A Death in Vienna

treated you well and humanely.”
    “If that is the truth, Herr Sturmbannführer, then why am I a skeleton?”
    He has no answer, except to draw his pistol and place it against my temple.
    “Recite to me what happened to you during the war, Jew. You were transferred to the east. You had plenty of food and proper medical care. The gas chambers and the crematoria are Bolshevik-Jewish inventions. Say those words, Jew.”
    I know there is no escaping this situation with my life. Even if I say the words, I am dead. I will not say them. I will not give him the satisfaction. I close my eyes and wait for his bullet to carve a tunnel through my brain and release me from my torment.
    He lowers the gun and calls out. Another SS man comes running. The Sturmbannführer orders him to stand guard over me. He leaves and walks back through the trees to the road. When he returns, he is accompanied by two women. One is Rachel. The other is Lene. He orders the SS man to leave, then places the gun to Lene’s forehead. Lene looks directly into my eyes. Her life is in my hands.
    “Say the words, Jew! You were transferred to the east. You had plenty of food and proper medical care. The gas chambers and the crematoria are Bolshevik-Jewish lies.”
    I cannot allow Lene to be killed by my silence. I open my mouth to speak, but before I can recite the words, Rachel shouts, “Don’t say it, Irene. He’s going to kill us anyway. Don’t give him the pleasure.”
    The Sturmbannführer removes the gun from Lene’s head and places it against Rachel’s. “You say it, Jewish bitch.”
    Rachel looks him directly in the eye and remains silent.
    The Sturmbannführer pulls his trigger, and Rachel falls dead into the snow. He places the gun against Lene’s head, and once again commands me to speak. Lene slowly shakes her head. We say goodbye with our eyes. Another shot, and Lene falls next to Rachel.
    It is my turn to die.
    The Sturmbannführer points the gun at me. From the road comes the sound of shouting.Raus! Raus! The SS are prodding the girls to their feet. I know my walk is over. I know I am not leaving this place with my life. This is where I will fall, at the side of a Polish road, and here I will be buried, with nomazevoth to mark my grave.
    “What will you tell your child about the war, Jew?”
    “The truth, Herr Sturmbannführer. I’ll tell my child the truth.”
    “No one will believe you.” He holsters his pistol. “Your column is leaving. You should join them. You know what happens to those who fall behind.”
    He mounts his horse and jerks on the reins. I collapse in the snow next to the bodies of my two friends. I pray for them and beg their forgiveness. The end of the column passes by. I stagger out of the trees and fall into place. We walk that entire night, in neat rows of five. I shed tears of ice.
    Five days after walking out of Birkenau, we come to a train station in the Silesian village of Wodzislaw. We are herded onto open coal cars and travel through the night, exposed to the vicious January weather. The Germans had no need to waste any more of their precious ammunition on us. The cold kills half of the girls on my car alone.
    We arrive at a new camp, Ravensbrück, but there is not enough food for the new prisoners. After a few days, some of us move on, this time by flatbed truck. I end my odyssey in a camp in Neüstadt Glewe. On May 2, 1945, we wake to discover that our SS tormentors have fled the camp. Later that day, we are liberated by American and Russian soldiers.
    It has been twelve years. Not a day passes that I don’t see the faces of Rachel and Lene—and the face of the man who murdered them. Their deaths weigh heavily upon me. Had I recited the Sturmbannführer’s words, perhaps they would be alive and I would be lying in an unmarked grave next to a Polish road, just another nameless victim. On the anniversary of their murders, I say mourner’s Kaddish for them. I do this out of habit but not faith. I lost my faith in God in Birkenau.
    My name is Irene Allon. I used to be called Irene Frankel. In the camp I was known as prisoner number 29395, and this is what I witnessed in January 1945, on the death march from Birkenau.
    17
    TIBERIAS, ISRAEL
    IT WAS SHABBAT.Shamron ordered Gabriel to come to Tiberias for supper. As Gabriel drove slowly along the steeply sloped drive, he looked up at Shamron’s terrace and saw gaslights dancing in the wind from the lake—and then he glimpsed Shamron, the eternal