by Ben Stevens
Well, they were as good as dead.
As Commissioner Sasse of the Berlin Gestapo got into the car he shuddered. It had been Heinrich Himmler himself who’d first informed him of the camps existing in the occupied eastern countries and even within Germany itself.
The horribly descriptive term the Reichsfuehrer of the SS had used was one which Sasse had immediately tried to forget, even though he’d assisted in getting thirty prisoners from Sachsenhausen to act as barrack chiefs at a camp in southern Poland.
The term was Endlosung.
The Final Solution.
Revenge?
1
Tumultuous applause greeted the end of Heinemann’s performance. Along with most of the audience, Schmidt rose to reward the violinist with a standing ovation, the eyes in the ruined face burning with pleasure.
Heinemann himself gave a bow, and with his right hand indicated the orchestra. Then, handing his violin to a member of staff, he left the stage.
A loud hubbub of conversation came from the audience as they exited the hall. Schmidt, however, remained in one of the aisles that were between the rows of seats, looking for one of the venue’s stewards.
Seeing such a person, he walked quickly towards him, mentally rehearsing what he needed to say in English. Many years before, he’d learned a little of this language from the American soldiers who’d been part of the Allied force occupying Berlin.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ asked the steward – for Schmidt was the only audience member to be walking towards the stage while everyone else was leaving.
‘I want to… see... Erich Heinemann,’ replied Schmidt slowly.
The steward gave a slight, cautious smile and shook his head.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but that’s not possible,’ he declared.
‘I am… friend,’ said Schmidt, the last word feeling as strange on his lips in English as it would have done in German. For Schmidt had never experienced any kind of friendship – emotionally he was quite incapable of feeling such a thing – but still he recognised that this lie was important for the purpose of achieving his aim.
‘See him, give him… this,’ said Schmidt awkwardly, proffering the steward a small white envelope.
Hesitating a moment, the steward then said tightly, ‘Wait here, please.’
Schmidt stared after the man as he walked off.
2
Heinemann sat alone in his dressing room. Meditatively sipping a glass of red wine, relaxing after his performance. All through it he’d felt curiously on edge, unable to fully immerse himself in the music as was usual. He considered that his playing had consequently been a little below par – not that anyone in the audience appeared to have noticed.
Again, he wondered just why he’d experienced such a state of unease – but there remained no obvious reason or answer. All he really knew was that he was greatly looking forward to returning to America – he’d lived in Michigan for many years now – tomorrow.
Maybe, he reflected, he was just getting a little too old to keep on performing. A few more months and he’d be eighty. Time enough, perhaps, to obey his wife and daughter’s shared wish that – for the sake of his health – he cease the twenty or so concerts he continued to give each year, mainly in Europe.
But performing was in his blood; he couldn’t imagine a time when he would stop playing in front of an audience entirely. And yet tonight’s recital had somehow stirred distinctly unpleasant memories and emotions... For the very first time in his life, he’d almost not enjoyed playing.
This realisation scared Heinemann but also intrigued him: Why had this been so?
Again, no answer.
There then came a knock at the door.
‘Mr Heinemann?’ said the male voice outside.
‘Yes, come in,’ returned Heinemann.
The steward entered, in his hand a small white envelope.
‘There is a gentleman outside in the hall, who claims to know you – to be a friend of yours.’
Heinemann raised his eyebrows, as unaccountably he again began to experience that strange sense of unease.
‘Oh?’ he said cautiously.
‘The gentleman asked that I give you this,’ said the steward. ‘Do you wish to accept it, or should I…’
The remainder of the question went unvoiced as Heinemann held out a hand.
Opening the envelope and reading the brief message written in German on the piece of paper inside, Heinemann visibly paled. For a few moments, it looked as though he was experiencing difficulty in breathing.
‘Mr Heinemann?’ said the steward with concern.
With a colossal effort Heinemann succeeded in controlling his breathing, and slowly his face regained its natural colour.
‘This man,’ he said, forcing his words to come out evenly, ‘would you mind bringing him here...?’
Ich kannte Sie als wir in Auschwitz waren (read the note.)
‘I knew you at Auschwitz.’
Just as he sometimes was in his darkest dreams, Heinemann was again transported back to that accursed time and place.
He was twenty years old, imprisoned along with who knew how many others in one of the cattle-trucks that were almost completely devoid of light and air. There was a general stench of excrement mixed with fear, and all the while a low moaning came from the woman in one corner whose baby had died a few hours earlier. She’d only just stopped screaming.
There was nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and it was freezing cold. Heinemann knew that, along with the baby, several other passengers within this truck had also died; it was just that they had no one to mourn them.
Heinemann himself thought that he might die soon; he hoped that he would. Certainly there was nothing to live for now; and anyway – who could possibly hope to escape from this hell?
But suddenly the panels slid open and a mass of grey-uniformed guards were ordering the scared, starved, stinking scarecrows within the trucks to get out. Those who did not move fast enough were rewarded with kicks and punches, Heinemann observing that several guards grinned at one another as they beat an elderly man’s head bloody.
