Avengers #340
Clay Soldiers
The Avengers are the guests of honor for the grand opening of the brand new Super Hero Medical Research and Treatment Facility. The creation of this facility was only possible thanks to the funding of Janet Van Dyne, aka the Avenger known as the Wasp. Joining her are her teammates Captain America, Iron Man, She-Hulk and Hercules. Not all of them are comfortable being there, such as Iron Man who has been having his own health problems of late,[1] and Hercules he believes that he’s just a fill-in god since Thor is currently indisposed.[2]
The festivities are interrupted when a woman comes running to get the aid of the Avengers. Tragically, she is struck by a car while trying to run across the street. Captain America races by her side and learns that she needs Cap’s help to stop her husband and protect her children. The woman talks as though she knows Captain America, but Cap has never met the woman before in her entire life.
The woman is then carried away by paramedics and the Avengers return to their headquarters. While going through a training session, Cap can’t just shake the woman’s words from his mind, particularly since she claimed that there are children at risk. The Wasp can’t get the woman off her mind either and interrupts Cap’s training session with Jarvis to tell him that she looked into the woman’s claims. The woman’s name is Heidi Ehman and she was once married to a man named Itzhak Berditchev, a wealthy and reclusive weapons manufacturer. Digging through the records she determined that Heidi gave birth to quintuplets in Switzerland 10 years ago. More interestingly, Itzhak Berditchev has just recently returned home from visiting his native Austria. His return also coincides with news that a stockpile of plutonium was recently stolen from that country, raising concerns that Itzhak might be building a nuclear bomb.
The trio decide to look into this further and Captain America decides to use Jarvis as a decoy. Posing as a gunrunner named Armond Carlyle III, Jarvis arranges a meeting with Berditchev at his private mansion. Their investigation uncovers the fact that Berditchev has been training his sons to become soldiers, part of a twisted plot that also includes blackmailing the world with a nuclear weapon in some attempt to prevent the concentration camps of World War II from ever happening again. Berditchev becomes aware that Captain America and the Wasp are trying to infiltrate his estate. While Jarvis and the Wasp deal with disarming the children, Captain America has to fight Bulwark, Berditchev’s paid assassin.[3]
While Captain America is turning Bulwark’s own cattle prod against him, the Wasp and Jarvis learn that the stolen plutonium is being held at a warehouse and have dispatched the other Avengers to recover it. They also convince the boys to stop fighting for their father by showing them a newspaper clipping about their mother’s recent hospitalization. When they confront Berditchev and disarm him, the madman suffers a nervous breakdown. As the police take Itzhak and Bulwark away, the Wasp can’t help but worry what long lasting effects all of this will have on his children.[4]
Recurring Characters
Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Wasp, Hercules, She-Hulk), Edwin Jarvis
Continuity Notes
Tony Stark’s health problems have been an on going issue since he was shot through the spine by a stalker named Kathy Dare in Iron Man #242. Tony was paralyzed from the waist down but managed to overcome this disability with a new experimental bio-chip in issue #248. Tony’s nervous system has been compromised since Iron Man #258-266. His health problems will persist until issue #290.
Thor is not present because he has been banished by Odin, with the role being passed on to Eric Masterson following the events of Thor #432-433. The true Thor will eventually return in Thor #457-458.
Here, Jarvis recalls how he was once injured in battle. He is talking about the beating he suffered from Mister Hyde when the Masters of Evil stormed Avengers Mansion in issue #273-277, issue #275 in particular. His eye was injured for a time forcing him to wear an eyepatch from Avengers #280 through 326.
As of this writing this story has not been revisited so what happened to the Berditchev quintuplets is unknown.
Topical References
Itzhak Berditchev is identified as a survivor of the German concentration camps from World War II. He states here that Cap even rescued him from said concentration camp. While this was possible when this story was originally published in 1991, it becomes increasingly impossible to reconcile as the Sliding Timescale pushes the Modern Age forward. See below for a deeper analysis.
Captain America states that he has been in action for over 50 years. This should be considered a topical reference as it measures time between World War II and the date this story was published. Due to the Sliding Timescale, the amount of time between the end of World War II and the start of the Modern Age will continue to grow. See here for more on that.
Could Itzhak Berditchev be a Holocaust Survivor?
As stated above, the Sliding Timescale of the Marvel Universe makes it increasingly impossible for a Holocaust survivor like Berditchev to still be alive in the Modern Age without some method of slowing or stopping the aging process. While many characters have had access to these kinds of techniques, it seems somewhat unlikely that a one-off character like Berditchev would have access to such technologies.
That said, not only does Berditchev’s continued life becomes increasingly impossible as people alive during the war are now dying off, it also becomes biologically impossible for him to have offspring that are still children.
Berditchev also states in this story that Captain America rescued him from a concentration camp during the War. Something that Steve Rogers doesn’t recall. Which is interesting enough, considering that in the past Cap has remembered people he did save from the camps, such as Anna Kuppelbaum in Captain America #237.
Marvel has yet to explain how Itzhak Berditchev could still be alive and I am sure a simple explanation would be that he did have some method of slowing his aging. I personally don’t like to consider such an idea for such a one-off character because it really dilutes the who “slowed aging process” shtick used by so many other wartime characters. If someone so minor as Berditchev had access to that it creates a situation where such technology was so plentiful and available that it no longer becomes special and it raises the question of why everyone isn’t using such technology.
I think a simpler explanation would suffice: Given that Captain America doesn’t remember meeting Berditchev and the man is clearly insane — he is raising child soldiers after all — one could assume that he is mentally unstable and has deluded himself into thinking he is a Holocaust survivor. As appalling as making such a false claim as that is, it’s not unprecedented in real life. Plenty of grifters have made such false claims in the past.
