture until she began hearing about the concentration camps at Treblinka, Dachau, and Auschwitz. The smallest details of daily life became complicated. Basic needs, drinking or even changing the baby Yudel, were tedious procedures in such a restricted space. Jora was continually amazed by Odile Cohen’s ability to communicate. She had developed a complex system of signs that allowed her to carry out long and sometimes bitter conversations with her husband without uttering a word.

Over three years went by in silence. Yudel didn’t learn any more than four or five words. Luckily he had a calm disposition and hardly ever cried. He seemed to prefer being held by Jora rather than his mother, but this didn’t bother Odile. Odile appeared to care only for Elan, who was suffering the most from being locked up. He had been an unruly, spoiled five-year-old when the November 1938 pogroms exploded and after more than a thousand days in hiding, there was something lost, almost crazy, about his eyes. When it was time to return to the hideout he was always the last to go in. Often he refused, or would remain clinging to the entrance. When that happened, Yudel would go over and take his hand, encouraging Elan to make the sacrifice once more and return to the long hours of darkness.

But six nights ago, Elan couldn’t take it any more. He waited until everyone else had gone back into the hole, then slipped away and out of the house. The judge’s arthritic fingers only managed to brush the boy’s shirt before he disappeared. Josef tried to follow him, but by the time he was out on the street there was no trace of Elan.

The news came three days later in the Kronen Zeitung. A young mentally disabled Jewish boy, apparently without family, had been placed in the Kinderspital Am Spiegelgrund. The judge was horrified. When he explained, the words catching in his throat, what would probably happen to their son, Odile became hysterical and refused to listen to reason. Jora felt faint the moment she saw Odile go out the door, carrying that same package they had brought to their hideout, the one they had taken to the hospital years before when Yudel was born. Odile’s husband accompanied her, despite her protests, but as he left he handed Jora an envelope.

‘For Yudel,’ he said. ‘He shouldn’t open it before his bar mitzvah.’

Two terrible nights had passed since then. Jora was anxious for news, but the judge was more silent than usual. The day before, the house had been filled with strange sounds. And then, for the first time in three years, the bookcase began to move in the middle of the day and the judge’s face appeared in the entrance hole.

‘Quick, come out. We haven’t a second to waste!’

Jora blinked. It was difficult to recognise the brightness outside the hideout as sunshine. Yudel had never seen the sun. Frightened, he ducked back in.

‘Jora, I’m sorry. Yesterday I found out that Josef and Odile have been arrested. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to upset you further. But you can’t stay here. They’re going to question them, and no matter how much the Cohens resist, the Nazis will eventually find out where Yudel is.’

‘Frau Cohen won’t say anything. She’s strong.’

The judge shook his head.

‘They’ll promise to save Elan’s life in exchange for revealing where the little one is, or worse. They can always make people talk.’

Jora began to cry.

‘There’s no time for that, Jora. When Josef and Odile didn’t return, I went to see a friend at the Bulgarian embassy. I have two exit visas in the names of Bilyana Bogomil, tutor, and Mikhail Zhivkov, son of a Bulgarian diplomat. The story is that you’re returning to school with the boy after spending the Christmas holidays with his parents.’ He showed her the rectangular tickets. ‘These are train tickets to Stara Zagora. But you won’t go there.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Jora said.

‘Stara Zagora is your official destination, but you’ll get off at Cernavoda. The train stops there for a short while. You’ll get out so that the boy can stretch his legs. You’ll leave the train with a smile on your face. You won’t carry any luggage or have anything in your hands. As soon as you can, disappear. Constanta is thirty-seven miles to the east. You’ll either have to walk or find someone willing to take you there by cart.’

‘Constanta,’ Jora repeated, trying to remember everything in her confusion.

‘It was Romania before. Now it’s Bulgaria. Tomorrow, who knows? The important thing is that it’s a port and the Nazis don’t watch it too carefully. From there you can take a ship to Istanbul. And from Istanbul you can go anywhere.’

‘But we don’t have any money for a ticket.’

‘Here are some marks for the trip. And in this envelope there’s enough to book passage for the two of you to somewhere safe.’

Jora looked around. There was hardly any furniture left in the house. Suddenly she understood what the strange noises the day before had been. The old man had hocked almost everything he owned to give them a chance of escaping.

‘How can we ever thank you, Judge Rath?”

‘Don’t. Your trip will be very dangerous and I’m not sure that the exit visas will protect you. God forgive me, but I hope I’m not sending you to your death.’

Two hours later Jora had managed to drag Yudel to the building’s stairway. She was about to go outside when she heard a truck halting on the pavement. Everyone who lived under the Nazis knew exactly what that meant. The whole thing was like a bad melody, beginning with a screech of brakes, followed by someone shouting orders and the dull staccato of boots on snow, which became more precise as the boots hit wooden floors. At that point you prayed for the sounds to fade away; instead there was an ominous crescendo culminating in knocks at a door. After a pause, a chorus of weeping would ensue, punctuated by machine-gun solos. And when the music was over, the lights went on again, people returned to their tables, and mothers would smile and make believe that nothing had happened next door.

Jora, who knew the tune well, hid under the stairs the moment she heard the first notes. While his colleagues broke down Rath’s door, a soldier wielding a flashlight paced nervously back and forth at the main entrance. The torch’s beam cut through the darkness, barely missing Jora’s worn grey shoe. Yudel grabbed her with such animal fear that Jora had to bite her lip in order not to cry out in pain. The soldier came so close to them that they could smell his leather coat and the cold metal and oil of the gun.

A loud shot rumbled down the stairwell. The soldier interrupted his search and rushed upstairs to his companions who were yelling. Jora lifted Yudel in her arms and went out into the street, walking slowly.