by Michael Dean
And then he stood. Bram Asscher was a tall grey-haired figure, with a long head; his low pixillated ears not detracting from his dignity. Despite a reputation as a no-nonsense figure, he embodied solidity. He was as solid as his company’s headquarters – the massive Diamantslijperij Asscher building on Tol Straat, in the Pijp - a crenulated brick building, which looked like a cross between a factory and castle.
Asscher had been born in Amsterdam, as had his father and grandfather. He spoke for the city as a Liberal member at the Regional Assembly. Nothing could be more fixed, more rooted, more immovable, safer, than Asscher.
‘As you know, some of us have been asked to facilitate contact between the Occupying Authority and the Jewish Community, which we hope will make matters easier for everybody. The first issue to deal with is that of weapons. I’m sure you’ve all seen the appeals for the community to hand over weapons. The response has been disappointing. Please ensure that any weapons are handed in at the police station on Jonas Daniel Mayer Plein.’
There was a ripple of indignation, as an audience consisting of professionals, academics and hard-working, working-class family men expressed helpless indignation at the impossibility of handing in weapons they did not possess.
‘Or it may be,’ Asscher continued, ‘that you know of groups who have weapons. In which case these weapons should be brought to the attention of the authorities.’
From his place toward the middle of the hall, Manny let out a long sardonic whoop at this thinly veiled appeal to betray the Geuzen. People shifted in their chairs to look at him. He pasted a grin on his face and stared resolutely at Asscher. Joel Cosman was grinning, too. Even Tinie was smiling.
Hirschfeld suppressed a groan as Manny got to his feet. It was amazing how much bigger he looked, the Secretary General thought, when he was about to open his mouth.
‘I have a question,’ Manny sang out. Asscher nodded to indicate his willingness to take the question.
‘Is it true that a member of our newly elected Jewish Council, meneer Hirschfeld, has provided the Nazis with a list of every Jew in Amsterdam, using records from the Public Records Office?’ Manny was now in lawyer mode, speaking from a crib, clutched in his fist. ‘And would you not agree, meneer Hirschfeld, that by providing this list, you have accelerated the establishment of a ghetto in Amsterdam? And you have eased the way to the deportations of Jews, which meneer Asscher is about to announce.’
Manny sat down. Hirschfeld was white. Joel, Tinie and a few of the younger element scattered throughout the hall cheered. The main response was inchoate – the noise level rose, but whether in support of Manny or condemning him was impossible to say.
Bram Asscher hesitated. ‘We are not here to discuss this …’ There was a roar at that, so after another hesitation he said ‘The information you refer to is freely available at the Town Hall. Do you seriously think they wouldn’t have found it? They are the Occupying Authority. One of the buildings they occupy is the Town Hall.’
Manny bounced to his feet, his compact frame appeared to be vibrating. ‘That is nowhere near good enough, meneer Asscher. That information could have been withheld. It could have been tampered with, it could have been destroyed. And had that been done, who knows how long we could have delayed the Moffen?’
‘And what would have been the point of that?’ Asscher shouted back.
‘What would have been the point?’ Manny crowed his words back at him. ‘What would have been the point? I’ll tell you what the point would have been, meneer Asscher. I’ll tell you and all the Quislings like Hirschfeld, who work with and for the Moffen what the point of resistance is, shall I? The point, meneer Hirschfeld, the point, meneer Asscher, meneer Cohen, is to delay, obstruct and defy the Moffen until the cowardly British finally get off their fat imperial arses and fight. The point, you milksop Quislings, is to rally round our beloved Queen Wilhelmina, like our brave Engelandvaarders are doing, and kick these crackpot brutes of Nazis out of our country. That is the point!’
By now a proportion of the audience were cheering, a few were booing, nearly everybody was talking.
Who knows whether Manny would have continued his peroration, but it had now become impossible. Too late, Hirschfeld wished they had appointed stewards, with armbands, to throw troublemakers out.
In an inspired piece of demagoguery, Manny leaped on his chair and, wobbling unsteadily, began to scream out the Dutch national anthem, the Wilhelmus, itself a song of the original Geuzen. .
