Page 199 - LEIBY

Chapter 25 199

move on to Germany greeted them. Akiva was nowhere to be
seen and in his place was a different breichnik, serious and severe
looking, by the name of Shlomo.

“Who are you and where have you come from?” he asked
suspiciously.

“I’m also a breichnik,” Leiby smiled. “We’re looking for his
sister,” he pointed at Yosef. “He arrived here just a week ago
and his sister has disappeared.”

Shlomo listened attentively as Leiby told him about their
search. When he finished, Shlomo remained silent for a few
moments, his forehead creased in thought.

“If the girl isn’t in any hospital and hasn’t been reported to the
police, I think we can safely assume that she’s been lured away
by someone who wants her – in all probability, her adoptive
mother,” he said. “The Nazi who came looking for her may well
have been an agent of hers. I think that the best thing to do
now would be to mount a search of her home and see what you
come up with.”

He continued. “Your story is all too familiar to me, it’s already
happened to me a number of times,” he sighed. “After extreme
effort we finally succeeded in getting Jewish children away
from the non-Jewish parents who took care of them during the
war, but the children apparently missed them a lot, and the first
chance they had, they ran back to them.

“It’s a real tragedy, often these children were the sole survivors
of their families and have now become lost to their people
forever. After these incidents we began sending the children’s
transports first, before the adults, to orphanages and institutions
in France and Germany. These places are far enough away that
the children can’t run back home, and after they spend some
time in an all-Jewish setting, their memories of their real parents
and homes come back to them and they return to their faith.”

Yosef listened in gloomy silence. He had joined an adult