Two Brothers

by Ben Elton

  And those on the death side, those who now knew themselves to be Jews, could not help but be bitter, angry and resentful of the status of those on the life side. Those people now called Aryans. And since no Nazi or even silent fellow traveller would speak to them or look them in the eye, they found themselves taking out their feelings on the only ‘Aryans’ who would still acknowledge them, their remaining non-Jewish friends.

  So this is what your Mr Hitler thinks, is it?

  What will your people decide to do to us next?

  Do you really believe we have stolen your homes and jobs?

  Schwarzschild did not stay long. He had patients to see, Frieda’s as well as his own. Patients about whom Frieda was already worrying, feeling guilty, despite herself, that she was suddenly absent from their care. A hundred half-finished stories sprang suddenly to her mind as she showed Schwarzschild to the door.

  ‘I’m concerned about Frau Oppenheim’s boil. I lanced it but it isn’t healing properly and I suspect she’s not cleaning the wound as I instructed. The little Rosenberg boy is still not walking after his accident and it’s because he is not doing his physiotherapy, you must be very firm with his parents … I will write notes for them all. Can you bring me my files? I’m sure that is still allowed. We can go through them. You know that I’m fearful old Bloch might be turning diabetic; you must test his blood sugar.’

  Perhaps it helped her. Taking refuge in the responsibilities of a life that was over. Trying vicariously to impose her attentions on people who were now obliged by government decree to shun them.

  Wolfgang had watched her from his place at the piano.

  ‘Why do you still care about those people, Frieda?’ he asked. ‘Do they care about you?’

  ‘Wolf, I’m a doctor. I do not require my commitment to be reciprocal.’

  Wolfgang smiled, a smile and a shrug.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘fair enough. You’re a better person than any of them but we didn’t need the bloody Nazi Party to know that. I, however, am not and if it was up to me I’d say let them rot.’

  In defiance or frustration he began to play some Kurt Weill, The Ballad of Pirate Jenny.

  ‘Wolfgang! Please!’ Frieda said.

  He looked up. There was fear on every face.

  ‘Oh sorry,’ he said bitterly. ‘Not happy with Jew music?’

  ‘Come on, Wolf,’ Frieda said. ‘The walls aren’t thick and there’s no point provoking them.’

  ‘That’s what I thought too,’ Wolfgang said. ‘But now I wonder whether it makes any difference.’

  ‘If we provoke them they’ll kill us,’ Herr Loeb the tobacconist said. ‘We are few and they are many.’

  ‘They won’t kill us!’ Frau Leibovitz almost pleaded. ‘This is Germany, it’s an aberration, it must be. It must be an aberration.’

  Some others agreed. This could not be real. It was simply unimaginable that the National Socialist Government intended to keep this onslaught up.

  Again, the formal description. The National Socialist Government. As if somehow, using the Nazi Party’s full name, treating them with formality and politeness, might cause the Nazis to somehow reciprocate.

  Other voices took a grimmer view.

  ‘My son thinks they will keep it up till we are all dead,’ the bookseller Morgenstern observed. ‘He is leaving. He and his fiancée. He has a friend in Zurich who will put them up for a while.’

  ‘But what will he do? How will he work? Has he a Swiss work permit?’ came the enquiries.

  Morgenstern admitted that his son did not.

  ‘But he’s leaving anyway. He will go on a holiday and then refuse to leave; he says they can shoot him if they wish. His girl agrees. They intend to go within a week.’

  This news of course depressed the little gathering further.

  Clinging to hope as they were it was terrible to realize that some people had already forsaken it. But everyone knew someone who had already decided the situation was now impossible. The young in particular, those who had least to leave behind, were all making plans to go.

  Then the Hirsches, a retired couple from two floors down, arrived with the first edition of the afternoon newspaper. Amongst the crowing lead story reporting the ‘success’ of the ‘spontaneous’ boycott was another headline:

  ‘Exit Visas Introduced’.

