Holocaust (6 page)

The street was a wreck. Every store had been smashed. Most were on fire. Mr. Goldbaum, a jeweler, was playing a fire hose against the remains of his shop. Everything he owned had been stolen. Those patriotic Germans, those aroused citizens, eager to avenge Vom Rath’s death, were ordinary crooks and murderers.

A truck came rumbling by. I grabbed Anna and we
hid in an alley. It was an open truck. Some men were carrying photographs of Hitler, swastika banners. There were men parading up and down with signs denouncing the Jews. Mr. Seligman, from whom my mother used to buy draperies and bed linen, was lying face down in a pool of blood and broken glass.

The truck stopped and the hoodlums jumped off.

“Look who’s with them,” I said to Anna. “That rat Hans.”

“Rotten pig. I always hated him.”

“Yeah, Inga’s brother. I wonder about
her
sometimes. Boy, I’d like to get him alone for five minutes.”

Then we saw the parade. Grandpa, his head bloodied, one eye closed, was being forced to lead it, beating on the toy drum. Every few steps, he and the other storekeepers would be beaten with clubs and chains. Hans Helms was talking to Muller. Hans was a weak sister, a yellowbelly. He was stupid and lazy. Someone like Muller could lead him around.

I stepped out of the alley. Beyond the street the sky was turning orange with fires. I could hear women wailing. And more glass breaking, as if they meant to break every Jewish-owned window in Berlin.

The mob seemed to be getting weary of its game. Muller’s gang began wandering off. Grandpa was still standing erect, refusing to cry, or beg, or plead.

I walked up to him and took his hands. “Grandpa. It’s me. Rudi.”

Anna came running out and took his arm.

At the rear of the column of Jews, a drunken young man was rifling pockets—stealing wallets, pens, watches. Muller shouted at him. “Hey. The party says none of that. This is a patriotic demonstration, not a fucking robbery.”

“That’s what you think, Muller,” the man said.

“You obey orders,” Muller shouted. Then he looked at me in the dim light and walked toward me. There was a moment of recognition, almost human, in his eyes, and I wonder now, could there have been something decent in this man, something that was crushed? After
all, he was not, like some of the SS, a gangster or a tramp, a rootless troublemaker; he had a trade, he knew respectable people. What had impelled him to become a brute? I’m not sure I know yet; nor am I sure that it matters any more. An honorable man who turns criminal, especially if he moralizes about it, is perhaps more to be hated than a habitual burglar or murderer.

Tamar scoffs at my philosophizing. “They had two thousand years of preparation for what they did,” she says. “And they all took part, or almost all. The men who ran the gas chambers and the ovens went to church, loved their children, and were kind to animals.”

Muller asked if he knew me, and Grandpa replied that I was his grandson, Rudi Weiss. In response, Muller slapped my grandfather’s face and said, “Shut up, you old kike.”

“He’s an old man,” I said. “You want to fight someone, fight me. Not a mob. Just you and me, Muller.”

Five or six of them gathered around us. Anna hugged Grandpa. Hans Helms was with them. He saw me. Of course he knew me well by now. I could see him whispering in Muller’s ear. “Weiss … Inga’s Jew relative …”

Muller rubbed his chin, glared at me through the haze of smoke. People were coughing, doubled over.

“Okay, Weiss. Beat it. Take the old shit with you. Get off the street.”

I suppose I should have been grateful to him, and to Hans. But something was building up in me. I knew what. Revenge. Some day I wanted the sheer joy of smashing their faces, shaming them, letting them know they could not do this to us.

We helped Grandpa to his house. He and my grandmother lived in an apartment over the bookstore. Once he stopped and picked up a burned first edition of Johnson’s dictionary, then an early edition of
Faust
. He turned the charred pages sadly.

“Heinrich, Heinrich,” my grandmother wept. “How could they do this to an old man?”

He wiped blood from his forehead, stiffened his back. “I’ll survive.” He looked at the burned books again. “But my books …”

“Anna and I will clean up,” I said. But I saw it was useless. He would never sell a book or a print or a map again.

Berlin
November 1938

Two days have passed since what the press is now calling
Kristallnacht
—the night of broken glass.

I took it upon myself, now that I’m a Captain and have risen in Heydrich’s esteem, to assemble data on the events of that historic night.

The chief was relaxed, sipping cognac, listening to
Siegfried
.

