by Helen Burko
“I’m glad the prosecutor was once kept prisoner in a Nazi camp,” said Hannah to the blonde woman who sat there nervously and impatiently.
“Yes, he knows personally what they are and will do everything he can to put that spy in the electric chair,” added the blonde woman.
“Mathilda should have been put through the same tortures that the Germans visited upon us,” said the man on her other side as his eyes shone with the light of vengeance.
“I would have both her and her lover, who is now defending her, shot!” another man announced. “This has never happened before, a Jew defending a Nazi! My God! It’s a scandal, a shame, a disgrace!”
“How insolent she was when I recognized her,” said Hannah to the blonde woman who, from time to time, held nervously on to Hannah’s hand. “But you know her better than I do.”
The blonde woman wanted to say something, but Hannah continued. “If you had seen, Betty, how she pretended not to know me. She wanted to run away when I mentioned Majdanek, but I didn’t let her. Believe me, Betty, I had the urge to tear her clothes off and leave her naked as they did to us when they did their infamous medical experiments on us. I wanted her to feel like a test rabbit!”
“And someone like her had the nerve to marry a Jew!” said another lady who was listening to their conversation.
“That was the best way to save her skin,” said the woman Hannah had called Betty.
The discussion ceased when Mathilda was brought in by her two guards. All the eyes of the spectators turned to look at her.
“My God! It’s Mathilda! Mathilda! It’s her! It’s her!” shouted an excited Betty.
The bailiff shouted, “Quiet!” and warned them if the noise continued, the room would be cleared and the trial held behind closed doors.
The warning succeeded in quieting the spectators.
Mathilda sat down in her seat next to the table of the defense. She was pale, her blue eyes glancing at the spectators. No nervousness or anxiety was apparent in her expression, as if she thought the whole trial was beneath her or it was the trial of someone else. Only in her eyes was there a trace of confusion almost impossible to detect.
The suit she wore, which Jacob had brought to the prison, fitted her well and showed off her remarkable figure to perfection. The dark circles under her eyes gave her a look of a prima donna after a sleepless night, and while her mouth was pale, it was as full and provocative as always.
She rose and straightened her skirt as if she didn’t want it to wrinkle, as if she were waiting for her escort.
“My God! How elegant she looks!” said an excited Betty, feeling as if she were the defendant and not Mathilda. “Even her hairdo is the same! But then she was often wearing the Gestapo hat and uniform.”
“I can’t look at her calmly!” whispered Hannah. “I could easily shoot her as one would shoot a dog!”
Jacob’s mother, when she saw Mathilda, felt her headache growing worse and took a pill from her purse and swallowed it to ease the pain.
The Levines whispered to each other. Professor Gottheim stared, with great interest, at Mathilda’s every movement, and all kinds of psychoanalytical speculations went through his mind.
The prosecutor entered: Claude Alrist, about forty-five, a little stooped. His green eyes had a strong penetrating look, and his thick brows made his eyes look even stronger.
After him, carrying a case, came George Devoe, his assistant, about thirty, blond, looking more like a college lecturer. His movements were brisk and confident, even a little arrogant.
Directly following them came Jacob. Loud whispers were heard as he entered.
“That’s him! The defender of Nazis! Shame! A disgrace!”
The bailiff called the court to order again.
Jacob entered with a wry smile on his thin lips. He was wearing, like the others, a dark suit. His face was pale, his dark eyes flashed, and his look was confident but pensive.
“He looks like he’s the accused!” someone whispered as Jacob took his place at the table for the defense.
“Ahh, love…love!” someone else whispered.
“Will the court please rise!” the bailiff called, and they all rose as the judge, Carl Witner—about sixty, gray haired, sturdy, with a manner that aroused respect—entered in his black robe.
He sat down in his comfortable padded seat behind the high bench, and all the others in the court also seated themselves. There was complete silence in the room. The press sat in the jury box, as there was no jury yet. The photographers had been busy until now, but as the bailiff announced that the court was convened, they ceased their activity.
“Mathilda Krause,” thundered the voice of the prosecutor, “twenty-six years old, born in Bernau, Germany, accused of directly aiding the Nazis in the murder of millions of innocent citizens!”
When these words were heard, a soft sigh drifted in the air. Someone coughed nervously, but the spectators tried to be quiet so as not to miss a word.
“Mathilda Krause joined the Hitler Youth in 1936 and in 1939 joined the SS. In 1941, she was parachuted into Russia, where she acted as a successful spy for the Nazis and in this way aided, directly and indirectly, the German Nazi army to cause a greater amount of death and horror in Europe.
“After the war ended, in 1945, when there was no other way for Mathilda to save herself, after the German armies were defeated, she succeeded in disguising herself as a Jewish girl and lawfully marrying an American citizen, the attorney Jacob Barder.”
Claude Alrist described the great damage Mathilda had caused to the Allied Command in their struggle against Nazism and laid upon her shoulders the responsibility for the murder of millions of victims. He compared her to the war criminals who had been tried at Nuremberg and emphasized that, for those who had aided the Nazis, directly or indirectly, in their cruel atrocious acts, death was too easy a sentence.
