I Am Juden

Home > Other > I Am Juden > Page 34
I Am Juden Page 34

by Stephen Uzzell


  I tried not to slump.

  Our beers arrived and Brühl proposed a toast to Moses’ short life. From the strained grin on my face, he realised that for once his clowning had gone too far.

  ‘I wouldn’t let it spoil your evening.’ He leant back and rested a boot on his knee. ‘Montefiore’s a Schindler-Jew.’

  ‘I don’t speak Yiddish,’ I said glumly. ‘So I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘Oskar Schindler, remember, paid our tab last week? Owns the Emalia factory, enamel and ammunition. Guards his workers like gold-dust. Little Moses is probably better off with her there than Jagiello.’

  The way he spoke of Schindler’s protection made me think of Camp Moda, and the Chaze. There were other good men and women out there, I had to believe it was true. Emalia, the Pharmacy, and now my own apartment block, if the postcard could be believed. I didn’t know any of them, and it was probably too dangerous to ever meet. But it was enough just to know they existed.

  ‘Hello, Michael.’ The white-haired owner was collecting glasses from a table behind us when Brühl called him over. Pointing to a side alcove behind a velvet curtain, he asked, ‘You haven’t got Herr Schindler stashed in there, have you?’

  ‘No, sir. Tonight is the Mayor and the Chamber of Commerce. Herr Schindler is in Paris for the holiday, I believe.’

  ‘Lucky bastard.’

  As the owner bowed, I placed a hand on his forearm. ‘Tell me, is your name really Michael?’

  ‘It is. Friends call me Michas.’

  ‘And do you know the Rock of Gibraltar?’

  Widening his eyes at me in exasperation, Brühl said, ‘You’ll have to excuse my friend, he doesn’t get out much.’

  Michael smiled. ‘Situated off the coast of Spain?’

  ‘The very same. Owned by the British.’

  ‘I’ve seen it in the atlas,’ the owner said. ‘But it’s one of the many countries I have never been to, and don’t suppose I ever will.’

  ‘And this bar’s got no connection?’

  ‘Seeming as the bar in mine, sir, no, neither of us do.’

  ‘Amazing. There’s a network of limestone hollows within the Rock, and the biggest one is called Michael’s Cave.’ The owner looked decidedly nonplussed at my revelation, and really who could blame the poor man. ‘It’s a synchronicity, that’s all. A coincidence.’

  ‘I understand.’

  After our host had taken his leave, Brühl said, ‘Harry, you are a complete one-off.’

  ‘It’s perfectly true. The name comes from a grotto in Italy where the archangel Michael is said to have appeared.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. How does a telecoms engineer know all this stuff?’

  ‘I used to be a teacher,’ I confessed. ‘In another life.’

  ‘My God, they let you loose in a classroom? Poor children.’

  I shifted, my seat suddenly as unforgiving as concrete. How sad that I now felt more uncomfortable trapped in the truth than a lie. Another life indeed.

  ‘The University of Kassel,’ I said.

  The substitution was inspired. If Brühl ever thought to check up, I had dealt myself an ace, in terms of plausible deniability. Kassel? No no. I was at the University of Kiel.

  ‘What was your subject?’

  ‘Humanism and Civil Society. A hot-bed of Marxism back then, as you can imagine. I annoyed most of my colleagues by attending the Militant League for German Culture conference in 1933, and said goodbye to the rest when I joined the SS a year later.’ I grinned. ‘If they could see me now.’

  ‘I can’t believe you never told me. I studied Literature at Wittenberg.’ He beamed as if the act conferred brotherhood upon us.

  ‘But not Anna Karenina.’

  The joke sailed over his head like the Hindenburg. He said, ‘I was a total book-worm, before the Cleansing. But one never really stops being a student. What did you teach?’

  ‘Plenty of texts that have gone up in flames since. Heinrich Heine was a favourite, before his Jewishness… became unavoidable. I do think his early poetry is rather sublime.’

  ‘I may still have a volume,’ Brühl whispered. ‘How decadent we are. My tastes were always more… Anglo-Saxon in nature. Victorian Gothic in particular. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?’

  ‘Wonderful novel. Man as Divided Self. Very Nitzchean.’