“Wagner is a wizard,” he said. “A magician. There, Dorf, is what a pure Aryan soul can produce.”

I listened a moment, hating to interrupt his reverie.

“What chords,” he said. “What sublime chords.”

“The reports on the action, sir. On
Kristallnacht.”

Wagner’s haunting music—I believe it was the Rhine journey—seemed an accompaniment to my rather grave report. There had been thirty-six deaths. Usually when Jews resisted. The foreign press could hardly raise a fuss over that. Seventy synagogues had been burned, and over eight hundred Jewish shops and businesses destroyed. Where our people seemed to have gone overboard was in the matter of arrests. More than thirty thousand Jews were imprisoned.

Heydrich looked up. “Thirty thousand? My God, those fools. They’ll fill Buchenwald overnight.” He turned off the record player. “No matter. We’ll fill it eventually. And we’ll need many more Buchenwalds. Our enemies—all of them—Jews, Communists, Socialists,
Freemasons, Slavs—they’ll all have to be contained if they resist.”

“There may be protests, General. Boycotts. Retaliatory actions.”

Heydrich laughed. What a controlled man! There is a rumor that in a drunken rage one night he fired his Luger at his own reflection in a mirror (but I refuse to believe the story).

“Retaliation?” he asked. “Because a few Jews have been beaten? Dorf, Jews are always in season as game.”

“I suppose so. Almost as if we had a moral precedent for punishing them. After two thousand years …”

“Moral precedent!” Heydrich laughed again. “That’s marvelous.”

“I’m sorry if I said something stupid.”

“Not at all, Captain. Of course a moral precedent. And a religious one. And a racial one. And above all, the practical values. How else unite our people?”

He put on another record. I left my reports on
Kristallnacht
on his desk and started to leave.

“Still neutral on Jews, Dorf?”

“No. I quite understand their importance to us,” I said.

“And the threat they pose. You know the Führer’s creed. Jews are subhuman, created by some other God. His intention—it’s all spelled out—is to set Aryan against Jew until the Jew is destroyed.”

I listened, nodding.

“And if someday—the Führer told me this personally—millions of Germans must die in another war to fulfill our destiny, he will not hesitate to annihilate millions of Jews and other vermin.”

It was an odd sensation listening to his calm voice, hearing Wagner’s celestial music rise in the lofty room. He made it sound logical, inevitable, a fulfillment of some historical imperative.

On November 14, 1938, a few days after the night of broken glass, my brother Karl was arrested.

Many Jews had gone into hiding, made last-minute efforts to leave, bribe their way out. It was almost impossible now.

Karl’s arrest was a tribute to the thoroughness of the SS operation. He lived with Inga in a Christian neighborhood, in a small studio next to her parents’ apartment. But the Nazis had informers everywhere. Inga was sure someone in the building had talked.

Karl was a commercial artist, and a good one. But by now he was barely able to eke out a living. Christian publishers and advertising people would have nothing to do with him. For a while Inga tried passing his work off as her own; but most of them knew. Karl did not like the idea, in any case. He had ideals—the integrity of the artist, the truth inherent in art. (Beautiful notions, but of small help against brutes armed with clubs and guns.)

The day they came for Karl, he was painting Inga’s portrait. He kept teasing her, calling her his “Saskia.” She had no idea what he meant. Karl explained that Saskia was Rembrandt’s wife and the artist, being too poor to hire models, had painted her over and over—just as he had done hundreds of self-portraits.

“But I am no Rembrandt,” Karl said. “Just an unemployed commercial artist.”

He stopped painting, went to the couch. They lived very simply—almost no furniture, a few plants, some Picasso drawings tacked to the wall.

“You’re a splendid artist,” Inga said. “You’ll get your chance someday.”

“God, I love you,” he said suddenly. And kissed her.

“No more than I love you.”

“I’ll hurt you. I’m marked, Inga. I don’t want you to
be hurt because of me. They have a name for you, Inga. You’re a race defiler.”

“I don’t give a damn what they call me.” She took his shoulders. “Look at me. We’re getting out. Somehow. That proper, corseted, perfumed mother of yours. Always having her way. She took the fight out of you. I said, look at me.”

“I see the most beautiful girl in Berlin.”

“And a stubborn one. We’ll buy forged identity papers. We’ll go to Bremen or Hamburg. They’ll never know you’re a—”

“You’re dreaming, Inga. It’s the end for me.”

