THE HITLER FUND by Sandra Kobrina
“Thieves, murderers what you are,” my father screams at my brother Barry and me, lunging toward us in the den of his Florida home. His voice is from another time, another world. All we’ve done is taken pillows off the couch, but he knows what we’re after.
“Daddy, relax, you’re going to give yourself another heart attack,” I tell him. My voice is shaky. All week long I have been dreading this day.
“Ver geharget, drop dead, both of you,” he glares at us with what I assume to be the same vicious stare he leveled at the Germans. My brother and I look at each other and almost smile. We have heard these words many times. It is his go-to phrase when he’s really pissed off.
Behind us in this tiny den is a cracked wall unit tentatively balanced against an uneven wall. Only hinges remain where glass used to be, and it’s been emptied of the Russian samovars and countless tchotchkes it held just days before. One push and it will collapse. Just like my father.
Next to the wall unit is the hole, the size of a 30” flat screen. Through it I can see the remains of what was the bathroom, broken tile, a dangling medicine cabinet, and into the empty garage. Who knew you could drive a Cadillac through a wall or two and all it would need is a new bumper, hood and a paint job?
My mother paces stoically behind my father, repeating everything he says, like an out-of-sync ventriloquist’s dummy. “Drop dead,” she screeches, “thieves,” but she gives me a look that takes it back. She is the ultimate survivor, playing both sides. She knows she needs me. I’m the one dealing with the accident reports and the insurance company, and she wants me to take care of the contractors. The damage to the house comes to $60,000. Luckily insurance will cover most of it.
“That’s why we spend a fortune for insurance,” my mother said earlier in the week when I told her we were covered. “Everyone makes mistakes.”
My mother’s mistake was driving the car into the house. Pulling into the garage, she meant to apply the brakes but pressed the gas pedal full force. The Seville went through the garage wall, through the bathroom, and lodged its nose into the den. She was unhurt, as was my father, who was sitting in the kitchen at the time.
As soon as he heard the sound of the crash he called me – this before my mother was out of the car. I live 3000 miles away in California. It was 6 a.m. my time.
I grabbed the phone as fast as possible hoping not to wake my husband, Jason. This was the fifth time in two weeks my parents had called our house before 7 a.m. No matter how many times I reminded them we were three hours earlier, they kept calling. It was likely that they didn’t remember, but it was even more likely that they didn’t care.
Before I could even eke out a hello I heard, “Sandy, we’re finished. Your mother has killed us. You better get here.”
This was not the first time my father had uttered those words or similar ones about my mother’s incompetence, big or small. There were countless calls over many years demanding I come over immediately, he was divorcing her, or she had done X, Y or Z. “I can’t take it no more,” he’d say, and having been on call for these emotional and physical emergencies for as long as I could remember, I’d grown tired of them. Most calls involved some fight and both of them being stubborn. More often I’d agree with him, but I disliked taking sides in their constant drama. I knew they would never divorce. They were stuck together with the glue of shared trauma, and neither one could function outside their private ghetto. Eventually she would forgive him for whatever transgression, but she never absolved me for the crime of listening to him.
Still, I took every call seriously and resented every one. I pitied both of them, tortured souls, war damaged, never far from concentration camps and death. At the same time I hated them, hated the position they put me in.
This time, round 500-something, I thought but didn’t say, “Why should I bother showing up if she’s killed you?” But he was already telling me about the car and the water forming pools in the den, and I sensed this was more serious than the usual minor scuffle. I hung up and told him to call the police. And I called the airlines.
In the week since I arrived, I’ve filled out massive forms, found a contractor, and located a hotel for them to stay in during the construction. But they won’t leave.
Here’s the problem. There’s the gold. The Hitler Fund.
And that is why two days before construction is to begin, my brother flies in from Maryland. Hidden inside this spotless, unused couch, smack in the middle of the upcoming work zone, my parents have buried heavy kilo bars of gold. Each one is wrapped tightly in plastic and sealed with duct tape. I’ve never known how many there are, but both my parents have told me countless times over the past 40 years that the Hitler Fund is never to be spent. It is not to be touched, not ever. It’s to be used only as a bribe if the Nazis ever knock on the door. It’s our bargaining chip, our way out of the ovens.
Since I was 9 years old, I’ve argued about this. “Daddy, this is America, Hitler’s not coming here,” I always said.