Joel Cosman leaped to his feet and joined in. Tinie stood and sang. All over the hall others joined in, some standing some not. They got as far as the seventh stanza:
My God, I pray thee, save me
From all who do pursue
And threaten to enslave me,
Thy trusted servant true.
O Father do not sanction
Their wicked foul design,
Don’t let them wash their hands in
This guiltless blood of mine.
Then they broke off singing, and Manny led three cheers for the Queen, for Prince Bernhard, and for the Netherlands. Bram Asscher waited until they had finished. Then, in a flat defeated monotone, he said arrangements would shortly be announced to deport the first Jews from Amsterdam.
*
Rauter had designated two Assembly Points for the deportation of Jews from Amsterdam: Central Station and the Tip Top theatre. The idea, presumably, was that the old, the infirm and children not strong enough to get as far as Central Station on foot, from the Jewish Quarter, could be brought by lorry from the much nearer Tip Top.
The first Hirschfeld heard of the deportations was when Simon Emmerik showed him a notice for Het Joodsche Weekblad, given to him by the Occupying Authority, to be printed on the front page. NSBers also gleefully posted it as a notice all around the Jewish Quarter. Rauter, to Hirschfeld’s disappointment, had not consulted him. Indeed, he had by-passed him.
The deportations were the first public issues Hirschfeld had ever discussed with Else. Else was strangely calm about them; it was Hirschfeld who was fretful and edgy.
‘What should I tell people?’ Else asked. ‘People ask me, because I’m your sister.’
She loved embroidery, and was pulling threads through of a cholla cloth she was making. It showed the children of Israel in the wilderness, in blue white and yellow.
‘Tell them not to go,’ Hirschfeld said, forcefully. ‘Tell as many people as you can!’ He was yelling.
She had stopped sewing and looked up, questioningly, at him, her head on one side.
‘Alright,’ she said.
Sitting at his desk, in his office, on the day designated for the deportations, Hirschfeld was unable to work. He went and stood at the window. He saw Hendrik, the chauffeur, lovingly polishing the Mercedes in the sunshine.
It was really too warm for a coat, but Hirschfeld took one anyway. He jammed his brown Fedora hat on his head and marched out.
Outside, Hendrik straightened up from his polishing and pulled at his white moustache, clearly about to ask if he was needed. Hirschfeld scurried by, eyes averted, giving him a muttered ‘Dag, Hendrik’ in passing. He walked quickly along the Binnen Amstel and crossed the Blaauw Brug, glancing up occasionally. There were high, wispy, cirrus clouds in a blue sky - not a typical Dutch sky at all.
On the Blaauw Brug, he passed a Jewish family heading for the Tip Top – a father, mother and two small boys. They were shabbily dressed; the father was carrying a suitcase, the little boys were clutching books and toys.
His head was exploding. Had the Nazis got hold of the lists from the Public Records Office? Manny, in that speech at the Jewish Council meeting, attacking him, assumed they had. He was not so sure. They had had no time to send out letters, to people listed as Jewish. And surely he would have heard something, seen at least one letter, if they had? They were relying solely on Asscher’s announcement and public notifications.
Weren’t they? And in that case …
With n
o clear plan in mind, he made his way along Nieuwe Amstel Straat, which runs alongside the Waterloo Plein Market. Even at this early stage, it was obvious that the numbers obeying the call to deportation were low – a trickle, where Rauter would have expected a stream.
Nearer the Tip Top, he saw the first people he knew. It was like a blow in the face. There was Abraham Katz, with his wife and what must be his oldest daughter. He had a small yarmulke, for outside, pinned to the back of his head.
‘Reverend!’ Hirschfeld touched him on the arm of his shiny black jacket. The cantor jumped, but seemed relieved to put his suitcase down. ‘Reverend, ladies. What are you doing?’
‘Dag, Max. I didn’t expect to see you here.’
With that enigmatic remark, the cantor nodded his head and solemnly pulled a cutting from his pocket. It was the notification from Het Joodsche Weekblad for Jews to report to one of the two designated Assembly Points. The date and places had been underlined in pencil.
