The Last Jews in Berlin

by Gross, Leonard;

  In the first days on their own, both Ruth and her mother had been so frightened that they could not bring themselves to venture into the street. They would rise early and eat a meager breakfast. While Ruth sewed, Anna would clean the house and prepare food if they had it. Often they would go without lunch. Inevitably the day came when they had to risk a trip to the market, where they nervously bought a few turnips and potatoes with small bits of the money they had taken with them into exile. From then on, Mother went out only when she absolutely had to. Ruth’s work, however, required that she leave the apartment more and more frequently—a fact of life that was as much a blessing as it was a danger. As she had known it would, the sewing machine had become their means of survival. Soon after she and Mother had moved into the Pankow apartment, word spread that there was a clever woman who could tailor very well. Before long she had all the customers she could handle, all of them happy to have someone fashioning the materials their husbands were bringing in from the conquered lands.

  Whenever either Ruth or her mother went out, whether it was to pick up work or procure food, they carried all their money with them. It was a precaution against the possibility that they might be followed and therefore not be able to return to their sanctuary, or that the sanctuary itself might be discovered while they were away.

  Every trip to the market was a gamble. Some of their food they bought on the black market, but Ruth hated to do it, certain that it had been the address book of a black marketeer that had brought them to the Gestapo’s attention the previous November. Once a week a bakery woman in the Fasanenstrasse would give Ruth a loaf of bread. Another merchant would give her vegetables. Although the shopkeepers never spoke about it, Ruth knew that they were anti-Nazis. The people who didn’t overcharge you were always those opposed to the regime.

  As each day passed and nothing happened, Ruth’s fantasy mechanism gradually became charged again and she could repress those awful memories that could destroy her will to resist. She had had one horrible relapse. A Belgian she knew had sold her a small radio. Each night Ruth would put the radio under her pillow and listen to the BBC and the Russian broadcasts. One night the Russians reported that the Nazis had been killing Jews in gas chambers and cremating their remains. Smoke was pouring from the crematoria chimneys, the Russians said. Ruth refused to believe it. She couldn’t accept that Kurt Thomas would be killed in this way. She could not accept that Germans would be capable of such monstrosities.

  But given her good fortune relative to other Jews, it was difficult for Ruth not to feel that she was living life in a protective bubble. Except for the fact that she was an illegal, being sought by the Gestapo, her existence was in truth no different from the average Berliner’s. She walked the streets, took streetcars, shopped and from time to time even visited with friends. On streetcars men would stand and offer her their seats, even as they had before she had gone illegal.

  Often Ruth would work in her customers’ homes, and though she never told them that she was Jewish, she suspected that some of them knew. It was not insignificant that she never heard any discussions of the Jews, let alone an anti-Semitic remark, even though she was certain that some of her customers were Nazis. At that time only Nazis could afford the exquisite materials that Ruth worked on, and could pay for her work with food. They never asked her for her papers, because they were only too happy to have someone sewing for them, especially someone with Ruth’s flair for design. If her customers offered her a choice of payment in either money or food and ration stamps, Ruth would choose the food and ration stamps. Between those payments and the food her friend Hilde Hohn was supplying, Ruth and her mother soon had enough to eat.

  Hilde had an advantageous job. She was in charge of arranging documents and licenses for imports on behalf of a chain of small markets. So she had access to food. In addition, she traveled every weekend to the old manor house of her husband’s parents and brought back supplies of food. Five persons, including Ruth and her mother, counted on her to supplement their diets. Ruth paid for what Hilde brought her, but there was always a little something extra from Hilde’s in-laws, along with a message that they were praying for her to their patron saint, Saint Anthony.

  Ruth and Hilde saw a great deal of each other. As they had suspected from their first encounter, they were very much alike. Both were young and pretty and chic. Ruth made a dress for Hilde of dark blue and pink silk, with slightly puffed sleeves, a pink yoke, a dark blue bodice with a full skirt and three pink bands near the hem. Hilde was ecstatic. Twirling in front of the mirror, she announced, “I am the best-dressed woman in Berlin.” A few days later Ruth accompanied Hilde on a drive to Gatow, a small community alongside the Havel River, on the southern outskirts of the city.

