And Peace Never Came

Waiting

explains that her brother has left for Palestine, but she encloses the twenty dollars. With much difficulty, I find my way to the train station in Linz, and after a couple of hours I arrive in Salzburg on a raw November day, already in darkness. I am unprepared, without appropriate clothing and shivering with cold, but I have arrived. I make my way to my cousin's sublet apartment. The owner lets me in. I find my cousin in her room, standing at the glazed tile­oven. Glancing at me, she exclaims, 'These Raabs are driving me crazy." I search for words, after her curious non­welcome. "Why, how many do you have?" "Your brother just left yesterday," she says. "What?" I can't believe what she just said. "But he didn't want to come with me. I can't understand it." "Well, apparently he changed his mind. The hotel called me today to ask what to do with the stuff he left in his room." The next day I go to his hotel. I get the key to his room and, sure enough, find his coat hanging on the closet door and his boots, shoes and the rest of his clothes inside the closet. All sadly abandoned: these beautiful treasures, so difficult to obtain after the war. I fold my hands in dismay. Then I pack his suit­ case and knapsack, hoping for miraculous strength, since from now on I have to carry two suitcases and two knapsacks, his and mine. My next plan is to meet the man with whom I exchanged the false travelling papers for cigarette smuggling. But his message is that he doesn't want to see me again. I can't believe it at first, but through a third person he lets me know clearly that I "didn't deliver the full load to his parents." I have no words to express my feelings. Until now I have reflected proudly on my accomplishment, and now his anger hits me like a thunderbolt. 128 I try to think, and begin to trace back my moves. When I left for Pecs, I entrusted the parcel to the people I stayed with in Budapest. I asked them to hand the tightly wrapped and roped box over to his parents when they came to claim it. That is the only time when something could have happened. What a fool. No lesson is harsh enough to convince me to give up believing in humanity. I can't even prove my innocence. How can I con­ vince him? But what difference does it make who took it? I add this to my not­so­great memories of Budapest. I have lost my contact, which I need, because Salzburgis not Germany, where I want to go. As fast as possible, I try to forget the whole incident and get busy planning how I can move on, as I don't intend to stay one more day at my cousin's. I look up the Zionist headquar­ ters in Salzburg and arrive there just before a whole convoy of trucks, filled with eventual immigrants to Palestine, starts out for Munich, Germany. The energetic young men who put the transport together don't ask me for any identification or papers, not even whether I am a Zionist or not. The only passport valid to them is "a Jew in need." They take me. I don't ask questions, neither does anyone with the trans­ port. Wepile on the trucks, expecting that nothing will be easy. Inside, we are filled with the emigrant's tension; outside, we ex­ hibit controlled calm, like patients before surgery in a hospital. In the middle of the night we reach the German border. Our leaders, with fantastic adroitness, negotiate and respond to Austrian, German and American patrols, while we sit silently, not knowing what the conversation is about. At about two in the morning, we make a stopover for a few hours' rest at a concrete tower, seemingly a wartime bunker. Apparently, we can't leave our luggage on the truck; everything has to be carried up to the bunker. We are trudging up the nar­ row staircase, me with the two knapsacks and two suitcases, dragging ourselves up to the fourth floor. I take two of my 129 packs up a few stairs while leaving two behind and then pick them up alternately. While...