Aftermath
by Philippe de la Matraque
Chapter Thirteen: Home
A week later, Pierson was pinning his purple heart onto Zussman's dress uniform. Colonel Davis even gave another speech to him and the other soldiers going home. Pierson stayed after to see him off. Zussman handed him an envelope, and the once taciturn sergeant gave him a brief hug before stepping to offer a salute which Zussman returned. Then Pierson grabbed a passing private. "You! Make sure he gets a good bunk."
"Yes, Sergeant," the private replied. Zussman laughed and introduced himself as the two of them approached the gangplank. They became friends on the trip back to the States. Not good friends. Not friends that exchanged addresses before they disembarked, but comrades for the journey. Zussman didn't mention Berga but tried to act happy like the other soldiers. He was happy. Just not all happy.
And he was very surprised to see someone holding up a sign with his name as he pushed past the families greeting soldiers there at the harbor in New York. It took him a beat to recognize Aiello out of uniform.
"What are you doing here?" Zussman asked after they greeted each other.
"Didn't think you could pass through New York without seein' me, did you?"
Zussman smiled. "Pierson."
"I might have received a telegram." Aiello took his pack. "We'll get you homeward bound tomorrow. Train, bus, whatever you want."
"Bus," Zussman said. He remembered his last train ride and didn't need a long reminder. The sun was setting past the towering skyscrapers to the west. "Where do I stay exactly?"
"With us, of course," Aiello said, as they started walking away from the crowded harbor.
"Us?" Zussman asked, wanting some clarification.
"Me and mom," Aiello replied.
"The mom who taught you to never trust a Jew."
Aiello stopped and Zussman stopped, too. "You'll hear nothing of the sort, I promise. She's seen the papers, the newsreels. It sickened her. Besides she's been workin' on her spaghetti sauce all day."
Zussman started again in the direction they'd been going. "All day?"
Aiello chuckled and caught up. "You can't rush a spaghetti."
After dinner was done, Aiello's mom insisted that Frank could sleep on the sofa and wouldn't take any argument from Zussman, so he relented. He was more stuffed than he'd ever been in his life. Stuffed enough to feel sick and never want to look at food for at least a week. And it felt good!
Mrs. Aiello was a gracious host. Zussman didn't even know if she knew he was Jewish. And she insisted he place a call to his mother to let her know he was back on American soil, he'd be home in a few days, and where the bus would drop him off. Aiello had worked it all out before he'd come to the harbor to meet Zussman's ship.
In the morning, Mrs. Aiello clucked about him being too thin and packed him some food for the trip. Aiello took him to the bus station and sent him on his way. When Zussman opened that food for lunch, he found a list of addresses. One in Queens, one in Philly, and one in Longview he already knew by heart.
Finally, the food ran out and there was a familiar skyline out the bus window. He was almost home. He saw his father out that window, too, as the bus pulled into the station. Zussman gave him a big hug and his father told him his mother was furiously cleaning the apartment for him. They held each other there in the station for several minutes.
"What happened to you, Robbie?" his father whispered into his ear.
"Later," Zussman whispered back. "Just please take me home."
His father kissed his cheek then bent to pick up his bag. They took the L back to his neighborhood. Zussman gripped the sides of his seat and told himself it wasn't like the train. It had lots of windows and moved fast. But his grip wouldn't let up. His father must have noticed because he put a hand on top of Zussman's the rest of the way. They reached their stop and Zussman was quick to grab his bag and sling it over his shoulder. He left the station and took a deep breath. It even smelled like home. It was a short walk to their building. His dad tried to take the bag so they both carried it up the stairs. He took it as his father opened the door.
His mother was in the kitchen, but she turned toward the door when it opened. She hurriedly dried her hands on a kitchen towel and ran over to pull him into her arms. Zussman dropped the bag and held her. She smelled like warm, baked bread. Her tears wet the shoulder of his uniform. Finally she stepped back and held his shoulders. "So thin, Robbie!"
