The Death's Head Chess Club

by John Donoghue

  The disapproval in his mother’s voice was hard to bear. ‘Maman, please don’t be like this. She’s not a dancer, and she’s not pregnant. I hoped you would be happy for me. We’re in love.’

  ‘Hmph,’ his mother snorted. ‘So much in love that you couldn’t bring her home to meet your mother.’

  ‘I’m bringing her home to meet you today, Maman. I beg you, please don’t be difficult, for my sake. Once you get to know her you’ll love her as much as I do, I promise.’

  His mother reached a hand across the table to touch his. ‘You are my son, all I have left in the world. Naturally, what I want is for you to be happy. But there are so many things that need to be sorted out. For starters, where will you get married – will it be in a synagogue or in a church?’

  ‘You are right, of course.’ Emil took his mother’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. ‘There are many things that need to be sorted out. But for now let us put them all to one side while you and Rosa get to know one another.’

  In the end, their union was blessed in neither church nor synagogue: they settled for a civil ceremony followed by a small reception in a restaurant owned by one of Emil’s friends. His mother’s reluctance thawed over the months and her fondness for her daughter-in-law seemed genuine.

  For their honeymoon, Emil took Rosa to Switzerland, to Basle, where he introduced her to Walter Nohel, now in his late sixties, to whom Emil, at the age of fourteen, had been apprenticed.

  ‘Meister Nohel taught me to play chess,’ Emil told her. ‘Most people think that chess is merely a game, but it is more than that. It was created by the angels to please God.’

  Nohel had also introduced Emil to a deeper understanding of his own religion, to the Kabbalah; something Emil had never spoken about, even to his mother. It was in his contemplation of the Kabbalah that he had found the most profound revelations about the game of chess – how it connected him with the divine thoughts of angels and how he could draw on their strengths when he played.

  That there was a close bond of affection between apprentice and master was plain to see. One evening, at dinner, Nohel said, ‘I have been thinking about retiring. I have had a reasonable offer for my business from Adolf Boeckh. You remember, he has that place on the corner of Koenigstrasse.’

  Emil remembered it only too well. Its windows were always brightly lit and the merchandise festooned with trinkets and gewgaws, ‘lacking in taste and decorum’ his master had always said, calling it ‘Boeckh’s Bazaar’. And now it seemed that Nohel’s elegant establishment would suffer the same dreadful fate.

  It seemed obvious that his master was tempted by the offer, but was most reluctant to see his life’s work come to nothing. ‘How are you finding Paris?’ Nohel asked. ‘Is your business prospering?’

  ‘Better than I could have hoped for. I have an excellent location in Montparnasse, and a clientele that is growing steadily.’

  ‘And a reputation,’ Rosa added.

  ‘Of course,’ Nohel agreed sagely. ‘But would you not consider coming back to Basle? I would much rather hand the business over to you than to that nincompoop, Boeckh.’ He regarded his former apprentice hopefully. ‘It is well established and profitable, and I wouldn’t expect you to pay me out all in one go – you could buy the business in stages, over a few years.’ He was smiling now, warming to the idea. ‘Don’t give me an answer now; take time to think about it. Come back and see me again before you return to Paris, eh?’

  Later, Emil and Rose talked about it. It was tempting, but Basle was no match for Paris.

  ‘Is there even a Le Chat Noir in Basle?’ Rosa asked.

  ‘If there is a Le Chat Noir in Basle, it must be well hidden,’ replied Emil. ‘So well hidden that I was here for seven years and still I could not find it. Basle is probably the dullest city in the world. After Metz,’ he added.

  1962

  Amsterdam

  ‘It seems quite extraordinary that in the midst of so much privation you managed to play chess.’

  Schweninger’s words brought a sharp look from Meissner. ‘I assure you it’s quite true.’

  ‘Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not questioning the veracity of Herr Clément’s story. All I’m saying is that it’s extraordinary, that it seems almost an extravagance, in a place where there was no room for such things.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s possible to understand unless you were there,’ Clément said. ‘Everything was extraordinary. The mere fact of survival was extraordinary. The depths of deprivation we suffered were unbelievable. Many times I have asked myself the question, “How can men be so lacking in pity that they can subject their fellows to such brutality?” Yet it happened every day.’ He shivered. ‘Different people did different things to survive. I played chess.’ He looked at the German. ‘I wonder what you would have done if it had been you instead of me.’

