And I think it was Miller, no Müller was his name, the German, the main one. ‘Juden raus!’ I haven’t spoken that name since I was a child. More than fifty years ago. Yes, because I remember how everybody was saying Müller, Müller, and it has stuck to my mind that it was Müller.
‘Juden raus,’ he screamed.
XIX
‘I was white as chalk,’ he says.
‘My whole body trembled. I went home as white as chalk but because I was the SS Commander I couldn’t run away.’
So Hermann Müller had to remain there to watch, dressed in a white uniform-jacket which afforded relief when the midday sun was at its most intense.
‘I had to remain there,’ he informs his post-war accusers in a Stuttgart courtroom.
A witness observed how he remained and kicked a baby with his foot from the loading ramp of a lorry. His whip came down on the head of a woman who attempted to help—perhaps it was the mother—but the child was left lying helplessly on the pavement, his arms and legs flailing.
‘I believe I have never come home so depressed. I am a man, but I cried at home because of the fact that this was expected of me.’
Another SS colleague remembers that Müller did not merely watch. On one occasion he reserved for himself the privilege of shooting three young naked Jewish women.
‘I was a slave to the SS and I had committed myself to these things with part of me saddened and with inner torment. What we did was brutal, cruel and inhumane. Yes, how can one stand that? I can’t describe my inner feelings.’
His colleagues described him as a ‘bloody Jew-hater’: the man who forced my mother and her family from their tiny hiding hole that day.
Hermann Müller’s rise within the ranks of the SS was rapid and meteoric.
The son of a petty merchant. Eight brothers and sisters. Born and raised in Essen.
An ordinary German.
By 1931 he was an SS officer. After Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933 he assumed full-time employment with the Essen Nazi Party, his credentials enhanced by three light sentences received for committing petty acts of violence in the name of the Führer. His contribution to the party was rewarded with promotions and the prestigious golden insignia—the Death’s Head ring and the honorary dagger of the Storm Troopers.
He might never have arrived in Tarnopol had his problems with women not intruded on his career. There was firstly the divorce from his own wife in 1941, after six years of marriage and the birth of two daughters, followed in June 1941 by a severe reprimand for incorrectly treating a woman whose husband was serving in the navy. Such peccadilloes, in Himmler’s view, were ‘unworthy of the SS’, and led to penal procedures against Müller, followed by a transfer to Lwów as head of the Security Services. During October or November 1941 he arrived in Tarnopol. There he ruled as head of the region’s Security Police, with one technical limitation, forbidding him ‘to undertake any commanding capacity in executive actions’. These restrictions, however, were purely theoretical. As his superior in Lwów reported, Müller continued to bear the duty, as head of the external branch of Tarnopol, ‘to carry out executive actions’. These executive actions, moreover, were carried out ‘according to the rules’ and to the ‘complete satisfaction’ of the Police Leader in Lwów.
‘Executive actions’ is not a phrase my mother would have used to describe Hermann Müller’s work. She remembers: screaming, the sound of shots, mothers separated from their children.
‘It was one town or one place after the other. How should I remember exactly after twenty-five years? There were too many Aktions.’
Forty-one, to be precise; with a death toll in the Tarnopol region of at least 40,000 Jews.
XX
Then one day the head of the Wierzbnik Jewish community came to us and said: ‘We have your father’s ash.’
That was it. His ash.
‘What do you mean, his ash?’ we asked.
And he explained. ‘He’s dead.’
And all I remember is that it came to us, a little box with ash, and also his clothes, sent to our home. Was it him? We didn’t know. We made a funeral, attended by the whole town, but I didn’t go because I was too sick. The doctor wouldn’t let me go when we buried his ash, because I had fallen in a frozen lake the day before. Maybe it wasn’t him anyway. Maybe they just tricked us, maybe to scare us. A friend once told me that they sent home his father’s ash, and after the war he came back from the dead. But I remember seeing my father’s clothes. I don’t know what happened to him, but it must have been winter. There was snow, and I fell into a hole. Then they buried the ashes. That was it. I had no father.
So he lights a candle in memory of his parents on the Day of Atonement. ‘It’s their yortseit,’ he casually says, as he kindles the twenty-four hour anniversary candle which rests in a glass he is careful to place on a silver tray. He has finished eating the feast my mother prepares in preparation for the extended fast, but still manages a piece of light sponge cake and a cup of tea with lemon and honey. ‘Ahhh,’ he says in satisfaction when he takes his final sip, ‘I’ve eaten enough to keep me going till next year.’ He leaves the two candles burning on the kitchen table alongside my mother’s candles, and heads off to synagogue in time for the prayer which ushers in Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. ‘For our sins,’ he beats his clenched fist against his breast during the evening’s liturgy. At home, the flames leave a slight impression in the candle which will burn until the blowing of the ram’s horn the following night.
‘Why on Yom Kippur?’ I once asked him. He did not know, but my mother told me that it was because the dead souls of our ancestors were being invited to testify in heaven on our behalf. ‘Don’t be in a rush to find your own witnesses,’ she quickly added, ‘I hope we live biz hindert in tsvontsik.’ One hundred and twenty, like the years of Moses’ life, is the magic number for Jews, effectively meaning forever.