  Anybody who wanted to leave Germany had first to get police permission to do so. It was stated that Jews in particular were not simply to be allowed to wander around hostile foreign countries spreading their lies. If they wanted to get out they would have to beg and only then would the authorities take a view.

  ‘They want to trap us,’ Wolfgang observed and defiantly banged out a few chords of Mack the Knife.

  Morgenstern asked if he could use the telephone to discuss the news with his son.

  Frieda’s parents arrived.

  It almost broke Frieda’s heart to see the old man’s face, a combination of suppressed fury and utter confusion that she’d never seen in him before. Only weeks earlier Captain Konstantin Tauber had been an important senior officer in the Berlin Police. He was a decorated war veteran. A deeply conservative German patriot and champion of the rule of law.

  Now he was a non-person. Without status, without a job and without rights.

  ‘The Sturmabteilung came to our station yesterday afternoon,’ Tauber explained.

  Again, the refuge in formality. The Sturmabteilung.

  The National Socialist Government.

  Herr Hitler.

  As if somehow they were dealing with something recognizable and relatable to their previous experience of the world. And not an entirely new, completely alien force, more brutal and more primevally cruel and ignorant than anything they could possibly contain within their understanding.

  ‘Simply marched in,’ Herr Tauber went on. ‘They have been coming and going as they pleased since Herr Hitler became Chancellor but yesterday they came for me. It’s only weeks since I was arresting these actual same men for violent disturbances. For intimidation. For all sorts of squalid thuggery. Throwing them into the cells night after night. Now they are in charge! They wanted my desk! They took my cap, my side arm. They told me I was not a good enough German to be a policeman. I was a good enough German to be gassed at Verdun, was I not? To sit for three years in a hole in the ground for the Kaiser?’

  Herr Tauber lapsed into silence, accepted a cup of coffee and held his wife’s hand.

  ‘We came over because we read about the decree regarding Jewish doctors,’ Frau Tauber explained. ‘It’s a terrible thing. To stop you caring for your patients.’

  ‘From two respected professional people in the family to none,’ Captain Tauber growled.

  ‘Come off it, Pa,’ Frieda said. ‘You never even wanted me to be a doctor.’

  ‘That was a long time ago. I changed my view. I’ve been very proud of you. Did I never say?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, no you didn’t.’

  Wolfgang broke the silence that followed this.

  ‘Cheer up, Pop. You’ve still got a musician in the family.’

  Tauber merely glared.

  Morgenstern, who had been on the phone to his son, approached Herr Tauber to ask a favour.

  ‘Excuse me, Herr Kapitän,’ he said, ‘but perhaps you still have friends and colleagues at your old station.’

  ‘Fewer than I might have hoped,’ Tauber said.

  ‘This business of exit visas, the announcement was only made today. I cannot imagine they could implement it at once.’

  ‘No, they are not supermen, whatever they might say. Even in these extraordinary times, if they want the border to function as a border they cannot just “will” it, they must have due process.’

  ‘Would you be kind enough, Herr Kapitän, to be so good as to make an enquiry to find out when these exit visas will be required from?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Tauber replied. ‘And it’s just “mister” now, I’m not a captain any more.�
��

  Tauber got up, crossed the blue rug and went out into the hallway to the telephone. Frieda watched as he went. His gait stooped at first, the walk of an old and defeated man. After a few steps, though, he seemed to realize it and straightened himself up. Putting back his shoulders and holding his head a little higher.

  That’s right, Frieda thought. We must all keep trying to walk upright. It was what Wolfgang told the boys. If you want to feel tall, you have to walk tall.

  The phone rang as Herr Tauber reached for it.

  ‘Stengel residence,’ he said. ‘Tauber speaking.’

  After a moment he turned back into the room.

  ‘It is Herr Fischer,’ he said, ‘of Fischer’s department store. He is enquiring after his daughter Dagmar.’

  A Quiet Day at the Store

  Berlin, 1933

  AFTER THEIR DAUGHTER’S flight from the front of the department store, Herr and Frau Fischer were forced by the SA gang to remain on their knees on the pavement for some ten minutes longer.

