The Autobiography of a Lesser God

Do the crime, do the time. While I'm waiting for that to happen, I sit here and think. It's choice that got me here; first the choices of others and the choices they gave me, and then the choices I made. My name is Selwyn Bergner and I am going to tell you about three other people and their choices, including my own. Oh, and there is also my older brother, Bernie. He is in a rather special category, and tells his story in his own words, as I have imagined them. First in line is my father, Sid Bergner. He was an entrepreneur par excellence, starting out in New York's Hell's Kitchen and turning up in Philadelphia with a 'bag of gold', as my aunt Tudeh Figler described it. Next is my cousin, Norman Figler, known to everybody as Chickie. He was drafted to participate in WW2. Assigned to a diversionary regiment known as the Ghost Battalion, D-Day took him through Southern Germany to the surviving remnants of a concentration camp outside of a town called Flossenbuerg. That got Chickie involved with Irgun, an underground organization smuggling Jews out of Europe into Palestine against the efforts of both Great Britain and the Arabs. And finally, there was a person I had doubts about from the very start, a Mr. Nathan Stern-Guilbert, or Stern as he was known in our family. The Nazis were stealing valuables, mostly jewelry and art, all across Europe. Irgun was stealing them back and Stern and my father colluded to convert these 'Nazi contributions' into American cash, sending it back to Irgun to support the costs of their smuggling. So, I tell you these four stories first and then weave them together into my own story, the autobiography of the title. It involves shadowy people, questionable alignments, skimming cash and at least one murder, probably more.