The main reason for Plaszow’s lack of progress was obvious, or at least it was to me. The vast majority of workers were still commuting from the Ghetto every morning, and returning before curfew. I argued that the long walk rendered them less productive, and that we could maximise the working day if all lived on site. But my superiors regarded prisoner barracks as a luxury. I began to worry that I looked ‘soft’ on Jews, so abandoned my persuasion.
Kommandant Pilarzik blamed Rudolf Lukas and replaced the civilian contractors with three Jewish engineers from the Ghetto, who were given overall responsibility for construction and solving all technical problems. Zygmunt Grunberg headed up this team. The engineers worked at a frenzied pace in the hothouse of Building Administration, desperately trying to execute the new Kommandant’s crazy completion schedules. But by now Pilarzik himself had been moved aside. Franz Jozef Mueller had been promoted from the Julags to camp Kommandant, and the demands on Jewish labour went overnight from unreasonable to unfeasible.
All prisoners bore the brunt of this new regime. My Barrackenbau laboured without relief, day and night, at a running pace, under work norms which were first doubled, then quadrupled, in order to complete the latest demand. Builders were disposable. The dozen that dropped dead of exhaustion in an average week could easily be replaced. But the newly ordained engineers were indispensable. When it came to putting the Kommandant’s rantings into effect, nobody else would or could do the job. In the whole of Cracow, here were three who Jews couldn’t be killed, at least not until the camp was up and running. But that didn’t mean they weren’t beaten, and often to within an inch of their lives.
It was one such punishment I interrupted by chance on the afternoon of December 17th. I’d been summoned to the Building Administration office to receive a telephone call – Scherer’s customary progress check, I imagined - only to find Mueller laying into Zygmunt Grunberg as if he were a punch-ball. The engineer was every bit as compliant, but did fail to obligingly right himself for the next pummelling, slumping instead against a map of the camp on the wall. The Kommandant had to pull him upright by the collar before he could demolish the other side of his face. When I cleared my throat and picked up the telephone, Mueller finally stopped, leaving Grunberg to slide down to the floorboards. Still seething, the Kommandant walked out. Grunberg’s colleagues unglued their behinds from their stools to venture out and hold the stricken man’s hand, but he flapped them away. If their work stopped, even for a minute, men would die. Besides, there were no doctors at Plaszow; medical attention was only available in the Ghetto.
The black receiver buzzed in my hand and I heard a tiny, shrill echo from the ear-piece. It sounded more like Scherer’s wife than the man himself.
‘This is Oberführer Mohnke,’ I said. ‘Who’s calling?’
‘Oh, at last. Harry, is that you?’
Definitely an older woman, but it was too high for Elsa Scherer.
‘Who am I speaking to?’
‘Katherine.’ The name meant nothing to me, until I ran through its various abbreviatons. Just as I guessed who I was speaking to, she confirmed it: ‘Kate Becker.’
‘Aunt Kate. How nice to hear from you.’
‘I have sad news, dear. Are you sitting somewhere quiet?’
Against the wall, Grunberg began to stir. He grabbed a handful of writing paper from the desk and started to wipe away the blood, but the paper had no absorbency and merely smeared it around his face.
‘What’s happened?’ I said.
‘It’s your father. He never woke up this morning.’ She paused to let this sink in. ‘The housekeeper found him passed away in bed, as peaceful as anything.’
‘He’s dead?’
Grunberg was looking at me through blood-slicked eyes. I wondered if he’d seen the involuntarily pump my fist had given the air.
‘I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you,’ Kate Becker said. ‘Mr. Scherer offered – I called him to get your new number – but I thought it should come from me.’
‘Thank-you, Aunt Kate. I appreciate it. How - what happened?’
‘The doctor thinks it was his heart. Otto wouldn’t have suffered. Chances are, he didn’t even know. None of us can ask for more than that.’
‘I can’t believe it. We were only talking about him a few days ago.’
‘So sudden, I know. But better this than long and drawn out.’
‘Yes. He’d lived a full life.’
