Oh, no, Renate thinks, starting across the street. Nononono…
But as she gets closer it becomes clear that it is. The woman shouting is her mother, who is attempting to pull the half-stripped man away from the crowd of leering, laughing youths.
The half-stripped man is her father.
And standing between the crowd and the couple is Ilse von Fischer.
13.
Ilse
1938
The man on the motorcycle wears civilian clothes: khaki slacks, white shirt, leather trench coat. But his hair is cut close on the sides and in the back, in the style favored by the SS. And his bike—a BMW, glinting with newness—is the type Ilse has seen SS officers riding.
“Heil Hitler,” says Kai, Ilse’s editor at Das Deutsche Mädel.
“Heil Hitler,” says the biker, saluting back. “It took you long enough.”
“Sorry,” Kai says. “I had to confirm a few details on our list. You ready?”
“Never more so. Who’s the skirt?” The biker pushes back his driving goggles, and Ilse realizes with some surprise that he’s quite young, probably not much older than she herself is.
“A colleague,” says Kai. “Berlin’s answer to Torchy Blane. She’s here to write about us making history.” Grinning, he flings a thin arm across Ilse’s shoulders. She forces herself to smile back, even as she subtly maneuvers away.
Whippet-thin and sallow-skinned, Kai Hellewege spends his work days circling his female staffers like an undernourished shark; general opinion is that the only reason he took the job was in order to have girls actually talk to him. And at least in Ilse’s case it is working: she is here because he offered her her very first political piece. He declined to offer many details about it. But after two years of writing columns about racial hygiene and seasonal craft ideas Ilse leapt at the chance. It didn’t hurt that Kai’s personal connection to the Führer’s extraordinary Propaganda Minister is said to be very close—some say Goebbels is practically his godfather.
“Good thinking,” says the driver. Reaching into his jacket, he pulls a flask out. Deftly unscrewing the cap, he takes a swig and hands it to Kai, who in turn offers it to Ilse. After hesitating a moment, she tips it against her lips, discovering to her relief that it’s rum and not Schnapps. After her experiences with Hauptsturmführer Wainer, even a whiff of the latter can trigger a sickening gag reflex.
She hands the flask back to the boyman biker, who restows it before turning to candidly look her up and down. “Want a lift?”
“How far are we going?”
Kai pulls out the map she’d seen him studying earlier when they’d stopped for a few drinks at a local Bierhaus. “First stop is Pestalozzistraße 14–15.”
“What about the others?” asks the biker.
Others? Ilse thinks.
“They’ll meet us there.”
“Excellent.” The driver pats the seat behind him. “Come along then, Torchy. You’ll have to sit behind me, though. Sidecar’s taken.” He juts his chin at the latter, which Ilse sees is covered with a tarp.
“I think she wants to walk,” says Kai possessively.
“Actually,” says Ilse quickly, “I am rather tired. I’ll meet you there.”
Before he can argue further she perches herself behind the driver, smiling apologetically. Shrugging, Kai turns and starts off at a rapid clip down the darkened street.
Ilse’s driver kicks the engine into gear. As he lowers his goggles he shouts over his shoulder: “I didn’t catch your real name.”
“It’s Ida,” shouts Ilse back, surprising herself. “Ida Fuchs.” She hasn’t thought of her old pseudonym for months, perhaps years, and for a moment she considers correcting the lie. But the rum is warm in her stomach, and the idea of assuming another persona is both titillating and unexpectedly reassuring. It’s like she’s donning a disguise.
“I’m Max,” he says, revving the engine again. The leather seat vibrates against the insides of her thighs like a live animal, something forbidden.
Cautiously, she snakes her arms around his waist. Leaning against her, Max chuckles.
“You’re going to have to hold tighter than that, Ida. It’s going to be quite a ride.”
* * *
Ten minutes later they stand with Kai and a dozen others in civilian clothes in front of an aged building that Ilse recognizes as one of Charlottenburg’s smaller but gracious-looking synagogues.
