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Being a wickie  at St.  Catherine's Lighthouse  on the  Isle of Wight  had its  good points,  Benjamin thought. His wife Edith and daughter  Judith  aided  him  in his  work,  so  it  became a family  endeavor. Also the lighthouse  grounds  doubled  as a  meteorological  outstation. During daylight, the  Margolies family sent  hourly  reports of  temperature,  humidity,  cloud height, cloud formation, wind direction, and wind  force to the Meteorological Office  in  London  by  Teletype. This allowed Benjamin the satisfaction of working within his chosen field.

Periodically a small amount of petrol was delivered to power the engine that turned  the  lighthouse shaft. Benjamin was never tempted to divert  a  portion  of this  petrol,  as  he had  no motorcar, but he kept an eye out for neighbors who did.

On weekday mornings Judith  trudged up  from Undercliff  to the village of Niton  for  her primary  school,  and sometimes  her mother accompanied her when she needed to attend to shopping. At sunset on Friday, when it was Shabbat, Benjamin  and his family ceased from all their labors and remained indoors.

On rare occasions Benjamin took his family by ferry  and bus on such modest holidays as they could afford. One time they went to the beautiful Lake District  in the  northwest of  the country, camping in the high, treeless hills called fells that qualified as mountains in England.

The Isle of  Wight  lay  within the  English  Channel, and  the English Channel was  the  chief arena  of  contest between  the United Kingdom and  Germany in  1940. That is not  to say  the Margolies family would have been entirely safe if they had moved closer to the Lake District.

The Luftwaffe had a clear advantage when it came to the quality of their aircraft, but with the new Chain  Home Radio Direction Finding systems providing early warning of  attacks, RAF pilots could rest until scrambled, use less fuel, and put less wear on their own aircraft.

As the Luftwaffe  began to  take  heavy losses  in bombers  and fighter cover  they tried  attacking  some  of the  Chain  Home stations. One was  near  to St. Catherine's Lighthouse. The Margolies family was unharmed but they had their first taste of the War. Towers constructed with an open  lattice structure are practically immune to blasts. The few antennas the Germans did manage to topple were repaired within days while operators from nearby dummy stations  broadcasted  signals to  make the  enemy believe no harm was done at all. L1

The Luftwaffe tried approaching England below the sight line of Chain  Home  stations  but  the  British  used  smaller  systems intended to direct gunfire against ships in the Channel. German losses continued to  mount. Eventually the Luftwaffe  accepted they would  be spotted  electronically  and  switched to  night raids, but the British quickly produced even smaller systems for planes that rapidly ended bombing by manned aircraft.

The Luftwaffe lost nearly  two thousand  planes and  Hitler was forced to  shelf  his  invasion plans. In hindsight  Hitler's campaign  was  never realistic. Even if  Germany had  obtained command of the air Britain still had an unmatched Navy.

The United Kingdom  shifted emphasis  from air  defense to  air offense, but during the course of 1941 it became clear to Bomber Command that nighttime navigation to  the correct target  was a serious  issue. In 1942  an electronic  guidance system  called Clarinet was developed with two highly directional radio beams, one transmitting Morse code dots and the other one transmitting dashes, to be received by a  single bomber flying point  in the wave to minimize the chance of  the Germans reverse-engineering the system from a downed plane.

The night bombers flew out from England on a straight line along the radio  dots,  and  when  the  lead  plane  encountered  the strongest part of the radio dashes from another angle it dropped a load of  marker flares. Then the whole bomber  wave dropped their bombs on the flares.

Concrete was  transparent  to  the Clarinet  frequency. So an antenna was constructed inside  Benjamin's lighthouse mounted to the  central shaft. That way the structure  of the  lighthouse would hide the antenna and  the Germans, it was  thought, would never suspect a thing. Periodically a targeting order  came to Benjamin Margolies  over the same  Teletype he used  to transmit his weather  information to  London. The message gave  him  a precise  angle to  position the  antenna, a  duration and  start time, and whether he was to transmit dots or dashes.

The Margolies family was kept  busy throughout 1943 as  the RAF focused their  bombing campaign  on  Hamburg  and the  industry centered in the  Ruhr  valley. The next year  a large  number of American,  Australian,  En  Zed, and  Canadian  troops  were transported to the south of England.