‘He certainly had.’
‘Are you alright, Aunt Kate?’
‘Me?’
She seemed almost amused at this questioning of her self-sufficiency.
‘Do you have anybody with you?’
‘Not yet, thanks heavens. I’ve got the whole brood arriving tomorrow. I suppose they’ll be staying until the funeral now.’
My God. Another bloody funeral. What was it with this damn family?
‘You leave all the arrangements to me, dear. I expect the service will be in about a week, but I’ll let you know when we have a date. You’re still living on Tragutta Street?’
‘Yes. Although I have quarters here in camp now.’
‘Well I know where to reach either way. Please call if there’s anything you need. Absolutely anything.’
‘You’re very kind.’
‘God bless, Harry. We’ll speak soon.’
53
Unsure of the protocol for Christian burials, I estimated five to seven days before Otto Monhke’s coffin was lowered into the ground. Which meant I had a week left in Cracow. There was no future for me after that, whatever I decided. If I went to the funeral, Harry’s friends and family were sure to realise I was an impostor. If I didn’t go? Scherer would never stand for it. He almost certainly blamed me for hastening his old friend’s demise, by prolonging the rift. Out of loyalty to Otto, Scherer would do everything in his power to ensure I discharged my final filial responsibility. Even if I managed to wriggle out of it, Scherer and Elsa would travel by themselves. My absence would cause as many questions as my presence. The gossip was not hard to imagine:
Harry’s become a virtual recluse.
Nobody’s seen him for such a long time.
Probably not since Erich’s funeral.
He was never the same after his brother died.
That was over a year ago, November 1941
The truth of what happened outside Lublin train station was buried along with Augustus Brühl, but it wouldn’t take much digging to bring both to the surface. Particularly when the timeline was established. Camp Moda had evidently entered into Nazi folklore, which meant that Jozef Siegler’s breakout in the autumn of 1941 was also common knowledge. If the Gestapo set about tracing an escape route south, they’d put Siegler in Lublin at the same time as Harry Mohnke’s train had broken down, en route to Cracow.
Laying it all out like this was terrifying. It was only thanks to the quotidian anarchy of war that nobody had yet made the connection. Otto Mohnke’s funeral finally provided the reason. I worked myself up into such a state after Kate Becker’s telephone call that sleep was impossible. I spent the early hours wandering the camp, throwing chunks of bread through barrack windows.
How could I abandon the last of the Cracow Jews now? And where could I run to? I knew from bitter experience I lacked the skills to survive alone. It was only by donning the enemy’s uniform that I had given myself any kind of future. But those lightning bolts came with a heavy price: the burden of responsibility. I’d been with my Barrackenbau since the start; everything that happened to them was down to me. It wasn’t just life in the camp. The remainder of the Ghetto would be emptied any day now. I was using my influence to see as many residents as possible transferred to Plaszow. Without my demands for labour, thousands more would end up on a one-way train ride to Belzec and Auschwitz. If I stayed here, I risked certain capture. It wasn’t death that I feared most, or even torture; I already knew my capacity for withstanding physical pain was pitifully low. What terrified me was the kno
wledge that, under duress, I’d betray the names of my brothers and sisters in the underground.
There was only one person I could turn to for advice. The next day I volunteered to lead a prisoner detail back to the Ghetto and while there, I posted a message through the Pharmacy’s letterbox. I didn’t know where Gusta was living, but I knew how to reach her.
***
Meanwhile, preparations for Otto Mohnke’s funeral continued apace. Kate Becker was keeping me updated on a daily basis. In a perverse way, I had come to look forward to our conversations. Kate’s consoling tones soothed me, even if her actual words were nailing shut my own coffin. The doctor’s initial assessment was correct; Otto Mohnke had died aged 73 of a massive heart attack. The funeral was to be held at noon on December 24th, at St. Mary’s in Dahme, the same church where Erich Mohnke was laid to rest thirteen months previously. I was due to make the thousand mile journey on the 23rd, and return after the reception. Julian Scherer had already reserved three first-class tickets on the 7.02am Berlin express from Cracow Hauptbanhof, changing first at Lublin, of all places.
