by Jana Petken
Satisfied it was, he went back inside to face the three men and one woman. “If you know the locations of the bunkers in the ghetto, hide in them.”
The men looked shocked.
“It’s a long story. Suffice to say, I know they exist,” Paul said, “and I’ve never said a word to anyone about them.”
“Will they hunt us down if we are on the lists?” one of the men asked.
“Yes. But the authorities will be too busy to search for missing people today.”
“And tomorrow?” the same man asked.
“Tomorrow, they’ll go door to door in every tenement block in every street – go now, and wherever you find to hide, don’t come out until the deportations are over.”
He’d incriminated himself after all, he thought, closing the door behind the last person to leave. If the runaways were caught and gave his name, he’d lie through his teeth and feign outrage at the Jews’ filthy, deceitful mouths. Whether the Gestapo believed him would be a different matter, of course.
He climbed back up the stairs, his feet dragging and thumping hard against every concrete tread. Had the remaining staff members informed the patients they were being deported? Had any of the patients fled yet? Had Zusanna left? He’d not seen her in the mortuary. It was 0230; two and a half hours to go until chaos and death descended on this place of supposed healing.
Chapter Ten
At precisely 0500, the hospital’s main doors opened to admit the Gestapo, SS, and Schutzpolizei – Schupo. The ghetto Jewish police were ordered to wait outside to help with the loading, but a further detachment of SS also entered the back of the building through the mortuary.
Paul observed the start of the deportations from the entrance to a first-floor ward. He was silent and being largely ignored, apart from the odd Heil Hitler received from overzealous SS soldiers who loved to snap their heels and arms every chance they got. He was asked twice to assist with the sicker patients, and twice he refused. “My job is to heal, not to drag ill people out of their beds,” he snapped at an SS Schütze.
Within minutes, the shooting began. Paul jumped every time a pistol shot rang through the ward and patients screamed. It was still dark, and the guns flashed blue when fired, or was he seeing something that wasn’t there?
Pyjama-clad patients began to file out of the ward in a single line at gunpoint, and as they passed Paul, they pleaded with him to help. To his disgust, he could hardly bring himself to look at their frightened faces, much less meet their eyes.
When the last of the walking patients had left under guard, Paul went into the ward. He halted, his eyes darting from one occupied bed to another. In the first one was an elderly woman, her withered hands gripping the apron of a female nurse who had evidently decided to stay behind.
In the other bed, another female nurse had got on top of the covers, partially concealing a male patient. She looked up, saw Paul, and screamed, “Doctor! Don’t let them do it. Please, tell them to go away!”
Paul opened his mouth, then snapped it shut as two shots were fired from a rifle at close range. He turned sharply to the other bed, his ears ringing and heart pounding furiously. The old lady was dead, shot through her eye socket. Blood and brain matter slid down the wall to the left of the bed, and on the floor below the stains, the nurse who had stood at the elderly patient’s bedside had also been killed with a shot to her temple.
The two SS soldiers approached Paul, who was shielding his nurse at the man’s bedside. Amelia Bartek was one of his favourites, a quirky, good-humoured girl, who often carried on working long after her shifts ended. Rage burned inside him. He’d be damned if he let the soldiers harm her!
“Put your guns away!” Paul yelled at the two men.
“With respect Herr Oberarzt, we have our orders. All those who cannot walk must be disposed of here. Tell the nurse not to resist.”
Nurse Bartek and her patient clung to each other, defiance sparking in their eyes. Paul was veering close to disobedience, and the soldiers knew it.
“This patient can walk,” he said, trying to calm the situation. “I’ll get him downstairs. The nurse will help me.”
“Very well, Herr Doctor. We’ll watch you get him out of bed and see for ourselves if he can stay on his feet,” one of the soldiers said, his expression just short of derisive insubordination.
Paul hardened his voice. He rarely used his rank, because he wasn’t certain how much additional authority the SS and Gestapo had over other branches of the military. “I said, I’ll deal with this patient. You two can go.” It was apparent that the patient couldn’t stand, never mind walk; nonetheless, Paul drew back the covers and began to pull one of the man’s bony legs over the side of the bed.