  ‘My tutor said it was about alcoholism, the gentleman who transforms into a monster after supping his vile brew.’ We knocked our bottles together. Cheers.’

  ‘Faust’s pact with the devil.’

  ‘Another professor with ideas above his station.’

  ‘Oscar Wilde,’ I said. ‘The Portrait of Dorian Grey. More split personalities.’

  ‘The sodomite?’ Brühl said. ‘Steady the buffs, Harry. Even I have limits.’

  28

  I spent the morning of the 25th smuggling what little happiness I could into the Ghetto. City shops were bare in the run up to Christmas while Herman Göring ensured German shelves groaned with food and consumer goods sacked from the Ostland. But with careful purchasing throughout the week, I managed to replenish my supplies. Children’s gifts were harder to come by. Chocolate SS soldiers, toy tanks, fighter planes and machine guns were all that was left unsold in this year of years. A few boiled sweets was the best I could offer the orphans.

  Filling my pockets with cartons and bags and tins, I trafficked the contraband from my apartment and through the Lworksa entrance. For once, the streets were deserted, making my food-drops easier to make. On crowded mornings I had learned to disguise my intentions under a snarling façade, screaming abuse at an unsuspecting prisoner one minute, then disappearing round the nearest corner and leaving two eggs propped against the wall. It didn’t matter if the residents came to detest Oberführer Harry Monke. In fact, as long as it perpetuated my cover, I positively encouraged it. But today I had the streets to myself.

  Hanukkah celebrations could no longer be conducted amongst festive crowds, publicly displaying their joy. Tenement window sills might have been denuded of burning candles, but parties and prayers and speeches and jokes were being held in nearly every courtyard and back room; today, even in rooms which faced the street. With only a skeleton crew of Jewish Police on patrol, nobody was likely to be arrested for lighting a menorah. Like Augustus Brühl, even the OD had limits.

  I spent the morning of the 25th caring for one extended family. When my cupboards were empty, it was time to start searching for the real thing.

  Equipped with a bag containing a peasant’s outfit and the crude sketch of Novy Sacz as my only map, I climbed aboard a V3000 truck from in the Jozefinska workshop and drove it out the courtyard. The glum posse of Blues at Lworska were the only guards to see me leave. Should my actions be questioned when the station reopened tomorrow, I had an answer prepared: my crotchety father was visiting, and demanded to be taken for a tour of the countryside after lunch. Having no vehicle of my own, I took the liberty of borrowing one. Surely the Germany army could not begrudge Julian Scherer’s family friend, not on Christmas Day.

  The drive south took a little over an hour in light traffic and snow. By twelve noon I was approaching Novy Sacz. Knowing nothing of the area, I stopped at a swastika-festooned hotel on the outskirts of town and interrupted lunch to enquire about the size of nearby villages, and their Jewish populations. The staff could not have been more helpful. I left with a ranked list of ten, six of which tallied with the names I had already ear-marked as Shoshana’s possible destinations.

  On the eastern side of Novy Sacz, Logi was a prosperous satellite community to an aircraft factory commandeered by the Nazis. The Jews were allowed to remain exclusively on the four tidy streets that bordered the market square, as quiet today as the Ghetto. I headed towards the two towers of the modern synagogue and parked between the public baths and the kosher abattoir, both of which were closed for the day. It was the perfect place to change clothes.

  Appearing in full SS regalia to Syzmek Lustgarten
was a mistake I woud not make again. Despite the embroidered vest and my well-practised spiel, he had never accepted me. I’d left his apartment with nothing. I could not risk such a failure when it came to my own mother and sisters. If there was information about their whereabouts, it would be passed on to Jozef Siegler, not Harry Mohnke. I shed his skin behind the truck and pulled on the ragged shirt and trousers I’d brought from the Ghetto.

  After knocking on a few doors on Nowy Rynek, I was directed across the square to Waska Street, to the house of Ester Bram, who had arrived with her son earlier this year from Cracow. Alas, the names of my sisters and mother meant nothing to them, but Mrs. Bram insisted I stay for a cup of hot milk.

