‘I’m two inches taller,’ I said. ‘It’s the only way our mother could tell us apart.’
Kunde said, ‘The father’s old friends with Oberführer Scherer.’
Goethe rubbed his nose with the tissue and gave a startled sneezed. ‘You know, I think I’m going to like Cracow after all. The four of us must have dinner one night. I throw the most exceptional parties.’
44
Overnight, the Ghetto was surrounded by German police and SS. The Jews were woken at dawn by a chorus of loudspeakers, ordering everybody to report outside: ‘This is not a deportation. Repeat, this is not a deportation. You are being resettled for your comfort and convenience.’
It was our job to patrol the streets, make selections and compile the first of many lists. Those employed in factories or workshops were permitted to stay, along with members of their family up to fourteen years of age. These lucky few received my seal of the Polzeifuhrer on their identity cards. All others not in eligible employment were told to collect their valuables and baggage of up to 20kg, and to report to Zgody Square. After barely enough time to pack a hairbrush, let alone kiss loved ones goodbye, the Jewish Police started knocking on doors, pulling those without the proper seals back onto the street and driving them towards the assembly point. Kunde, Goethe and an Oberführer I did not know called Otto von Mallotke swept up the rear.
The rest of Jozefinska were dispatched ahead to the Square, where a truck full of small wooden desks and chairs awaited. We unloaded the furniture and set up a neat row opposite the Pharmacy, then made sure each desk was equipped with the correct stamp and ink tray. In an idle moment, I caught myself thinking of June mornings long gone, laying out exam papers in the Great Hall of Kiel before the students arrived.
The square started filling from all directions with a stream of women, children, and elderly. They had reported so often in so many towns and cities, they knew exactly what to do. Everybody moved like clockwork. Lines were formed at the desks, ID cards clutched and ready. While they shuffled forward, I wove in and out, distributing chalk for the labelling of baggage. No need to lug cases around in the heat, everything would be taken on ahead. At the head of the queue, Jews were greeted by smiling young Germans who praised their good fortune, wished them luck and then stamped their Ghetto permits with the word ‘Cancelled’.
A flotilla of horse-drawn wagons entered stage-left, to excited whoops from the children. SS officers tossed them carrots and sugar-cubes to feed the animals, a week’s worth of Ghetto rations gobbled up in minutes. Families were invited to sit down in the back of carriages and Karl Mende and I were sent up to the Pharmacy roof with a pair of Zeiss Ikon Contax round our necks to record the moment for posterity. How humane those Germans were, how considerate.
By the time we’d come back down, the Square was a bear-pit. Families were chased down from the wagons by dogs, tumbling on each other as they jumped. Soldiers shouted and forced them up, beating legs, driving the deportees out of the Square en masse. Guns were fired, but the only screams were the incessant yells of the SS. I joined the scramble, scooping up those who had fallen before the pistols picked them off. Looking back over my shoulder for stragglers, the Square was littered with a dozen corpses.
We chased the column north towards the station, where there was a small labour camp for Jews who worked on the railway. 150 of ours were shot en route. The survivors were greeted by a line of prisoners hanging from the footbridge like ghoulish wind-chimes. Hands ties behind their backs, heads bowed from broken necks, they hovered above us, seven souls in ascension.
The soldiers worked in shifts, but I could not stop, not while there were bewildered elderly people to try and reassure, or bereft children looking for somebody to hold their hand, even a German officer. As a result of the first day of Aktion Reinhard, the Ghetto was cut by 7,000. 1,000 of the weakest were killed by Ukranian guards at Plaszow-Prokocim while friends and family were loaded onto sealed baggage cars.
Amon Goethe’s superiors were not satisfied with the numbers and on Thursday June 5th, the Ghetto was once again surrounded by SS and Schutzpolizei. Jewish identity cards were re-examined and another 4,000 were rounded up and forced to wait in Zgody Square throughout the hot summer morning. With no escape from the scorching sun, the Jews were left to bake, crying out for water. The concrete was too hot to lie on, so they stood until they could stand no longer.
