A Long Night in Eindhoven

My name is Judah Meijer. I was born May 5, 1897. I was a soldier and farmer, and am now a husband and father. I am a Jew.

When the Germans invaded the Netherlands, my family and I were forced to flee our home outside Arnhem. I was fortunate enough to have friends willing to conceal my family from the SS and men like Captain Heinrich Richter. Many others were not so fortunate; I didn’t realize how important it was for our mere survival.

My heart broke having to leave my only daughter, Evi, with my friend Kyland, but I knew she was in good hands. There seemed no better way to hide a family of four than to present to the world a family of three. When my wife Lily, son Levi, and I reached our hiding place in Eindhoven, I set some rules to be followed at all costs:

1. Don’t make trouble or break any laws.

2. Work and come home.

3. No new friends.

4. Trust no one.

5. If you get into trouble, find me.

I hoped that if we followed these simple rules, we might remain undetected. I secured employment for all of us the moment we arrived; Lily at a café, Levi in a delivery service run by my poilu Lambert, and I in a butcher shop.

I thought we would have enough time to save and then book passage to England, but I was wrong. By the time our new papers were forged, the Germans had full run of the country and we were trapped. Watching the Germans day-in and day-out was surreal. I found myself often gripping my cleaver a little tighter when they were around, that Great War itch creeping up my spine. When the Dutch resistance began to gain some ground, I did what I could for the group when possible. After four years of relatively uninterrupted mundanity, Captain Heinrich Rickter walked into the shop as we opened.

My beard is gone. Surely, he won’t recognize me. I thought.

“I understand you have the best landjaeger in town. Two kilos, please.” His voice cut through my skull like a chisel.

“Yes, sir.” I would rather feed him his own tongue.

Stick to the rules. I told myself repeatedly.

He paid, and marched out the door as I breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t recognize me.

That night, I was working in the shop after hours, packaging Schweinebraten, Würstl, Rouladen…we’d started catering more to the German palate. I heard a tapping on the windows out front; it was Levi, looking frantic.

“Get inside!” I whispered as I unlocked the door. “What are you doing here?”

“Father, you have to come quick to the café, mother needs your help.”

I closed up shop, grabbed the rendering wagon, and we hurried to the café. There was a small alley for deliveries behind the building, and we entered through the back door to see Lily dragging a German soldier in from the front patio. The lights were out, and luckily the streets were empty. As I walked around the bar, I recognized Captain Heinrich Richter and three other soldiers, two sergeants and one lieutenant on the floor…all dead. Never would I have believed my own family would be the cause of my murderous participation in this new war, until that moment.

“What in God’s name have you done?!” I exclaimed.

“He killed Kyland!” Lily panted as she dropped the soldier and locked the door.

“What?!” Levi’s eyes began to fill with tears.

“What do you mean he killed Kyland? What about Helga and Evi?!” My rage began to build. I must temper my anger.

“I overheard him talking about killing Helga and Kyland, but that he couldn’t find Evi.” She began to get upset. “Our little girl is hiding or lost, we have to get her!” The tears spilled forth.

“So instead of just telling me this, and me making arrangements, you kill four German soldiers!?”

Through her sobs, Lily shrugged.

I sighed. “We have to get rid of these bodies first.”

“How?” Levi asked.

“Help me load them into the wagon. Lily, clean up the blood.” My heart began to pound. In the back of the wagon, I covered the bodies with a few large carcasses, butchered earlier that day, and a large canvas blanket to hide the mess. My plan was to take the bodies and bury them while delivering carcasses to the renderer, but we were stopped at the edge of town and forced to turn around.

“No one in or out,” the soldiers said.

“What are we going to do, Judah?” Lily whispered. I knew she would not like the answer.

We stopped the wagon in the alley behind the butcher shop.

“Levi, help me unload and take all this downstairs,” I said solemnly.

“No Judah, he’s too young!” Lily was horrified.

“We have no choice. No one must find them.” I looked at Levi; he was still not up to speed.

Once inside, we stripped the bodies, and I kept the weapons - just in case. I sent Levi upstairs, and set to work removing teeth, fingernails, even hair. Then, I did what a butcher does - chop and debone meat. It was nauseating work, but when it came to protecting my family, there was nothing I wouldn’t do.

I mixed the meat of the two sergeants and lieutenant with ground pork and beef and made sausages. I turned the rest into ribs, bone-in pork cut lookalikes, whatever I could think of. The nausea faded after a while, giving way to pure rage.

I’m going to feed these vicious shits to their own company.

I saved the captain for last. I hauled him onto the table, and he began to move.

"What?!"

He coughed up blood, then began vomiting what looked like chocolate. Gasping for air, he rolled off the table and opened his eyes, bloodshot and frightened. Lily and I stood in astonishment and deafening silence, everyone frozen and waiting for someone else to move first.

“He shouldn’t be alive!” Lily’s mouth was agape.

“What are you doing?” The captain began to connect the dots. I’m sure the human foot flopped to one side in the grinder and the severed heads of his men helped him understand the situation.

