Upfall

Mofaz led his team, followed by a few of De Jong‘s men, through the Himmelgang. En route he ran into a pair of fleeing Ukranian guards. Mofaz shot them and pushed on. At the end of the covered way he stopped and swept the open area with his Tavor then emerged into the light, where he was mobbed by dozens of smelly ragged and sobbing men.

Mofaz brought Sandler and the surviving Sonderkommando to join the other rescued camp Jews who had now gathered in the open area of Camp 2. This had served as Sobibor‘s undressing area, and was the last place most victims saw before entering the Himmelgang on the way to the gas chambers. A yard of horror and humiliation now became a place of rejoicing, as the stunned prisoners recognized that they had been, at least for the moment, saved. When the Sonderkommando appeared, looking even more gaunt and disheveled than the other Jews, they were embraced and welcomed, in spite of the work everyone knew that they had done. Here and there friends and brothers embraced, as if suddenly returned from the dead.

It was early evening as Yatom wandered through the captured death camp, contemplating the situation. Besides the rescued Jews from Camp 2, Yatom had organized a prisoner holding area in the Forward Camp for about two dozen captured Ukrainians and a few SS, including the wounded commandant. He faced many problems, but foremost among them was what to do with each group. The Jews couldn‘t remain in Sobibor. He couldn't guard the captured Germans and Ukrainians for long, and yet he couldn't let them go either. It was one thing to have captured the camp, another to deal with the aftermath.

Yatom called another orders group. Although De Jong had proved to be a brave and valuable leader he was for the present excluded, as was the young Sonderkommando Sandler, who evidently had led the revolt in Camp 3. The Israeli team leaders, with Perchensky and Feldhandler, sat at around a camp table between the Forward Camp and Camp 2, where Yatom could keep an eye on things. According to their adjusted watches, the time was a little after six in the evening. In Israel the sky would be darkening, but in this northern latitude the summer sky was only a medium blue. The sayeret had been hard at it now for over fifteen straight hours and they were all tired, but not exhausted. Rather than wasting the combat rations, which they might well need later, the Israelis munched on food taken from the SS kitchens, which was not half-bad. There were sausages, sauerrkraut, cheese, bread, and freshly boiled potatoes, made by the Jewish kitchen workers who themselves were preparing a feast for themselves and their liberated comrades. Mofaz and a few of the other men, who kept kosher, refused to eat the sausages, which were certainly made of pork, but Yatom, Shapira, Feldhandler and Perchensky stuffed themselves with the tasty meat. There was also plenty of beer and schnapps. Yatom the mostly tea-totaling Israelis disdained it. Judging from the increasingly boisterous camp Jews, most of them had not.

"It's good Mofaz!" exclaimed Shapira, his mouth full of Polish kielbasa. "The rabbis say it's okay to eat traif in desperate situations."

"Not there yet" replied Mofaz, his mouth stuffed with potatoes. "If I run out of loof maybe I‘ll reconsider."

"What now?" demanded Yatom looking sternly at Feldhandler.

Feldhandler somewhat daintly patted grease from his mouth with a napkin taken from the German officer‘s mess. "Go on" said the scientist.

"First" said Yatom "how long before the Germans know this place has fallen and send reinforcements?"

"We probably have 12-24 hours" said Feldhandler picking his teeth. "It depends whether they got out a radio signal before we blew the antenna and took the transmitter—I doubt they did. But if they did, I'd still say 12 hours. A day if they didn't."

"Are you sure?"

"No" said Feldhandler defensively "I can‘t be sure. But Sobibor is very isolated. It was built in the middle of nowhere—for obvious reasons. There are probably no substantial German forces nearby, and the road and rail communications out here are terrible. We have some time, for now."

”Beseder" continued Yatom. "Now, question two. What time is now?"

Feldhandler paused, understanding the question immediately, but taking his time, gnawing on a rind of bread. "It's June 1942" he said, as if talking to a group of children. "We've been over this."

"Not really" said Perchensky angrily. "Is this June 1942 in our timeline or some other timeline? Can we get back home— and if we return, will we have destroyed the world we know through our actions here?"

Feldhandler smiled and leaned back comfortably in his chair. This was too much for Mofaz who lept on Feldhandler like a leopard, and put Feldhandler's neck in a hammerlock. Feldhandler involuntarily spit out a piece of half—chewed rye.

Mofaz growled in his ear. "I've a wife and children back home, and I mean to see them again."