“That’s preposterous—it’ll never work,” another commander said. “First of all, we don’t have twenty-two men we can spare. And even if we did, you’d get them all killed, not to mention yourself.”
“And what if it does work?” the third commander said. “What then? You’d put the entire Resistance movement in jeopardy. The Nazis would be humiliated. They’d turn the country upside down to catch us. And when they find us, they’ll crush us. And then what? How are we going to save Belgium when the Resistance is no more? No, Avi, it’s foolhardy and reckless. I cannot give my permission.”
Jacob had never seen his uncle so angry. First Avi excoriated his superiors, telling them to wake up and confront reality. Then he pleaded for a fundamental change of perspective. Hitler was rolling over the Allies. Der Führer was gaining ground, picking up speed, putting more and more of Europe under the jackboots of the Reich. The Jewish Resistance was too small to save Belgium. This they had to admit, he said. They were, he argued, wasting precious time and manpower helping the Allies gather intelligence. It was time to save Jewish lives. They certainly couldn’t save them all. But they could save some, and therefore it was their sacred duty to do so.
“What does the Talmud say?” Avi asked, his voice becoming quieter now but even more impassioned. “‘Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.’ Your job, gentlemen—my job, the job of all in the Jewish Resistance—is to save lives, lives that will otherwise be destroyed by Herr Hitler and his thugs. Please, I implore you: Let us hear the cries of our condemned brothers and sisters. Let us come to their rescue. Let us not waste another second doing anything else. Is not this why God has spared our lives thus far?”
The room grew silent. Jacob’s eyes turned to Maurice Tulek. So did everyone else’s. Jacob could see the argument on both sides, but he was moved by his uncle’s passion. It was the same passion that had moved Avi to try to save Herr Berger’s life during Kristallnacht, the same passion that had moved him to argue so vehemently with his brother to leave Germany before it was too late. And it was that passion—that deep and abiding sense of moral conviction—that had persuaded Jacob his uncle was right.
To Jacob’s shock, however, Maurice Tulek came down on the side of his fellow cell commanders and against Avi. Their mission, he said, was to gather intelligence on Nazi troop strength, locations of arms caches, and the like, and to feed that intelligence to the Allies. The sooner the Allies won, the more Jews who would be saved. A mission such as the one Avi was proposing, Morry felt, would threaten the entire Resistance in Belgium.
It was a risk that could not be afforded. The answer was no.
21
Jacob felt betrayed.
It had been his love for these men, his admiration for their courage and for their willingness to risk their lives to do what was right, that had so inspired him and given him the motivation to keep going against all odds. Now all of that was lost. His faith in the Resistance was rattled at best, if not shattered altogether. As he and Avi sneaked back to their own safe house—this time the basement of a warehouse on the west side of Brussels—Jacob felt the will to continue steadily draining from his heart.
Avi said nothing. He seemed focused entirely on their safe return home. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else. When they finally got there, Micah, Henri, and Jacques were sound asleep on their tattered old mattresses on the cold cement floor. Jacob glanced at his watch. It was nearly four. They had to be cleared out of the warehouse by seven. Yawning, he quietly pulled off his boots, climbed up onto the top level of the room’s only bunk bed, and pulled a thick wool blanket over himself. Avi, however, did not go to bed. He just sat on a wooden stool and stared at the floor.
“Uncle, what are you going to do?” Jacob whispered when he could take the suspense no more.
“What would you do?” Avi replied.
Jacob was caught off guard by the question. “Me?” he asked. “I’m not a commander.”
“Someday you will be,” Avi replied. “Maybe someday soon.”
“I’ll be dead or the war will be over long before that,” Jacob sighed.
“Don’t be so sure. God has given you a quick mind and a good heart, Jacob. Don’t underestimate what he could do with you.”
Jacob said nothing, but he mulled his uncle’s unexpectedly kind words.
“So what would you do?” Avi asked again.
Jacob stared up at the ceiling. “Let it go, I guess,” he said at last. “We have to follow orders.”
There was a long silence. Several minutes went by. Finally Avi got up, came over to the bed, and settled in on the lower bunk. “You would really send all those Jews to die at Auschwitz?”
“Before today, I had never heard of Auschwitz.”
“It’s a concentration camp in southern Poland.”
“Okay.”
“A death camp.”
“Morry says that’s only a rumor.”
“What if it’s true?” Avi asked.
“What if it isn’t?” Jacob replied over the snoring of the Belgians.
“Are you prepared to take that chance?” Avi pressed. “The rumors come from people in a position to know what’s really happening. What if they’re right?”
“What choice do we have?” Jacob said. “You said it yourself. We’d need more than twenty men. We don’t have them. We’d need rifles, but you gave them all to Morry. All we have left now is a single pistol and a handful of bullets. I see your point, Uncle. I do. But if the council isn’t going to back you, then it’s a suicide mission.”
Avi said nothing for what seemed like several minutes, and Jacob thought that maybe, just maybe, he had won the day. He breathed a bit easier and finally closed his eyes.
But Avi was not yet done. “What if our Ruthie were being sent to Auschwitz? What if your parents were on the twentieth train?”
