"They were murdered," Mira said, and this time there was a current of anger in her tone.
"By the British, you mean."
She shook her head. "Esther and Willie weren't killed by the British. They were murdered on August 26, 1939, in their apartment in Tel Aviv."
I asked her to repeat what she'd just said. She did. Then she told me the rest of the story. She spoke haltingly at first, as if she had to talk herself into uttering each new word in her narration. Once she got into it, though, her speech smoothed and normalized.
"I met her on the Salonika. The ship wasn't much. It was old and patched up, and the engine rattled the whole way from Greece. But it was the best we were able to find. We arrived a little after dawn and began ferrying passengers ashore. We only had two boats, so we had to make several trips back and forth. We had people on the beach with cars ready to drive the new maapilim away. Then the British came."
Her face darkened with the memory. She had strong features—high forehead, pronounced cheekbones, ruler-straight nose, full eyebrows, wide mouth with thin, almost severe lips, and a well-defined jawline. Her hair seemed to be the only part of her appearance that she actively cultivated; it fell in vibrant tresses to her trim shoulders. She wore no jewelry or makeup. The lack of added color just placed more emphasis on her eyes. They bounced back whatever light hit them. Her face was too linear to be beautiful, but there was something about it that arrested the eye.
She was five foot eight and athletic. Long limbs, narrow waist and shoulders. Small high breasts. A body made for running and jumping. A tomboyish figure, but attractive nonetheless, and it seemed to fit her character like a glove. She had on a pair of black shoes with a negligible heel and a pearl-colored shirt, which was tucked into the waistline of a blue skirt that showed her knees and calves. I found myself staring at her exposed legs.
"Unlike what the papers said at the time," Mira continued, "there was no battle. Neither I, nor any other Irgun member, was on board at the time. We were all on the beach, getting the maapilim already ashore into waiting cars and trucks. The British simply began firing as soon as they had the Salonika in range. Some of the passengers who were still on the ship died then and there; the rest—ten of them—were taken into custody. Esther and Willie were among them."
She began pacing the room. It was clear by the set of her jaw how upset reliving that day made her. No wonder the Irgun proved to be such a thorn in the side of the British. They had ample stores of motivation to draw from.
"The British took the prisoners to a makeshift prison camp near Haifa. It was nothing much. A few shacks, some fences, a guard post. A decision was made in the Irgun: we were going to storm the place and get the prisoners out."
"Shmuel Birnbaum told me the raid was a fiasco," I said.
She snorted without humor. "That's mild compared to how it was portrayed by the Hebrew press at the time. We were called terrorists, insane, a danger to Zionism. We were to be shunned. That's why I didn't want to talk about all this at the hair salon. My boss and clients, none of them know I had anything to do with that raid. I wonder how Shmuel Birnbaum knows about it."
"He has good contacts. What went wrong?"
Instead of answering, Mira stepped over to a dresser and picked up a picture that was reclining on top of it. It showed two men and two women. All four were young, fit and tanned, and dressed in khaki short pants and shirts. And all had machine guns slung over their shoulders, hanging in front of their bodies. All four flashed the confident and arrogant smiles common to young warriors.
One of the women was a younger Mira Roth. How old was she when it was taken? Nineteen, eighteen, maybe even seventeen. Her hair had been shorter then, her face slightly leaner. She looked fierce, eager for battle. Fearless.
Mira pointed to the man at the left of the quartet of young warriors. "Yohanan died that night, and Talia…" Her finger lingered on the figure of the other woman in the picture, a willowy brunette. She raised her eyes to me. They glistened with withheld tears. Apparently, Mira had not cried out her share of tears. At least not yet.
"All told, we lost four members. What went wrong? In short, everything. The raid went badly from the get-go. Nothing went according to plan. Of the ten prisoners, six died. We only got four out. We also killed some British soldiers, but that was small comfort. Two of the prisoners we freed were Esther and Willie."
"What happened next?"
"We took them to a safe house, where they stayed until we arranged false papers and an apartment for them. When Esther told me the story of the baby, I suggested giving him to another family for safekeeping. She refused and said she would care for him until his mother arrived. I think she had grown attached to him. I think she loved him."
Mira sat down again and smoothed her dress. She crossed her legs, lacing her fingers on top of her knee.
"The papers we gave them said they were mother and son. We let Esther keep her first name; it eliminated the risk of her making an involuntary mistake if someone called out her name on the street. She chose the surname Kantor—German for cantor—because her father had been one in their synagogue in Germany. She gave the baby his first name—Erich. So that's who they became: Esther and Erich Kantor, mother and son."
Now I understood why Reuben Tzanani had failed to find a death certificate for Esther Grunewald and Willie Ackerland. Both had died under assumed identities. And the people who had been close to them—neighbors and colleagues and friends—knew them by their false names. Which explained why none of them had answered Henrietta's newspaper ad.
But that raised another question. "My client posted an ad in the newspaper, asking Esther to contact her. Didn't you see it?"
Mira asked me which paper the ad had run in and gave a rueful shake of her head when I told her it was Davar.
"Davar? No Irgun member would ever read that rag. Not with the way it vilified us over the years and still does today. It's the party paper of Mapai. It's pure leftist propaganda."
Of course. I could have smacked myself for not figuring this out for myself. Like all Israelis, I was well aware of the intense enmity between Mapai, the left-wing ruling party of Israel headed by David Ben-Gurion, and the right-wing Herut party led by former Irgun leader Menachem Begin. This enmity had its roots in the 1930s and '40s, when Zionists strove to establish a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Despite sharing the same overall goal, the divergent politics and tactics of the two factions had led to tragic consequences, including internecine fighting and bloodshed. Even now, with the Irgun disbanded, its fighters absorbed into the Israeli Defense Forces, and its commanders turned to politicians, the hatred between Mapai and Herut burned blinding hot.
This blindness had led Mira, and perhaps other members of the Irgun who knew Esther Grunewald by her true name, to not see a particular newspaper ad. If they had, I would not have become involved in the case, and the terrible duty of informing Henrietta Ackerland that her son was dead would not have fallen to me.
"And the murderer?" I asked. "What happened to him?"
"He was never caught," Mira said.
10
I asked Mira a few more questions about the murders, but she had little information.
"Newspaper reports at the time were vague on the details, but I know both Esther and Willie were killed with a knife. Rumor was the scene was pretty gruesome." She had no idea what the police investigation had uncovered, nor whether there had been any suspects.