“MEIJERS!” He croaked, “You Jews are demons!”

Still too weak to run, he started crawling away hoarsely yelling for help. I grabbed my biggest cleaver and moved to finish what Lily had started. As I grabbed his hair to expose his neck, he yelled out, “Evi! Evi Meijer!”

I stopped my blade millimeters from his throat. “What do you mean, Evi?” I glanced at Lily. “I thought you said he didn’t find her!”

“He said he didn’t!” she exclaimed.

“If you ever want to see her alive again, you won’t kill me,” the captain spat.

“He lies, Judah. Finish him!” There was a darkness in Lily’s voice that I’d never heard before.

“I left soldiers stationed on the farm to find her. They will be there until they are relieved or complete their objective. If they haven’t already found her, they surely will.”

“Lies!” My temper turned my voice to a growl.

“My life for hers! If you want to see your daughter again, keep me alive.” The captain’s words tasted bitter, but I had to swallow them.

“How?” I asked.

“I have a car. There is one man in the barracks about your size - Sergeant Brähmur. We can take one of his uniforms, and you and I can drive to Arnhem and fetch her.”

“Levi! Come down here!” I bellowed.

“Yes father...Holy shit! He’s alive?!”

“Language!” Lily and I yelled in unison.

“I think it’s a little late to tell him to watch his language,” the captain smirked. He was quickly becoming an irritation. Levi begrudgingly shrugged in unwilling agreement.

“Does the name Brähmur sound familiar?” I asked Levi.

“Yes, we deliver his laundry. He’s almost as big as you.”

“Get Lambert and grab one of Brähmur’s uniforms; tell him to get one for himself too. Then come straight back here.” Levi nodded and was gone.

I threw the captain his clothing and barked at him to get dressed. I gave him back his luger, but kept the ammo, and kept the Lieutenant’s gun pointed at him.

“If you fuck with me for even a moment,” I hissed, “I’m going to finish this cleaver’s work.”

The captain nodded in agreement, sweat covering his face.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lily whispered nervously.

“We have no choice. I’m going to get Evi and then we’re leaving - pack everything valuable. First, though, I must dispose of these bodies.”

“Bring our daughter home, my love.” She kissed me and left.

I tied the captain to a chair and continued making “German Sausage.” Lambert entered the cellar grinning - Levi had obviously filled him in.

“Well, well, well, what have we here?” he said, almost laughing. Already in uniform, he scanned the room, filling in the details my son had left out. “Making German Sausage, I see.”

“It concerns me that this doesn’t bother you,” I glanced at him sideways. “It bothers me.”

As I finished packing the meat into boxes. I disguised the larger remnants as bits of pig and cow carcasses and loaded them into the wagon. What remained - the heads and uniforms - were small enough to all be incinerated without leaving evidence behind.

I cleaned myself up and handed Lambert a pistol. “We’re going to Arnhem - hand me that uniform.” After untying the captain, we walked toward where he said his car was parked.

Lambert interjected. “Clever plan, dressing as soldiers. But you do realize we are locked down, and there are whispers of an invasion. It would help if we had a distraction…” He knew something I didn’t.

BOOM! An entire corner of the Crown Hotel erupted in flames. I felt the force of the explosion hit my eyes, and for a moment I was back in the trenches, Lambert smiling ear to ear, the fire reflected in his eyes.

“Was that you?!” I yelled.

He pointed to my son.

I turned to Levi, who looked as though he’d seen a ghost.

“That was you?!”

He gulped.

“Told you he was a natural,” Lambert beamed.

“You blew up my hotel room! Are you all trying to kill me?!” the captain shrieked.

“Yes,” we all replied instantly.

“Your family is terrifying. I was right, Jews…”

We all shot a look; he didn’t finish his sentence.

“Levi, go help your mother, “ I instructed. “If you don’t see us by tomorrow, run.” Levi sprinted home.

Lambert, the captain, and I all piled into the car with the boxes of ‘German Sausage’ in the trunk. Only two soldiers remained at the checkpoint gate, the rest running towards the blaze.

“Sir, curfew is in effect.” The first soldier said.

Lambert pressed his gun into the captain’s side. “Special delivery of sausage to General Hans von Tettau. We could always tell him you two were responsible for him not getting his morning sausage, if you want to keep us here.”

“Open the trunk,” he ordered.

The second soldier peered inside. “Sausages,” he nodded.

"There’s some extra, if you want to take a box for the barracks,” I offered.

The soldier lifted a box out, smiling. The captain turned green for a moment. “Sergeant?” he pressed on, pointing at the gate, which they raised.

It took a few hours to reach Arnhem. It was barely daybreak when we heard air raid sirens, saw American planes dropping men, and felt the jolts of anti-aircraft shell bursts.

“It’s the Americans!” Lambert yelled.

“They’ve come,” the captain was ghostly white.

“Americans means there will be fighting!” I shouted, stomping the gas pedal to the floor.

Lambert looked worried. “What are you going to do? Charge in like a raging bull?”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”