Leonard Brooks

by Ian Wrisley

Ravensbruck: Small town in the forests and lakes of northern Germany, near Furstenberg.

From A Concise Dictionary of German Place-Names. Maximillian Strauss London: Topwattle & Sons, 1912

Ravensbruck: Small German town, site of a Nazi work camp for women beginning 1938. An estimated 92,000 women and children were murdered there. Ravensbruck was liberated April 30, 1945 by Russian Army.

From The Big One: WWII. Gerhardt Escobar New York: Pagollion Press, 1962

If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Jesus Christ, Luke 16:31

From Big Bill's Book of Bible Quotes Amirillo: Second Coming books, 1982

My name is Leonard Brookes. Like a lot of families, the Brookes have their share of skeletons, always just out of sight, waiting. But ours just aren't dead. Ours are the kind that leer out of the closet, dressed in rags. Ours chase you down hallways in dreams, shrieking from airless phantom lungs. I've never told anyone about this.

It starts with my grandfather, Heschel Brookes, who wasn't always Heschel Brookes, upstanding Jewish grocer. He was fifteen year old Herman when he came to the U.S. from Germany in 1919, losing himself in the American dream. He learned English like a native and never looked back. In June of 1946, on a New York City street he saw a man who reminded him of his dead father. The man motioned to him to follow, then ducked inside a movie theater. He never found the man but bought a ticket. What he saw sent him back out onto the street.

He hurried: home to collect his family, then the courthouse where he legally changed their name, then to the train station where he bought tickets to Columbus, Ohio for himself, my grandmother, my father and four uncles. There the newly named Heschel marched the entire tribe to Temple Beth Israel. They converted to Judaism, circumcision and all. He bought a grocery and lived fairly happily ever after.

All these things Heschel did because of a five minute news reel he saw as Herman that steamy June day in 1946. It was about the liberation of death camps in Europe: Auschwitz, Dachau, Ravensbruck. Herman Ravensbruck watched a man, a guard in an SS uniform, the very image of his brother, Theodore, who had died August 2, 1941. The grey guard carried a dead Jew, her arms spindly and stiff, bald head bobbing like a joke that wasn't funny.

He looked into the camera, his lips moving silently, "Bruder, Brother," then he was gone forever. And Herman's name, his life, and my name and life, changed forever.

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