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Summary
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mendel Landau is a baker and the opposite of Professor Johann Clement in all ways except that they are both Jewish. Jewish people have been persecuted in Poland for seven hundred years, so when tensions start rising as the war nears, Mendel is used to the oppression and knows its danger. Mendel does not have a zealous faith, but he gives his children the idea of equality that a re-established Jewish state could bring. The entire family, including his youngest child Dov, belongs to a Zionist group called the Redeemers. When Germany invades Poland, Mendel is killed in battle. Resistance groups are forming all over the country and Dov’s older brother Mundek is head of one of them. Ghettos are formed and rampant discrimination against the Jewish begins.
In the winter of 1941, Adolf Hitler decides the final solution of the Jewish “problem” will be genocide. When shooting Jewish people becomes inefficient, the German army devises the idea of concentration camps. The Nazis move all Jewish people into ghettos to prepare them for deportation. The largest of these ghettos is in Warsaw, where Dov’s family is relocated. Dov quickly learns how to stay alive in the Warsaw ghetto and becomes a courier for Mundek, moving supplies in and out of the ghetto through the sewer system. He also learns forgery. In 1942, the Germans begin rounding up the elderly and children. Mundek and Rebecca tell Dov to stay outside the ghetto for his own safety, because they desperately want one of the Landaus to survive. On the day before his thirteenth birthday, Dov leaves his family. Mundek and other leaders stage an uprising in the ghetto to resist further deportation.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Germans are embarrassed by the Jewish resistance they find in the Warsaw ghetto. For ten days, the Warsaw Jews repel attack after attack from the Germans. Dov cannot stay away and returns to take part in the resistance. Dov and Mundek Landau are now the only surviving members of their family. The Germans begin systematically sweeping the bunkers throughout the ghetto. Dov suggests escaping through the sewers, which is how he has delivered his messages as Mundek’s courier. He goes out on a reconnaissance mission to plan the escape, and when he returns, Mundek’s entire group is dead. Dov is alone. He is picked up on the street by the Gestapo and is marked for resettlement at Auschwitz.
Chapter Twenty-Four
This chapter toggles between Dov’s long and brutal journey to Auschwitz and the story of the camp’s creation. The concentration camps are designed as a way to get rid of the Jewish people so that Europe can make more room for the supposed “Aryan race.” SS Lieutenant Colonel Karl Hoess is put in charge of genocide at Auschwitz. Through a series of tests, he discovers Cyklon B, an acid gas can be used to exterminate up to ten thousand people a day in the Birkenau gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dov arrives in Auschwitz. Detainees are being separated into three separate lines as they come off the train cars. Dov’s days in the ghetto have sharpened his instincts and he quickly surmises the reason for the separate lines: old and sickly-looking people are heading for the gas chambers, the stronger men and women are going to labor camps, and young, beautiful girls and some boys are being separated for sexual exploitation by the German soldiers. Dov is being sent toward the door leading to the gas chambers. He stops and calmly informs the doctor who looks him over that he is an expert at forgery, and he is spared. Dov is disgusted by what he sees in the camp, and he wonders if he would have been better off going to the gas chamber. A year drags by, and Germany begins to lose the war. The SS goes into overdrive trying to kill as many Jewish people as possible. Dov is made to work as a Sonderkommando, a word for Jewish people who are made to clean out the gas chambers. Dov does this work for three days before the gas chambers are destroyed, and it haunts him for the rest of his life.
Chapter Twenty-Six
After the war, Dov is physically healthy, but his mental health suffers from the events of the last six years. Dov is depressed and hateful. In the summer of 1945, a man named Shimshon Bar Dror arrives at the liberated Auschwitz. He is an agent of the Mossad, and he tells the survivors that he is going to bring them to Palestine. The British refuse to allow the survivors to go to Palestine, however, and the Polish government declares that all Jewish people must stay in Poland. Bar Dror makes a daring decision and tells five hundred survivors, including Dov, that they will leave Auschwitz on foot and go to the Czech Republic. The British try to stop the group, but the Czechoslovakian Foreign Minister has sympathy for them and allows them to enter his country. The group slowly makes their way through European countries until they are on a small boat headed for France.
