THE GREEN KING (part 54)

THE GREEN KING (part 54)

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The Photographer from Salzburg

The representative of the Jewish Brigade had two other candidates in mind that day, one of whom was in a neighbouring room. The other, whose name was, coincidentally, Reb, was Reb Yoel Bainish, a Polish Jew who had reached Mauthousen at the end of the winter of 1944-45. He had been part of a convoy of three thousand prisoners brought in February from Buchenwald to this camp in north Austria (a convoy that included Simon Wiesenthal and a Radziwill prince). Only a thousand arrived alive. In 1945, he was nineteen years old.

He was in the bed to the right of Reb Klimrod. He and Barazini spoke for a long time, in Yiddish.

Two days before the tanks of the US Seventh Army reached Mauthausen, an SS man had broken Bainish’ship and his thigh with the butt of a rifle, and he had been taken to Room A, in Barracks Six, the ‘death barracks’.

Barazini has no recollection of the sick boy lying right next to them, other than the fact that nothing he said to Bainish seemed to interest the stranger. Besides, even though he spoke fluent Hebrew and English, Barazini had enough trouble with Yiddish for it to occupy all his attention.

Bainish immediately agreed to the proposal made to him, with the understanding that he would leaves as soon as his physical state would permit it.

Barazini announced that he would return in two weeks.

He did.

TO BE CONTINUED

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I LOVE YOU…

I LOVE YOU…

I LOVE YOU…

I LOVE YOU…

I LOVE YOU…

I LOVE YOU…