This is a story that involves sex between males. If such a story is offensive, or illegal for you tor read where you live, then do not continue, go and surf elsewhere.
This is a work of fiction and in no way draws on the lives of any specific person or persons. If there is any similarity to any real persons or events it is entirely coincidental.
The work is copyrighted (c) by the author and may not be reproduced in any form without the specific written permission of the author. It is assigned to the Nifty Archives under the terms of their submission agreement but it may not be copied or archived on any other site without the written permission of the author.
My thanks to John and Michael who have read this through and made a number of corrections and suggestions. Any remaining errors , grammatical, spelling or historical or whatever are entirely my fault.
If you want to comment on the story then do contact me on Jeffyrks@hotmail.com. I aim to reply to all messages.
Resume:- 1945. Trevor is a boy from the East End of London. He is now 13 and living with Isaac, a Jew from Austria.
Two Jubilees and One Spitfire. Part 9 Isaac's Story
This is probably the place to tell Isaac's story. From their earliest meetings Isaac had told Trevor things about himself. They were not told in any order, but one incident at a time, often when they were cuddled together in bed. Sometimes in answer to a question from Trevor, sometimes when something or other occurred which reminded him of his earlier life in Vienna.
I have sorted Isaac's story into chronological order, and retained some of the questions and comments of Trevor. Jeff.
They were lying in bed.
"Was you born in Germany, Isaac?"
"It was not a part of Germany when I was born. Austria was an independent country. Vienna, where I was born, was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ruled over by an Emperor, Franz Joseph. But after the Great War the Empire was all split up into small countries. Austria was one of them. It was a hard time for us Austrians."
"Wot did your Dad do?"
"My father was a banker."
"Was 'e rich?"
"I suppose you could say so. We lived in a large house. I have four brothers and three sisters. I am the next to youngest. We had a cook and a maid who lived in. Also a man servant who did a lot of things for my father. We children also had a Nanny."
"Wot's a Nanny?"
"A special woman to look after the young children. We had an English Nanny called Flora. No! She would not like to be called English. She came from Scotland. My parents wanted her to speak only in English to us. So we were all brought up bilingual. That's why I can speak English and German so well. She is a lovely person, Miss Flora MacCloud. She was strict with us, but kind."
"Is she still in Austria?"
"No; she went back to Scotland in 1930. I try to see her as often as I can. She is quite old now. One day I will take you to visit her.."
"Did you go to school."
"Of course. I went to several schools."
"A Jewish school?"
"No. Though there were a lot of Jews in the school, about half the children were Jews."
"All the boys with cocks like yours?" asked Trevor.
"Yes, all the Jewish boys must have had circumcised cocks. But I didn't see them all," said Isaac with a laugh.
"What did you learn at school?"
"Same sorts of things as you. Maths, German, History and Geography. English, and later French. The history was different to yours, as it was the history of Austria."
"I don't like history. It's boring."
"It isn't if well taught. It is very interesting, it helps to understand what is going on today. History helps to understand why there is a big war going on now. Unfortunately though we all try to learn from history, we never seem to manage to learn the right lessons."
"I don't learn German or French, learning English is bloody well bad enough."
"You're good at languages. You're coming on at German and French."
"No, I aren't. I'm not learning it at school."
"Not at school, but what do you think we are doing when we use German and French words. ??? You're learning those two languages."
"But that's fun, not real school learning."
"But Trevor, all learning should be fun, even languages, or sums, or history."
"Tell me more about your 'ome in Austria?" asked Trevor.
"It is a big house. There is a downstairs part, a basement, almost below the level of the pavement outside. That's where the kitchen, and other places where the servants work, are. You have to go up some steps from the pavement to the front door. Inside you are in a hall with rooms off on each side and a staircase straight ahead going down to the basement, and stairs going upstairs to where the bedroom and bathrooms are."
"Bathrooms! More than one?" asked Trevor in surprise. The only house he had been in with a bathroom was his new home with Isaac. His home in Limehouse, and the cottage where he had been evacuated in Somerset, did not have a bathroom.
