No deportations from the Ghetto were scheduled for today. So where were the Jews going, and on who’s orders?
I ran towards the Kacik junction. The truck-driver had found the small pedestrian gate next to the Rynek market square, and was attempting to negotiate through his window with the Blue Police on guard. Eventually, the driver turned off the engine, got out, walked round the side of the truck and opened the back doors. The peasants helped each other down with cases and bags and filed through the narrow squeeze-point into the Rynek.
The prisoners weren’t being taken away; they were arriving.
A breeze funneled off the river, bringing with it the rumour of a distant roar, car horns and cheers, a rally or procession. I followed the tram-line away from the wall towards the water’s edge.
Traffic was backed up on the two bridges, all the way in to Kazimierz, solid lines of army trucks nose to tail, loaded with peasants. Twenty-nine villages’ worth, a people in mandatory exodus. The road-sides lined with Polish commuters, cheering goodbye to the Jews. The trucks were moving, slowly. They bumped off the bridge at Podgorze and snaked around the far end of the wall to the main gate. For once, the Germans had to be taken at their word. Resettlement meant just that.
I was in Vilno on 20th March 1941, the day the Cracow Ghetto was opened, but this must have been what it looked like. Hundreds of Jews arriving with knapsacks, cases, boxes and bundles. All streaming into the gloomiest, grimiest quarter of the city, a place with no sewers and paved with cobblestones. The mud in the streets splashed as people walked, tripping on the uneven pavement, dropping clothes and other possessions into the sticky black mud. Their meagre property lay trampled, crushed, covered with dirt.
Waves of people, one after another. Mentally ill people with ghoulish eyes and uncontrollable limbs, sick people pulled on droshkeys, and a great unmediated mass of men and women, tall and short, attractive and ugly, strong and frail, stooped and trudging under the weight of their luggage. Animals of all sizes, brushes, bowls, irons, pillows, pots and pans, cutlery, possessions beyond number.
And leaning out of tenement windows, aghast, the Ghetto’s original ghosts. Apartments were already full to bursting. Where were these peasants meant to go?
In the course of a single day, the population grew by more than two thousand people.
***
At the start of the next week, on the coldest day of the new year, two SD and one SIPO trucks drove into the Ghetto, shrilling through loudspeakers strapped to their roofs that the city captain had ordered all Jews to give up their furs. An infestation of lice from the recently arrived country cousins was claimed as pretext, expertly salting the wounds of resentment. All garments must be handed over.
Obersturmführer Koerner, Obersturmfuhrer Heinemayer and Unterstrumfuhrer Vollbrecht commandeered a former schoolhouse on Limanowskiego Street. The collection began immediately. On a day that saw the temperature plummet to minus ten degrees, Jews in flimsy cloth coats queued for hours to rid themselves of thick warm furs. One helpful soul, in addition to handing over his wife’s blue fox pelt, brought news from his tenement that a neighbour had been seen cutting a coat into ribbons rather than surrendering it. A pack of German dogs soon dragged the trouble-maker out of his cellar, where he was burying the pieces. Soldiers pushed him through the streets to Limanowskiego, where they shot him in the face. He landed in a pile of coats spilling out the schoolhouse doors. Snowflakes started to fall, first pirhouetting through the air, then covering all in a thin white layer, like an embalmer’s sheet.
In total, the Fur Aktion yielded twenty-three men’s fur coats, a hundred and thirteen ladies’ fur coats, three hundred and fifty-eight men’s coats fur linings, fourteen silver fox pelts, a hundred and forty-four red fox pelts, five hundred and fifty-three hand-warmers, four thousand nine hundred and seventy-two fur collars, four hundred and fifty-eight assorted pelts, two hundred and eighty-one sheepskin coats.
Two thousand four hundred and eighty-three receipts were issued.
