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    Jew
    Jew
    Jew
    Ebook164 pages1 hour

    Jew

    By Ben Schnitzer

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    About this ebook

    The breathtaking story of the Schnitzer family is shared through the eyes of a father and son. It embarks in Nazi Germany during the 1940s where the family members suffered at the hands of Hitler. Some of them escaped to the USSR, only to be trapped in a Siberian Gulag labor camp. Eventually, the surviving family members immigrated to America. After years of extreme poverty and hardship, the Schnitzers were not going to give up on the American Dream easily, and astonishing success soon followed their hard work. Join the Schnitzer family on their amazing journey in the novel, "JEW."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRichter Publishing LLC
    Release dateJan 7, 2019
    ISBN9780463772386
    Jew

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      Book preview

      Jew - Ben Schnitzer

      PART ONE: EAST

      CHAPTER 1: JUDE

      Hitlershnitler… Hitlershnitler…

      Open the door, dirty Jew! Open the door, moron!

      Daddy, Daddy! They’re breaking the door! What did I do wrong?

      Nothing! Run!

      No!

      Run with Mommy, I said!

      No! Where is my teddy bear?

      Run to the back door, son—run as fast as you can! Godenue! Please!!!

      Okay, okay, okay! I’m running! I’m running as fast as I can, Daddy! I love you, Daddy!

      The nightmare of his past.

      Every night, he woke up at 3 a.m. Always at the same time when the Gestapo broke into his parent’s house. And always with the same haunting dream of his long gone but so present past, entangled and suspended in eternity...

      The old man looked at the number he had crossed off and the new one he’d just added.

      29006 nights had passed since he lost his teddy bear.

      The new number was 29007.

      29007 nights.

      29007 nightmares.

      The ancient notebook was nearly finished.

      Just one page left.

      When he’d found a brand-new notebook in the garbage can, pencil attached, he knew what to do with it. Even at the age of three or maybe four—too long ago to remember—he knew his numbers. He was sure that if he wrote down a number each time the dream came to him, the dream would be punished, and that punishment would eventually stop it from haunting him. He had no doubt it would work. Maybe they would even get their house back, and he would find his teddy bear. And so, whether he was lying on the potato sack in the abandoned barn or hiding with relatives under the bridge during the day, he would write the next number every time the nightmare came.

      He remembered that it made him happy to commit that figure to the page, as a despicable harsh punishment to the bad people in uniform for separating him from his teddy bear. It provided some comfort or perhaps relief. He would learn all the numbers in the world if need be because one day the punishment would work, and the nightmare would stop.

      He remembered a family reunion with his grandparents under a bridge with his frightened father, who was badly beaten and bloodied, wearing the yellow Star of David with the German word JUDE. He remembered separating from his grandparents and walking at night just with his parents and brother, then sleeping during the daytime. The memories started to come faster, obscuring his vision until all he could see were snippets from the past.

      Hiding in the forest… the train… many different forests… many different trains.

      People in uniforms wearing swastikas.

      He didn’t like swastikas—they looked like spiders. He was afraid of spiders.

      When they crossed the river during a rainy black night, people were suddenly speaking strange, unfamiliar languages. Then, brown uniforms were changed to green uniforms with a big red star instead of those familiar swastikas. Bad, bad swastikas. Bad spiders. Bad uniforms. Bad red stars.

      Siberia… Hard labor camp… Soviet Young Communist Pioneer camp… Post-Stalin Russia… Escaping to America… Homeless shelter in Manhattan… Hunger…

      A kaleidoscope of memories.

      A life so long, but so short.

      Memories harden in his mind. His memories, and his father’s memories shared during long nights in the Siberian Gulag. Mixed authentic memories. His childhood in Germany—the country of his birth. Was he just a toddler when they were forced to leave? But nevertheless, the German language is embedded in him. Now he spoke English, Russian, Romanian, and Yiddish, all with a German accent. But when he spoke in his mother tongue, German, there was no accent. At least, that’s what people said.

      Well. As always after the dream, it was 3 a.m. No need to look at the clock.

      His heart was jumping and pounding in his chest, the way it unfailingly did with the dream. He could feel the beads of cold sweat on his forehead.

      He never did get back his teddy bear.

      Every day was a gift, but it was also another day to fight with his dream—his nightmare. It was something evil and no longer real, yet it was perpetually lingering in the back of his mind.

      He reminded himself. The present-day is real. The dream is not. The past is gone, and the future is yet to be.

      The old man opened his eyes and looked through the porthole window.

