Читать книгу Hoodwinked - the spy who didn't die - Lowell Ph.D. Green - Страница 12

I SUSPECT I AM AS BRAVE as the next man, but the thought of the knives, testicle crushers, and other fiendish devices awaiting those caught trying to escape from Minsk is too frightening for me to even contemplate. If I am really going to proceed with an escape attempt, I must first devise some method of cheating the torturers. I do not fear a quick death. “What I must find,” I tell myself, “is a means to achieve it if caught.”

I am allowed a small knife, hammer, and crowbar with which to open some of the packing cases containing the pillaged treasures, but all such tools must be returned to the guards at the end of my working day, usually close to midnight. Even if somehow I am able to conceal the knife, it is too small to do the job properly. Death will have to be swift and certain!

They say there are no atheists in foxholes; I doubt there are many in ghettos either, but until that time I had been one. What overcame me that terrible night of the Purim massacres, I cannot tell you, but for the first time in my life I find myself on my knees praying for strength and deliverance.

God arrives the very next morning. Well, to be completely accurate, it is a huge, beautifully carved marble statue of Jesus on the Cross, pillaged from a Warsaw cathedral, probably St. John’s.* Why it has been shipped from Warsaw to Minsk only God knows. About ten feet tall and weighing, I suspect, close to a ton, it appears to be in perfect shape, but as I struggle to remove the Polish newspapers which crudely encase it, something falls to the floor and rolls to my feet. It is a thorn made of stone; about eight inches long and tapered at one end to a sharp point. A thorn, cleanly broken from the crown of thorns, encircling Christ’s bowed head! A miracle! I have my weapon.

*FACT: I have been unable to determine if such a statue existed at St. John’s or any other cathedral in Poland prior to the war. Six-hundred-year-old St. John’s Cathedral was partially destroyed by the Germans in 1944 during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Following the collapse of the uprising in November 1944, the remains of the magnificent cathedral were blown up by the Germans as part of their planned destruction of the entire city. The cathedral has since been rebuilt and is one of Poland’s national pantheons.

Gunfire suddenly rattles from the street just outside the Opera House—all eyes dart in its direction. Stooping swiftly I grasp the stone thorn and stuff it into my shirt.

God is not finished with his miracles. The next day a truckload of lumber and a large tarpaulin arrive along with orders to build a crate large enough to accommodate the statue and its enormous base, which we learn is to be shipped to the cathedral in Berlin known as the Berliner Dom.

My heart leaps when I see what had been sent!