Accidental Saviors Read online

  Accidental

  Saviors

  Jack A. Saarela

  Can’t Put It Down Books

  Accidental Saviors

  A Novel

  Copyright 2018 by Jack Saarela

  ISBN: 978-0-9994623-2-4

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  Can’t Put It Down Books

  An imprint of

  Open Door Publications

  2113 Stackhouse Dr.

  Yardley, PA 19067

  www.CantPutItDownBooks.com

  Cover Design by Eric Labacz

  www.labaczdesign.com

  This novel is dedicated to my countrymen,

  Algot Niska and Felix Kersten,

  and all persons of moral vision and courageous acts

  of self-sacrifice

  on behalf of the oppressed

  whose stories, like theirs, are seldom or never told.

  Whoever destroys one life is considered by the Torah

  as if he destroyed an entire world;

  whoever saves one life is considered by the Torah

  as if he saved an entire world.

  —Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5

  There are certain moments that define a person's whole life, moments in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become balance on a single decision. Life and death, hope and despair, victory and failure teeter precariously on the decision made at that moment. These are moments governed often by happenstance or accident.

  —Jonathan Maberry

  WAR IS HELL,

  but sometimes in the midst of that hell,

  people do things that Heaven itself must be proud of.

  ―Frederick Buechner

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Historical Interlude

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  The Final Chapter

  Epilogue

  A Word from the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Resources

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Berlin: March 12, 1940

  Felix Kersten’s eyes opened from sleep with a jolt at the ungodly knocking at the front door of his flat. It was six o’clock on a March morning; the sun had not yet risen over Berlin.

  “Open the door!” a man’s forceful voice shouted through the locked door. “This is the SS.”

  Why in hell’s name is the SS at the door to my home? They must know that I’ll be at SS headquarters in just a few hours. Why can’t they wait?

  Kersten threw off the covers on his bed with an angry force. He hadn’t been sleeping well since overhearing the conversation in the SS dining room about Holland. The repulsion of the ugly nightmare of the previous night left a foul taste in his mouth like jungle breath on the morning after a shot too many of the cheap vodka he’d consumed in his student days. He’d been irritable and fretful for a couple of days now.

  He fumbled groggily at the edge of the bed with his right foot for his slippers. He grabbed his silk dressing gown off the back of the chair and threw it over his pajamas. He mumbled a curse to himself as he left the bedroom and rushed through his well-appointed living room to the front door.

  “Open the door, Dr. Kersten. It’s the SS.” It was a different, less overtly threatening voice this time. There was further impatient knocking, sounding as though his uninvited visitors were using their clubs against the wooden door.

  “Coming, coming. Stop your knocking. You’ll wake up everybody else in the building.”

  When the tall, meaty Kersten opened the door, he found three men there, two privates in the field-gray SS uniform with the ancient runes pinned on the front of their collar, and an officer in a shiny black leather overcoat. For a moment, Kersten was overtaken first by surprise, then alarm.

  Whatever you say or do, Felix, don’t reveal the slightest hint of fear. The SS can smell blood from a mile away.

  “Dr. Felix Kersten?” the officer asked.

  “Well, now we know you can read the name tag on the door,” Kersten countered irritably.

  The privates remained impassive. The officer didn’t look the least bit amused by Kersten’s mockery.

  “May we come in, Doctor?” the officer asked with gentlemanly courtesy. Kersten knew that SS officers were trained to begin interrogations with apparent benign politeness, with Aryans at least. Eventually, however, like a cat stalking its prey, sitting absolutely still until the bird is lulled into inattention, the interrogator leaps suddenly just at that moment and administers the fatal attack.

  “Do I really have a choice?” Kersten asked as he pulled the door open to let them into the living room.

  The officer forced a smile and nodded his gratitude for Kersten’s cooperation. The officer was accustomed, however, to an exhibition of more anxiety, even fear, whenever he entered the residence of a host off his guard.

  “I am Leutnant Rohrbach, Doctor. We have been sent by my superiors to pose a few questions.”

  “Why don’t you have a seat here, Leutnant.”

  “Thank you. Always stand when I am working, if you don’t mind.” The officer gave no indication that he would remove his black leather coat.

  Good. This isn’t going to take long.

  Rohrbach remained the epitome of politeness and respect, despite his threatening errand. He nodded to the two privates, who gamboled off immediately in separate directions of the flat.

  “I’m at your service, of course, Leutnant,” Kersten said in a tone that matched the officer’s affected courteousness. He had imagined the SS to be gruffer if not spiteful in their methods of interrogation. Perhaps they were aware of his unique position. “But is it really necessary for your men to inspect the rest of the flat? My servants are asleep and deserve their rest.”

