Schreiber's Secret

by Roger Radford

  “Don’t bugger me about, Peter,” growled Webb. “Get on with it.”

  “Our results show that Müller was in no way related to either of the other two.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “There’s something else, Bob. I couldn’t believe it myself when I saw it.”

  “Well, go on then, you bugger,” snapped Webb.

  “There can be no doubt about it, Bob. Henry Sonntag and Herschel Soferman were brothers.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Mark Edwards was already familiar with the territory. He plied the hired car, another of his favourite black BMWs, through the quiet streets of Straelen, turning finally into Annastrasse.

  There was only one course of action that he could take after Webb had given him the results of the DNA test. The only possible explanation for the fact that Dieter Müller was not the son of either Sonntag or Soferman was that his mother had been made pregnant by someone else but believed the baby was Schreiber’s. “She probably got pissed one night and never even realized it,” was the policeman’s opinion.

  This explanation may have cleared up one question. But the undeniable truth that the adversaries in court were indeed brothers had posed many more. Only one man might reasonably be expected to supply some, if not all, of the answers.

  “Now are you sure you want to come in, Dani?” the reporter asked, pulling up outside the home of Dr Wolfgang Schreiber. “I may have to use a little rough stuff with his nurse.”

  Danielle Green nodded. She was fully prepared for any eventuality. She had decided to forgo the funerals of Henry Sonntag and Herschel Soferman in order to be with her future husband. The old doctor must talk.

  Edwards rang the doorbell with steely determination. This time Schreiber’s nurse opened the door wide. Her face bore a scowl, but before Edwards could say anything she bade them enter and led them into the room with the french doors. The old man was once again peering at his garden with unseeing eyes.

  “Your guest has arrived, Herr Doktor,” the Amazon said with undisguised displeasure.

  “Come in, Herr Edwards,” said the old man, gesturing in welcome. “I have been expecting you. Please be seated.” Wolfgang Schreiber then made staccato sniffing noises. “I smell a woman’s perfume.”

  Edwards, astounded by the reception, could only stammer his reply.

  “Y-Yes, my colleague, Fräulein Danielle Green, is accompanying me.”

  “Hilde, I heard the kettle whistling. Please bring us some coffee.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Doktor.”

  “You mustn’t mind her,” said Schreiber apologetically. “It can’t be easy looking after an old codger like me.”

  Edwards looked at Danielle, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “I knew you would be back, Herr Edwards.” The old man sighed deeply. “You see, I heard the news. Of course, I followed the case all along. But now that he is dead, I can at last open my heart. I have carried the pain for too many years.”

  “I don’t understand, sir,” said the Englishman.

  “I will try to explain, but it may take a long time.”

  “Go at your own pace, sir. I will try not to interrupt you.”

  “Thank you, Herr Edwards. You see, I know that there is still some doubt about who the real Hans Schreiber was. Frankly, to me it doesn’t matter anymore. He is dead. That is all that matters.”

  The old man cleared his throat. His voice was rasping but the words were fully coherent. “You see, it all began in Berlin in 1922. That was the year Hans was born. He was my brother’s boy. My older brother, Josef. It all started when my brother brought home a girlfriend. He was besotted with her. He started to fall more and more in love with her. It was inevitable that they would get married, but there was one problem.” The old man hesitated as the nurse brought in their coffee. Edwards watched the old battleaxe pour. She added sugar and milk to the old man’s drink but left the guests to fend for themselves.

  “As I was saying ...” Schreiber brought the spout of his safety mug gingerly to his lips and took a few sips. “There was this problem, although it did not carry the same stigma as later. You see, Rachel Jakobs was a Jewess.”

  There was a stony silence, punctuated only by the ticking of the clocks. My God, thought Edwards, that made Hans Schreiber a Jew. Both under Jewish law and the Nuremberg Laws.

  Although Danielle could pick up only a few words, she could see that Edwards was transfixed by the man’s story. She felt his body tense suddenly.

