61 pages • 2 hours read
Ronald H. BalsonOnce We Were Brothers
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part III, Chapter 51-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part III: “The Lawsuit”
Part III, Chapter 51 Summary
Catherine receives a call from Jeffers requesting a private meeting between Elliot and Ben.
Part III, Chapter 52 Summary
After signing confidentiality agreements, Elliot and Ben enter a conference room alone. Elliot offers Ben $20 million to drop the case and make a public apology. Ben rejects the offer, saying, “Will twenty million dollars wash your hands, Otto? Will it cleanse you from the thousands you condemned?” (343).
Before long, Elliot drops the facade and speaks to Ben as Otto, rationalizing his actions by blaming Abraham for forcing him to join the Nazis. Ben is unmoved, explaining that he would sooner die than drop the case. Elliot’s demeanor changes from plaintive to vicious, and he says, “Just another dead Solomon” (344).
Part III, Chapter 53 Summary
At a Bar Association committee meeting, Jeffers whispers something in Judge Ryan’s ear.
Part III, Chapter 54 Summary
Catherine meets her old mentor Mickey Shanahan at the Gavel, a bar that caters to Chicago’s law gentry. Mickey tells her that Jeffers offered Judge Ryan a bribe to grant a summary judgment, ending the case. Catherine vows to file for a substitution of judges, but Mickey reminds her that such a request is unlikely to be honored so late in a proceeding.
Part III, Chapter 55 Summary
In court Catherine argues before Judge Ryan for a substitution of judges. Careful to maintain the perception of incorruptibility, Judge Ryan feigns amenability to the substitution request before allowing Jeffers to argue strongly against it. Unsurprisingly to Catherine, Judge Ryan rejects her request.
Part III, Chapter 56 Summary
Against all rules of professional decorum, Catherine barges past a secretary and into the office of Judge Murphy, the Chief Judge of the Chancery Division of the Cook County Circuit Court. She tells him that Jeffers offered Judge Ryan a lucrative partnership after he retires as long as he tosses her case. Only after Catherine reveals Mickey as her source does Judge Murphy call in the substitution order, replacing Judge Ryan with Judge DiGiovanni, the acting chairman of the Judicial Ethics Board and an impossible man to bribe.
When Elliot hears about this from Jeffers, he replies ominously, “We need to pull out all the stops” (357).
Part III, Chapter 57 Summary
Carl calls Liam and informs him there is a contract out on Ben’s life. While speeding to Ben’s apartment, Liam receives a call from Ben, who says there are people chasing him. When Liam arrives, he finds Ben out of breath and looking very sickly.
Part III, Chapter 58 Summary
At Catherine’s townhome Ben’s friend Mort claims that Elliot’s Auschwitz tattoo is fake. He explains that according to Auschwitz’s procedures, the five numbers following the letter “A” only reach 20,000 before starting over with the letter “B.” Therefore, “A93554” is obviously fraudulent.
As the evidence piles up, Ben has a revelation: Elliot’s wife Elisabeth is in fact Otto’s old girlfriend, Elzbieta Krzyzecki. At that moment, Ben collapses and is hospitalized. According to the ER doctor, Ben suffered a myocardial infarction. He is now heavily sedated, clinging to life.
Catherine, emotionally traumatized by Ben’s condition, frantically prints out a subpoena for Elzbieta Krzyzecki and instructs Liam to have it served immediately.
Part III, Chapter 59 Summary
A process server delivers the subpoena to Elisabeth at her home. When Elliot finds out, he is emotionally abusive to his wife, telling her menacingly, “If you fuck this up, it’ll be the last thing you do” (370).
Part III, Chapter 60 Summary
That night at 2 a.m. Catherine receives a call from Elisabeth. Though Elisabeth wants to be left out of it, Catherine warns her that it is too late. Even if Elisabeth is not found guilty of being a Nazi or Nazi collaborator, Catherine says she will be deported for financial and immigration fraud. Though she can make no guarantees, Catherine says Elisabeth’s only chance of staying in the country is if she testifies against Otto to the US Attorney.
The next morning Elisabeth arrives at the office of US Attorney Richard Tyron to make a deal for immunity and protection from Eliot for herself and her granddaughter Jennifer. She says, “You have no idea how ruthless my husband can be” (373). In return, Elisabeth testifies to the property Elliot stole, his immigration fraud, and his role in Nazi war crimes. After her three-hour interview, Richard issues an arrest warrant to the US Marshals Service for Otto Piatek n/k/a Elliot Rosenzweig.
At the hospital Ben’s condition is unchanged. Adele asks Catherine to accompany her on a drive so she can finish Ben’s story. When the Russians reach Majdanek, they don’t liberate the Jews. Under Stalin’s orders, Ben and the rest of the camp’s survivors are sent to a detention camp in Siberia. Nearly a year passes before he is released. With no one left in Zamosc, Ben walks to Uncle Joseph’s cabin. After a few weeks spent in relative tranquility, a US Army jeep arrives to drop off Hannah, alive and well.
Adele goes on to tell the story of Hannah’s survival: At Birkenau, she and Lucyna are separated from Leah, who is never seen again. As the Russians close in on the camp, the Nazis march the remaining 58,000 prisoners in what is now known as the Auschwitz Death March. On their way to Buchenwald, Lucyna dies. The remaining survivors reach the camp, with Hannah clinging to life. On April 11, 1945, the camp is liberated by the US Army. While convalescing, Hannah befriends a US Army corporal who vows to help her reunite with Ben. With the help of Cousin Ziggy, Hannah and Ben emigrate to Chicago and live a happy, full life together.
