by Herman Wouk
“Henry, I thought you were in Moscow,” Admiral King said in cold harsh tones. In their rare encounters King always made Pug uneasy. It was a long time since he had thought of the Northampton, but now in a mental flash he saw his burning cruiser going down, and sensed a hallucinatory stench of petroleum in his nostrils.
“I came to Iran on special assignment, Admiral.”
“You’re in the delegation, then?”
“No, sir.”
King stared, not liking the vague responses.
Burne-Wilke said, “Pug, if we can manage it, let’s get together while we’re here.”
As coolly as he could, Pug replied, “Pamela’s with you, you say?”
“Yes indeed. I was summoned from New Delhi on very short notice. Problems with the Burma campaign plans. She’s still sorting out the maps and reports that we hustled together. She’s my aide-de-camp now, and jolly good at it. One realizes what she must have done for poor old Talky.”
Despite King’s look of distaste for this chitchat, Pug persisted, “Where is she?”
“I left her at our legation, hard at work.” Burne-Wilke gestured toward the open doorway. “Why don’t you pop over and say hello?”
73
A Jew’s Journey
(from Aaron Jastrow’s manuscript)
IT will not be easy to record my meeting with Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann. In a sense I am starting this narrative over; and not only this narrative! Whatever I have written, all my life long, now seems to have been composed in a child’s dream.
What I must put down is so dangerous that the former hiding place of my papers will not do. As for the encipherment in Yiddish transliteration, the SS here would penetrate the poor mask instantly. Any one of a thousand wretches in Theresienstadt would read it all off for a bowl of soup or to avoid a beating. I have discovered a more secure place. Not even Natalie will know about it. If I go in one of the transports (at the moment this still seems unlikely) the papers will molder until wreckers or renovators, probably long after this war is over, let sunlight into the walls and crevices of Theresienstadt’s mournful old buildings. If I survive the war, I will find these papers where I hid them.
Eppstein himself came by this morning, to accompany us to the SS headquarters. He tried to be agreeable, complimenting Natalie on her looks and on the healthy appearance of Louis, whom she was clutching in her arms. Eppstein is in a pitiful position: a Jewish tool, the figurehead “mayor” (Attester) who carries out the SS orders; a shabby Jew like the rest of us with his yellow star, making a point of wearing a clean if frayed shirt and a threadbare tie to show his high position. His wan, puffy, worried face is a truer badge of office.
We had never been in or near SS headquarters before; a high wooden fence separates it and the entire town plaza from the Jews. The sentry passed us through the fence and we went along a street bordering the park, past a church and into a government building with offices and bulletin boards and stale-smelling corridors echoing with typewriter noise. It was very strange to come out of the grotesque and squalid ghetto into a place that, except for the large picture of Hitler in the lobby, belonged to the old familiar order of things. In its ordinariness, it was almost reassuring; the last thing I expected of SS headquarters. Of course I was very, very nervous.
Despite a balding broad forehead, Lieutenant Colonel Eichmann looks surprisingly young. The remaining hair is dark, and he has the alert, live-wire air of a middle-level official who is ambitious and on the climb. When we came into the office he sat behind a wide desk, and beside him in a wooden chair sat Burger, the SS boss of Theresienstadt, a cruel rough man one avoids if at all possible. Without getting up, yet not disagreeably, Eichmann motioned Natalie and me to chairs in front of the desk, and with a tilt of his head directed Eppstein to a grimy settee. So far, except for the cold nasty look of Burger, and the black uniforms on both men, we might have been calling on a bank manager for a loan, or on a police supervisor to report a theft.
I remember every word of the German conversation that followed, but I mean to put down only essentials. First Eichmann made businesslike inquiries about our health and accommodations. Natalie did not utter a word; she let me reply that we felt well-treated. When he glanced to her she jerkily nodded. The child, completely at his ease, sat in her lap looking wide-eyed at Eichmann, who then said that conditions in Theresienstadt did not satisfy him at all. He had made a thorough inspection. In the next weeks we would see remarkable improvements (“gewaltige Verschonerungen”). Burger had instructions to treat us as very special Prominente. As things improved in Theresienstadt we would be among the first to benefit.