After the reading of the accusation, Judge Carl Witner turned to Mathilda and asked her if she understood the statement of what she was accused of.
“It is all clear, Your Honor,” she said.
“Do you plead guilty or not guilty,” asked the judge, giving her a piercing look.
Mathilda glanced at Jacob, who sat quietly, and announced, “Not guilty, Your Honor!”
“The war criminals in Nuremberg gave the same not guilty plea,” said Hannah to Betty, and the murmur in the court increased.
The judge pounded his gavel for silence. After that, he turned to Jacob and asked if he had any comment.
“I have nothing to add,” he answered quietly.
The judge looked at his diary and suggested the trial be postponed for two weeks to give them a chance to prepare and to choose a jury.
The prosecutor requested a later date for the trial because he was still searching for additional witnesses, although he had succeeded already in finding one who knew Mathilda, not only in the camp but also at Mathilda’s home in Lublin, and he was looking for more. Of course he would give all the details to the defense. When she heard this, Mathilda looked at Betty Grasolska, sitting next to Hannah Rubin. Betty smiled at her somewhat sarcastically. Jacob noticed the exchange of glances and concentrated on Betty, who looked at him and smiled the same smile.
Since Jacob didn’t object to the postponement, they decided upon September 21.
“It doesn’t matter to me what date you set for the trial,” Jacob replied to the judge’s question on whether that date was convenient.
So the preliminary hearing ended, and after the bailiff told the people to rise again, the judge left the courtroom and the people dispersed, most of them unhappy with the postponement of the trial.
The guards came to take Mathilda back to the prison, while the noise and confusion increased with the reporters trying to get to everyone and the photographers blinding everyone with their flashes.
Jacob was also surrounded by newsmen and photographers who rained questions down on him.
“Do you hope to win th
is case?”
“Hope is for the discouraged,” Jacob said with a double meaning. The newsmen laughed and continued with their queries.
“Do you know about the new witness?”
“No, I don’t know her, but I’m sure there will be many more witnesses and important ones, too. But I have taken all that into consideration.”
They pestered him with more questions for a long time and wrote down every word he uttered.
When they prepared to leave the courtroom, the police guarded Jacob carefully. When he went to his car, people shouted after him.
“Shame! Shame! Disgraceful!”
When he reached his car, he saw written on it the words “Nazi! Defender of Nazis! Shame!” He smiled ruefully and drove home.
He just succeeded in closing the door after stepping into the apartment when his doorbell rang sharply.
He opened the door unwillingly and faced his parents and his friends, Eddie and Leonora, and Professor Gottheim and his wife.
“We followed you here, Son,” his father said in a tired voice. “In the courtroom we didn’t want to interfere while the newsmen were interviewing you, but now we want to talk to you. We fear for your life! If you had heard the threats of those former inmates! Their anger and their hatred!”
“Their anger and their hatred is justified!” Jacob replied and lit a cigarette. “But you have no reason to be afraid for me. I’ve faced dangers greater than those. You don’t need to come here to watch over me. But if you want a drink, that’s another story.”
He poured out drinks for everyone. Eddie and his wife sipped their drinks, but the other glasses remained untouched.
“We came to convince you to reverse your decision to defend her and instead of that to prosecute the…your…”
His father didn’t know whether to say “the Nazi” or “your wife,” so he didn’t finish the sentence.
“Yes, my wife, the Nazi spy!” Jacob finished for him. “You don’t have to hesitate. You can convince yourselves with what I told the newsmen and what will appear in tomorrow’s newspapers that I don’t deny that my wife, Mathilda, was a Nazi spy. In principle, I don’t deny many of the accusations of the prosecutor. It’s his duty to state the accusation even if he knows it may not be proven. If the judge and jury were to pass a sentence according to the accusation, no defendant would ever go free. We are lucky, however, that this is not the case, because Mathilda Krause is not guilty even if indirectly she caused a crime or two.”
“It’s difficult to understand what you mean.” Eddie smiled. “Somebody committed a crime, and it’s not important if it’s directly or indirectly, he has to be punished, or he didn’t commit the crime and the defense attorney feels his client is innocent and should be freed.”
“My dear friend!” said Jacob after taking another sip of his whiskey. “If you want to spare me superfluous words, please avoid that subject! I have my own convictions about crime and punishment. These convictions are more or less known to you. Be patient. Another three weeks isn’t eternity. My closing statement will clarify, I hope, why I undertook the defense of Mathilda Krause instead of prosecuting her.”
“But, just imagine, my son, how agitated the former inmates are,” said his mother. “If you had heard their hate and rage when they talked about you. Your statements in the press sound terrible. They almost come right out and say you belong to the cursed Nazi Party, and the former inmates think that, during the war, you were a criminal and that you should be on trial yourself!
“They ask how it’s possible to explain it otherwise, that a man who had been deceived by his wife defends her when he discovers her to be a former Nazi spy. And he gives vague, double-meaning statements when asked what the reasons are for doing so.”