"I think there were three or four bathrooms."
"Cor," said Trevor in utter amazement.
"Then there are more stairs up to the nursery and children's rooms," continued Isaac, " and up further to the attic rooms where the cook and maid and so on sleep."
"It's a big 'ouse. Did you have your own bedroom, I 'ad my own room back in Limehouse."
"When I was small I slept in the nursery, first with the sister who is next oldest to me, she was called Rachel, and then when my youngest brother, Reuben, was born I shared the room with him. Later when I was about ten or eleven I had my own room."
"Were there enough rooms for you all to 'ave your own rooms?"
"Yes. By the time I was able to have my own room my eldest brother Joseph was married, and also my eldest sister Rebeccah."
"It must be fun living in a large family."
"Sometimes. You know the saying 'Two Jews, three opinions'. There was always a lot of arguing, sometimes heated, but once we were grown up we never seriously fell out. I was in some ways the odd one out."
"Why's that?"
"I knew that I was different. I didn't want to get married, I liked men more that girls when it came to sex. My older brothers went to work in Dad's bank. At that time I did not want to be a banker, so I managed to persuade my father to let me go to University. There I met some left wing students. I also read some of the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin."
"Who are they?"
"Communists."
Trevor knew a little about Communists as there were a lot of them in the East End of London.
"Are you a Communist?"
"No. There is too much of a banker in me. But knowing what they were saying and wanting, made for some good heated discussions at home," said Isaac with a laugh.
"When did you first make spunk, Isaac."
"I was by myself. When I was about your age I began to wake up in the morning with my cock hard. Then sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night with a sexy dream and a hard cock. Then one night I woke with a dream to find my pyjama trousers all wet."
"Spunk?"
"Yes. Spunk. I wondered what had happened. I thought I may have got some terrible disease. I was quite close to my next oldest brother, Aaron. I told him. He said I was normal, and if I played around with my cock I could make it come and it was nice."
"Next night I woke with a dream and my cock was hard, so I played with it,
and very soon I was 'making spunk.' Soon I was masturbating regularly."
"Is that what it's proper called?"
"Yes. Tossing off and so on are slang expressions for it."
"When did you first do it wiv another boy or man?"
"I wondered when you were going to ask that! It was with the boy who lived next door. He was called Amos He was an only child. He was a couple of years older than me. I rather hero-worshipped him. We did not do much together as young children, but when I was about fourteen and he was sixteen the age difference does not seem so much. We both had train sets.
We had a clockwork train set, it sort of belonged to the family . It had been started for Joseph, and then Benjamin and Aaron had it, and so it got passed down to me. Each brother had added to it, so it was quite a large set. The boy next door also had a train set. We decided to put them together and make a big layout. I took mine round to his house, and in a large upstairs room we began to set it out on the floor. This involved a lot of kneeling and crawling around, as it took some working out with the points and so on. As we were doing it once or twice I caught him looking at me in a funny sort of way. So I asked him, 'What are you looking at?' 'Your bottom,' he answered with a grin on his face. 'My bottom, what is wrong with it?' 'Nothing. It looks good in those tight trousers when you kneel down and lean forward.' 'So what?' 'I'd like to run my hand over that smooth rounded bottom of yours. Does your cock ever get hard?' he asked. I nodded. 'Mine's hard now, thinking of touching your bottom. Do you ever toss yourself off?' I nodded. I was a bit embarassed at this turn of conversation. 'Ever done it with another boy?' I shook my head.
'Its great!' He shuffled across to me, and put his hand on my bottom. 'Like that?' he asked. 'Yes,' I answered. 'Your cock getting hard now?' he asked. 'Yes,' I said. He then reached to my front and felt me. 'Like the feel of that?' I think I nodded again. He undid my fly buttons and put his hand in."
"I bet you liked that," said Trevor.
"I did. He then got my hand and placed it on his cock. Soon we had our cocks out. We rubbed them together, and tossed each other off. That was the first time with another boy. We both shot our spunk all over the carpet and the train set."
