The Book of Ghosts Read Online Free PDF Page A

life affirming to something vaguely evil and suspect. There were all sorts of theories about how Isaac Becker was really a Soviet spy and that the book was full of coded secrets. That when they liberated all the Auschwitz camps, the Russians had enlisted Weisen as a spy. That the book was a lie perpetrated by the Russians to make Americans doubt the sincerity of their new allies, the West Germans. None of it made a lick of sense or held up under any kind of scrutiny, but what did that matter in 1952?
    The worst part for Weisen was when the investigator from the House Un-American Activities Committee showed up at his house to interview him and his wife. It was bad enough that this preppy asshole came into his home, asking questions not so different than a Gestapo or KGB interrogator might have asked, but what really infuriated Jacob was that this prig hounded Ava as well.
    â€œLevinsky, that’s your maiden name, is it not, Mrs. Weisen?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re the daughter of Saul Levinsky, the lawyer who represents the grocery workers union. Is that correct?
    â€œYes and yes.”
    â€œWere you aware that the head of the union is alleged to of have ties to the New York Socialist Workers Committee?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDo you think your father is aware of these allegations?”
    Ava was cool. “You’d have to ask my father, I suppose.”
    And so it went. Jacob kept his answers short and nearly bit through his tongue in frustration because, in spite of his anger, the investigator’s unfounded insinuations and thinly veiled anti-Semitism, Jacob knew he had been the one to bring this down on their heads. He, and he alone, was responsible. Nothing ever came of the allegations, but rumors and whispers were enough to ruin people in those days, especially Jews who spoke with foreign accents. After all, who needs the truth when you’ve got demagoguery on a grand scale?
    Jacob and Ava Weisen were luckier than most in that they weren’t ruined. In fact, Olson’s story did far more damage than HUAC ever could. Now that the legend of The Book of Ghosts was out there for the world to know and the pictures Max Baumgarten had snapped of the tattered package were in wide circulation, Jacob had very little peace. Jewish groups raised funds to hire investigators to look for it. The Federal Republic of Germany, as an act of atonement and as a gesture to the people of Israel, had agents on its trail. It was rumored that the Israeli government had assigned some Mossad agents from the Nazi hunter squads to search for the book. For a moment there, it seemed that every adventurer, freelance reporter, and foreign government on the planet was out searching for the damned thing. And of course, they all wanted to interview Jacob Weisen. Worse still were the constant rumors of the book’s whereabouts. The Book of Ghosts had been transformed from a lie into a combination of the Holy Grail and the Maltese Falcon. With every report, every rumor, came a knock on Weisen’s front door or a ring of his phone.
    Yes, there were whole months, years sometimes, when the activity would slow to a trickle and Jacob and Ava could enjoy their children and, eventually, their grandchildren. The damned book, however, was never completely out of their lives and each time an escaped Nazi was captured—the year Eichmann went on trial was hell—or a Holocaust-related movie like The Pawnbroker, Schindler’s List, Shoah, Marathon Man, The Odessa File, The Boys From Brazil or even The Producers was released, Jacob was forced back into the hell of his own making. The Internet only made things worse. By then, at least, he had retired and they’d moved down to Boynton Beach. After Ava passed in 2002, Jacob Weisen had a brief period where he was practically Zen about the whole affair. He could not undo things. What was done was done, but it wasn’t done, not by a long