They trained with Tommies  in preparation  for the  invasion of France. To ensure  their  success a  tower  of  deception  was assembled that the world had never seen before. L2

False plans were planted on a corpse that was allowed to wash up on a French beach. A world of false radio traffic  was created and maintained to  let the  German High  Command conclude  that General Patton was gearing up to lead the entire force over the narrowest part of the  Channel where Dover  could be  seen from Calais. The Germans knew it was the smartest move.

Admiral Sir Bertrand Ramsay, in overall command of the invasion, left absolutely nothing to chance. On June 4, 1944, just before D-Day, Sir Ramsay actually took  time to visit  St. Catherine's lighthouse. The weather was  quite  murky and  wet  so he  cut his inspection short. Benjamin showed Ramsay  the room  where the Teletype and  Clarinet transmitter  were installed. Ramsay thanked Benjamin personally for  his service  to the  King, and Benjamin, for his part, considered it prudent not to mention the assistance he received from Edith and Judith.

The Admiral   seemed  to  be   captivated  by  a   wall  chart. Benjamin said, "That's my moving five-day  weather forecast for Undercliff, sir. That would be this stretch where the lighthouse is located.  We are in a  rain-shadow right here, you  know. And also  a fog-shadow.  The weather  in  this little  patch is  not nearly as immoderate as it is for the Overners."

He led the Admiral into the white octagonal tower to inspect the Clarinet antenna and  took  him spiralling  up the  ninety-four steps to the  top. Benjamin showed Sir  Ramsay where  the huge crystal lens had been chipped by a 1943 air raid. They could see thirty nautical miles  out to  sea. The whole English  Channel was roiling with  whitecaps  kicked up  from  high winds  which threatened to derail the immanent invasion.

"And you do this weather forecasting as a sort of hobby?"

"Perhaps more than just a hobby, Admiral Sir Ramsay. I'm trained as a meteorologist, and I'm a damn fine one,  if you don't mind me carrying my own chair. But it's wartime now, and I'm a wickie for the duration.  Now I know we've all got  to pull together to stop Jerry, sir,  but all the same, one must  use the skills one has been trained to use, or one's mind gets in a bit of a rut."

"I see," said Ramsay.

"It's not the purely sterile pursuit you might imagine it to be, Admiral Sir. By a strange fluke of geography and wind and water currents, the  weather here  at the lighthouse  has a  very high correlation with the weather directly  across the Channel on the coast of France." L3

That last bit got Ramsey's attention. "Are you quite sure?"

"I've checked it for years, sir, in every season, and the match occurs more  than eighty percent  of the time, well  outside the realm of  coincidence. I  intend to publish  a paper  about this after the war."

"Remarkable! And what do you forecast for Undercliff?"

"A twenty-four hour  break  in this  miserable weather,  partly cloudy, winds drop  to five knots. Then on the  afternoon of the sixth of  June we  return to the  same pattern.  Everywhere else along the English  Channel there will be fog and  rain and winds gusting to thirty knots."

Admiral Sir Ramsay was elated. Eisenhower's chief meteorologist had predicted the same  short break in  the weather  using B-17 aircraft far out over the Atlantic to gather  the data. General Montgomery was willing to take the risk, but Ramsay and Ike were still cautious.

Allied Intelligence said  General Erwin  Rommel, master  of the Atlantic Wall, wasn't  even  presently in  France,  a sign  the Germans were anticipating at least  a week of bad  weather. But now a doughnut hole in that weather was confirmed  by a second, entirely unexpected source. Sir Ramsay had moved over to General Montgomery's camp and was ready to give the nod on the invasion. It might be enough to convince Eisenhow- er, the Supreme Allied Commander, to launch the massive invasion of France just as the Germans were letting down their guard.

The Admiral asked,  "Does  the strange  correlation of  weather between   Undercliff  and   the  French   coast  hold   for  the Pas-De-Calais?"

"Alas, no, I'm afraid that predicting the weather for Dover and Calais is a puzzle, and my reports to the Weather Office are but one piece."

The Admiral sighed, reluctant to  proceed. There was one final duty Benjamin Margolies could perform for  England. It saddened the Admiral to deceive  the man,  but there  was no  choice. He said, "Then it is time to  reveal the real purpose  of my visit here, and why I have attended  to this myself rather than send a staffer. What  I'm about  to tell you  has the  highest possible classification. You cannot mention this even to your family."