“If you think a Holocaust can’t happen here, you’re crazy,” he always answered. “I know better.”
By the time I was 12, I knew it was useless to disagree. I saw that even though it was 25 years after WWII, the war never left them for even a moment and it never would. I saw how they were depriving themselves and depriving me rather than choosing to spend the Hitler Fund. I watched them hide jewelry and stash cash in the hollows of doors, in the walls behind light fixtures, and in empty sugar canisters, while they clipped coupons and re-used tea bags three and four times, still living in the poverty and deprivation of years past. I was always broke. I mooched off my friends for 15 cents to buy an egg cream.
“Can’t we at least enjoy life a little until Hitler comes?” I asked my dad when I was in junior high. “Can’t you spare a quarter a day for a slice of pizza?”
His answer was always no. Just in case loomed larger than anything we needed in the now. The past took precedence over the future. Our apartment was tiny; I shared a room with my brother until I left for college while the Hitler Fund remained hidden. Under no circumstances, they both insisted, was there any reason to dip into the Hitler Fund.
When my brother arrives in Florida, we discuss their latest situation at length. We’re sitting in their spare pink bedroom, out of their earshot. We know they’ll never leave the house with the gold stashed in the couch, and we don’t think the gold is safe in a house filled with strange workmen. Our parents are 83 years old and slowly sinking into dementia. We can’t move our parents, so we know we’ll have to move the gold. And we know it’s going to cause a scene.
Just the day before the four of us were sitting around the small glass kitchen table, debris and dust visible in the humid Florida air. Barry slurped chicken soup my mother had cooked amid the rubble, while I tried to reason with them.
“What if when the men move the unusually heavy couch they find the gold?”
“They’re not going to look in the couch. I’m going to watch them,” my mother said.
“What if you have to go to the bathroom?” my brother asked.
“Don’t be an idiot. Then Daddy will sit and watch.”
“What if by chance they find it, then what?” I asked.
“I’ll take care of them,” my 5′4″, 130-pound father said, pulling a knife from the pocket of his Dockers. A small switchblade he’s carried for 60 years.
I looked at my brother and stifled a laugh. He almost choked on the Dr. Brown’s diet cherry soda my parents always have in the house.
I told them Barry and I would store the gold and bring it all back after the workmen finished. When the house was back to normal and they had their alarm system working again, we would bring it back to their Fort Knox-like lair.
“No,” my father screamed and walked out of the room, my mother trailing. I started to laugh. Really laugh. Long ago I’d learned to cope with their insanity by finding the humor in it.
“Maybe they’re worried we won’t bargain for their lives if Hitler shows up in the next six to eight weeks?” I said to Barry.
“I wouldn’t,” my brother said as he placed his dishes in the sink.
And so we had devised a plan to move the gold the next morning while they were playing cards with friends. Barry would put every bar into a safe deposit box, and then he’d fly back to Maryland.
But it’s morning, and we’re at work, and they’ve come home early because of a fight over a nickel in their kalooki game.
They walk in just as I’m lifting pillows from the couch.
My father screams, then tackles my husky brother with the precision of a Jets linebacker.
“Thieves, you’re stealing from me. You’re robbing me,” he yells as my brother delicately peels him off.
“Dad, we’re not stealing it. Come to the bank, we’ll put it only in your name,” I say. “We don’t want it. We just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I can take care of myself,” yells the former guerilla fighter and again he wields his tiny knife. I wonder if he plans to stab my brother or me.
“You can’t. You don’t remember very well anymore, Dad. You do things you’re not supposed to.” Just the week before, while he and I were at Publix, he modeled his diamond Rolex for the bag boy. Hubris and dementia are not a good combination. Who knew what he might show the workmen?
“We’ll put it back as soon as the work is over. You can’t leave it in a room where men will have to move everything around.”
“My own children, stealing from me, I’m going to call the police.”
I try to touch his shoulder. “Daddy, calm down,” but like a petulant child he pulls away, sits down on the couch and folds his arms. My 200-pound brother easily lifts him.
“Daddy, don’t be crazy,” Barry says.
It’s asking a bird not to molt. When Barry sets him down, my father storms to the kitchen table, cursing and screaming, while my mother echoes every comment, “Police, call the police,” doing her best to keep things at the height of hysteria and misery; it’s where she feels most comfortable.
I weakly attempt to lift out the sofa bed but it’s too heavy to budge. I turn to my brother.
