Long Road to Jerusalem

By Roger Bowen

Miriam a survivor of the holocaust escapes to Palestine, where she meets Cobi an officer in the Palmach. In the bitter fighting for Jerusalem, during Israels war of Independence, they fall in love. In the battle for the Bethlehem road, Cobi confronts his childhood friend Yusuf a Palestinian Arab, with unexpected results.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503504943

Roger Bowen

Roger Bowen was brought up in Bewdley, a small town in Worcestershire, England. After leaving college, he worked in the city of Birmingham and later in London as a sales representative. Where he met his Israeli wife, they went to live in Israel, spending a total of five years there. He then emigrated to Australia and with three friends started a Real Estates business and has been living there for forty-five years. Heis now retired. He has and four children plus ten grandchildren six of them in Israel three in Australia and one in England. Roger is now married to his Dutch-born wife Edune and they have two dogs, Sam and Holly. This is Roger’s third book.

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Copyright © 2015 by Roger Bowen.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2015906475

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5035-0492-9

Softcover      978-1-5035-0493-6

eBook      978-1-5035-0494-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/11/2015

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

PART ONE MIRIAM’S STORY

Chapter One April 1941

Chapter Two September 1941, Inside The Ghetto

Chapter Three Miriam’s Family

Chapter Four Planning Their Escape

Chapter Five Escape From Warsaw

Chapter Six Preparations

Chapter Seven The Journey Begins

Chapter Eight October/November 1941—The Ochoza Forest

Chapter Nine November 1941—Meeting The Partisans

Chapter Ten December 1941—Love

Chapter Eleven Betrayal

Chapter Twelve January 1942—Revenge

Chapter Thirteen Journey To The Parczew Forest

Chapter Fourteen The Russians

Chapter Fifteen March 1942–April 1943—Fighting Back

Chapter Sixteen April 1943–August 1944—Tragedy

Chapter Seventeen August 1944–May 1945—Onward To Victory

Chapter Eighteen June 1945—Safe At Last

Chapter Nineteen July 1945–November 1947

Chapter Twenty Deggendorf

PART TWO COBI’S STORY

Chapter Twenty-One March 1948 Kibbutz Dahlia

Chapter Twenty-Two Preparations

Chapter Twenty-Three The Battle

Chapter Twenty-Four Parting

Chapter Twenty-Five Yusuf Ben Omar

Chapter Twenty-Six First Meeting

Chapter Twenty-Seven The Battle Of The Monastery Of Notre Dame

Chapter Twenty-Eight Confession Of Love

Chapter Twenty-Nine Latrun

Chapter Thirty Under Fire

Chapter Thirty-One The Battle Of Latrun

Chapter Thirty-Two Operation Burma Road

Chapter Thirty-Three Building The Road

Chapter Thirty-Four Bethlehem Road Battle

Chapter Thirty-Five Revelation

Chapter Thirty-Six Hospital

Chapter Thirty-Seven Conclusion

Postscript

To my dear wife Edune for her support and patience and for being my sounding board for ideas

Author’s note

This work is purely a work of fiction, and although many of the actions that take place are based on fact, they are not necessarily in chronological order. Someone once said, ‘Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.’

I spent five years on and off in Israel, and I came to love the country and the people. I was often intrigued by their stories. I remember one occasion, travelling on a bus, and a rabbi was strap hanging with his bare arm exposed. There, tattooed on his arm, was a concentration camp number. He looked such a gentle fellow and I couldn’t help but wonder what his story was, what he had been through, and what horrors he must have witnessed.

This is not a story just about the Holocaust and Israel’s war of independence; rather, it is the story of two people and the tremendous difficulties they faced on the long road to Jerusalem.

Acknowledgements

The Arab-Israeli Wars by Chaim Herzog for his clear descriptions of the battles fought in the War of Independence—his concise descriptions were invaluable.

A Cup of Tears by Abraham Lewin, a story of the Warsaw Ghetto, is a diary kept by Abraham of the daily life in the ghetto. Unfortunately he was not to survive and was deported to Auschwitz.

Fighting Back by Harold Werner—much of the story of the partisans came from this book. Harold himself was a partisan and tells a harrowing tale of his life with them.