  Born in Logi, my host had returned home at the start of the year, when the Germans were trying to make Cracow free of Jews rather than imprisoning them behind walls. Anybody with friends or relatives in the surrounding District was encouraged to flee. They were even allowed to purchase one-way train tickets, a mode of transport otherwise forbidden to them. Although the move was an upset, eleven months later, Mrs. Bram was glad she’d made it. Life was simple but comfortable. Mother and son both found work at the aircraft factory, she a clerk, he an engineer, and the German bosses weren’t so bad, when you got used to them. Every now and then, news reached the village about detention camps being built in different parts of the country, but Logi was safe. The Germans needed skilled labour. After half an hour, I too was lulled by the warmth of the fire and the general atmosphere of security. I could have stayed all afternoon, the rest of the war. But I knew the Brams were mistaken. The Germans wanted to create an illusion of peace and quiet, in order to execute their plans with the minimum amount of resistance. There were more than enough Aryan engineers to go round. I said my goodbyes and wished mother and son a happy new year, which was all they wanted to hear.

  As I suspected, life was very different in the impoverished villages west of Novy Sacz. The second one on my list was suffering a Typhus epidemic. My truck was stopped at a Red Cross blockade on the outskirts of Swinecze before I had a chance to change out of Harry Mohnke’s uniform. The health inspector explained that a doctor from Dusseldorf was fighting the outbreak and had imposed a temporary ban on traffic in and out of the village. The sick Jews had been quarantined in a building situated amongst Christian homes, which had provoked much restlessness from the neighbours, inflaming an already volatile situation. The inspector was sure the travel ban could be lifted for the military, but it would have to be cleared by the doctor first. I had no wish to divert the medic’s energies but at the same time, I couldn’t leave without making sure my family were not amongst the afflicted. I wrote a brief message which the inspector had delivered. Forty minutes passed while I waited in the truck, playing noughts and crosses on the back of the vehicle log book. When a reply came back, I could scarcely believe my eyes.

  The doctor had heard about a sister and a mother on the other side of the river Dunajec. The tiny farming village of Paskow was ninth on my list, thirty miles east of Swinecze. While this was enough to excite me, it was the second sentence that converted me into a stuttering fool. The oldest sibling was rumoured to be a courier for the Jewish underground. That had to be Shoshana! I will endeavour to wire ahead, the doctor’s note finished, so the authorities may detain her on your behalf.

  It is safe to say I had never driven so recklessly in my life.

  Afternoon had dissolved into evening by this point, and the only lamps in the darkness were the V3000’s. In the end, all my slips and slides and near-misses with stray cows in the middle of the road were for nought.

  When I arrived, Paskow was a ghost village. The Jews had fled, and it had nothing to do with the doctor. Paskow didn’t have a pair of tin cans or length of string left, never mind a radio set. Windows were smashed, doors kicked in, empty homes ransacked by mobs. Outside the barns and cattle corrals, all that remained were a few split sacks of salt and flour.

  I found an elderly man at prayer in the ruins of one shack, too diminished in body and mind to leave. He offered no reaction to my SS uniform, and invited me to observe the lighting of the third Hanukkah candle and to join his blessing, that a miracle would descend on the entire House of Israel, as in days of old.

  The ceremony over, he told me what had happened. On December 21st, the residents of nearby Zagory had been ordered to get ready for transfer to the Gorlice Ghetto. They had obligingly made their preparations, loading food and cases onto wagons. But on the 22nd, every man, woman and child was taken to ready-dug pits, ordered to undress and executed. The same day and at the same time as the Jews of Jod, the Jews of Kislowszczyzna and its neighbouring small yishuvim were killed – all in all over 500 Jews. Two days ago, when news reached Paskow, the population scrambled into the night, spilling east towards the Ukranian border. Not one of them had been heard of since.

  Crushed by the vicissitudes of hope and despair, I drove back to Cracow in a trance. To this day I can recall nothing of the ninety mile journey.

  It was one in the morning when I arrived at the Ghetto; eight hours until I was due back at my desk. The gate guards were too drunk to speak as I passed and there was nobody in the workshop to see me return the truck. At least I had managed to get out and back without arousing suspicion. Next time, I would need considerably longer than a day. Crossing into the Ukraine was not a decision for my current state of mind. I could barely keep my eyes open as I stumbled home to Tragutta.

