Ditzen in darkness had something of the mole about him. Pink button nose, big flat dome of scalp, tiny eyes squinting at the hallway bulb. For some reason he had turned off his own lights – behind him, the electric cord still swung at the side of his mirror. The other doors behind him were closed to preserve the warmth.
‘Mr. Mohnke,’ he said after thirty seconds of quite exquisitely painful silence.‘Is everything alright?’
‘Apologies for the late hour, Ditzen. I’m trying to find a damned needle. I don’t suppose I could borrow one?’
‘A needle?’ He tapped the inside of his arm, near the elbow.
‘A needle and a reel of cotton.’
‘Yes, right. I think I have some. One minute.’
He closed his door and left me standing in the corridor. Less than a minute later, he returned with a small piece of cardboard wrapped with thread and studded with two needles.
‘Perfect,’ I said.
‘Keep it.’
‘Very kind. Darning my - ’
‘Goodnight,’ he said, closing the door before I could finish.
‘Socks.’ The bolt drew back in place. ‘Goodnight.’
25
I waited long into Tuesday afternoon for one of Symche Spira’s informants to come to the Department of Civil Affairs with news of a lucrative lead. A Polish factory worker outside the Ghetto was rumoured to be forging employment permits for pretty young Jewesses, who he proceeded to offer as escort girls to his clients. While August Brühl was taking down details, I gathered up the Syzmek Lustgarden file I’d been studying, walked over to my colleague and placed it next to his paperwork.
Brühl checked the name and frowned. ‘Who’s he?’
‘An old Akiva contact of Gusta Tova Draenger.’
He opened the file and dangled the single sheet. ‘Not much here. What do you know?’
Two years ago they were all under Gestapo surveillance. And now he’s squeaky clean? I don’t believe it. So I did some asking around.’
‘You were here all day Sunday, putting me to shame again.’
This was true. Hungover from our Michael’s Cave rendezvous, I’d spent the next day smuggling food from Erich’s kitchen into the Ghetto, and dropping it in the streets.
‘These Jews are dogs,’ I said, avoiding the eyes of the informant. ‘It takes them a while to get used to a new master, that’s all. Now they talk to me.’
‘Dr. Doolittle.’
‘Something like that.’
‘And what do they say?’
‘That Lustgarden’s up to his old tricks, running an evening prayer group out of his apartment. I’m going to pay him a visit.’
‘Why not do it tonight and catch a full haul?’
‘I thought about that. But if I get to him by himself, there’s always the chance I can turn him.’
Brühl flashed a grin at the informant. ‘See this? Only been here a week and already he’s thinking like one of you. You can tell Spira his days are numbered.’
‘So do you want to come? It’s only down the street.’ I pretended to throw a punch. ‘One, two, we work him over like Frau Jagiello.’
But as I’d hoped, the organiser of illicit prayer meetings proved no contest for the cocktail of bribery and sexual exploitation that Brühl had just been served. He declined.
As I moved to retrieve Lustgarden’s file, Brühl’s long cold fingers stopped the back of my hand. Lowering his voice, he said, ‘Go easy, alright?’
‘On Lustgarden?’
‘On yourself.’ I tried wriggling my hand free, but Brühl clamped tighter. ‘You looked shattered yesterday, and I don’t just mean the black mollies. Pace yourself.’
For the benefit of both our reputations, I pounded ferociously on Lustgarten’s door and when the father answered, snarled at him to fetch his son and leave us.
The younger Lustgarten darted across the hallway into the kitchen, where I heard a woman I took to be his mother plead to be able to stay and watch her stew. The son calmly insisted she go next door, promising he would not let the pot burn.
I stood loudly cursing in the corridor while the elders left, mother shouting instructions about when to add the beans as father pulled her away. They disappeared through a neighbour’s slitted door.
I marched into the vacated hallway and made sure Lustgarten and I were alone. One water closet, a bedroom with three matresses, living room with a window that opened onto a dank well-shaft in the centre of the block and a tiny cluttered kitchen at the back that made Erich Mohnke’s look imperious. True to his word, Szymek Lustgarten leaned against the stove, ankles crossed, an open book in one hand and a long wooden spoon in the other.
