The Prosperous Thief

by Andrea Goldsmith

  At seven o’clock the next morning the SS come again for Martin. There is no dying grandmother to distract them this time, and no beatings. Martin takes a hasty leave of Alice and Renate.‘I’ll be back,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry.’ And to Renate: she must do whatever is required to secure visas,‘To anywhere,’ he says, then a final kiss before being hustled through the debris of the living room and frogmarched out the door. Within twenty-four hours Martin is in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, while twenty-five kilometres further south in Berlin, Renate and Alice have moved in with Dora Friedman and her son Willi.

  On the very same day Renate and Alice were travelling east to join Dora and her son in Berlin, Private Heinrik Heck was travelling in the other direction to Hamburg, together with several other new recruits. His past had taught him the importance of the present moment, but nothing could have prepared him for the excitement he was now feeling. Such prospects he had. For the second time in his life he was leaving Berlin, but so different were the circumstances he might as well be another person. He was well clothed and well fed, and not only did he have money in his pocket, he was being paid to sit on this train, being paid as he smoked his cigarette, being paid to look out the window at the passing scenery. And most exciting of all, he was being paid to cook.

  He had always been a quick learner. From early boyhood when he was the best young thief around, during all those years of looking after his sister and brother, and of course his time at school, he had learned faster than anyone. And now, after only a couple of weeks in an army kitchen, he’d picked up enough knowledge to be sent to Hamburg as a cook. After a lifetime of keeping a watchful eye on the present, a glance at his future revealed plenty of possibilities.

  And he’d met a woman, Agathe, a good sort who really seemed taken with him. She said she liked a man who was going places, and she could see he was. What a laugh: Heini Heck, late of the Scheunenviertel, suddenly a man with prospects. Agathe worked in a factory, but her main interest was as a leader in the BDM, the girls’ section of the Hitler Youth. She was going places too. Heini had known plenty of women in his time, but Agathe was one out of the bag.And she liked him, she liked him very much. She would slip him into her room and there she would love him like he was the last man on earth.

  As the train chugged along, Heini was thinking that when he was settled he would send for her, he might even marry her – now that would be a turn-up for the books. But then everything was different when you’ve got prospects, he decided. And he lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply and settled back to enjoy the journey.

  Preposterous Migrations

  The Friedmans lived on Bamberger Strasse, a short twenty minute walk from the clang and bustle of the Kurfürstendamm cafés and shops. It was a typical residential street of the area, quiet, tree-lined and crammed with sturdy blocks of flats four and five storeys high, many with a weary, big-city, middle-class shabbiness of a kind not seen in Krefeld or Düsseldorf. Renate had always enjoyed Berlin with its energetic crush of people, its marvellous shops and inexhaustible entertainment. But it was different this time. What had formerly been inviting now felt strange and hostile, and the once-vibrant crowds seemed cold and aggressive. As for the cafés and theatres, most were now forbidden to Jews. Even if she could ignore Martin’s absence and forget for a moment the danger he was in, Renate needed only to step into the street to be reminded this was no holiday visit.

  Erich and Dora’s flat was located in a mushroom-pink block of five storeys, a distinctive building owing to the unusual scalloped facings of the garret windows – as if the windows were wearing bonnets, Alice had once said. All the flats had floor to ceiling windows providing a view to the street, and attached to the better flats were heavy balconies decorated with plaster moldings and flower boxes. On the ground floor was a delicatessen-cum-hardware shop – cheese and sausage for supper plus some solder to fix the leaking heater.

  Erich and Dora Friedman and their son Willi lived two floors up from the street in one of the more modest flats. Their immediate neighbours were the Müller family: husband, wife, sullen son and a lumpy daughter. Years before, Willi Friedman had made the mistake of talking to the daughter as they climbed the stairs together. This had resulted in an angry visit from Herr Müller and a threat of trouble should Willi ever approach their daughter again. The Müllers had adhered to a policy of non-engagement with the Friedmans long before Hitler came to power, and had always made it clear they would be far happier sharing a wall and staircase with anyone other than a family of Jews.