By the time my father is ready to leave for synagogue in anticipation of the morning memorial service, the candle has burned down into the lower parts of the glass, leaving a trace of oil where the solid white cast had formerly risen. It was always so, year in, year out, for as long as I remember. Fire and oil, the body and the soul. What was, is, what is, was.
Like the esh tamid, the eternal flame which once burned in the Jerusalem Temple. Except when the Temple was destroyed, then there was no dwelling for the flame. So the fire was moved to Houses of Prayer, to myriad synagogues that sprang up in all the lands where Jews were exiled, through the centuries, in Spain, Germany, Morocco, Poland, down to this very day. Now it is no longer a flame, but an electrical lamp whose globes are maintained by a synagogue beadle. Memory in a glass bulb: remembrance of God, of His perfect Temple, and of His promise of redemption when all the dead souls will be resurrected.
Jews do not remember with flowers; their petals wither on the grave as if the corpse is a temporal thing, no more than food for ravenous termites.
Jews do not remember with mirrors but cover them with a cloth during the first seven days after death; as if what we see in our reflection is what we are.
Jews remember with stones. Rocks and pebbles placed on the gravestone; impenetrable, mysterious, eternal.
And Jews remember with words; with the Word, which is studied by the living, in the name of the dead, daily, in a yearly cycle, which once ended begins again.
My mother-in-law understood the meaning of eternity. Before she died she cooked a steaming pot of chicken soup as she had always done before the Sabbath. This, her last libation, she placed in the freezer. After we buried her, we ate the soup, crying with each mouthful.
Perhaps we should have left it in the freezer, to remain for ever like the esh tamid.
During the memorial service, I am not allowed to stay in the synagogue. ‘Tuy, tuy,’ my mother mutters, warding off the evil eye. ‘You have nothing to remember. Not yet.’
So after the rabbi’s sermon, I joined the gathering outside the syna
gogue doors, where circles of the unorphaned huddle to talk about the football, the hunger, last week’s movie, while inside they recite: ‘May God remember the soul of …’ followed by a vacant space, to be filled in with personal remembrances of a mother, a father, sometimes a child snatched away before his time. Each memory is to be named, so and so the son of so and so; or so and so, the daughter of so and so. ‘Let their memory be bound up in the bond of life. Amen.’
I turn to the archives to fill the blank spaces in my father’s prayers:
Leib Bekiermaszyn, the son of Israel-David Bekiermaszyn. Jude. Pole.
Born in Szydłowiec, 3 March 1900.
Died at the age of forty.
Not today. Today is not his yortseit, his death anniversary. He should have his own day; a private one, a special space on the kitchen table for his flame to flicker in memory of that moment.
The day is 6 December 1940; winter in Buchenwald.
The roll-call has been completed and the corpse carriers have gathered the day’s dead; there are numbers to be redistributed, barracks to be reorganised, a new transport to be greeted and processed.
Tak tak tak.
An officer attached to the Camp Records Office is tapping his fingers against a typewriter, entering numbers on to a sheet of paper to be presented to the Camp Commandant, Karl Koch:
Total on 6.12.1940 7496
Going: 11
Coming: 2
__________________________
Total on 7.12.1940 7487
A deficit of nine. Nine free numbers to be distributed amongst the new arrivals before resorting to unused ones. On another sheet of paper the officer is typing the missing numbers:
The officer completes his assessment with the following analysis: of eleven departures from the camp, seven can be accounted for by reason of death. They are: 6828, 2236, 6923, 7027, 5503, 4674, 7024, 5170.
Tak tak tak. The Jewish prisoner population of Buchenwald at the start of the winter of 1940 constitutes sixteen per cent of all lives, but thirty-nine per cent of all deaths.
This makes a deficit of twenty-three per cent.
Tak tak tak.
It is recorded in the camp crematory book:
Prisoner Number 5503, the clerk signs.
Leib Bekiermaszyn.
Cremation Number 483. Burned on 17 December.
His ashes are in an urn. His tombstone, sitting on a shelf in the Buchenwald crematory; in a mobile crematorium, temporarily constructed while the permanent structure awaits completion. It was, said Himmler, the best antidote to the spread of epidemics. Burn them, but not before a series of medical experiments had been conducted by SS doctors. Remnants of the bodies fall on to the parade ground; scattered limbs clog up the sewerage system. They are the fallen victims of undernourishment, tuberculosis, suicide, or execution. Finally, when the day’s burning is complete, a handful of ashes is thrown into a row of urns, each of which is identified by a label which purports to represent the life once moulded from this cloud of dust.
Number 483.
Prisoner 5503.
Then comes the cruel charade, practised in numerous concentration camps until the spring of 1941, when such niceties were discarded in the face of accumulated mountains of blackened earth. A typed letter is sent to the family at home:
Dear Mme. Bekiermaszyn,
Your husband Leib Bekiermaszyn died on 6 December 1940. I extend to you my sincere sympathy on this loss. Mr. Bekiermaszyn was brought to the hospital with grave symptoms of exhaustion and complained of breathing difficulties and pains in the chest. In spite of having given him the best medicines, it was unfortunately not possible to save the patient’s life. The deceased did not express any last wishes.
