The evening deepened. Gradually Jakob himself felt the weariness of the stressful day stealing over him. His arms, then his whole body, and finally his eyelids began to sag. He had to remain alert, he told himself. They must not miss the appointed meeting, lest they lose their only chance of escape.

He clutched his sleeping son more tightly in his arms and, fighting sleep himself now, continued his nighttime vigil….

61 Gestapo Schemes

61

Gestapo Schemes

The Gestapo section chief strode back and forth in the small room with a determined step. His eyebrows were knit in thought, causing the black eyes beneath them to appear even more sunken into the depths of his head than they actually were.

He had been absently glancing over a stack of routine files a few hours ago. He’d not even seen them on his own desk but had absently noticed them among the papers of a subordinate.

Something had flashed back into memory and with it, the question whether there was more here than met the eye.

The trail of Rabbi Wissen had been his private search for months. In hopes of finding the man’s whereabouts he had ordered the net dropped on this region several weeks ago, stretching from Torun down to Inowroclaw, and east to Wloclawek.

Many Jews had been rooted out, but not the rabbi.

He knew the rabbi was in this area; he could smell the dirty, olive-skinned Semite! The professor’s hometown was Plock. After leaving Warsaw, he had traced him there, and at last report the Jewish leader was said to be heading west. He had the feeling the rabbi was right here in Wloclawek!

He hated to be made to look foolish, and the rabbi had eluded capture far too long!

The assignment had been an unwanted one. He hadn’t clawed and backstabbed his way up through the ranks of the Gestapo for this. Actually, it hadn’t exactly been offered. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler had ways of pretending assignments were voluntary when in fact they were nothing of the kind. He had accepted the offer, not because he had the least interest in being sent to Poland, but because it was Himmler personally who had done the offering. He was a man you did not refuse.

As it turned out, the move represented an advance, more power, the chance to lay important groundwork for further promotions within the SS, and the opportunity to survey options eastward if such ever became necessary. The Russians had invaded this far back in ’39, and, though they were on the retreat at present, one never knew how the fortunes of war might shift.