Heinemann’s own skull ached from the blow it had received – when? A day, a week, a month or so earlier? Heinemann had lost all track of time. And what did it matter, anyway? Of what use was time in a place like this?
And then, unbelievably, Heinemann realised that a brass band was playing. Yes – it was performing a jolly tune as the women, children and elderly from the cattle trucks were separated from the men, prompting yet more tears from the scarecrows and more snarls and blows from the guards.
During the journey here – and Heinemann had absolutely no idea how long it had taken – a variety of rumours had spread amongst those within the cattle trucks, concerning the place where they were heading. One such rumour had maintained that they’d all be killed the moment they arrived, while another suggested that the younger and fitter amongst them had at least some – if only temporary – hope of survival.
And now Heinemann found himself being thrust into a body of young to middle-aged males, a guard then ordering them to march beneath a sign that read Arbeit macht frei – ‘Work makes one free’. A number of men tried to look back at their wives, children or parents, receiving for their pains several blows from the guards’ truncheons.
I’m not going to be killed yet realised Heinemann.
Not yet...
.
There came another knock at the dressing-room door.
‘Come,’ said Heinemann curtly, steeling himself for whatever – or rather, whoever – was about to reveal him- or herself.
The steward opened the door and there, stood behind the young man, burnt the eyes that Heinemann still saw in his worst nightmares. It failed to matter that half of that once handsome face was hellishly disfigured, or that the other side had naturally aged just like Heinemann’s.
For those lizard-like eyes hadn’t changed in the slightest...
The steward seemed ab
out to say something when Heinemann said brusquely, ‘Thank you.’
It was evidently a dismissal, and so showing the visitor in the steward then shut the door behind him.
For a while Heinemann sat staring at his guest, who gazed back with an expression that seemed almost triumphant.
There was a deathly silence in the room, broken only when Heinemann said simply:
‘Du.’ –
You.
3
It was strange – but now that Schmidt was at last alone with Heinemann, he found himself feeling curiously tongue-tied.
And as he struggled to think of something to say, he remembered when – so many years before – he’d first seen that pale young man at the camp...
Instantly Schmidt had realised that this was the same person whom he’d witnessed performing with such evident genius several years before, that evening when he’d sneaked into the Aalto Theatre searching for something to steal…
And it was this realisation that had (for the very first time) succeeded in sending Schmidt’s thoughts into something like turmoil. For people came to this camp to die – be it within a matter of days, weeks or months – and quite simply Schmidt did not want this man whom (he soon discovered) was called Erich Heinemann to perish.
And so – through a number of illicit means and entirely unbeknown to Heinemann himself – he began to ensure that the young violinist would stay alive...
Ever since his departure from Sachsenhausen, Schmidt had enjoyed a paid job along with his own room at the camp. So he was now able to indulge his discovered love of classical music, having purchased a gramophone for which he regularly obtained records via mail order.
One of the compositions Schmidt enjoyed most of all was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – The Choral. Almost unconsciously he began frequently to whistle parts from it, something that led inevitably to the inmates giving him the nickname: The Whistler.
But still – listening to records was no compensation for what Schmidt had heard that night at the Aalto Theatre, and soon enough he found himself greatly desiring to listen to Erich Heinemann play again.
He had to wait some time – but then, almost unbelievably, the chance for The Whistler to do just that presented itself one evening.
*
The bespectacled figure of Heinrich Himmler observed Dutch Jews being herded from out of the cattle-trucks on the morning of 17 July 1942, his visit to Auschwitz concluding his tour of the various concentration camps situated within Poland. Following a leisurely luncheon he requested to see some Polish prisoners being beaten, stating that he wished to ‘determine the effects’ of such punishment.
In his honour a drinks occasion was held in the evening, which became steadily more raucous as increasing amounts of alcohol were consumed. Being notoriously prudish when it came to revelry, Himmler soon left, accompanied by Rudolf Hoess, the camp commandant.
This left those staff who were present free to fully enjoy themselves; and one of these men was The Whistler. He, however, stood alone and aloof, expressionlessly observing the red sweating faces of his colleagues who frequently tugged at the tight collars of their dark-grey tunics.
He knew most of these jovial men from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp; they were nearly all former thieves and criminals like himself. Now, however, they were something else entirely.
As ever he desired no one’s company; his stomach did not ache from over-eating, and his face was not red. He was completely sober, and his uniform was in its customarily immaculate condition.
That he’d assisted in murdering approximately five hundred men that day was of absolutely no concern to him whatsoever. It had been the same yesterday, and it would be the same tomorrow. The wagons rolled in full of people and the chimneys of the crematorium belched thick black smoke.
A call for entertainment was given and a man left the room. Schmidt’s eyes burned with anticipation as the man returned with a battered old violin he’d obtained from somewhere. The gramophone was turned off as the man began to play; but he was drunk, and evidently possessed not the slightest trace of a musical ear even when sober.
