The Life That He Lived

By Marguerite Mooers

Two men, a grandfather who escaped from Auschwitz when he was nine and his grandson who wants to write his story. But when the grandfather's enemy is killed and the old man confesses to the murder, the grandson must find the killer or become the killer's victim himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marguerite Mooers
• Release date: Apr 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9780990444848

Marguerite Mooers

Before retiring, Marguerite Mooers taught inmates in a medium security prison in upstate New York. She is the author of numerous short stories and award winning poems. An enthusiastic watercolorist, as well as watercolor teacher, she and her husband divide their time between upstate New York and coastal Texas. Take My Hand is her first novel. "Take My Hand" published in 2014, is Marguerite's first book. "The Shelter of Darkness," also a murder mystery was published in 2015, and coming in 2016 will be "A Casualty of Hope" (Guess what? A murder mystery). You can read her blogs on Goodreads or on her website, and enjoy seeing some of her art on the website. To contact Marguerite, e-mail her at [e-mail]

Book preview

Chapter One

January 17, 1945 Auschwitz

Heinrich Bauer

Tonight my twin brother, Hermann died and tomorrow they will kill me. After the injection last week, we were both sick, but as I grew better, Hermann  grew sicker, so sick he could hardly stand for the daily examinations by the doctors.  I tried to keep my brother alive. I told him that the two of us needed to find our parents when we were released. I gave him my evening ration of moldy bread, and my blanket to keep him warm, but instead of getting better his cough became worse, and tonight when we lay down together, it was hard for him to breathe. I lay awake, listening to his strangled breath until finally I could hear it no more.

The Nazis are very precise about these experiments.  If one twin dies, the other twin is killed so they can compare organs and learn why the second twin didn’t die.  Now, lying on the bunk beside my brother’s body, I try to think of what to do.  I have two choices. The first is to stay where I am, holding on to my twin brother’s lifeless body and wait until the guards take me away and end my life. The other choice is to run and take my chances with the outside world. Leaning forward so my cheek brushes Hermann’s, I whisper in his ear. When you see God, tell him that I tried to keep you alive. The tears are running down my cheeks.  Tell God that I loved you.

I take my blanket, slide out of the rough bunk and set my feet on the ground.  It is at that moment that I realize two things. The first is that I have forgotten my hat. Not having my hat will get me shot, but I can be shot just to amuse some SS guard, or because I can’t do my job, or because I have the misfortune to be a Jew. The second thing is that the door, that is usually locked and guarded by a Kapo is open. Just inside the door is the nearly-full piss bucket, where the Kapo sits and makes fun of us as we do our business. But the Kapo’s spot is empty. If I am caught abroad at night, it is certain death,  but it is the only chance I have. I move to the open door and walk through.

Outside there is the muted sound of voices, people moving around and guards shouting.  There has been a rumor for weeks now, that the Germans are losing the war and that we may be freed by the Soviets or even the Americans. Two weeks ago, Soviet planes flew overhead and since then the guards have been more careless. Even the great Dr. Mengele, who runs the lab where people are tortured every day, seems distracted. I listen carefully, but the only language I hear is German.

I look back. Would it be safer to wait? No. Mengele will come tomorrow and I will be killed. Quietly, daring not to breathe I push myself against the wall, listening for the Gestapo who patrols at night or one of the dogs. Hugging the shadows, I move away from the barracks. I am small for nine and two years of poor food have made me thin, but I am still alive and if the God of Abraham is with me tonight, I might get out of here.

Before I came here, I never saw death up close. But the first night here in the camps a little boy died right in the bunk beside me. He was younger than I was, maybe five or six, and he died without making a sound.  I had never seen a dead person before and it shocked me. Now, two years later, I am used to death. Every morning there are two or three people who were alive the night before, and are dead. And, like me and my brother, if one twin dies, the other soon vanishes.

When I was in the hospital last month, I could see through a window, to the back of the kitchen where a  large wheeled barrel held kitchen scraps. Every day the barrel was taken outside the front gate and dumped.  Prisoners could be shot for stealing a rotten turnip or a potato peel, so the scrap barrel has a lid, but now when I get closer I see that the lid is off.  Taking a deep breath, I climb into the barrel, ducking under the wet garbage and sliding the lid closed. I hope that since it is dark, I won’t be noticed, and if I am extra lucky, I can get outside the gate to the woods.  Will I be caught? Maybe. But it’s the only chance I have.

