The Last Jews in Berlin

by Gross, Leonard;

  One of the prisoners stepped from the line, bent over Fritz and listened to his chest. “It’s his heart,” he told the officer.

  “Get him into my office!” the officer demanded.

  Several prisoners carried Fritz into the office of the commandant. He waited until Fritz opened his eyes and then he said, “Croner, I’ve got your money.”

  “What money?” Fritz said. “I gave you all my money when I came here.”

  The commandant smiled. “Here,” he said, opening his desk drawer. “I’ve got your five thousand marks.” He took out the money. “You were going to escape with this money, weren’t you? How? Whom were you going to bribe?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  But the Gestapo officer obviously thought that he was onto something big. If there was corruption in his administration, he would find out where it was. For this inquiry he needed a healthy witness. “Take him up to the sick bay,” he told the guards.

  As the guards led him away Fritz could not help thinking how ludicrous it was. He was too sick to go to Auschwitz! In a few days he would be murdered, but he was too sick to keep the appointment.

  The sick bay was on the third floor. It was a small room with two beds. A man of thirty and a little boy were lying on one of the beds. Between the beds was a window. Fritz walked to it. He could not believe his eyes. The window had no bars. He turned to the man, an obvious question on his face. The man nodded his understanding. “I couldn’t try it because of the boy,” he said. He reached under the mattress and began to pull out a homemade rope.

  “Wait!” Fritz whispered. He took a broom handle and inserted it through a handle on the door, so that anyone pulling on the door from the outside could not open it.

  The rope had been fashioned from strips of blanket. The moment he tugged at it, Fritz knew it would never hold. But there was more material. Fritz made another rope. Then he braided the two ropes together. As he worked he told the man about the transport that was scheduled to leave for Auschwitz in the morning. They agreed that they would try to escape that night.

  That evening the lights outside the building went out, and a few moments later Fritz could hear the drone of the approaching bombers. Soon the bombs were whistling down on the city. The first explosions sounded like the beat of muffled drums. The fires from the incendiary bombs slowly spread along the horizon, and the darkness of the night lifted like a curtain rising on hell. At ten o’clock Fritz opened the window very slowly and eased his head outside. The guards were gone—in their shelters, no doubt.

  There were several raids that evening. Each time a new wave of bombers came over, the explosions moved closer. Now all of the sky was red, and there were fires only a few blocks away. Several times during the raids Fritz peered out the window. There were no guards, and the street was empty.

  “We’ll go at two,” Fritz whispered. The man nodded. “I’ll go one way, you go the other,” Fritz said. They played a game from childhood to determine who would choose. The game was rock / scissors / paper. Fritz showed scissors. The man showed rock; rock dulls scissors, so he had won. He elected to go to the left.

  Fritz undid his belt and extracted two hundred marks from a secret pouch and gave it to the man. Then he gave him a fresh pair of socks from the supply that Marlitt had sent and told him to pull the socks over his shoes so that they would cut the scent.

  At a few minutes before two Fritz lashed the little boy to his father’s back. Then he eased the window open and nodded to the man. The man stepped over the sill. Even in the darkness Fritz could see the whites of his eyes. The little boy was also frightened, but he didn’t make a sound.

  As soon as the man reached the ground Fritz went over the side. They waited together on the ground for an instant. “Go,” Fritz whispered. The man disappeared to the left, the boy still on his back.

  Then Fritz began to run. It was as though all of his life he had been tied to the earth with ropes and they had suddenly been cut from his feet. The socks on his shoes muted his footfalls, but they echoed through the darkness nonetheless. He heard shouting behind him then, and knew the man and boy had been caught. The sounds drove him even faster. Five hundred yards from the building he ducked into a bombed-out house, found the cellar, and leaned against a wall, trying to still his breath. He could hear the dogs. Their barking grew stronger and stronger. They were no more than a hundred yards away now. He could no longer make a break for it—the dogs would run him down.

  Then, miraculously, the barking sounds receded.

