Mila 18 - Leon Uris [94]
Stephan Bronski asked the rabbi if he could be excused for a moment and it was granted. He stood up, and then he saw them!
There were three Nazis in black uniforms in the doorway. Major Sieghold Stutze stood before the other two.
“Rabbi!” Stephan cried.
And they all froze in terror.
Sieghold Stutze limped into the room. “Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
The children flocked behind the rabbi, quivering in fright. One vomited. Only Stephan Bronski stood in front of the old man. His eyes burning with anger, he looked at that moment very much like his Uncle Andrei.
Stutze brushed Stephan aside as he tried to “protect” the old rabbi and grabbed him by the beard and flung him to the floor. He took the dagger from his belt, straddled the fallen man, and cut off the earlocks worn by religious Jews because King David had worn them.
The other two Nazis broke into laughter. They walked around the room, throwing the books to the floor, overturning the desks, trampling on the symbolic ornaments from the synagogue.
“These will make a lovely bonfire,” Stutze said. His eyes searched the room carefully. “It is here, somewhere—now where is it?” He walked to a large canvas. “Could it be beneath here?”
“No!” shrieked the rabbi.
“Aha!” Stutze said, pulling the canvas away, revealing the Torah scrolls.
“No!” shrieked the rabbi again.
Stutze took off the breastplate, tore off the velvet cover, and took out the scrolls which formed the heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the five books of Moses. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. “Here it is, the prize.”
The rabbi crawled to the Nazi and threw his arms about his knees and begged him not to harm the scrolls. Stutze answered by sending his boot thudding into the old man’s ribs.
As he dangled the tree-of-life lambskin Torah before Solomon’s nose the old man cried prayers.
Stutze laughed and his troopers laughed. “I understand old Jews often die for this trash.”
“Kill me, but do not harm the Torah!”
“Shall we have some amusement? You! Boys! Line up against the wall! Hold your hands over your heads and put your faces to the wall.”
The boys did as they were ordered. Stutze dropped the Torah to the floor. Rabbi Solomon crawled quickly to it and covered it with his body.
Stutze took out his pistol and walked to the boys. “All right, old Jew, dance for us. Right on the Torah.”
“Kill me first.”
The Austrian cocked his pistol and placed the barrel against the back of Stephan Bronski’s head. “I shall not kill you, old Jew. Let me see how many of the boys I will have to kill first. Now dance for us.”
“Don’t do it, Rabbi!” Stephan shouted.
Stutze went into a spasm of hysterics. “Sometimes when I play this game we have to kill two or three before they do their dance.”
The old man got to his knees, grunting in anguish.
“Now dance for us, old Jew.”
As Stutze tantalized the boys by placing the pistol against their skulls they cried, “Rabbi! Rabbi!”
The tears streamed down the old man’s cheeks.
He brought his foot down on the Torah and shuffled a grotesque dance on the sacred lambskin.
“Faster, old Jew, faster! Wipe your feet on them!”
“Now, old Jew—piss on them! Piss on them!”
While the Nazis convulsed in laughter at the desecration of the Law, Stephan Bronski had in the flash of a second made a lightning dash for freedom.
Chapter Fifteen
Journal Entry
NEVER A DULL MOMENT since Sturmbannführer Sieghold Stutze has honored us with his presence. He calls his SS detail the “Reinhard Corps” after Reinhard Heydrich, the SD chief in Berlin. This gives us a clue to the chain of command. Hitler, Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Globocnik, and, in Warsaw, Stutze. In this week’s meeting with Emanuel Goldman, David Zemba, and Simon Eden, they gave me a raft of notes for my journal.
The Reinhard Corps swept into the northern Jewish area in large trucks and emptied Jewish stores of all their merchandise.
The Reinhard Corps has been going into individual homes and taking clothing, pots, pans, lamps, books—which are burned—pillows, blankets.
The Reinhard