by Gerald Green
Marta blushed. “Oh, you know me. I’m content to look after the house and the children.”
“A much better house. I’ve got my eye on a new apartment. In a better neighborhood.”
Marta kissed me, threw her arms around me. “Oh, Erik. I’m so happy for us. And you once sneered at—what did you call it? Police work! Look how you’ve succeeded!”
Sitting here with my cognac (it was a long, tiring day at work), I know it is not in my nature to be boastful, but I am finding it easier to talk about myself. And of course, Marta delights in this new version of Captain Erik Dorf. I told her, as she listened, smiling, how I solved a tricky problem growing out of recent events.
Many German insurance companies were on the verge of bankruptcy because of claims by Jewish shopkeepers for damages. After mulling the problem, I advised Heydrich that we should let the companies pay the damages, but before the Jews could collect, the government will confiscate the payments on the grounds that the Jews incited the rioting and hence are not entitled to reimbursement. The money can then be returned to any Aryan firm that requests it. (Jewish insurance firms are exempted from such repayments.)
Marta confessed she had trouble following my legal reasoning, but she agreed that it is a just solution. The Jews, as she said, brought all this on themselves.
My attitudes toward Jews are unquestionably changed since my naive days three years ago. Now, I see clearly how they have insinuated themselves into our life, spreading their tentacles, preventing Germany from realizing its destiny. I understand what the Führer means by a “Jew-free” Europe. It can only be for the good of all concerned, including the Jews. Every now and then some old concept of law troubles me, but it is not hard to dismiss it under Heydrich’s benign leadership. He was right, of course, at that first meeting. I have to put aside old-fashioned notions of justice. There are times and cases where they simply do not apply.
When Peter and Laura finished their baths, they came in wearing their new bathrobes. I kissed them.
“Children,” I said, “you smell like spring flowers.”
Peter sulked. “I’m no flower. Maybe she is.” He is almost nine—tall, sturdy, with his mother’s fine features and strong will.
Laura, who tends to be thoughtful, moody—much like me as a child—leaned heavily on my knee, the way children will do when they want attention. Her innocent eyes found mine, and she asked, “Papa, why does everyone hate Jews?”
Peter answered before I could. “‘Cause they killed Christ. Didn’t you learn that in Sunday school?”
“Oh, there are other reasons,” Marta said. “Something you will understand when you are older.” She began to shepherd them off to bed.
I pondered Peter’s ingenuous yet truthful response to Laura’s question. Yes, they killed Christ. And although the party, our movement, the Führer’s writings on the subject make little of this, we are certainly beneficiaries of a long tradition. My historical knowledge is not sufficient, nor am I a philosopher, but it seems to me there is an almost unbroken chain from the denunciation of Jews for the greatest crime against God ever committed to what we are planning for them. After all, we have not invented anti-Semitism.
My ruminations were halted by the door buzzer. Marta looked startled, but I cautioned her to stay with the children, that I would answer it.
It was Dr. Josef Weiss, standing in the hallway, looking older, stooped. “Captain Dorf,” he said. “I am sorry to intrude at this hour, but I was afraid if I called you would refuse to see me.”
I was annoyed with him. He should have known better. “I told you not to come to me.”
“I have nowhere to turn. My son Karl—he’s a bit younger than you, you may remember him from the old neighborhood—has been arrested. Not a word sent to us, nothing. No reasons given. He’s never had a political thought in his life. He’s an artist. He …”
His voice dwindled away.
I couldn’t help him and told him so.
“What crime have we committed? What have we ever done to you? My father-in-law was a hero of the German army. His shop and his home were pillaged by ruffians. My sons … they have always felt as German as you—”
“These actions are not directed at you personally, or your family,” I said.
“That makes it no easier for us.”
“Doctor, these are long-range policies. For your benefit as well as Germany’s.”
“But lives are wrecked. People destroyed. Why?”
He was getting on my nerves. He had no right to come to me. “I can’t discuss this with you.”
