I Am Juden

by Stephen Uzzell

  The meeting ended with assurances that ground on the new Plaszow site would be broken as soon as possible, hopefully by the end of the week. Rudolf Lukas rolled up and sheathed his map and left the office chatting with Julius Madritsch. Kunde, Pilarzik and myself were to head back to the Ghetto by car to begin putting together the first construction team. My colleagues were out the door when I felt Scherer’s hand on my shoulder.

  ‘I’ll keep Mohnke for a minute or two,’ he called. ‘Don’t bother waiting.’

  Scherer’s fingers tightened, squeezing the collarbone.

  With the door closed, he opened his drinks cabinet and poured two whiskeys from a crystal decanter.

  ‘Congratulations, Harry.’

  We chinked glasses. I tossed mine back and held it out for a refill. Sportingly, Scherer obliged.

  ‘I can’t tell you how pleased that you’re on board for this,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted me to pull any strings, so I held back, much as it pained me. Willi Kunde put your name right at the top of his list. All those hours you’ve put in to the Ghetto have not gone unrewarded. Plaszow is a new chapter, and it’s going to be a very profitable, for the Reich, and for ourselves. To 1943.’

  We raised another toast. ‘Thank-you, sir.’

  ‘You’re here on merit. Your father would be proud.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘On that particular front.’ Scherer set his glass down on the tray and pulled his tunic away from his belly. I take no pleasure in reminding you of this, but it’s almost a year now that you’ve been promising to pick up the phone.’

  ‘Time’s gone so quickly.’

  ‘Your father’s an old man, Harry. This is only making him weaker.’

  ‘It’s not easy for me, either, sir.’

  ‘Christmas is approaching, and it might be his last. Do the decent thing and pick up the damn telephone.’

  50

  Two days later, the first Barrackenbau group assembled outside Jozefinska in the dawn drizzle. Back-breaking construction work in harsh winter conditions - yet there’d been no shortage of volunteers. The final list comprised fifty men, five Jewish Police, and myself. I’d sent a message via the Pharmacy asking Gusta for any names she wished included, but there was no time to await her response. More lists would be compiled as Plaszow continued to grow.

  Walking in a column, we set off out the Ghetto. The prisoners were pleased to be leaving, but their mood was more subdued than I expected. I should have realised why: their loved ones had been marched along exactly the same roads during the Aktions, being being shunted off to Belzec. I allowed a leisurely pace and hoped the mood would lift when we arrived.

  Situated on the stony hillsides and malaria-infested marshes of the Liban quarry, Julag one was no promised land. Any notion that the men were destined for a better life was dispelled by the electric double-apron barbed wire fence which extended around the camp’s perimeter. Between the two fences was a ditch filled with swampy water. The fence was guarded by thirteen watch towers, equipped with machine guns, telephones and revolving spotlights. The personnel were snarling black-uniformed Ukranians, supplemented with their own uniformed Ordnungsdienst, armed with rubber truncheons. There was no beaming Chaze to greet us, no whistling Oswald Zgismond to give a grand tour.

  Prior to Pilarzik’s appointment, the sole source of authority had been Franz Jozef Muller, Kommandant of the three Julag. His regime was lawless. There was no system of administrative control or camp by-laws. The Julag had been Muller’s personal fiefdom for the past year, and the existing prisoners despised him. Conditions were unbearable. Men had to run to and from from the railway line, while the Ukranians shouted, screamed orders and threatened to shoot them. Muller had executed one sixteen year old boy for muddying his favourite horse. The Julag barracks lacked sanitary arrangements or even beds.

  I inquired about getting my men some food and drink before they began work. The four mile walk from the Ghetto had left them tired and hungry. But I learned that prisoners would not be provided with meals and had to bring their own food. For the residential Julag inmates, breakfast was one slice of bread and black coffee. Lunch was a cup of soup, in four hours time, and evening meal was a second cup. I loitered by the garbage pile outside the prisoner’s kitchen, moving away when a guard approached a Jew digging through the scraps and fired a gun into his neck.