Time passes. My legs are going to sleep in the barrel. Very cautiously I move my feet. If I make too much noise the Gestapo will find me and shoot me.  It is January; I am cold and wet but I try to stay awake. I can hear dogs barking in the distance, someone moving around, probably a Kapo. Are they looking for me? The lid of the barrel rattles and I duck down trying not to breathe. We’ll take this one, a man’s voice says. This has to look real, or it won’t work.

It has to work, a second voice says. We’ve planned this for a year. They’re moving the camp today. It’s our only chance.

The barrel shifts and I begin to bump along. Christ, this is heavy, the first voice said. What do they put in here?

Shut up. Just keep moving. We need to get to the garage.

Are the uniforms in the coal house? one man asks.

Yup.

And the car?

Don’t worry, the car will be there. Just do your job.

And then I realize that these men are speaking Polish not German. I learned Polish as a child from my father, and many people here in the camps speak Polish. This means that the men pulling me along in the barrel are prisoners like me, not Gestapo.

The barrel stops moving and I hear voices. We must be at the gate. The German voice is loud. The Polish voices are softer. I hold my breath. After a long minute the barrel starts moving again and it is quiet.

We come to a stop and I wait. Cautiously, I move through the mess and pushing the lid off the barrel, poke out my head. We are outside the camp. I can see the gate with the Arbeit Macht Frei  (Work Makes You Free) sign  above the entrance. We may be outside this gate but we are still inside camp. Two men are standing in the darkness talking. I begin to work my way out of the barrel.

What’s this? A rat in the garbage? one man asks.

Where did you come from kid? asks the second man.

Mengele’s laboratory. My brother died. They’re going to kill me too.

Christ, the first man says. He moves toward me and I can see him clearly. He is blonde, the perfect German, but he’s wearing the uniform of a prisoner.

We can’t take him with us, Jakub. We’ve worked it all out, the second man says.

So you want I kill him here? Jakub asks.

Not here, the second man says. Away from here. Once they learn he’s missing they will be looking. He comes forward into the light. He has dark hair, dark eyes and a long face, thin from years of starvation. How old are you kid?

Nine.

You know you’re a pain in the ass, the man says. He looks at his partner.  We’ll take him with us. Once we get outside we ditch the car and split up. Then we decide how to get rid of him.

Come on, Jakub says. He looks at me. You too, kid.

The two men sprint toward a nearby building and I struggle behind them and slide through a partly opened door. I wonder how long these men have worked on this escape and how lucky they are to run on a day when everything is falling apart.  I follow them as they cross the coal storage area and go up a set of stairs to where two Nazi uniforms lie on a table. Jakub and the dark-haired man whose name is Josef  change quickly into the SS uniforms. They have nothing for me to wear and I smell like garbage. Jakub picks up an old blanket lying on the floor and throws it over me.  Now we go, he says.

We rush down the stairs, and out into the night again. I can see prisoners crowded inside the gates, and guards moving beside them yelling Geh du Schweine. Josef pushes me toward the back of the building where a sleek, black car stands.

Wow, Jakub says. A Steyr 220. How did you get this?

We needed something that would move fast, Josef says. He puts his hand on the trunk, trying to lift it, but the trunk won’t open.

Shit, he says. It needs a key. He looks at me and I wonder if right then, at that moment, he will kill me. Instead, he opens the rear door of the car and shoves me inside, throwing the dirty blanket over me. Not a damned sound, he says.

I shiver under the blanket, wondering if the guards outside will hear my heart beating and pull me out, or if the two prisoners will kill me once we are outside the gate. Slowly, with great care, I begin to pray. It is my only chance.

The car starts and we begin moving.  I can hear guards shouting outside shouting "Beeilung, Beeilung,"  but I don’t dare poke my head up to see what’s happening.

This better work, Jakub says inside the car.

What choice do we have. It’s either death by a bullet here or being worked to death in another camp.