After speaking to Aunt Kate, I telephoned the Pharmacy to check for any messages, but the answer was the same again. Three days and no reply. In another three, Harry Mohnke’s father would be buried.
How long does Scherer wait in his first-class carriage before realising I’m not joining him? Let’s hope a son is given a little latitude on the day of his father’s funeral. Say 8.02am comes and goes and Scherer delays the train’s departure. It’s within his power. As SS Commander for Cracow, he could order the city to a stand-still if he so chose. When after half an hour I’ve still not taken my seat, he sends men to the apartment on Tragutta Street. Finding it empty, he calls for a city-wide search. By this point, Scherer has done as much as he can. It’s 9.00am. He can’t postpone the journey any longer. Otto was his dear friend, as well as Harry Mohnke’s father. Three hours later, Scherer explains my absence to the St Mary’s congregation, and the questions begin to fly. By the end of the day, ‘Harry Mohnke’ has been correctly identified as Jozef Siegler. The German people have a new Public Enemy, one a lot closer to home than the last fugitive to hold the title, Hitler’s former Nazi Party rival Otto Strasser, currently on the run in Canada. I’d be lucky to make it across the Vistula.
***
While my Barrackenbau were excavating a building at the main Jerozolimska Street gate, I overheard a kindly buck-toothed prisoner called Szei Dreiblatt approach the OD and explain that he was feeling ill. Szei was a former high school chemistry teacher, a patient, hard-worker respected by inmates and staff. The OD had no reason to think he was shirking, and granted permission to step away for a couple of minutes to use the newly constructed Latrines.
To me, watching from the fence, the timing seemed odd. The rest of the men would be stopping at noon for lunch-break. Szei Dreiblatt didn’t look sick enough that he couldn’t wait another half an hour. And that was the other thing: he’d told the OD he was ill at 11.30 on the dot, not 11.28 or 11.33. In my experience, sickness was rarely so punctual. Szei Dreiblatt was up to something. I needed to know what in order to protect him.
In no time at all, the Latrines had become the spiritual and commercial centre of the camp. Prisoners lingered at the taps before morning roll call, to trade gossip and cigarettes, and the OD often chased them out with whips. Szei Dreiblatt was not one of these idlers. He only used used the latrine for its designated purpose, and to brush his large yellow teeth. My suspicions were right: he walked straight past the building now and carried on up the hill towards the barracks. Perhaps he needed to lie down. But he didn’t look tired; I was struggling along the fence while he threw himself into the wind.
He disappeared inside the barracks and closed the door, two punishable crimes in themselves. I approached the side, pretending to give the windows their daily inspection for smudges or smears and stopped at the corner where Dreiblatt bunked. I peered in through the glass past the stove and water pail.
There were three men clustered around the bunk, two other prisoners having left their details at the same time as Szei Dreiblatt., as I suspected. His accomplices knelt while the teacher unwrapped the striped jacket he used as a pillow. This was where prisoners stored their only personal property, the dish and spoon and washcloth. From his bundle, Szei Dreiblatt extricated three highly-illegal metal tins, jam or honey from the looks if it. The school teacher was smuggling contraband after all. Good for him. Now I knew, I could pay off the OD to ensure his bed wasn’t searched.
As I pretended to finish off my inspection of the glass, Szei Dreiblatt removed a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully laid it out onto his straw bedding. I stopped, curious to see what he else was trading. He lifted the first tin to pour and out came a fine rain of black powder. From the second tin, a hail of scrap fragments and ball-bearings. He stirred the metal into the gun powder with his hands, lifted the corners of the handkerchief, tied the ends and stuffed the ball down into the third tin. Leaving a length of cloth projecting from the top as a fuse, he screwed the lid back on.
Szei Dreiblatt emerged through the door five minutes later, threw himself into the wind and pushed back up hill towards the Latrines.
