DESTINY OF A STRANGER

                                                         

 

  

“Coming ready or not”!

Hans could only vaguely hear the shout coming from his brother from the floor beneath him.

This was their usual game of hide-and-go-seek and Hans prided himself on always being able to find the best hiding place.

His two cousins were also playing and he saw them scuttling down the stairs, probably to hide behind the lounge couches and behind the thick luxurious burgundy velvet curtains.

Of course there was also the large kitchen where they could hide in the broom cupboard or even the strangely shaped cupboard beneath the stairs.

Well, John, he was sure would go downstairs first. His cousins had made enough noise about it.

Hans had crept quietly along the passage right towards the end where there were wooden stairs which led towards the attic. People hardly ever went to the attic mostly because there was nothing that was really needed there.

It was primarily a place to store things, a rather dark place, lighted, it seemed, only by a small round window which was even difficult to look out of if you were a child. If you did manage to put one box on top of another and stand on them you could look out on the vast estate, perhaps even to the actual fence and the wrought iron gates with its rather sleepy somewhat taciturn guard.

He did not have time to do that today but he was glad that the room was fairly bright.

He was sitting behind one of the boxes wondering in John would even come up there when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Quickly he leapt over some more boxes, climbed over and under a few more and found himself at the far end of the attic under the sloping roof. Here was a space to hide, even to lie down, and he did this, hoping he would not sneeze from the dust.

He heard his brother walk in, look around and then leave. As he did so he turned the key in the lock which nearly evoked a cry from Hans but at the same time he realised his hiding place was safe.

Thank goodness the sun shone brightly through the window.

He decided he would wait about 15 minutes and then bash on the door shouting to be let out.

He had not been in this part of the attic before. Probably no one had for many years.

Next to him was a battered cabin trunk, the kind which was used on the old Union Castle Shipping Lines. The box had a lock of it but in manoeuvring it a little he found it suddenly releasing itself in his hand.

He gasped as he saw some of the contents of the trunk. What were these things? Where did they come from?

He picked up a tiny book which was encased in a silver cover and opened it curiously. This was not German or French; in fact the letters were not the same, not like any letters he had seen. He picked up a small silver cup with a  small saucer to match. It, too, had there strange letters around it.

He felt further into the trunk. There was a candlestick and a place for eight candles, or perhaps even oil. And here was place for another one, slightly raised from the rest.

There things gave him a strange feeling of warmth but at the same time a feeling of dread and of fear and he shut the trunk and tried to relock it, and found himself moving far away from it. He would look at it some time later, perhaps when his brother was with him.

He got to the door realising he was very full of dust. Well, that couldn’t be helped. He was in the middle of a game, wasn’t he?

He was surprised that the light from the window was dimming and he wondered how long he had been investigating the mysterious trunk.

He got to the door and banged on it. It was opened by his very relieved brother.

“Hans, where did you go?”

“I was here, you locked me in”.

“Oh I am sorry. I did not see you”.

“The best hiding place” proclaimed Hans.

“Definitely the best hiding place,” agreed John.

DESTINY OF A STRANGER

Based on the Book:

 “STRANGER TO HER PEOPLE”

BY RUTH BENJAMIN

CIS  PUBLISHERS   1993  NEW YORK, LONDON, JERUSALEM

(Jenny Reynolds, a young South African convert to Judaism, was full of eager anticipation as she set out from Johannesburg on the "March of the Living" tour. Over the next few weeks, as part of an organized groups of thousands of holocaust survivors and their families, she would visit the scenes of the German destruction of European Jewry during the Second World War. It promised to be a profound intellectual and emotional experience, an experience that would be burned into her memory for the rest of her life. Her pilgrimage to the scenes of the holocaust does indeed become an experience that she would never forget, but in a very unexpected way. During an unscheduled overnight stopover in Switzerland, Jenny is shocked to discover that there may be a dark secret buried in her family's past) 

Copyright: Dr. Ruth  Benjamin  

(PhD Psychology) 2013

Available as an e-Book on Amazon Kindle

Published by Create Space, Independent Publishing Platform. www.createspace.com

This book is based on a book I wrote 20 years ago “Stranger to her People”

It is not a sequel in any way. It is, in itself, an entirely new book. The story is richer and deeper and concentrates on the story of Hans Frederich as much as it goes into the story of Jenny Reynolds.  It also covers a very much wider time span than the original book.

