"Dad . . . is Dad O.K.?" His mother seemed to look right through him as she said,
"Your father's dead."
The first shot that came as they ran from the home the previous morning put Samuel onto the ground, as it penetrated his leg. The next two shots Jerry heard a moment later, went through the back of his father's head as the Nazi soldiers mercilessly ignored his pleas that he was an American citizen. Esther, Lilian and his grandmother stood in the doorway in unspeakable horror and witnessed the incident. To the soldiers, Samuel was just another raving Jew, and Jews were to be exterminated. Some went quietly, some protested.
The women had also seen Jerry run around the corner and had resigned themselves to the fact that he was also dead. They were more than astonished to see him show up at night with a gun in his hand, and then kill two Nazis.
They then explained the events that had taken place that day. Joseph had been dragged from his bedroom and shot with six other men right in front of the house. Their bodies were later picked up by a truck and taken away. Around mid-morning, two members of the Gestapo pounded on the door and demanded to see each of the women's documents. When they saw that Samuel's mother was a Jew, they arrested her on the spot and said that she was to be taken to Auschwitz under the charge of Hitler's butcher, Adolf Eichmann.
When Jerry had gained his composure, he asked where the bodies of the soldiers were. In the blackness of the night, the two women had together loaded them into their car and dumped them about a mile from the home. Jerry heaved a deep sigh of relief, then reached around to clutch his aching shoulder. He looked down at a clean bandage and said, "You two have done a good job."
To be continued.