“Ten Reichsmarks to whoever hits it on the first try.” Kai squints. “Twenty to anyone who hits the center of the kike star.”
“You’re on,” says Max.
As he removes the tarp from his sidecar Ilse sees that beneath it lies a dense pile of rocks and bricks. Atop that are several sets of leather gloves, some welder’s glasses, and a few crowbars. Removing a rock, Max winds up theatrically, like an American baseball player. They all watch with bated breath as he lobs his stone, sending it up and up, straight at the shining surface. It hits just to the star’s left, shattering half the window.
With a whoop, two others in the small gang Kai’s led here let fly their missiles. After reducing the big window to splintered wood and jagged glass teeth they take out the smaller, clear windows that flank the doorway, their shouts growing more exhilarated and confident with each throw. They lob a few stones at the door itself. When this has no effect beyond scraping off some paint, Max climbs the short stairwell and sets his shoulder against it.
“Here,” he calls to Kai and the other motorcyclist. “Give us a hand.”
The other two fall into position: “Eins, zwei, drei…” They hurl their combined weight into it with a heavy thud. Then another. And another, this one followed by a faint splintering sound.
“Almost there,” shouts Kai.
Ilse’s stomach has curled itself into a tight ball of anxiety, balanced out by a tingling anticipation. Her teeth are chattering even though it’s not particularly cold. As the other three continue their assault she finds herself wishing she could have a few more swigs of Max’s rum.
Meanwhile, the synagogue doors finally give way with an ancient-sounding, splintering complaint. Panting, Kai and the two drivers peer in, as though surprised by their own efforts. There’s a round of applause from the newcomers; Max takes an elaborate bow. Then he ushers the others into the darkened interior. “Remember the instructions,” Ilse hears him bellowing above the excited roar. “No stealing. We’re only here to destroy.”
He is greeted with catcalls and more mocking laughter. “Yes, Headmaster,” one of them shouts.
As the last of them files in Ilse hesitates a moment, certain that the Polizei must be on their way by now. But the street is quiet, save for a lone black van that has pulled up a slight distance from the parked BMWs. As Ilse watches, the driver cuts the engine and lights a smoke. He seems to be settling in for a wait.
She looks back to the shattered synagogue. From inside comes the sound of laughter and more shattering; the lights go on. Max sticks his head out. “Come on, Ida,” he shouts, and gestures for her to hurry.
What she actually feels like doing is running away, and for a moment she even considers it. But then she thinks about the article Kai has promised to give her: the thrill of seeing her own words in a major Party publication.
Berlin’s answer to Torchy Blane.
Throwing her shoulders back, she starts mounting the stairs.
* * *
Inside the building a dozen-odd men and boys lay waste to everything they get their hands on. Several are on the balcony, pulling books from bookshelves, ripping pages from them, sending them skating down like flat white leaves on an autumnal breeze. Two have just pushed over the lectern at the front and are laying into it with axes. Max and three others have ripped the curtain off a large cabinet and are pulling out enormous and ancient-looking scrolls.
“Wha
t are those?” she calls.
“Torah. The kike bible,” he calls back, panting.
Ilse watches, both enthralled and aghast as he rips off the protective silver headpieces and sends the yellowing parchment rolling down the steps into the aisles. When one of the others unbuttons his pants and starts to urinate on the hand-inscribed texts, Ilse feels her bile rise—as much at the sight of the soft pink member as the way the careful lettering smears beneath the yellow stream. Yet it’s like watching a horror film: she can’t seem to look away. And as the boy splashes his last, Max, who’d disappeared briefly, reemerges wearing several skullcaps piled on his lank hair, his body wrapped like a mummy in prayer shawls.
“What do you think?” he calls to Ilse. “Is this my color?”
She shakes her head, both sickened and strangely exultant at finding herself here, in the heart of such astonishing transgression. Everywhere, ripped scroll paper is fluttering down like snow. The boy next to her is plunging his Hitler Youth dagger into the burgundy velvet of the pews, while Kai is stamping on a silver goblet of some sort until it lies squashed like a precious bug beneath his boots. She still can’t quite believe the police won’t appear at some point, though Kai had assured her that they will not.