Several of my readers have asked me to publish a sequel to “Stranger to Her People”.  What they wanted to know, basically, is:

 ‘What happened to Jenny Reynolds?’

That story had been in my first outline and draft of the book and is interwoven into this edition.

I have no intention to publish this book and, because of the added and different chapters make the first book redundant in any way. The first book stands alone, a classic in its own right.

One could have a situation where the writer of a book is a clinical psychologist and the editor is a very brilliant, talented, religious investigative political journalist. The book, written by both could look very different to the original manuscript, but one would not negate the other in any way .

The reader is advised to read them both.

Some  new research has gone into the book, with information that was not included in the original book. An example of this is Aktion T4  which trained the Nazis for the later Operation Reinhard, under Heindrich Himmler. They were operating the later Death and Extermination Camps which had been established with the one goal of mass ‘euthanasia’ , mass murder. This  included Treblinka , Sorbibor and Belzec.

“Hitler instructed his personal physician  to evaluate a family's petition for the "mercy killing" of their blind, physically and developmentally disabled infant boy. The boy was eventually killed in July 1939.^. but Hitler took it further and instructed the doctor to do the same thing in similar cases. The secret order to start the registration of ill children, took place on 18 August 1939, three weeks after the murder of the boy. Hitler wanted to kill those whom he judged to be ‘ unworthy of life.’   Among other things they were blocking much needed hospital beds. This view was held by many doctors and medical staff.”

……………………………“ And there were centers,” said John,  “just like concentration camps but these centers were beautiful, large mansions. Some looked like castles.” He had not been able to keep the tears from coming into his eyes, neither had Hans.

 “At first patients were killed by lethal injection, the method established for killing children, This proved to be expensive and slow. Hitler himself recommended that carbon monoxide gas be used which was seen as a ‘major advance in medical history’ The first gassings took place at  Brandenburg   Euthanasia Centre in January 1940. “

“Medical History,” said Hans, shocked.  “That was genocide history !”

“Once the efficacy of this method was established, it became standardized and was instituted at a number of centers across Germany. Tens of thousands died in these centers As well as killing patients from mental homes, nursing homes and sanatoria, these centers were also used to kill prisoners transferred from concentration camps in Germany and Austria.”

                           

“Patients were transferred from their institutions to the killing centers in  busses, busses with gray, painted windows, operated by teams of SS men wearing white coats to give an air of medical authenticity. This was called the Community Patients Transports Service. The patients were quickly moved around so that they could not be traced. Families were sent letters explaining that owing to wartime regulations it would not be possible to visit relatives in these centers.

“Most of these patients were killed within 24 hours of arriving at the centers, and their bodies cremated.  Death certificates were prepared, giving  false but plausible causes of death, and sent to the families along with an urn of ashes (random ashes, since the victims were cremated en masse).”

……………….Everything connects, absolutely everything connects.”

“How” asked Hans?

“The one arose from the other,” said John.

“What do you mean,” asked Hans, he himself knowing only a little.

“Well, when I was researching this I kept on connecting with something else,  Operation Reinhard, The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.”

“What do you mean,” whispered Hans”

“OK, lets take the people,” said John.

“When I started to research the actual Nazi individuals involved I saw the terrifying link between Aktion T4 and Sobibor. It was almost as if one had been a preparation for the other.

With Special Thanks to:  Rabbi Isadore Rubenstein,

     Division of Informal Jewish Education.

     S.A. Board of Jewish Education, who shared his experiences, many of which have been used in this book

 On "The March of the Living".