In the present the car stops at a cemetery. Adele and Catherine walk to a gravestone that reads, “Hannah Solomon / Dance Through All Eternity / 1921-2001.”
Part III, Chapter 61 Summary
With US deputy marshals in tow, Richard arrives at the mansion in Winnetka and arrests Elliot for participating and assisting in persecution under the Nazi regime. At the Federal Building, Elliot sees Catherine and says, “I don’t get it. What’s all this to you? You couldn’t have made any money. You lost your job. Your career went to hell. Where will you be tomorrow?” (384). Catherine replies, “I won’t be in prison” (384).
Catherine receives a call from Liam, who tells her Ben is awake.
Part III, Chapter 62 Summary
At the hospital Ben is weak and under strong medication but awake and coherent. Catherine shares the news of Elliot’s arrest. Ben knows instinctively that Elzbieta was the key. According to Catherine, Elliot was indignant and arrogant up until the point he learned Jeffers dropped him as a client. Ben tells Catherine he is going to be with Hannah soon: “I can’t keep Hannah waiting. I promised her the next dance” (386). Ben dies with a beatific smile on his face.
Part III, Epilogue Summary
Catherine visits Ben’s grave and talks to him like he used to talk to Hannah. She says her private practice is about to open and that she owes it all to Ben. Next month Catherine and Liam will travel to Tel Aviv, Israel, for Otto’s trial. In the last line of the novel, Catherine says, “The music beckons, Ben. Enjoy the dance” (389).
Part III, Chapter 51-Epilogue Summary
For the first time, in Chapter 52, the novel breaks down the wall between Elliot and Otto. When Ben and Elliot meet in private, Elliot drops the facade and speaks to Ben like Otto. This gives readers a glimpse into Elliot’s psyche as he attempts to rationalize away his guilt over committing Nazi atrocities. He insists:
“I had no choice. Don’t you understand? It was you and your father who forced me to join the National Socialists. I didn’t want to. I stood in your living room and begged not to become involved. It was your father who insisted I take a posting. What did you expect me to do? If I didn’t follow orders, if I wasn’t an obedient soldier, I would have been killed. They were ruthless people. Don’t you see, I had no choice?” (343).
But as soon as Ben refuses to empathize with him or grant mercy, the hollowness of Elliot’s excuses is laid bare. With startling coldness, Elliot responds to Ben’s vow to die before surrendering by shrugging his shoulders and saying, “Just another dead Solomon” (344). It is clear from Elliot’s callousness here that his earlier remorse was insincere, a mere tactic to convince Ben to accept his settlement offer.
Elliot’s psyche is further laid bare when he is finally arrested by US marshals. At first Elliot is as indignant and arrogant as ever, telling Richard, “Go to hell. I’ll have your job. You’ll be on the streets by dinnertime” (383). Furthermore, his response shows the extent to which Elliot has externalized the anti-Semitic dogma of his former Nazi overlords, hissing, “Are you Jewish? You don’t look like a Jew” (383), as if to suggest that only a Jew would care about atrocities committed against the Jewish people. The most telling scene, however, comes when Elliot finally drops his arrogant swagger. It is not the arrest or the perp walk that kills his sense of defiance. Rather, it is the realization that Jeffers dropped him as a client. Until now, Elliot justified and rationalized away all of his misdeeds because of his faith in a system allowing for his own self-preservation, whether in the Third Reich or the United States. His actions were always defensible because they were sanctioned and enabled by the power structures and laws of the land. But with the exit of Jeffers as his attorney, Elliot realizes he can no longer rely on the levers of the state or the US bureaucratic apparatus to protect him. And unlike during the fall of Nazi Germany, it’s too late to escape to Argentina.
These chapters also complicate the liberation narrative that is often repeated in history books. Contrary to a number of historical narratives, many death camp prisoners did not gain their freedom when the Soviets marched into the camps. As Adele tells Catherine:
“Ben and the other Majdanek prisoners were not actually liberated in the sense that they were free to go anywhere. Stalin was a distrustful anti-Semite and didn’t want to release the Jews behind his lines, so the Russian army sent the survivors to a detention camp in Siberia” (375).
In fact, Stalin’s mistreatment of Polish Jews extends back to 1940, when the Soviet government, which for a brief period occupied much of Poland, deported 200,000 Polish Jews without passports and sent them to labor camps in Siberia. While the Soviet Union did not seek to exterminate the Jewish people en masse like the Nazis did, Stalin imprisoned them and viewed them as second-class citizens.
Just as Jews faced roadblocks in their attempts to emigrate to the United States prior to the Holocaust, Adele’s story also reveals the challenges they faced after the Allies liberated the camps. Adele explains:
“Ben had no family and nowhere to go. He was a DP, a displaced person, one of thousands who wandered Europe after the war. Although the Allies had established displaced persons camps where people could go waiting to emigrate to the United States, or perhaps to Israel, they held no interest for Ben” (376).
Despite the massive number of displaced persons who survived unimaginable trauma only to find their homes gone, the US Congress was reluctant to loosen immigration quotas, driven in part by a strain of anti-Semitism that persisted despite the realization of the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust. Even after US President Harry S. Truman issued a controversial executive order to loosen immigration quotas, Congress found ways to keep these quotas strict. It was only not until 1948 that Congress, faced with intense lobbying efforts from American Jewish organizations, passed legislation to allow an additional 400,000 DPs into the United States. Although Ben, like many real-life Holocaust survivors, finally received the opportunity to settle and thrive in a new home, the transition was not as smooth as some historical recollections suggest. That American legislators remained reluctant to accept World War II refugees is relevant to modern debates over refugees from Syria and other regions torn apart by violence.
