by Michael Dean
He was trying to catch-up. For a while, after that, he continued, more and more desperately, to demand love, for himself, for his mother. But after their initial warm reunion, his father lapsed back into nothingness – a black void.
Manny consoled himself with the Geuzenactie newsletter. He had scored a Dutch royal crown into the stencil, flanked by the words NEDERLAND and ORANJE in block capitals. Under the crown, he blocked out the royal motto: JE MAINTIENDRAI. Then he wrote articles in longhand onto the stencil for duplication. The articles were of two sorts: factual/argumentative and satirical/mocking.
An early satirical one was a proclamation, written in Rauter’s name, imposing a curfew on dogs as a punishment for activities against the Occupying Authority – such as relieving themselves against the wheels of German tanks. He also wrote a satire called Last Order of the Day - written in the name of Adolf Hitler, on the day of German capitulation. Joel had praised it, though he couldn’t get Robert even to read it.
The first of the factual/argumentative articles was an attack on Nazi anti-semitism. It was headed The Bomb of Anti-semitism Should Blow up in their Faces. Manny had written it in one draft, sitting on his bunk, his tongue protruding slightly between his lips.
The Germans have the tendency, with peoples they wish to subjugate, not only to conquer them with weapons. They also try to strangle the life out of them with their ideology. Anti-semitism is one of the ways they do this. They try to make the presence of Jews a bone of contention. They try to use anti-semitism as a battering ram to drive a wedge between the various segments of society. German anti-semitism is, in this sense, an example of the time-honoured technique of divide and rule.
Robert did read this one, but was dismissive of his efforts: ‘It’s just words,’ he said. He was slurring his own words, permanently drunk on jenever.
‘If anything is ever “just words”, then they have won,’ Manny said, trying to hide his hurt.
Robert was walking round and round the car, a bottle of jenever in his hand. ‘We can’t beat them with words. We have to beat them with fists and guns. Then the likes of you can write and draw all you like.’
There was no reply; because deep down Manny agreed with him.
The other job he worked on was the forging of ID cards, once Lard had shown him what to do. The false ID cards and ration cards had to be distributed to onderduikers by people who had a valid reason to be on the streets. Anybody could be stopped by the Moffen, either at checkpoints, or on trams; or sometimes they would seal off a street at random at both ends and search every passer-by.
The knokploeg used a butcher’s boy, on his bicycle; a doctor who could always claim to be making house calls; and Tinie. Tinie cycled around Amsterdam in a nurse’s uniform, she had made for herself. She also sewed a couple of pockets inside the legs of a pair of voluminous bloomers, to carry documents about.
She visited Manny every day, bringing him stories from life up above. Manny dubbed these stories Tinie’s Tales From Mokum. Mokum – the place - was the Jewish name for Amsterdam. The Jews called it the place because Amsterdam had given them a haven, in Spinoza’s time. Manny would sit on the bunk, pat the spot beside him, and demand his tale, as soon as Tinie appeared, in her nurse’s uniform.
Some of Tinie’s Tales From Mokum were happy, some were not: One family had taken in two onderduikers, a father and daughter. The daughter was behaving like a prima donna, refusing to sleep in the same room as her father.
Then there were the sad stories of onderduikers being tricked and cheated. Tinie had come across Jews, people she knew, paying a fortune for shelter somewhere, agreeing to an advance payment, being told to turn up at the station – usually - and finding it was all a trick. The Nazis had put a bounty on Jewish onderduikers – five guilders a head, financed by the office they had set up to seize Jewish wealth – and there was no shortage of takers.
But for every story like this, Tinie regaled Manny with another two of the citizens of Mokum risking their lives for people they hardly knew - or sometimes did not know at all.
*
‘So why did you leave us, mother and me?’ The tone was challenging, consciously irritating – digging.
It was ten in the morning. Robert already had a bottle of jenever on the go. Joel had gone for a walk.
‘I have no idea,’ Robert said. ‘It just happened. The older you get, boy, the more things just happen. And you stop giving a damn why they happen.’
‘Oh, well, that’s something to look forward to, then. As I get older.’