The Camp Commandant,
SS Major Karl Koch.
The letter is sent on 30 December 1940 to the Starachowice Security Police at a cost of 0.60 Reichsmark. It is accompanied by a parcel which contains a cap, a pair of shoes, socks, trousers, a coat, two shirts, underwear and a pile of black dust contained in an urn labelled four-eight-three.
The remnants of Leib Bekiermaszyn, restored to his widow Hinda and her children, Baruch, Yossl, Marta, and Yenta.
Wierzbnik’s first Jewish victim.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
It is five minutes past seven, the stars brighten the sky, and the sound of the ram’s horn bleats through the synagogue where my father sits with a glass of whisky and a piece of honey cake suspended between his hand and his mouth. On the kitchen table at his home, the flame expires into a puddle of oil at the bottom of the glass resting on a silver tray; total blackness.
Tak tak tak.
XXI
Tuesday, 27 October 1942, Wierzbnik.
‘Left. Right. Left. Right. No, left.’
He has not wandered far from his house near the market-square when two men in uniform step up to Shloymele Szkop. They point a pistol at the cheder teacher’s head and he falls to the ground. Shloyme the Bucket remains lying there in his long black jacket.
Wierzbnik’s most notable Elder is standing at the centre of the crowded market-square alongside the community he governed for sixteen years. The man in uniform draws his pistol and fires.
They are running through Kolejowa Street in the direction of the market-square. An old man struggles through the alley opposite the Judenrat offices. ‘Damn Jew, can’t you run?’ He is shot in the head.
A younger man cries out, ‘Is there a God above?’ He is answered by a man in uniform who fires at him from a close distance.
‘Left. Right. Left. Left. Right.’
An elderly couple is walking arm-in-arm down Krótka Street. They reach the market-square and are greeted by a revolver. They fall to the ground and lie there until another uniformed officer approaches and fires more bullets into them.
The tailor is not selected for labour service. His talents are not valued by the SS guards. He is called out of line, hopeful that at the last moment he will be given a reprieve. He is shot in the chest. He calls for assistance before he dies.
A woman struggles to join those selected for work. She pulls her eleven year old daughter along. An SS guard notices. He shoots her. The daughter is pushed with a kick into the crowd destined for deportation.
‘Right. Right. Right. Left. Right.’
The infant is dressed in a light blue outfit. She has been separated from her family and sits alone in the market-square. A guard calls out to the child. She raises her head. She is dragged to an arch at the southern entrance to the square. He throws the child against the gate. He smashes her head.
A man is holding onto his twin children as they are dragged to the train station. The SS guards try to separate him so that he can join those selected to work. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I will stay with my family.’ He is led with his wife and four children to the sealed railway-car.
A Jew puts on his prayer shawl and marches to his death. Others recite the Shma: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is One.’
And what of Hinda, who in her husband’s absence must maintain control of the family shop? ‘Proprietor of food, glass, and porcelain shop,’ the taxation records for 1941 describe this valorous woman. What of Hinda and her four children?
‘Left. Right. Left. Right. Left.’
XXII
The round-up began in the morning and they started to shoot—dogs I remember, barking, biting—and they called all the Jews of Wierzbnik out from their houses. In the market-place, in front of our house, near our shop. I don’t know what date … what month … what year. People were scared, the dogs were chasing us, everyone was crying, and I was with my mother, my brother, and my two sisters, and we came outside on to the square. We could see thousands of people there, all Jews, and we watched the Germans search houses, in case someone was hiding, and then we heard shooting. After a while they called out: ‘Who wants to go to work? Who wants to be a volunteer for work?’ and my mother Hinda pushed me and my brother away and said, ‘You both go, go and
work.’ I never saw her again, or my sisters, but how could I know it at the time? We hugged, I kissed her, she said nothing. They took us away. They marched us, thousands of us, we marched, march … march … march.… For half an hour, one and a half hours, I don’t remember, a hall they took us into, how old was I? Thirteen? Fourteen? I don’t know. When was it? 1942? Or 1943? I don’t remember. They are beating people, and we come to a big hall, and they are beating us. I’m wearing shoes, I remember that, you know why? Because we had the boots made by a shoemaker in Wierzbnik, and we hid money in them in case something happened. But after we opened them to see if the money could help us, mine was there but my brother’s had disappeared. The shoemaker took it for himself. It was cold, winter, we had winter boots on, the ones with money sewn inside.
He says it was cold. Winter.
But it was warm. Autumn. That’s what they all say. ‘You all remember,’ writes someone from the same town. ‘You all remember that it was a hot day. It was the twenty-seventh day of October 1942.’
No one writes anything about my father’s shoes, but they all speak about the weather. He does not remember the heat. He recalls the boots placed over his feet to protect his soles from the cold.
It gnawed at me, the feeling that my father’s narrative had surrendered to forgetfulness.
The dogs, that part he remembered. He still remembers, and always crosses the street when a dog, of any size or colour, approaches. ‘Be careful,’ he would warn me when I went to play next door with Peppy the poodle.
The Fiftieth Gate Page 9