Next he cleared up — as much as it ever will be, I fear — the mystery of how we come to be here. We were brought to his attention, he says, when I was in the hospital in Paris. The OVRA demanded that the Gestapo hand us over as fugitives from Italian justice. As he tells it, Werner Beck wanted first to extract recordings of my broadcasts from me, and then let the Italian secret police take us away. He paints a very black picture of Werner, which may well be distorted.
At any rate, our case fell in his lap for disposition. To hand us over to the Italians might well have meant our deaths, and could have complicated the negotiations for exchanging the Baden-Baden group. Yet to allow us to return to Baden-Baden, once we were discovered, would have offended Germany’s one European ally; for Italy was then still in the war. Sending us to Theresienstadt, while taking the Italian request “under advisement,” seemed the most considerate solution. He had brushed aside Werner Beck’s pleas to extort the broadcasts from me. That was no way to treat a prominent personage, even a Jew. He always tried, Eichmann said, to be as fair and humane as possible in carrying out the strict Jewish policies of the Fiihrer; with which, he was frank to say, he totally agreed. Moreover, he did not believe the broadcasts would have served any purpose. So in short, here we were.
Now, he said, he would let Herr Eppstein talk.
The Ältester, sitting hunched on the sofa, proceeded to reel off words in a monotone, occasionally looking at me and Eichmann, but throwing many worried glances at Burger, who was glaring at him. The Council of Elders had recently voted, he said, to split off the Culture Section from the Education Department. Cultural activities had greatly increased; they were the pride of Theresienstadt; but they were not properly supervised or coordinated. The council wanted to designate me as an Elder to head the new Department of Culture. My lectures on Byzantium, Martin Luther, and Saint Paul were the talk of the town. My status as an American author and scholar commanded respect. No doubt in my university career I had learned administration. Abruptly Eppstein stopped talking, looking straight at me with a mechanical smile, a mere lifting of the upper lip from stained teeth.
My only possible motive for accepting the offer would have been pity for the man. Clearly he was doing as he had been ordered. It was Eichmann who for some reason wanted me to head this new “Department of Culture.”
I do not know how I summoned the courage to reply as I did. Here is almost exactly what I said. “Herr Obersturmbannführer, I am your prisoner here, bound to obey orders. Still, I permit myself to point out that my German is only fair. My health is frail. I have little appreciation for music, which is the backbone of Theresienstadt’s cultural activities. My library work, which I enjoy, absorbs all my time. I am not refusing this honor, but I am ill-suited for it. Do I have a choice in this matter?”
“If you did not have a choice, Dr. Jastrow,” Eichmann answered briskly, without annoyance, “this conversation would be pointless. I am a rather busy man. Sturmbannfiihrer Burger could have given you an order. However, I think this job would be a fine one for you.”
But I was appalled at the prospect of becoming one of the wretched Elders, who for a few miserable privileges — most of which I already enjoy — bear the awful burden of the ghetto on their consciences, transmit to the Jews all the harsh SS decrees, and see that these are carried out. It meant giving up my obs
cure but at least endurable existence for the limelight of the council, for daily dealing with the SS, for unending wrangling over terrible problems which have no decent solution. I screwed up my nerve for one more try.
“Then, if I may, sir, and only if I may, I should like to decline.”
“Of course you may. We’ll say no more about it. We do have one other matter to discuss.” He turned to Natalie, who was sitting through all this with a face of white stone, gripping the boy. Louis was behaving like an angel. That he sensed his mother’s terror and was doing his best to help seems to me beyond doubt. “But we are keeping you from your work. The mica factory, I believe?” Natalie nodded. “How do you like it?”
She had to speak. The voice came out hoarse and hollow. “I am very glad to be working there.”