Hirschfeld looked round, wildly. There were plenty of NSBers in their black uniforms, but no sign of the Orpos. ‘Reverend, did anyone come to your house, to tell you to leave?’
The reverend’s wife was looking alarmed, clearly fearful that they had made some terrible mistake. The daughter, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, was studying Hirschfeld coldly.
‘Come to my house? Did people come to my house?’ Katz said, reflexively looking at his wife for support. ‘No. No. Bella, did anyone come to the house?’
‘Nobody came to the house,’ Bella Katz said. ‘Should they have done?’
‘Did you receive any sort of personal notification?’ Hirschfeld was still shouting. ‘Say, a letter?’
All three of them silently nodded no.
‘Then go!’ Hirschfeld shouted. ‘Turn round and go home.’ Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two NSBers watching him curiously.
‘Go home?’ the cantor said. ‘But the notification in the newspaper …. We thought, better to be among the first. We could help the later ones get settled. You see, I hope to establish a small synagogue, wherever it is we are going. It’s to the east, isn’t it? Poland, they say.’
‘Reverend, turn round and take your family back home. You will be safe. Nothing will happen to you. I give you my word.’
The daughter had been watching Hirschfeld’s face. She narrowed her eyes against the weak sunshine. ‘Why are you saying all this?’ she said, suspiciously. ‘What do you know?’
Hirschfeld made a noise between a sigh and a sob. ‘The Nazis are not, at this stage, working from a specific list of Jews. They’re just hoping that people will … This is a shot in the dark, on their part … They will never know. Please. Please, Reverend, I beg you. Go home.’
He had won the daughter over. She touched her father’s arm lightly, as if waking him from sleep. ‘I think he may be right, Papa. We’ll go back, eh?’
The old man hesitated. ‘Well, it would be nice to …. Alright we’ll go back. Thank you, Max. For your good advice.’
‘That’s alright, Reverend.’
‘You should come to synagogue, you know. It can be a great comfort in these difficult times. Come to keep your sister company, if for no other reason.’
‘I’ll … I’ll try.’
The cantor and his wife and daughter turned and made their way back, the way they had come. Hirschfeld feared the NSBers would try to stop them, or would harass them, but they didn’t. One of them, however, was speaking into a radio.
Hirschfeld made his way to the Tip Tip, which had now been closed down. Here, the crowd of Jews leaving their homes was thicker, but still, Hirschfeld thought, nowhere near what Rauter would have expected. To warn his fellow Jews here would be too risky. There were a couple of Orpos in evidence, taking names and processing. Hirschfeld walked away again, stationing himself, eventually, in an open area where Waterloo Plein met Jonas Daniel Mayer Plein.
Here, he stopped Jewish families at random, always asking if they had had a visit or a direct communication from the Occupying Authority. None of them had. ‘There are over seventy-thousand Jews in Amsterdam,’ he would point out, in what quickly became a practised patter. ‘If your name is not on a list now, you do not have to leave. You can go home.’
Many of the Jews he stopped mistrusted him - some knew who he was, some did not. They ignored his pleadings and continued to the Assembly Point of their choice. Others listened, as the cantor had, and turned back.
Just as he was growing hoarse from his efforts, a car crossed Jonas Daniel Mayer Plein and screeched to a halt next to him. It was full of WA-men. Meinod Marinus Rost van Tonningen leaped out of it. Never the calmest or most controlled of men, he was positively gibbering.
‘Now you’ve done it, Hirschfeld. I’ve got you now! You’ve revealed yourself in your true colours.’
‘Have I?’
The Jewish family he had just warned were heading back, away from the Assembly Point, as they spoke. Van Tonningen, though, was so intent on berating Hirschfeld that apparently it did not occur to him to have them seized and questioned, as to what Hirschfeld had said to them.
Van Tonningen’s pointy little face was bright red. ‘Warning your fellow Jews, eh? Undermining the Occupying Authority’s cleansing of Amsterdam.’ His voice rose to a scream. ‘You are under arrest, Hirschfeld.’ Van Tonningen turned to his WA escort. ‘Take him!’
Two of the WA troopers seized Hirschfeld under the arms, and bundled him into the back of the car. It drove off at top speed.