  It was episodes such as this one that made Ruth believe she was secure. She became bolder and bolder. One day while she was in Berlin she decided on an impulse to go to a concert. Heart hammering, she bought a ticket and went inside. Memories flooded over her, carrying away the realization that she was the only Jew in the audience. The old concert crowd, the one she’d seen at concerts before the Nazis came to power, was gone. In its place were men in uniform and their women. I am as strange to them as they are to me, Ruth persuaded herself. I am secure.

  But she could not quiet her heart. She was simply too excited. She couldn’t remember the last time she had heard a live concert. The radio was a meager substitute, its sound small and scratchy. And the selections! Light operas and operettas, Johann Strauss at least once a day—a menu dictated partially by the exclusion of music composed by Jews, partially by the demand on the part of listeners weary of war work and air raid alarms for music to help them relax. Only on Sunday evening was there a good classical concert by either the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonic, but their programs were limited by the one-hour length of the program. Only rarely were long or challenging works performed.

  This concert was a traditional one—Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Haydn. Sadly Ruth noted the absence of music by such Jews as Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer. During the intermission Ruth remained in her seat. To stand or walk about would be to invite attention. She made it a point not to notice any interested males. Once when she looked to her left she saw a man staring at her. She had seen that stare a thousand times. It had nothing to do with suspicion; it was an announcement that said, “You attract me.” She looked away.

  After the concert Ruth departed quickly. But her success encouraged her to go again, and soon she was a frequent listener at concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic. Each time she went she would sit in a different place, in order to be certain that she was not seen more than once by season-ticket holders. Some tickets she would buy herself, but many she received as gifts from the desk clerks at the Central and Adlon hotels. They had known her for many years, from the time when the store was a place to send their guests. Ruth was certain that they knew she was Jewish. But they never discussed the matter. It was much easier to pretend ignorance.

  Each time Ruth came to the center of the city she would look at the billboards to see if there was a good opera or concert being given. She went often to the opera until it was bombed, and to recitals, and most of all to films. She didn’t think about the danger. She was very well dressed—better dressed, actually, than many of the people in the audiences—so she knew that she looked as if she belonged. Other than the interested looks from men, she never had any feeling that people were staring at her. She was never asked for papers—happily, because she had none to show. When she saw an S.S. patrol she would simply circle around it.

  Ruth’s sorties into the cultural world upset Anna terribly. She was afraid that Ruth would be caught; moreover, she felt much safer when Ruth was with her. On two occasions Ruth coaxed her mother into accompanying her, arguing that the safest place for them was the streets, that the safest course was to act normally. But Anna was too uncomfortable to enjoy herself, and besides, she didn’t have the interest in music that her daughter did.

  For Ruth,
music was as much sustenance as food. For a few hours she could be like a child with forbidden sweets, daring to fill herself with the past she had trained herself to forget, to remember how life had been, to connect again with that time when fantasy and reality were synonymous. She could live for weeks on the memory of a concert. Those small moments gave her the equilibrium she needed when life did not go as she wished.

  How that standard had changed! Once life, to be lived well, meant comforts, stimulation, lively company, a decent home—in Schöneberg, perhaps—frequent family reunions, success in business, personal growth, religious observance, leisure time, vacations in Baden-Baden and, of course, a marriage. Now all notions of the good life were compressed into a single word: survival. And not just her own—her mother’s as well.

  Six months had passed without incident since Ruth had learned that she was being sought by a catcher, but she was still always on her guard. Whenever she could she would avoid such streets as the Kurfurstendamm, where the Gestapo frequently checked papers. She had no plan for dealing with a sudden request to see her papers. She just watched out and tried not to think about it. On one occasion, however, she did have a close call—in, of all places, her own apartment building. The air raid warden for her block, a man named Knoll, lived on the floor below. He was a gaunt old man with white hair, and rather hard of hearing. Frequently Ruth would have to arouse him on her way to the bomb shelter, even though it was his duty to get the residents of the block into the shelter.