I arranged for the Pharmacy girls to bring out jugs of water for the Jozefinska officers, making sure there was plenty left over for the Jews. Pankiewicz had marked a tiny X on paper cups containing phenobarbital and codeine, to pacify the wailing children. As I distributed drinks, I chanced upon a strikingly tall mother and baby encircled by a group of friends providing shelter. The mother’s neck was emaciated and the bosom to which she clutched her child was shriveled. Half her hair was combed and the rest unkempt, but those tight curls were unmistakable. The last time our paths had crossed, she’d spat at the ground and cursed me. Now she refused my water.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘I can help.’
The friends closed ranks around her as if I was the devil incarnate. ‘Your kind of help we can do without,’ said a man with a scar over his eyebrow. ‘Leave her be.’
But I could not stand by and watch mother and child dragged kicking and screaming to Plaszow. I found the man in charge of the Aktion, and pointed out his problem.
‘That woman is a highly skilled employee at the armaments factory. Herr Schindler will be furious if she is deported.’
Oberführer Mallotke sighed and said, ‘Name?’
‘Devorah Montefiore.’
Mallotke consulted his clipboard.
‘She’s on the list,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing I can do.’
‘Does it say Essential Worker next to her name? Because that’s what she is.’
‘It doesn’t say anything.’
‘Then there’s been a mistake. Schindler lost a worker like this on Monday. The man responsible is in Southern Russia now.’
Mallotke processed this information with a curt nod.
‘Alright. Let’s she what she has to say for herself.’
We marched back to the circle of shade-makers.
‘You.’ Mallotke singled out the woman in the centre. ‘Job?’
‘Munitions worker, Deutsche Emalia. I made 45 mm anti-tank shells.’
To Devorah Montefiore I said, ‘Don’t worry. There’s been a misunderstanding. I’m getting you out of here.’
She cried out as Mallotke crossed her name off the list.
‘You are free to return to the factory.’
‘No, please let us go,’ Montefiore cried. ‘My boy is sick. He’ll die if he stays here.’
What did she think was going to happen? A week of this bloodshed and still the Jews believed in the Promised Land, while their brothers and sisters were thrown on the garbage heap.
Mallotke said, ‘It is mandated, essential industrial workers must stay in the District.’
‘Then let the baby go without me, I beg you.’
The scarred man quickly put his arms out for the child. ‘We’ll take him.’
‘Children under fourteen are to remain with their parents. We’re not operating a crèche. Guards!’ Mallotke whistled for two Jewish Policeman. ‘Escort this woman and her child back to the Emalia Deutsche factory. They are to arrive safely, or you shall answer to me.’
Her wails haunt me still, the wails of the only woman to be saved.
For all Goethe’s efforts, several thousand people remained in the Ghetto without the correct seals in their identity cards. Symche Spira’s Jewish Police combed the streets, and the informants continued to feed us names.
On Friday June 6th, a new decree was issued. Blue slips were to be stapled to identity cards. From this point forth, only Jewish residents in possession of these Blauschein were entitled to remain within the walls. The entire Ghetto population was ordered to report for further inspection, including those wh
o had already received the seal of the Polzeifuhrer on the subsequent two Aktions. Since no rain had come to wash Zgody Square of its blood, the unfortunates were ordered to assemble in the courtyard of the Optima factory at Wegierska Street.
The courtyard filled up very slowly with those denied permission to remain: the old and the lame, cripples on crutches leading the blind and the mentally ill. Several patients were carried from the hospital and tipped off their gurneys. It took until late Friday afternoon for everybody to be rounded up, at which point the SS and Schutzpolizei went off duty for the weekend.
The Jews were simply left where they lay, with Jozefinska staff expected to guard them in shifts. I did not go home, but stayed in the courtyard, distributing food and drink to the most needy. Many collapsed from exhaustion or fear, and did not move again.
The rest were marched to the railway station first thing on Monday morning.
On Friday June 20th, SS and Polizeiführer Julian Scherner proclaimed an amputation of the Ghetto, reducing to less than a third of a square mile. The south side of Limanowski Street was to be severed from the main body, leaving only the north. Residents of Limanowski, Czarnecki, Benedikt, Kragus and Wegierska streets were given five days to find new living quarters within the curtailed area. This latest Aktion coincided with a new policy for the Jewish Police: if Symche Spira’s men failed to deliver a family into the street, their own flesh and blood became forfeit.