  I gathered my Barrackenbau and explained what had to be done. The two Jewish cemeteries were to be levelled to make way for the new buildings. Buried bodies would be relocated to a mass grave while the coffins needed to be chopped up for firewood for bombed out families in Germany. The headstones had to be broken up with pick-axes and hammers, the smaller pieces ploughed back into the earth as part of the barracks’s foundations. In a typical display of Nazi theatricality, larger sections would be used to pave the roads in front of the SS offices and residences.

  According to Oberführer Scherner’s instructions, only one monument was allowed to remain standing. At the edge of the Jerozolimska Street cemetery, at the camp’s new entrance, a modest sandstone marker bears the following inscription:

  Here rests

  Chaim Jakob

  Abrahamer

  Died on 25.V.1932

  in the 74th year of his life.

  Peace to his soul

  I have no doubts as why Scherer chose to spare Chaim Jakob Abrahamer’s tomb from desecration. As you may imagine, it had precious little to do with sentimentality or respect. Abrahamer’s stone is a reminder to Plazsow’s Jews of all they’d been denied: a long life during peacetime, and a death from natural causes.

  ***

  When the walls of the third hut went up at the end of November, I told the workers they would not be returning to the Ghetto. They moved in to the barracks the next day, with no electricity or sanitation. As rough and dreary as the camp was, it was better than life in the Ghetto, which limped on fearfully in our absence, day by bloody day.

  The end of the Ghetto was nigh, and even the Judenrat couldn’t deny it anymore. Constant searches were carried out by the SS, with maximum violence and brutality. Houses were raided around the clock, people dragged from their apartments or rounded up on the street, regardless of age and sex, marched to Prokocim and loaded onto trains. The transfer of able-bodied inhabitants into Plaszow went on at a slower pace, with approximately 100 new admissions a day.

  With every deportation, the Ghetto area was diminished. New working squads were assigned to sort through Jewish property in the vacated streets. Furniture and other valuables were carried out and stored on Jozefinska. But that space was now full, and talk had turned to setting up new warehouses in the camp.

  A particularly bitter winter morning brought a team of engineers into the dazed streets with new plans and diagrams. The Ghetto was to be divided into two sections: A and B. A new decree proclaimed that all R, W and Z workers must henceforth relocate to section A, and any unemployed residents must move to B, which became a holding pen for the elderly, the sick and the children. Within a few days, Section B was emptied out in the usual manner, via trains to Belzec, while overcrowding in Section A drove able-bodied workers to fling themselves from fifth floor windows, as if driven out by tongues of fire.

  51

  A young Ordungsdienst called Poldek Hackl was supposed to be guarding the main Jerozolimska Street gate while the Barrackenbau were having evening soup. Like most who wore the German uniform, Jackl was seen as a collaborator and widely despised. For his own protection, I kept him away from the prisoners and put him in charge of the gatehouse, even though I suspected he was not up to the job. Hackl was a broken man following the October Aktion. When Amon Goethe’s troops formed a human chain around the Ghetto, Poldek was assured his own wife and son would be spared. Symche Spira arranged for them to be transferred to the Prokocim Julag, to work on the railways. But amidst the chaos of the day, mother and child ended up in the wrong column and were last seen being herded into a cattle-c
ar to Belzec. As if this was not bad enough, two days later Gusta Davison tracked Hackl down with good news: she had arranged for his son would be saved.

  ‘From Belzcec?’ Hackl hardly dared to believe what he’d heard. From the whole of the Ghetto, only one man was ever known to have escaped.

  A rare note of doubt dulled Gusta’s voice. ‘Which son are you talking about?’

  ‘I only have one.’

  ‘Jiri?’

  Hackl gave a sombre nod. ‘He was deported with my wife. What did you mean, he was going to be saved?’

  Eventually, Hackl managed to get the truth out of her. Gusta had secured a place for Jiri outside the Ghetto, to be raised as a Christian. Jiri was due to be smuggled out that night.

  For my own peace of mind, I rigged a bell wire from Poldek’s guardhouse to the officers’ quarters, for advance warning of important visitors. The idea came to me during a rare return to Erich Mohnke’s apartment. Much as I disliked leaving prisoners under the replacement Ukranian guards, I hadn’t yet recorded the camp’s brutalities in my ledger. If I died tomorrow, the truth would be buried with me. When I got back to Erich Mohnke’s apartment, I fell into my usual procrastination, rereading previous entries. I turned back to one of the very first, the story of Shoshana’s Magic Bell.