  ‘Since I was not there, it is hardly a fair question. I’m sure I would have been able to find something.’

  ‘Find something? Like what?’ As Schweninger shrugged, floundering, still Emil pressed him: ‘No, I really want to know.’ His voice took on a commanding tone. ‘Tell me – how exactly do you think you would have survived?’

  Schweninger coloured. ‘You’re not the only one who managed to survive,’ he retorted. ‘You ask me what I would have done – I would have conformed. Followed the rules. Kept my nose clean.’

  Clément smiled. ‘Followed the rules?’ He shook his head. ‘Like I said, it’s not possible to understand if you were not there.’

  Schweninger appealed to Meissner. ‘Well, I was not there and that can’t be changed. Herr Clément says it’s not possible for me to understand.’

  Meissner signalled to the waiter to bring coffee. ‘I’m not sure it’s possible for anyone really to understand the paradox of Auschwitz. Even those who were there.’

  ‘The paradox? What paradox?’

  ‘The conditions in Auschwitz were appallingly degrading, yet prisoners and guards alike came to accept them as normal. It was as though we had entered another world, where the normal rules of civilization were suspended. The prisoners were utterly at the mercy of those in any sort of authority. You might expect there would have been some sort of solidarity among them as a result, but that was not the case. The need to survive was so acute that some prisoners would prey on their fellows without giving it a second thought. And yet . . .’ The priest paused while the waiter placed cups before them.

  ‘And yet?’ Schweninger urged.

  ‘And yet there were places where the human spirit continued to burn brightly. That was why the Gestapo were there in force – to extinguish all hope before it could take hold. But they could never put it out completely.’ He lifted a cup to his lips but put it back down without drinking. ‘And that is why I think Herr Clément played chess in Auschwitz, because, for him, it was an affirmation of his humanity.’

  Schweninger turned to Emil. ‘Is that true?’

  Emil sighed. It seemed plausible, but was it true? With a shake of his head he replied, ‘I really don’t know.’

  Schweninger frowned, and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘how it was that the two of you came to meet.’

  ‘You need to be a little more patient,’ Meissner replied, ‘or you won’t understand the extraordinary circumstances that brought us together.’

  18.

  AHLHAUSEN’S OPENING

  May 1944

  Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-III, Monowitz

  Bodo Brack had not merely survived in Auschwitz for two years; he had thrived.

  During the Weimar years,1 Brack had made a good living organizing muscle for the Social Democrats for their brawls with both the Communists and the Nazis. He did not care for politicians and their posturing; all that concerned him was what he could make from them. In 1929, sensing a bigger game was to be had in Berlin, he had left Hamburg for the capital. Joseph Goebbels had been appointed Gauleiter2 for the city – an entirely unoff
icial position until the Nazis came to power – and had immediately started a vendetta against the chief of police, Isidor Weiss. Misjudging the mood in the city, Brack had decided the greatest profit was to be made from the Communists, who were being bankrolled by Stalin.

  In the summer of 1931, the Communist politburo in Berlin decided that a deliberate provocation would tip the balance in their favour. The police were thought by many to be the puppets of the Social Democrats and were unpopular in Communist areas. An example was to be made. In August, a car stopped outside the Babylon Cinema near the Bülowplatz. Two men got out and gunned down three policemen.

  The Communists waited for the popular uprising to happen, but they underestimated Goebbels’ ability to use the crisis to his advantage. He put on the mantle of righteous outrage: it was intolerable, he said, that law and order had so declined that policemen doing their simple duty of protecting the citizens of Berlin could be gunned down with impunity. He promised swift justice.

  The full weight of the Nazi network of informers was put behind discovering the identities of the killers. Within days, the newsstands proclaimed that three men were wanted for murder: Bodo Brack, Erich Mielke, and a third, as yet unnamed, man. The reward for information leading to their capture was huge.

  Mielke, a high-ranking member of the Communist Party, was spirited out of Berlin to Moscow. Brack had no such luck.

