“He has one of the biggest art collections in all of Europe,” said Frau Schmidt narrowing her eyes. “Most of it stolen.”
“We must hang the portrait in the post office—on loan of course,” Fritz suggested. “If not, it should be part of the permanent acquisition in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.”
“No, no,” Freidle replied, “I think it is more fitting in my office, more fitting. You and Frau Schmidt have introduced greatness! We have our very own Rembrandt.”
Frau Schmidt nodded. “A tidy office makes for a tidy mind,” she proclaimed.
When visitors arrived from Prague and Berlin, they admired Norbert Troller’s paintings in the anteroom to Freidle’s office. Frau Schmidt thought Freidle purposely placed them there because Germans were fond of pastoral landscapes. A few drawings turned into a cottage industry, and Troller was busy providing Freidle with a steady supply of paintings. They were all duly sold to visiting party officials from Berlin. Troller had his assignment. The “art fund,” Freidle called it, and it was a profitable arrangement. Frau Schmidt wasn’t sure where the proceeds went, but she was sure Norbert Troller’s landscapes would soon be hanging in every home in Berlin.
Soon, Troller received a letter ordering him to appear at Himmler House. Himmler House was where the SS were, along with visiting officers and officials. Troller was ordered to design a taproom and a lobby conforming to a Bauhaus design. The existing rooms were shabby, and Troller, much to his annoyance, was compelled to adapt a plan to a military theme.
With my faithful tool kit and my beloved ribbons, I was commanded to keep its glorious Steinway in tune. Playing and tuning once a week allowed me a time of respite, a time of escape, away from the anxiety and the hunger and the illness, a time to get lost in my craft.
To keep Freidle’s landscape gallery well stocked, Norbert could paint outside the gates of Terezín anytime he wanted. I was appointed to supervise him, which amounted to being his keeper. I was to watch him and warn of any attempted escape. They’d picked the wrong man for the job; if he’d tried to escape, I would’ve given him a map and a pat on the back.
A favorite place to set up his open-air studio was a park-like setting outside the village. It had well-tended lawns and grass-covered slopes, and Norbert sketched every house and every tree. When the afternoon folded into a quiet time of day, I figured that life was created in those meadows. It seemed a place that God must have walked through from time to time, while taking a detour from Terezín. Between my work tuning the Steinway and these idylls with Norbert, I felt fully alive for the first time in months, even years. I was reminded that there was a place and a need for color and space and beauty in every life.
During our expeditions to satisfy the inventory of Freidle’s gallery, Troller saw a house with a gabled yellow roof. He pointed his brush as if to paint a stroke in midair, not unlike waving a baton. The house had a shaded lawn with leafy oaks and maple trees. It was a scene so perfect that Troller immediately set up his easel. While he was at it, the owner appeared, walking from the wide doors across a path to a cart used for farming. He saw us and came closer, peering over Norbert’s shoulder at the sketch of his home and hay wagon.
“Are you from Prague?” the man asked.
“Um … no,” Troller said, with a practiced economy of words. “Just nearby.”
“My name is Pavel.” He offered his hand and I shook it.
“I’m Max, and this is Norbert Troller.”
The man nodded and left, returning a few minutes later with a package containing two loaves of bread, tomatoes, and slices of smoked meat, a well-received gift considering our food rations. A man appearing and then reappearing with a gift—it all seemed mysterious. And yet I felt safe.
“I don’t like those Germans much,” Pavel said. “I hate what they do. I hope that something good to eat will help.”
I grinned. “Wow, we should come here every day!”
“Pavel, you are much too kind,” said Norbert. “May I present you with a sketch of your home?”
“Do you think you could paint my family, especially my wife? She’s beautiful.”
“Of course, my new friend,” said Norbert. “But please understand the commission will take several weeks to capture the light and mood.”
I took the hint. I wanted to enjoy treats for as long as possible. “I can assure you, Mr. Pavel, you will treasure it always.”
Within the hour, we were tucking into freshly baked pastries filled with wild strawberry preserves. It was the best deal we ever made.
Two days later Sophie sneaked away long enough to be with me and walk over fields of cornflowers that stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see.
While Troller painted, we lay on the grass, shoulder to shoulder, holding hands, enjoying the beauty all around us.
Sophie rubbed her nose along my neck.
“Cut it out, Sophie. You’re tickling me.”
“I can’t. I have no control.”
“Norbert will think we’re kids.”
“Well, aren’t we?”
I sat up and looked at Sophie. She wasn’t a kid anymore, and neither was I.
“It’s really a pretty setting, isn’t it?”
“It reminds me of a poem I once read, Max—it’s like floating on daffodils. If I could collect all the poems in the world on a long sheet of paper, I would roll them up and give them to you.”
With just a hint of a smile, she combed my hair away from my forehead. I wished Norbert could have painted us there together, capturing our feelings, so they would have lasted for all time. Then I thought, that’s what memories are for. I saw a detail that I had seen in one of his paintings, a beam of light shining onto a field through a gray and platinum sky. The heavens paused for a moment. That moment was that glimmer of light. A landscape of unspoken words made visible.