“Are you getting all this, Ida?”
Turning back toward the lectern she sees Max, now hatless, about to take aim at an ornate wooden screen with his boot. At first she has no idea what he’s talking about. Then, remembering the whole purpose of her inclusion in the event, she reaches into her satchel and pulls out a notebook and a pen. The movements feel almost embarrassingly inappropriate; like trying to read Shakespeare in the center of a tornado. And yet this, she remembers, is what she has come here to do: to get the story.
Just get the story, she tells herself.
She sets her pen to her notebook, then hesitates, her mind a blank. Somewhere, someone has started singing what sounds like a gibbered approximation of Hebrew: Dai-dai-dai. Dai-dai-dai. Dai. Within moments the others have taken up the tune, singing in rhythm as they pound and smash and break: Dai-dai-dai. Dai-dai-dai. It’s like the finale of the most frightening opera ever composed, as if Nosferatu had stepped from the screen into the screaming, deafening present. She has to remind herself that in this live version the attackers are the heroes, taking revenge on the true villains: bloodsucking Jews.
As she writes the phrase down, she becomes aware that a sudden hush has fallen onto the hall.
The rioters in the balcony area are all looking in one direction. Looking up, she follows their gaze.
A man is standing in a side door she hadn’t noticed before. He is short and dark, wearing a long dark coat and a black hat, from beneath which corkscrew curls tremble on either side of his pale cheeks. He doesn’t look like a vampire. He looks like a frightened, oddly dressed little man.
But even before the thought is completed there is a hoarse shriek from the balcony area: “KIKE!”
It’s quickly followed by another: “Murderer!”
A rock comes flying from the pulpit area and hits the man on the forehead. As he staggers back, Kai and two others hurl themselves into the debris-filled aisles, fists and weapons raised.
“Go!” shout the others. “Assassin! Get him! Don’t let the scum get away!”
Run, thinks Ilse reflexively; and as though he has heard her the man whips around. Still clutching his forehead, he staggers into the darkness, the three boys taking after him in hot pursuit. A moment later she hears thuds, screams. A garbled plea for mercy.
Then, nothing but the men shouting KIKE! KIKE!
They are laughing.
A few minutes later they reappear, arms around each other’s shoulders as though they are coming back from a night’s worth of hard drinking. There is blood spattered over Max’s khaki pants. “One down,” he shouts, to no one in particular.
“Two hundred thousand to go!” shouts someone back from the balcony, and the room roars its approval.
Looking down at her notebook, Ilse takes a deep breath. Rabbi, she writes, carefully. Blood.
* * *
After an hour and a half, there is literally nothing left in the chapel that hasn’t been defiled or destroyed. Disappearing outside briefly, Kai and Max come back carrying four cans of petrol. These he and the others distribute liberally over the wreckage before retreating to the street. Standing in the splintered doorway, they flick lit matches into the darkness, watch them fall like tiny comets of doom. Within seconds the entire building is in flames. The mob stands before it as though it were a campfire, singing and swaying in triumph:
Germany, awake from your nightmare!
Give foreign Jews no place in your Reich!
We will fight for your resurgence!
Aryan blood shall never perish!
They finish with a communal piss into the flames, the urine hissing like a thousand hostile snakes. Then Max shouts out the next stop on his list—someplace on Unter den Linden—and the crowd sets off at a bellowing jog.
“What happened to the rabbi?” Ilse asks Max as she clambers back onto his BMW.
“Why?” Turning, he lifts an eyebrow behind his protective glasses. There is still blood on his left cheek.
“I just want to include it in my article,” she says quickly.
He shrugs. “Write that he was taken into protective custody. Him and thousands of others.”
“Thousands?”