"That guy Amos you first 'ad it off with? Was 'e a Jew like you?"
"Yes, why?"
"Circum, whatever, like you?"
"Yes, circumcised like me."
"Did you do it wiv 'im again?"
"Yes, many times. His parents were out of the house a lot. There was just a cook housekeeper in his home in the afternoons. A daily cleaning lady came in each morning. The cook never came upstairs, so we were free to do what we liked. I think I remember Amos locking the door any way."
"What did you do?"
"All the things we do."
"What did he look like?"
"He was a little taller than me, and being slightly older he was that bit more well developed. More muscles in his arms and so on. He had a bigger patch of hair on his chest. In those days I just had a small thin patch right in the middle of my chest. This lot," Isaac rubbed his chest, "appeared slowly over the next few years."
"They don't all come at once?"
"No. I think I am still getting more on my upper arms and back now."
"I like the feel of your 'airs against me, though they tickle sometimes."
This led to a bout of horseplay, tickling and wrestling together.
"I soon asked Amos if he'd done it with anyone else. He seemed to know how to go about things. 'Yes,' he said. 'I've done it with a couple of other boys from school. You have to be careful. There would be trouble, real bad trouble, if you were caught.' Amos went on to say that he had taking a big risk in commenting on my nice bum. But he had sensed that I might be interested."
"When did you do it wiv someone other than Amos."
"After a month or so, he introduced me to the other guys. So there were four of us, who would get together."
"All four of you at once?"
"Only once all four of us. That was fun. But usually it was just any two, or three, of us. Because I came from a big family we couldn't meet at my house. In the summers we went off together, in twos or threes or all four, and then in the woods we would find a secluded place and do it together. Usually if all four of us were together, it was two behind this bush and the other two over there, if you know what I mean. One of the boys was a goy."
"A goy, wot's that?"
"He wasn't a Jew. He was a Gentile, like you."
"Wiv a cock like mine, uncircumcised?"
"Yes, but not as good as yours," said Isaac with a wink. "Though there are some goys with circumcised cocks. It was exciting doing it with a different sort of cock. Which reminds me, I haven't sucked that lovely cock of yours today."
That remark signalled the end of that conversation as another activity took over.
One day when Trevor had had a hard day at school he asked, "Did you like school, Isaac?"
"Yes. I worked hard and learnt a lot. Though there was always a tension between us Jews and the goys. Austria has always been quite strongly anti-Jewish, even though there were many of us. Perhaps because there were many of us. It was a disturbed country after the Great War. Austria had lost its Empire, lost its Emperor, and was seeking a new role in the world. There was a lot of social unrest."
"Wot does that mean?"
"People restless, uncertain, lot of unemployed, tendency for there to be violence and fighting in the streets. With all this came the rise of the Nazis. At first they were dismissed and laughed at. Then people began to listen to them. They blamed the Jews for the defeat in 1918. There were boys at school who were listening to Hitler and his followers, and took it out on Jews when they could. But they were not only against Jews, they thought one boy was a homosexual, one of us Trevor, liking men. They beat him up very badly one evening as he was going home."
"Wos 'e one of your group?"
"No. I don't know whether he was a homosexual or not. But it made us all very careful. At school we used to totally ignore each other, in case any of those young Nazis suspected, and beat us up. They always waited until there was a group of them and only one Jew, or homosexual, or communist. They are evil people, Trevor." Isaac was silent as he continued to remember those days of his youth, and to wonder about the fate of his family. He shook his head as he remembered where he was. "But I liked school, except for that. I hope you will come to like school as much as I did."
"Not bloody likely," muttered Trevor.
One day when they speaking to each other in French Trevor asked Isaac, "Is University like school?"
"Not very much. You are there to learn of course. It is a matter of not of lessons, but lectures. You have to do a lot of work, reading, studying,
writing essays, on your own."
"Essays, wot are they?"
"I think you call them compositions."
"Oh them. I don't like them."
"Sometimes we had to write several thousand words."
"Did Amos go to University with you?"
