Frameshift

The sun burned down fiercely, as if God Himself were helping the Nazis incinerate bodies. But of course God would not do such a thing; the heat turned to an advantage as the deputy camp commander took a group of Ukrainian guards for a cooling swim in the river Bug.

The Jews in the lower camp — the part where prisoners were unloaded and prepared — had gathered some makeshift weapons. One had filled large cans with gasoline. Another had stolen some wire cutters. A third had managed to hide an ax among garbage he’d been ordered to remove.

Even some guns had been captured.

A few had long ago hidden gold or money in holes in trees, or buried it in secret spots. Just as the bodies had been exhumed, so now were these treasures.

Everything was set to begin at 4:30 in the afternoon. Tensions were high; everyone was on edge. And then, at just before 4:00—$

“Boy!” shouted Kuttner, a fat SS man.

The child, perhaps eleven years old, stopped dead in his tracks. He was shaking from head to toe. The SS officer moved closer, a riding crop in his hand. “Boy!” he said again. “What have you got in your pockets?”

Jubas Meyer and Shlomo Malamud were five meters away, carrying an exhumed corpse to the cremation site. They stopped to watch the scene unfold. The pockets on the youngster’s filthy and tattered overalls were bulging slightly.

The boy said nothing. His eyes were wide and his lips peeled back in fear, showing decaying teeth. Despite the pounding heat, he was shaking as if it were below zero. The guard stepped up to him and slapped the boy’s thigh with the riding crop. The unmistakable jangle of coins was heard. The German narrowed his eyes. “Empty your pockets, Jew.”

The boy half turned to face the man. His teeth were chattering. He tried to reach into his pocket, but his hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t get it into the pocket’s mouth. Kuttner whipped the boy’s shoulder with his crop, the sound startling birds into flight, their calls counterpointing the child’s scream. Kuttner then reached his own fat hand into the pocket and pulled out several German coins. He reached in a second time. The pocket was apparently empty now, but Jubas could see the German fondling the boy’s genitals through the fabric. “Where did you get the money?”

The boy shook his head, but pointed past the camouflage of trees and fencing to the upper camp, where the gas chambers and ovens were hidden from view.

The guard grabbed the youngster’s shoulder roughly. “Come with me, boy. Stangl will deal with you.”

The child wasn’t the only one with something concealed on his person.

Jubas Meyer had been entrusted with one of the six stolen pistols. If the boy were taken to commander Fratiz Stangl, he’d doubtless reveal the plans for the revolt, now only thirty minutes from its planned start.

Meyer couldn’t allow that to happen. He pulled the gun from the folds of his own overalls, took a bead on the fat German, and—

—it was like ejaculation, the release, the moment, the payback—

—squeezed the trigger, and saw the German’s eyes go wide, saw his mouth go round, saw his fat, ugly, hateful form slump to the ground.

The signal for the beginning of the revolt was to have been a grenade detonation, but Meyer’s gunshot startled everyone into action. Cries of “Now!” went up across the lower camp. The canisters of gas were set ablaze. There were 850 Jews in the camp that day; they all ran for the barbed-wire fences. Some brought blankets, throwing them over the cruel knots of metal; others had wire cutters and furiously snipped through the lines. Those with guns shot as many guards as they could. Fire and smoke were everywhere. The guards who had gone swimming quickly returned and mounted horses or clambered aboard armored cars. Three hundred and fifty Jews made it over the fences and into the surrounding forest.

Most were rounded up easily and shot dead, the echoes of overlapping gun reports and the cries of birds and wildlife the last sounds they ever heard.

Still, some did make good their escape. They ran out into the woods, and kept running for their lives. Jubas Meyer was among them. Shlomo Malamud got out, too, and began a lifelong search for his brother Saul.

And others Jubas had known or heard of made it to safety as well: Eliahu Rosenberg and Pinhas Epstein; Casimir Landowski and Zalmon Chudzik.

And David Solomon, too.

But they, and perhaps forty-five others, were all that survived Treblinka.

Chapter 2

The early 1980s. Ronald Reagan had recently been sworn in as president, and, moments later, Iran had released the American hostages it had been holding prisoner for 444 days. Here in Canada, Pierre Trudeau was in the middle of his comeback term as prime minister, struggling to bring the Canadian constitution home from Great Britain.

Eighteen-year-old Pierre Tardivel stood in front of the strange house in suburban Toronto, the collar of his red McGill University jacket turned up against the cold, dry wind whipping down the salt-stained street.