Exodus - Leon Uris [32]
Kitty looked at Ari. There was something deadly about this man.
Ari felt Kitty’s disdain. His hands grabbed her arms. “Do you know what a Sonderkommando is?”
“Ari, please ...” David said.
“A Sonderkommando is one who was forced by the Germans to work inside of their crematoriums. I’d like to show you another old man here. He took the bones of his grandchildren out of a crematorium in Buchenwald and carted them off in a wheelbarrow. Tell me, Mrs. Fremont, did you see one better than that at the Cook County Hospital?”
Kitty felt her stomach turn over. Then resentment took over and she fired back, eyes watering with anger. “You’ll stop at nothing.”
“I’ll stop at nothing to show you how desperate we are.”
They glared at each other wordlessly. “Do you wish to see the children’s compound or not?” he said at last.
“Let’s get it over with,” Kitty answered.
The three crossed the bridge over the barbed-wire wall into the children’s compound and looked upon war’s merciless harvest. She went through the hospital building past the long row of tuberculars and into the other wards of bones bent with rickets and skins yellow of jaundice and festering sores of poisoned blood. She went through a locked ward filled with youngsters who had the hollow blank stares of the insane.
They walked along the tents of the graduation class of 1940–45. The matriculants of the ghettos, the concentration camp students, scholars of rubble. Motherless, fatherless, homeless. Shaved heads of the deloused, ragged clothing. Terror-filled faces, bed wetters, night shriekers. Howling infants, and scowling juveniles who had stayed alive only through cunning.
They finished the inspection.
“You have an excellent staff of medical people,” Kitty said, “and this children’s compound is getting the best of the supplies.”
“The British have given us none of it,” Ari snapped. “It has come as gifts from our own people.”
“You made the point right there,” Kitty said. “I don’t care if your facilities are manna from heaven. I came at the request of my American conscience. It has been satisfied. I’d like to go.”
“Mrs. Fremont ...” David Ben Ami said.
“David! Don’t argue. Some people find just the sight of us repulsive. Show Mrs. Fremont out.”
David and Kitty walked along a tent street. She turned slightly and saw Ari staring at her back. She wanted to get out as quickly as possible. She wanted to return to Mark and forget the whole wretched business.
A sound of uninhibited laughter burst from a large tent near her. It was the laughter of happy children and it sounded out of place at Caraolos. Kitty stopped in curiosity before the tent and listened. A girl was reading a story. She had a beautiful voice.
“That is an exceptional girl,” David said. “She does fantastic work with these children.”
Again laughter erupted from the children.
Kitty stepped into the tent flap and drew it open. The girl had her back to Kitty. She sat on a wooden box, bent close to a kerosene lamp. Circling her sat twenty wide-eyed children. They looked up as Kitty and David entered.
The girl stopped reading and turned around and arose to greet the newcomers. The lamp flickered from a gust of air that swept in from the open flap and cast a dancing shadow of children’s silhouettes.
Kitty and the girl stood face to face. Kitty’s eyes opened wide, registering shock.
She walked out of the tent quickly, then stopped and turned and stared through the flap at the astonished girl. Several times she started to speak and lapsed into bewildered silence.
“I want to see that girl ... alone,” she finally said in a hushed voice.
Ari had come up to them. He nodded to David. “Bring the child to the school building. We will wait there.”
Ari lit the lantern in the schoolroom and closed the door behind them. Kitty had remained wordless and her face was pale.
“That girl reminds you of someone,” Ari said abruptly. She did not answer. He looked through the window and saw the shadows of David and the