Upfall

Wirth looked at his fellow SS officer with evident dislike. "I'm the commander here, Hauptsturmfuhrer. Do not demand answers of me." Opificius choked back his own disaffection, allowing indoctrination and training to hold. "Excuse me Major! I was only concerned about your safety" he lied. Having verbally prostrated himself, Opificius pressed on. "May I ask why you stopped my troopers' assault?"

"This assault?" Wirth smirked as he pointed to the dead soldiers at his feet. "I seem to be more solicitous of your men than you are."

"They are combat soldiers" said Opificius angrily, ignoring again the nineties of rank and determined to have his say. "Their duty is to die. Perhaps you don‘t appreciate that."

"You were dispatched to protect this camp" said Wirth. "Now the critical part of the installation, its raison d 'etre, is wrecked and Wirth gestured dramatically about him, as the gas chambers blazed amid the efforts of the bucket brigades to douse them.

"You prevented me..." stammered Opificius before Wirth cut him off.

"Shut up!" rasped Wirth, as if Opificius were an unruly child. "This is your fault, and you'll pay for it. The only good that can come of this disaster is what is inside this gas chamber, and I want him alive."

"Who?" asked Opificius, still unable to guess Wirth's motive. "A partisan?"

"That's no partisan He just killed four of your men. It is a British commando—likely the leader. And I intend to have him. Alive."

Opificius stood by dumbly. Wirth was obsessed with his silly commandos, but the Waffen SS commander was in no position to argue. Then, incredibly, Wirth knocked on the chamber door, like he was the milkman.

Shapira couldn't hear the discussion between the German officers from inside the darkened chamber, but sensed something was up, since the attack was suddenly aborted. If they just tossed another grenade or two Shapira knew he'd be done—he had no control of the doorway. He moved the two dead Germans across the threshold anyway, as a lame obstacle, and pulled away one of the Mausers which might be useful as a club.

Shapira considered shooting himself—but he wasn‘t suicidal. If he fought on he'd be killed anyway, but it was not exactly the same thing as suicide. And the truth was, Shapira didn‘t want to die. He knew when he set off, and left Norit behind, that his chances were not good. But duty and the abstract risks of a pending mission were different than deliberately seeking death.

Plus, Shapira had other concerns, most importantly, how to protect Norit and the rest of the Jews of Biali. If he could lead the Germans away from Biali by giving them false information, through the inevitable torture, he would do Norit greater good than dying a glorious death. Indeed, if he told the Germans the real truth, he would only confound them more. But beyond all that he was simply curious. He was in war torn Europe in 1942! He wanted to experience more of it, explore it, live it, even if that meant capture, interrogation and torture.

And so, sitting on the floor, in the grim darkness of the death chamber, the blood of German soldiers soaking his trousers, Shapira decided to parlay if he could. He barely heard the incongruous but welcome knock on the door. Shapira almost laughed. What was he to say? Who is it? Come in? He decided not to be wasn't in a movie, and he was dealing with the SS.

"I am Major Ronald Shapira of His Majesty's Palestinian Brigade!" he shouted, in English, hoping that sounded right. He waited. "Raus! Waffen ab!" said a harsh German voice. Then in halting English "You will be treated goodly."

"Ich spreche Deutsch!” shouted Shapira. Continuing in German he said "I demand to be treated in accord with the Geneva Conventions, as an enemy officer, properly surrendered."

Outside the chamber, in the growing light of dawn, and the flickering glow of the dying fires around him Wirth smiled and looked over at Opificius in triumph "Sicher Herr Major" said Wirth. "You have my word."

Several hundred meters from the burning gas chambers, high in a leafy oak, Chaim watched as Shapira was led away. The sergeant had ignored his team leader's orders. Instead of withdrawing as he'd promised, Chaim shed his heavy vest and helmet—hiding them in the lower branches—and climbed high into the tree. Ignoring the ache in his damaged shoulder he found a comfortable spot from which he could clearly see into Belzac and into the woods behind him, where Sandler‘s men and the few survivors of Shapira‘s demolition platoon, had fled pell mell into the woods.