  It was not the police who found him, but Nazi Brownshirts. While relations between Goebbels and the police chief might have thawed over this matter, the Gauleiter was not prepared to share the credit for apprehending one of the killers. Brack was in an apartment in the Fischerkiez district. In twos and threes, the Brownshirts made their way there, their uniforms concealed under overcoats. Despite the hot weather, nobody noticed how strange this was. When the building was stormed, Brack received a brutal beating, but was nonetheless delivered to police headquarters alive.

  In court, the prosecutor demanded the death penalty, but the judge was a Communist sympathizer. Brack received a life sentence with hard labour.

  When the Nazis came to power, they proved to have long memories. In 1936 they established a concentration camp north of Berlin where their political opponents could be incarcerated away from public view. One day, Brack was brought from his cell and handed into the custody of two men in black SS uniforms. He was taken to Sachsenhausen. There his head was shaved and he was given new prison clothes: a coarse, blue-striped uniform with a green triangular patch on the breast and a prison number beneath: 11442. He still wore that number.

  The SS understood that the most efficient way to operate a concentration camp was to get selected prisoners to run the camp for them. They created a system of Ältesten, or elders, who would manage the living quarters, and Kapos, who would supervise the labour squads. These Prominenten would be given privileges but would keep them only by maintaining an iron control over their fellow prisoners. They would do anything to avoid losing their positions. If ever they were returned to the status of an ordinary prisoner, their lives would be short indeed as their fellow inmates exacted revenge. The system resulted in extremes of violence as the Ältesten and Kapos competed to curry favour with their SS masters, who imposed few limits on their brutality.

  If the Nazis thought that incarceration in Sachsenhausen would be the end of Brack, they were mistaken. He discovered that among the prisoners, those with a green triangle could prosper. Greens were convicted criminals. They fared much better than prisoners with red triangles, the Communists, or homosexuals or Jews. In the camp, Brack discovered his natural milieu. It was as if somebody had been able to enter his mind and, on finding his greatest aptitude, had created for him the perfect playground. Instinctively, he knew how to make the system work for him.

  Where the Communists refused to cooperate with the camp authorities on principle, and the SS loathed the homosexuals and Jews, criminals like Brack became natural collaborators, and he rose rapidly in the camp’s perverse hierarchy. In 1942, in return for a promise to commute his sentence from life to fifteen years, he agreed to be moved from Sachsenhausen to Auschwitz.

  Brack started as a Kapo in the original Auschwitz camp, the Stammlager, but things did not turn out as he had expected. Brack’s record – suggesting Communist sympathies – had come with him. In the Nazi pantheon of hatred, this was almost as bad as being a Jew. He was taken to an interrogation room in the punishment block.

  Like most of the buildings in the Stammlager, the punishment block was brick built, and two storeys high. Brack was taken up unlit stairs to the upper floor. Dark stains on the bare walls and concrete floor bore witness to what he could expect. Two SS men strapped him into a heavy chair.

  He had been there for about twenty minutes with a single guard for company when the door opened and a man entered: a dark, thick-set man with a heavily lined face, and thick, greasy hair. Klaus Hustek was Gestapo, and a Communist-hater of the highest order.

  As soon as Brack saw him, he recognized someone with as little regard for his fellow man as he had himself.

  ‘How is it,’ Hustek asked, in a hushed voice, ‘that you have managed to insinuate yourself into this camp as a Green, when you are a known Communist terrorist?’

  ‘Herr Scharführer,’ Brack replied, trying to keep his voice calm, ‘I was convicted of murder. I did not kill because of any political convictions, but because I was paid to do it. I have no interest in politics,’ he added.

  His response earned him a hard slap across the face. ‘No lies, Brack. Understand? I can tell when you’re lying. Now tell me, who did you bribe to get the green triangle?’

  The Scharführer seated himself and lit a cigarette, all the while staring at the prisoner with unblinking, heavy-lidded eyes.

  ‘Nobody, Herr Scharführer,’ Brack protested. ‘How could I bribe anybody? What would I have that anybody would want?’