"No he went into his father's bank. My Dad did not want me to go to University. It was quite hard to persuade him to let me go. He wanted me in the bank. In those days I wanted to see something more of life. Eventually he gave me permission."
"Did you enjoy it? Where there Nazis at University?"
"Yes, by that time they were getting stronger in Austria. They were becoming outspoken against Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and Communists. There weren't any Gypsies at University but a couple of Communists were severely beaten up, and one guy who they thought was a homosexual was actually killed in my final year at University. He was dragged off late one evening into a park, and there beaten to death. His body was found the next morning."
"Wos he a 'omosexual?"
"I don't know. He may have been, but equally he might not have been."
"Did they go to prison for it."
"No. The police made some show of enquiring, but then it was put round that he had tried to lead someone off into the park to have sex with him, and so got beaten to death. The Nazis were able to put pressure on the police to make sure that those guilty were never found."
Trevor thought this over for a minute. "That's wrong."
"Yes, very wrong. This old world is an evil place in many ways. All sorts of wrong things happen. Many, many people would be very angry and want to send us to prison for what we do. I think Mr and Mrs Stevens, next door, would be horrified if they knew we slept together in the same bed, and even more if they knew what we did when we were in bed."
"I 'aven't told anybody."
"Good."
"Are there many like us?"
"I don't know how many, or what percentage of men like having sex with men.
But there are some as you know from Bill, Fred, Len and so on."
"At University did you have sex with any other pupils."
"Students. There was one who I got to know."
"Wot was 'is name."
"Ernst."
"Wos 'e a Jew or a goy?"
"He was a Jew. Yes, with a lovely circumcised cock if you want to know. Almost as nice a cock as yours," added Isaac hastily.
"How did you know he weren't a Nazi spy or something?"
"I knew he was a Jew. So it was unlikely he would be a Nazi. Talking with him soon showed he wasn't. He was rather left wing."
"A Communist?"
"I don't think he was a member of the party, but he had sympathies that way."
"What 'appened?"
"Six of us decided we would go on a week's walking holiday in the mountains."
"Climbing."
"Not with ropes and so, only walking. We fixed it to stay in a village. We were paired off into double rooms. Ernst got paired up with me. The others were in double rooms, with two single beds. When we got to our room there was just one double bed in it. We looked at each other. 'Do you mind?" Ernst asked me. 'No. I hope neither of us snores,' I replied. When it came to going to bed we undressed and got into our pyjamas and climbed into bed."
"Did you see 'is cock?"
"No. And I made sure he didn't see mine. We got into bed, and sank deeply into the feather bed. One of us turned off the light. We both lay on our backs. Then he turned on his side to face me. 'I'm glad we two are together,' he said. 'Why's that?' I asked. 'If I have to share a bed with any of us, I'd rather it was you. If I was with any of the others I think they would be wishing I was a girl.' I laughed. 'You don't think I wish you were a girl, then?' I asked. 'I'm not sure with you.' 'What are you saying, Ernst?' I asked. 'The others talk a lot about girls, and even about when they get married. You don't have a girl friend to my knowledge. you've never spoken about one.' 'So?' I asked, then continued, 'Neither do you.' 'Exactly, perhaps we are similar.' 'How?' 'We are not greatly interested in girls.' I began to see where this might be leading. I did not want to turn him away, but I knew that I had to be careful. 'I would go along with you on that. I'm not greatly interested in girls, yet.' 'Do you expect to get married,' asked Ernst. 'I haven't given it much thought. Do you?' I asked. There was quite a pause before he answered, 'No.' I decided to open it up a bit. 'I think it would be hard to go through the whole of one's life without physical affection and making love,' I said. 'You don't have to get married,' he said. 'What then?' I asked. 'There's always prostitutes if you are desperate.' 'But you run the risk of all sorts of diseases. Have you ever been with a prostitute then?" I asked. 'No, never. But there are other ways.' he added very softly. 'How?' I asked, wanting him to reveal himself first. 'There are some men who like doing it with another man.' 'So I've heard. Have you done it with another man then?' I asked. There was a long silence. I thought he was not going to reply. 'Can I trust you, Isaac?' 