Just when I’d decided to follow, the barracks door opened again and the second prisoner emerged. Without acknowledging Dreiblatt, he turned and set off in the opposite direction, towards the work detail levelling the Old Cemetetry. I watched the two men drift apart, until they were random specks in the snow. The door opened a final time. The third prisoner stepped out, and headed east, disappearing between the barracks.
54
It was time for me to leave Cracow for good.
After evening roll call on the 22nd, I wrapped my toothbrush and razor in my washcloth and hitched a ride to the Ghetto. There was nobody at Plaszow to say goodbye to, and nobody at Jozefinska, now that Brühl and Mende were gone. This time last December the courtyard rang out with pagan carols and Lili Marlene. Now the stationhouse was quiet, the rest of the street deserted. I hurried past. Up on the fourth floor Syzmek Lustgarten’s apartment had been gutted, its windows smashed.
Tadeus Pankiewicz left his scales unbalanced to usher me into the Pharmacy office. He handed me a cream envelope.
‘She said it was urgent.’
‘Gusta?’
Not hearing an answer, I tore the seal and pulled out the single sheet of paper. Two words in Hebrew in the middle of the paper, the sign of the cross underneath:
Be Strong, Sacred Flame
X
Nothing on the other side.
‘Be strong,’ I said. ‘Is that it?’
Pankiewicz’s face was as impossible to read as ever.
I showed him the message. ‘She’s joking, right?’
‘Could the X be a Roman numeral?’
‘You think? Number ten. An address? Be Strong, Ten.’ It meant nothing to me. ‘Is there a Strong Street in the city?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘A tenement building? Strong House, maybe?’
I held the paper up to the light-bulb: no watermark. I ripped the envelope apart and examined every corner.
Nothing.
I exited the Ghetto for my apartment on Tragutta Street. The priority was to finish documenting conditions in Plaszow before I left the city for good. The camp had mushroomed since Poldek Zygoti’s death, and there was a great deal to record. I brewed black coffee, fetched the book from behind the Caravaggio and took my usual seat in the living room. Conscious the words could be my last, I chose each one obsessively, weighing the rhythm of sounds and sentences in my mind before laying them down on paper. Progress was slow, but I finished before 10.00pm.
It was too risky to take the books. I already had the safest of safe places to leave them. If Harry Mohnke was arrested after failing to appear at the funeral, and his property searched, there was a good chance the wall-safe would elude detection. I’d been living in the apartment for weeks before I found it.
My books could survive untouched for decades. They might need to. If Germany won the war, every last Jew on the planet would be murdered. We’d become a rumour of an ancient people, like the myth of Atlantis.
I tied the three volumes together with string and laid them on the metal plate. On top I placed the dog-eared Torah of my night prayers, the folded prayer shawl taken from the old woman at the village massacre, the copy of Mordecai Gebirtig’s Our Town is Burning handed in by his informer, the first anti-Hitler postcard I found in the stairwell last December and Augustus Brühl’s Christmas present, The Lyrical Ballads of Heinrich Heine. That was it, my collection of relics. I locked the safe and rehung the painting.
It was time to go. My plan (such as it was): head for Paskow, where my mother and sister had last been sighted. Follow their ghosts towards the Ukranian border. From there, travel south, through Georgia and Turkey and finally on towards Palestine. Shoshana and I had often spoken of emigrating there from Vilno, the so-called Jerusalem of the North. I dreamed we would be reunited in its namesake.
While I was making a sandwich, a dull thud boomed beyond the windows. The noise would have shook me once. But now my knife didn’t even wrinkle the butter. Two years in the Ghetto had accustomed me to the hail of nightly gun fire. This sounded different, though. Further away than the old wall, but louder than bullets.
I wrapped the bread in brown paper, ran the knife under the tap and turned off the kitchen light. I was donning my leather greatcoat in the hallway when a second explosion detonated, rattling the panes in the living room.
I was right: this was the wrong direction for the Ghetto. And it definitely wasn’t gun fire.
The third and fourth explosions went off one after another, like echoes.
I Am Juden Page 46