by Stephen Fry
“‘Axi,’ he says to me. ‘You are going to have to look after Mutti for a while. Do you think you can do that for me?’
“I do not understand, but I look across at my mother, who is in tears and I nod my head.
“My father, still on his haunches, turns to his medical bag. ‘That’s my soldier! First I must do something that will hurt a little. For your own good. You understand?’
“I nod my head again. I am used to injections.
“But this injection hurts more than any other I have had. It takes a long time to perform and I am screaming in pain. Such pain bewilders and upsets me, but Mutti is there, stroking my hair and shushing me. A part of me understands that this is done in love. At last Papa gives me a kiss and then he stands and kisses Mutti. He pulls down sharply on his tunic to straighten the creases, gathers his medical bag and leaves the house. This is the last time I see him.” Leo paused to blow across the surface of his chocolate before taking a careful sip.
“So how old were you by this time?”
“I was six years old. All that I am telling you is what I know, not necessarily what I remember. Some things I do recall very clearly, most I do not. Little flashes, little islands of memory I have. I do not remember my mother explaining to me that we were to have a new name. I do not remember that I was once Axel Bauer, I cannot recall that my name was ever anything other than Leo Zuckermann. I know it, but I do not remember it.”
“So how did you find all this out?”
“In 1967 in America I am at Columbia University, New York City, doing well. A young professor, not so much older than you are now, with a big future ahead of him. A Jewish boy, a survivor of the Shoah, teaching at an Ivy League school. If this is not a perfect example of the escape from the European nightmare into the American dream, then there never was one. But I am called one day on the telephone and summoned into the nightmare once more. This time I will never leave. Your mother has collapsed, come at once, Leo. I drive like crazy over the bridge to Queens. When I arrive at my mother’s apartment I find hushed men and women gathered outside the room. A rabbi, a doctor, weeping friends. The old woman had been found on the kitchen floor. She is dying, the doctor says. I enter the bedroom alone. My mother signs for me to shut the door and come sit by her bed. She is weak but she finds enough strength to tell her story. My story.
“She tells me what I have told you, that my real name is Axel Bauer, that my father was an SS doctor at Auschwitz. She tells me that by the end of 1944 my father knew for sure that the Russians were on their way, knew for sure that there would be a reckoning, a retribution for what had been done. He was convinced that vengeance would be taken not just on him, but on his whole family. The Jewish people, my father believed, whose motto is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, would not be satisfied with his own death. Of this he was sure. Most methodically he prepared a plan for the survival of his family. There was at the time a Jewish prisoner assisting in the surgery. A very brilliant doctor, originally from Krakow, by name of Abel Zuckermann. Zuckermann’s wife, Hannah, a German Jewess from Berlin, and their young son, Leo, had naturally been gassed at once, for they were useless, but Zuckermann’s knowledge of hepatic diseases was deemed of some service and he was given work to do in the surgery. My father it seems was kind to Zuckermann and secretly he gave him small amounts of food and encouraged him to talk about himself. Over the few weeks my father learned a great deal about Zuckermann’s family, his history, his estranged brother in New York, his education, his background, how he met his wife, everything there was to know.
“But a day came. This was the day the authorities decided that the Jew doctor had outlived his usefulness and that it was his Jew turn to join his Jew family in Jew Hell. Maybe my father had a hand in that decision. It is something I ask myself with fear. But whether my father sent him to his death or not, this was the day Abel Zuckermann died. This was the day Sturmbannführer Bauer was able to put into operation his plan for the safety of his wife and son. This was the day he came to the house and told me to be strong and to look after my mother like a good soldier. This was the day he knelt down and tattooed my arm with a camp number, the best passport a child could have in the days that were coming. This was the day I became Leo Zuckermann. This was the day my mother, not Marthe Bauer anymore, but Hannah Zuckermann, took me from Auschwitz and traveled west. Always away from the Russians, whom my mother feared above all else. We would try to make sure we were picked up by the Americans or the British. Papa had promised my mother he would join us one day, when it was safe. He would find us somehow, and we would be a family once more. In fact, my mother believed, he always knew that he could never see us again.