Paul glanced at Amelia who was still holding onto the patient for dear life. He leant towards her, aware of the SS standing their ground behind him. “Help me,” he mouthed.
“No. You’re not taking him,” the nurse whimpered back.
The patient’s eyes were sunk deep into their sockets, and his mouth looked oddly enlarged on his skeletal face. Narrow shoulders supported a fragile neck where translucent skin was stretched over two jutting collarbones and an enormous-looking Adam’s apple. His breath rattled, coming and going in quick, shallow pants. Unequivocally, he was at death’s door.
Paul straightened and turned to the soldiers who were smirking at his failure to move the man. “You could help,” he hissed.
“No, no, you said you could do it,” one of the men tittered. “You have two minutes, Herr Doctor. We have no more time than that to waste on this bag of bones.”
Trying to sound officious, Paul shouted, “If you don’t want me to report you to your commanding officer, you will leave – now!”
“What’s going on here?”
Paul spun around to the ward’s entrance and saw Gert, pistol in his hand, approaching the bed.
“Herr Oberarzt, do you need assistance?” Gert asked.
“No, on the contrary. I ordered your men to leave this patient to me, but they either don’t understand my instruction or are being deliberately insubordinate.”
“They’re doing their jobs, Herr Doctor,” Gert retorted.
“They can have him once he’s on the truck, but whilst he’s still in this bed, he is my responsibility. They could stand to be disciplined, Untersturmführer.”
Gert’s eyes drifted to the dead nurse on the floor, the old lady in the bed, and the blood splatter on the wall behind her. With a stony expression, he told his men, “You two, come with me. Let the doctor deal with his patient.”
“Yes, sir,” the soldiers said, clicking their heels together.
When the soldiers had stepped into the hall ahead of him, Gert said, “Doctor, make sure this patient reports to the reception area – in the meantime, you won’t be disturbed like this again.”
Alone in the ward with Nurse Bartek and the man in the bed, Paul said, “I don’t know this patient. Who are you to each other?”
“This is my husband, Ari,” Amelia sobbed. “I brought him here at ten o’clock last night. I shouldn’t have, but…”
Paul cut the nurse off and led her to the corridor. There, he spoke to her in whispers. “He’s critically ill. You must know this, Amelia. If I take him, he’ll be loaded onto a truck and then taken to the train station. If he makes it that far, they’ll put him into a cramped train wagon with no room to sit or lie down, and eventually, he will arrive at a camp where they will execute him.”
Her ashen face was sleek with sweat. She shook her head as though trying to rid herself of the images he had placed in her mind. “No … no, they can’t…”
“They can, and they will.” Paul had already said too much but continued regardless of the terrible effect his information was having on her. “Amelia, if he goes, he’ll suffer terribly in his final hours. He might not even make it through the journey. I can save him from a bullet, but he will die today.”
Amelia’s dark eyes overflowed. She dre
w herself up, sniffed, wiped her puffy eyes, then said, “I know he’s dying, and he knows it, too. Help him, Doctor. Please give him dignity in his last moments – take away his pain – please.”
Paul looked down the length of the corridor. As he’d predicted, the Gestapo and SS had started on the lower floors and were making their way upstairs. This floor looked deserted. Gert had taken the last of his men away, and he wouldn’t return with them, at least for a while.
“Do you want to say goodbye to him, Amelia?”
She nodded.
Paul stood at the ward’s entrance. The sounds of shouting, screaming, and gunshots coming from the floor above him pierced the cracked ceiling. He wanted to give the nurse and her husband more time, but the sound of thumping feet coming down the stairs was growing louder. Gert and his SS squad might not return, but he had no idea where the Gestapo and other SS officers were.
He returned to the bedside and asked the man,” Are you sure you want me to do this, Ari?”
