Asylum

by Moriz Scheyer

  ‘Awful?’ the brigadier responded cheerfully as he walked past her. ‘Everything that these Jews leave behind goes to the Secours national.’

  On the other side of the road there is still a bed and breakfast, which belongs to a Madame Marquet. This Madame Marquet had now positioned herself in front of her door and, as we were led past, she clapped delightedly, as if she had just watched a particularly well-performed scene in a play. And the brigadier smiled at her, flattered–just like the actor acknowledging his applause.

  The next stop was the house where Frau Friedezky lived. She was already waiting on the street, flanked by two gendarmes. It was not even six weeks since her flight from Paris.

  So: five prisoners, now–escorted by nine gendarmes. We were taken–by a roundabout route, to avoid attracting attention–to the courtyard of the police barracks, some way outside the town centre. There we waited for the remaining seven Jews to be delivered. The process was finally completed about eight in the morning. Twelve persons. The brigadier rubbed his hands together.

  Just before we got into the bus, Monsieur and Madame Pellat came up on their bicycles: Madame Regnier had told them the news. At first the brigadier refused to let them in, but the determined Madame Pellat started to make such a scene that he thought better of it, and gave in. We were thus able to say farewell to our neighbours.

  And so, on the radiantly beautiful morning of 26th August 1942, in a genuinely comfortable tourist bus, we began our journey to Grenoble.

  20

  Caserne Bizanet, Grenoble

  IF I TRY, NOW, to put into words what we went through on that day, and what we had to witness, then every word I use seems to me terribly inadequate–and at the same time, not simple enough. One has a duty to bear witness. But if it were not for that, it would be best to say nothing.

  The tragedy was being played out almost silently, almost unnoticed. In the middle of a large, carefree town which carried on its business as usual. On a glorious summer day. No thunder, no lightning, no sign of divine rage descended from the cloudless, feelingless sky. There was no outward sign of the pain and the human goodness; the fear and the prayers; the persecution and the heroism that Caserne Bizanet held within its walls. Even amongst us, inside–even amongst the damned–there were no great scenes, no pathos, no emotional outbursts; there were barely a few, quiet tears. And yet language is quite inadequate to the attempt to make clear our deathly sense of desolation; inadequate to give voice to the silent groan of agony that we all had locked inside us.

  There were perhaps no more than a thousand of us in this barracks. What happened to us there would constitute a tiny, invisible particle in the monstrous body of misdeeds perpetrated by the Germans against defenceless Jews. The series of crimes is endless; so is the number of the victims. And yet, what punishment could there be that could ever be an atonement, even for what was done here–done to the relatively small number of Jews in the Caserne Bizanet in Grenoble?

  And what small comfort from the silence, the indifference of the world in the face of Jewish suffering.

  At the time of my committing these notes to paper–December 1943–there has been much discussion of the deportation of 1,500 Norwegian students, priests and teachers to Germany. Sweden, Finland and Switzerland have lodged an official protest against it. Sweden has even put her money where her mouth is and, under the pressure of public opinion, significantly reduced her trade with Germany.

  All this is extremely welcome and gratifying. The magnificent people of Norway deserve this and so much more. But it is surely understandable if I cannot get out of my head the thought: what official voice was raised in response to the fact that every conceivable atrocity has been–and is being–inflicted on millions and millions of Jewish men, women and children? Which neutral régime thought our sufferings worth the loss of a single contract? Which country converted indignation over our ordeal into actual, concrete measures?

  Even the Allies… well, they at least have done something. But they neglected the issue to a monstrous degree, when there might still have been time. Their official outrage, in any case, was largely confined to words; and there were times when one could not help thinking that crimes against Jews were regarded by them mainly as fuel for the propaganda machine.

  Let us return to Grenoble.

  After a journey of about one hour our bus stopped in front of a barracks, the Caserne Bizanet, which was now serving as a prison for all the Jews arrested in the Isère region.

  Other coaches were arriving at the same time as ours, each with its own cargo. A thick wall of people had gathered in the road by the front gate, curious to know what was happening. Most of them at least had the decency to watch in silence; others regaled their companions with a jokey commentary on events, as if they were having a particularly enjoyable time at the cinema. Nowhere a cry of indignation, nowhere a protest.

  How many of them are still alive–this consignment of Jews, led into the barracks yard in front of all those gawping eyes?

  We were received by soldiers: French soldiers in helmets, with bayonets at the shoulder. Helmets and bayonets, to herd this miserable flock into the grip of the German Beast.

  A flock, incidentally, that consisted to a large extent of women, children, invalids and cripples. There was no distinction of age or gender. There was only one gender here: Jews–Jews to be eradicated. There were men and women in extreme old age. And then there were the children.

  I do not wish to be guilty of any exaggeration here. Children under the age of two were left ‘in freedom’. They had been snatched away from father, mother and siblings; but they were themselves ‘free’–the freedom of a domestic animal deprived of its master. One day over your second birthday, however, and you joined your parents in captivity.