Zussman just nodded. He wasn't sure how to begin now. He had written his story back in Germany before they went to Bergen-Belsen. He had meant it for his mother. But he had changed his mind back in Le Havre. He'd copied it out and put it in two envelopes. One he sent to Daniels and one he left with Pierson. They both deserved to know. "After breakfast?" he asked, his voice a little shaky. He wanted to tell them.
"Of course, of course." She took his hand and led him to the dining table. "Sit, I'll fix you something."
It was a little strange, hearing her speak English with her heavy German accent at home. But he understood it. After what the Nazis had done, he didn't want to speak German either.
It was only a few minutes before she put fresh rolls on the table, then jam, butter, scrambled eggs, and milk for each of them. "Eat, eat," she said. It was the best meal he'd had since Berga. Oh, he'd had the eggs and rolls in the Private Zimmer, but these were his mother's rolls and he felt he could even taste the love she'd baked into them. These rolls were home.
They ate without much talking, but his mother wouldn't take her eyes off him. When they were done, she cleaned the table then sat down again.
Zussman pulled a photograph from his breast pocket. "Before I tell you about me," he said. "I want to tell you about them." He handed the photo to his mother first. "They're all we could find. Sofi Bergman held the flowers at your wedding." He looked to his father. "Johan Strauss is your great cousin Marta's son."
"Marta had two children," his mother said. The worry in her voice told him she already guessed.
"They killed children, Mama," he told her softly. "Sofi had a little daughter. Sofi only survived because she played the clarinet. Johan was selected for work. They both survived Auschwitz. They are the in the DP camp at Bergen-Belsen now."
Mama handed the photo to Papa. "All the others?" Papa asked. "You're certain?"
"They were certain," Zussman replied. "They both thought they had no family left."
Mama put her hand over his. "You gave them family again."
"They're our family," he agreed. "Their stories are worse than mine. What I tell you about mine, you can't share. The Army doesn't want us telling anyone. The others had to sign a document swearing not to tell anyone. I didn't, so I'll tell you. But I don't want to get the others in trouble."
"Okay, Robbie," his mother said.
He looked at the table, stared at the lines in the wood. He couldn't look at either of them, not where he was going. They both scooted their chairs closer to him.
"I was sent to Bad Orb, Stalag XI-B, after I was captured in December. It was okay, mostly boring. But one day in February, this Nazi came to camp looking for Jews. The prisoner leadership decided to defy orders and not hand anyone over. But they rounded up three hundred fifty or so likely suspects and lined us up near the railroad tracks. They had cattle cars waiting. This Nazi-Sergeant Erwin Metz-said he needed workers, Jews. So we dropped our dog tags in the snow. He tells the guy next to me to show him the Jews. When he doesn't, Metz shoots him, right in the head. He was gonna do it to some else, so I got his attention.
"Frag mich doch du Nazi Stück Scheiße." That did it. The Nazi walked back to him.
"Du sprichst Deutsch. Ausgezeichnet." Zussman kept his gaze straight ahead, right over the bastard's shoulder. "Wer sind die Juden?"
"Fick dich!" That did it. The gun was pointed at him now.
"Zeig es mir!"
Now he looked right in that ugly, scarred face. "We're Americans. Period."
There was no bullet. What he got instead was a pistol grip to the temple. He saw stars and fell to the ground. Before he could get his breath back, the Nazi kicked him hard the ribs then stomped just as hard on his chest.
"Setz sie alle in den Zug!"
He was dragged to this feet and drug to the open door of one of the cattle cars. Fellow prisoners helped ease him in. The Nazi was still out there. Zussman could still perhaps get something from him. "Wohin bringt ihr uns?"
"Ihr seid zum Arbeiten hergekommen und das werdet ihr auch tun! " Metz spat back. Zussmen knew then that they were all in trouble.