Wikipedia is a wonderful source for any aspiring writer. The amount of information I obtained from this source was absolutely invaluable.

PART ONE

MIRIAM’S STORY

Chapter One

APRIL 1941

Miriam alighted from the tram and began walking the short distance to her home. As she rounded the corner, she froze in horror; people were screaming and shouting. She saw her friend Rachel kneeling on the pavement, wailing. Two German soldiers roughly picked her up and slung her onto the back of a truck. And then Mr Feldman, who owned the delicatessen, still wearing his apron, was frogmarched out of his shop by two other soldiers and put aboard the truck. A crowd of onlookers had gathered watching. Her first thought was for her family. She was about to rush forward when she felt someone grab her arm and hold her back. Looking back, she saw it was Maria, their maid.

‘No, no. Don’t go down there, Miriam. They have already taken your mama and papa. There’s nothing you can do.’

‘I have to go to them.’ Miriam shouted, struggling to break free. ‘Let me go.’

‘No, Miriam,’ Maria said firmly. ‘Your papa told me to stop you. You are to come with me.’ Miriam was sobbing now.

‘Oh no,’ Miriam cried. ‘Is Danny with them?’ She was referring to her younger brother.

‘I’m afraid so, he didn’t go to school today and was at home when the Germans came.’

‘Where are they taking them?’

‘I heard one of the soldiers say they were being taken to the ghetto.’

The ghetto had been set up by the Germans in occupied Warsaw in November 1940 as a containment measure for the Jewish population.

‘Now come on, we must get away from here, people are beginning to stare.’ Maria dragged a reluctant Miriam off to the nearest tram stop, and they caught a tram to Maria’s home in the outer western suburb of Wolomin.

Miriam sat in stunned silence all the way, her mind racing, thinking of all the awful things that could happen. She had heard about conditions in the ghetto. Many people were dying; disease was rife, especially typhus, but also other diseases and starvation.

Miriam was a shy eighteen-year-old student nurse, working at Warsaw’s general hospital. She came from a sheltered middle-class background. Her father was a well-known lawyer and her mother was a professor of linguistics at the university. They lived a comfortable life in a rambling old house in the suburb of Zabski.

It had all changed when the Germans invaded Poland in September of 1939. At first, life went on much as usual, apart from the shortages of food and other commodities. Then the Germans began issuing decrees against the Jewish population. They must wear a yellow Star of David on their right breast; they were forbidden to gather in groups of more than six people, banned from public places, and so it went on. The Germans made life very difficult.

Their latest obscenity was the construction of a huge wall around the Jewish district of Warsaw, enclosing the original residents and resettling thousands of Jews from Poland, Germany, and other countries. It created massive overcrowding as more and more people were crammed in. The wall was built by Jewish forced labour. The Germans had ordered the labourers to build the wall ten feet high in twenty-four hours. When the Jewish workers were unable to complete the task, they were lined up and every tenth one was shot.

It made it so much easier for the Germans to have the Jews in one convenient place, where they could be put on cattle trucks and sent to Auschwitz or Treblinka concentration camps. Though at the time, no one knew this was the destination. Most people thought the Germans were going to resettle them in the east.

Miriam’s thoughts returned to her parents and her brother Danny. My God, how long could they last in that place? Her thoughts were confused and tumbling over themselves. What was to become of her? Where would she go? What would happen to mama and papa and Danny? It was so overwhelming that she let out a stifled sob.

Miriam had an inquisitive mind and did not look Jewish. With long, flowing blonde hair and vivid blue eyes, a throwback to her Polish grandmother, apart from the Star of David on her coat, she would have passed as an ordinary Pole.

‘There, there, dear, don’t upset yourself,’ said Maria. ‘We have to make a plan. The priority is to get you a new identity and a plausible story to back it up. I know. You could be my niece staying with me from Kosalin and attending the hospital.’

‘That wouldn’t be plausible,’ sniffed Miriam. ‘How am I supposed to work at the hospital under an assumed name when everyone knows me?’

‘Oh yes, I forgot that. All right then, let’s start on your identity. We have to get rid of that right away,’ she said, pointing to the Star of David.