  “It’s just customary and routine procedure, Doctor, on a call such as this. I’m sure that they will return empty-handed, with nothing untoward to report.”

  Sure enough, barely had Rohrbach finished his sentence than the two privates returned to the living room. One greeted the lieutenant with “Nichts, Herr Leutnant.”

  “You see, Doctor? They found nothing
suspicious hidden in your flat, just as I predicted,” Rohrbach said to Kersten with a well-bred grin.

  Kersten’s head ached. He was growing increasingly vexed by Rohrbach’s superficial courtliness and solicitude.

  “You said you have been dispatched here to ask questions,” Kersten asked impatiently. “What do you need to know?”

  “If you’re impatient to get right to the point, then, as you wish, Doctor.”

  “Who is it that wants to know my answers to your questions, if I may ask?”

  The lieutenant flashed an indulgent, patronizing smile. “Of course, that you may not ask, Doctor. I’m sure you understand. Instead, let me begin by asking you, do you ever use this residence as a clinic in which to treat any of your patients?”

  “Herr Leutnant, I am sure that whoever is your superior in the SS who sent you here on this...this...fool’s errand has my building under surveillance and has a very accurate record of who enters and who exits the building.”

  “There’s no need for impertinence, Doctor. You must be sufficiently familiar with SS procedure by now to know that we are seeking an answer that corroborates information we have gathered by other means. Or contradicts it.”

  “Then, since you ask, I’ll give you a straight answer. Yes, I do occasionally receive patients in my flat here, particularly if they are from out of town or I do not have access to their residence for some reason.”

  “Aha, if I may continue, Doctor, why is it that you may not have access to the residences of some of your patients?”

  Kersten was beginning to feel more testy. He wasn’t consciously afraid of Rohrbach, but he noticed that his mouth was dry.

  “As you undoubtedly know, Leutnant, some individuals and families no longer have their accustomed residence, but are in temporary arrangements, sometimes with relatives.”

  “Oh, yes...I vaguely remember hearing something back in 1938 about some families being evacuated to make room for Herr Speer’s plans to honor the Führer by rebuilding sections of Berlin that even Paris could not rival.”

  “Vaguely remember,” my ass! He knows full well the details of the displacement of hundreds of households to make room for Speer’s grandiose architectural delusions. For Hitler’s grandiose delusions, in other words. It was the SS that was dispatched to evict the residents.

  “As I recall—though, as I say, my memory about the event is only imprecise, I’m afraid—that the households that were appropriated were those of Jews. Am I remembering correctly, Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, can we deduce, Doctor, that some of the patients to whose residence you do not have access, whom you therefore need to receive here in your private flat, are Jews?”

  It suddenly dawned on Kersten that this was precisely the matter that this circuitous charade was about. Rohrbach had the gratified look of someone about to checkmate an opponent in a game of chess.

  These Nazis, and their obsession with the Jews.

  “Yes, that is an accurate deduction, Leutnant. That’s really no surprise, is it? Or a secret?”

  “No, indeed, Doctor, we’ve suspected the same for quite some time.”

  Rohrbach’s face became sterner suddenly, his voice more severe, like that of a drill sergeant. He raised the volume a notch. “You do realize, do you not, Dr. Kersten, that to treat Jewish patients is forbidden, absolutely forbidden?”

  “No, actually I do not...Besides, that does not concern me in the least.”

  Rohrbach had had enough pleasantry, and of this masseur’s defiance. His piercing eyes looked directly into Kersten’s. “Then you place yourself outside the law of the German people?”

  “No, not at all, Leutnant,” Kersten said with a forced smile. “My driver obeys traffic signals. I pay my taxes. I purchase only my rationed portion of bacon.”

  Rohrbach’s face was turning a shade of crimson now, especially at his neck. “You mock me, Doctor, but you do so, I warn you, at your risk. You are not behaving as a German doctor should behave. It is unlawful for a German doctor to treat Jewish patients. They have their own doctors.”

  Kersten smiled inwardly as he paused for effect.

  “Perhaps so, Leutnant. Though among my various medical degrees, one is from Berlin. Nonetheless, I am not a German doctor. I believe that this law does not pertain to me,” Kersten said as civilly as his glee at evading Rohrbach’s checkmate allowed him.

  Rohrbach looked at the two privates confusedly, as if expecting one of them to bail him out.

  “Dr. Kersten, such insolence and impertinence are unnecessary. They can land you in the kind of trouble with the SS that I would hate to have happen to a man of your standing.”

  “Surely your superiors know that I am, in fact, a Finnish doctor.”

  An awkward, embarrassed silence overtook the room. Puzzlement was all over Rohrbach’s face. The two privates looked back at Rohrbach equally baffled.

