Hour of the Assassins Read Free

strength in that slender body. And our baby, he was only fourteen months old.”
    It’s always bad, Caine thought. Our generation grew up with it. You’d have thought we’d have gotten used to it by now, that we’d have heard the worst by now. But it’s always bad.
    Wasserman’s eyes were brimming wet, but he shook his head and went on.
    â€œI don’t understand how we survived that trip, standing crushed against the dead, the insane, and the dying for six days without food or water. But we did.
    â€œWhen we arrived at Auschwitz, the kapos threw those of us who were still alive out of the boxcars and the guards marched us to the Birkenau railroad camp for our first selection. Hanna was clutching Dieter when they separated us. It was then that I caught my first glimpse of a short, swarthy SS officer. He was the camp doctor, SS Hauptstürmführer Josef Mengele. That was what the guards called him. We inmates had another name for him. We called him malachos mavet , in Hebrew it means the Angel of Death.
    â€œMengele selected those who were healthy enough to work for the labor barracks. All the others, and almost always the children, were sent to the gas chambers. Once, while standing in front of the crematorium, he stood with his hands on his hips and bragged, ‘Here the Jews enter through the gate and leave through the chimney.’ And all the while a small orchestra made up of inmates played Strauss waltzes. He wanted to make it gemütlich , don’t you see?
    â€œI never saw my son again. But Hanna I saw one more time, and God help me, I see her again now every night.”
    Wasserman rubbed his hands over his sweaty face, then he regained control and continued more calmly.
    â€œOf all the Nazi criminals, Mengele was perhaps the most infamous. There is an open warrant for his arrest in West Germany and a fifteen-thousand-dollar reward. He is also wanted by Interpol, the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and of course, the Israelis. He sentenced millions of people to death.
    â€œI personally know of one instance when he threw a crying baby into an open fire before the horrified eyes of the mother. I once saw him bury a bayonet in a young girl’s head. He would inject phenolic acid into children’s eyes. You see, this monster was obsessed with breeding twins with blue eyes.
    â€œBut that isn’t what I dream about, or why you are here. Because he did something much worse than all that to my Hanna.”
    Wasserman stared bleakly through Caine, as though he were seeing her face once more. It was coming now, Caine thought. In a reflex action Caine took out’ a cigarette and lit it. As he inhaled, he looked at Wasserman’s empty blue eyes, lost in the dark night that never quite ends for survivors. But mixed with his pity was a sense of uneasiness. Something didn’t fit, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
    Wasserman took a deep breath and went on in a strangled, hoarse monotone, as the sweat poured down his face.
    â€œEvery night it starts the same way. The kapos come to rouse us and they march us through the fence into the women’s compound for the first time. At first I don’t recognize Hanna standing in front of the other women. Her head is shaved and she is so thin and ragged. But then she looks up for a moment and I see those gentle blue eyes filled with fear and courage and loathing and things I will never know. And then Mengele comes and stands on a platform to address us. As always, his black SS uniform is neatly pressed. He was, like most vain men, a sharp dresser. I remember that he always wore clean white gloves.
    â€œâ€˜Dogs,’ he shouts. They always used to call the prisoners dogs and they called the guard dogs men . ‘This Jewess has been elected by the other bitches in her barracks to bring a medical problem to my attention. It seems that the bitches in these barracks, like all bitches, are suffering