Five days on that damn train. No food, no water, no toilet. It was miserable and it left them all in a weak state when they finally reached the squalid little Arbeitslager. They were led to their new homes, wooden barracks with little more than wooden slats covered with thin straw mats and rough, threadbare blankets. They were each given a metal bowl and nothing else. They were woken up the next morning before the sun had even risen.
They got something the Germans called coffee that didn't taste at all like coffee. Then they were assigned to work. Twelve hour shifts in the tunnels, seven days a week, no days off. The tunnels were dug into the side of a hill. German civilian engineers blew a section with dynamite, and the prisoners were made to scoop up the resulting debris. They were given no masks or filtration for the slate dust that obscured even the man standing right beside them. They put the debris onto flatbed carts and dragged the carts to the Elster River to dump them.
That first day, he found out that Metz had not been that impressed with his German. Rather, he was very unimpressed by what he'd said in German. He directed one of the younger guards to hit Zussman. The rifle butt to the midsection doubled him over and made him slightly nauseous, though there wasn't anything in his stomach to throw up. It hurt a great deal and drove him to his hands and knees in the snow. He felt a hand on his arm try to help him up. But that arm was ripped away and the rifle butt found his chest this time. He fell again and struggled to get his breath back. He nearly threw up anyway. He saw the legs of his fellow prisoners march by. He didn't see Metz bend down but his voice was quiet and quite near. "Wer ist jetzt das Stück Scheiße, Jude?"
Zussman was sure he was going to die then. But it didn't happen. "Steh auf!" Metz commanded. Not particularly wanting to die after all, Zussman did as he was told. It took a while, and he was dizzy with pain and hunger, but he stood. "Und hilf ihm in keiner Weise"
So Zussman walked. He tried to do it in steady movements, but he was so tired, hungry, and now dizzy that he nearly fell down again. He barely managed to keep his feet. Metz walked away and the guard prodded him in the back. He had hoped to go straight to the barracks but the Germans weren't done with the POWs yet. He was put in line with the others as the Nazis walked to and fro counting and counting. For some reason it took another thirty minutes or more to finish the count of three hundred fifty prisoners. They were then given their evening rations: a loaf of bread for each eight men and an awful, watery 'soup'. No one touched him or spoke to him until they were inside the barracks, and the doors were locked from the outside.
A medic approached, and introduced himself as Anthony Acevedo. "Guess he holds a grudge." He helped him onto a bunk.
Zussman didn't answer. He just wanted to sleep.
"Stay strong, Zussman." Acevedo patted him on the shoulder and left him for his own bunk.
The second day, Metz claimed he'd been shirking from the work. The third day, he'd been sloppy. Another time, he claimed that Zussman had back talked one of the German engineers, though he hadn't said a single word to anyone. He was too busy coughing up the slate dust to speak, too thirsty to even move his parched tongue.
Each morning, Metz came to the sick call to judge the sick or the healthy enough to work by the look of their tongues. Zussman knew better than to even bother with sick call.
A month in, people started dying. One of the medics complained to Metz about the violation of the Geneva Conventions. He got a day in the tunnels for his audacity. The medics were the food gatherers. They had little in the way of supplies to address the ailments that proliferated in the men. Day after day, shift after shift, the men were ground down. It took all their strength and left them quiet and isolated in their own cares. Malnutrition, pneumonia, heart attacks. Some men just gave up. Some who were deemed healthy by the look of their tongues were dead the next day after having to work in those tunnels. Others who were sick were sent away, supposedly to hospitals somewhere. The Germans were deathly afraid of typhus and other contagious diseases. The dead each morning, however, meant nothing to them.
Zussman became one of those men so absorbed in keeping himself alive that he didn't talk to the others except when he was needed to explain German orders. Only the medics really seemed to care for others. They didn't have it easy, but they didn't work in the tunnels. They tried, with what little they had, to make things better.