  The Friedman flat had seen better days but not for a while, or so it seemed to Renate who was accustomed to a home spacious enough and comfortable enough to accommodate a diverse family and social life. It was a two-bedroom flat, but as Willi’s bedroom was no more than a cubicle off the kitchen, it was really a one-bedroom flat with pretensions. The one bedroom had also served as a study for Dora as she continued to work on her biography of Heine, even though both she and Heine had long been banished from German universities. The living room was only marginally bigger than the bedroom. At one end was an armchair and couch, both with weary upholstery and flabby cushions, and at the other, a small dining table scored with ink and burns and irregular patches of mustardy shine where the original varnish still remained. All but one wall of the room was covered with books, both Erich’s medical and scientific books plus a substantial library of German language literature belonging to Dora, with gaps where the Jewish authors had been removed and hidden.

  ‘A lot of gaps,’ Dora said about both her own library and German literature generally.‘And only a matter of time before the whole structure of German culture collapses.’

  A tiny place, even more so given the Friedmans were large people, but of little concern before Hitler and his restrictions. In the old days, Erich, a doctor with the public health service, would return from the hospital and Dora from the university and together they would spend their leisure time in the neighbourhood. Even when Willi was a baby they would take their meals at a local restaurant, practise their politics on the promenades, and go hiking – their term – in the Tiergarten. So although they could have moved to a larger place while Erich and Dora were still in work, the flat and its location suited them.

  The Friedmans were no more religious than the Lewins but a good deal more Jewish. Both Dora and Erich were active in political and cultural groups associated with the Jewish community, and Willi was prominent in the Zionist youth movement. Now nearly sixteen, Willi had never felt much allegiance to Germany and, while he differed in this respect from his parents, all three were convinced their future lay with Palestine and had been working strenuously towards that end.

  If the Friedman flat had been small for three people who spent most of their time away from home, it was a pigeonhole for four people who went out only when necessary. There were the extra possessions to accommodate too, not that Renate had packed much in the panic of leaving Krefeld, nor, for that matter, wisely. In the weeks and months to come she would long for a particular skirt or a pair of walking shoes while looking with dismay at the box of drawing materials she had neither heart nor time to touch. Then there was the anxiety, bulky and ever present, and sometimes so raw that if you were to scrape against it the fear would spurt out in a rush.

  Their situation was not particularly unusual. After Kristallnacht many Jews were evicted from their homes or the damage was too great for them to return, so it was common for two or three families to squeeze into a flat meant only for one. And while everyone seemed to cope, some did extremely poorly. Fortunately Dora, Willi, Renate and Alice were not among them.

  Privacy as they had known it was no longer possible, but rather than turn themselves into entirely different people, they were quick to develop some creative alternatives. They would turn the armchair to the wall when there was a problem to solve or a worry to scratch; or slot themselves behind the couch with a book or dreams. Use of the desk was strictly scheduled so no one need miss out,
as was the bathroom – more for thought than for bathing. Each would find a space a little larger than their own body and make of it a place of solitude.

  Renate’s most strenuous worries occurred at night, not simply because privacy was assured then, but she couldn’t sleep. As soon as she shut her eyes her head was rushed by terrifying thoughts of all the possible dangers confronting Martin. Such awful thoughts slamming into her night after night. And she would struggle to push them away, each danger worse than the last, and the worst possible danger enough to bleed her of all reason and hope. For how would they manage without him? A woman and a child, no money, no country, it was too dreadful even for glancing at. And she would try to drown the horrors in a flood of words spoken to her husband to stiffen his stamina. She would tell him, beg him, her open-hearted husband, to put himself first.‘Think of us,’ she would say.‘Think of us, Martin. Alice and me. And come home safe.’ Hour after hour, night after night, she would talk to him, as if she really believed her thoughts could reach him. For he had to be safe, he had to come home, and the three of them would leave Germany and make a life somewhere else.

