Once We Were Brothers

Once We Were Brothers is a Jewish historical fiction novel and legal thriller published in 2013 by the American author and attorney Ronald H. Balson. A finalist for the Harper Lee Award for Legal Fiction, the book tells the story of two young men on opposite sides of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. It is the first entry in Balson’s Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart book series.

Plot Summary

The book is divided into three parts. Part I, “The Confrontation,” is set in 2004 in Chicago. An 83-year-old Holocaust survivor named Ben Solomon uses an antique Nazi pistol to threaten another octogenarian Holocaust survivor, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist Elliot Rosenzweig. Ben accuses Elliot of being a former Nazi SS officer named Otto Piatek, further alleging that Otto stole Ben’s family’s valuables and life savings during the war. Under the guise of empathy for a fellow survivor, Elliot asks the police to drop all charges against Ben. Private investigator Liam Taggart convinces his best friend, a disgraced corporate litigator named Catherine Lockhart, to hear Ben’s story and evaluate whether he has grounds to bring a civil lawsuit against Elliot.

In Part II, “Ben Solomon’s Story,” the narrative shifts to Zamosc, Poland, in the 1930s. One day, Stanislaw Piatek drops his 11-year-old gentile boy Otto off on the doorstep of the Solomons, an affluent Jewish family. Ben’s father, Abraham, raises Otto like a son, and Ben considers Otto his brother. When anti-Semitic street gangs attack Ben’s sister Beka, Otto comes to her rescue and suffers a deep cut on his arm. Around this time, Ben falls in love with a classmate named Hannah Weissbaum.

As Hitler continues to occupy territories to the East, the situation grows more dire for European Jews. Otto’s mother Ilse begs her son to join the Nazis so he isn’t mistaken for a Jew. While Otto refuses, Abraham instructs him to follow his mother’s advice, and the rest of the family reluctantly defers to Abraham’s wisdom. At first Otto is a valuable ally to the Solomons, providing them extra rations and hiding their cash and valuables when the Nazis seize Jewish property. Over time, however, Otto begins to relish the status and privileges he receives as a Nazi.

Despite his newfound careerism and complicity in Nazi atrocities, Otto helps smuggle Ben, Hannah, and Beka out of Zamosc to their Uncle Joseph’s mountain cabin. Three months later, when their money and supplies run out, Ben returns to Zamosc to retrieve some of his family’s cash. Though the box Otto hid contains valuables from numerous families, the Solomons’ money is missing, and Otto is reluctant to give it back to Ben. Even worse, when Ben returns to the cabin, Beka and Hannah are gone, taken by the Nazis to a hotel in Zakopane where they will likely be forced into prostitution. Otto rescues Hannah, but Beka is trapped in a depraved bordello that is out of even Otto’s reach. Ben borrows a Nazi uniform and stages a rescue mission himself, only to learn that Beka killed herself rather than submit to her Nazi captors.

Devastated by the loss of Beka and with no money or means to escape, Ben and his family resign themselves to life in Zamosc’s crowded and impoverished New Town ghetto. Eager for some respite from their hopeless situation, Ben and Hannah marry in a makeshift ceremony. During this time, Otto is largely absent, although his girlfriend Elzbieta continues to be an ally to the Solomons. As the months pass, Ben spends more and more time with a resistance group located in the forests outside Zamosc. One night, after returning from a long mission, he discovers that Hannah and the rest of his family have been resettled to Izbica on their way to the Belzec extermination camp. At gunpoint, Otto leads Ben to his family. Ben ties up Otto and escapes in his car with Hannah, Abraham, his mother Leah, and his friend Lucyna.

For the next few months, the group shelters at a Catholic church run by Father Janofski, a key member of the Polish resistance movement. When Hannah gets scarlet fever, Father Janofski calls on a doctor who alerts the Gestapo to Janofski’s operation. A group of SS officers led by Otto raids the church, killing Abraham and Janofski and sending the women to Auschwitz. Under Otto’s orders, the Gestapo torture and interrogate Ben before sending him to the Majdanek extermination camp. Ben survives until the Soviet Red Army liberates the camp.

Part III, “The Lawsuit,” is set once again in 2004. Catherine and Liam obtain evidence confirming that after the war, Otto Piatek fled to Argentina, changed his name to Elliot Rosenzweig, then emigrated to the United States with the cash and valuables of numerous Zamosc families. He used his ill-gotten wealth to buy an ownership stake in an insurance company. Despite firmly establishing Elliot’s guilt, the opposing lawyers use a number of underhanded tactics to threaten the case. Catherine and Liam also learn that Elzbieta is Elliot’s current wife, living under the name Elisabeth. Under threat of deportation and imprisonment for aiding and abetting Nazi war crimes, Elzbieta testifies to US Attorney Richard Tyron against Elliot, resulting in his arrest. Ben learns of Elliot’s fate just before dying of heart failure.

At the end of the novel, Ben’s friend Adele tells Catherine the rest of Ben’s story. After surviving Majdanek and a Soviet camp in Siberia, Ben waits at Uncle Joseph’s cabin for Hannah, whose fate is uncertain. Miraculously, Hannah survives Auschwitz and convinces a US Army corporal to drive her to the cabin where she reunites with Ben. They emigrate to the United States and live together into old age until Hannah dies of heart failure.