33
As promised by Wilhelm Kunde, August Brühl and I were soon back to doing what we did best in the Department of Civil Affairs. Symche Spira’s networks of spies set about drawing up lists of those suspected of withholding furs. They were brought to Jozefinska and beaten until they revealed the hiding place. Work was suspended one February morning by Rottenführer Ritschak’s announcement that all staff were required to report to the Jewish Hospital for a health inspection.
The office let out a groan at this, which I thought churlish. With a Typhus epidemic running rampant, it was better to be safe than sorry.
Even in its impoverished state, the Ghetto hospital was a wonderful sanctuary of order and cleanliness to all prisoners who visited. Nobody had to lie on the floor, as they did elsewhere. There were beds, clean sheets, and food. The clinic was open twenty-four hours a day. A committee of three doctors could release workers for reasons of illness. Hundreds of people sought appointments everyday, mostly in the evening when they returned from work. The Ghetto hospital had general practitioners, specialists, dentists, laboratories including an X-ray department and, until last week’s decree forbidding births, its own children’s ward.
Today the third floor gynaecology department was given over for the check up all German and Polish authorities who policed the Ghetto. It was only when I entered the ward that I realised the inspection had nothing to do with Typhus. Infectious diseases of a very different nature were the order of the day. The poster on the wall was my first clue: a chorus line of blonde beauties receding into the distance, tight black dresses accentuating their curves and – leaving little to the imagination – the intersecting Vs of their crutches. A red banner above their blonde heads proclaimed ‘98% OF ALL PROCURABLE WOMEN HAVE VENEREAL DISEASE’.
Being circumcised, I lived in constant fear of public nudity, avoiding all baths and swimming pools and only urinating in closed lavatory stalls, or else walking back out if the closet was occupied. My colleagues must have thought me the most constipated man in the Reich. It made no difference to Germans whether a chap had lost his foreskin for religious reasons or an accident, or because of a congenital or acquired phimosis. Anyone lacking a foreskin was immediately under suspicion. So-called ‘circumcison reversal’ was a burgeoning field, although most of the specialists were charlatans. I knew an eminent plastic surgeon in Wilno who had supposedly taught Moshe and some of the other Pilies Street boys to lengthen their foreskins by sleeping with a bottle of water attached to themselves, gradually increasing the volume night by night. The surgeon claimed the method had helped Jews avoid persecution in Roman times. Too squeamish to hang a bottle, I tried gingerly pulling on mine for a week to reverse the Mohle’s handiwork, unsurprisingly to no avail. Now after several years of successful concealment, I had walked straight into what the other officers were calling a Troddelappel – a Prick Parade.
The corridor was teeming with gate guards, German soldiers and Polish Blue Police, stripped to the waist except for ID tags and caps, mired three deep against the wall while I scrambled after Augustus Brühl towards a hand-painted ‘Officer’s Area’ sign at the far end.
‘I haven’t a drop of juice left for myself,’ one irate solider shouted. ‘And you pecker-checkers expect me to have anything left for a whore!’
Another insisted, ‘You ought to be over on the Eastern Front, they’re crazy about Russian brothels!’
The doctors gave as good as the got, especially if anyone didn’t have his works ready in time. At the inspection area, a soldier dropped his trousers in a slouching doctor’s face, impassive behind tortoise shell spectacles. The doctor flicked a lazy cigarette cigarette at the man’s groin and sneered, ‘Pull that foreskin back further, man! Should come easily to the likes of you!’
We left the scrum behind for the more sedate atmosphere of the Officer’s waiting room, but we weren’t exempt from examination. The only exit was via the doctor’s consulting room, guarded by a stern nurse outside w
ho was collecting my colleague’s identity cards. Once ticked off on her list, the men sat down on a pair of long benches against the wall. When they saw myself and Augustus Brühl enter the room, three men on the second bench got up and squeezed onto the end of the first. Brühl’s unpopularity had plummeted since the new year, and it was contagious.
What the hell was I going to do?
Pretend to have a heart attack and get carried away on a gurney? The way my chest was banging, I might not even need to fake it.