“Captain Dorf, please. You have influence. You are an officer in the SS. Help my son.”
As he stood there pleading with me, Marta appeared in the hallway. “Erik? Is anything wrong?”
“No, my dear.”
Weiss bowed to Marta. “Mrs. Dorf, maybe you’ll understand. Put yourself in my place. Suppose it was your son taken away, as mine was. You both once entrusted your health to me … I ask only—”
Malta’s voice was firm. She ignored him. “Erik. The children.”
Dr. Weiss would not leave. I walked away from him, to Marta.
She whispered to me, “Make him leave. He’ll endanger your career. Explain to him you can’t do anything for him. You didn’t arrest his son.”
“I’ve told him so.”
“Tell him again. Be polite, but tell him there is absolutely nothing you can do.”
I returned to the door. “Dr. Weiss, I’m afraid I cannot help you. These matters are out of my jurisdiction.”
“But a word to your superiors … at least to let us know where my son is … what charges he faces …”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
His face dropped. “I understand. Good night, Captain.”
The door closed.
I was briefly troubled by his visit. He has always seemed to me a rather decent fellow, and for all I know, his son is also. But I have crossed some bridge, forded some river, and I cannot go back. Heydrich and Himmler have often warned us to be wary of the “good Jew,” the one, as a compassionate German, you want to save. Our program is a long-range one, a complex one, and deals with whole peoples, vast changes. We cannot let sentiment, false sympathies stand in our way.
Only we, the SS, the elite of the SS, Heydrich says, have the steel to get this job done. I know now, after hearing the physician’s slow tread in the hallway, what he means.
Rudi Weiss’ Story
A few days after Papa’s visit to Erik Dorf—I had no idea who he was, how important he was, just that he had refused to help us—my father was ordered deported to Poland.
My father, always seeing the best in people, or refusing to think the worst, was convinced Dorf had nothing to do with it. Possibly he was right. It was general policy at the time. All alien Jews resident in Germany—and there were thousands of Polish Jews—were forced to leave.
In fact, when the fellow with the briefcase entered the office, while my father was fixing some kid’s sprained ankle, he was even hopeful that it was good news from Dorf, maybe about Karl.
But the man was from the immigration office and he said to my father, “You are Dr. Josef Weiss, born in Warsaw, Poland, and you are here illegally under the new laws. You are ordered deported to Poland. Be at the Anhalter railroad station tomorrow at six a.m. with food for one day and one bag.”
I listened outside the office door, weeping for my father, wanting desperately to help him. How I hated those men who had come for him! How I longed to hit them, make them feel pain!
“But my wife and children … the people I take care of …”
“The order applies only to you. Give these documents to the transport officer tomorrow.”
What I remember most clearly is that instead of going upstairs to tell my mother, or being so stunned that he could not continue his work, my father returned to the boy on the examining table and resumed treating his ankle.
My brother Karl had been sent to a prison camp, Buch
enwald. The account of his internment there I learned from a man named Hirsch Weinberg, who had been arrested a few days before Karl. Weinberg was a tailor by trade, a native of Bremen. He remembered Karl Weiss the artist well.
Buchenwald is near Weimar. The Germans had built a huge camp there for anyone considered an enemy of the Reich. After Kristallnacht, it became a hellhole, packed, unsanitary, a place where hundreds died daily of beatings and disease, or were executed for whatever reason pleased the guards.
The torment began from the moment the prisoners walked through the gate with the legend ARBEIT MACHT FREI—work makes you free.
Karl and a batch of other prisoners were ordered into a receiving room filled with typists, guards, office managers—all SS personnel. The usual opening questions, after name and address and profession, were on the order of:
“Name of the whore that shit you?”
“What pimp screwed her to make you?”
“What crime were you arrested for?”
As Karl waited his turn, shivering, fearful, a burly young Jew with the look of a truck driver refused to answer these insults. He protested; his mother was no whore, his father no pimp, and he had committed no crime. At once he was dragged into an adjoining room. There were screams, thudding noises.