Manny started sketching Robert. He sketched him over and over again, as if trying to finally fix him – nail him down. Robert refused to pose. The sketches were growing less and less flattering. One showed Robert asleep, drunk and drooling. His father found it and tore it up. Then he tore up all the other sketches of himself. By starting another sketch, Manny was deliberately provoking him.
Robert and Joel were rubbing along well enough together. Robert not only considered Joel a man – unlike Manny - but a man he could respect. Their first talks were about the success of German counter-espionage, in particular the turning of Lievers.
Manny listened; analysing, judging. To Manny’s fascination, Robert wasted no time – as Robert himself saw it - on the hows and whys of the past. Manny wanted to know what had made Lievers turn traitor, but Robert didn’t. Robert was interested only in the actions which needed to be taken, as a consequence.
‘London needs to organise a blind drop,’ Robert said.
‘What’s that?’ Joel was respectful, without being subservient.
‘Dropping an agent with no reception committee. Nobody would know his codes, his sched, his frequencies. That’s why I can’t radio London for explosives, you see.’ Robert nodded at his transmitter, now reclaimed from Central Station, taking up more of their precious space, in a corner. ‘Everything’s blown They could pick up the signal and we’d never know. We’d just be donating explosives to them.’
‘Let me ask around,.’ Joel said. ‘I’m sure we can steal you some explosive from somewhere.’
Robert nodded. ‘OK.’
*
Tinie Emmerik stood on tiptoe, to peer out of the grimy dormer window of her room. Batavia Straat, usually alive with talking, laughing, screaming, shouting, remonstrating and reconciling, not to mention selling and buying, was completely silent. And then she saw them - two Orpos with coal-scuttle helmets, rifles slung across their chests, walking in the road, about a foot in from the pavement. They passed by, out of sight under the window, but she knew they’d be back.
Sure enough, there was a rapping on the door, a few minutes later. Two Orpos, not the two from the street, were followed into the room by a bustling, resolute-looking mevrouw Kuipers.
‘Dag, mevrouw Kuipers!’ sang out Tinie, cheerily. ‘How nice to see you.’ Mevrouw Kuipers nodded, grimly. The gesture made the mole on her chin, with a single bristle through it, bob up and down. ‘Not gone yet, then?’ Tinie added, brightly.
‘Next week,’ mevrouw Kuipers growled
‘Stop that Kauderwelsch!’ one of the Orpos shouted. ‘Speak German, or don’t say anything. You speak German?’
‘Yes,’ Tinie said, in German. ‘But she doesn’t.’ She nodded at mevrouw Kuipers. ‘She’s too stupid.’
‘Go back to your own room,’ the same Orpo said, to mevrouw Kuipers.
With a sweet smile, Tinie translated, watching with some satisfaction as the old busybody indignantly bustled out.
Tinie waved a hand round her little kingdom. She had no fears about the nurse’s uniform. A skilled seamstress, she had adapted it so that it converted into an ordinary grey dress. The collar, cuffs and the other accessories that marked it out as a uniform had been folded away in her button box, where they looked like rolled strips of cloth. The sketch paper she had been about to take to Manny, though, was all over the table.
One of the Orpos was opening the drawers in the dresser. The other made straight for the ni
che behind the curtain. He drew it back and tapped the bunk-boxes, with a practised air. Tinie blew an imaginary kiss to Lard Zilverberg, for coming back to seal off the hiding-place he had made.
But the Mof still challenged the bunk-boxes. ‘What are they for?’
‘They are beds for children. They were made before the war.’
‘What war?’ called out the other Mof. ‘There is no war. The Netherlands is being incorporated into the German Reich, where it belongs.’
Tinie nodded.
On the way out, the Mof who had asked about the bunk-boxes noticed the sketch paper.
‘You draw?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me too.’ He gave her a smile. ‘What sort of things do you draw?’
Tinie breathed deeply. From the look in his eye, he was getting interested in her.
‘Portraits mainly. People.’
She offered God anything in return, if he would only stop the Mof asking her to draw something – she could not draw at all. He was clearly thinking about it, but the other Mof said ‘That’s enough, here. Let’s go.’