I handed our ID cards to the nurse and joined Brühl on the empty bench. My one ally, the only person who might have helped me, and he was the least popular officer in the Ghetto. I had hitched my wagon to the wrong star. Brühl was continuing to haemorrhage friends and I was no closer to finding out why. Something had happened over the Christmas holiday. Had the Gestapo found out that he had given me a banned book? I shivered and moaned. The Prick Parade was of much more immediate concern.
‘What’s up with you?’ he said.
‘I think I’m coming down with something.’
‘Well, you’re in the right place.’ His eyes drifted up to the yellow Syphillis poster on the opposite wall. ‘Or possibly not.’
‘Thanks for that.’
He nodded to the slogan on the poster, a German officer straightening his tie at the sight of a shapely woman leaning against a street corner. ‘Self-control is self-preservation, Harry, remember that.’
Before I could reply, the nurse took her next card and called my name.
I don’t remember my companion wishing me good luck, or the long walk past the crowded bench to the nurse’s desk.
The door to the consultation room clicked shut behind me. The doctor was grotesque, eyes and lips squeezed shut by drapes of purple fat. A round chin studded his jaw like a roast apple. He wagged two bejewelled fingers for me to approach.
‘Trousers.’
‘How would you like me to save you the bother?’
‘I’m paid to bother.’
‘Not enough, I bet. It’s not pretty down there. The dreaded drips and sores.’
‘Let’s see what’s going on.’
‘I’m already taking sulfa drugs and penicillin, from the Pharamacy Under The Eagle. Kunde’s man sorted me out. Oberführer Scherer and I were hoping to keep a lid on this.’
‘Pity you hadn’t taken your own advice. Put a helmet on next time you see action.’
‘I will, don’t worry. Look, the men out there don’t like me too much. They think I’m a stickler for the rules, and I suppose I am. Most of them.’
I took out my wallet.
‘If word gets out that I’ve got the clap, I’d never hear the end of it.’ I counted off five of Erich Monhnke’s hundred Reich Mark notes onto the doctor’s desk. ‘You’d be doing us all a huge favour to keep this off the record.’
‘I suppose there’s no point in needlessly disrupting morale,’ the doctor said, covering the money with a blank certificate. ‘Of course, my nurse is also responsible for the paperwork.’
I doled out three more hundreds. The doctor’s fine eyebrows kept arching until another five notes were piled on his desk.
***
Back at the station, another purge was in progress, conducted by the same three men responsible for the Fur Aktion, Koerner, Heinemayer and Vollbrecht of the Political department of the SD and SIPO.
I don’t know if the timing was coincidental, or if our medical inspection was ordered to make sure there was no interference from the existing Ghetto security. But once again, Jozefinska has been sidelined.
One hundred and forty prominent Jews, mostly intellectuals, had been arrested while I was stuck in the Prick Parade. They were now crammed into our cells. Deportment was scheduled to a new camp I had not heard of before, called Auschwitz.
34
SD and SIPO visits to the Ghetto became increasingly common after that, and arrests of Jews a daily occurrence. A pattern quickly established itself. Individuals were taken to our prison and transferred in small groups to Auschwitz. Before the end of the week, the station received a batch of telegrams addressed to the families of the first wave of deportees. Each hand-written message was a variation on a very limited theme:
Husband/brother/son died in the concentration camp Auschwitz. The Komendant.
In the beginning it was accepted that relatives had died of natural causes. But the deportations continued, and for each one, a telegram followed a few days later. A ripple of alarm began to wind its way through the crowded streets, and would not be quietened. The days of wilful ignorance were over.
At first, I thought the endless telegrams were an administrative blunder, some young clerk failing to realise all these notifications going to the same Ghetto. But I quickly realised the authorities just didn’t care. Sooner or later, every last Jew would end somewhere like Auschwitz. The last stage of resettlement was always death. Sometimes it just took a while.
