The Nazi Question

A Short Fictional Tale

By Izzy Sommers, MD

It was exactly 3 pm, Wednesday afternoon.  For the past 5 weeks, I have attended the wood-carving classes of Samuel Gustavsen, after lunch from 1 to 3.  I noticed 2 identical, unusual, white and blue, Toyota minitrucks whose drivers were discussing something tete-a-tete.  I could see them clearly through the large Queen Anne windows of my new home, YE OLDE FOLKS CO-OPERATIFF, on the east bank of the picturesque Welland Canal.   The trucks were parked across the old canal in a small, gravel parking area, adjacent to the paved bicycle path.  The smooth bicycle paths of the area were well maintained; they followed the Welland Canal from Port Mannheim through Wellandorf to Ste. Sophia.  The drivers of the minitrucks saluted each other.  Each quickly drove out of the small gravel parking lot unto Washington Street, one going west toward Jonestown, the other east toward Naked Falls.  Both trucks displayed small decals on the front and back doors:

RENT A SMALL TRUCK

RENT-A-TRUCK

RENT A FLEET OF THEM

Next carving class, I saw the trucks, again.  I’m usually able to read lips, but these drivers, in light blue uniforms and chauffeur caps, were either moving their lips in code or speaking a foreign language I didn’t understand.  I called over my retired assistant, Jimmy 007 Bondsmann, who lived here, too.  We had both worked as security guards for the Canadian Government, mainly as body guards for indiscrete or wandering MPP’s, some of whom were pre-senile and others of whom were in this very co-op.  We had both been trained in the art of picking up whispered conversations in the vicinity of the men and women to whom we were assigned.  Sometimes it averted a disaster by alerting one of us to some danger.  Once, we detected an assassination conspiracy; a model acting as an escort to the Prime Minister was arrested before she could pull the trigger of her 38 caliber bra…  More often, we detected the arranging of a forbidden rendezvous, the actual original bra size of a porn star, the latest defrocking of a person of the cloth or the secret of a newly disclosed homo- or metrosexual.  We were required to maintain our own apartments in Toronto and Ottawa and to remain undercover to our cover as homosexual partners who were successful interior designers and wedding planners.

Covering my mouth with Carving Monthly, I asked Jimmy if he still owned the secretly sequestered version of GIZMO-QP34i.  Without a word or a gesture, 007 discretely retrieved what looked like an iPod, with 2 earpieces, which made us appear to be auditioning a new music selection.  He “pointed” the device at the large Queen Anne window through which we could see the last few moments of the minitruck driver’s meeting before they quickly departed east and west on Washington.

“Got it!” whispered Jimmy.  “They’re speaking Yiddish!  I recognized ‘shmuck’ and ‘shlepp’ and ‘Gei pish uff ’n yum!’  I’ll go ’n’ get Sammy!”

Samuel Benjamin Weiss was also a former security guard for the Canadian Government and presently a resident of our nursing, retirement home.  Sammy came to the window and we whispered what we had heard.  His eyes widened and his ears perked up.  “They’re Massad!” he whispered.  What’re they doing in Wellandorf?”  The three of us decided to wait until the next afternoon to catch another meeting of the Jewish-speaking minitruck drivers and perhaps pick up what they were planning.  Sure enough, the next afternoon, the two minitrucks arrived.  We translated the conversation with the valued help of Sammy.  “They’re following some Nazis in town!” was Sammy’s pronouncement.  “They’re going to gather on Aqueduct Street to spy on the Nazi meeting.”  Sammy added, I could not translate a little about the ultimate plans but the meeting is apparently set for next Wednesday at noon.”  “We could set up a stake-out, like the old days,” said 007.  I said, “we can use the cabs and just cruise by so as not to attract attention.”  “Good idea!” whispered Sammy.

