by Michael Dean
Meanwhile, the blazing life of the Jewish Quarter was flickering on, despite the fighting: The Mille Colonnes, a workers’ café on Korte Konings Straat, was still open. A troop of police, mixed German and Dutch, burst in, ordered every man inside to put his hands up, and herded the younger ones at bayonet point to Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein. There they stood, forced to keep their hands clenched behind their heads, outside the synagogue, menaced by the two machine guns.
A few of the small textile factories along the Oude Schans were working, as normal. They were raided. The younger workers were marched to the Collection Point, as the synagogue was now known.
Some shops were also open. Mozes de Beer’s wine shop had half a dozen customers, all judiciously sipping the samples Mozes provided. Mozes was in his twill trousers, beret and carpet slippers. He was waiting for them all to get tipsy, before suggesting they ordered more than they wanted.
When the Moffen burst in, they threw Leen de Beer and a woman customer against the wall. One of them grabbed Mozes, to take him away, but another one cursed and shouted at him that Mozes was too old.
As they couldn’t take him away, they beat him up. Two of them held him by the arms while another one hit him in the face, again and again. A third Mof held Leen and made her watch. Eventually, the old man lost consciousness, dribbling blood and teeth. The Moffen lost interest and left, taking two male customers who looked young enough, and plenty of boxes of wine.
Any male passers-by in the streets were challenged – regardless of age. One of them was Professor Kokadorus, the man with the crazy plans, who sold shoes in the market. He was walking along, oblivious to the world, talking to himself. When they shouted to him to stop, he ran for it. An Orpo shot him in the back; they left him where he fell.
By now, a dark silence had fallen over the streets, the factories, the shops. The police started to seal off streets at both ends. Dutch police with bullhorn loudspeakers ordered all males between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four to come out into the streets and surrender, immediately.
Most of them did – if only to prevent Orpos bursting into their homes and mistreating their women and children. They said a hasty goodbye to their loved ones and were marched away, with their hands up. Women watched at the large uncurtained windows, drinking in last diminishing glimpses of the men they loved - husbands, brothers, sons - until they reached a turn in the road.
*
Some men didn’t go down into the street when the summons came. If the Orpos suspected they hadn’t got a big enough haul from a street, they went into the tenements to get more hostages. But the Jewish Quarter teemed with tenements, and the Orpos, even with their large numbers, were spread thinly.
Only two Orpos started to climb the stone stairs of a tenement in Batavia Straat, two doors down from where Tinie Emmerik used to live. Both were dark haired, short and slightly built. One wore cheap nickel-rimmed spectacles, which gave him an intellectual look, as did his receding hairline. The other had a bad case of acne.
Lard Zilverberg, crouched down among the bicycles in the vestibule, heard them talking. They were joking about claiming the bounty the civilian Dutch were offered for hunting down Jews. Lard’s face grew grim, as they joked.
As the Moffen approached the first landing, spectacles said ‘Isn’t there some sort of list of protected Jews?’
‘Protected Jews?’ said acne, with some amusement.
‘Jews in reserved occupations, or something. That’s what I heard.’
The Orpos had their rifles slung over their backs. They looked relaxed, going to work, doing a job. They reached the first landing, presenting the width of their backs to Lard. He went up the first concrete stair, steadied himself, and pulled the knokploeg’s one and only pistol from inside his zip-up jacket. He fired twice, hitting each of them in the back.
Spectacles groaned; acne went down silently. They both fell forward. There was complete silence in the block of flats. And no footsteps came running from outside. Lard, breathing heavily, went up to the first landing. He started to disentangle the two rifles, one of them was smeared with blood.
Acne was dead. Spectacles was still breathing. Lard thought about finishing him off with his last pistol bullet, but did not want to push his luck, with the noise. He saw the nickel-rimmed spectacles winking up at him, on the concrete landing, and ground them under his heel.
Slinging the two short-stocked rifles over his shoulder, he took the Germans’ side arms, too – two new-looking Walther pistols. Then he went up the stairs, three at a time, until he reached the flats at the top of the building. He knocked on the door of the left- hand flat, the one whose windows would overlook the street. Silence.