It was during this period I received a rare letter that I was accosted by Otto, hobbling out of his kitchen as I returned home. The square of bright paint under the stairwell where his noticeboard once hung was now covered with a print of Wilheln Sauter’s Eternal Soldier. Following January’s postcard, the Superintendenet had spent the day in Pomorska at Gestao HQ, put up in what he described as more of a hotel room than a cell. Inspector Schmidt told him the quietude was to help ‘give him space’ to recall valuable information. Whether it succeeded or not, I can not say. But the next morning, Escherich was back at his kitchen table.
‘Come here,’ he closed the kitchen door behind me. He lifted a spitting egg pan from the stove, set it on a trivet, then reached up to a shelf of mason jars and removed a white envelope.
‘It came today,’ he said. ‘Mordka Zygot, just like you said. Sixth floor and everything. Should I tell Inspector Schmidt?’
‘On no account,’ I said, a little too abruptly. ‘That is, I’d like to surprise him myself.’
‘You think this Donelaitis is the postcard writer?’
‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose details in such a sensitive case.’
‘Sounds Lithuanian to me. Never trusted them.’
‘Very wise.’
‘No Lithuanians registered here, I checked.’
‘If he’s a tenant, he would have assumed a different identity,’ I said. ‘Or she.’
‘What do I do next?’
‘Nothing. You’ve done all that was required.’
‘Will there be more letters?’
‘I hope so. If there are, do exactly as today.’
‘Should I call you at the stationhouse? It’s been sat here on my shelf for a whole day.’
‘Better to let me know in person,’ I said. ‘Anybody could be listening to a telephone line.’
‘Spies?’
Turning to leave, I nodded. ‘Dangerous times.’
As I opened the janitor’s door, Rudolf Ditzen was standing on the threshold, overcoat draped over his elbow, hand raised, ready to knock. He frowned when he saw me blocking his way, that expansive brow rippling like the Sahara.
‘Oberführer Mohnke.’
‘Ditzen.’
I folded my hands behind my back, concealing the envelope I hoped he hadn’t seen. Unfortunately the Janitor interpreted this as some kind of sign. I felt his rasping breath at my shoulder.
Escherich shifted into place at my side. ‘Not expecting any post were you, Ditzen?’
My soul groaned.
‘No special deliveries I should keep an eye out for?’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Ditzen said. ‘It’s been a while since anybody sent me a parcel. No, I’m afraid it’s my water pipe. I don’t know if they froze again last night but I couldn’t get anything out of it this morning. Had to leave without even brushing my teeth.’
‘Nobody else has had a problem.’
‘It must be just mine then. The same thing happened last year, or the year before.’
‘Whi
ch taps are you talking about?’
‘Gentlemen.’ Turning sideways, I put my palms to excuse myself. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ I slipped between them out the door.
I made it to the third floor landing when I heard Ditzen puffing up the steps behind me.
‘Here, what did he mean about special deliveries?’
I’d already started up the third flight and didn’t stop.
‘We’ve had another postcard, haven’t we?’
I made an exaggerated show of glancing up and down the stairwell before continuing in a hushed voice. ‘Don’t take it to heart, Escherich probably mixed you up with somebody else. He’s going through a rough patch.’
‘A new card would spoil the pattern. It’s the tenth today. The last two appeared on the twenty-third.’
‘I don’t know anything more about these cards than you, Ditzen. The Gestapo are handling the investigation, I work in the Ghetto. I don’t interfere with their work, and vice versa.’
‘The whole thing’s got me on edge.’
‘As are we all. But I think the less we talk about it, the better. Otherwise we’re falling right into their hands.’
‘Yes, alright. I should be grateful, really, having you as a neighbour.’
For the second time in five minutes, I wished Ditzen a good evening, and hurried into my apartment. Safe behind my locked door, I tore open the letter from Kopaliny.
35
Justyna commends you for preserving the sacred flame of resistance and prays that throughout this bleak winter you will continue to feed it with the live coals of your heart!
I Am Juden Page 36