Deadly Pedigree - By Jimmy Fox Page 0,5

hardly abated.

“And then it was my turn. The war was going bad, very bad for the Nazis. They could not kill us fast enough, but they did not want the Allies to see what they were doing to us. Trains were scarce, so they marched us on the snowy roads. You see, they hoped we would drop dead and save them a bullet. I think we were going to Chelmno death camp. That was the rumor, anyway. One day, when there was nothing left of me except bones, a rag or two, and a weak pulse, I looked up–it was a sunny, cold, sparkling spring day, I remember–and there, there were horrified Russian soldiers in place of the Nazi guards.”

He blew his nose with startling, loud vigor.

“Acch, the things I could tell you.”

The trance broken, Nick took a deep breath and shifted in the chair, making it squeak loudly in the sudden quiet of the room.

Nick was strongly moved by Corban’s narrative. A hundred questions formed in his mind, the foremost being, If all of his relatives are dead, what the hell am I supposed to find?

“Look, Max,” Nick said, “I know this is painful for you. You don’t have to tell me anymore. Let’s just move on to the specifics of the project you want me to–”

“It helps, sometimes, to talk. No one wants to hear about it anymore.”

“I understand. Well, if that’s what you want. What happened after the war? What did you do? How did you get yourself back together?”

“After a few years in the displaced-persons camps, learning how to live like a human being again, for a while I cried, and a while after that I screamed in rage at the Nazis, all Germans, mankind, my parents for being so stupid–even at God. I got married to another survivor; she was French. God rest her soul, she is gone now. We came here, to New Orleans. You see, I liked the music and the river and the warmth; she liked the food and the street names.” He smiled sadly. “That is what we told ourselves. But really we both hoped that a few thousand miles would help us forget. It did not.” He paused for a minute, looked down, his eyes filling with tears.

“She could have no children. The Nazi devils–‘doctors’ they called themselves–they did…experiments on her. For many years she worked at a nice place on Royal, selling lace things and gifts for the tourists. This handkerchief, she gave me, for our forty-fifth wedding anniversary…I was a traveling dental-supplies salesman.” Corban wiped his eyes and looked up, a trace of an ironic snicker shining through the tears. “It was the one trade I learned in the camps. I had to do something,” he said, shrugging.

“I’m sorry, Max. That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard. You’re right, I can’t know what it was like. But–and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way–as a genealogist, I’m fascinated. There are few more difficult tasks in modern genealogy than tracing families torn apart or destroyed by the Holocaust. I’ve never actually worked on such a case, but truthfully, I’ve always wanted to. And more than that, since my father is Jewish, I understand your anguish on a more personal level.”

“Mazel-tov. Welcome to the club. Wait until you see the dues. Oy, they’re murder!”

“Well, I’m not a religious person. Currently, I mean.”

“When you shed your first real tear, you’ll come crawling back, young man, back to God, whatever you call Him. Like me. Mark my words.”

Nick felt sorry for the guy. How had he survived with those memories and remained sane? Was he sane? Well, clearly, he was eccentric, to put it charitably. Despite his compassion for him, Nick felt compromised, tricked into revealing such personal things to a stranger. He also believed he’d shed a sufficiency of genuine tears himself, thank you very much.

Nick was a private person by nature; his humiliation at Freret University had made him even more so. Though he rooted around, sometimes literally, in the basements and attics of other people’s lives, he didn’t want anyone doing the same in his.

“Max, if we could talk genealogy for a few minutes. From what you’ve told me, I think the best place to start is with your parents, and with whatever European records may have survived. It’s possible some line of your family escaped. There are several excellent archives in Europe and Israel which–”

Corban suddenly lost his temper.

“No! I have had enough of eating the