‘My name is Lard Zilverberg,’ he said softly in Jewish Dutch. ‘I’m with the resistance. Please let me in.’
There was a pause, then the door swung open, though nobody was visible. Lard went in, filling the tiny box of a main room with his bulk. The man who had let him in was behind the door. He had a toothbrush moustache and tortoiseshell spectacles. He wore a short-sleeved pullover with a diamond pattern and baggy trousers. Lard knew him by sight; he was a diamond-cutter called Isidore Terveen. His eyes were wide with terror.
‘Excuse the disturbance,’ Lard said. ‘I need to borrow your flat.’ He indicated his mass of weaponry, almost apologetically. ‘It overlooks the street.’
Terveen nodded. ‘You can come out,’ he whispered in the direction of the bedroom. A woman, obviously his wife, made her way out to the centre of the living room.
‘Dag, meneer,’ she said. She was shivering with fear.
Without replying, Lard made his way to the window. He could see one end of Batavia Straat, sealed off by one of the bulky overvalwagens which had brought the Orpos. The other end of the street, out of sight, would be sealed-off, too. Lard took one of the rifles.
‘What should we do, meneer?’ said Isidore Terveen.
‘They’re taking hostages,’ Lard said. ‘Men only.’
‘What should we do?’ Isidore Terveen said, again.
Lard looked at him. Isidore Terveen was in his fifties, way over the age they wanted.
‘Both of you go down,’ he said. ‘Report the deaths of two Germans on the stairs. Say resistance criminals did it. Lay it on thick. They will let you go. When they do, go to another flat, in this building. Don’t come back here.’
Isidore Terveen nodded. The Terveens left without another word, accustomed to obeying instructions. Lard peered carefully out the window. After a few moments, he saw them in the street, pointing back toward the tenement, obviously reporting the deaths of two soldiers. As Lard had predicted, the Terveens were released.
As two more Moffen ran towards the entrance, Lard opened the window, pushed back the bolt on one of the rifles, leaned out and fired.
*
Many of the Christian workers from the Klattenburg Raincoat Factory believed there was nothing more they could do, up against armed Mof troops. Those who weren’t injured went back to the factory and, as they were on piece-work, they resumed work. The same applied to many of the communists alerted by the CPH, operating from a clandestine basement in east Amsterdam, but outside the Jewish Quarter.
But one quite sizeable group of workers, none of them Jews, stumbled on three Orpos down an alleyway near the Burg Wal. Before the Moffen had time to mobilise their weapons, the workers rushed them and beat them unconscious. Then they dispersed.
Just as Lard Zilverberg was leaning out of the window in Batavia Straat, Joel Cosman and Manny were knocking on Karel Polak’s door. When the NSB guards had fled Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein, the tyre seller had returned to his flat, overlooking the Oude Schans canal, to be with his wife and their new-born son. When Joel and Manny arrived, he had packed a bag and was saying goodbye.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said to Joel and Manny.
The two knokploeg boys were armed with staves, which looked incongruous in the neat, though threadbare, flat. Both of them were embarr
assed by their intrusion.
‘We’re going to … fight back,’ Manny said.
‘Not here you’re not!’ Polak stroked his ginger moustache, bent his lean frame over Manny, and said ‘I’m giving myself up. I’ll do my stint of labour in the east, then I’ll come back. I’m gonna see my wife and son again. You’re not going to ruin that for me. Now fuck off!’
As Joel and Manny sheepishly turned to leave, Karel Polak picked up a cushion and threw it at them. It hit Joel in the back. ‘Putting my family at risk. Arrogant pricks!’
Outside, Manny put a hand on Joel’s arm. ‘Let’s stop this,’ he said miserably.
He felt foolish carrying the stave. He was ready to admit to himself, though not to Joel, that he wanted to give himself up – get it over with. The comparative safety of the Collection Point was developing a fiendish attraction.
He just wanted a rest. His battered, bruised body was screaming for peace. His forehead was bleeding. To his horror, he realised that in his exhaustion from the constant danger, he actually wanted the Moffen to tell him what to do next. He badly needed a crap, and was afraid he might shit his pants from fear, out there in the street, in front of Joel.