A pair of thick dark eyebrows raised on his forehead as I approached the doorway, the only sign that being paid a house visit by the SS spoiled his day. With slicked back hair and collar wide open over the lapels, Lustgarten looked more like a Hollywood idol than a Hebrew scholar.
I picked my way past the pots and pans stacked on the floor and stopped at the sink, where I removed my cap and said, still in German, ‘Do you speak Yiddish?’
‘I do.’
‘Say something.’
‘Why?’
‘Humour me.’
Turning back to the pages of his book, he said, in exaggerated, cartoon Yiddish, ‘I’m not your talking monkey.’
‘Very good,’ I replied, in the same tongue. ‘Now I want you to put the book down and give me your full attention.’
Lustgarten obligingly fit the paperback onto a crowded plate shelf above his head and dangled the spoon like a hypnotist’s pendulum. ‘Permission to keep stirring, Oberführer? My mother’s very insistent.’
‘Jewish mothers, I know them well’. I removed my jacket and hung it from the door handle. When I started unfastening my cuffs, Lustgarten said, ‘Sorry for the heat – air conditionning’s on the blink. Maybe you could send somebody round?’
I placed a finger to my lips, then opened my shirt buttons, pulled it off and draped the garment over the jacket.
Finally, I reached behind my shoulders and lifted the cotton vest over my head. I folded it into a square in my hands until the stitching was clearly visible next to the label, then passed the vest to Lustgarten.
‘My name is Jozef Siegler,’ he read, cradling the fabric. ‘25/03/1901. I am a Jew. Where did you get this? Why are you wearing it?’
‘In case I am discovered.’
‘Discovered?’
‘May I?’ Lustgarten returned the vest and I started putting my clothes back on, talking as I dressed.
‘I’m not Oberführer Mohnke, I’m Jozef Siegler. My family lived in Cracow before the war, in Kazimierz. They had a grocery store on Izaaka. I worked in Germany in the 30s, until things got too bad. Then with my sister, I joined Akiva. This was in Wilno. We were smuggling Jews across the border, but the Nazis invaded there too. I was arrested, my sister fled. Three months ago I broke out of a labour camp near Ponary, and found shelter with two brothers, first in Lithuania and then in Poland. I was able to pass as a member of the family, as a Pole. I used to be a teacher, I was good at languages. So I became known as Damian Plotz. Word of my arrival spread. After a month in the village, the Belorussian Chief of Police came to the house. He needed a translator, at short notice. For the sake of the family, I could not refuse. It was awful, the things I witnessed that night. I knew I had to do something, to try and help. I agreed to work for the police full-time, in Lublin. On the way, there was a fight outside the train station and the Belorussian Chief and I became separated. I found an SS officer murdered in an alleyway. His name was Harry Mohnke. It was uncanny, we looked like brothers. I took it as a sign. I put on his uniform, and left him wearing my clothes. Damian Plotz was dead. Mohnke was coming back from his brother’s funeral, another SS, killed in Warsaw, and was on the way to Cracow, where the brother kept an apartment. I found letters in his pocket, legal papers and a key - ’
I stopped, distracted by the engorged flame
at the stove, now feeding on the end of Lustgarten’s wooden spoon. The ladle was already blackened and trailing smoke. Lustgarten snapped out of his trance, flung the spoon to the floor and stamped out the fire. He blew out the stove and set the pot on the side to cool.
Composure regained, he turned to me and said, ‘Are you finished?’
‘Almost. I decided to come back to Cracow to look for my family, but then I managed to get Mohnke was assigned to the Ghetto. To the station at Jozefinska, the Department of Civil Affairs. It was it was the best place to be. That was two weeks ago.’
‘And what do you want me me to do?’
‘Do you believe me?’
‘Why have you come here?’ He pointed to the floor. ‘I mean, to me.’
‘Because you know Gusta Tova Draenger.’