The first wave of suicides occurred on Saturday June 21st, while Wilhem Kunde was at the stone circle in Odry for Midsummer Solstice. Inside the Ghetto, the sun had long stopped shining. Escape attempts over the walls became nightly affairs, punishable by a bullet in the back.
As half the Ghetto scrambled to relocate into the other, apartment floors became the hottest black market commodity, snapped up sight-unseen. Bidding wars broke out for cupboards and water closets. Occupancy was limited to one person only – no luggage. Residents of the condemned streets had to leave behind most of their belongings, which sat untouched in vacant buildings. Even gangsters didn’t have the energy to steal, or the space to store their loot.
At Jozefinska, additional shifts were required to cope with the upsurge in curfew violations, and I volunteered. I spent my days in the office and the nights patrolling the walls, bringing food in through a hole and spiriting out children in sacks and cardboard boxes, drugged by the Pharmacy to keep them from crying out. When dawn broke at half past four, I would go back to my apartment and sleep for two hours, then return to my desk for the day shift.
News of my commitment eventually reached Julian Scherer, who came over from Pomorska to personally thank me. Shaking the hand that had signed the Aktion to liquidate the Ghetto was the least of my worries. Scherer wanted to nominate my ‘bravery before the enemy’ with an Order of the Iron Cross, the same award Erich Mohnke had received posthumously. I explained that while I was grateful for the recognition, I could not consider myself a worthy recipient, compared to the sacrifice my brother had made. Scherer reluctantly agreed not to put my name forward. But in return, I had to attend a dinner at his apartment that weekend.
45
Scherer had met me three times by this point, and never when I was wearing my new spectacles or moustache. I didn’t take any chances Saturday night, and left both items at home, shaving again for the occasion. In place of the Zeiss case in my trouser pocket, I carried a pack of Nordland cigarettes, Harry Mohnke’s brand of choice. Smokers enjoy only one advantage at awkward social occasions: a ready-made excuse to disappear intermittently without appearing rude. Perhaps that’s why people take up the habit.
The Oberführer’s city residence was a luxurious penthouse apartment in the heart of Kazimierz, with a receptionist on the ground floor. Scherer himself greeted me at the door, a grin threatening to split his face like a ripe tomato. The first of many champagne glasses was thrust into my hand and I was tugged into a grand, open-plan living room that could have housed half the Ghetto. A radio cabinet was playing waltzes at an intrusively loud volume. In the centre of the room on a lionskin rung was a grand piano. To the right a cluster of white leather armchairs and sofas overlooked the city through an open French window, and in the other corner, a cloth-covered table, set - I noted with alarm - for six people and not three.
‘Please tell me you didn’t invite my father,’ I said quietly.
Scherer raised a quivering finger to his lip. ‘Oh dear. I thought that’s what we agreed…’
‘No. We did no such thing. I’m sorry Oberführer, I can’t do this.’ I started backing away.
‘Harry, relax. Of course I didn’t invite him. Willi Kunde and Amon Goethe are making up the numbers.’
I rubbed the smooth groove above my lip. ‘I suppose I can put up with those two bums.’
‘Ha!’
Elsa Scherer was a large, softly-spoken woman, placid in nature, and impossible to dislike, despite her choice of husband. The three of us awaited the others on the armchairs, where talk turned to Harry Mohnke’s home town of Dahme, his mother and brother’s death, and how the family was coping. Frau Scherer didn’t seem to know about the estrangement between father and son. The Oberführer steered conversation round to life in Cracow, but his wife possessed a steely persistence beneath her easy-going façade, and wouldn’t be dissuaded from her line of questioning.
‘And how’s Kate managing?’ she asked.
My mind went blank. Kate? In all Erich Mohnke’s letters and journals, I had never come across the name. There was no sister, so I guessed that Kate was an aunt, or a friend of the mother’s.
‘Kate’s doing much better, thank-you.’