“If you weren’t her husband,” said Sam, “this case wouldn’t have aroused any anger. Everyone would understand you are appearing as a lawyer for a fee, which is common, and there are many cases like that, but here the situation is different, especially with your statements about the court and the law!”
“In criminal history, there are many cases where the husband and even a betrayed husband or a lover,” Eddie added, “testified in favor of or in defense of that husband, wife, or criminal.”
“Explain it any way you wish…” Jacob laughed bitterly. “…but please don’t talk about it to me. And let’s have another drink.”
After his parents and his friends couldn’t convince him to withdraw from Mathilda’s defense, they got up to go home.
“We are simply afraid for you,” repeated his mother with tears in her eyes.
“Please, don’t worry about me, Mom!” Jacob tried to smile. “Oh, all those feelings…those sentiments! What chasm of misunderstanding they open if they aren’t aimed in the right direction!”
He hugged his mother and kissed her warmly, which made her sob even more.
His uncle, who liked Jacob’s last words, wanted to stay and speak to him alone, but his wife, Eva, persuaded him to leave his nephew alone, saying that the war had made Jacob strange and unpredictable.
“We were lucky to have a son returned to us who was healthy and whole.” His mother choked back the tears. “But our luck ran out when he fell in love with that woman.”
When his parents, his friends, and his uncle finally left, Jacob sat at the desk writing for a long time.
He sat there for hours and didn’t put the pen down. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, read what he had written over and over, erased and crossed out, and after that, he took out some books.
Here he felt so lonely, so solitary, just like in Otvotsk, when “Rachel” had disappeared with that Russian officer Matvey Bunin.
He stretched out on the sofa and, in his imagination, went back to the day he had sailed to Europe with Doris and Lillian. He remembered how they had arrested him and, after that, taken him to a camp. Like on a movie screen, the pictures from his past flashed before his closed eyes, scene after scene, each one swiftly following the other.
When he felt the pictures were too poignant, he sat up and lit a cigarette, but it didn’t ease the pain that stabbed him or the nervousness that attacked him. He wanted to shake off those shadows, chase away those depressing pictures from his mind, but he didn’t succeed.
After he poured a few more whiskeys down his throat, he lost control of his thoughts and lay on the sofa as though he were bound with chains. When he tried to move, he became dizzy as if he were on a carousel. For a moment, he was a boy again, and he dreamed and saw everything around him with curious and awed eyes.
But the whiskey didn’t calm him for long. He was dizzy, and the pictures in his mind just grew more realistic. He was reminded of a strange episode from his life in one of the camps.
*****
Not far from the men’s section was the women’s section. At night, the male prisoners would steal over to the women’s section for a little entertainment. They used to enter through a back entrance. The women in the huts were already waiting for them because they knew that the men didn’t come with empty hands.
Jacob went with them unwillingly, only because the other prisoners dragged him along with them.
A young, blonde girl of sixteen was assigned to him. Natasha was her name. They had pointed her out in the daytime. She was lovely and just at the age of blooming. It was a wonder the life in the camp had not affected her badly.
She was a little bashful, but the other women in the camp had persuaded her to enjoy life.
“You’re going to die soon,” her friends reasoned with her. “And if you bring your modesty with you to the next world, who will have need of your innocence, huh? Natasha, tell me who? As long as you are alive, live and enjoy it as much as you can. Choose a good man, and you’ll enjoy life! He’ll at least bring you some bread from time to time.”
“And so,” she told Jacob one night, “I decided not to be better than the rest of the women prisoners.”
When he came to her the first time, because of the
darkness in the hut, they couldn’t see each other. She asked him in a whisper, “Did you bring me something?”
“Yes, half a loaf of bread.”
“What is your name?”
He answered and asked her for hers.
“How old are you?” he asked when he felt her soft skin.
“Sixteen.”
“Have you had a man before?”
“Yes, one man… But he stopped coming here. He got into a fight with another prisoner and killed him while they were working in the forest.”
“Aren’t you afraid to have sexual relations with me?” he continued asking out of curiosity.
“Only the first time frightened me a little.” She paused. “But my friends laughed at me. ‘Don’t be afraid, you little fool! You won’t lose anything. Bread is better than staying a virgin. For what good is being a virgin when you’re as hungry as a dog! Let the man at least enjoy it as long as he brings you a piece of bread.’”
“Who was that first man who had sexual relations with you?”
“What difference does it make?” She laughed. “Someone like you. But hurry up because the guards may come soon and then we’re lost.”
“Don’t be afraid. You see, I’m interested in everything about you.”
“So ask!”
“Tell me, Natasha, aren’t you afraid of getting pregnant?”
“You can’t get pregnant here.” She laughed. “My friend Tanya told me that when you have so many different men, you can’t get pregnant.”
“How does Tanya know?”
“She works as a nurse here, and she knows everything.”
Then, when he continued to pester her with disturbing questions, she became angry and told him, “What foolish questions! Don’t come to me with your bothersome questions. Better eat your bread by yourself!”