The China Card by Freed Donald

Author:Freed, Donald [Freed, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Boson Books
Published: 2003-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

13

BUCHENWALD—JULY, 1944

The man, Kantsler, kept making the awful sounds. When the boy could not stand any more he ran into the room just as the doctor his father, finished killing Kantsler with his bare hands.

The tall, lifeless body slid down and sprawled on the carbolic clean floor of the Staff Room. Scores of others must have heard the screams, yet no one had appeared except the boy. A vein in his father’s forehead was pumping as he stared at the boy and caught his breath. Outside the heavily shaded window was hot July day, but inside it was still, for the moment, and shadowy cool. “Shut the door,” the doctor said, and sat down heavily, his powerful hands on his knees.

“This is Kantsler, our man in the ‘Canada’… Wolfie, do me a favor, sit down. Please. I have to talk to you. You know about Canada?”

The boy knew all about the Canada. Buchenwald, like every other camp, was a machine for robbing and stripping each new arrival, storing the booty and treasure, then shipping it back to the Reich. This system involved thousands of inmates and gigantic warehouses; warehouses overflowing with clothing and tins of food, drugs, liqueurs and sweets—this the inmates called “Canada.” The boy knew Canada because for more than three months one of his jobs had been to run drugs and medicines from Warehouse 19 back to the hospital. And he had seen the Canada Kapo, Kantsler, any number of times making the rounds, barking orders. Now he was dead, sprawled on the floor like the broken clown in the ballet, The Shoemaker of Munich, that his mother had taken him to see and at which he had cried and cried.

The goods from the Canada had come under the control of the camp underground after ferocious fights with the original criminal kapos, the Greens, and now provided the barter for the manipulation of the SS. Meats, liqueurs, clothing, jewelry were lavished on key SS by the underground. The boy knew that it went on. “But wasn’t Mr. Kantsler a leader in the underground?”

“Let me tell you about Mr. Kantsler,” the doctor said. “Relax yourself for a few minutes. They’re all asleep after the noon food, until it cools off; the workers won’t be back for hours yet… Mr. Kantsler was a former accountant from Breslau—that is why we put him at the head of our bank. Mr. Kantsler was clever with figures, too clever as it turned out. We discovered that he was holding back on drugs and running a combination with SS enlisted men who in turn were selling on the Weimar black market. Here, as you know, the security of the group comes first, and I’m afraid that Mr. Kantsler, when he got into trouble—as he must when thieves fall out—would be denounced by the SS. The SS would then have their man ready to go in as head of Canada, and their man would, in his turn, denounce the underground. You see, Wolfie, why Mr.

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