  At least, then, these children over the age of two were not separated from their parents; at least they were allowed to die together? To allow oneself such sentimental fantasies would be to betray a poor understanding of the Germans. We shall see what became of these children above the age of two–what was allowed to become of them, without the protest of a single régime.

  Anyway–this was the nature of the army that these helmets and bayonets had been called out to deal with. A few months later, when the Germans decided–flying in the face of all their previous undertakings–to occupy the zone libre too, then, of course, all the helmets and bayonets were meekly handed in to them. The campaign against Jewish women, children and old men had been glory enough for the great Pétain, Maréchal de France.

  We were first taken to an office, where our names were entered in a register. There followed the separation into groups, each of which was allotted to a room with the appropriate number of sleeping spaces.

  Anyone who had to perform a bodily function had first to report to a guard appointed for this purpose, and to wait. Once the number of candidates reached twenty, they were led by this heavily armed warrior across the yard to the toilet. After the performance of the function, they were carefully counted and escorted back. The next division followed in its turn. In this particular case, French organisation left nothing to be desired.

  In comparison with Beaune-la-Rolande the accommodation here was very comfortable. Moreover, this time I was together with my loved ones. And yet, I now looked on the concentration camp with something akin to nostalgia. It was a place where there had at least been some approximation to hope; some approximation to life. Here, on the faces all around me, I constantly had before me that final, indifferent expression which is in fact the face of death. An expression that makes you instinctively want to whisper, to go around on tiptoes.

  The reason for this was that most of us (I mean here the adults) had made the calculation that it was over. We were already in a sort of No-Man’s-Land–a Second Realm–between life and death. But on the other side of the Demarcation Line, the Germans awaited us. There would begin the Third Realm–das Dritte Reich–which was a realm of agony. Nor would we be given the small comfort
of being allowed to die together. They would tear us apart–we knew that. Not a voice, not a look, would be allowed to reach us there. Nothing but the mocking laughter of our executioners.

  That is why so many–though still alive, though still unscathed–were already wearing their own death-masks.

  Others, meanwhile, were curiously composed, simply because they lacked the imagination to grasp what lay before us. We had heard that our stay in the barracks would last three or four days. These people clung to this notion of three or four days: they escaped into each individual minute as if it were a hiding place.

  Others again, especially the young, wanted to spite their fate by not showing any reaction at all. Inwardly, youth coursed through their veins with all youth’s torrent of emotions; but they smiled at it all. That smile was more terrible than any grimace.

  Any such expressions will seem false and empty; and yet, one cannot put it in any other way: there was, in this prison of people condemned to ‘liquidation’ a kind of nameless heroism which commanded awe, even reverence. There was no complaint voiced, among all these unfortunates. Each, in his or her own way, and all collectively, bore their pain with a dignity which was quite without show–a fact that made it all the more shattering. They were, all of them, no more than a little morsel to feed the Master Race’s delight in torture. They were Jews. But they should have been immensely proud, these Jews: proud of their nobility, their greatness.

  There could only be one punishment for the Germans, that would be a sufficient atonement–only one punishment that would be just. That would be if they had to suffer, eye for eye and tooth for tooth, what they made us suffer. And I should like to see how they behaved then.

  For the rest of my life I shall have before me the small children, playing together in between the sleeping spaces, happy, carefree, without malice. And for the rest of my life I shall see the look of inexpressible sorrow on the faces of their mothers–following them, watching over them, pressing them to their hearts.

  From a back window in the room you could look down on to a narrow street. There, too, children were playing, and out of the house opposite mothers were looking out at them, too. Happy children, happy mothers.

  Here, children playing, with their mothers. Over there, children playing, with their mothers. No more than a narrow street between us–no more than a couple of steps. Only, what was happening there was a beginning, and what was happening here was the end. That is all.

  In the course of the morning, my heart had already started to play up. You will understand that I had had some difficulty following the instructions that Dr Ferrier had given me in Voiron the previous day, when he strictly forbade me any kind of emotional disturbance.

  In a room on the ground floor a kind of sickbay had been set up, with a doctor and a nurse. Shortly after our arrival we had seen a woman–a mother–taken away on a stretcher; she had suddenly gone mad. Her small child remained behind.

  At my wife’s insistence I asked the guard in front of our door to be allowed to see the doctor–but he would not hear of it. The problem unresolved, I returned and lay back on my mattress. Towards evening my condition rapidly worsened. With a superhuman display of energy my wife succeeded in dragging me down to the sickbay. Hardly had I got there when I suffered an attack of greater severity than I had ever previously experienced. The nurse put something between my teeth, while the doctor prepared an injection, which was followed by a second.

  He was a human being, this doctor. He was not German. I wish that I knew his name.

  When I had come to myself sufficiently, he said to me: ‘Stay here and lie quietly for the moment. The Prefect is in the barracks now. I shall give him my certification of your illness, and present you to him personally, once you are in a condition to walk again.’ Glancing at my wife, he added: ‘Madame will accompany you.’ He then dictated something softly to the nurse and went away with the piece of paper.

  When he returned, he was followed by a man who walked with difficulty on two crutches, with a child of about eight years. The man was whimpering in pain. He was a Polish Jew, who understood not a word of German; the boy–who spoke French like a native–acted as interpreter. ‘Help my father, monsieur,’ he implored. ‘Help my father.’