The car slows. We must be at the outside gate. I can hear the window being rolled down and light flashes across the interior and briefly into the back. The minutes stretch forward. The guard is speaking in German, but I can’t understand what he is saying. I hold my breath., repeating the words of the prayer in my head.  Suddenly I hear Jakub’s shouting. Hurry up, you jerks. I have never heard anyone call the Nazis jerks, especially not a prisoner. Jakub is yelling that we are in a hurry and that if we aren’t let through he will speak to the man’s superior. We are still inside Auschwitz. At any minute, the guard can realize who we are, pull us from the car and shoot us there. Or he can realize after we’ve gone through the gate that we are not Gestapo and open fire as we leave. Prisoners have been shot for much less than what we are doing. The minutes stretch forward endlessly.

And then, miraculously, we are moving. We are outside the gate. We are free. 

We travel for a long time. I am tired and cold and very hungry, but I keep remembering what Josef has said, that once we are away from the camp, I will be killed. Once the car stops, I will have to run, but until then, I have no way to release myself from the car which is a solid, German-made vehicle, built like a tank. I have to trust to providence that I will be safe.

Chapter Two

January 18, 1945 somewhere outside the gates of Auschwitz

Heinrich Bauer

We drove. I huddled deeper in my blanket, curled up in the back of the car. I must have slept, because when I woke with a start the car had stopped. It took me a moment to remember that my brother was dead and that I was escaping.

The back door opened and Jakub stood there. I remembered my plan to jump up quickly and run away, but when I tried to get up, my legs refused to move. Jakub pulled me roughly out of the car and I fell to the snow. We were in a forest, the snow was deep on the ground and it was cold.  I tried to sprint toward the trees, but my legs didn’t work.

Hurry up, Josef said, pulling off the uniform jacket and turning it inside out. Jakub was doing the same. He turned to me. We’ve decided to let you come with us to my sister’s house in Krakow. Christ, you smell like a sewer. It’s a good thing we’re outside. I watched as he dug a hole and threw in the caps. Now, said Jakub. We walk.

I was nine, malnourished from the camps and weakened from the experiments. I still had my striped prisoner uniform and my shoes with no socks. I tucked the blanket around me, and shivering with cold, started to walk.

As we walked, Jakub told me about his life. He was from a farm in southern Poland where he had learned to be a mechanic, a skill the Nazis had appreciated, and which had given him access to the garage. Josef  had been working in the laundry where he’d stolen the uniforms. The two men were from the same town and had been helping each other inside the camp.

You heard all that commotion this morning? Josef asked. People being told to hurry up.

I looked up. Would you really have killed me?

Little rat, you didn’t need to worry. We would have taken care of you.

They’re evacuating the camps, Jakub said. They’re marching the able-bodied workers to another camp farther away. In a couple of days the Soviets will be here.

Why didn’t you wait to be rescued?

You think we would be rescued?  Jakub asked. Not a chance. Josef  and I are too strong and valuable. They would have marched us to Bergen-Belsen and worked us to death there. Now we have a chance to live."

We heard a noise behind us and I turned, panicked, but it was only a deer. We walked for the rest of that day, and that night we rested behind a barn. Jakub tried begging food from the farm wife, only to have the door slammed rudely in his face. The next night, I had better luck, coming away with a bowl of hot soup and a loaf of bread.

The next day we walked all day being careful to avoid the road. Even so I could hear noises not far from us. Was I hearing the prisoners being moved? I drifted closer to the road trying to get a look at the prisoners, but Jakub pulled me away. Finally, toward evening we stopped and rested. We were in a forest. It was dark and we had no food, no covering against the cold, nothing to scare animals away, except some matches that Josef had found in the pocket of the uniform. We tried starting a small fire, but the wood was wet and just smoldered. And we didn’t want to waste the matches. Finally I slept, but it was a sleep filled with nightmares of Dr. Mengele saying We’re going to take you apart piece by piece and listen to you scream as we do it.

The next morning we woke and started off again. The deep snow had soaked through my feet and legs making me very cold  and I was still half asleep so I didn’t see the depression in the earth until I almost stumbled into it.

I froze. Before me in a shallow ditch were hundreds of bodies. They were prisoners from a nearby concentration camp. They might even have been people I’d been imprisoned with. All of them had been shot.

Josef came up behind me. Jesus Christ, he said.  Jakub whistled softly. We stood there, overcome with horror at the sight people twisted in the final agonies of death, some of them with their mouths open in a silent scream.

Let’s get out of here, the Gestapo might still be close, Jakub said.

Wait, I said and without another thought, I jumped down into the pit.

What the hell are you doing? Are you nuts?

