Josef watched his sister splashing around happily in the swimming pool on A-deck. Other kids chased each other around the promenade. Watched movies. Played shuffleboard. For as much as he’d wanted to grow up, Josef wished now that he could join them. Be a little kid again, cheerfully oblivious to what was going on around him.
But he wasn’t a kid anymore. He had responsibilities. Like keeping his sister and his mother safe. Papa had told him what the concentration camps were like. He couldn’t let that happen to Ruthie and his mother.
“Are you ready?”
It was Pozner. He stood in the shadow of a smokestack, looking around nervously.
Josef nodded. He had agreed to help take over the ship. He had to do something, and this was the only thing he could do.
“What about Schiendick and his firemen?” Josef asked as they walked.
“We’ve got a distraction for them down on D-deck. But we have to move fast.”
The rest of the group came together near the social hall. There were ten men, including Josef, and they all carried metal candlesticks and pieces of pipe. Some of the men were Papa’s age, like Pozner, and some of them were in their twenties. Josef was by far the youngest.
Ten men, Josef thought. A minyan.
Ten Jews come together not to worship, but to mutiny.
Pozner put a small length of lead pipe in Josef’s hand, and suddenly the weight of what Josef was about to do was very real.
“Lead on,” Pozner said.
Josef took a deep breath. There was no turning back now. He led his fellow mutineers into the maze of crew corridors.
Just outside the bridge, in the chart room where all the maps were stored, they came across Ostermeyer, the first officer. He looked up from the map cabinet with surprise, but before he could do anything, Pozner and one of the other men grabbed him and pushed him through the door to the bridge. Josef was startled by how rough they were being with Ostermeyer, but he tried to swallow his fear. Taking over the ship wasn’t going to be easy, and this was only the start.
There weren’t as many people on the bridge as there had been when Josef visited—just one officer and three sailors. The sailor at the ship’s helm saw them first, and he let go of the steering wheel to dive for an alarm. One of the passengers got to him first, slamming into the helmsman and sending him tumbling to the floor. The mutineers quickly surrounded the other sailors, threatening them with their makeshift clubs.
And they had done it. Just like that, they had taken the bridge.
Josef’s heart raced as he looked around, wondering what was next.
Stretched out before them was the great green-blue Atlantic Ocean, and beyond that, still days away, Germany and the Nazis. Up on the little
platform at the back of the room, the steering wheel teetered back and forth, and Josef wondered crazily if he should jump up there and turn the ship around himself.
“Send for the captain,” Pozner told the first officer.
Warily, Ostermeyer went to the ship’s intercom and summoned Captain Schroeder to the bridge.
As soon as Captain Schroeder stepped onto the bridge, he understood what was happening. He spun to leave, but Josef and one of the other men blocked his exit.
“Who’s in charge here?” Captain Schroeder asked. “What do you mean by all this?”
Pozner stepped forward. “We mean to save our lives by taking over the ship,” he said, “and sailing it to any other country but Germany.”
Captain Schroeder put his hands behind his back and walked to the middle of the bridge. He looked out at the ocean, not Pozner.
“The other passengers will not support you, and my crew will overpower you,” he said matter-of-factly. “All you are doing is laying yourselves open to a charge of piracy.”
Pozner and the others looked around at each other nervously. Josef couldn’t believe they were so easily losing their resolve.
“We’ll hold you here as hostages!” Josef said. “They’ll have to do as we say!”
Even Josef was surprised he’d spoken up. But his words seemed to put a little more steel back in the mutineers’ resolve.
Captain Schroeder turned to look at Josef. “The crew will obey only me,” he said calmly, “and I will give no order, no matter what you do, that will take my ship off its set course. And without that order, you can do nothing. What will you do, pilot the ship yourself?”
Josef blushed and stared at the ground, remembering his crazy urge to take the wheel when he didn’t even know how it worked or where to go.
Captain Schroeder helped his fallen helmsman back to his feet and led him to the steering wheel. The man was still shaking from the attack, but he took the helm and straightened the ship on course.
“You have done enough already for me to prefer serious charges against you,” Captain Schroeder said, still frustratingly even-keeled. “If I do, I can assure you that you will most certainly be taken back to Germany. And you know what that means.”
Josef steamed. He did know what that meant, but did Captain Schroeder know? Really know? How many Germans really understood what was happening in the concentration camps? Josef knew, because his papa had told him. Had shown him when he jumped overboard and tried to kill himself.
Josef wasn’t about to let his mother and sister end up in one of those camps.
“You would do that to us?” one of the men asked the captain.
“You are doing it to yourselves,” Schroeder said. “Listen: I understand and sympathize with your desperation.”
Pozner huffed. “You have no idea what we’ve been through. Any of us.”
Captain Schroeder nodded. “No. You’re right. But no matter what’s been done to you, what you’re doing now is a real criminal act. By law I should have you all thrown in the brig. But I’m willing to overlook all this if you leave the bridge right now and give me your word you will take no such further action.”
Josef scanned the faces of his co-conspirators and saw only panic. Fear.
Surrender.
“No,” Josef told them. “No,” he told Captain Schroeder. “My father told me what happened to him in those camps. I can’t let that happen to my mother and my little sister. We can’t go back to Germany!”
The first officer took that moment to try to pull free from the men holding him. There was a struggle. The other sailors moved to help him, and the other mutineers flinched, ready to fight.
“Ostermeyer! No!” Captain Schroeder commanded. “Cease and desist.
That’s an order.”
The first officer froze, and Pozner froze too, the lead pipe in his hand
still raised in threat.
Nobody moved.
The captain raised his hands. “I promise you men,” he said quietly, his voice almost a whisper, “I promise you on my honor as a sea captain that I will do everything possible to land you in England. I will run the ship aground there if I must. But you must stand down and promise me no further trouble.”
Pozner lowered his pipe. “Agreed,” he said.
No. No! Josef wanted to argue, but everyone else agreed.
Josef threw his pipe to the ground and left without the other men. They were going back to Europe, and there was nothing he could do about it.