  Such was my desire to collapse into bed that I almost walked straight past the mail-boxes in the lobby. Christmas Day had come and gone and there was still no indication how Otto Mohnke had taken his sole-surviving son’s rejection. I back-tracked to my mail-box in case correspondance had arrived in my absence.

  One parcel wrapped in bright red paper, no label, hand delivered. Somebody had been intending to give it to me in person, but found the apartment empty. From the way the gift flexed between my fingers, I knew it was a book. I tore it open in the lobby, unable to wait for the privacy of my hallway.

  The volume was yellowed and well-thumbed and I knew before I inspected the cover what it was and who it was from: The Lyrical Ballads of Heinrich Heine. A handwritten inscription adorned the front page:

  ‘You were right. They are rather sublime. Seasons Greetings, your friend Augustus.’

  29

  Given all that happened yesterday, I was content to be leaving the apartment only five minutes late for the first day back at work. The chill I’d caught changing Harry Mohnke’s uniform behind the kosher abattoir had blossomed into a full-blown cold, which slowed my pre-coffee shaving. I had to keep pausing not only to wipe the bathroom mirror but the tip o my own nose.

  There was one consolation to being five minutes behind schedule. It further reduced the chances of meeting Magda Pryzotsky again, the woman who’d seen me with the postcard. I’m sure we were both relieved about that.

  Approaching the Lworska gate, I was hailed by Augustus Brühl, normally parking his car when I arrived at the station. Today he looked like he had walked the five miles from Kleparz. Walked or ran. Between the sweat on his face and and the snow-stains on his trousers, the man was drenched. I waited for him to catch up.

  ‘Harry, I’m going to tell you something now, and I want you to promise you’ll listen very carefully,’ he commanded, catching his breath. I wondered what on earth he was going to say.

  ‘Under no circumstances must you ever, ever think of buying a DKW.’

  I coughed. The cold had worked its way down to my chest.

  ‘Nothing but trouble that car. I leave it in the garage for one day – one day - and she’s as dead as a doornail this morning. And that’s after the 300 Marks I’ve already spent this year on a new carburettor…’

  I let him vent as we entered the Ghetto. Car-talk had never been one of my specialties.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, his own battery finally running flat. ‘How was your Christmas?’

  We crossed onto Jozefinska, where
the wrenching struggle for survival was starting up after the briefest of respite. Queues were already forming outside the shops, which would not open for another hour. Old people leaning on sticks, cripples in carts, babies at their mothers’ breasts. The rest without faces, backs curved, heads hanging low. A cavalcade of poverty.

  ‘Strained,’ I said.

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘As predicted. Look, thank-you so much for the - for that book. Very thoughtful of you.’

  ‘Pah. It was only gathering dust in my cupboard.’ He swatted my gratitude away like a cloud of flies. ‘You two were out late last night.’ Since there was no question, I didn’t risk a reply. ‘I waited until evening, but you weren’t back.’

  Still no question, but my silence was becoming conspicuous.

  ‘We went for a drive,’ I said. ‘To get out of the house. Ended up getting lost, which led to more arguments. But at least we changed the view.’

  ‘It was dark by three in the afternoon,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t have seen much. I didn’t know you had a car.’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said, and suffered a coughing fit, doubled over on the pavement, hand clutching my mouth. The line outside the baker’s regarded my condition with sly bemusement.

  ‘OK, Harry?’

  I span my finger like a clock, waiting for the fit to pass. When it did, I wheezed, ‘Don’t tell anyone, but I borrowed a truck from the workshop.’

  ‘Why would I tell anyone?’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  I coughed again. The line shuffled aside to make way for my spluttering. A tall, angular woman who’d been eyeing me hissed a stream of Yiddsh invective as I passed, and her companion snickered. I didn’t know either of them. The thin woman shook her curls and spat in the gutter.

  I was reasonably sure she’d told me, ‘Abi gezunt dos leben ken men zikh ale mol nemen.’

  Which translated as, Stay healthy, so you can kill yourself later.

  ‘My Yiddish is a bit rusty.’ Brühl had stopped walking again. ‘But I don’t think she wished us Seasons Greetings. Harry, for Christ’s sake. She spat at you.’

 

‹ Prev