The cabs were an old ruse that all of us had used in the past for stake-outs.  We three all had the roof lights and decals for the doors to make our old cars look a lot like cabs.  It had always worked well, in the past.  We started cruising Aqueduct Street about 10 am, Wednesday morning.  We’d simulate the picking up, and dropping off, of passengers or packages and cruise around the corner to meet behind the cemetery to discuss our observations.  “The minitrucks are here in huge numbers!” said 007 about 11 am.  “I counted 43,” reported 007.  I reported seeing over 45.  By 11:45, each of us had the same count of 50.  They were all parked on Aqueduct Street near where there’s a ramp down to the old Welland Canal for walkers and bicyclists.  Starting at exactly noon, a well-dressed thin man walked up from the bicycle path and walked to the house at 37 Aqueduct.  He paused for a second to look around and then mounted the front steps of the porch.  He knocked softly on the door using the shiny brass rapper.  The house looked dark.  No lights were turned on as the door was opened quickly for the well-dressed man with a Hitler moustache.  Still no lights were turned on as the arrival entered and disappeared into the dark interior.  All the windows were heavily shaded with thick-slatted Venetian blinds.  At intervals of exactly one minute, 50 thin, well-dressed men, each sporting Hitler moustaches, and wearing Tyrolean hats with small brushes on the right side of the hats, entered the house and disappeared into the darkness.  By 1:00 pm, they were all inside.  Still, there was no visible activity in the house at 37 Aqueduct.

The three of us former security men drove our cabs past the house as if looking for an address.  When we met behind the cemetery on Church Street, we decided we had no idea what was going to transpire.  The answer came almost immediately.  At 1:11 pm, exactly, the 50 minitrucks started up and with their motors still running parked as close to number 37 as possible.  Each minitruck driver exited his truck and retrieved pieces of something from the back door of their vehicles and carried their piece to the front door of 37 Aqueduct.  A large something or other was assembled quickly.  The door was then battered down and the large something was wheeled into the interior darkness of the house.  We all heard some muffled pinging sounds coming from the darkness within the house, which we recognized, immediately, as gun shots from guns with silencers.  Then, we felt, rather than heard, a rumbling noise from somewhere in the house.  The noise lasted about three minutes, diminished gradually in intensity, and then stopped.  Then, we noticed water slowly dripping off the porch, originating from the door which had been forcefully battered down.  The water was dripping off the porch in several small streams for about 30 minutes.  Then the flow of water caesed and all the minitruck drivers in sky blue work uniforms and sky blue caps exited quickly.  All of them drove off in their minitrucks and were never seen again in Wellandorf.

We quickly alerted some of our friends on the Niagara Regional Police Force who arrived in a few minutes in three squad cars.  They signalled us to enter the house with them.  We found the basement flooded.  The level of water was receding quickly and we were able to wade into the basement recreation room.  In the wall facing the old Welland Canal, was a neat hole exactly 60 inches in diameter.  The contents of the recreation room floated out through the hole, on its way to the old Welland Canal that used to be a prominent feature of the old downtown of Wellandorf.  The new canal bypassed the city and was elevated.  Roads exiting the city going east, all went through tunnels und the new Welland Canal.  The old and new canals would be re-united north of Wellandorf about 10 miles near Port Bradenton.  Anything exiting the house on Aqueduct, through the recently made tunnel, would float toward Ste. Katerina, Ontario, and eventually reach Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence Seaway and the North Atlantic Ocean at the Gaspe Peninsula, just south of Newfoundland and Laborador.

Only 2 intact bloated bodies of the well-dressed Nazis were ever found.  The other 49 were distributed so widely in the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Atlantic Ocean that it would have been impossible to find them.  The whales and other denizens of the deep might have made good meals of them in excellent feeding and breeding grounds around Rimouski and Riviere-du-Loup in Quebec.  The identities of the two bodies were established as long sought after Nazi war criminals, who had been hiding and only recently detected, in North America, presumably, in the Niagara Peninsula.  The Massad did not come forward to take credit for its successes.  Except for this fictional account, there is, as far as I know, no other report to substantiate what occurred.

Amen and Hallelujah!

THE END

© izzy sommers, md

Welland, Canada

June 17, 2013