  As block warden, Knoll had the right to inspect papers, and several times he asked Ruth for hers. Each time she told him the same story she had told Frau Otto when she rented the apartment: she had a house in Schöneberg and needed to retain her registration there in order to retain her rights to the home. But Knoll kept asking, and it was increasingly evident that the original story would not satisfy him much longer. So Ruth improvised ever wilder stories. First she told him that she was living with a man who was not her husband and that she was putting Knoll on his honor as a gentleman not to breathe a word of it, because she was certain that Frau Otto would not approve. Still the questions persisted. Finally Ruth spent a restless night thinking up a story, and the next day told it to Knoll.

  She worked, she said, for the Gestapo. She was living here under an alias so that she might carry on her affair. Her real residence was in a pension in the Nymphenburger Strasse. The subterfuge was simply to protect her aunt—Frau Otto—who would never forgive her for having an affair. Again she called on Knoll to keep her secret. He assured her that he would. Just to be sure, Ruth called the pension she had referred to and alerted the woman who ran it, who was her friend, and who did have a boarder living there who worked for the Gestapo. If anyone came to check, she was to alert Ruth, who would then flee from the Pankow apartment. But no one came, and Knoll stopped asking questions.

  And then, just as Ruth was beginning to believe that she had developed a feeling for danger and had learned to avoid it, she and danger came face to face.

  She had set out one ominous afternoon to visit Hilde, whose office was a few hundred yards from the Bülowstrasse U-Bahn station—one of the U-Bahn’s few elevated sections—near the center of the city. Black clouds moved over the city, heralded by thunder. By the time her train reached the station, it seemed that night had fallen. As Ruth walked toward Hilde’s office she saw a familiar-looking man coming her way, a young, handsome man she remembered from the Jewish community. For a moment she thought, What a pleasant surprise! and was about to smile and say hello when she realized that she must be within ten feet of her catcher.

  Ruth’s expression froze and she looked away, but not before noticing that the man had noticed her. She began to move faster. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the man had changed direction and was following her. She wanted to run, but knew that she shouldn’t. Suddenly the clouds burst. Torrents of rain lashed the streets. It was a heaven-sent excuse for hurrying. Ruth raced to Hilde’s office.

  “My God, look at you,” Hilde said.

  Ruth blurted out her story and asked if she could remain overnight in the office.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Hilde said. “We’ll leave together. As long as you’re with me, nothing will happen.”

  Ruth didn’t believe her, but she had no alternative. Together they walked to the U-Bahn station. Ruth did not see the catcher, but she was positive he was following them.

  They took the train to the Bahnhof Zoo, where Ruth was to transfer to a train for Pankow. Hilde walked her up the stairs, crowded with commuters going home. At the top of the steps Ruth bolted to the other side of the stairway and, head down, followed the crowd going down. Hilde kept on walking—luring away anyone who was still following Ruth.

  A minute later Ruth boarded another train. She didn’t know where it was going. She didn’t care. She had lost her pursuer.

  21

  THERE WERE TWO ironic compensations for his capture and incarceration in the deportation center on the Grosse Hamburger Strasse for Willy Glaser. The first was that he had been permitted to take a bath, the first he had had since going into hiding ten months before. He had been so dirty that a crust had formed on his skin. The second compensation was warm food. The food, prepared by a Jewish woman, Frau Harpruder, wasn’t good by normal standards, but Willy savored every bite.

  The compensations, however, were of little comfort. Willy knew why he was there. It would be only a matter of time before he was on his way to Auschwitz.

  Several days passed without incident. Willy spent hours looking out the barred window of his room, watching the guards play soccer. The building backed onto the oldest Jewish cemetery in Berlin. It was overgrown now, with many of the gravestones lying on their sides, but it had once been the burial place of the most important Jews in Berlin. It was said that Moses Mendelssohn, the great scholar and philosopher who lived in the time of Frederick the Great, was buried in the cemetery. Mendelssohn had translated the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, into German. He had also been—yet another irony—a leading proponent of German-Jewish assimilation.