The first Mof widened his smile, shrugging his shoulders in open reluctance at having to leave her. But they left. Tinie sat down and cried, soundlessly, in relief, as much as anything. After a while, she pulled herself together. At least Hirschfeld had not been round for a while, although he continued to send the money. So perhaps things were looking up – there was always hope.
She re-assembled the nurse’s uniform, gathered up the sketch paper, and some cheese, for Manny. She tiptoed out, shoes in one hand, her eyes never leaving mevrouw Kuipers’ door. If the neighbour spotted her, suddenly and suspiciously transformed into a nurse, it could be all over for her.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, put her shoes back on, took her bicycle from the vestibule, and cycled to the knokploeg’s coal shed. She tapped the pre-arranged morse V for victory signal on the coal shed floor – the hideout’s ceiling. Manny let her in. To her surprise, neither Robert nor Joel was there.
‘Joel said he and my father would be back at five,’ Manny told her, after he’d given her a warm hug.
Tinie looked at her watch. It was half-past two. ‘Manny …’ She looked down at the floor, then at the bunk beds.
‘Do you want to?’ Manny said, softly. ‘Is it time? Are you sure?’
She nodded. She was sure, but she was afraid Manny might not want to, after Hirschfeld.
He took her hand and led her toward the bunk. ‘I love you so much, Tinie. But I don’t … I mean I …’
‘It’s alright,’ she said. ‘I know only too well what to do. I’ll help you.’
But she didn’t need to. It was gentle, like strawberries.
*
Joel Cosman treated Robert Roet as his commander, determinedly ignoring the older man’s drinking. The relationship was a novelty to Joel; he quite enjoyed it. He had been a leader all his life, not because he had sought to be, but because everybody followed him.
He could not remember a time when he had not played sport – football, boxing, table-tennis, swimming, diving. He had been a member of the elite De Hoop rowing club – so elite it banned Jews. He refused to tell anybody how he had achieved that. He had run the Jewish boxing club; he had coached at a swimming and diving club – the Zwemvereniging D.O.K. Amsterdam. But football was always the God.
Bright though he was, school was a lost cause. All he read was Cetem, the Sunday football paper. That and the Saturday afternoon football results, chalked up on a board outside Swaap’s cigar shop.
Fortunately, Joel’s old man was as mad about football as Joel was. He ran a drapery shop that looked like an oriental bazaar in Sint Antoniesbree Straat. But he closed in good time before every Ajax home match.
Then, he solemnly, almost ritualistically, took Joel and his younger brother Simon by the hand and they all caught a tram to Weesperplein. There, they changed to a steam tram, which jolted and puffed along, stopping every now and again while the water reservoir was re-filled, until it reached the De Meer Stadium, where Ajax played. It was just a couple of miles east of the Jewish Quarter.
A lot of Jews supported Ajax, but so did a lot of Christians – like Gerrit Romijn, who Joel used to see there on match days. They greeted each other like long lost brothers, even comparing the bruises and cuts they had inflicted on each other during the week. When a swastika flag went up in the stadium, just before the war, when Ajax were playing Admira Vienna, Gerrit booed as loudly as Joel did.
From the age of twelve, Joel’s father had paid him to work in the shop after school, and at the weekend, so he could save up for a pair of English football boots. He used to gaze at them every time he passed, tied up by their laces outside the Melhado store. That just left the shirt, the shorts and the suitcase to put them in. Playing football was an expensive business.
He had started playing at HEDW, one of Amsterdam’s all-Jewish football teams, dominating the game from right-half. He was fourteen at the time. He seemed to break up the opposition attacks without even having to tackle – just by being in the right place at the right time. But when he did tackle it was eye-watering.
He would then set up his own team’s attacks with slide-rule diagonal forward passes. The gleaming quiff of his swept back hair was like a beacon – he was involved in every passing move. He was team captain at the age of sixteen.
Ajax Amsterdam spotted him and signed him up. His third home game for the first team was the grudge-match against Xerxes of Rotterdam, captained by the legendary Cannon – Wim Lagendaal. Joel scored the second goal in a 3-2 win for the Amsterdammers. It was a header from a corner, despite the legendary Wim standing on his foot as the ball came over, to keep him down.