‘You can easily pass as a gentile, and we can continue with the story that you are my niece. Maybe you’ve come to Warsaw to look for work. Yes, that’s it. You could be looking for a job.’ Maria was starting to get excited as she expanded on the plan.

‘I know someone who knows someone that can get you a new set of papers. We also have to think of a new name for you. Any ideas?’

Miriam thought hard. ‘I think I would like the name of Krista. Yes, that’s it—Krista.’

‘That’s a good Christian name. You will also have to learn the Catholic mass and the catechism though, in case someone questions you.’

Miriam nodded in agreement.

‘I’m afraid you will have to stay indoors for a while until you have got your new identity papers.’

Miriam nodded absently. She was still thinking of her family.

‘What about you?’

‘What do you mean? What about me?’

‘Well, you know the penalty for harbouring a Jew is death.’

‘Listen, dear, your mama and papa were very good to me, it’s the least I can do. Besides which, if you learn your new identity off by heart and you’re careful, I don’t see it as much of a risk.’

Miriam quickly adjusted to her new life; she settled in with Maria and attended church with her every Sunday and learnt by rote the Catholic mass.

Meanwhile she practiced her new identity until she was word-perfect; she learnt to answer to the name Krista. Maria had described the town of Kosalin until she felt that she had actually been there, she knew it so well. Her ‘parents’ lived a simple life. Her father was called Stanislaus; her mother, Maria’s sister, was called Theresa. They had a smallholding outside of the town. Krista had lived there all her life and attended the local schools.

Her new identity would not pass close scrutiny, but it would suffice if she was stopped on the street.

Next was to find work. She was lucky enough to find a job as an assistant to the nurse, at a local GP’s surgery. At least, she thought ruefully, she could continue her studies.

It was about five months later, when a chance conversation with a patient awoke the feelings for her parents again. He was in the surgery for a broken arm and they were chatting together while she was putting his arm in plaster. ‘So what do you do, Mr Gryzbowski?’

‘I have a flower stall in Zelaznej Bramy square near the ghetto.’

‘Really?’ said Miriam, ‘That is interesting. Tell me, would you know how to find out if someone is in the ghetto?’

‘Well, that depends’, said Mr Gryzbowski, ‘on whom you want to contact.

‘I suppose the best place to ask would be the offices of the Judenrat, just inside the gates. That’s like a council; they run the ghetto under the Germans and carry out their orders,’ he finished by way of explanation.

Miriam stopped bandaging his arm. ‘What, you mean anyone can just walk up and ask?’ Miriam was astonished.

‘No. Not anyone,’ chuckled Mr Gryzbowski. ‘You could hardly go in there if you were a Jew, could you? They would keep you in there. Why do want to know anyway?’

‘Oh nothing really, it was for my aunt, she was wondering what had happened to her ex-employers. They were rounded up a few months ago.’

‘Hmm, well, I wouldn’t hold out much hope for them if they’ve gone in there. The people are starving to death. I haven’t been in but I can see, from the gates, bodies on the pavements. The tram still runs through the ghetto. People have told me of the sights they’ve seen, dead bodies and people begging for food as the tram goes past. Absolutely terrible.’

Miriam was silent for a minute. She decided to see for herself; she made further small to talk with Mr Gryzbowski until she had finished.

Before leaving that night, she asked the doctor if she could have the morning off to attend to some pressing business. He consented and said not unkindly, ‘I hope it isn’t anything serious, Krista. Your parents are well, I trust?’

‘Oh yes, thank you, doctor, they are fine. I just need a little time off to sort out some personal stuff.’

‘All right, Krista, off you go,’ said the doctor, not wishing to pry.

The next morning, Miriam was up early and, after a light breakfast, caught the tram to the city. She couldn’t help noticing how glum everyone seemed. I suppose, she thought, it’s because people are finding it hard with the occupation, the shortages, and the constant decrees coming from the German occupation administration. Miriam had read one of them at the tram stop:

‘Anyone caught supplying food or rendering assistance to Jews will be shot’ it said. Miriam shuddered at the memory. She got off the tram in Zelaznej Bramy square and walked slowly down Graniczna Street to the ghetto gates. Most people, she noticed, hurried past them as if they did not want to see. She