  “Finnish? So you say, at least,” Rohrbach finally said a little self-consciously, though Kersten was humored by Rohrbach’s scrambling to reverse the tables and resume his position of strength.

  “Then I presume you can afford us the pleasure of inspecting your passport?”

  “The pleasure is all mine, Leutnant. If you would wait a moment, I will produce it, and anything else you want, for that matter.” With that, Kersten nodded at all three SS men to excuse himself, and exited to his bedroom.

  After barely a minute, he reappeared holding the oxblood-colored booklet that was his Finnish passport. He handed it to Rohrbach with an air of satisfaction. “Suomi-Finland” was etched in golden letters into the front of it below the new coat of arms of the republic. Though he was trying his best to appear nonplussed, Rohrbach’s eyes grew a little larger and revealed surprise mixed with embarrassment.

  “It...seems to be in order, Doctor. A Finnish citizen for over twenty years? With temporary stays in the Netherlands and Germany? But not originally a citizen of Finland?”

  “Just as it reads right there on the page in black and white.” Kersten had to discipline his urge to be mocking.

  Rohrbach handed the passport back to Kersten sheepishly, although he tried to maintain a front of official decorum. “Apparently, I have been misinformed. We regret the early hour for this visit, Doctor.”

  “I will see you and your men out, Leutnant,” Kersten said with a feigned smile. “Now if you do not mind, I would be appreciative if you corrected your superior’s information.”

  Rohrbach stood in the open doorway, turned toward Kersten, and said noncommittally, “As you wish, Doctor.” Then, he added, with no trace of a smile, “But be aware, Doctor, that this may not be the last time my superiors seek some answers from you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Berlin: November 9, 1938

  The moment Algot Niska stepped off the train from Brussels at the HauptBahnhof in Berlin, he knew that something momentous and sinister was happening. The sky over Berlin was quivering with a malevolent electricity. November was already eight days old, but this evening, for some mysterious reason, a wall of hellish heat cooked the air. As he exited the terminal onto Friedrichstrasse, he was almost knocked to the pavement by members of the Hitlerjugend running up and down the street as if let out of school on the last day before summer vacation, boys screaming riotously and pig-tailed girls running beside them. Flames lit the sky a brilliant shade of hot orange. Furniture, beds, dressers, tables, chairs, paintings were strewn and toppled chaotically on the sidewalk; sheets of paper were being carried hither and thither by the wind.

  The almost fifty-year-old Niska carried his small valise and walked quickly toward his hotel in the Charlottenburg district, which was in the opposite direction of this insane violence and destruction. He wanted to be as far away as possible from the chaos.

  His latest smuggling project had been more hazardous and risky than he had expected. He felt satisfied with a job completed, and gratified that he had succeeded in smuggling the Gottfrieds’ jewelry into Bru
ssels and on to the United States, far from the clutches of the Nazis. But he was ready for rest and relaxation. For that, he needed peace and quiet. This evening, Berlin was not cooperating.

  He passed a synagogue at an intersection that had descended to all-out, open warfare. Youth were tearing up some of the abandoned objects on the street for projectiles to hurl at people they judged to be Jews. Young men and women were running around with grotesque, wolfish faces, shouting, “There’s one! Stone him! Kill her!”

  Although Niska was a tall and thin man, he was engulfed in the human congestion on the side of the street opposite the synagogue. The crowd was so densely packed that Niska was prevented from making further progress toward his hotel. Whether he wanted to or not, he was seeing the devastating effects of an unrestrained hatred.

  Some of the older people—whether they were members of the synagogue, Niska couldn’t tell—were covering their faces with their hands. They could not comprehend the madness. An elderly woman moaned, tears streaming down her cheeks, “Oh, dear God, what are the young goyim doing?”

  Suddenly an enormous cheer erupted as though a soccer team on a pitch nearby had scored a winning goal. “The synagogue is burning! The synagogue is burning!”

  Niska saw an older, bearded man, probably the rabbi, appear on the front steps of the synagogue. His longish locks were gray. He was in his white shirtsleeves, not the way a rabbi was usually dressed in public. There hadn’t been time to don his suit jacket. He had his right arm around two large scrolls, and with his left hand he was holding the hand of a terrified woman Niska assumed was his wife. They were trying to escape the burning building. They almost tripped in tandem as they shuffled down the steps to the street.

  A renewed burst of rage erupted among the pack of youthful participants. In the next moment, a rainstorm of rocks and projectiles pelted the synagogue. One rock hit the arched frame of the huge, stained-glass window on the front of the building. The remainder of the frame, with what stained glass still remained, came crashing down on the heads of the rabbi and his wife. The mob howled with triumph as the couple became one with the flames on the window frame. In no time at all, the roof of the synagogue collapsed and came crashing down to join the smoldering rubble below.