"I understand, sir." L4

"Mr. Margolies, the following three  weeks will be  very lively ones for you, I'm afraid. As we  get closer to the moment of the Allied invasion across the Strait of Dover, which is set for the final week of June, you will find that your Clarinet task orders will be coming in at a much greater rate than ever before."

"Nightly rather than weekly, then, sir?"

"Twice nightly, I wanted  to tell you  this, Mr.  Margolies, so when it happens you do not imagine things have gone amiss."

"I perfectly understand what I must do, sir," said Benjamin.

So after a brisk shake of their hands they  descended the steps mounted inside the structure of the lighthouse and were parted, but Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay felt thoroughly soiled.

One time a  German U-boat  captain noted  that St.  Catherine's lighthouse stopped flashing for hours. It was a small matter but he noted the  start and  stop time. The report wound its  way through Berlin. One clever analyst realized the data matched the start and stop time of the Clarinet signal originating from what they thought was a nearby antenna. A second observation verified the light beam remained lined up on a target in Germany that was taken out by night bombing.

In the early morning hours of June 5 a  U-boat surfaced off the Isle of Wight. Commandos rowed ashore to raid  the lighthouse, led by an  SS captain  named Felix  Schaub who  doubled as  the political officer to ensure the crew's loyalty to the gangsters running Germany. Judith and Edith whimpered in terror when they were tied up and threatened with pistols pointed at their heads. Benjamin demonstrated the operation  of the Clarinet  system to Captain  Schaub,  but the  Germans  neither  destroyed the  gear nor tried to  remove  it to  their  submarine. Instead, Schaub identified each member of the Margolies family by name, and told them he knew they were Jews.

"Mr. Margolies," Straub  said, "this  is a  matter of  life and death for your  wife and daughter. The fate of  Edith and Judith will depend on how you answer  two questions. First, what is the target area of the planned invasion across the Channel?"

Benjamin stiffened in dismay. He was confronted with the choice of losing his family or betraying the trust Admiral Sir Bertrand Ramsay had given him. To prod him along, there was a slight nod from Schaub. The hammer was pulled back on the pistol pointed at Judith's head. L5

Margolies capitulated. It was never really a question. "Dover to Calais," he said, letting escape the breath he had been holding for half a minute.

"Goot," Captain Schaub said. "And the timing?"

"I do not know  the precise day.  I know only  that it  will be during the last week of June."

The SS officer smiled. "I am a man of my word," he said. "Your family is  safe. Now,  when  you  get  your orders  to  operate Clarinet, you will carry them out, but you will be just a little sloppy when you align the  antenna. Not too much, Mr. Margolies! Perhaps only a fraction of one  degree. Just enough to throw off the resulting bombing raid by a  few hundred meters. You will do this until your government returns  to their original wisdom and no longer prosecutes its war against  the Reich. But this is the most important part: you must tell no one you are sabotaging the raids, or that we were ever here."

"Or you'll return and kill us?"

"Mr. Margolies, now I am disappointed  in you! What does  a man have in this  world if he fails  to do what he  promises he will do? You have my word that neither you nor your lovely wife Edith nor your beautiful  young daughter Judith will be  killed. But I am not sure that  you are a man of your  word, Mr. Margolies. So at this  time we will take  them to the concentration  camp near Saint-Malo in France."

"No, let them alone, I beg you!"

"Do not be  alarmed, Mr.  Margolies. Your  wife Edith  and your daughter will  not be  mistreated there.  This camp  I mentioned that lies in Brittany is where  all the British Jews we captured in the Channel Islands have been relocated. But if we learn that a future air  raid using the transmitter  inside this lighthouse is successful, things  will not seem so good. But  even then, my word will hold!  Judith and Edith will be  simply be transferred to a work camp deeper in France or perhaps even in Germany."

Judith and Edith Margolies were taken to Cherbourg  by raft and by sub, and by the morning of June 6 they  were inducted into a French farm that had been dubbed a clinic for racial hygiene.