'Yes. I wouldn't tell on you.' There was another long silence, I hardly heard him when eventually he whispered, 'Yes.' 'Thank you for telling me, Ernst. I will not tell a soul. I am the same,' it was my turn to whisper. 'I thought you might be.' We both lay there, then there was a slight rustle of the bed clothes, and I felt his fingers feeling towards me. He touched my wrist, and he held it. I rolled on to my side facing him, and with my other hand I placed my hand on his and stroked it. His other hand came across, and soon our four hands were gently touching. We stroked and held hands. After a while one of his hands began to feel up my arm, it was covered of course, by my pyjama jacket. I reached across to him and my fingers encountered his chest. My hand gently explored and found a button, and then went in and enountered his hairy chest. I stroked it with the back of a finger. Then suddenly it was as though a barrier had been breached. We were at each other, almost like animals. We could not get close enough to each other. Our mouths met, and we kissed. He pulled me on top of him. I could feel his cock hard against mine through the two layers of material. We could not touch each other enough. We humped away at each other. Eventually we stopped. 'I think we need to get these pyjamas off,' he said. That didn't take long I can tell you. Soon we were naked together. Now we were more gentle with each other. Our hands explored with soft touches and gentle fondlings. 'I'm glad we were put together,' said Ernst. 'I'm glad we talked and found out the truth about each other,' I replied. We turned the light back on so that we could se what we were doing. The bed clothes were rolled back and we admired each other's body. He had a lovely cock. I should think just over six inches, perfectly straight, and thick too. It was a joy to hold, and a joy to suck.'
"Good taste, too?"
"Yes, a good taste too. I sucked him to a climax and then he did me. Then it was lights out, and snuggling up together for some good sleep. We enjoyed the rest of the nights of the week."
"Did you enjoy the walking?"
"Yes, and that too."
One day shortly after the end of the war in Europe Isaac and Trevor were seated at the table having finished their meal. Trevor asked Isaac, "Was it hard for you to leave Austria? Did you have to find a secret path over the Alps to get away?"
Isaac laughed. "No. I left before it was necessary for people like me, who wanted to leave, to find small paths through the mountains. I left before the Anschluss."
"Wot was that?"
"On March 12 1938 Hitler sent his troops into Austria and made Austria a part of the German Reich. Things started getting difficult for Jews from then on. The anti Jewish laws that applied in Germany now began to apply in Austria. I finished at University in 1935. But I had read Hitler's book Mein Kamf and knew what he wanted to do. He blamed the Jews for everything that had gone wrong for Germany. He thought that we were sub-human. There were other sub-humans as well. The Gypsies, the mentally ill, and of course men like us - homosexuals. He also wanted to get rid of those who might be Communists or Communist sympathisers. So I knew that I was in danger if Hitler got control of Austria, and remember he was an Austrian, he was born in Vienna. The Gestapo would know I was a Jew, and could find out I was also a homosexual, and I had friends who were members of the Communist Party, or were at least fellow travellers, like my University friend, Ernst.
"I decided I wanted to get out of Austria. I wanted my family to get out. I tried to persuade my father. We had a great many long talks, I argued and pleaded with him to get all the family out. But no. He said there were too many Jews in Vienna, in too many important positions for the Nazis to do anything serious. I think he got fed up with me. Eventually he said, 'Well, Isaac, if you want to go, you can go.' We discussed whether I should go to France, England or the States. He had business connections in Paris, New York, and London. I decided I would like to go to London. I knew and loved one person in this country."
"Who was that?" asked Trevor.
"My old Nanny, Flora MacCloud, but she lives up in Scotland. So it was all arranged. My father wrote to several banks in London, and one of them said that they could find me a job. So one day in the Autumn of 1936 I caught the train, crossed the channel and arrived in London. My father had been generous and given me some money. 'Buy a house, with three or four bedrooms in case we decide after all to come and join you.' I got a job in a merchant bank in the City. I bought this house, wrote letters pleading with them to join me, if not all of them, at least some of them. They never came. They never joined me."
