Short Stories

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The barracks were frigid that November day, with flakes of snow and ashes fleeting across the desolate plain. Three men had gathered at a table by the east corner; somber was their mood, despair was their eyes. On the left was Schmidt, the Defender, the middle one named Baumgarten, a professor of law in better times. On the right was Mordechai—the Ha-shatan—poised to accuse. They had decided to form a Rabbinical Court to question their centuries-old Covenant. They had decided to put the Lord their God...on trial.

Arguments were raised point for point about how God had dismissed His Covenant with the Jewish people—what else could explain this Holocaust they asked? Argumentative banter passed passionately between the righteous believers and the doubters. Schmidt, a Rabbi, stood his ground on the side of their Adonai (the Hebrew word for Lord) while Mordechai fired back with the mind of a young man who could not understand. As lively as it started, it stopped abruptly as Akiba stood to speak.

“Who brought us out of Egypt?” he asked. A well-respected Rabbi from Poland, he was called “The Living Torah” because he had committed the first five books of the Bible to complete memory. He looked like the others; head shaved, beaten about the face wearing the prisoner coveralls given to them by the SS.

“God did.” replied Schmidt reluctantly, knowing he was about to argue with the best.

And then Akiba went on to tell about the famine that led them to their neighbor's land, and that God had caused the calamity. He talked about the plagues of frogs and boils, of disease and pestilence. Then to finish, he spoke with quivering lips about the death of the first born of Egypt, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth from all but the Hebronites, and not a sound was heard. He asked one last question that shocked them all.

“And after all this, what did the mothers of Egypt learn about the Almighty? They learned that Adonai...the Lord God...our God...is not good...he's not ever been good...he's simply been on our side.” The old man who had spent his entire life devoted to God hung his head, placed his right hand upon his heart, and wiped the tears from his eyes.

An eerie silence permeated the hall as the men who had put their faith in the Lord lo these many years could not speak, could not argue, could not retort. One man sat in a bunk unnoticed until that very moment as he said:

“How much knowledge do you possess about Molech, Akiba? Tell these men all that you know. Tell me if you know.” The inquisitor eased his tall and thin frame from the bunk and stood in the middle of the room. His grey garment hung loosely on its gaunt frame as he looked around the array of dead men walking. Akiba, ashamed, did not answer.

“Does anyone hear wish to answer me?” No one moved.

“Then I would ask the scholar,” he said as he pointed a crooked finger at Idek, a college student from Gdansk. Head shaven as the rest, he stood embarrassed in front of his elders.

“Molech...was an idol worshiped by the Egyptians.”

“I see,” the stranger said as he moved about the room. “And what did this idol look like, my friend?”

“He was tall and muscular, with the head of a bull and two large horns.”

“Now, the worshipers of this en-graven image that neither walked, nor talked, nor heard their prayers...what was required of them if asked by Molech's high priest?”

Idek didn't answer, but twirled his cap between both hands. The stranger clasped his hands together and lowered them to his waist, then asked again, but received no reply.

“They were commanded to offer their first born sons to Molech—were they not?”

“Yes,” said Idek.

“And how was this sacrifice to be carried out?” Idek dropped his gaze, and did not wish to answer. The stranger walked as he circled the room, knowing that he would have to answer his own question.

“They would tie their children to the altar in front of this abomination, place kindling around them, pour oil upon their screaming bodies, and the priest would burn them alive. Now, did Pharaoh know of this, Akiba?”

“I do not know—I suppose.”

“Of course he knew. Pharaoh knew everything that occurred in his land, or else he would not have been a pharaoh. Did he do anything to stop this practice—Idek, I ask you again?”

“No, not that we know of.”

“Then it would seem to me that Adonai—our Adonai—cared more for the first born of Egypt than their Pharaoh did. At least He took them in their sleep, and did not force them to face the torment of the fire. And is it not justice that Pharaoh lost his first born son as did the slave at the mill or his highest General?”

The unity of their silence was broken by the sudden roar of German Shepards and heavily-armed Nazis crashing through the doors. They yelled and cursed and beat them that did not run fast enough to the “showers” to await the methaned madness that had gripped the town of Auschwitz. The tall grey stranger sat at the edge of his bunk, unafraid of all around him. The shepard's drool and bared fangs meant nothing to him as he stared it down till its tail fell between its legs. A large solder raised his club to beat him but was met by his eyes, and the look of undeniable authority.

“Be gone from here Colonel, you have no power over me.” And the stranger...was no more.

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Note: The above, except for the presence of the stranger, was taken from a PBS true story movie entitled “God on Trial.” It has bothered me since I saw it a year ago that no one stood up for God anywhere in this rendition. The tall stranger's character is fiction, and his dialogue mine in an attempt to relay my anger that no one spook for God that day. Surely, someone should have.

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