  Fritz remained in the cellar for an hour. While he waited he used the scissors he had stolen from the barber to clip off his mustache. At last he went up to the street. The streetlights were out and there was no moon. He walked so close to the buildings that he brushed the walls with his shoulder. He walked for half an hour, moving south, until he was well out of the neighborhood. Only then did he go into a phone booth.

  He reached into his pocket for the ten-pfennig “souvenir” he had been given by the barber, placed it in the telephone and raised his finger to dial Makarow’s number.

  He could not remember the number. He had dialed it hundreds of times, but as much as his life depended on it, he could not remember it now.

  Only Makarow could get word to Marlitt; he, Fritz, would not dare jeopardize her and Lane by going directly to them. He would have to go to Makarow’s, he decided now. He would still be taking a risk, because Metz might have given the Gestapo Makarow’s name. But he had no other choice.

  He walked through the empty streets until he reached Makarow’s block. Fifty yards from his building he stopped. Were his eyes playing tricks or was that the glow of a cigarette in the dark? Fritz edged backward until he reached the corner. Then he walked around the block and approached the building from the other side. Once more he could see the tip of a cigarette, and now he saw a man. He turned quickly and walked away. Were those footsteps behind him? He walked faster. The footsteps sounded closer. He looked around. Two men were following him. He ran then, and they ran after him, but he had that feeling again that he had been cut loose from the earth, and he was sure they wouldn’t catch him unless they used a gun. He ran to the Hauptstrasse. A tram was coming down the tracks. It was not yet in service, on its way from the barn to where it would begin its run. Only a motorman was aboard; there was no conductor. Fritz ran into the street and jumped onto the open platform. Only then did he look back. His two pursuers had stopped running. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he recognized them. They were from the Grosse Hamburger Strasse building, privileged Jews, Mischlinge, perhaps, or Jews married to Gentile women. If so, they hadn’t been that interested in catching him. Had they been catchers, he would have been a dead man.

  Just then Makarow’s phone number flashed into his head. A few blocks farther on, Fritz dropped from the tram and telephoned. “It’s Fritz,” he said. “I escaped.”

  “Thank God.”

  “The Gestapo may be watching your house. Go see if anyone’s outside.”

  A moment later Makarow returned and told him no one was there.

  “Get in touch with Marlitt. Tell her I’m in Halensee. She’ll understand.” Even Makarow hadn’t known that Fritz had a hiding place there.

  The streets were filling now as the working day began. Fritz lost himself in the crowd and walked to Halensee. There he found the caretaker, who let him into the store after he explained that he had just returned from his engineering job in Poland and had forgotten his key. He drank several glasses of water. Then he undressed, put on his pajamas and lay down on the bed. An hour later a knock on the door awakened him. It was Marlitt. She fell into his arms.

  27

  THE GAME WAS ON in earnest now. No more loud singing of Hebrew prayers at night. No more capricious walks in the streets. No more restlessness translated into spontaneous trips to the railway station to meet Marushka. At last Hans was willing to take his enemy seriously, to see him for what he was. He knew that his lair h
ad been marked. Officially he no longer existed, but it would take only one insistent catcher or a Gestapo agent to remedy that.

  The first order of business after the catcher’s visit was to stop all traffic to the flat. At least ten illegals might show up the next day to get their ration cards. Marushka telephoned a friend, a Fraulein von During, and arranged a meeting. At the rendezvous she gave her a list of names and addresses. Each person she found was to receive the same message: “Stay away from the flat.”

  The next order of business was to get Hans away for a while, because Marushka was sure that the Gestapo would be back. She called friends who owned a home on the Lake of Ferch, near Potsdam. They agreed to shelter him. Now the problem was how to get him out of the house without being observed. They knew they were under surveillance. The morning after the catchers’ visit a man with a newspaper was standing under the streetlight across from the flat when Marushka left for the university in the morning. He was there again the next morning.