Like the night Acevedo approached him with nine one-inch strips of blanket. He wrapped them around Zussman's chest under his shirt. It wasn't much for padding, as thin as those blankets were. But it helped a little, kept him just a bit warmer, and was thin enough that Metz never caught on that it was there.
Zussman's hatred for Metz kept him going. It got him up from the beatings and through the long counts in the cold. It even helped him stay warm. His anger was like a ball of fire in his chest. That was why Metz had promised him he'd get rid of the 'Fuck you' expression from his face and promised him he'd die in the camp. But 'Fuck you' was the reply in his head to anything Metz said.
And that's how things went until the Red Cross packages were finally distributed. Every day they worked, except Easter Sunday. Every day he was beaten. Every day he was late to the count or just late enough to be led straight to the locked barracks. The guard would unlock it, throw him in, and lock it again. Every day, he'd kept his tongue, but glared and thought 'Fuck you' to Metz. He hated that bastard with every fiber of his being, and he was determined to survive and not let that monster break him.
But that night, when the letters came, when the food came. That was too much. While the others ate, he had to stand at attention in front of Metz. His mother's words were so close he could have read them if there had just been more light. But the flames took them away, scattering them into ash that wafted away in the cold wind. And he felt something inside him break. The ball of anger burned out. Or maybe it was swallowed by the hole in his stomach that ached and ached for a real meal.
Lights out was called and he was allowed to go back to the barracks. He stumbled in and climbed to his bunk with difficulty. That hole in his stomach felt like it would swallow him in his sleep. And he thought that maybe that was for the best.
Then someone tucked something into his hand before walking away. Zussman couldn't see what it was. The only windows were high on the walls. But he could smell it, feel the consistency. Meat. Someone had given up a few bites of Spam from their pack. It quieted his stomach enough to fall asleep. It was the only food he'd had that day.
The rest of the days were a blur but it didn't matter. There was a rhythm, a pattern to it. Wake up, 'coffee', count, march, work, beating, stumble back, count, eat a little bread and foul soup, sleep, do it all again the next day and the next day. Until April 6th. Zussman hadn't known it was April 6th. He wasn't even sure it was April. It was just a break in the routine. Line up, march out. "Sie fünf. Halt," and "Warten Sie zehn Minuten und schießen Sie sie ab!"
That was it. Metz was going to keep his promise. Zussman wouldn't leave Berga alive. He had a moment of clarity as the bullets rang out and the men to his left dropped to the ground. Why were they dying? Metz hadn't promised them. He tried to reason with the guard. "Erschieß sie nicht. Erschieß mich.Daniels is dead. Ich auch. Lass sie mit den anderen gehen." But the sound of the gun so close to his ear deafened him, blinded him. He lost his balance and the guard shoved him down. He cried out because it hurt when he hit the ground with his shoulder, his, chest, his hip.
There was another shot and that was it. He was dead. Wasn't he? Must have been because Daniels was there. He's seen Daniels die. Pierson? Didn't sound like him.
"I don't remember much else, but I wasn't dead. Obviously. The guard was. Daniels had survived getting shot the day I was captured and Pierson had changed. I woke up in a clean bed with warm blankets and my own squad beside me. I was back in Bad Orb, but it was now held by the US Army. I was in and out of it for a few days, then I remember waking up again in a different bed. My stomach hurt and a doctor told me my spleen had ruptured. They'd had to do surgery. Daniels and the others had been ordered back to the front. I got a little better, so they sent me to a field hospital in Belgium.
"Then I got pneumonia. I was sure I was going to die then. A lot of guys had died of pneumonia. But they sent me to a real hospital in Paris and the guys showed up again. They stayed with me, read to me, talked to me about what was going on in the war. And I got through it.
"But I still weighed less than a hundred pounds and wasn't strong enough to sit up, let alone walk. I was hungry all the time. But they had to start me slow, work me up to bigger meals and solid foods. A saw Acevedo again. He and the others had been marched a hundred and twenty miles! They weren't liberated until April 23rd. The hundred and seventy who survived anyway.