‘Do what you like,’ Joel said, airily. ‘I’m going to see Marinus.’
Manny nodded, trotting along behind him, afraid of being left alone. He thought of Tinie, like a talisman, like touching his love for luck. He was glad she was safe – well, what passed for safe in the nightmare the Moffen had made of the world.
Marinus Glim lived round the corner, on the Oude Wal, overlooking Eilandsgracht. The streets were deserted, they could hear only the Moffen, in a silence that was like the end of the world.
*
As soon as the deaths of two comrades was reported to him - shot in the back on the steps in a tenement in Batavia Straat - the Orpo commander on the ground radio’d Rauter. He asked if he could attack the building, in which he reported armed resistance. Rauter forbade that, instantly and firmly. He ordered the building surrounded, the area around it evacuated. The bodies of the two dead soldiers were to be recovered, if at all possible. Then wait.
Rauter then radio’d the two SS-Totenkopf battalions standing by their vehicles. He ordered them to the Jewish Quarter. They set off from Zandvoort and Amersfoort, with full battle equipment.
The Obergruppenführer hardly dared think how this would look to Himmler. He seized the radio again and ordered an SS tank into action, in support of the troops heading for the Jewish Quarter. Five minutes later he radio’d again. He ordered the synagogue destroyed.
*
Ben Bril had chosen this alleyway very carefully. It led from Valkenburger Straat, where he was born, to the Uilenburgergracht. He had played in this alley as a boy, gone there when he wanted to be alone, especially when he was hurt. He was hurt now, because the Nazis had just killed his mother - beaten her to death.
Two of Gerrit’s Catholic boys had flanked him, while he carried her home in his arms. They had then knelt, crossed themselves, and prayed for the old lady’s soul. It had consoled Ben more than he would have believed possible.
Ben Bril peered down into the turgid waters of the canal. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He walked slowly the short distance to the intersection with Valkenburger Straat, walking with the floating, almost dancing, walk of a boxer, weight on the outside of his feet.
There was a spot at the end of the alley where you could peer down Valkenburger Straat without being seen. The street had been sealed off at one end. It was swarming with troops. But none of them were passing the high walled alleyway. Not yet, anyway.
He carefully took a bandage and some ketchup from a canvas bag he had brought from home. He bandaged his right thigh, using the ketchup to create a bloody-looking wound. Then he waited. As soon as two Orpos approached the alleyway, he lay on the ground, moaned and cried for help, in Dutch, then in German. The two Orpos peered cautiously down the alleyway.
‘I’ve been shot,’ Ben Bril called out in German.
They advanced, holding their rifles out ahead of them, as he hoped they would.
‘Hands up!’ one of them called nervously, as they approached.
Ben struggled to his feet and held his hands up. ‘I want to surrender.’
They were near enough now. One of the Moffen made to take him by the arm. Ben swung a right hook into his nose, smashing him to the ground. Spinning round he left jabbed the second Mof in the solar plexus, doubling him up, before getting him with a haymaker in the face, with another right.
Both Moffen were now unconscious on the ground, in the dirt of the alleyway. Ben stood over them, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. Their bayonets were in holsters around their belts, not clipped to their rifles. Ben took a bayonet from one of the Moffen, just as the man started to regain consciousness. He slit his throat with it, the way Robert Roet had shown him; the way the SOE had shown Robert. Then he turned to the other one and slit his throat, too – side to side.
He threw the bayonet in the canal, then threw his makeshift bandage after it. Making sure nobody saw him leave the alleyway, he turned into Valkenburger Straat with his hands in the air.
‘I surrender,’ he called out in German. ‘I’ll go to the Collection Point.’
As two Moffen took him at rifle point to Jonas Daniel Mayer Plein, Ben Bril husbanded his strength, the way he had been taught to do, during a bout. He gathered every scrap of will in his being. He was going to survive this war. However long it took, whatever happened to the people he knew, to the world itself; he, Ben Bril, was going to be alive at the end of it.
*
Manny and Joel Cosman went to see Marinus Glim, at his ground-floor room in Jodenbree Straat. Glim’s cousin, Hollander, was with him. They had both packed suitcases. They were sitting, washed up, on Glim’s bed, prepared to leave, but putting off the moment. Outside, an Orpo megaphone announcement from the roadblock at the end of Jodenbree Straat was telling all young males to pack one suitcase and report to Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein.