22
FEBRUARY 3, 1943
WEMMEL, BELGIUM
By nightfall the next day, their little team had relocated.
Wemmel was a small town north of Brussels. Huddled in the attic of an elderly couple sympathetic to the Resistance, Jacob and Avi feverishly worked on their plan.
When they explained the situation to Micah, Henri, and Jacques, all three men had instantly agreed to help attack the train as soon as possible. “Of course we’ll help,” they’d said when Jacob asked for their support. “Don’t you know us by now?”
As Avi listed out the questions to which they needed answers, the supplies they’d need, and the enormous challenges that lay ahead, Jacob couldn’t help but look at these men with affection. He’d never imagined having true friends like these, men so ready and willing to risk their lives for a cause greater than themselves. It might not have restored his faith in mankind, but it certainly moved it in the right direction.
One important fact emerged that night: Micah was Avi’s source for the intelligence he had shared with the members of the council. Avi didn’t actually know the two people he had referred to in the meeting. Those were Micah’s contacts. But the more Jacob heard about them, the more confidence he had in Micah’s assessment of their trustworthiness.
For the next few weeks, Micah pressed these contacts hard for more information. Which train would they use? What night were they leaving? Exactly how many prisoners would be on the train? Nothing could be left to chance. They had to have precise, actionable intelligence. The mission was already likely to cost all of them their lives. They needed at least a shred of hope that they could succeed, and that came only with knowing exactly what they were up against and whether the plan Avi had developed could really work under those specific circumstances.
There was plenty of critical work to be done. Most important, they had to find a site to attack the train. Since they no longer had any access to cars or trucks, it couldn’t be far from Brussels. It had to be close enough that they could reach it by b
icycle. It had to be near public transportation. Once they’d helped the Jewish prisoners escape the train, those who weren’t gunned down by the Nazis had to be able to travel quickly to Brussels or Antwerp or some other nearby city. Micah’s intelligence indicated that all the Jews were still wearing street clothes, not prison uniforms, and they hadn’t been captive for more than a few months—only a few weeks in some cases—so Avi felt certain they had a real chance at blending into society and using public transportation without immediately getting noticed and arrested.
The point of attack had to be near a curve in the track, Avi said. As hard as they’d tried to get some, they didn’t have explosives. Thus they couldn’t blow up the train or the track. Nor could they cut the track ahead of time. It was inspected daily. If they couldn’t figure out a way to make the train stop, they at least had to take advantage of a curve, where the train would have to slow down from hurtling along at roughly thirty kilometers an hour to a manageable six or seven kilometers an hour. Only then would Jacob and his fellow freedom fighters be able to rush forward, jump on the train, cut the chains and wires securing the cattle cars, open the doors, and help the people jump out.
Furthermore, the site had to be isolated enough that no one could witness the raid or the escape. Ideally, it needed to be near a forest to provide cover for the team to hide until the train arrived, cover for Avi as he fired at the guards with their one pistol, and cover for the prisoners as they fled.
The longer Avi made the list of requirements, the less confidence Jacob had that this could actually be done. But he didn’t voice his concerns. He didn’t say much of anything. He judged this wasn’t the time to express doubts, however real they were. After all, Avi was right: What if his sister or his parents had been forced onto such a train? Wouldn’t he want people to do everything in their power to try to set them free, even if they failed?
Each man on the team was given a list of duties. Avi would be responsible for finding the right attack spot. Micah would work his contacts for more information. Henri and Jacob would gather bicycles, pliers, and wire and bolt cutters. Jacques would be in charge of gathering bags of cash and then distributing fifty-franc notes to every prisoner and directing them through the forest to various train and bus routes.
On Friday, April 16, they gathered for dinner, though everyone but Avi was too nervous to eat.
The good news was that their intelligence channels were working. All the pieces were coming together. According to Micah’s sources, there were now just over 1,600 Jews in Mechelen. Commander Asche and the Gestapo were ready to go. The plan was for the prisoners to be loaded into cattle cars on the evening of Monday, April 19. Train 801 would then pull out at precisely 10:00 p.m. No later than 10:30, the train should pass the site Avi had chosen.
The bad news was that none of them believed their current plan was sufficient. They needed a way to stop the train, even for a few moments. Only then could they effectively cut the chains and wires and get people out of the cars. The Belgians were adamant that trying to open the doors while the train was still moving—even at a slower rate—simply wasn’t realistic.
Jacob looked at Avi, expecting him to be angry. But he was not. Or at least he didn’t give the appearance that he was upset, just exhausted. He calmly told his men they had until lunchtime tomorrow to come up with a plan to stop the train, though he had tried for weeks and hadn’t come up with anything convincing. He wolfed down some soup and bread and a glass of wine and then said he was going to bed. He had a meeting with Morry in the morning. He told the men that they should plan to meet again at noon for a final review of the plan.
With that, he retired for the night. The younger men were on their own.
– – –
They spent half the night considering ways they might be able to bring the train to a halt.