“Yes. Thank you, Doctor … let me go now … God bless and keep you,” the dying man rasped, his eyes then turning to Amelia.
Paul searched Amelia’s face.
“I’m not leaving him.”
“Very well.”
As Paul took the man’s pillow from under his head, he said, “It will be uncomfortable for a moment or two, then you’ll go to sleep.”
“Like going to sleep,” the man repeated, a wan smile on his face as he looked at his wife.
Paul got onto the bed, straddled the patient, and then pressed the pillow into the face staring up at him. For a few seconds, Ari’s arms flailed, scratching at Paul’s downturned face. The human instinct to survive was kicking in but he was too weak to put up a real fight and his struggle ended within a minute.
Paul lifted the pillow, threw it on the floor, and then got off the bed. He would think about what he had done later, not now. He checked Ari’s pulse at the neck and wrist and found nothing. He used his stethoscope to listen for a heartbeat. Nothing.
Amelia kissed her dead husband’s forehead. Ari looked like a corpse who had been in the mortuary for days; his lips were already blue, his mouth wide open, his eyes semi-closed, and his waxy skin already beginning to cool without his life’s blood circulating.
“I’m sorry Ari had to die like this, Amelia,” Paul finally said.
Amelia walked around the bed to Paul. “You did him a kindness, Doctor. It was all so quick … as though he just let go.” She lifted Paul’s hand and kissed it. “Thank you … God thanks you. He’s not covered in blood like that poor woman over there, and he won’t suffer like those other poor patients being taken away. He’s clean.” She sighed. “Should I report to the SS now?”
“No. No, Ari wouldn’t want that.” Paul pictured hiding places that might be overlooked. It was possible the SS would do a final sweep of this floor. The dead Jews in this ward would have to be disposed of at some point. His eyes widened as he had a thought. The pharmacy was at the end of the corridor. It had been the first place the SS ransacked, although they’d found nothing but empty aspirin boxes. That victory was his. Without thinking it through, he said, “Amelia, Ari is at peace now. Come with me.”
She hesitated.
“If you want to get out of this mess alive, you must do as I say,” he said more severely.
She cried, kissed her husband one final time, and then followed Paul into the corridor.
A cacophony of sounds permeated the area, but it was difficult to know where they were all coming from. Noise seeped through the old brick walls, down the stairwells, and through the ceiling. The SS officers’ booming voices were, at times, overwhelmed by snapping gunfire and high-pitched screams, and now the sound of breaking glass was adding to the mayhem.
The Germans were like a pack of feral dogs devouring a defenceless prey. It was easy for Nazis to kill Jews, Paul had long since concluded. They did it for Hitler and the Fatherland and were so devout in their beliefs, they found no wrong in their murderous rampages.
Paul hid Amelia inside the pharmacy storeroom behind some shelves that had been tipped over. Filing cabinets lay on their sides, their drawers ripped out and thrown in a pile on the floor. Empty intravenous bottles had also been thrown across the floor and smashed for no other reason than the soldiers’ perverse enjoyment of the destruction.
“Stay here. I’ll try to come back for you after dark,” he told her.
“What if they lock the doors?”
“Leave getting back in up to me. If you’re not on the list, I’ll escort you back to your apartment…”
“And if I am on the list?”
“We’ll tackle that problem if it arises.”
She looked terrified as she lay down behind a cabinet and drew her legs up to her chest.
“I know you’re scared, but you must be strong. It may take some hours until I can make it back to you. Promise me, you won’t make a sound or move until I return – say it.”
“I promise, Doctor.”
Paul left, leaving the pharmacy door ajar. He made his way to the stairwell at the end of the corridor, took a quick glance over his shoulder, saw no one, and took to the stairs.
******
Paul gaped at the scenes in the street below as he watched from a window in a now-empty ward on the top floor. Dozens of ghetto residents were running towards the hospital, screaming patients’ names and fighting with Jewish and German policemen to get closer to the building. Shots rang out, and some people fell to the bullets whilst others stumbled over the dead bodies, undeterred by the weapons. News travelled fast in the ghetto, and people were coming for their loved ones.