Analysis
Uris makes an interesting comparison between Mendel Landau, Dov’s father, and Johann Clement, Karen’s father, at the beginning of Chapter Twenty-Two. The author points out that the only thing the two men have in common is that they are Jewish by heritage. Johann is a wealthy intellectual with a comfortable life. Mendel, on the other hand, is a baker and has always known oppression and marginalization. In Poland in 1939, Jewish people are made to live by different rules and have been for centuries. The Landaus do not openly profess their Jewish faith, but Mendel does instill in his children the idea of freedom and equality that Jewish people can achieve if they return to Palestine. The Poland that Mendel is raising a family in is very different from Johann’s Germany where Johann is part of mainstream society. When trouble begins leading up to World War II, Johann trusts that he and his family would be safe, but Mendel knows from experience that he can feel no such comfort. This simple contrast highlights the illogical nature of the holocaust. Neither Mendel nor Clement even practices his faith. Their lives could not be more different, however, the hateful ideology of eugenics and anti-Semitism cause both men to become targets of the Nazis.
After Germany invades Poland, Dov begins to transform from the innocent youngest member of his family to a hardened soldier under the tutelage of his brother and sister. Initially, the siblings try to shield Dov from what is going on around him, encouraging him to remain in school after they move to the ghetto. They want at least one member of their family to have a normal existence. Eleven-year-old Dov instead begins sharpening his instincts and survival skills as he helps The Redeemers. He is surrounded by carnage and goes for days at a time without food, which increase his tolerance for suffering. Dov essentially begins living in a constant state of shock, especially after killing another young boy one day when he is cornered by a gang. Mundek does his best to comfort him, but Dov is suffering so many losses, including that of his innocence, that he cannot possibly process them all.
When Dov arrives at Auschwitz, he is a shell of the boy that once lived in Poland with his family. Still, he is able to stay alert and rely on his conflict-tested instincts to save his life. Dov is not yet privy to the chilling details surrounding the construction of his current location. He does not know of the meticulous plans and the enormous number of people involved, but he does know that there is danger everywhere. He manages to find a corner of safety for himself in his forgery work, but his contact with the inhumanity around him fills him with a festering hatred for his oppressors. He comes to know nothing but death and terror. At Auschwitz, he essentially stops all contact with other people. Like Karen, he begins to forget the faces of his family and the times he spent with them, remembering only his promise to Mundek to stay alive.
Mossad Aliyah Bet agent Shimshon Bar Dror’s arrival at Auschwitz represents hope and the possibility of the freedom of Palestine. Although the camp has been liberated, it is not truly free until Bar Dror is there. When he arrives, the survivors are in shock and without any bearings in the world. Some Jewish people have left the camp, only to return in crushing defeat because their homes are gone. Bar Dror also represents the resistance of the Jewish people against the British stance on Jewish immigration. The British are pressuring European governments to keep Jewish people in their countries and not allow them to immigrate to British-occupied Palestine because they do not want to upset Arab allies. This policy reflects the same mentality the British officers will display at the meeting of Sutherland and his military colleagues when discussing the camps at Caraolos a few years in the future. The quest of the Jewish people from Auschwitz to find safety and freedom in Palestine is viewed by the British as a tactical problem that needs to be managed. Instead of seeing a train of malnourished, tortured people who have survived concentration camps, the British sees obstacles. Once again, the Jewish people are treated as a “problem” and not as individuals with will and agency. This plight experienced by the Jewish people is one that Uris highlights repeatedly throughout the novel.
Even before the genocide that swept across Europe, so much had been taken from the Jewish people over time that they had seemingly become accustomed to it. They have become used to being treated as less than and have largely accepted it. Thus, whenever a group such as Dov’s group from Auschwitz successfully resists oppression, it is a victory not only for those involved but for all Jewish people past and present. Mossad Aliyah Bet therefore represents a new mentality for the diasporic Jews. They do not accept their mistreatment and keep their heads down in order to survive. Rather, they have decided to be proactive, and initiate a bold and visionary plan to secure a future for their people. The genocide has shown many Jewish people a lesson they will never forget: only the protection of establishing their own nation state can tragedies like that of Dov Landau’s experience be prevented and avenged.