Then the invasion stopped everything – not the football, that continued bigger than ever. Just the Jewish players playing for their teams.
And now? Being cooped up in a room with a car and two other men was making even
Joel’s instinctive grin waver. He worked ferociously to maintain fitness, doing press ups and sit ups in the tiny space between the bunks and the car.
And there was also the Manny-problem … He was fond of Manny. He respected the boy’s brains; he also respected his guts: Manny was the most useless fighter he had ever seen, by a long long way - which made the boy’s courage downright moving. And he was proud, Joel was - bursting-proud - to be his friend, after that speech Manny made at the Jewish Council meeting.
But … the boy could irritate a rock. His constant chatter was irksome, his vomiting was annoying, and the never-ending irony was like a dripping tap. Also, Joel acknowledged to himself, he was afraid that one day Manny would turn his head, with his constant hero worship.
*
Joel took Ben Bril along to check out the main Nazi ammunition dump, just outside Haarlem. It was dispiriting. The place had a barbed wire perimeter, protected by watchtowers and heavily-armed troops. Joel described their uniform flashes to Robert, who said they were GFP – Geheime Feld Polizei. They did nothing but guard military installations. A knokploeg of tough boxers armed with staves would be well out of its depth.
He was beginning to regret the offer to get explosives, when Lard Zilberberg – big, good-hearted, big-mouthed, stolid old Lard – suddenly said ‘Why don’t we try the docks at Schiedam? The Prinz Eugen’s there for a refit. There could be munitions from off her.’
Joel grabbed Lard’s swarthy cheeks – even he had to reach up to do it – and shook them. ‘You little beauty,’ he said. ‘That’s wild, that is, my son. That is really clever. And I’ll tell you for why. Because if the munitions are just off temporarily, the guard won’t be so tight.’
Joel called a meeting of the knokploeg, which included Tinie. Guards were stationed outside; the car was raised up to the coal cellar, to create enough room. To Manny, Joel and Robert, their tiny cell felt the size of a ballroom, as soon as they were rid of the car.
Robert seemed pleased to meet the fifteen or so of the knokploeg
who turned up, including Gerrit Romijn, with two of his gang. Gerrit was quieter these days. He even looked different – older, more thoughtful.
Everybody knew everybody else, so there was less fear of a stool pigeon than there might have been – although the fear was never entirely absent. There were stories of the most unlikely people turning informant, sometimes under duress. Sometimes not.
After getting Robert’s approval, Joel told the assembled knokploeg exactly what was wanted. ‘We want to steal ordnance from the Prinz Eugen, at Schiedam docks, and use it to blow up the Arminius, here. Does anybody know anyone reliable, working on the Prinz Eugen?’
They all looked at each other. The centuries old tension between Rotterdam and Amsterdam had been broken by the bombing of Rotterdam. There was no time for it now. Ben Bril said he had a cousin in a KP – knokploeg – in Rotterdam. He said he was sure this cousin would help - find someone working at Schiedam docks, who was reliable. The cousin’s name was Arie Allegro.
How to contact the cousin? Even if they knew somebody who was on the telephone in Rotterdam, the telephones were probably tapped by the SD. Writing a letter would be far too dangerous. Somebody had to go to Rotterdam. Ben Bril said he would go – it was his cousin.
‘I’ll go,’ Tinie said. ‘I’ve got better cover than Ben. And it’s easier for females to get around.’
Joel looked at Robert. Everybody knew Tinie was right. Robert had actually been told to use nurses – real or fake - as couriers, on the SOE course at Beaulieu. The whole packed room was looking at their commander. Manny could sense his father was about to agree. He did:
‘Yes. Tinie’s the best person for the job.’
‘What about Hirschfeld?’ Manny said softly, to Tinie, then immediately wished he hadn’t. Tears sprang to Tinie’s eyes. ‘I mean, he’ll know you’re gone.’
‘Give him a cover story,’ Robert said.
Tinie shot Manny an angry look. It was obvious Robert knew about Hirschfeld, and he could have got it only from Manny.
‘I have an old aunt in Vollendam,’ Tinie said. ‘I can tell Hirschfeld she’s been taken sick. Or just leave him a note..’