  Nights in Plaszow were eerily quiet. The German residential quarters were situated in the nucleus of the emerging sprawl, just acoss SS Strasse, opposite the administration offices. Most of the guards had gone out to the Cyganeria Café; I’d come down with another migraine - so I told them - the perfect excuse for solitude. The guards lived a life of luxury, with electricity and hot showers, but preferred to spend evenings in the city, socialising with Polish sweethearts. Most of them were young, at least half my age. Who could blame them? Their bedrooms were decorated with the finest rugs and curtains and silk-covers looted from the Ghetto. On the other side of cemetery, the former curtain-owners were herded into cold, bleak barracks without roofs.

  I was reading about the sinking of the British destroyer HMS Blean, torpedoed north-west of Algiers by a German U-boat, when our house-help appeared at my door. Radka was a timid creature who rarely ventured into private quarters when they were occupied, so I knew something was amiss.

  ‘Oberführer Scherner would like a word with you, sir.’

  I peered over the top of my newspaper. ‘Did he say in connection with what?’

  ‘No sir, and I didn’t like to ask.’

  ‘Very well, Radka. I’ll call him right back.’

  ‘Sorry to say, sir, I haven’t made myself clear. The Oberführer has just arrived in the camp.’

  ‘He’s here?’

  ‘He’s waiting for you outside.’

  ‘Good God. Why didn’t you say?’

  There must be something wrong with Poldek: the Magic Bell hadn’t rung.

  I threw my jacket and boots on and scrambled out onto the new road, paved with shiny Jewish headstones. The sight of the Oberführer approaching in a smart black tuxedo went some way to quelling my nerves. His limousine was idling on the main road, on the other side of Jerozolimska Street. Through the tinted glass I could make out the tiara-topped curls of his wife in the backseat, regal as the Queen of England. Poldek Hackl was nowhere to be seen. The sickness in my stomach quickly returned.

  ‘Evening, Harry,’ Scherer said.

  I wasn’t sure whether to salute or shake hands, and ended up lurching awkwardly from one to the other, almost jabbing the SS and Polizeiführer for Cracow in the stomach.

  ‘Is everything alright?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You look worried,’ Scherer said. ‘What were you doing in there?’

  ‘Reading the paper,’ I said. ‘It is 7.30 in the evening, sir.’

  ‘Come.’

  I followed him across the road to the guardhouse. Scherer paused, hands on hips, leaving me to approach the hut. The guard’s chair was empty. I leant forward, nosing through the window. A pair of ragged trouser-legs stretched out on the floor, bare footed. Socks were balled up and stuffed inside the boots. Muffled snoring came from underneath the guard’s desk. Poldek Hackl was sleeping on his shoulder, tunic bunched under his head as a pillow.

  ‘The entire workforce could have fled through the gates and your security wouldn’t have woken up,’ Scherer said at my ear, tossing a filter-tip into his mouth. ‘Put the man down, Harry.’

  I heard the spark of Scherer’s lighter and smelled a faint tang of smoke as he withdrew to savour his cigarette. I unholstered my Luger, slowly opened the guardhouse door and tiptoed inside. Poldek didn’t stir. I crouched at the desk, slipped the fingers of my free hand under his jaw and when he finally woke with a start, clamped his mouth shut.

  ‘Scherer’s outside,’ I whispered. ‘He’s going to hear a gun-shot, and you’re going to lie there, completely still, until you hear his limo drive away. Understand?’

  Hackl’s head nodded under my fingers. I drew back, cocked the trigger and fired into the floorboards.

  Outside, Scherer had turned around and was gazing at the prisoner barracks.

  ‘This was inexcusable, Oberführer,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to say, after the trust you’ve placed in me.’

  ‘I’m sure one bad egg doesn’t spoil the box. But at the same time, if word got out this was some kind of holiday camp we’re running …’

  ‘It won’t, sir. These inmates work until they drop. You can see what we’ve accomplished.’