He nods curtly. “Those are the orders. We’re to arrest as many male Jews as we can fit into the vans.” He points at the black truck she’d spotted earlier, the driver of which is now starting the engine.
“Where do the vans go?”
“Various holding sites. Then the camps. Dachau, Sachsenhausen. Oh, and a new KZ out in Ettersberg. Buchenwald, I think it’s called.” He revs the engine.
“How long will they be there?” she shouts over the rumble.
He shrugs. “Who cares?”
* * *
As the dawn breaks they make two more stops in rapid succession: a stationery store that explodes in flame with a single match. A delicatessen that they leave looking as though the floors and walls have been renovated in rotting meat. Both owners are beaten and dragged off like the rabbi, while policemen look on benignly. Meanwhile, firemen stand at attention in the early-morning light, soaking adjacent buildings and warning rioters to be careful not to get burned. They do nothing whatsoever to put out any of the blazes. Indeed a few actually feed them, tossing in bits of broken furniture and other debris.
As the sun streaks the gray sky with silver and pink the mob surges on to its next target, a small row of shops on Unter den Linden. The tea shop and sundries store bearing red-and-black Christian-Aryan Enterprise signs have been left alone. Gerstel’s hat store, however, swarms with drunken rioters who have shattered the show window and painted Jude and a crude Star of David on the door. Hats and gloves lie flattened on the street, amid shards of glass and shiny mirror and puddles of what looks like drunken vomit. Scattered throughout are small yellow spheres that Ilse recognizes as lemon drops from the big crystal jar the jovial merchant used to keep on his sales counter. She also spots what she at first takes to be a pile of dirty, wet rags before realizing with a chill that the wet and dirt is actually blood, and the “rags” are a man lying facedown on the pavement. When one of the rioters turns the prone form over with his boot Ilse doesn’t know which shocks her more: the sight of Herr Gerstel’s lifeless face, the eyes open, blank and staring, or the casual way in which the man above him kicks the body before moving on.
She manages to tear her eyes away as Max pulls up next to three men who have dragged what appears to be a shop safe through the wreckage and are hammering at it ferociously with clubs and crowbars.
“No looting, right?” he calls out to them. “We’re patriots. Not thieves.”
“Klar,
” says one, pausing and wiping his brow. “We’re not after money. We’re after records.”
“What records?”
The man slaps his right fist into his left hand. “Customer records. To see who’s been betraying their country by doing business with this scum.”
Ilse looks back at the ruined shop, swallowing again. Though she and Renate probably tried on every hat in the store at one point, she has never bought anything from the Jewish merchant. She wonders uneasily what the punishment for his Aryan customers will be. At the delicatessen on Friedrichstraße, she’d seen the mob turn on one of its own with dizzying speed, a dozen or more of them pummeling an older man until he’d collapsed into a fetal-shaped ball. When Max asked a bystander what had happened, the man spit in disgust.
“He said that maybe they’d done enough damage for now,” he said.
Cutting the engine, Max dismounts, as does Ilse. He begins walking the heavy machine across the street. “One more stop,” he says, gesturing across the street with his chin. “This one’s a special assignment.”
“Special?” Following his gaze, she feels her mouth go dry.
“He’s had offers from Aryan buyers but has been holding out for a better price. We’re to give him a little incentive. Though by the time we’re done with it I doubt the place will be worth more than a few Pfennige.”
Noticing something near the engine, he squats to get a closer look, then looks up, seeming annoyed. “You go ahead.”
“I can wait.”
“No, go on. I’ll be there in a moment.”
She makes her way toward the crowd, her heart pounding as she draws close. The target, as she’d feared, is the Schloss-Konditorei, though it bears no resemblance to the fragrant haven of her younger years. The large glass display window has been shattered so thoroughly that the shards are tiny, piled high both inside the building and outside on the sidewalk like mounds of glittering snow. Baked goods lie in swollen, sodden piles on the ground, brown loaves mashed into gray pavement with lingering imprints of heavy boots, cakes oozing frosting and custard like sugary innards.
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