  Hustek made the slightest of gestures and the guard hit Brack from behind with a cane, raising an angry weal on his right cheek. A nod, and the blow was repeated; then again, and again.

  Brack tried to pull away from the blows, but it was futile. In under a minute, his face had become a bleeding, purple mess.

  ‘That’s enough.’

  A bucket of water was thrown over the prisoner.

  Hustek took short, thoughtful puffs on his cigarette as he gazed at his prisoner. Brack’s attention flitted between the guard, who now stood beside the Scharführer, and the window that looked across to a similar barrack block perhaps twenty metres away.

  The Gestapo man’s voice brought him back. ‘You know, it does not do to make an enemy of me.’ His voice was quiet. In different circumstances it could almost have been mistaken for being friendly.

  Brack tried to speak but his throat was thick with fear and his mouth full of blood. Fearing to spit it onto the floor, he had swallowed. Forcing a cough, he replied, ‘Please believe me, Herr Scharführer, I have been in Sachsenhausen since 1936, and nearly four years in Spandau before that. I am not a Communist, and I have not bribed anybody.’

  Hustek ground out his cigarette butt beneath his jackboot. ‘Today is your lucky day. Today I believe you.’ He raised his face to look directly at the man strapped to the chair. ‘But I want you to be very clear about something – from now on, you belong to me. Every breath you draw in this camp will be at my pleasure. I will permit you to live, but in return you will do something for me. You will be my eyes and ears wherever you go in this camp, and you will report to me everything you see and hear. Is this understood?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Scharführer.’

  Hustek held a hand out to the guard and was handed the cane. With a back-handed swipe he brought it across Brack’s already battered face. ‘I did not hear you properly, Brack. What did you say?’

  Brack spat a gobbet of blood onto the floor and shouted, ‘I said yes! I will do anything you ask.’

  ‘Good.’ Hustek stood and walked to the door. Opening it, he said to the guard, ‘Have him assign
ed to Block 14. It is a rat’s nest of Polish Communists.’ He turned to Brack. ‘I want results, and I want them fast.’

  Delivering the results Hustek had wanted was easy. Brack’s reputation as a Communist who had killed three police stooges and the obvious evidence that he had been badly beaten meant it was not difficult to get the Poles to trust him. Within a fortnight, six of them were lined up against the wall outside the punishment block and shot.

  Brack did not lose any sleep over it. For the next year it became his task to work his way into the confidence of new Polish prisoners as they entered the camp. He was not looking only for Communists: Hustek wanted information about the Polish underground, the black market, smuggling rings – anything, and Brack delivered. Yet there was no respect between him and the Gestapo man. Brack had a nose for how people felt about him and he knew that Hustek considered him scum. His opinion of Hustek was the same. He hated Hustek for the hold he had on him, and in the long darkness of winter nights he schemed endlessly about the day he would get his revenge. When Hustek was promoted to Oberscharführer, he gave Brack one of the vouchers that the Prominenten could use in the camp brothel. Brack got an hour with a Polish whore and cursed Hustek savagely for it.

  In August 1943, while the Battle of Kharkov was at its height, Brack was transferred to the Monowitz camp. He was surprised at how far it was from the Stammlager and he calculated that Hustek would never bother to make a special trip all the way to the other side of Oświęcim to find him.

  Despite being in thrall to the Gestapo man, Brack had not done badly, and he was determined to do even better for himself in Monowitz. Better than any of his fellow Greens he knew how to organize a gang of thugs and, before long, his status as unofficial Führer of the camp underworld was secure.

  Nearly a year later, one of Brack’s fellow Prominenten told him about a Jew who had given him a watch so he could play chess. At first, Brack was merely curious, but when he learned the Jew was from his own block, he became angry. He could not allow such a slight to go unpunished: the Jew had to be taken down a peg or two. He deserved the beating he got. But now the Jew puzzled him. Brack could understand that people would want something to distract them from the constant misery that existence as a Häftling entailed, but chess? The Poles played it, he knew, and some of the politicals, but a Jew? He should have been too exhausted at the end of every day. In truth, Brack’s refusal to allow Clément to play had been more about asserting his control over the Frenchman, but he had soon started to wonder how he might make a profit from this foolish game.