A few minutes later, beaten and cowed, he was dragged back in, his head a bloody pulp, one eye closed, and whimpering, he answered all the questions.
Karl was next.
He gave his name, his address, and his occupation: artist.
An SS sergeant carrying a short whip walked up to Karl and shoved the butt end into his side. “One of those Jew Bolsheviks, Weiss? Drawing lying cartoons for some Communist rag?”
“I’m a commercial artist,” Karl said. “I don’t belong to any party. I—”
The whip cracked across Karl’s face.
When Weinberg told me this, all I could think of was Karl, always skinny, a kid who was naturally picked on, chased. I was four years younger, but I was always strong, fast, and my creed was, if you hit me, I’ll hit back. I wanted to weep when I spoke to Weinberg, but my wife Tamar was present, and she does not believe in tears.
“The whore who shit you?”
“No … my mother …”
Crack. The whip landed again.
“Berta Palitz Weiss,” Karl said. “The pimp who raped her?”
“Josef Weiss. Dr. Josef Weiss.”
“What crime did you commit to be sent to Buchenwald?”
“I … I did nothing.”
“Try again, Jewboy. What crime did you commit?”
“Nothing. Honestly. I was at home, painting. These men came for me. There are no charges filed.”
“You’re a Jew. That’s reason enough.”
“But … but that’s not a crime.”
They laughed at this. The sergeant and two other louts dragged Karl into the adjacent room and beat him senseless. He awakened in a dark barracks, where he met Hirsch Weinberg, who tried to teach him some tricks of survival.
Still unaware of where Karl was, or what was happening to him, we all went to see my father off for Poland. It was the last day of November, 1938.
I remember the scene at the bleak railroad station. About a thousand Jews, most of them older and poorer than my father, with their miserable bundles and packages of food. There were rumors the Poles were turning them away. The Jews would be left in a no man’s land, floating between Germany and Poland.
But my father tried to be cheerful. “If you cry, Berta,” he said to my mother, “you’ll make me angry.”
She dabbed at her eyes. No, she would control herself. Around her, other families made no secret of their sorrows. They wept, they begged, they tried to keep their loved ones from boarding the train for the Polish border.
“Why, this may be the best thing that’s happened to us,” my father said. He was a terrible actor. Yet who could tell? Maybe he was right.
“My brother Moses said he’d meet me. We’ll head right for Warsaw. Moses has connections. I’m sure I can get work at the Jewish Hospital.”
We listened to him—silent, attentive, concerned. As yet, the shock of his leaving had not sunken in. Karl gone, my father forced to leave. The blows were falling one after another.
“I’ll go with you,” my mother said. “They’ll let me. I’ll get my papers tomorrow.”
“No, no,” my father said. “The children need you. I’m told the Poles are being difficult about even letting Polish Jews back in, let alone Germans.” He took Inga’s hand. “And we must be optimistic. Inga will find Karl, she’ll get him freed, and you’ll all be together again.”
As I write this, I am again appalled at how so many of us, my parents included, could have deceived themselves for so long. Tamar claims it was a form of mass hysteria; a self-deception that spread among Jews. I argue that many were helpless, without money, with no place to go. Few countries would take them. Fighting back was unknown to them. We had been a people who accommodated, gave in, bent, tried to make arrangements, hoped that tomorrow would be better. Now, to the east of our kibbutz, Syrian guns are firing again. But this time we fire back. Morality is a marvelous, admirable thing; but I have yet to hear of a moral stance, a righteous position, that ever deflected a bomb or a bullet.
Anna began to sob. She threw her arms around my father, crying, “Papa, Papa, don’t leave us. I’ll be afraid without you. Please, Papa, stay with us.”
Inga took Anna aside, brushed her hair, kissed her. “Papa will be all right, Anna darling. He will come back.”
Anna was truly bawling. “Shut up,” I said. “You make it worse.”
My mother asked, “Josef, how did this happen to us?”