I reached toward a body that was still wearing a jacket. I had no jacket and a jacket would be better than the threadbare blanket I still wore. Wrestling the garment off the dead man, I put it on. It was much too large, but it would keep me warm. Then I looked at the man’s feet. He was wearing shoes and  hand-knitted socks. I struggled to wrestle the shoes from his feet.

Hurry up, Jakub said. Or we’ll go without you.

Tossing the dead man’s boots aside, I took my shoes off and put on the socks. Almost instantly I could feel the warmth created by socks that some woman had knitted to keep a beloved man warm. Quickly I put on my shoes. Josef and Jakub were waiting anxiously, and without a further word we began to move.

That night we slept in the relative comfort of a barn. We had begged shelter at a farm and the housewife, risking her life, had given us some dried bread and cheese and showed us where we could get water from the pump.

It took us three more weeks to make our way to Jakub’s sister’s house in Krakow. The German army was fighting the Soviets, but for the German people,  the penalty for harboring a Jew was still death and we could be betrayed at any time.  But Jacub’s sister was generous. When we reached her house, I had the first bath I’d had in years, got my first pair of clean clothes and slept for the first time in ages in a real bed.

Chapter Three

August 25, the present

Jason

I did not set out to be a failure. I had good parents, ones who loved me, (though not each other), the best education my parents could afford, a great job, a lovely wife and loyal friends. It didn’t occur to me when I had all these things, that luck could leak out of my life like water in an old bucket. I didn’t think that one day I would find that my wife had divorced me, I’d left a high paying job for one that paid less, and the friends who’d been close were now on the fast track to better places, leaving me wondering where all my early promising choices had gone.

My name is Jason Ketteridge. I’m twenty-eight and at this moment, with sixty dollars in my pocket, I’m traveling by bus to upstate New York to visit my grandfather, a man who escaped from Auschwitz as a child and whose story will give me another chance at success.

How had I come to the decision to go and see my grandfather in northern New York? It’s a question I have asked myself again, as the bus traveled slowly north, leaving the cities, and entering the flat green land dotted with small dairy farms. Was I making a huge mistake, traveling all the way up here, to interview a man who’d been supportive of my choices, but whom I hadn’t seen in years?  My grandfather had always been reluctant to talk about his early life, but would he talk to me now?  I like to call myself a writer, though the single novel I self-published in my twenties didn’t go anywhere. In fact, of the print run of one hundred copies, ninety-eight were still sitting in my mother’s basement in Florida. The book, a long sad tale of a Vietnam vet who comes back to a society he can’t understand, wasn’t very good. Most readers would, if they bought the thing, have tossed it away as being too depressing. In those days, I thought of myself as a serious writer, as opposed to one who wrote for commercial success. I’ve grown a lot since.

Since writing that novel, I’d tried to make a living writing travel articles, but even that is difficult. When I decided I needed a subject that would propel me down that fast chute to success I called my grandfather and asked if I could interview him about his experiences in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz. When Granddad agreed, I took a leave from my job, emptied my bank account and headed north.

Looking out now at the growing dark beyond the window I thought about money. I had started with a hundred dollars, all I had left in the bank, but that had been reduced by the cost of the bus ticket and a meager meal. My father normally deposits an allowance into my account every month, but this week there was nothing. In addition to this loss, my hours as a bartender had been reduced. I really needed the cash my father provided.

And so, the day before I started out on this journey, I called my dad at the office, a conversation I dreaded. My dad and I both lived in the city but we were miles apart, socially and psychologically. The only thing that held us together was the monthly allowance my father gave me. The thought of talking to my father made me break out in hives, but there was no other way.

I dialed the number, and got the secretary, hoping that my father was in a meeting and I could postpone this, but when I gave my name, my father picked up.

Jason, he said. How are you? Your mother says you’re going upstate to see your  grandfather. You still at McSorley’s?

Yup.

Are you making a career of bartending, Jason? my father growled. I didn’t want to have this conversation. I’d worked at McSorley’s for more than three years and in the beginning it was a good temporary fix, but now it revealed itself to be what it truly was, a place with no future.

You could have stayed at the job here, my father said. I could never understand why you quit. You were making good money and I had promised I would promote you.

I’d spent two years after college working for my father and hated every minute of it, but I didn’t want to get into a shouting match now. Instead I jumped to the topic of my call.

Dad, I