As the assembled men moaned in a comic manner and berated their hapless colleague, the fat Chief Guard called Grobauer said, ‘What about that Jew? Is he still here?’
‘What Jew, Chief?’ laughed one of the men under his command. ‘There’s a few of ‘em, you know!’
Grobauer had a reputation for being prickly and uptight, but on this occasion he nodded and grinned in recognition of his error. He, like most of the others, had already drunk a great deal.
‘I can’t remember his name,’ he said carelessly, ‘but if what I hear is true, he often used to play his violin for the bigwigs in Berlin.’
Schmidt looked searchingly at the Chief Guard whom the inmates had – on account of his girth and generally porcine appearance – nicknamed ‘The Pig’.
From who, pondered The Whistler, had Grobauer heard such information? Not that it really mattered, however – for here was Schmidt’s chance to listen to Heinemann perform again.
But (Schmidt then cautioned himself) what might happen to that young man whom he’d sworn to protect, were he to be brought to this room in order to provide entertainment?
Schmidt decided to take a chance and say what he knew. For he desperately wanted to hear Heinemann play again, and – after all – he’d be here to ensure that no harm befell him.
So Schmidt said curtly, ‘I know of him. I could go and get him.’
The Pig stared suspiciously at Schmidt, wondering why this usually silent (except for those damned occasions when he whistled) man was volunteering this information.
Technically Grobauer was in charge of all the men currently in this room, though when it came to Schmidt he did not care to exert his authority too greatly. For it was apparent to every one of the men who’d been recruited from Sachsenhausen that Schmidt continued to dislike Grobauer – and, as such, The Whistler often barely even acknowledged any orders given by his supposed superior, let alone carried them out.
‘Okay,’ said Grobauer, looking sullenly at Schmidt from beneath his fleshy eyelids. ‘Let’s have him here.’
With a nod The Whistler left the large room, walking quickly towards the barrack where the violinist who was already – comparatively speaking – a long-term survivor of the camp was housed. Moonlight made the barbed-wire fences shine silver, and from somewhere close a guard-dog barked mournfully into the dark.
Reaching his destination Schmidt unlocked the door, shouting, ‘Everyone out – move, move, move!’ To enforce the urgency of his command he banged his stubby truncheon against the doorframe.
The inmates hastened to obey, clambering out of their crowded bunks. They assembled in three lines outside, and impassively scanning the gaunt and fearful faces The Whistler’s gaze then alighted on Erich Heinemann’s.
‘You – fall out and follow me,’ he ordered. ‘The rest of you remain at attention until my return. No talking.’
It was a short walk to the brick-built building, the fogged windows of which blazed with light. From inside Heinemann heard drunken laughter and loud, guttural conversation.
The Whistler opened the door, gesturing for Heinemann to follow him inside. Entering the room, Heinemann blinked back at the guards who stood leering at him like cats observing a mouse. A long table still laden with food was placed against one wall, the sight causing his stomach to groan audibly.
The guard whom he and the other inmates knew as ‘The Pig’ approached him, the fat man clearly enjoying this moment. Quickly – for he’d once witnessed The Pig kick an inmate to death for ‘visual insubordination’ – Heinemann dropped his gaze to the floor.
‘Look at me,’ purred The Pig dangerously, to general guffaws from the other guards.
Hesitantly, Heinemann met the fat man’s drink-smeared eyes.
‘You’re a lucky fellow,’ continued The Pig, ‘because if you do as you’re told, you just might go back to slee
p on a full stomach. I believe that you’re a violinist, and so you will play for us. You will also ensure that what you do play is lively, and not one of your miserable Jewish dirges.’
The violin was held out for Heinemann to take, its body chipped and its strings badly worn. The Mischling began to shake, his narrow grey eyes observing the faces which leered at him.
But he was no longer afraid. Why not? He didn’t know, but he wasn’t. He was angry – more than angry. He was shaking with rage, not fear. Thousands of people already gone forever, killed – murdered – by scum such as these.
So let them kill him too, if that was how it was all going to end anyway. ‘No.’
There were a few moments of absolute silence, none of the guards quite believing that they’d heard him correctly. And then he was on his knees, The Whistler having clubbed him in his right kidney.
The Pig nodded again: The Whistler clubbed his left.
The pain was quite something else; Heinemann gasped, cradling his wounded sides with opposite hands. He sought the merciful oblivion of unconsciousness but was instead hauled back to his feet.
Putting his face close to Heinemann’s, The Pig said softly, ‘Why don’t you just do as you’re told, before I have the guard break both of your hands?’
Although The Whistler stood watching with his usual impassive expression, inwardly his thoughts were squirming. He’d pulled the two truncheon blows as much as possible; had he have hit with his usual force Heinemann would have been a screaming, vomiting mess.
But still, Schmidt had not wanted to hit him at all – he’d only done so before one of the other guards had taken their chance, thereby saving Heinemann from possibly fatal injuries.