11
Robert checked his watch. It was time to set off for his meeting with Huib Lievers. On a whim, he asked Joel if he had heard of Lievers, who was just a name to him.
‘He’s a crook,’ Joel said.
‘So you know him?’
Joel shrugged. ‘To greet in the street …’
‘But you know what he looks like?’
‘Sure.’
Robert thought hard: Towards the end of the SOE coding course, they had sat in while girls at the coding section in Grendon Underwood – known as the FANYs - decrypted messages from agents in the field. Very frequently, there were indecipherables – the incoming message in code could not be read.
The girls would drop everything else and work flat out, in teams, for hours, to decrypt an indecipherable. Robert had seen the FANYs in tears, many times, when they couldn’t crack one of these messages, because to ask for a re-send would expose the agent to mortal danger.
There were many indecipherables from France; there were quite a few from Norway and Belgium. But none from Holland. Not one. Never. At first, as Robert recalled later with some embarrassment, he had been filled with patriotic pride at this. He thought it meant that the agents in Holland were better, more efficient.
But one day, with a chill, it dawned on him what the lack of indicipherables from his homeland meant. It meant that the agents there had plenty of time to plan what they wanted to say, and send clear messages. And there was one reason, and one reason only, why these agents would have plenty of time. Because they had been caught. They had all been caught. Every single one of them was being played back against London.
Once one agent was captured and turned, this was all too horribly possible. Over a few stiff tots of whisky, he told Fat Laming – all eighteen stone of him - what he feared. Laming said he was talking rot, and defeatist rot at that.
Robert was still thinking, pacing up and down. Such was the aura of authority round him that Joel, Manny and Tinie fell silent.
He did not know what Lievers looked like, Robert thought. The Moffen would know he didn’t know. If Lievers had been captured, they would hardly risk sending him to a meeting in a café in the middle of Amsterdam, at least not unnecessarily. They would send someone else, and brief him on the codewords. Robert would know it was a trap only when they grabbed him.
‘I’m not going to the meeting with Lievers,’ Robert said. ‘You are, Joel. If Lievers shows up, use the codeword I’ll give you. Set up another meeting. I
f there’s no sign of Lievers, come back here immediately.’
‘But, Joel’s wanted,’ Manny said.
They ignored him.
Joel Cosman grinned. ‘Sure I’ll do it.’
Joel had managed to hold onto his bicycle – despite a so far ineffective attempt by the Moffen to seize them all. He cycled off to the Café Sterrebos, for the five o’ clock meeting.
He didn’t come back. It was dusk, then dark outside. Robert was pacing the hideout, afraid he had sent the young Geus leader into capture – or death.
Then Joel returned. He was full of apologies for the delay – a puncture on the way back. He had spotted the contact, waiting, but it wasn’t Lievers.
Joel Cosman put an arm round Robert. ‘You’d better stay here,’ he said. ‘With me and Manny.’
Robert nodded, indifferent to where he would stay. ‘If the SOE has been penetrated, to that extent,’ he muttered to himself. ‘arranging an explosives drop is impossible. And without an explosives drop, how do we blow up the Armenius?’
*
Once the hydraulic lift-bridge had lowered the car, there was little space left in the concealed room. Fortunately, the three bunks were recessed into the wall. But a spirit duplicator had been brought in, to roneo off articles for the Guezenactie newsletter - that took up precious space. Some of the stolen blank ID cards, ration cards and clothes coupons were stacked against the walls, though most were buried in woods nearby.
It was claustrophobic and stuffy. Lard Zilverberg or his father brought food in, and took clothes away to be washed. Robert Roet, Manny Roet and Joel Cosman took it in turns to empty the toilet, to wash, and to cook on a primus stove. They went for a walk once a day, one at a time – thankful to get out.
Manny’s frequent vomiting, followed by profuse apologies, put a strain on all three of them. He had had this nervous vomiting – pyloric stenosis - since babyhood. It was getting worse, as he realised his long-lost father was as indifferent to him now as he had been when he left.
For the first twenty-four hours, shut in with his father, Manny hardly stopped talking.