  Her nights were riddled with fear, but the days spent hustling for visas were even worse. Such a desperate business it was. Day after day spent in a frantic rushing, no money to waste on buses and streetcars, just perpetually aching legs, and shoes more suited to the sedentary life of an artist than the harried existence of the newly despised. Renate would dash from this embassy to that foreign office, and when she stopped, rather than the relief she craved, was further beleaguered by the interminable waiting. She joked that if she were to be given ten marks for every hour she had spent in the queue at the American Consulate she would have money enough to pay the family’s way out of Germany several times over. She joked because it was important to appear strong, but in truth she felt like a living, breathing target, out in the open because her family’s life depended on it, yet always having to conceal her fear. The dashing across Berlin disguised as a leisurely saunter, the studied nonchalance whenever she passed a German in uniform, the once-normal business of walking down a street now as fraught as crossing a battlefield; each day, each hour demanded of her a first-rate performance.

  And it was no better closer to home. The district around the Friedman flat had long possessed an easy, assimilated Jewish presence, yet Renate felt conspicuous as a Jew in a way she never had in Krefeld or Düsseldorf. There were several Jewish families within close proximity, one family actually lived in the same building. A couple of kilometres away was the Jewish community centre where Dora would go several times a week for the latest news, and there was the large synagogue on Fasanenstrasse. Renate felt the Jewishness of the area in a way a Berliner did not.Where she came from, Jewishness was miniscule and politely hidden. As the days passed, she found herself wondering whether she had done the right thing, by her daughter most of all, moving from the anonymity of Krefeld to Germany’s most Jewish city.

  Dora harboured no such doubts. ‘You’re ignoring the facts, Renate. The SS found Martin in Krefeld just as easily as they did Erich here in Berlin.’ She paused a moment to allow the point to sink in. ‘The days of the assimilated Jew are finished. A Jew, no matter how you look, no matter how you live, is a Jew. Even a tiny bit of Jew is a Jew.’

  ‘Shows how powerful Hitler thinks we are,’ said Willi with a laugh.‘Even a fraction is to be feared.’

  Dora flashed a smile at her son before continuing. She had seen how things were with Renate. She, too, had her dark days and knew how important it was to climb out of the trough before sinking too deep.

  ‘If you feel conspicuous here, imagine how you’d feel –’ and she waved in a vague easterly direction,‘over there where there are streets full of Jews, not our sort of Jew, but Polish and Russian Jews. Long black coats, ridiculous hats, their appalling Yiddish, a makeshift synagogue set up every few houses, food you wouldn’t want to touch. You want conspicuous, Renate? Take a ride to Rosenthaler Platz, or walk down Grosse Hamburger Strasse past Willi’s school, and you’ll see Jews who are Jewish from the tops of their heads down to the soles of their shoes.’

  Willi offered to act as guide. Since being forced to leave his state school two years earlier, he had attended a Jewish boys’ school in the east of the city. ‘I’ve become quite familiar with the area,’ he said.

  ‘Not too familiar I hope.’ All smiles were now gone and there was a warning in his mother’s voice.

  ‘You sound just like a German.’

  ‘Not at all, I’m just not the sort of Jew who lives over there.’

  And again the vague wave of Dora’s hand.

  And so the old argument threatened, with the son sounding quite different from the parent, an argument easily stumbled upon in so many German-Jewish homes.

  ‘We’re all Jews together, no matter what our origins,’Willi now said. ‘You made much the same point a moment ago: even a bit of a Jew is a Jew.’ He spoke slowly and deliberately with more than a drop of adolescent venom. Then he turned to Renate.‘I’d be happy to show you around the Jewish district,’ he said. And with a stubborn glance at his mother,‘I like it over there. It’s like entering a different world, and such a strong world too. Not even Hitler can make them change their ways.’