Isaac sat silent, the tears rolling down his face.
Trevor got up and came and put his arm round Isaac and kissed his tear stained cheek. "I know I'm not your family. I know I'm just a cockney boy from the East End, who don't know 'ow to talk proper, but I love you."
Isaac looked up into Trevor's face, and smiled through his tears. "Trev, you are as precious to me as any family. You have given me so much. You have brought joy and happiness, meaning, purpose back into my life." Isaac pushed his chair back, away from the table. "You're not too big to still sit on my lap?"
"No."
They sat and cuddled for a long while, as the tears continued to flow down the cheeks of both of them.
"Did you ever see any of them again?" asked Trevor.
"No. It was hard saying good bye. My parents, all my brothers and sisters came to the station to see me off. Joseph, Rebeccah, Benjamin, Aaron, Sarah, Rachel and Reuben, they were all there. It was hardest of all to say goodbye to Reuben. He was my young brother, just two years younger than me. We had grown up together. He was not like the rest of the family. The rest of us are fairly tall, dark and slim. He was much shorter, always on the plump side. His hair was brown, not black like the rest of us. The rest used to tease him that he was not a true blooded Rosenbaum."
"Rosenbaum?"
"That is my Austrian and Jewish surname. When I became a British citizen I changed my name to Rose." Isaac paused in thought. "I think I loved Reuben more than any of the others. I wonder what has happened to him." Again Isaac was silent, and the tears flowed again down his cheeks.
"Perhaps, now the war is over, you will get a letter from them telling you they are all safe and sound," said Trevor trying to cheer Isaac up.
"I don't think so," muttered Isaac.
On another occasion Trevor asked, "When did you last hear from your family in Austria?"
"I had regular letters up until, and for a short while after, the Anschluss.
They told me things were getting difficult for them. One one occasion they all had to scrub the pavement outside their home with their toothbrushes. The Gestapo stood over them making sure they did it. The final letter was posted from Switzerland by a goy friend of my father's who was going to Switzerland and he posted it from there. My father said that he had made a mistake in not leaving when I did. He wished me well, and gave me his blessing. 'The future of the Rosenbaums lies with you,' he wrote. I do not think there will be any more Rosenbaums I will never marry. I will never father a child. You, my dear Trevor, are the nearest I shall come to having a son, and you are a Russell and not a Rosenbaum. You did not have a Jewish mother."
They lay together in bed in silence.
After several minutes Trevor turned and kissed Isaac and gave him a hug. "What was it like coming to England?"
"It was strange at first. I quickly found a cheap room, and began working in the merchant bank. As soon as I could I took out papers to become a citizen of this country, and at the same time I changed my name from Rosenbaum to Rose. House prices were cheap and I could afford to buy this house. So I travelled up to the City every weekday. It was very lonely. I had acquaintances at work, but no friends. Then I began to make one or two friends through the synagogue, but when people realised I was not interested in marrying any of their daughters I ceased to get invitations to a meal. And I am not a very good Jew, I don't keep all the dietary and other laws. But in those days I was very lonely."
"Did you see any men, or boys like me?" asked Trevor.
"No."
"Why not?"
"It takes a while to get to know how things are done in a strange land. I did not know what was possible. I found out that all sex between men was illegal and you could go to prison for it. I did not want to run the risk of that. I was afraid that if I was caught I would get sent back to Austria."
"So 'ow did you meet Bill?"
"Soon after war broke out I was seconded from the bank for the duration and went to work for the Ministry of Economic Warfare. I had studied economics at University, and it was thought that my knowledge of German and Germany would be a help. I don't know if I have helped our war effort, but I have certainly been very busy. Sometimes I have to find out something by going and interviewing a person. One day I had to go down to East End to find out something from a man who had imported a lot of stuff from Stettin before the war. After the interview it was too late to go back to Whitehall, and I was hungry. I went into this small cafe in the Commercial Road. It was very full when I arrived, only one vacant table. Then Bill came in. He was dressed in a suit and looked very respectable."