“It wasn’t our doing, Berta. We had no control over events.” Then he smiled. “But you must believe me. I’m feeling optimistic. This will open our eyes. I have a feeling we’ll be reunited in Poland. Or somewhere else. England, perhaps.”
“I made you stay,” my mother whispered.
“Now, no more of that,” Papa said. He was brisk, businesslike. (And no worse a businessman ever practiced medicine.) “Berta, you should sell the clinic. Find a smaller apartment.”
She wiped her nose, managed a smile. “And you must not go running out on night calls. Wear your rubbers in the rain. Poland is a very damp place.”
“I will, if you promise not to sell the piano. Anna must continue her piano lessons, no matter what.”
Two Berlin policemen approached. People were being herded toward the train. “Move it along. We’re boarding in five minutes.”
Mama turned to us. “Children. Rudi, Anna, Inga. Say goodbye to Papa.”
Anna was uncontrollable now. “Papa, Papa … we’ll come to live with you! Uncle Moses can find us a place!”
“Of course, Anna, my darling. But meanwhile, you must look after Grandpa and Grandma, and we must find Karl. Work at your music, Anna.”
He hugged me, looked into my eyes. “Rudi. Maybe you should go back to school.”
“If I can, Papa.”
“The world doesn’t begin and end with a soccer game, you know. You must prepare yourself for a career.”
What could I say to him? Career! But I played his game. “I’ll try, Papa. Maybe I can be a physical-education teacher—as you once said I should be.”
“Splendid idea.”
People surged forward. Among them, I noticed Max Lowy, the printer. He was a Polish Jew also; he was being deported. He seemed undismayed, ready to accept fate’s blows.
“Hey, Doc!” Lowy shouted. “You too? I thought they were just kicking out guys like me? You know the wife, doc.”
A tiny dark woman nodded at my father. He tipped his hat, always the gentleman. In fact, on seeing the Lowys, he turned to my mother, who was still crying, and said cheerfully, “You see, Berta? I’m the only physician deported with his own supply of patients.”
They hugged for the last time. I heard him say, “They cannot defeat us. So long as we love
one another.”
“Josef …”
“Remember your Latin, my dear, Amor vincit omnia. Love conquers all.”
The crowd shoved him away, and they were separated. At a barrier, a policeman and an SS guard examined my father’s papers. A loudspeaker was bellowing instructions: “Follow the guards to the train. This is the special train for the border only….”
My mother ran to the iron railings, and we followed her. She was waving to him, calling, “Goodbye, Josef, goodbye. Let us know where you are. We’ll come …”
I turned my face away to hide my tears. What I really wanted to do was to hit somebody—one of the Berlin policemen, the guards directing people to the trains. What right had they to do this to us? What had we ever done to them? There was a suppressed fury in me. I could have killed them—the grinning party members, all of them in boots and uniforms, braggarts, bullies, liars …
“Oh, you’re so brave,” Anna taunted. “You’re crying also.” Her eyes were wet, her cheeks soaked.
“I am not. I don’t cry.”
She grabbed me, and held me, and we both wept. But I forced myself to stop. “They’ll never do that to me,” I said. “Never.”
“Won’t they?”
“No. I won’t go the way Papa and Karl did, and Mr. Lowy, just giving in.”
I was boasting to buoy my courage. But as I look back at the moment, I realized I had made a vow to myself. They would not humiliate me, force me to do their bidding, the way they had forced so many others. Jews were supposed to agree, be polite, obey, listen, accept. But I had never understood this. I did not look for fights in the street, but I never ran away. And when I played soccer I played to win. And if the other fellow played dirty, I could trip and shove, and if need be, throw a punch.
“What will you do?” Anna asked, still weeping.
“I’ll fight.”
We watched my father climb aboard the train and wave to us a last time. My mother put her arms around us. Inga stood just behind us, shaking her head in sorrow. I could see there was shame in her face—shame for her own people.
“Let us go home, children,” Mama said. Her voice was calm again.