  Renate had never visited the area and, given her self-consciousness among the most secular of Jews, had no desire to. There were Jews and Jews, and while Hitler might not differentiate, Jews themselves did. Renate had seen a few of these Ostjuden in the various foreign office waiting rooms in which she now passed her days. They stood out like beggars at a banquet, and not just their appearance, although that was bad enough, their German was a mangled mess to cultured ears, as if it had been subjected to a firing squad. Most of them seemed to be manual workers – tailors, leather workers, dyers and the like, with even less chance of obtaining visas than the Lewins. And poor too, far too poor to pay their way anywhere but back east to the countries of their forebears. Secretly Renate was glad, less competition at the foreign offices meant improved chances for the Lewins, but she would have been gladder still and more at ease if these Ostjuden stayed away completely.

  Although money was a problem for her too. Within a few of days of arriving in Berlin, hard decisions had to be made. Her small stash of cash was needed for visas and bribes and exit penalties. The only items of value Renate possessed were her mother’s jewels. She was merely delaying the inevitable and she knew it. A week after arriving in Berlin, Amalie Friedman’s watch, her rings and brooches, and the pearls which were so much a part of her that Renate used to joke her mother wasn’t dressed until she had put them on, were given away for a song and a sausage.

  Along with her mother’s jewellery went so much that had comprised their life in Germany. Change after change and every one requiring just a little more effort. And such a sense of futility as Renate pushed and pushed like Sisyphus with his rock, but in her case the mountain itself kept shifting. Waiting at the foreign offices and embassies day in and day out, she would look at the other women, some so shrivelled and fading, others with the strength and determination of a general, and wonder how it was that people coped so differently. She would see the same women over and over, would see that a week, even a couple of days could make a person weaker or stronger or more desperate, sometimes violently so.

  Alice squashed into the flat along with Willi and the adults, and while nearly everything was different from life in Krefeld, she learned to grasp on to those few aspects which had not changed. She had her legends book and her Käthe Kruse doll. And each morning Mutti still brushed her long curls, so different from the short bobs of other girls, and the stroking felt so good and not just on her head but down her back as well. And on Saturday her hair was washed as usual, and even though the water heater was a monster that fizzed and sparked and threatened to blow so that even Mutti wasn’t allowed to light it, the Saturday routine and the clean hair to twirl in bed made her feel safer.

  Most days she stayed
at the flat while her mother and Aunt Dora scoured Berlin for visas. She preferred it this way. She couldn’t keep pace with her mother’s dashing, and she hated seeing her and all the other mothers so worried. And during the hours of waiting in the foreign offices she didn’t want to make new friends, not here in Berlin. Secretly she wanted to be home in Krefeld, and during the long days alone it was easier to pretend she was.

  Renate was relieved, not only was it safer for Alice to stay at the flat, there were times when her own nerves were so barbed and her frustration so bullish that if Alice were a witness, it would only distress. As the days ground on, Renate felt as if she were working against a highly integrated machine forever trying to find a way of breaking into the cycle. If she had more money it would be easier to obtain visas and exit papers; if she had the visas it would be easier to secure Martin’s release.

  As for visa approvals, people were leaving all the time. Some people left with nothing more than a suitcase of clothes from Jewish welfare, having cashed in everything to pay the huge amounts required to leave the country. Others were more fortunate. Renate and Dora had seen the entire contents of a flat being loaded onto a cart or lorry, once even a huge shipping container. Everything from sofas to saucepans, beds to washing blue, even nonperishable food was packed, not simply because good German food would not be available in America or Argentina or Australia, but being unable to take money out of Germany, any cash left over after taxes and permits was converted to material goods.

  ‘There’ll be small communities of German Jews all over the world,’ Dora said one day, having just farewelled some old friends. ‘I can see them now nestling among the kangaroos in Australia, raccoons and red Indians in America and God knows what in Argentina.’