“How much you think they have in there?”
At least 6 bars, maybe more,” my brother says.
“How do you know?” I ask.
“They told me.”
Turns out they have over six figures stashed in the couch and they told him. Not me. I feel a tinge of jealousy. Do they love him more than they love me? Deep down I know the answer is no. My father adores me. But he trusts my brother more. He has become an Orthodox Jew. He saves money. I, on the other hand, spend. I’ve lived among and made friends with people of all colors and religions and backgrounds. Sometimes I ran out of money, and when I did, I did the inconceivable: I used credit cards. I bought retail. I also made the largest offense possible – I divorced my Jewish husband and married a half-Jew, the wrong half.
And even though they call at 6 a.m., I’m the one they cannot trust to know what they have. Clearly they knew I wouldn’t sell them out to Hitler, but they’re worried that if I knew how much they were hoarding, I might pressure them to spend it. Barry didn’t care about hoarding; he just didn’t want the workmen to steal it.
“You should drop dead, you gonif,” he spits again as my brother lifts the up the bed and unfolds the thin mattress.
Two wrapped packages, each one weighing almost 10 pounds, are taped together. My brother carries these out to his car. Our parents follow him into the street.
“I’ll never talk to you again,” my mother screams.
“I’ll piss on your grave,” my father yells.
I watch my brother get into his car and drive off, leaving me with the dynamic duo. It’s part of our bargain. I’m to stay until tomorrow to wait for the contractors to start.
The truth is, I could leave. I could say, “If you don’t stop cursing at me, I’m leaving,” but I don’t say that. I can’t. I can’t bear to see them lost and suffering. Every since I was a kid, they’ve told me I am all they have, that I’m responsible for their happiness and well-being. It’s my responsibility to make up for all those who died – all those mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters who were killed in concentration camps and ghettos, who they mourn every day. I can’t watch them fall and fail, and I can’t abandon them. When they need me, they reel me in like a marlin on a line. I think I’m swimming free in the ocean of life, but with just one tug on the line I’m there. I’m back. I’m swimming, yes, but their pain is the bait.
For hours after Barry leaves all they talk about was how we have betrayed them and what thieves we are.
“You put him up to it,” my mother cries, always placing blame on me. She prefers my quiet brother who eats her soup and lives like she lives.
“You’re going to piss my money away,” my father yells. No matter how many times I assure them that Hitler won’t show up in the next six to eight weeks, they will not rest.
Less than 24 hours later, my brother calls from his home in Maryland. Instead of placing the metal in a local safe deposit box and flying home as we’d discussed, he drove straight to his home with the booty in the trunk. “We’ll deal with it once the job’s finished,” he says.
For the next two days my parents stew and simmer. Every thought, every comment revolves around the Hitler Fund.
“Let me take you to a hotel,” I cry as the whirring of the saws begins.
“So you can steal more,” my father shoots back.
“You need to leave, look at all the dust, you shouldn’t live like this,” I beg.
“I’ve lived in worse. This is nothing. Believe you me. You should only know from what I lived through,” my mother says.
I give up. They’re always more comfortable with stress than with ease. The workmen bang away and I fly home to California.
My parents call me daily for the next two months, complaining about the noise, the dirt, the inconvenience of it all. Still, they refuse to move out for even a day. My mother rarely mentions the Hitler Fund. My father, who was circling Alzheimer’s before the accident, dives deeper into dementia and never mentions the Fund. My mother says he’s forgotten it’s no longer in the couch. We agree it’s not a good idea to remind him.
Over the next year my father continues to deteriorate, and his mind keeps revisiting his childhood home and his suffering under the Nazis. Sometimes he calls out for my mother, but mostly he calls out for his. As he nears death, at times he seems lucid, calm, considerate. He asks about my husband, if I’m happy instead of “Is the goy making a living?” He asks what I’m writing instead of asking how much I’m being paid.
A few months before he dies, I’m sitting with him in the hospital, and he looks at me with tear-filled eyes. In the last six months I’ve seen him cry more than I’ve seen both of my parents cry in their whole lives.
“I’m sorry I was so meshuggah about the Hitler Fund,” he says. I put all my fears, my mishugas on you. Maybe I shouldn’t have had kids, but I didn’t know I was crazy. At least I made a living for you, what I thought was important. Spend the money on the children, on yourself. At least you should have pleasure that I worked so hard.”