ON THE WORD OF
THREE WITNESSES
On a cold, crisp morning—it felt like the coldest Terezín had ever experienced—Rabbi Baeck called David and I to his study. When we arrived, he introduced us to a man named Milos Brunner, a Czech engineer who had recently returned to the camp.
“Sit down,” said the rabbi. “You must listen.”
Milos nodded at us. We sat down on the rabbi’s worn couch and waited expectantly.
“Fredy Hirsh is dead,” he said.
I gasped. “But I don’t understand.”
I hadn’t seen Fredy in weeks but hadn’t thought much of it. David sat quietly, always a thoughtful listener.
Sighing, the rabbi said, “Max, a few weeks ago, Fredy and some older children were transported to a place known as the Reich Area, a settlement called Birkenau. It’s a family camp, part of Auschwitz.”
I had heard of this place from Fritz.
Milos frowned. “It’s a dreadful situation. I’ve just returned.” He moved closer to the rabbi. “They’re using Zyklon B on the prisoners—women and children alike.”
The rabbi dropped his head into his hands.
“What’s Zyklon B?” David asked.
“It’s a commercial name for cyanide pellets. It’s being used to gas thousands of Jews deported to Auschwitz.”
“Wait, slow down, what do you mean, gassing Jews?” I asked.
David sank deeper into the couch.
I was unable to comprehend the news of this.
“I was there, Max,” said Milos. “It’s for the final solution. Zyklon is poured through small rooftop openings into rooms packed with Jews. After a few minutes, the screaming stops.”
It was beyond my imagination. It was too much to take in. How could this be true?
“Why? What happens then?”
Trying to soften the news, the rabbi came closer. “They’re dead, Max. They’re all dead.”
Milos told us that Fredy had impressed the SS, spea
king perfect German, and with his manners and dress, had managed to set up a home for the smaller children. While the family camp was separated from the complex, Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann appeared with a man called Dr. Mengele. He’d already shown a special interest in the children, especially twins. He began making selections for scientific experiments.
“Eichmann and Mengele?” David asked, his face white.
“Karl Adolf Eichmann,” the rabbi said, “is the man who keeps the trains rolling all over Europe. He’s a model bureaucrat and a lover of systems. A classic subordinate following orders. But he’s no fool. He’s studied all aspects of Jewish culture, attended synagogues, visited our homes. He even made Jewish friends, who trusted him.”
The rabbi took a few moments to gather himself before he continued. “Many … many thousands, tens of thousands, unimaginable numbers of people, of human beings have died at the hands of this monster. It is what he does that makes him what he is. I met him on one of his visits. He studied Hebrew and speaks a bit of Yiddish; it was Heydrich and Eichmann who ordered the Jews to be rounded up and forced into ghettos and labor camps, following orders from Hitler. They followed the orders with alacrity.”
“Now to Josef Mengele. He’s called ‘the Angel of Death,’” said Milos. “A doctor who was wounded on the Russian front and volunteered to go to Auschwitz. A slightly built man, deceptive in every respect, and not what you think of when you imagine evil. There’s scarcely a wrinkle in his uniform, he’s perfectly groomed, not a hair out of place, his dark green tunic neatly pressed, his face well-scrubbed, boots polished, his death’s-head SS cap tilted to one side, you can’t miss him at the Auschwitz station, surveying his prey. He greets everyone at the train and with a simple gesture, a flick of his cane clasped in gloved hand, he seals their fate, with a casual wave; death to the left, life to the right.”
Milos extended his arm, imitating Mengele. “One woman, faced with being separated from her child, screamed and scratched the face of an SS man forcing her back into line.”
Milos drew an imaginary gun.
“Mengele shoots the woman and the child without any hesitation and sends the rest from the transport to the gas chambers.”
David gasped.
“Mengele is Satan incarnate,” Milos said. “He appears to be a gentle, affable man, a sort of father figure. ‘Have a chocolate,’ he says. It’s hard to believe he’s the same man performing grotesquely cruel scientific experiments that I can hardly talk about. Fredy learned all about him and staged a revolt. The kids were doomed; they were taken … taken away and never returned. Fredy was with them.”
We were silent. David was shaking, unable to take this in. I laid my hand on his arm to steady him.
“Max,” said the rabbi, struggling to regain his composure, “there was a debate in the Talmud: Would the world be better off if God had never created mankind? Much to my surprise, the commentary concluded that maybe God should not have created man.”
“No disrespect, Rabbi,” I said, “but thousands of Jews are being murdered. God couldn’t be a factor here.”
“But God—think of the hand of God, Max, one that can be open or clenched into a fist.”
“What are we expected to do?” I asked, jumping up and pacing the room, thinking of Viktor Frankl’s words. “Why do we exist?”
“That’s a big question. We exist to live life as best we can, to be virtuous through all adversity, to give and to contribute to each other. Part of our culture is steady hope. We are being tested, every moment, every day, in the face of everything that we endure and see others endure, and somehow, some way, the hand of God points us in a better direction.”