At mention of her name, his whole attitude changed.
‘You know Gusta?’
‘Not personally,’ I said. ‘Not yet. I came because you’re Akiva.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘The SS knows everything.’ I smiled. ‘Well, almost everything. I read your file. I want to help.’
‘I can just see you lighting Sabbath candles in your lederhosen.’
‘You must be able to see what I can do.’
‘I can see that you’re saving your own skin, and that’s fine. If I had those big blue eyes of yours, I’d probably do the same - actually, no. Even if I had a face like Gerhard Bartels, I don’t have the chutzpah to do what you’re doing.’
‘You’re already doing it,’ I said. ‘Last Saturday I watched more than half a dozen men and women troop up your stairs here. That’s nowhere near enough, but it’s a start. Think of what we could do together.’
‘The start of what?’
‘Resistance. An army.’
‘Those men and women are boys and girls, only a couple of years younger than me. They’re not soldiers, they’re scouts. With the schools closed, education is our only fight. Reading and worship. If you were Akiva, you’d know that.’
‘I joined Akiva in 1941, with my sister. We worked on Operation Punsk, transferring orphans across the Lithuanian border. When that became impossible, we ran a youth house on Pilies Street, in Vilno old town. I was like you then, a scholar. I used to spend my afternoons in the Strashum Library, studying ancient texts, and telling my students about them in the evenings. My sister Shoshana, she was the fighter. A couple of her friends came to see me one night, Vitka Kempner and Abba Kovner. We had a discussion in a kitchen much like this. They pleaded for me to join them, made wild prophecies about Europe becoming a burial pit for the Jews if we stood by, but I refused. Six months later, December 1941, the Akiva secretariat brought a young boy from Cracow to tell us a story. The man was Joziek Rudashevski, the boy was Jacob Shmiel. Jacob had witnessed the first SS purge on Kazimierz, the raiding party for furs and jewels. For an encore, the Einsatzgruppe locked a group of men in the Stara Boznica synagogue and burnt it down.’
‘I remember.’
‘Still I would not be persuaded to take up arms. Shoshana left that night, to join the struggle. I haven’t seen her since.’
‘Well there’s no Shoshana Siegler here, if that’s who you’re looking for.’
‘Don’t make the same mistake as I did.’
‘Look, if you want to play cloak-and-dagger, that’s up to you, my friend. But I won’t be putting Akiva at risk. Even if the whole Ghetto rose up en masse, we’d be crushed in minutes. ’
‘So what do you propose?’
‘Those raids you mentioned, burning the synaogues. That all stopped when the Germans set up the Ghetto. It’s not perfect, but times are tough. The world’s at war in case you haven’t noticed. We keep our heads down and we get by. Now if you’ll excuse me, the stew’s ready and my parents are hungry.’
26
I left my apartment in the usual manner on the morning of Thursday December 23rd, eschewing the elevator to walk the four flights to the ground floor. As I approached the penultimate stairwell, I passed an envelope propped against the windowsill.
A plain postcard on closer inspection, the address side left blank.
When I turned it over, thirteen shots of pure adrenaline surged into my heart:
Polish people wake up! Why suffer war and death for the Hitler
plutocracy?
The handwriting was precise, each letter scratched in the blocky style of the signwriter.
It wasn’t from Akiva; Syzmek Lustgarten didn’t know where I lived.
As I wiped my fingerprints prior to replacing it on the sill, a middle-aged woman appeared at the top of the flight stairs, smart in mauve hat and coat, a handbag plumb at her wrist.
‘Halt!’ I shouted in Polish, although she walking towards me and not away. ‘Identify yourself.’
‘Magda Pryzotsky, apartment 21.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m on my way to the National Bank. I work as a teller. Is everything alright?’
‘Did you just pass anybody suspicious?’
‘You’re the first person I’ve seen. What’s happened? May I approach?’
Magda Pryzotsky and I had never met. Our morning routines deviated by that all-important factor of three minutes. But now she had seen me, with the postcard.