  Collecting torn shreds of Herr Fischer’s vandalized ‘discount’ banner and licking the paving stones until both of them thought they would choke to death.

  ‘Some water please,’ Frau Fischer croaked, looking upwards at the boys standing over her, who were young enough to have been her sons.

  ‘What was that, old sow?’ one laughed. ‘Can’t you speak German? I can’t understand you.’

  Frau Fischer’s tongue was swollen up and her mouth was filled with grit and dust. She struggled once more to speak.

  ‘Water, please, for pity’s sake.’

  But there was no pity to be had. Her tormentors would have argued that it was not that they lacked heart or conscience, but simply that Jews did not deserve pity. Their crimes were too terrible and their natures too sly. Heartless cruelty towards such Untermenschen was the stern duty of a German patriot.

  Only that week in an editorial in the Völkischer Beobachter Herr Goebbels had warned specifically against the temptation to show pity, reminding decent Germans that such weakness was in fact not just weak foolishness, but treason. The Minister of Propaganda pointed out that the cousins of the poor old Jew granny appealing for help in Berlin were sitting in Washington and Moscow, rubbing their hands together with glee and plotting the annihilation of European civilization.

  Therefore Frau Fischer simply could not be shown pity for fear of the global threat her blood posed for Germany.

  Which was fortunate for the young men towering over her, because there could be no doubt that tormenting helpless creatures was also the best fun.

  It was not pity that brought the Fischers’ ordeal to an end but pragmatism. Word of the scene taking place outside the famous department store had spread to the offices on the Wilhelmstrasse, where there were those who understood that such incidents would not look well abroad. And for the time being at least the new German Government, anxious for its voice to be heard in the world, still considered that to be an issue.

  As Frau Fischer was begging for water, a second Mercedes pulled up.

  Roaring to a halt behind the splendid empty vehicle that had delivered the proud Fischer family to their fate.

  From this second car stepped a man in a gabardine coat and wearing a homburg hat, the inevitable ‘tough guy’ look favoured by the Prussian Political and Intelligence Police, who were shortly to be renamed the Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo. This gangster-like policeman was followed by another, less stern-looking individual in a lounge suit.

  ‘You!’ the Gestapo man shouted, flashing his police identification at the SA troop leader.

  ‘Heil Hitler!’ the SA man shouted back, springing to attention and delivering his stiff-armed salute all at the same time.

  ‘This necessary action is over. Get these two to their feet.’

  The SA man looked a little put out at having his sport curtailed. The official police and the SS to whom they were now attached were much resented by the rank and file of the SA, who considered themselves to be the true inheritors of the Nazi revolution. But orders were orders and that was something that could never be ignored. The troop leader therefore swallowed his disappointment and shouted at his men to pull the Fischers to their feet.

  ‘That man with the camera,’ the Gestapo officer snapped, ‘bring him to me.’

  A man in the crowd who had been taking photographs saw himself pointed out and turned on his heel. He was clearly hoping to be able to get away but wisely chose to stop when ordered to and waited while two troopers pushed their way through the crowd in order to escort him back.

  Meanwhile Herr Fischer had shaken himself free from the SA men and now approached the Gestapo officer. Despite his ordeal, the bruising on his face and the disarray of his clothing, Isaac Fischer still managed to carry himself with some dignity.

  ‘My name …’ he said, speaking with great difficulty. His lips were bleeding, his tongue dry and swollen, and like his wife he was in desperate need of water. ‘My name,’ he repeated, ‘is Isaac Fischer.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ the Gestapo officer replied curtly. ‘Why are you addressing me?’

  Herr Fischer was forced to cough and clear his throat several times before attempting another sentence. A function which provoked a look of utter offence and contempt from the policeman.

  ‘Because,’ Herr Fischer began, his voice like sandpaper on stone, ‘because you clearly have some authority and I wish to make a complaint.’