  The guards were playing in a clearing and laughing very loudly. It wasn’t the kind of laughter you normally associated with soccer. Then the play moved Willy’s way, and suddenly he understood why they were laughing, and he had to bite hard on his lip to keep from crying out. It was not a ball the guards were kicking; it was a human skull.

  Six days after his capture Willy got his transportation number to Auschwitz. “I’m not giving up yet,” he told one of the other prisoners. “If I get a chance I’ll try something. I’d rather have a bullet in me than be shipped to Auschwitz.”

  The other prisoner, a reed of a man, also in his forties, eyed Willy critically. “I’d like to come along,” he said at last. “I have money outside. If we make it we can live well.”

  “That’s great,” Willy said. “I have no money at all.”

  The day before the transport was scheduled to depart, the guards took the prisoners outside to exercise in the cemetery.

  “Now’s our chance,”. Willy whispered to the reedy man.

  But the man shook his head. “I can’t,” he whispered back.

  Willy nodded. “I’ve got a coat and a briefcase back in the basement. Take them with you,” he said.

  The guards made them line up and count off and then sent them marching around the cemetery. Once, twice, three times they went around. By now the guards were off in a small group, talking, laughing, kicking the skulls, not watching the prisoners any longer. As they passed some shrubs Willy darted through them and toward the cemetery wall. He saw a headstone next to the wall. His senses were so clear he even noted that the inscription was in memory of a couple. He put his foot on the headstone and vaulted to the top of the wall. He heard no shouts and he did not look back. Seeing a garbage can on the other side of the wall, he accepted it as yet another sign that his life was charmed. He jumped onto the can, and then to the ground, and ran to the fir
st door he saw. Then he raced through a corridor and out into the street. He knew exactly where he was—on the Oranienburger Strasse, not far from an S-Bahn station. He walked as rapidly as he could without running to the station. The minutes that he waited for the train were the longest in his life. He could feel his throbbing temples and his banging heart.

  Finally the train came and Willy got in. He rode over viaducts, arches and bridges, through tunnels and forests and along canals and rivers—stunning views, all of them, of what had once been a magnificent city. Now it was being ground to pieces by the Allied bombs. As frightened and self-absorbed as he was, Willy could not help but be shocked by the devastation he saw from his vantage point on the elevated S-Bahn. How right he had been: it would take a bloody war to finish Hitler. Well, they had it now, their “total war,” these crazy Nazis. When would they learn they had lost?

  When the S-Bahn reached the Tempelhof station, Willy Glaser got off.

  On November 17, 1943, a Wednesday, Fritz Croner set out from his store residence in Halensee to deliver some gems to a jeweler friend. It was a warm day for November in Berlin. He walked slowly, limping, swinging his right leg ahead with the help of his cane. As he moved along the crowded Kurfürstendamm in the direction of the Olivaer Platz, he felt completely at ease. For months now his limp and his cane had been his unstated answer to any questions in the minds of passersby. The trick, he had learned, was to walk the streets as though you had every right to be on them. At first it had required a monumental effort of will to do that, but now he felt so absorbed by the city and its multitudes that he was certain his inner confidence expressed itself in his face. His sense of security was such that in recent months he and Marlitt had even gone to restaurants and movies.

  And why shouldn’t he be confident? The war was going his way. A permanent reddish haze hung over the city from the smoke of the incessant fires set by the incendiary bombs—proof, if such were still needed, of the ability of the English to bomb Berlin at will. It was only a matter of time, he thought. The war would end and he would be free. In the interim he was sure he could survive. His black market contacts were the strongest they had ever been. His jewelry business was thriving. Most important, the Croners’ two hiding places had met the test of time. He was secure in Halensee, and Marlitt and Lane, with their official identification papers, had been accepted without question by their new neighbors at Bayerische Strasse 5. The papers themselves had held up under scrutiny when Lane, her eyes injured by flying fragments during a raid, had to be taken to a hospital for treatment. Given the realities of Nazi Germany for a Jew, Fritz could, and did, thank God for his good fortune.