"Cor! I never seen 'im in a suit. Must 'ave been on some bloody job."
"The only vacant seat was at my table so he came and joined me. We were soon talking."
"Yea, 'e's a good talker is our Bill," said Trevor.
"He asked me what I did. I gave him told him I worked in a bank."
"No wonder he charged you so much for me!"
"Then I asked him what he did. 'A bit of this and that,' he replied.
" 'Im looking respectable 'e must 'ave been doing something fishy. 'E does a lot on the black market, that's when 'e's not pimping poor bloody boys like I was."
"He asked if I was married. When I said 'No', he said he thought I was not, as I was not wearing a wedding ring. By this time the cafe had almost emptied. How do you get your load off then? I did not understand at first. 'What do you do for sex then? Prossies?' I think I shook my head. 'What, are you not that way inclined?' I felt myself blushing. He must have seen me blushing, 'That's alright, I'm not into birds I like heaps of coke anytime.' I was completely lost.
"Heaps of coke, - blokes, rhyming slang, Isaac." interpreted Trevor.
They laughed.
"Bill leant forward. 'Tell you what! Let me make you a business proposition. If you want a nice boy, a nice clean boy, almost a virgin, but not so virgin that 'e don't know a mouth from an arsehole, I can supply you with one. For five quid you can 'ave 'im for a day. Wot do you say?' I asked him a few questions while I was thinking about it. And the rest is history as they say."
1945 was a hard one for Isaac. As the war had progressed rumours had began to circulate that all was not well for the Jews of Europe. In January Auschwitz had been liberated by the Red Army, and it seemed that the worst fears had been true. In the last months of the war further concentration camps had been discovered and liberated, and the terrible tale of human cruelty and human suffering was revealed. The first months of peace merely confirmed those fears. It was reckoned that over six million Jews perished in the holocaust. But for Isaac there was that other group with whom he felt a solidarity. The homosexuals who were exterminated or incarcerated in the concentration camps were nowhere near so many. But many, far too many by any count, had suffered from Nazi bigotry and dogmatic intolerance. For many of the surviving homosexuals the suffering continued. The liberating allies decided that they had been incarcerated for a civil crime, and had been through the due processes of law, and had been sentenced by a civil court, so they should serve out the rest of their sentence!
On many occasions in that bleak time Isaac found consolation in the arms and affection of young Trevor. Frequently they both shed tears.
It was one dreary foggy November Friday when Isaac finally accepted that none of his family had survived. The two of them were sitting at the table having finished their meal. "Trevor, I have come to a decision. I must accept that all my family are dead. I have made a list. There are thirty five of them. There are my parents. My grand parents My brothers and sisters, their husbands and wives. There are my nephews and nieces, some young babies who I never met. I must say the Kaddish for them all. On each Sabbath for the next thirty five weeks I shall light a candle for one of them, and say the Kaddish for that one. I will remember each one individually, and for each one I will be thankful to God for their life. The Sabbath has begun, we have eaten our meal. I will now light a candle and say the Kaddish for Daniel Rosenbaum, my grand father. He was the head of the family."
Trevor watched and listened as the ancient Hebrew prayer was said.
When it was finished they sat for several minutes in silence. Then they did the washing up, still in silence. Back in the sitting room Isaac sat in his easy chair, and Trevor came and sat on his lap.
"Wot was your granddad like?" asked Trevor breaking the silence.
That simple question opened a flood of memories. Isaac spoke at length about his grand father, from his earliest memories. He produced all the letters he had received from Vienna after his arrival in England. Tears were shed, but the healing of Isaac had begun.
This established a ritual for those sabbath meals on the Friday evenings. Always Trevor asked the question, and Isaac found consolation in recalling the one who had been put to death in the concentration camp. It was later that Isaac learnt that almost all the Jews in occupied Europe had been taken in cattle trucks by rail to Auschwitz, or another death camp. ***
Jeff at jeffyrks@hotmail.com