  The man was given an injection, but the pain continued. The boy began to weep inconsolably and covered his father in kisses. ‘You’ll see,’ he reassured him, speaking in Yiddish, ‘it’ll be better soon.’ Then, to the doctor, in French: ‘That’s right, isn’t it, monsieur: we’ll soon be able to go back home?’ The doctor was unable to speak. Then, in Yiddish again: ‘You see, father–better already!’ The father gave no response; but bestowed on the child a look of indescribable pain and tenderness.

  They left the room.

  At last my condition improved to the point where the doctor and my wife could accompany me to the Prefect.

  The Prefect said to me: ‘You can go back home.’ And then he added, with a peculiar emphasis. ‘Immediately.’ He then gave me a document stating that I had permission to return provisionally (the word was underlined) to my residence, accompanied by my wife.

  I thanked him. My wife also begged the Prefect to see the two other persons who belonged with us, Miss Kolářová and Mrs Ornstein. He agreed.

  We returned to the second floor. On the way my wife said simply: ‘A miracle, a miracle.’ Dazed, I stretched myself out on the bed again. I had only a sort of numb awareness of our salvation. And then, what would the Prefect decide about Sláva and Mrs Ornstein? Sláva had stubbornly and consistently refused to appeal to her ‘Aryan’ status. She was determined to share our fate to the end. Now, for the first time, she declared her readiness to approach the Prefect, together with Mrs Ornstein.

  While the two women were down below, a soldier came and took my wife to one side: ‘I hear that you are free to go,’ he whispered to her. ‘Leave the barracks without delay.’

  ‘My husband is still too weak,’ she objected. ‘We must wait a few hours, at least.’

  ‘Let me say one thing to you,’ the soldier insisted, ‘just one thing. Get out of here, even if you have to carry your husband on your back!’

  We recalled the Prefect’s emphatic ‘Immediately’.

  Just after that the two women returned. Sláva had the same document that we had. The Prefect had been satisfied with her certificate of baptism, although he had added: ‘You will still have to present proof of your Aryan status before the Commissariat général aux questions juives.’

  Mrs Ornstein? One glance at the unhappy woman was enough to show that she had not received mercy at the hands of the Prefect. This white-haired lady, who suffered from such bad arthritis deformans that she found it hard to dress herself, had had the temerity to request a medical examination on her own account.

  The Prefect cut her off indignantly: ‘Who decides that–you or me?’

  He then sealed her fate with a simple: ‘Vous pouvez disposer.’ That will be all.

  We had to leave her behind. Her and Mila Friedezky. And so many others. Of course, if we had stayed, we would not have been able to alter her fate in the slightest. It would not have helped any of us. In any case, we would have been separated. We knew all that: reason told us that. And yet we felt almost ashamed of ourselves. We wanted to ask her pardon.

  Finally we crept away, like guilty things. It was one in the morning. The whole building was silent. But this was a sleepless, agonised silence. A silence to choke you.

  In the courtyard a soldier came up to us. It was the same one who had warned us. He said: ‘I am glad that you are free. May God protect you.’

  As the sentry at the gate checked our documents, he muttered under his breath to my wife: ‘You have one last chance, now, to get away.’

  We were on the street–back on the street. An unimaginable miracle. My wife and Sláva, already laden with our baggage, carried me more than they led me; and at last we reached a hotel. There was no room free; but they allowed us to spend the rest
of the night in the foyer.

  From one of the bedrooms we could hear the sound of breathing–the deep breathing of peaceful, contented sleep. We thought of those in the barracks.

  At six in the morning we took the first tram to the station; and two hours later we were back in Voiron.

  The same time yesterday…

  The same time yesterday, we were on the way to Grenoble. Now we are back here. Twenty-four hours between the two. Twenty-four hours which seemed more than a whole lifetime. And between them, too, a miracle; the miracle of a resurrection. But one of us was gone.

  21

  A toast

  AT THE POLICE STATION, where we went to get back the key to our house, they were very surprised to see us. The brigadier even pretended to be pleased.

  On the door of our house there was already a notice: ‘Confiscated by order of the prefect of Isère.’ Fortunately, though, they had not yet had time to remove our possessions.

  From the Koflers we learned that buses full of prisoners from the Caserne Bizanet had already been seen driving through Voiron in the direction of Lyon. In one of these buses–one which was full of women and children–Rosa had been among the passengers. Kofler had even managed to speak with the poor woman for a couple of minutes.

  We had gathered that the transportation was to take place in three or four days’ time; in fact, the whole camp, entirely without exception, had been evacuated at five that morning. The gendarmes who accompanied them had been ordered to deliver them to the camp of Vényssieux near Lyon. There the deportees would apparently remain for several days, before being taken to the Demarcation Line and there handed over to the Germans.

  We had to try everything possible to save Mrs Ornstein. Young Edgar Kofler,* our friend’s son, had already gone to Lyon on the first train. Two days later he returned empty-handed–all his efforts in vain.