  “Carry on, Herr Doktor,” Edwards said quietly. He could feel his heart pounding.

  “My parents were against it. Even if you discount the religious aspect, Rachel was an orphan and did not have any money. Josef was headstrong, but he did make one concession. They lived together as man and wife, but did not actually get married.” The old man hesitated. Lifting his glasses, he wiped a tear from his misty, unseeing eyes. “The accident happened almost four years later. I had just got married to a local girl here – we met at university – and was just starting out in practice. Anyway, poor Josef was killed in a car crash. By that time they had had two children, Hans and Helmut, one after the other. Hans was the elder. Poor Rachel was devastated. She could not cope.

  She asked me to take one of the children. I took Hans. She was in Berlin and I was here in Straelen. So far away. Suddenly, I heard from my parents that she had run away with a man, a Jew, and had taken Helmut with her. My parents did not try very hard to find her. As I told you, they were against the marriage in the first place.”

  “So you brought up Hans,” said Edwards flatly.

  “Yes. It was only at the end of the war that I realized I had taken the more capricious of the two children ... but I am jumping. Let me go back to those early years. My wife and I could not have any children and we loved him as dearly as any real parents. But he was never a happy boy.”

  For the next half-hour Mark Edwards sat enthralled by the story of the young Hans Schreiber: how the boy had been taunted at school because he was circumcised; how he had joined the SA and had participated in the terrible events of Kristallnacht; how he had pleaded to join the SS.

  “What could I do, Herr Edwards? He was all we had. You see, I hated the Nazis and all that they stood for. I was a doctor. I was a man dedicated to the well-being of others. But I was weak with my adopted son. I gave him everything he wanted. Now he wanted to join the SS. But I knew that he would never be able to serve because I knew the truth. He never knew what he was then, Herr Edwards.”

  The reporter’s ears pricked at the word “then” but he remained silent.

  The doctor continued. “I told him that he would have a hard time because of his circumcision. He always believed that he’d had to have the operation because of an illness. ‘You’re a doctor,’ he used to say, ‘can’t you do something about it?’ Well,” the old man sighed again, “I did what I could. I used every trick in the book to become the SS medical officer in charge of recruitment at Münster.”

  “You altered the files, didn’t you, Herr Doktor?” said the Englishman, and then added quickly, “I’m sorry. Please continue.”

  “Yes. You are right. I had all the relevant papers and I altered them to suit my purpose. I knew an expert forger and he helped me. I paid him quite a lot of money. When the records went back to the SS central register, all details about his mother had been expunged. I only agreed to help Hans if he would join a non-combat unit. He was A1, but I put down in his records that he suffered from asthma so that he could never be transferred to a combat force. Finally, I swapped Hans’s photographs for those of some other soldier. I still don’t understand why I did that. Something told me we would all pay dearly for Hitler’s madness. I didn’t see Hans again until the end of the war.”

  Something told Edwards that the conclusion of this fantastic story was about to be revealed. He could see that the old man was shaking. The reporter suddenly felt guilty for putting him through all this.

  “Please, Herr Doktor,�
�� he said kindly. “If you would rather rest a little ...”

  “No,” rasped the old man. “No. I must tell it all. I must.”

  Edwards gripped Danielle’s hand. She squeezed back. She did not know what the old man was saying but she could see that he was suffering.

  “As I said,” Schreiber continued, “the next time I saw Hans was soon after the end of the war. I was so pleased to see him. So happy that he had survived. And then ...”

  Tears welled in the Englishman’s eyes as he watched the old man struggle with his emotions.

  “... and then he boasted to me about Theresienstadt, about how he had killed Jews and how he now planned to pretend to be a Jew in order to escape the Allies.”

  The old man wilted in his wheelchair, tears streaming down his gnarled face.

  “Please, go on, Herr Doktor,” said Edwards hoarsely. He looked at Danielle and shook his head slowly. The concern in her face mirrored his own.