Frau Scherer clapped her hands in glee. ‘Is she walking again?’
I found myself nodding along. ‘Yes. Yes she is.’
‘The poor dear broke her hip skiing in Switzerland,’ Elsa reminded her husband. ‘The doctors said she’d be bed-bound.’
‘Doctors,’ Scherer grumbled. ‘What do they know?’
‘We must all go and see her. We can take Harry, too. I’m sure Otto would love to meet us.’
The doorbell rang. The rest of the party arrived together. Kunde was accompanied by his glamourous wife Christina, a diminutive blonde with an infectious laugh and a lazy eye, while Amon Goethe came alone. Neither man remarked on my lack of moustache, but I took the armchair as far away as possible from Goethe, and pushed it back even further out of his sightline. Scherer’s two young daughters came out of their bedrooms to perform duos on their accordions, with father accompanying on the the piano.
After the girls went to bed, Frau Scherer led the way to the table, directing us to our seats. Host and hostess took either end, with Kunde and Christina between them on one side. That left Goethe and I together on the other, as if we were a third couple. I found myself seated once again on his right, this time with no cap, glasses or moustache to hide behind.
Dinner was served ‘farmhouse style’ by Frau Kruk, an excellent chef who’d worked for a German nobleman before the war. I was relieved to hear that beef steak followed the starter of white bean soup, and I would not have to eat pork.
During the main course, conversation was stopped by a sombre announcement that came over the radio. The presenter apologised for interrupting programming in the kind of tones reserved for Hitler’s death or surrender. But no news bulletin followed, only dead air.
‘Thank God we’re not in Berlin, Professor,’Goethe muttered at my side. ‘Out to dinner there, you leave with dessert or spend the night shacked up in the cellar.’
I realised then what was happening: radio silence meant an Allied air-strike over the capital was imminent.
‘The Baltic’s taking a hammering,’ Goethe continued. ‘Especially Kiel, with the navy and shipbuilding. When was the big one, last April?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I was in Russia.’
‘Of course.’
Silence continued to hiss from the cabinet speakers, engulfing the room. We were eventuall
y jolted from reverie by our own localised hostilities, the crack of distant gunfire across the river, from the Ghetto. It was 9.00, the nightly escape attempts were beginning. Frau Scherer flinched at the echoes and pushed her plate of pancake away untouched.
‘Compassion is one of my wife’s greatest virtues,’ Scherer explained from the head of the table. ‘It is in fact the main reason I married her.’
‘The violence in our Residential District is unforgivable,’ Kunde said. ‘But a philosophy of racial purity does not allow for niceties. You can rest assured, Frau Scherer, the days of city centre shootings are coming to an end.’
‘Heinrich Himmler toured Auschwitz only yesterday,’ Scherer said. ‘Great things are expected.’
‘Belzec, too,’ Goethe added. ‘Total refurbishment. The Professor and I will soon have this unpleasantry off your doorstep, m’am.’
‘Let’s not talk about it during dinner,’ she said.
‘Quite right.’
Scherer wiped cream from his mouth with the corner of a napkin. ‘Why are you riding him like that, Amon?’
‘Riding?’
‘All this ‘Professor’ business. Share the joke.’
‘I wasn’t aware I’d made one, sir.’
‘It’s a nickname I picked up at Jozefinksa,’ I explained, discretely nodding to Goethe to let it go. ‘I’m what passes as the brains of the department.’
‘I would hope so,’ Scherer said. ‘Compared to Karl Mende.’
Soon after that, a waltz recommenced from the radio. False alarm – Berlin was in the clear for now. Scherer rose to turn up the volume until we could no longer hear the Ghetto and we finished our apple pancakes with something of the earlier bonhomie restored.
‘Wonderful meal,’ I said. ‘Please excuse me for a few minutes.’ I tapped a Nordstrom out of its box. ‘I prefer not to blow smoke over the table. May I use the balcony?’
‘Of course.’
Passing the piano and armchairs, I stepped out the French windows, lit a cigarette under the moon and stood taking in the the Cracow skyline, then looked down past my shoes to the street below.
I Am Juden Page 41