I smile and hold his hand. “Thank you, Daddy,” I say. It is one of the few moments I have with him where he is at peace.
My father died four months later, and I spoke to my brother about the things my father had said, but Barry wouldn’t hear of spending any of the Hitler Fund. He and I were managing my mother’s money now and she didn’t need it. They had lived frugally and had plenty in savings. Barry didn’t need it either. So I decided to drop the discussion.
Then the unthinkable happened. My brother died of a sudden heart attack six months after my Father. I flew across the country back to Florida yet again, picked up my grief-stricken mother and flew north to Maryland with her to my brother’s shiva. I had not been to his home in over 12 years. We’d see each other and our respective families at my parents’ home in Florida.
I walked into his house and I was shocked. My educated, well-off brother lived as if he was on welfare. His furniture was mostly cast-offs from my parents’ home, couches and chairs dating back to the 70’s. The carpets were old, stained and worn, lights were broken, walls in need of repair. There were no shrubs or trees in the front of his brick ranch-style home, while nearby houses boasted high-end landscaping. My kids remarked that from the outside it looked like a witness protection house and the inside looked like the before house on Extreme Home Makeover.
Sadly, no matter that he was an important scientist and professor, he lived with the fears of a Holocaust survivor they’d implanted in him. He banked money like they hid gold; he had created for himself a new kind of ghetto, a more modern one, but by becoming an Orthodox Jew and associating exclusively with other Jews, he’d mimicked the way my parents knew only other Holocaust survivors. He watched pennies. He lived in fear.
Barry had bragged numerous times that he had hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank. Maybe even a million. And he still had his gold.
Twenty-five years earlier, when I married my first husband and my brother married for life, my father gave us each two pieces of gold. It was, of course, to start our own Hitler Funds for our new families, insurance for saving our children-to-be.
“Put this away,” he told us. “You never know.”
I knew. I knew as soon as I had them I would spend them. I bought houses, cars, clothes and books. I wanted to live my life in the present. I didn’t want to worry whether or not I’d have enough if another Hitler showed up. I knew from watching my father, there could never be enough. I knew it was better to live than to worry.
Not Barry. He had, in many ways, become them.
On the final day of the shiva, as we sat on the little mourning chairs, which sadly were more comfortable than my brother’s furniture, my mother’s mind zeroed back in on the Hitler Fund. No matter what the trauma, what the tragedy, her mind focused in on what she would need to survive.
“You need to take the gold now before we leave,” she told me. “I want to give it to you. It should be yours.” She believes Carol, his wife, would sell her out to Hitler. Carol isn’t blood.
It is all too strange for me. I wonder what Barry has told Carol about the Hitler Fund. I don’t understand how she can live like this: What insanity has she bought into? But I don’t ask. After the shiva, I ask Carol if she knows about the Hitler Fund. Is there a safe deposit box? Is there a key? She smiles and walks me down to the basement and points to a worn brown couch I recognized from the den in the house my parents owned 30 years ago.
“I think he put it in there,” she said.
Why was I not surprised? I looked around the musty basement filled with clutter, debris, torn furniture, a TV, and ironically, a new treadmill. Barry was trying to maintain good cardio health ignoring the fact he really lived in insane self-imposed stress, just like my father who had two heart attacks before he died.
I lifted the couch pillows and there was the Hitler Fund, wrapped exactly the same as when he took them. Lying next to it were the two pieces of gold my father gave him years ago, wrapped in the same duct tape. My father used to tease Barry about being the richest man in the cemetery. The blind leading the blind, I thought. It was all so sad, so terribly sad. I left my brother’s gold in the couch but lifted out the Hitler Fund and took it home.
I took my family, my mother, and my sister-in-law’s family to Israel, to put headstones on the graves of my father and my brother. They both were buried in Israel and that’s another story.
My children have all graduated college. They have no student loans.
I took my family to Europe. And Africa. And Australia.
I put my mother in an expensive independent living facility a block from the Pacific Ocean. It is near my home and when I visit, I often take walks on the bluffs and gaze at the coastline.
My mother constantly asks where we get the money for this and I smile and tell her we have plenty, there are just two of us now. She has never crossed the street to look at the ocean.
Sandra Kobrin’s nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Huffington Post. She and Gloria Killian co-authored Full Circle: A True Story of Murder, Lies, and Vindication (New Horizon Press).