“All this I listen to while the rabbi and the friends wait outside. As my mother speaks, memories stir themselves awake and call to me like distant music. The memory of the pain from the tattoo needle. The memory of a pineapple. The memory of my father’s uniform. And then the memory of walking at night, walking for miles at night and crying. The memory of being denied food. The memory of my mother saying to me, over and over, ‘You must be thin, Leo! You must be thin!’
“I tell her of this memory and ask if it means anything.
“‘Poor boy,’ she says. ‘It tore at my heart to starve you, but how could I have persuaded an official that we were refugees from a concentration camp if we looked plump and well fed?’
“After a week of walking south and west, she told me, we joined up with some Jewish refugees who had escaped from one of the death marches.”
Leo broke off here and looked at me enquiringly. “You know about the death marches?”
“Er . . . not really,” I said.
“Oh, Michael! If you, a historian, do not know, then what hope is there?”
“Well, it’s not really my period, you see.”
Leo dipped his head in despair. “Well, I tell you then. Towards the end, the SS were absolutely determined that not one single Jew would be liberated by the onrush of the Allies. It was clear to them all that the war was lost, but no Jew would survive to see his freedom or tell the tale. As the Americans and British advanced from the west and the Soviets from the east, a huge army of camp prisoners was evacuated from the camps and marched into the center of Germany. The prisoners were beaten bloody, tortured, starved, murdered out of hand. Forced to travel miles on no greater daily ration than a single turnip. Hundreds of thousands died. These were the Todesmärsche, the death marches. Now you know.”
“Now I know,” I agreed.
“So, one day, a week or so after leaving Auschwitz, my mother and I met up with a small group who had somehow managed to escape one of these marches. Three children and two men. Some others had left with them but died on the way. They had come from almost the same place as us. From the camp at Birkenau, sometimes known as Auschwitz Two. We struggled west across the Czechoslovakian border together in a pitiful condition, traveling only by night, leaving the road by day and sleeping in ditches and under hedges. One of the men could only hop, he had an edemic leg that began to stink of gangrene. One of the children died while walking with me. Just fell down dead without a sound. After a week we were picked up by Czechoslovakian Communists. My mother and I were moved from one refugee center to another, each bigger than the last. Finally, yielding to my mother’s incessant talk of her brother-in-law in New York City, we were sent further west to be processed by the Americans. A sergeant ruffled my hair and gave me a stick of chewing gum, just like in the movies. He questioned us, noted down our tattoo numbers and issued us with travel and identity papers. In 1946 we finally received permission to cross the Atlantic and live with our uncle Robert and his family in the Borough of Queens.
“So. My father’s plan had worked perfectly. I grew up as an American Jew, with my American Jewish cousins, knowing nothing of my past beyond the stories I was told of my great and murdered father, the good doctor Abel Zuckermann o
f Krakow. You wonder that I accepted this story, perhaps? Surely I knew that this was a lie?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, you must have remembered some of your earlier life.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I did, maybe I erased it. I can’t remember now what I remembered then, if you see what I mean. How much of your life do you remember from before you were seven? Is it not just shadows with strange patches of light? Everything my mother told me I believed. Children do. Consider too the trauma of the days of starvation and walking and hiding, the bewilderment of being herded from place to place for endless months, the boredom and nausea of the ocean voyage. All these did much of my mother’s work for her. It was a year and a half after my arrival in America before I was capable of any real conversation. By the time I emerged from my silence I truly believed I was Leo Zuckermann. Nothing else would have made sense.”
“But your uncle? How could your mother convince him she was really his sister-in-law?”