David stared into the distance, rocking back and forth, still not speaking.
Milos hung his head in despair.
The rabbi offered a prayer in Hebrew. I didn’t understand it, but I knew what it meant by the resonance in his voice.
I looked across at him, looking for some utterance, some message. “I just can’t see God in all of this. It’s too much for me. I feel desperate, and all around I see the same blackness.”
The rabbi paused a while, reflected, and finally spoke, quietly, so we had to lean in to catch every word: “God is here. God is in everything, in every moment. Things look dark now. They are as unimaginably terrible for those who hear them as for those who witness them. But the brightest light casts the darkest shadows, and there is always, always, a light of hope, and people must know the stories of those who didn’t survive, who couldn’t make it, from those who somehow did. David, Max, you must remember this story.”
“How can I forget?” David said, coming out of his wave of shock.
“A great writer once said that those who can make us believe lies can make us commit atrocities,” the rabbi said.
David scrunched up his face, trying to place the author.
“Voltaire,” the rabbi said.
Turning to David, I said, “If we can’t publish these things, how will anyone know?”
David shook his head, his eyes closed. “Maybe they never will.”
“Where was God?”
“Where is man?” David asked.
“You may not be able to document all that you see and know about in Vedem now,” said the rabbi. “But someday you will. You have a calling now, another appointment. Max, it’s written in the Bible that a battle must be told ‘on the word of three witnesses.’ It’s in Deuteronomy. You have heard this story, not to weaken you, but to strengthen you. You have become a witness. That is who and what you are. If you are the only one who lives … you are our witness.”
I decided that I had to tell Sophie, we kept nothing from each other, but when we met, I lost my resolve, I couldn’t.
“What is it, Max?”
“I … I just wanted to see you. It’s not a good day.”
“What happened?
“It’s just a lousy day.”
Sophie put her arm around me, offering an unswerving steadiness through her embrace. “Come on, Max. We’ll get through it together.”
I couldn’t manage to say anything more. I trusted that if God could really open the heavens somehow, somewhere, I had to go along with that. Where was the rest of the world? Gone. Disappeared. Swept away, leaving not a shadow behind. There was just enough to keep us all going. I couldn’t take it all in, and I had to keep believing we would still be together, waking each morning to find ourselves a little older and one day closer to the end of all this.
Fritz denied knowing anything about gassing.
“Surely there has been some information in the red packet.”
He stared at me blankly.
“Tell me, Fritz.”
“It’s beyond comprehension, for all decent people. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You once mentioned Auschwitz to me.”
“Yes, but I didn’t have details.”
“You knew something, and you didn’t tell me?”
“How can I speak of such an outrage?”
“I want to know more about it, Fritz.”
“It’s true.”
“For God’s sake, Fritz, someone has got to stop it. We can’t stand by and do nothing.”
“What do you propose we do, Max? Head toward Auschwitz and put out the fire? Sure, I’ll do that with you, but how far will we get? Max, we need an army. An army of soldiers with guns, journalists with words, people with prayers.”
I wanted to fight back. But not in prayer. The darkness returned. Little food and clothing. People, already thin, were becoming thinner by the day. Most of the residents believed their friends had only gone east to work. Rabbi Baeck said it was best to keep the news quiet. I wasn’t sure I agreed, but then again, what good would it have done to tell every living person at Terezín? For the time being I said nothing.
I was wracked with dou
bt. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. Had I done something wrong? Had I offended God? The pages of Twain spoke to me:
And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right …
One night I just couldn’t shake off the conviction that the people I loved had been taken away. I had to reassure myself, to make my heart right, so I left the comfort of my bed and, heading out into the chilled air, I silently patrolled the streets and squares of Terezín, ducking under every sweeping searchlight, avoiding the ominous, watchful guards. I took every precaution not to be caught after curfew—that would be the end of me.
I felt haunted, somehow convinced that I had lost my friends to the work camps, to the chambers. No, it couldn’t be, I tried to reassure myself as I trudged on, my frozen hands buried in my pockets. But was I sure? I had to dismiss this awful thought, one that refused to leave my anguished mind.
Slipping quietly around corners, I considered the barracks, first Hanover, quietly checking on David. I was relieved to see him sitting at his desk, buried in his work, lost in thought. I moved on to look for Hans, and there he was, as ever lightly playing a composition at his piano. Is this what they did at night? Did they ever sleep? Or were they a quiet, watchful presence, staying up protecting all good people from the dangers that came in the darkness?
When I arrived at Sophie’s barracks, running past wooden slats to window after window, I saw bunks of sleeping bodies, but hers was empty. I panicked. I invoked every prayer in my being, Please God, let her be here. Let her be well. Let her be okay. Let her be alive.
I guess I believed in God after all. I reassured myself that she must be at the infirmary, but the wards were empty, with only the sounds of an occasional, rasping breath clinging on to life.
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