‘We were thinking of giving them a bloody nose,’ Joel said, laconically. ‘Manny and me.’ Manny still had his stave, which he waved in ironic greeting. Joel had abandoned his – preferring to use his fists. The dried blood on his face gave him a piratical look.
Marinus Glim stood up, appearing to swell in the tiny room. He was only slightly shorter than Lard Zilverberg, and if anything, even heavier. ‘That’s the best news I’ve had all day,’ he said.
‘A new cure for toothache,’ Manny murmured, referring to the cousins’ stall, selling toothache cure.
Nobody laughed.
They could hear the Moffen in the next building. Manny looked out the window. He watched them herding young Jewish men into groups, hands behind their heads, then leading them off, under the control of one armed guard, toward the Collection Point. One young Jew, in a long tweed jacket and a peaked cap, made a break for it. A dog handler released one of the Alsatians, which had been straining at the leash. It caught him in seconds and brought him down. He was brought back to the main group.
The Moffen were coming into their building – they could hear them. There was a rap on the door. Marinus opened. There were two of them. Marinus and Joel leaped forward and dragged them into the room. Manny swung his stave and caught one on the knee. Hollander shoved the other one against the wall, where Marinus laid into him, beating him bloody. Joel smashed the other one, again and again, face-body-face.
Manny had never seen Joel like this. Joel deserved it, Manny thought. So did the Mof.
There were shouts and cries from outside.
‘Come on,’ Marinus called. ‘Out the back way.’
They got out through a landing window, dropping down to an alleyway, hoping to make their way through to Waterloo Plein.
‘Walk,’ Joel hissed at the others. ‘Don’t run. Manny, drop the stave.’
Manny dropped it. He and Joel went left at the end of the alley, across a patch of scrub. Joel m
otioned Hollander and Glim to go right. Manny lost sight of them. As they walked toward Waterloo Plein, they nearly walked into three helmeted Moffen with fixed bayonets.
The guns turned toward them. Manny and Joel put their hands up.
*
Lard Zilverberg could just see the overvalwagens and the Orpos who had blocked off the top end of Batavia Straat, as he leaned out the window. He fired again, hitting the overvalwagen. He had the satisfaction of seeing a scared looking Dutch police driver trying to start the vehicle, to pull it back, and failing.
Lard was surprised they hadn’t tried to storm him. He guessed they wanted to avoid any more casualties – it would look bad. They had sent up a sniper to the top floor of the tenement opposite him. The sniper had fired one round into the Terveen flat from the fire escape, then ducked into the flat opposite and fired single shots from there, whenever Lard leaned out of the window. His shots made a high-pitched pinging sound, very different from the dull cough of the rifles Lard had taken from the dead Mof.
There was a flash of light from the tenement opposite, and a bullet pinged into the wall above his head. Lard glanced at the pearly sky, then fired back. A Mof in Wehrmacht field-grey slumped out of the window, the weight of his body pinning his rifle to the sill. Lard glanced up at the sky again. ‘Thank you, God,’ he said.
*
Over two-hundred infantry troops from the SS 4th Regiment rolled in from Zandvoort and Amersfoort in the early evening. They mustered in Rembrandt Plein, just outside the Jewish Quarter, until their tank had been brought up. This vehicle, a six ton Panzer I, rolled at walking pace over the Blaauw Brug into Waterloo Plein, followed by black-uniformed SS infantry on foot, with fixed bayonets.
The tank headed for the centre aisle of the Jewish Market, then steered slightly right, flattening every stall in its path. The troops behind pulled down any stalls that remained, smashing them with rifle butts, occasionally stopping to steal watches, jewellery or any other portables that took their fancy. Nothing of the market was left standing.
About half-way along, the tank opened fire with one of its two machine guns, spraying the tenements around the square indiscriminately with bullets. One of the houses hit had once been the home of Baruch Spinoza. It was now occupied by a dry-goods merchant by the name of Isaak Kramer, who had come to Holland from Germany, in 1938.