“Their son’s visit made me realize what a danger I was to these people. Without them asking, I went on my way. I lived—survived—eating berries and leaves, drinking water from streams. And I found a gun, several, in fact. Being kosher, I never attempted to hunt for meat. I don’t have a shochet’s mentality, though theoretically I know how to ritually slaughter an animal. And I was able to sustain myself on the fruit of the forest. After such a ness, I was not able to transgress the laws of kashruth even if I had the excuse of pekuah nefesh—saving a life.”

“I wish I had your faith,” Decker said.

“You experience a ness like that, the faith just comes, Akiva,” Schulman said.

He paused a moment, then went on. “Toward the end of the war—I didn’t know it was the end of the war back then—I came across one of Hitler’s elite wandering the forest. He was a young man—around eighteen, nineteen—dressed in a dirty uniform—and was roaming about half-dazed, his eyes glazed over. He must have become separated from his regiment. He saw me, snarled, and fired out one word at me. Juden. That triggered some…primal anger deep within me.”

Schulman’s eyes hardened.

“I became enraged, reached for my gun. Suddenly, I saw fear in the boy’s eyes, Akiva. Imagine how that felt. A scrawny beaten-down Jew instilling a Nazi with terror. He started begging me for mercy, crying out his mother’s name. I remained unmoved, thinking, Gornish mein helfin. Nothing would help him now. I knew if I let him go and he should be saved, I would be hunted down and shot. Or he’d just go on to murder other Jews. For my sake and the sake of klal Yisrael—the Jewish people—I…shot him.”

He shrugged and looked Decker in the eye.

“Never any question as to the morality of what I did,” Schulman said. “I knew I was correct. It didn’t bother me then, it doesn’t really bother me now. But every few years, I dream about that boy. I see the terror in his eyes. I wake up, say a bracha to God for delivering me. But then I ask myself…” He pointed his finger in the air and his voice took on a singsong cadence. “If I was so right, why does God allow me to see this child’s terror as clearly as the day I shot him?”

“Do you have an answer?” Decker asked.