  There was something of a gasp amongst the crowd. Some surprised at the man’s bravery, others shocked at his effrontery. This was followed by much angry murmuring as word of the Jew’s whining spread.

  ‘A complaint?’ the officer enquired coldly. ‘What have you to complain about?’

  Fischer’s eyes widened. It was a shock. Even in his dazed and battered state he had not expected quite such brutal indifference to his obvious plight. And to that of his wife, a middle-aged woman publicly assaulted by a large gang of young men.

  What had he to complain about? He attempted to gather his thoughts to frame an answer to such a question.

  Only eight weeks before, the thugs standing behind him would be facing years in prison for what they had done.

  ‘I have been prevented,’ he said finally, ‘from entering my store by these men.’

  ‘One moment.’ The Gestapo man turned to the photographer whom the SA troopers had brought from the crowd.

  ‘But—’ Fischer found himself protesting.

  ‘You will address me when I give you permission and not otherwise!’ the Gestapo officer snapped, his rising tone giving warning that despite his pretence at formality he was every bit as unpredictable and as dangerous as Fischer’s previous thug tormentors.

  Fischer fell silent.

  ‘Who are you please?’ the officer asked the man with the camera.

  ‘I am an American citizen,’ the photographer replied in poor German. ‘I am an American citizen, I work for Reuters and these men have no right to be holding on to me.’

  ‘The camera please,’ the Gestapo officer demanded, holding out a black gloved hand.

  ‘Absolutely not! I am an accredited news photog—’

  At a nod from the Gestapo, one of the SA troopers snatched the man’s camera, which had been hanging around his neck on a leather strap, and handed it over to the officer.

  ‘That camera is the property of …’ the American protested, but then did not bother to complete his sentence, there being no point because even as he spoke the Gestapo officer took the film from the camera and exposed every frame of it. He then returned both the camera and the ruined film to their owner.

  ‘And here is your property returned to you. Everything is in order, is it not?’ the officer said. ‘My colleague from the Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda will be happy to answer any further questions you might have regarding the necessary police action you have just witnessed.’

  The American was led protesting from the scene, the civilian
who had arrived in the same car as the Gestapo man following him, already firing off a series of rapid excuses and qualifications.

  ‘Jewish provocation,’ the man from the Propaganda Ministry could be heard saying. ‘An essential containment action in order to maintain public order … Jews required to clean up results of their own vandalism.’

  The Gestapo officer turned back to the Fischers.

  ‘So, you will now get inside your shop,’ he said.

  ‘Sir,’ Herr Fischer began, ‘you are clearly a policeman. These troopers have acted illegally. The boycott is voluntary …’

  ‘Herr Fischer.’ The Gestapo man spoke quietly now. Leaning forward, bringing his face quite close to Fischer’s, conveying more menace than ever mere shouting would have done. ‘You have been given an order by an officer of the Prussian Political Police. I suggest you follow it immediately. Otherwise I will have you arrested for a breach of public order and, believe me, you do not wish these men to take you into their custody. Now, Jew, take your Jew wife and get inside your Jew shop.’

  Frau Fischer tugged gently at her husband’s arm.

  ‘Come, Isaac,’ she croaked, ‘please, they are releasing us. And I must have water.’

  Herr Fischer made a small bow, then taking his wife’s hand turned away from his tormentor. With stumbling step and aching knees weakened by their ordeal on the pavement, they made their way towards the multiple glass-front doors of their store.

  It was 9.05.

  Thirty-five minutes late.

  Thirty-five minutes later than the Fischer department store had ever been opened in all its history.

  The doors swung open as the Fischers approached them.

  Shocked, white faces awaited them, cowering behind the glass. Such familiar faces, made strange with fear.

  The doorman.

  A store detective.

  The senior under-manager, due to retire in only two weeks’ time after forty years of service. His gift was already at the engraver’s.

  All the Jewish members of the Fischer’s staff were there. Making do to cover the numerous tills, waiting behind their counters, as they had all been waiting since 8.15 that morning, in theoretical anticipation of a visit from the Empress Augusta Viktoria.