      Gentle Mediterranean waves were dancing and hugging the yacht as it approached Israeli waters. He was so glad his son, his boychik, had agreed to take him on this journey. The conversation had been tough.

      He had survived the Nazis, KGB, Katorga hard labor, and even the night he lost his beloved teddy bear.

      In comparison, crossing an ocean was a piece of cake.

      At the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the old man dug his notebook and pencil from his pocket. The notebook was nearly full—only one page remained. Cautiously, he tore out the remaining page and breathed hard, scrawling a note in Russian.

      29007.

      I need my teddy bear back.

      Shalom to Valentina, my Christian saint.

      The old man was skinny but muscular. Nevertheless, he struggled to squeeze the note between the weathered rocks of the remnants of the Jewish temple. This ancient wall of the shrine’s courtyard was a sacred site of Jewish prayer and pilgrimage. All the cavities of the timeworn stones were already rented to the thousands of notes that hosted complaints, requests, grievances, and demands.

      Papa, I always thought that you were agnostic. Aren’t you? The young man placed his hands loosely around the old man’s shoulders.

      Here, let me help you. His son took the note and effortlessly slid it in the wall at the height of a basketball hoop.

      May I ask you who Valentina is?

      The old man smiled. "Sure. I’d love to share my life with you, boychik. It’s a long story, though. Let’s drive to our yacht in Haifa and begin our journey back home. I should have enough time to tell you this shtick of my life. The ocean is vast and layered, and so is my life."

      "Git? Okay?" the old man asked, speaking in Yiddish and translating to English.

      They hugged. Happiness and love sparkled in their eyes. The old man and his young boychik.

      "Git," the old man sighed to himself, nodding his head.

      It was his story.

      It was his father’s story.

      It was the story of their family and their Jewish luck.

      CHAPTER 2: ESCAPE

      The old man settled into a comfortable seat on the yacht’s deck. He carefully studied the young man’s face, assuring himself one last time that he was ready to hear his story.

      Git, I would like to go back in time and tell you a bit about my father, Salomon.

      Boychik, your grandfather was born in Upper Bavaria, in Germany. His mother, Rosa, loved the country. That’s what he told me.

      Rosa was a nurse and a decorated hero from World War I. She loved Germany so much that she named one of her children after the country—my uncle German.

      Rosa and her husband, Dr. Paul Schnitzer, were German patriots and intellectuals. Our family at that time owned a medical office in Berlin and some real estate properties in Germany, Austria, and Chernovtsy. Our family also owned timber and two goldmines in Russia, but the Communist Soviets expropriated those businesses after the Russian Revolution. I will tell you about that later.

      Rosa loved to read books. She had read Hitler’s Mein Kampf and insisted that her husband read it, too. Rosa believed that, as tough as things were getting for the Jews in Germany after World War I, that our family would be all right. We were well-connected, and she was not particularly concerned or afraid. Not at that moment, anyway.

      But the situation got worse. Much worse. Even Rosa started to have doubts.

      Then, there was that terrible night... The night I lost my teddy bear and my family lost their house.

      By then, they had managed to send some close relatives and friends away, along with their families. Most went to Chernovtsy.

      I know that Rosa bought an airplane, hired a British pilot, and secretly made all necessary arrangements to fly relatives to Chernovtsy, where they had a summer villa. I was told it was a small airplane and the pilot was skilled and able to charter in and out of Germany. Some went to Palestine via Chernovtsy.

      Our family had relatives who had lived in Chernovtsy even before the Austrian Empire vanished in 1919, when the city became first a part of Romania.

      Altogether, my grandparents saved over 50 people, but as for themselves…

      A breeze rustled the waves as the old man paused to take a deep breath. As difficult as it was, this part of their family history needed to be passed on.

      Instead of hoping that the majority of Germans would prevail and defeat the Nazi ideology, they should have used the time to get away. But as I told you, boychik, they were German patriots and believed that Hitler’s collapse was near and inevitable.

      In the end, my grandparents delayed for too long. They postponed their escape to transfer their bank accounts to Switzerland and close their businesses in Berlin. Their plane and pilot never returned back from the scheduled flight, so they were unable to leave Germany by plane and their connections were no longer any help. Instead, new Nazi laws forced them to give away all of their properties and businesses to members of the Nazi party.

      Do you remember, boychik, when your Uncle German pointed out our last name on that old building in Berlin? It had been painted over so many times, but you could still see our last name easily underneath. Well, Rosa managed to the keep the key to that house. That building used to be her mansion in Berlin on Brunnenstrasse, one of the best streets in Germany at that time.

      Do you remember how the key fit perfectly in the door? It’s hard to believe, but it was the same lock

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