  “I told him, Herr Edwards ...” The doctor winced. “And when I told him, I knew then that I had lost him forever. I was glad to lose him forever. I told my adopted son who had become this animal ... I told him that he was a Jew.”

  EPILOGUE

  The following day, Mark Edwards and Danielle Green drew up at the Jewish cemetery at Waltham Abbey. The sun was spreading its warmth over the serene Essex countryside. The dawn chorus itself seemed to have extended into late morning as if the birds were determined to mark this day as a new beginning.

  The journalists had been moved by the extraordinary story of the blind old doctor. But there were still many questions left unanswered. Questions that no one could now answer. Did Hans Schreiber ever feel contrition for his awful deeds? Did the revelation that he was a Jew cause him crises of conscience, or did it simply make his subterfuge an easier game to play? How did Helmut become Herschel? Did his mother get married again, to a man named Soferman? And if so, what happened to them? The questions could go on forever. But the biggest question of all would never be answered. Who had been the real Hans Schreiber?

  The couple parked their car and walked silently, hand in hand, the few yards to the main office. Edwards donned his skullcap before asking the sexton the whereabouts of the graves of Herschel Soferman and Henry Sonntag.

  “Block G, Row L, numbers 112 and 113,” came the reply.

  “What do you mean?” said Edwards incredulously. “Does that mean they’re buried next to one another?”

  “Yes.” The man shrugged. “That’s the way they came in. One straight after the other. Neither was married and needed a double plot and neither of them had any families to object, so ...”

  The pair thanked the sexton and continued to walk for a further hundred yards before they came upon the two fresh mounds. They were unmarked apart from small sticks bearing their respective numbers. According to Jewish tradition, headstones would only be set some months later.

  “Mark, we don’t know which grave belongs to whom,” said Danielle with concern.

  “Does it really matter?” the reporter said, extracting a slip of paper from his pocket. “They were brothers who were born Jews and have been buried as Jews.”

  She stared at the fresh earth and sighed. “It’s not a tidy ending. Not knowing, I mean.”

  “Look, Dani, neat endings are for the movies. It’s not unusual for a Nazi sadist to have gone to his grave with his secrets intact. Most of them would never have admitted to their sins, even to their nearest and dearest. And remember, only a tiny minority of them have ever been caught and tried.”

  “You know, in a way, I’m glad it ended as it has.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Sonntag was my man, and Soferman was yours. Vindication would have had its price. One of us would have been devastated.”

  Edwards smiled ruefully. “In that, my dear, you are certainly right,”

  “This is going to make a helluva book. Have you thought of a title yet?”

  “There can only be one title, Dani. He took it to the grave with him. Schreiber’s Secret.”

  Then, in halting Hebrew, the gentile read out the Mourner’s Kaddish that Danielle had transliterated for him.

  “Yitgadal ve’yitkadash sh’may raba.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The motivation behind the thriller you have just read was the trial in Israel of John Demjanjuk.

  The Ukrainian-American was deported to Israel in 1986 to stand trial for war crimes, after being mistakenly identified by Israeli Holocaust survivors as “Ivan the Terrible”, a notorious guard at the Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Demjanjuk was accused of committing murder and acts of extraordinarily savage violence against camp prisoners during 1942-43. He was convicted of having committed crimes against humanity and sentenced to death in Israel in 1988. The verdict was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993, based on new evidence that Ivan the Terrible was probably another man, Ivan Marchenko. Following the trial, in September 1993, he returned to his home in Ohio. In 1998, his citizenship was restored after a United States federal appeals court ruled that prosecutors had suppressed exculpatory evidence concerning his identity.

  Demjanjuk was born in Ukraine, and during World War Two was drafted into the Soviet Red Army, where he was captured as a German prisoner of war. In 1952 he emigrated from Germany to the United States, and was granted citizenship in 1958 whereupon he formally anglicized his name from “Ivan” to “John”.