The hospital building was surrounded by a cordon of German Order Service and SS. They were being backed up by numerous Gestapo, some wearing their familiar black coats, hats and deadpan expressions.
Military trucks with their flaps up were full of patients. One pulled away from the kerb and straight into the crowd of screaming ghetto residents trying to see if their family members were on it.
Paul staggered backwards, shocked, as a patient flew vertically past the window from the flat roof above him. He went back to the window, just as another patient was plummeting to the ground, then another, and three more people after that, to the screams of the people in the street. Cautiously, he stuck his head out and glanced up, then down. The kerb, strewn with dead bodies, was a river of blood.
Rifle fire echoed further along the street. Paul had a limited line of sight, but he saw the two remaining trucks in the street below, the dead bodies, the Germans manning the perimeter, and the crowd gathering close to the building. He tentatively stuck his head and shoulders out of the open window again; craning his head upwards to the flat rooftop. To get a better sense of what was happening at the other end of the building, he gripped the window ledge and pushed himself out further until his whole torso was twisting left and right to view the length of the road.
Two pyjama-clad women were being mown down by machine-gun fire as they scrambled off the second truck pulling away. One was Margarit, the woman who’d had the miscarriage, and who hadn’t been strong enough to lift her head. He looked at her crimson nightclothes, riddled with bullet holes, and unable to watch the scene unfolding, he turned from the window.
“Ach, there you are, Oberarzt Vogel,” a familiar voice called.
Paul took in Manfred Krüger’s satisfied smirk. He looked like a man who was thoroughly enjoying his job; standing with his chest puffed out and four of his ghouls behind him.
“Kriminalinspektor Krüger, I was wondering when you’d show up.”
Krüger sauntered past the rows of beds, a roll of papers in his hand, and a smile through gritted teeth. He gave the impression that spreading his lips was a chore, for he never managed to hold the pose for long. He was one of the most sour-faced Gestapo pigs Paul had ever encountered.
“I was told you got here hours ago. Why did you report for duty straight after my party and under the influen
ce of alcohol?” Krüger asked when he came nose to nose with Paul.
Paul fought his panic. Who had told Krüger? “As supervisor, I often come in early to do paperwork or stocktake, not that there’s much of anything to count nowadays,” he said, mirroring Krüger’s contemptuous tone. “Why wasn’t I informed yesterday of this operation? A courtesy call would have been nice, don’t you think?”
Annoyance sparked in Krüger’s eyes as he looked Paul up and down as if inspecting his uniform, then he joined him at the window. “The decision to begin this operation was taken at our headquarters in Alexanderhoffstrasse at 2300 last night. I believe a list of deportees and the schedule was sent to your billet around 0130. That is the time the SS and Gestapo agreed to begin the deportation of Jews to Chelmno from the hospitals, before beginning with the ghetto residents, and that is the time the SS notified me.”
Krüger was almost as tall as Paul, but he had grown painfully thin with a permanently malicious expression. His new look had nothing to do with a shortage of food – the Gestapo never went without anything. It was, Paul believed, the stress of the job or maybe illness that was shrinking the Inspektor. Although he hated the man, he could see the strain in his eyes. It must be exhausting killing Jews day after day, Paul thought.
“We are beginning the Gehsperrle Aktion – the deportations will continue for ten days,” Krüger said, unrolling the papers and thrusting them at Paul. “Go through these lists. You’ll find the names of today’s deportees on them. Sign and stamp their death certificates. I’ll be back in an hour to collect them.”
Krüger was lying, Paul knew, taking the lists. Birthday or no birthday, a man this obsessed with his job would not have missed an important meeting about the timing for such a large operation. He was a key voice in all ghetto decisions, yet he’d been in a club socialising all evening, which meant the operation had been sanctioned much earlier than he’d stated. Did any of the other party guests, apart from Gert, know about the expulsions beforehand, or had they been kept in the dark too?