Russia was Marx’s dream. It wasn’t antisemitic, as far as Josef could see. Jews near China were building a Jewish Republic, a home for Yiddish literature, Yiddish theater, and Yiddish art, though not for Jewish haggling or Jewish religion. Molotov’s wife was a Jew, Kaganovich (“the Son of Cohen”) was Stalin’s pal, and Stalin himself had told a Jewish reporter, “Antisemitism is cannibalism.” It got the death penalty in Russia, Stalin had said, and Josef had promptly volunteered for the Russian army. He fell back to Stalingrad, switched to the Polish army, and led his battalion across a world of brick chimneys—everything else was in ruins—to Warsaw. He was appointed chief of the Office of State Security for Silesia, opened an office in Kattowitz, put up a picture of Stalin, and put Jews in charge of Intelligence, Imprisonment, etcetera, and in three-fourths of the other officers’jobs. But still, Josef was not the good fairy. The good fairy was Stalin. Stalin’s fondness for Jews wasn’t strange to the Jews, who assumed that he wanted the Germans pursued by the hounds of hell: themselves. In fact, Stalin wasn’t a German-hater. At age thirty-three he had lived in Vienna as Hitler was painting postcards and anti- perspirant posters near by. Hitler’s army was one hundred miles from Moscow when Stalin proclaimed, “Hitlers come and go, but the German people remain.” Nor was Stalin serious when, in Tehran, he proposed that the Allies execute 50,000 German officers after the war. “Never!” Churchill retorted. “Fifty [53] thousand,” said Stalin. “I’d rather be shot myself!” said Churchill. “Well, 49,000,” said Roosevelt, but Stalin was only pulling their legs. And now Stalin was sending the Germans to camps in Russia whose signs din’t say “All hope abandon” but “Hitlers come and go, but the German people remain.” Why then was Stalin so partial to Jews? Stalin didn’t say. On Christmas Eve, 1943, he simply invited some Jewish and Catholic Poles who were living in Moscow to dine at the Kremlin. He served them Georgian wine, said, “To Poland,” and declared them the Polish absentee government. On his orders, a Jew whose father had died at Treblinka would be chief of the Office of State Security, and Jews would be chiefs of all or almost all the departments, though from now on their names wouldn’t be Jewish ones but “General Romkowski"s and “Colonel Rozanski"s. In time, these people put Jews in most of the Office’s upper-echelon jobs in Warsaw and in Poland’s provinces. In one such job was Josef, who now would be Jozef, and who’d never wonder, Why does Stalin like Jews? Neither would Adam, who now was sitting in Josef’s imposing office. Adam’s father had died, his mother was still in Belsen, his girlfriend in Ravensbrück. He’d recently given the eulogy at a mass burial in Auschwitz, saying, “I will take revenge,” but his revenge so far was to manage the food, water and medicine at the hospital and to tell tourists, “Now, here’s where the train came in.” “How would I build a New World?” he now said to Josef, intrigued.

An Eye for an Eye: The Story of Jews who Sought Revenge For the Holocaust John Sack, 1993