“Robert had been parted from his brother for ten years. He had never met the real Hannah Zuckermann. Why should he doubt her? Oh, she had an explanation for everything, my mother. She even explained . . .” Leo paused, his face momentarily screwed up in pain and embarrassment. “She even explained my penis.”
“I’m sorry?”
“She told Uncle Robert that the moil in Krakow had been rounded up by the Nazis in 1938 before my circumcision could be performed. It was done to me in New York within a week of my arrival there. That I will never forget. Circumcision, Hebrew classes, bar mitzvah, all those I remember with perfect clarity. And now, as she lay dying in front of my eyes, my mother decides to tell me that it has all been a lie, my whole life has been a lie. I am not a Jew. I am a German.”
“Wow.”
“Wow is as good a word as any other. Wow about covers it. I looked down on this woman, this Marthe Bauer from Münster. Her face is as white as the pillow behind her and her eyes are burning with what I can only call pride.
“‘So now you know, Axi,’ she says to me.
“The use of the name strikes me like a rock. Stirs muddy pools of memory. Axi . . . it rings a bell, as they say.
“‘And my real father?’ I ask her. ‘Sturmbannführer Bauer. What of him?’
“She shakes her head. ‘He was captured by the Poles and hanged. I found out. Eventually I found out. It took me years. I had to be careful, you see. At last I hit upon the idea of calling the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Vienna and claiming that I had seen him in the street in New York. They say to me that it must have been someone else, since for sure Dietrich Bauer was tried and executed in ’49. Then I know. But don’t worry, Axi,’ she adds hastily, ‘I’m sure he died happy. Knowing that we were safe.’
“‘Why have you never told me this before, Mutti?’ I ask, keeping the horror from my voice. This is a dying woman. You cannot badger the dying.
“‘One thing mattered only. Your safety. In this world it is better to be a Jew than a German. But I always wanted you to know one day what you really are. I have been a good mother to you. I protected you.’
“Michael, I tell you, there was a kind of ferocity in her voice that terrified me.
“‘You should not be ashamed of your father. He was a good man. A fine doctor. A kind man. He did what he could. No one understands now. The Jews were a threat. A real threat. Something had to be done, everyone thought so. Everyone. Maybe some people went too far. But the way they talk about us now, you would think we were all animals. We were not animals. We were people with families, with ideals, with feelings. I don’t want you to be ashamed, Axi. I want you to be proud.’
“This is what she said to me. I sat with her for a while, her hand grasping mine. I could feel the grip of it weaken. At last she said, ‘Tell the others they may come in now. I am ready.’
“I turned from the doorway and saw that she had taken up a Hebrew prayer book. I stood staring at her as her friends filed in past me and surrounded the bed, as is the Jewish custom. And that, Michael, is the last I saw of my other parent. So now you know.”
The coffee was cold in my cup. I looked at the bookcase at the row upon row of books. All on that subject.
Leo followed my eyes. “Primo Levi’s book The Periodic Table is prefaced by a Yiddish saying,” he said. “Ibergekumene tsores iz gut tsu dertseylin. ‘Troubles overcome are good to tell.’ For him, for others, it may be that the troubles have been overcome. For me they will never be overcome. And they have not been good to tell. There is a stain of blood upon me that can never be washed away in this world. Maybe in another. So let us go, Michael, and create that other world.”
MAKING HISTORY
47° 13’ N, 10° 52’ E
FADE IN:
EXT. MICHAEL’S HOUSE—NIGHT
Establishing shot of the Newnham house. All the lights are on. An owl hoots. A thumping, scrabbling SOUND is heard inside.
CUT TO:
INT. MICHAEL’S HOUSE, BEDROOM—NIGHT
Inside the house MICHAEL is in the bedroom, looking under the bed. He talks to himself.
MICHAEL
Come on, baby . . . I know you’re here somewhere . . .
He moves to the wardrobe and opens it. It is empty. He searches on the floor.
MICHAEL
Come on!