Schuab's report, sent by coded radio from  the U-boat, filtered up to Hitler, and the final piece of deception in the Fortitude element of Operation Bodyguard was in place. L6

Hitler reinforced the defenses in the  Pas-De-Calais region and left only a skeleton force at Normandy. Captain Felix Straub and the Uboat at his beck and call only just made it to Cherbourg in time with Edith and Judith aboard. In the early morning hours of June 6  the Channel  was  filled  with 7,000  vessels  carrying 160,000 men to  the beaches  of  Normandy, and  not Calais,  as Benjamin told  his tormentors. Mr. Margolies's weather forecast had tipped Ramsay into Montgomery's  camp for having a  go, and that in turn convinced Eisenhower.

Two Panzer  tank  divisions,  which  might  have  defeated  the invasion, were kept on a tight leash by Hitler because he didn't trust his own generals. Hitler himself slept until noon on the sixth of June, and didn't release the Panzers until four in the afternoon, by which time the beachhead was relatively secure and Allied aircraft dominated the skies to the point of forcing all German tanks to move only at night.

For two months the Allies were tied down in the Normandy region trying to  break out  of  hedgerow  country while  the  Germans attempted to contain them. When the Allies did break through it was very near to the Saint-Malo area where Judith and Edith were being held.

To prevent their premature liberation the Germans moved everyone in the camp to another one deeper in France, far from the front lines, precisely  what  Felix Straub  threatened  would  happen should Benjamin Margolies prove faithless in his sabotage, when he in fact never was.

Benjamin continued  to operate  the  Clarinet  system when  the nightly orders came in over  the Teletype, but  he deliberately altered the  requested  target  angle  slightly. He sincerely believed Captain Straub that it was the only way  he could save the lives of Edith and Judith.

The deception came crashing to an end in  September when Judith failed to register  for  secondary school. The constable came calling, and  he found  evidence  of  the  raid by  the  German frogmen. He notified  army  intelligence,  and  they  in  turn squeezed the truth  out  of Benjamin. Sir Ramsay successfully intervened to keep Benjamin out of prison, but Sir Arthur Harris of RAF Bomber  Command  insisted  the man  be  sacked from  his lighthouse job. He was forced to move to a small cottage on the beach nearby and  he  was  not even  permitted  to operate  his weather station  inside  St. Catherine's lighthouse. In his isolation Benjamin gradually began to despair  of seeing either one of his loved ones again. L7

After breaking out of  Normandy at Avranches,  General Patton's Third  Army  moved  across   France  at  an  unbelievable  pace, performing a right hook  that nearly encircled  Hitler's forces opposing the invasion. Judith and Edith were moved to different camps at  least  once  a month. The constant  relocation  was encouraging in a way, but  things grew progressively  worse the nearer Edith and Judith were taken to Germany itself. Internment camps were abandoned for  work camps,  which were  evacuated in turn for what could only be called punishment camps.

Early in  1945 after  one  more  relocation, Edith  and  Judith reached their final destination,  an extermination  camp called Ohrdruf-Nord deep in the heart of Germany proper. In that place Jews were worked to death  constructing a railroad  center that would never be  finished. Along the way  currency, gold,  and jewelry (of which Judith and Edith had none) were sent to the SS headquarters of the  Economic  Adminstration. Watches, clocks, and pens were  sent  to  the troops  on  the Western,  Eastern, and Italian  fronts. Their civilian  clothing  was  given  to increasingly needy German families.

Judith saw things that pushed far beyond any boundaries of human evil she thought were possible to exist. Ohrdruf wasn't even the worst camp in the hellish constellation. Those were to be found further to the  east,  in Poland. Many men have  a taste  for sixteen year old female flesh. Judith learned to trade her body for scraps of extra food. The longer she could delay taking on the figure of  a skeleton, the more opportunities  he might have to trade her body for food, for both herself and Edith.

This became a huge problem during the terrifying and humiliating appells, or inspections, that followed roll call and lasted most of the day. The guards realized Judith and Edith  were wasting away at a slightly slower rate than  their companion prisoners. They were successful in  feigning weakness,  but it  was almost impossible to hide their extra weight, and suspicion was raised.

When the guns of Patton's tanks could be heard only forty miles away, the twelve thousand inmates of the camp were being loaded onto cattle cars. The prisoners were being rushed to transfer to Buchenwald. Edith Margolies slipped and revealed that she had a little extra food  hidden away. What happened after that Judith told no one but her father,  years after the war,  on his final day of life. Learning the manner  of the  passing of  his wife might have even been the thing that killed him.