‘Please,’ I said, softening my stance. ‘Come down.’
When she joined me on the landing, I held up the postcard. ‘I found it here. Two minutes ago.’
Trembling, she accepted the card and turned it over. As red as my face turned, hers blanched white. She pushed it back at me.
‘Whoever would leave such a thing?’
‘That’s what I intend to find out. They’ve written their own death warrant for sure. Oberführer Mohnke, I live on the fourth floor. I help oversee the Jewish Residential District.’
‘I’ve heard. Your poor brother. So sad.’
‘Terrorists have got their tendrils into all corners of the Reich,’ I said. ‘Even this apartment block. Can you think of anybody here with a grievance? Anybody particularly angry or upset?’
‘I wouldn’t know. We all keep to ourselves. Whatever would have happened if you hadn’t been here to find it?’
‘What would you have done, Mrs Pryzotzky, if I’d taken the elevator instead of walking this morning?’
‘I’d go straight to Escherich,’ she said, and when I raised my eyebrows, added, ‘And then contact the police.’
‘Very good. If everybody is as patriotic as you, this Communist won’t have any place to hide.’
27
On the evening of the 24th, I gave in to Augustus Brühl’s requests and agreed to join him for another festive drink at Michael’s Cave. Abruptly cutting short our last rendezvous had failed to rule me out as a drinking partner. In truth, I don’t think Brühl had anybody else. We were as lonely as each other. He even suggested that, as two unencumbered bachelors, we celebrate the 25th together, at his apartment. The works: roast goose, gingerbread cookies, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Thankfully I was quick-witted enough to recall Otto Mohnke’s letter. I told him my father was coming to town, and the two of us did not get on, like his sister. As much as misery loves company, I would spare Brühl on this occasion. He understood perfectly.
‘Happy families are all alike,’ I quoted,’ but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’
‘Dostoevsky,’ Brühl said.
‘Tolstoy,’ I corrected.
‘Smart-ass,’ he said. ‘Let’s get blotto.’ He began roaring with mock belligerence, ‘Down with a Christ who allows himself to be crucified! The German God cannot be a suffering God! He is a God of power and strength!
It was going to be a long night
No jazz band but a string quartet playing carols when we arrived at the cellar. Soothing enough, until I realised it wasn’t just the musicians who had been replaced:
Silent night, Holy night,
All is calm, all is bright.
Only the Chan
cellor stays on guard
Germany’s future to watch and to ward,
Guiding our nation aright.
Drinks ordered, we speculated on how the rest of the office might be celebrating the holiday. Wilhelm Kunde was a dedicated practitioner of Paganism, I learned. It was on his orders, the poster of Odin as Santa Claus was hung on the map wall, and the Sig rune placed atop the Christmas tree. Kunde had also petitioned Hans Frank to restore the date of celebrations to the winter solstice, but that was beyond even the purview of the General Government. Brühl swore that the Hauptsturmführer’s friends spent the night of the 21st atop the mountain in Zakopane, cavorting with torches while their families gathered round a bonfire in the town below, although I suspected my leg was being pulled at this point.
‘Hey, talking about Christmas,’ Brühl said, interrupting himself. ‘Remember baby Moses?’
‘I’m pretty sure you’ve got your Old Testament wrong there, my friend. Moses was the bearer of the Ten Commandants.’
‘And the Exodus, delivering the Israelites from slavery,’ Brühl said. ‘The Moses I’m talking about marched himself right back into it. Or you did, I should say.’
‘The little sack of shit I carried from Jagiello’s?’ I recalled how we’d left each other on the street. ‘You went off with Kunde. What was I to do? I dumped him at the House of Orphans.’
‘I know, because that’s where you thought he belonged. His mother, apparently, thinks otherwise.’
‘What mother?’
‘I was talking to old man Kurzamnn today. Turns out mama Montefiore is one of our Jews. Sent her precious boy to stay with Polish partisans in March, to spare him from the District. Now he’s back, right in time for the fireworks. I tell you - a Christmas miracle!’
I Am Juden Page 33