He slaps his thigh in frustration as he stands. He checks the top of the wardrobe. Nothing.
He moves to the bathroom.
CUT TO:
INT. MICHAEL’S HOUSE, BATHROOM—NIGHT
MICHAEL flings open the bathroom cabinet above the wash basin.
He has been rather too violent. All the contents of the cabinet tumble out. Shaving cream, toothpaste, toothbrushes, tubes of ointment, bottles of pills.
MICHAEL
(yelling furiously)
Arse! Pants! Double pants!
He scrabbles all the things together and tries to cram them back in. This doesn’t work well.
MICHAEL
Panty arse-fuck!
He snatches at a razor, cutting his hand as it closes around it. MICHAEL sucks at the blood, enraged.
MICHAEL
Jesus-ing bollock-pants . . .
He stamps through to the kitchen muttering.
MICHAEL
Arsey pant-pant bollocky damn.
CUT TO:
INT. MICHAEL’S HOUSE, KITCHEN—NIGHT
MICHAEL runs his hand under the tap and goes moodily to the central table.
On the kitchen table his wallet lies open. The contents are spread out. Some money, credit cards, driving license, scraps of paper.
MICHAEL sits moodily at the table and goes through these items. He puts his fingers in the wallet and checks each corner of each compartment.
MICHAEL
(muttering to himself)
Somewhere safe! That’s a joke . . .
He puts his head in his hands and rocks backwards and forwards in misery.
MICHAEL
(as Olivier in Marathon Man)
Is it safe? Is it safe?
(as Hoffman in the same film)
Sure it’s safe. It’s so safe you wouldn’t believe . . .
He howls at himself furiously.
MICHAEL
You moron. You arsehole. You couldn’t be trusted to keep a . . . a . . . cold, could you? WHY? Why the fuck couldn’t I just . . .
SUDDENLY, he raises his head . . .
MICHAEL
Hey!
A smile grows.
MICHAEL
Yeah . . .
It becomes a beam.
MICHAEL
Why the fuck not?
He stands up and runs to the study.
CUT TO:
INT. MICHAEL’S HOUSE. STUDY—NIGHT
MICHAEL goes,
not to his half of the study, but to Jane’s. There are the boxes still, neatly labeled, ready to be sent on.
MICHAEL
She won’t have remembered it. She won’t have remembered. She can’t have remembered . . .
He opens the bottom drawer of Jane’s desk and feels towards the end.
MICHAEL
(mimicking Jane)
“Always keep a spare” . . . “always keep a spare” . . .
His hand finds something.
MICHAEL
Yes!
His hand comes out bearing . . .
A dusty CREDIT CARD.
MICHAEL blows on it.
CLOSE on the card.
Not a credit card, but some sort of ID. There is a photo of Jane on it, looking severe.
MICHAEL kisses the card, and runs his finger along its magnetic strip.
MICHAEL
Bitch. Sow. Cow. Darling. Mwah!
CUT TO:
EXT. GENETICS LAB—NIGHT
MICHAEL, in black polo-neck, black trousers and black gloves, leaps somewhat unconvincingly from bush to bush outside the laboratory.
He gazes at the building. The lobby is lit, but there are no other discernible lights.
MICHAEL looks at his wristwatch.
MICHAEL
Pants.
He hops out from behind a bush and walks towards the glass doors, more or less confidently.
We see beside the main door a security lock, with a slit for swiping cards.
MICHAEL takes up the card, swallows twice and slides the card through.
A red light turns to green and we hear a satisfying CLUNK.
MICHAEL pushes open the door and goes in.
CUT TO:
INT. GENETICS LAB, LOBBY—NIGHT
MICHAEL pads quietly across the lobby towards the lifts. He looks left towards a reception desk. There is no one there. Everything is eerily quiet.
MICHAEL presses an elevator button and the doors sweep open.
He swallows nervously, enters the lift and the doors close behind him.