“And your son looks well, so it seems the children of Theresienstadt are properly treated.”
“He is very well.”
Lieutenant Colonel Eichmann stood up, gesturing to Natalie, and walked with her to the door. There he spoke a few offhand words to an SS man in the corridor, with whom she passed from sight. Eichmann closed the door and walked to his seat behind the desk. He has a thin mouth, a long thin nose, narrow eyes, and a sharp chin. Not a good-looking man; but now, all at once, he looked very ugly. His mouth was crazily twitched to one side. He burst out in a terrible roar, “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? WHERE THE DEVIL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”
Burger jumped up at this, charged at me, and slapped me. It made my ear ring, and as he raised his hand I winced, so that the blow knocked me off the chair. I fell hard on my knees. My glasses dropped off, so what happened next I saw very blurrily. Burger kicked me, or rather shoved me, with a boot so that I rolled over on my side. Then he kicked me in the stomach; not with all his might, though it hurt and nauseated me, but in utter contempt, as though kicking a dog.
“I’ll tell you what you are,” Burger shouted down at me. “You’re nothing but AN OLD BAG OF FILTHY JEWISH SHIT! You hear? Why, you stinking old pile of shit, did you think you were still in America?” As he walked around me I could barely see the moving black boots. Next he kicked me hard in the backside. “You’re in THERESIENSTADT! Understand? Your life isn’t worth a pig’s fart if you don’t get that through that old shithead of yours!” With this, he delivered a really ferocious kick with the point of his boot. It struck my spine. Red-hot pain shot all through me. I lay there, stunned, blinded, agonized, shocked. I heard him walking away, saying, “Get up on your knees.”
I obeyed, shaking all over.
“Now tell me what you are.”
My throat was clamped shut by fear.
“Do you want more? Say what you are!”
God forgive me for not letting him kill me. The thought pierced my fog of shock that if I were to die now, Natalie and Louis would be in still greater danger.
I choked out, “I’m an old bag of filthy Jewish shit.”
“Louder. I didn’t hear you.”
I repeated it.
“Scream it, shit pile! Scream it at the top of your lungs! Or I’ll kick you, you stinking Jew pig, until you do scream it!”
“I’M AN OLD BAG OF FILTHY JEWISH SHIT.”
“Give him his glasses,” Eichmann said in a matter-of-fact tone. “All right, get up.”
As I staggered to my feet, a hand caught my elbow to steady me. I felt the glasses placed on my eyes. Into my vision there sprang the face of Epp-stein. On that pale face, in those haunted brown eyes, were scarred two thousand years of Jewish history.
“Sit down, Dr. Jastrow,” said Eichmann. He was sitting at the desk, smoking a cigarette, looking quite composed and bank-managerial. “Now let’s talk sensibly.”
Burger sat down beside him, grinning with enjoyment.
What happened after that is less clear in my recollection, for I was dazed and in great pain. Eichmann’s tone was all business still, but with a new sarcastic edge. What he said was almost as upsetting as the physical abuse. The SS knows that I have been teaching the Talmud; and since education in Jewish subjects is forbidden, I could be sent to the dread prison in the Little Fortress, from which few return alive. Even more staggering, he disclosed that Natalie takes part in scurrilous underground shows mocking the Führer, for which she could be arrested and forthwith executed. Natalie has never talked to me about this. I only knew that she did puppet shows for children.
Obviously Eichmann told me these things to drive home the lesson of Burger’s brutal assault: that no vestige remains of our rights as Americans, or as human beings in Western civilization. We have crossed the line. Any claim to our former Baden-Baden status has been erased by our offenses, and the sword hangs over our heads. With peculiar acid frankness he commented, “Not that we really give a damn how you Jews amuse yourselves!” He told me to teach away, and added that if Natalie ceases her satires it will only go harder with both of us, for I am not to tell her what happened after she left SS headquarters. I must never breathe a word of it to anybody. If I do, he will be sure to find out, and that will be too bad. He said that Epp-stein would show me the ropes of my new Elder status; and so, with an offhand wave, he dismissed me. I could hardly rise from the chair. Eppstein had to help me hobble out. Behind us we could hear the two Germans joking and laughing.