  On the third morning Marushka crossed the street and went up to him. “Look,” she said, “I’m quite late for an appointment. Your taxis are paid for by the Gestapo. Could you give me a lift?”

  For a moment the man looked at her incredulously. Then suddenly he grinned. “By all means,” he said.

  The next day he was back, but a day later he was gone. Were there others, in other places? They couldn’t take a chance. That weekend Hans slipped out the back and went through a passageway of a neighboring building that led to the cross street. For good measure, he took the dogs with him. Who would suspect a man who was walking his dogs?

  As it turned out, Hans had left just in time. That evening one of the cats tensed as she sat next to the kitchen window. Marushka looked out the window but saw nothing. She was fairly sure, however, that she heard what the cat had heard—the movement of people.

  Each evening for the next week the cat noticed something, and then Marushka would hear the noises. Finally she determined to put an end to whatever was going on. Early the next evening she went into the garden and rigged several trip wires. Then she poured hot water—which freezes very quickly—over the stone path. An hour later there was a tremendous thud and a lot of swearing. Marushka immediately called the police. They were there within minutes, confronting—along with a dozen neighbors—two agents of the Gestapo.

  A few days later the Gestapo dropped its surveillance. After a fortnight Marushka brought Hans home.

  Wilhelm Glaser had been raised in a religious home. He had been bar-mitzvahed in the Lindenstrasse synagogue. By 1920, however, his religious enthusiasm had lapsed considerably under the influence of scientific explanations of the creation of the universe and the arguments of his Marxist friends. But in the time since his life had come apart he had begun to pray once again, and he had prayed in recent months more than he ever had before. When misery is the greatest, God is the closest, he would tell himself.

  He was homeless once again. He had run through all of the safe houses Gilbert Mach could find him; friends of Mach’s had been willing to hide him for a night or two but not longer. And although Mach had found him a series of part-time jobs, he was currently unemployed and almost out of money. And yet, in the bitter cold of the winter of 1944, Willy was beginning to believe once more that he was being watched over by God. One could say that he had been lucky—but, then, the luck had to have come from somewhere. God must have apportioned him an extra share.

  There had been the day a few weeks after the destruction of the glazier’s shop when, achingly cold from a night of sleeping in the park, he had gone to a popular coffeehouse on the Moritzplatz. Drinking his coffee, and hungry for news of any kind, he had just gotten his turn at the Völkische Beobachter when he heard a voice say, “Let me see your papers.” He looked up slowly from the newspaper. A man from the Gestapo stood before a customer at the table next to his. Willy reached for his hat and briefcase, rose and, nodding to the Gestapo man, returned the newspaper to its rack. Then he walked from the coffeehouse and sauntered away, his body tensed for the command to halt that would hit him like a bullet in the back.

  Much later, when he had stopped shaking, Willy would conclude that it had been his choice of newspaper that had saved him. Since the advent of the Nazis the Völkische Beobachter had been Germany’s leading newspaper—which was not saying much. It had achieved some degree of sobriety since its prepower days as a cheap and lusty tabloid, and it did manage to contain some bits and pieces of real news—the reason that Willy had chosen it—but it was still a party-line newspaper. If you were a member of the Nazi party, or even a nonparty member who wished to demonstrate your devotion to the state, you read the Völkische Beobachter. Seeing Willy with the newspaper, the Gestapo man must have assumed that he was loyal to the cause.

  Another day, waiting for a train at an S-Bahn platform, Willy was aghast to see two soldiers with dogs appear on the platform. It was part of the dreaded Kettenhunde patrol, which combed the streets for deserters. One of the soldiers looked Willy’s way, then turned and spoke to his companion. The two of them started down the platform with the dogs. Just then the train rolled in. Willy got on board, waited until he saw the soldiers board another car, and stepped out of his car as the doors were closing.