Unfortunately, not one of the ideas floated seemed realistic. They had no way to sabotage the train engine. They had no explosives. They could steal a vehicle and park it on the tracks, perhaps with its hood up to make it look like the engine had stalled. But the site Avi had chosen didn’t have a road close to it or a crossing near it, and it would be very suspicious to have a car in that area. What’s more, stealing a car or truck or some other kind of vehicle bore its own set of risks of getting caught. The operation was going to be difficult enough. Potentially losing one of their team members during the botched theft of a vehicle would make it impossible.
At one point, Jacob suggested he lie down on the tracks. But Micah reminded him they were dealing with Nazis.
“They’re killing half of Europe,” he said. “Do you really think they’re going to stop an entire train of prisoners in the dead of night to avoid cutting some poor sap in half? They probably won’t even see you in time.”
23
In the morning, Jacob awoke with a new idea.
“How do you make a train stop?” he asked.
“If we knew that, we wouldn’t have been up until three,” Jacques snapped.
“But how does one normally stop a train?” Jacob pressed.
The three stared at him blankly.
“Trains stop at stations, and they stop for obstructions on the track,” Jacob continued. “The only other reason they stop is if they see a red light, correct?”
The men shrugged.
“So let’s get a light—a red light,” Jacob said, his excitement rising. “We’ll put it in the middle of the track. In the darkness, the engineer won’t know why it’s there. He’ll just do what his training tells him to do.”
“Stop,” Henri said.
“Exactly.”
“What kind of light?” Micah asked.
“I don’t know,” Jacob said. “How about a hurricane lamp? You know, the old kind with oil and a wick. We can get some red tissue paper and cover the glass around it. From a distance, it might look like a railway lamp.”
The four of them looked at each other and decided it just might work. What other choice did they have? Time was running out. Henri volunteered to help Jacob find the lamp. Jacques would acquire the tissue paper. Micah agreed to go out and scrounge up something for lunch, and then, as planned, they’d all meet again at noon with Avi, who had left early that morning as promised.
When noon came, they were huddled back in the attic with a loaf of bread, a few small apples, and a jug of wine. They now had a hurricane lamp and the requisite paper. But Avi was nowhere to be found.
At first they weren’t worried. They ate together and talked excitedly about the mission ahead. But when Avi wasn’t back by one o’clock, and then two o’clock, Jacob grew concerned. By three thirty, they decided to go out and look for him. But by the time the curfew fell at eight o’clock and they were back together in the cramped and drafty attic, they still had not found him.
Jacob reported that he had gone to see Morry, who confirmed that he’d had breakfast with Avi. The two had met and discussed several upcoming operations. Jacob said Morry gave no indication that he knew about the operation scheduled for Monday evening, nor had Jacob alluded to it. Morry said Avi had left around ten that morning and indicated only that he had “a few errands to attend to.”
Suddenly there was a knock on the attic floor. Micah opened the hatch and peered down at the old man who was safeguarding them in his home.
“Someone just dropped this off,” the man said, his voice gravelly from years of smoking. “Didn’t stay. Didn’t leave his name. Said it was for you. Then he was gone.”
The old man handed up a sealed envelope. Micah took it and looked it over. It had no writing on either the front or the back. Out of respect, he handed it to Jacob, who quickly opened and read the short note within.
A. captured by Gestapo. At Avenue Louise now. Being moved to M. tonight. All we have.
Jacob’s stomach tightened. He stared at the paper in his trembling hands. It wasn’t possible. His uncle was the shrewdest, most careful man Jacob knew. How could he have been arrested? What had gone wr
ong? Worse, was he now being tortured in the basement of the Gestapo’s headquarters? Was he really being transferred to the Mechelen transit camp? If so, that could only mean one thing.
“He’ll be on the train,” Jacob said softly. “They’re sending him to Auschwitz.”
24
APRIL 19, 1943
BOORTMEERBEEK, BELGIUM
The brutal truth was that they were not yet ready.
They were, as one of them put it so bluntly, “badly equipped and underprepared.” But there was nothing more they could do, and they were now out of time. They had never envisioned running such an operation with just the four of them. Avi’s original concept, after all, had called for twenty-two armed men. But though none of them said it aloud, each of them knew they absolutely had to succeed. For Avi’s sake, not to mention the other 1,600 souls who would be on that train.
At precisely seven o’clock Monday evening, they set out on bicycles for the same destination. They went in different directions, of course, and took different routes, to see if any of them was being followed and to shake their shadows if at all possible.
Jacob knew the plan cold. If he was being followed, he was supposed to stop at a café, have a cup of coffee, and return to the safe house. But there was no way he was going to abort this mission. Not with his uncle’s life at stake.
Detecting no one on his trail, to his great relief, he pedaled for more than two hours, covering some forty kilometers, before he finally reached the stretch of track that Avi had chosen. It was about a kilometer from the Boortmeerbeek train station, secluded and desolate.
In his backpack, Jacob carried the lamp and a thin red scarf, having worried that the lamp could become too hot and burn up the tissue paper. Seeing no one and hearing nothing but the wind rustling through the trees and some birds off in the distance, Jacob hid his bicycle under some bushes on the far side of the woods. Then he hiked back through the trees and found a perch from which to eye the tracks.