As we left SS headquarters together, Eppstein said not a word. Passing the sentry at the fence, I forced myself to walk more normally. The pain was less, I found, if I stood straight and took firm strides. Eppstein brought me to the barber shop to have my hair and beard trimmed. We went on to the council chamber, where a photographer was setting up for news pictures of the gathered Elders. A reporter, a rather pretty young German woman in a fur coat, was asking questions and scrawling notes. I posed with the Elders. I had my own picture taken. The reporter chatted with me and with the others. I’m sure that these two newspaper people were genuine, and that they left with a highly plausible story — which they may even have believed — about the Jewish council which governs the Paradise Ghetto, a serene well-dressed group of distinguished gentlemen, including the eminent Dr. Aaron Jastrow, author of A Jew’s Jesus.
That Natalie and I are beyond diplomatic rescue is self-evident in this public use of my name and face. Even if the story is meant for European consumption, word is bound to seep back to the United States. The slight gloss I lend to Theresienstadt seems to outweigh any trouble the State Department can now give the Germans about us. Exchanges of official correspondence can go on for years. Our fate will be decided before anything comes of that footling process.
Some notes on all this, before I proceed to write about the counterweight to all this shock, pain, and degradation: my cousin Berel’s return from the dead.
In all my sixty-five years I have encountered strangely little physical violence. The last instance that I can recall, in fact, was the slap Reb Laizar gave me in the Oswiecim yeshiva. Reb Laizar slapped me out of my Jewish identity, as it were, and an SS officer kicked me back into it. What I did when I returned to my room will perhaps make no sense to anybody but me. Since leaving Siena I have carried a well-concealed pouch of last resort, containing the diamonds and the photocopied documents of my juvenile conversion to Catholicism. As Prominente we have never yet, thank God, been bodysearched. I got out those worn folded conversion papers dated 1900, and tore them to bits. This morning for the first time in about fifty years I put on phylacteries. I borrowed them from a pious old man next door. I mean to do this in all the days remaining to me on this sick and stricken earth.
Is this a return to the old Jewish God? Never mind. My Talmud teaching has certainly not been that. I drifted into it. Young people in the library began to ask me questions. A circle of questioners gradually formed, I found I enjoyed the elegant old logical game, and so it became a regular thing. The phylacteries, the old black-stained leather boxes containing Mosaic passages, gave me no intellectual or spiritual uplift as I tied them on head and arm. In fact, though I was alone, I felt self-consciously showy and
silly. But I will persist. Thus I answer Eichmann. As for the old Jewish God, He and I both have accounts to settle, for if I have to explain my apostasy, He has to explain Theresienstadt. Jeremiah, Job, and Lamentations all teach that we Jews tend to rise to catastrophe. Hence phylacteries. Let it go at that.
It says much about human nature — or at least about my own personal foolishness — that for many years I have refused to believe the stories of Nazi atrocities against the Jews, and even the evidence of my eyes; yet now I am certain that the most alarming reports are the true ones. Why this turnabout? What was so very convincing about the encounter with Eichmann and Burger?
After all, I have already seen much atrocious German conduct here. I have seen an SS man clubbing an old woman to her knees in the snow because he caught her peddling cigarette butts. I have heard of children being hanged in the Little Fortress for stealing food. Then there was the census. Three weeks ago, the SS marched the entire ghetto population out into the fields, in blowing freezing weather, counted us over and over for about twelve hours, and left upwards of forty thousand persons standing around in the rainy night. Rumors swept the huge famished crowd that we were all about to be machine-gunned in the dark. A stampede to the town gates ensued. Natalie and I ducked the mob and got back without incident, but we heard that the field in the morning was littered with sleet-covered bodies of trampled old people and children.