  But Willy’s best break by far was his chance encounter with a woman at the workshop of a tailor named Lowental. He went to Lowental’s shop every so often to deliver some textiles he had managed to acquire on the black market. From time to time Lowental let him spend the night on his cutting table. One day, just as Willy was leaving, the woman came in to Lowental’s shop. “Who is that man?” she asked the tailor. He replied that Willy was in essential war work. Hearing this, the woman turned at once to Willy. “Sir,” she said, “my husband is in the army, I live alone with my daughter, and I’m deathly afraid of the air raids. I assume you live in a furnished room. Perhaps you would like to move in with us.”

  Willy could scarcely believe his luck, but in his wildest dreams he couldn’t imagine the reception that awaited him when he arrived at five o’clock that evening. There on the table was the best dinner he had seen in years.

  That night he slept in the woman’s bed, with her daughter between them. If it was a precaution on the woman’s part, it was needless, because she was so unattractive he did not even consider sex. In the morning she gave him coffee and rolls, and then made him some sandwiches on the assumption that he was going to work. Dutifully Willy left, spent the day walking around, and returned that night.

  It went on like that for several weeks. Each night they would undress in the kitchen and go to sleep to the sound of music on the radio. When the air raid alarm sounded, Willy led them to the shelter. The woman marveled at his courage and was more than content with their bargain.

  Then one day her husband returned. He was not the least bit bothered that a man had been sleeping in his bed. In fact, he expressed his gratitude to Willy for taking care of his family.

  But then, once more, Willy Glaser was homeless.

  28

  SINCE AUGUST 1943 young Hans Rosenthal had been a conscientious spectator of the Allied bombers’ massive nightly attacks on Berlin. The attacks were the highlight of his existence, not because he wished ill-fortune for the mass of Berliners whose city was being destroyed, but because he knew that each attack brought the end of the war closer, and also because each night he could stand outside, under the fruit trees twenty feet from Frau Jauch’s house, and feel that he was free. He was absolutely certain that his presence would be unobserved. Not only did prudence dictate to the Germans that they remain in their shelters during air raids but the law forbade them to be on the streets. Of one thing he could be certain, Hans knew: Germans obeyed the law.

  In the last months, however, Hans too had been driven indoors, partially by the onset of winter, with its wet and penetrating cold, and also because the bombs were coming closer with every attack. Hans knew that a direct hit would kill him whether he stood in the garde
n or remained in the tool shack, and he was resigned to that, but he saw no point in shortening his odds by making himself a target for shrapnel.

  And then one night, as he huddled in his shack, a bomb came whistling down as though it were aimed at his head. It exploded no more than twenty yards from Frau Jauch’s house, in a corner of the garden. The explosion collapsed three houses around hers, but her own house remained standing. Only its windows were shattered. Hans was shaken but unhurt.

  To Frau Jauch it was clear that God had spared her house in order to save her Jew. Hans knew better: the explosion had created a vacuum that sheltered objects nearest it. But he said nothing.

  The next morning danger appeared, in a form far more threatening to Hans than the bombs. Two S.S. officials arrived to inspect the damage. As they walked from garden to garden Hans could hear their voices. Frantically he hid all objects in the room that might give away his presence, and then he crawled behind the couch and lay against the wall, an open knife in his hand.

  He had been there only a minute when the S.S. officers arrived at Frau Jauch’s house. They explained to her that if she wished to replace the windows they must first make out a request. “Please,” she said.

  The S.S. officers began to inventory the broken windows. “What about that one over there?” one of them said, pointing to the tool shed.

  “Yes, that one too,” Frau Jauch said.

  “Perhaps we should look inside,” the other S.S. man said then.

  “By all means,” Frau Jauch said as loudly as she dared.

  Hans’s grip tightened on the knife. If they find me, I’ll take at least one of them, he vowed.

  He heard their steps in the kitchen, and then he heard Frau Jauch pull aside the curtain and open the tool shed door. They were within five feet of him now.

  And then he felt the couch pressing hard against him. The S.S. men had sat down. He could hear papers rustling. One of the men must be making out a report, he concluded.