  ‘Yes I can. But now I wonder how much more if everybody was pulling their weight. You need more eyes on the ground when the guards are off duty. As of tomorrow, you’ll get 500 extra men, prisoners and Ordungsdienst.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I would take them, and gladly so. Every soul that came to us meant one less for the greedy gas chambers. The problem was keeping the prisoners busy. There’s been a bottle-neck in supplies somewhere along the chain, and we’d had no timber for days. We were having to make up pointless jobs to keep the prisoners busy. One group would dig stones all day in the quarry, another would carry the stones and pile them up few hundred feet away. Then, a few days later, they’d have to take the same stones from the same pile and move them back to the original spot.

  ‘Elsa spoke to Kate today,’ Scherer said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Elsa was his wife, but who was Kate?

  ‘Kate Becker. Your aunt.’

  I had forgotten about the skiing accident. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Back in a wheelchair, I’m afraid. Not that it’s slowing her down, the woman’s indomitable. She’s invited us up for lunch on New Year’s Day.’

  As far as awkward meetings went, this was bad, but I had survived worse. Coming face to face with Amon Goethe again, for instance. Aunt Kate would be no match for him. She had to be in her seventies, and with any luck her eyesight would be failing. I’d pass as Harry Mohnke, as long as I kept a distance.

  ‘The Vienna Philharmonic are broadcasting live on the radio,’ Scherer continued, ‘and you know how he feels about them. He’s too weak to get even get to Cracow at the moment, so we thought this would be the next best thing.’

  I’d lost the thread again, and Scherer could see it.

  ‘Your father,’ he explained kindly. ‘He’ll be meeting us at Kate’s.’

  ***

  While Julian Scherer was sitting in his opera box that evening, Dolek Liebeskind was arrested in the Ghetto. The Jewish Police traced him to his parents’ apartment, and found the fugitive sleeping in the back bedroom. After subduing him with truncheons, they marched their prized prisoner to Jozefinska, but didn’t think to frisk him before setting off. Liebeskind was carrying one of the pistols that Anka Fischer had smuggled from Warsaw. Seizing his chance when a policemen was hit by a stone from a high window, Liebeskind pulled his weapon. The unarmed policemen fled, and their prisoner disappeared into the night. A building-by-building search ensued and lasted until dawn, but Liebeskind wasn’t found. He
was rumoured to have escaped via the sewers.

  Understandably, his flight was the talk of the Ghetto. I found out the next day when Poldek Zygoti returned with Scherer’s 500 new recruits. We forbade the prisoners from speaking about Liebeskind amongst themselves, but the guards talked of little else. The fact that Liebeskind had come back to the Ghetto at all confirmed speculation that the resistance were preparing a large-scale offensive. I hadn’t received any messages from the Pharmacy for weeks by this point, and was as reliant on gossip and scuttlebutt as the next man. Depending who you listened to, the Jews were either planning on blowing up a section of the Ghetto wall, or had assembled enough of a weapons cache to mount an armed uprising.

  ***

  Most of the new prisoners were put to work transporting materials for the Latrines. Through fierce wind they trudged up and down the hills, carrying planks and pipes and stones and bricks, depositing pile after pile on the muddy slopes. From there, the skilled builders took over - the carpenters, plumbers and tinsmiths – and slowly the building began to take shape in the icy mud.

  At the end of the first day, Horst Pilarzik arrived to direct the evening roll call in person. He made Poldek Hackl count the prisoners as they stood to attention in a blizzard. Hackl’s first tally showed two short of the expected 500 men, and a recount was ordered, which came in at 497. Instead of ordering a third, Pilarzik turned round and put a bullet through Hackl’s left eye.

  52

  Concern continued to grow about Plaszow’s slow pace of building works. Only three barracks had so far been completed: the Kommandantur’s hut that contained the Building Administration, and two workshops for the industrial side of the camp. Himmler’s deadline for clearing the Ghetto was less a mere two weeks away, but there were still 12,000 residents within the walls. If we proceded at the current rate of transfer - about 100 prisoners a day - the Ghetto wouldn’t be empty until April 1943.