Troops of the  89th  Infantry  Division of  the  US Third  Army captured Ohrdruf-Nord on April 4,  1945. L8

Judith was one of the  very few prisoners left  standing. After the war in Europe when Judith had been sufficiently deloused and scrubbed, and had demonstrated her status as  a British subject to the satisfaction of the Occupation, she was placed on a ship and sent home to her father.

She met him on a dock  at Portsmouth. Judith gazed upon him as though  across  a  great  gulf  which  was  the  memory  of  the unspeakable ordeal she  had somehow  survived. They were utter strangers to  each  other. When he  took  her  home  Benjamin tearfully begged his  daughter  to tell  him  what happened  to Edith. The girl said nothing. Every time he pressed, she would only shake her head. But the beach bungalow was very small, and it was not very long before Benjamin caught a  quick glimpse of the mass of whip scars on his daughter's back.

Even a year after the war she stayed wide  awake every night on the back porch of her father's beach cottage, watching the coast with her war surplus Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle for Nazis who would never come. Who did come was strange man who loomed higher than anyone she had ever seen, perhaps a full  eight feet tall. The man watched Judith draw near with the rifle. At ten yards he said, "I offer no threat to you, Judith Margolies."

Her eyes narrowed at that. "How do you know my name?"

"I know much more than your  name. I know that  your father was used by the government to deceive Hitler as to exactly where the invasion was  going to take  place. I  know you and  your mother were taken to camps on the Continent by German special forces. I know they tattooed the number 271828 on your arm and I know that you have come  through such suffering and  human degradation and evil that  words cannot embrace  it. I  came to ask  whether you would hunt  real enemies  of Jews  throughout the  world, rather than ones you imagine might come here."

Judith unchambered the round and slung the rifle over her back. It was just before dawn, and in the light that was beginning to gather, Michael could take a better look at Judith. The girl had just reached adulthood, but there was an aged look in her hollow eyes, as though she  had already lived  four lifetimes,  and it haunted  him. A kind  of  Darwinian process  in  the camps  had produced a girl who  was able to  outwit, bribe,  or intimidate anyone to get  what  she  needed to  survive. Michael saw the results on Judith's face. The work camps had emaciated her body, but when she returned home and was fed by her father, the weight came back in the form of strong, wiry muscles. She was eighteen but looked twice that. L9

He said, "I am called Michael."

Judith showed Michael the  six numbers tattooed  to her  arm in Ordruf  Nord to  affirm his  knowledge of  her was  correct. She said, "The Crown owes a very large marker to  my father, but he will  not cash  it  in to  obtain a  small  thing, a  concession of  such little  import  it could  not  possibly disconcert  the government in the smallest way. The Foreign Secretary refuses to allow Jews to immigrate to the British Mandate in Palestine. Not even Jews who are already British subjects."

"Oil," said Michael.

Judith nodded. One word,  but it  explained  everything. The Middle-East was awash in petroleum, but if the  Arabs could not be assured that the Jews would never have  an independent state there, they would attack  the wells owned  and operated  by the British. So the Balfour  Declaration and  the Churchill  White Paper of a generation ago were torn up for the worthless pieces of paper they always were,  and all bets  were off in  the Holy Land, even with the moral imperative newly laid on all humanity by the Holocaust.

Judith said, "The admiral  who deceived my  father is  dead. My father has resumed  his profession and he is willing  to let the whole matter go, because has sold his very life to the goyim. To answer your earlier question, Michael,  I would hunt the enemies of my people where they are  rather than wait for them here, but you must see that is quite, quite impossible for me."

"And yet I tell you in all sincerity, Judith  Margolies, if you truly are willing, you can be in Palestine this very day."

An eyebrow raised. Judith said, "Indeed? A few moments, please."

She went  into her  cottage,  and  returned ten  minutes  later carrying a  small  tote  bag with  clothing  and  her  personal effects. She also carried  her  rifle, but  now  she also  had several boxes  of .303  caliber  cartridges  carried on  little straps. But she had not taken  the time to wake  her father and notify him that  she  was  leaving, and  Michael  knew that  as matters stood the  girl could not be persuaded to  speak to him. Michael also noted, with some satisfaction, that Judith carried in one hand a quantity of unleavened bread. That was the essence of the feast of  Passover, to reaffirm  the willingness  of the children of Israel to respond  without delay to the  command of their God to depart their place of captivity. Perhaps Judith had an intuition of who she was really dealing with.