  On 12 May 2011, Demjanjuk was convicted by an ordinary German criminal court, pending appeal, as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at Sobibor concentration camp. He was sentenced to five years in prison. The interim conviction was later annulled, because Demjanjuk died before his appeal could be heard. He was later released pending trial and final verdict by the German Appellate Court. He lived at a German nursing home in Bad Feilnbach, where he died on 17 March 2012. Despite decades of legal wrangling and controversy, Demjanjuk died a free man and legally innocent.

  I wanted to write a thriller revolving around a question of identity. To this end, I did major research into aspects of the Holocaust, especially Nazi bestiality at the small fortress of Theresienstadt. I had already visited the transit camp in a visit to Prague during the Prague Spring of 1968. I also gathered as much information as I could about what it took to become an SS officer, including the extraordinary lengths that the Nazis went to in order to make sure their members were of “pure” Aryan stock. I stayed with my nephew in Eindhoven, Holland, from where I visited the closest German town, which happened to be Straelen. The town archivist was of great assistance in helping me to define Hans Schreiber’s birthplace.

  Being a reporter, I had covered many crime scenes and court cases during my career. Nevertheless, I needed more authenticity with regard to police procedures and the language used by barristers during murder trials. Thankfully, Detective Inspector Frank Wetherley of the Metropolitan police, and Nigel Lithman, QC, one of Britain’s leading barristers, came up with the goods. I am indebted to them.

  I appeared on the Sky TV Book Show with Eve Pollard, prior to the selling of the film rights.

  Finally, the ending of the thriller you have just read is as it is simply because it emphasizes the fact that more than ninety-nine percent of Nazi sadists carried their dark secrets with them to the grave. Only relatively few were ever prosecuted. This is why, while Hans Schreiber’s terrible secret is finally revealed, the question of his identity is deliberately left open. A tiny minority of readers have found this frustrating, but they should always bear in mind that, when it comes to Nazi sadists, neat and tidy endings were, and still are, at a premium. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, one of the most inspirational men of the 20th century, devoted his life to the pursuit of justice by not allowing Nazi murderers to go to their graves in peace. Only if we hate evil passionately will we summon the determination to fight it fervently.

  An audio book of Schreiber’s Secret is available on Amazon Audible, iTunes, etc. />
  Schreiber’s Secret followed my first book, The Winds of Kedem (see youtube trailer), where I drew on my experience as a war correspondent in Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The story revolves around an Arab nuclear terror plot to destroy Israel.

  My third book, Cry of the Needle, is a medical thriller, spawned when my journalistic career was cut short by an invasive spinal procedure. It is a story of medical malpractice and revenge.

  High Heels & 18 Wheels: Confessions of a Lady Trucker is a work of non-fiction. The story (mainly in her own words) of Bobbie Cecchini is a tale of triumph over adversity. It tells how a girl from Philly overcomes a series of personal horrors, four failed marriages and one of the most painful illnesses in the medical lexicon. But first and foremost, High Heels is the story of Bobbie’s adventures on the road as a lady trucker. Bobbie and I share the same incurable condition, adhesive arachnoiditis, in our case a form of chemically-induced spinal meningitis.

  If you enjoyed this book, I do hope you’ll consider reading my others. Word-of-mouth is crucial for any author to succeed, so kindly inform family and friends. Also much appreciated would be your leaving a review on the Amazon Kindle English-language sites (you can copy and paste easily by using the flags page links on my blog www.rogerradford.com/). Unfortunately, Amazon hasn’t yet found a way to copy and paste reviews to each of its platforms automatically. This is a shame, because you want your review read by potential readers in whichever country they reside. I realize that it’s a bit of a chore, but by using the flags page you can just sign in to each as you usually do for your own country. It’ll make all the difference and be very much appreciated. However, please remember to make sure your review does not contain any spoilers. Others would love to read the book without prior knowledge of vital plot twists. Thank you once again for downloading and reading this thriller. I hope it has been thought-provoking.

  On my blog, www.rogerradford.com, you can click on the Click Here buttons to see youtube trailers of my other books. You are also welcome to get in touch on Facebook.