He stopped painting, seemed to lose all interest in his work that day. He kept reading and rereading the newspaper accounts of
Kristallnacht
. Outraged German citizens, furious at “Jewish domination” of banks, the press, business, were still roaming the streets. She tore the paper from his hand and tried to rouse him.

“Kiss me,” Inga said.

“It won’t change the world.”

“It may help.”

They clung to each other. At that moment, Ingrid’s mother, nervously wiping her hands on her apron, entered without knocking. She stood there as if about to cry, yet angry with her daughter. “Police,” Mrs. Helms said. “They want your husband.”

Karl turned white, did not move.

“Police? For Karl?” Inga got up and ran to the door. “Who … Why didn’t you warn us!”

Mrs. Helms made a helpless gesture with her hands.

“No!” Inga shrieked. “He’s done nothing! Tell them anything … tell them he’s gone …”

“It’s no use. They’re all over the block, arresting Jews.”

Inga’s eyes were blazing. “And you are rejoicing, I suppose. You could have lied for us. What in God’s name are you? You are my mother, and you …”

Inga, in her rage and sorrow, grabbed her mother and started shaking her shoulders. “I am your child, and you let this happen!”

Karl had to pull her away. Inga was weeping now, tears more of anger than fear. It had never occurred to her that Karl, sequestered in the studio, forgotten by his former patrons, would be found.

Two men in civilian clothing entered. They showed their badges: Gestapo. They were polite, offhand. Karl had five minutes to pack a bag and leave.

“No,” Inga said. “You must have a reason … papers …”

“Routine questioning,” one of them said.

“What is he suspected of?” Inga cried.

“He’ll be back in a few hours,” the other detective said. “It’s nothing important.”

Dutifully, Karl threw toilet articles into a bag, some clothing. He knew what was in store, but Inga would not accept it.

“I’ll go with him,” she said. “I will get an attorney.”

“Good luck, lady,” the Gestapo man said. “Hurry it up, Weiss.”

Suddenly Inga threw herself between the two men and Karl, hugged him, and with strong arms, tried to keep him from leaving. “No. No. They have to have a reason. You’ve done nothing. They can’t take you.” She turned to them. “He isn’t political. He’s an artist.”

“It’s all right, Inga,” Karl said. “I’ll be back.”

Both knew he was lying. There had been too many stories in the past six months—sudden arrests, people vanishing into the night.

The men had a hard time disengaging her arms.

“I’m going with him,” she said.

Inga’s mother was trembling. “No, no. You make it worse for us.”

“Be quiet,” Inga shouted. “If I find out who informed on him …”

“Inga, your mother is right. You must stay.” Karl kissed her.

Stubborn, strong-willed, knowing that she was Karl’s shield and protector, she had to be torn from him.

“Don’t follow us,” one of the men said.

“That friend of Papa’s, Muller,” Inga cried. “He told them!”

“Muller has not been here for months,” her mother said.

“No, but he drinks beer with Papa, and when Hans is on furlough.” She threw herself at Karl again. “My darling! I’ll get you free! They won’t hurt you, I promise. Tell me where you are, I’ll come to see you!”

Again, she had to be torn from my brother.

They escorted Karl out the door—and into the gates of hell.

The very day on which Karl was arrested, my grandparents, whose apartment had been burned, moved into our house on Groningstrasse.

I recall that on that same day, a man who had been my father’s patient for as long as I could remember, a printer by the name of Max Lowy, was being examined.

My father was changing the dressings on the wounds and bruises that Max Lowy had suffered during the terrors of
Kristallnacht
. Lowy was a sparrowlike, chirpy man, full of Berlin street slang. He was a skilled artisan, although uneducated. An ordinary man, and utterly devoted to my father, as were so many of his patients.

“Easy there, doc,” Lowy said.

“They did quite a job on you, Lowy.”

“Six big bums. Chains, clubs. Bastards wrecked my print shop, too. Ruined all the typefaces. What the hell do they care about words? Except to poison the air with them.”

“A familiar story. My father-in-law’s place is a wreck also.”

Lowy was irrepressible. Even in the dread final moments he would remain an optimist, a man who could not be crushed. “I hear the worst is over, doc,” the printer said. “Goering’s sore at Goebbels over the riots. Didn’t want him rocking the boat after Munich. You believe that, doc?”