Beneath a Scarlet Sky

“What?” Pino said.

“Tell her,” Leyers said. “And there is no argument. Either her daughter is saved, or she is not, and I’ll find someone more agreeable.”

Pino didn’t know what to think, but told her.

The woman swallowed but said nothing.

The women around her said, “Save her. Do it!”

At last, the sick girl’s mother nodded, and Leyers said to the SS guards, “Take her to my car, and wait with her there.”

The Nazis hesitated until Colonel Rauff shouted at them to comply. The girl, though weak and feverish, went hysterical when they took her from her mother’s arms. Her shrieks and cries could be heard throughout the station while Leyers ordered the rest of the people out of the boxcar. He walked in front of them, looking at each in turn before stopping in front of a girl in her late teens.

“Ask her if she wishes to be brought somewhere safe,” Leyers said.

Pino did, and the girl nodded without hesitation.

General Leyers ordered two more Waffen-SS guards to take her to his car.

The general moved on, inspecting, and Pino couldn’t help remembering how he had graded the slaves at the stadium in Como that first day Pino drove for Leyers. In minutes, General Leyers had picked two more, both boys, both in their teens. One boy refused, but his father and mother overruled him.

“Take him,” the man said firmly. “If he’s safe, he’s yours.”

“No, Papa,” the boy said. “I want to—”

“I don’t care,” his mother said, crying as she hugged him. “Go. We’ll be fine.”

When the SS soldiers had led them away, Leyers nodded to Rauff, who ordered the others back into the cattle car. Pino felt overwhelming dread watching them board the train, especially the mother and the father of the last boy chosen. They kept looking back over their shoulders before climbing into the boxcar, as if for one more glimpse of their lost love and joy.

You did the right thing, Pino thought. It’s tragic, but you did the right thing.

He could not watch when they shut the cattle car door, barred, and locked it.

“Let’s go,” Leyers said.

They walked past Colonel Rauff. The general’s valise sat at the Gestapo chief’s feet.

When they reached the Fiat, the four taken off the train were inside and shivering. Three were in the backseat, and one in the front. Two SS soldiers were guarding them. They didn’t look happy about it when Leyers dismissed them.

The general opened the rear door and looked in at them, smiling. “Vorarbeiter, tell them my name is Major General Hans Leyers of the Organization Todt. Ask them to repeat that, please.”

“Repeat it, mon général?”

“Yes,” Leyers shot back, irritated. “My name. My rank. The Organization Todt.”

Pino did as he was told, and they each repeated his name, rank, and the Organization Todt, even the little sick girl.

“Excellent,” the general said. “Now ask them who saved them from Platform Twenty-One?”

Pino felt strange but did as he was told, and the four dutifully repeated his name.

“Have long and prosperous lives, and praise your God as if today were Passover,” Leyers said, and shut the car door.

The general looked at Pino, his breath billowing clouds in the frigid air. “Take them to the chancellery, Vorarbeiter, to Cardinal Schuster. Tell him to hide them or get them to Switzerland. Tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t bring him more.”

“Oui, mon général,” Pino said.

“Pick me up at the telephone exchange at six p.m.,” he said. He turned and walked back into the train station. “We have much to do.”

Pino watched Leyers go before turning back to the car, trying to decipher what he’d just seen occur. Why was he—? What was he—? But then, he decided, none of it mattered. Getting these four to the chancellery was the important thing. He got into the car and turned it on.

The sick girl, Sara, cried and moaned for her mother.

“Where are we going?” the older girl said.

“The safest place in Milan,” Pino said.



He parked the Fiat in the courtyard of the chancellery and told them to wait inside. Then he climbed the snowy staircase to the cardinal’s apartment and knocked.

A priest he did not recognize answered. Pino told him who he was, whom he worked for, and who was in the car.

“Why were they in the boxcars?” the priest asked.

“I didn’t ask, but I think they’re Jews.”

“Why did this Nazi general think Cardinal Schuster would ever get involved with Jews?”

Pino looked at the priest, who’d gone stony, and felt outraged. He pulled himself up to his full height and loomed over the priest, a slight man.

“I don’t know why Leyers thought that,” Pino said. “But I do know that Cardinal Schuster has been helping Jews escape to Switzerland for the past year and a half because I helped him do it. Now, shouldn’t we ask the cardinal what he wants done?”

He’d said this all in such a threatening tone that the priest shrank and said, “I can’t promise you anything. He’s working in his library. But I’ll go—”

“No, I’ll go,” Pino said. “I know the way.”

He brushed past the priest, went down the hall until he reached the library, and knocked.

“I asked not to be disturbed, Father Bonnano,” Schuster called from inside.

Pino tore off his hat, opened the door, and stepped through bobbing his head and saying, “I’m sorry, My Lord Cardinal, but it’s an emergency.”

Cardinal Schuster stared at him curiously. “I know you.”

“Pino Lella, My Lord Cardinal. I drive for General Leyers. He got four Jews off the train at Platform Twenty-One. He told me to bring them to you, and to say that he was sorry there couldn’t be more.”

The cardinal pursed his lips. “Did he now?”

“They’re here. In his car.”

Schuster did not say a thing.

“Your Eminence,” Father Bonnano said, “I explained that you cannot personally be involved with such—”

“Why not?” Schuster said sharply, and then looked to Pino. “Bring them inside.”

“Thank you, My Lord Cardinal,” Pino said. “One girl is sick with fever.”

“We’ll get a doctor. Father Bonnano will see to it. Won’t you, Father?”

The priest seemed unsure, and then bowed deeply. “At once, Your Eminence.”

When Pino had seen the four to the cardinal’s library and watched Father Bonnano fetch them blankets and hot tea, he said, “I should go, My Lord Cardinal.”

Schuster studied Pino, and then walked him out of earshot of the refugees.

“I don’t know what to make of your General Leyers,” the cardinal said.

“I don’t, either. He changes every day. Full of surprises.”

“Yes,” Schuster said thoughtfully. “He is full of surprises, isn’t he?”





Chapter Twenty-Five

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