"And that's it. The war ended and we were all moved to Le Havre. The other guys went home. Pierson came every day and took me for walks as I got stronger and gained weight. I got my discharge papers but he asked me to stay, because he'd found Johan. So we went to Bergen-Belsen to meet him. The Jewish leader there knew another survivor from Stuttgart so Pierson went to meet her, see if she knew anything about your side of the family, Mama." Finally, he looked at her. Tears were staining her cheeks. "And she did. She remembered her aunt getting married and moving to America, and she saw her name, her parent's names, her grandparents' names on that list. They hadn't realized it was her because she had gotten married. She had taken her husband's name. But she was the Sofi on your list, Mama. That's how we found her. We gave them each a copy of that picture and our address. So they could remember."
Mama put her arm around him and pulled him close. Papa moved even closer and did the same. Zussman felt his own eyes fill with tears. He only realized now how starved he'd been for this, this love he felt in his parents' arms. They were together, the Berga POWs, in that hell, but each of them had been alone in their struggle to survive, driven to isolate themselves by the torture of the counting, the meagerness of the food, the exhaustion of the work, the cold, the sickness and the lice. Why had he lived anyway? The ones who died weren't beaten every day?
He picked up the picture again. "They had it worse. There were no selections to see who would die where I was. No gas chambers. And it was only two months. For them, it was years. For me, it was watching fellow POWs die, for them it was their mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, cousins, husbands, and kids. And now they have next to nothing. They can't go home. There's no home to go to."
"I am so proud of you, my son," Papa said.
For what? For cussing out a Nazi and getting punished for it daily? For giving up? For almost dying in a lesser camp in a shorter span of time?
"You survived," Mama said, as if she had guessed some of his thoughts, "and you came back to us. You survived everything they put you through. You are still here. And you brought us these two beautiful people who need us, our little family, to be their family now."
"Tomorrow is the Sabbath," Papa said. "We will say Kaddish for the others." He got up and came back with a handkerchief.
Zussman wiped his face. "Sometimes, when I sleep, I'm back there."
Mama kissed his forehead. "I would kiss away every nightmare like I did when you were a little boy. But you are a man now. I don't think it would work." She laughed a little, and Zussman chuckled too. If only it was that easy.
"We will do whatever we can to help," Mama said, serious again. "You may be a man but you'll always be my little boy."
Papa went to his bag by the door and picked it up. "Let's get you unpacked."
Mama kissed him one more time, but he got up and followed his father. His room was just as he'd left it what seemed like a lifetime ago. Papa placed his bag on his bed, and Zussman hung up his field uniform, and found places for everything else. Mama brought him a shoebox to keep his letters in.
Zussman changed into civilian clothes for the first time in over a year and realized he didn't know what he'd do now that he wasn't a soldier. Stiles would be a photographer, Aiello was a mechanic, and Daniels, a farmer. Pierson had stayed in the Army. Zussman hadn't thought of doing anything else but enlisting after high school.
When he rejoined his parents in the living room, his mother caught him up on all the goings on in the neighborhood. She jumped from one subject to other only to circle back around eventually. And he loved her for it.
Aurhor's note: I tried VERY hard to get exactly what the German dialogue was in the cut scene from Bad Orb in the game. Not easy. Because the subtitles are not an exact translation and my German is mediocre at best. So I managed to find *Ausgezeichnet** which means "excellent" rather than "perfect" in the subtitles. That was my first clue. But the last sentence Metz says after Zussman asks where they're being taken, that was very difficult. It sounds like *Wir zeitz zum arbeiten gekommen, und das wer diet ja tun!**" But that translates into: "We came to work at this moment, and whoever does it." Which is totally off. Then I found a native German speaker willing to help. So it now matches the subtitle.