“I’ll move in if I can bring Momma,” Ervin Rosenblum said.
“No. So long as you are able to work on the outside, it would be better not to be too closely identified.”
Alex looked slyly at Andrei. Andrei Androfski at Mila 19 would be a great boost to everyone’s morale.
“What are you doing with the basement?” Andrei asked.
“Storage.”
“Have you thought about an underground press?”
Andrei had behaved very well for the past weeks. He had shown great restraint, but he was going to be a problem as things grew worse, Alex thought Ana Grinspan had started publication of a weekly sheet in Krakow. Alex didn’t want to face the situation. Discovery of an underground printing plant could destroy the entire Orphans and Self-Help organization.
“I’ll help you with your press, Andrei, but not at Mila 19.”
“Then you really don't need me there, do you?”
“We had better get out to the dance floor,” Ervin said quickly.
The forgotten man—or the forgotten boy—at the bris of Moses Brandel was his sixteen-year-old brother, Wolf. He seemed bewildered by everything. When everyone said “Mozeltoff” to him, he wondered why he was being congratulated. He was a bit forlorn over the attention the new baby was getting and more confused at suddenly becoming a brother. Wolf was rather shy, anyhow, and leaned against a wall and watched the others dance. Rachael watched him while she played the piano.
Poor Wolf, she thought. He is like a lost soul. When her mother relieved her at the piano she drifted over to him.
“Would you like to dance?” she asked.
“Uh-uh.”
“Come on.”
“No, I don’t care to. Besides, I get all tangled up with my feet.”
There was an electrifying moment as the evening reached its highlight when Emanuel Goldman entered the room and it was announced that he would perform at the piano.
He had been in retirement for several years, and his hands and reflexes had become slowed and his technique rusty, but there was still that great personal charm of a real virtuoso. Tonight he had made an exception and was going to perform. The hall became breathless with anticipation as he seated himself at the upright and burst into a thundering polonaise.
Rachael Bronski went out to the balcony where Wolf Brandel stood alone, looking at the Tlomatskie Synagogue down the street. His hands were shoved forlornly into his pockets.
“Don’t you want to hear Emanuel Goldman play?” she said.
“I can hear him fine from out here.”
She walked up behind him, and that made him uncomfortable. He moved a few feet away, still keeping his back to her.
“What’s the matter, Wolf! I’ve never seen you so unhappy.”
He turned and shrugged. “Everything, I guess. Mostly the way things are today. Wearing this,” he said, touching the Star of David on his arm. “Not being able to go to school. Are you still taking piano lessons?”
“Momma teaches me now. I have a lot of time to practice when I’m not working at the orphanage. Are you still taking flute lessons?”
“No. I never liked it, anyhow.”
“I thought you did.”
“No, I just said that.”
“Why?”
“To make Momma happy. It wasn’t really too bad. I kind of used to look forward to Tuesdays. Sitting in the park with you after lessons.”
“I miss that too,” she said softly.
“Well, you’ll get over that. I’m not much.”
“Why do you always pull yourself down?”
“Look at me. I get more stupid-looking every day.”
“It’s not so, Wolf. You’re turning into a man and you will be very, very handsome.”
He shrugged. His voice alternated from high to low, and now he had much trouble holding it steady. He cleared his throat formally. “I should like to visit your brother Stephan,” he said. “I realize that you and your mother are schooling him, but he needs older masculine company. Someone he can look up to. I could teach him chess and many other things.”
“That would be very nice. Stephan does need an older ... man. Uncle Andrei is not around much, and Father works very late.”
“Good. I will come to see him. Rachael ...”
“Yes?”
“Do you think—I mean—with all the joy around here now—What I mean to say is that everyone is kissing everyone. Do you think it would be proper if we expressed our joy too? I mean, properly. For little Moses.”
“I don’t know. Seeing how happy everyone is, it might be all right, don’t you think?”
He pecked at her cheek and pulled back abruptly. “That was stupid,” he said. “It wasn’t a real kiss. Have you ever had a real kiss, Rachael?”
“Once,” she answered.
“Did you like it?”
“Not too much. I really didn’t like him. I only wanted to see what a kiss was like. It was sort of mushy. Have you ever had a real kiss?”
“Lots of them,” he threw off nonchalantly.
“Did you like it?”
“You know how it is. I can take it or leave it.”
Rachael and Wolf looked at each other for ever so long, and their breathing became irregular. There was a burst of applause inside and spontaneous calls for the master to play more. Then the shouts died down. Goldman played a soft Beethoven sonata.
Rachael was becoming frightened at the strange feeling she had all over her body. “We had better get inside,” she said.
“Could I—for real?”
She was too scared to talk. She nodded her head and closed her eyes and lifted her chin and parted her lips. Wolf braced himself and leaned over slightly and touched his lips to hers.
He lowered his eyes and jammed his hands in his pockets.
“That was very good,” Rachael said, “nothing at all like the other time.”
“Could we do it again?” he asked.
“Maybe we shouldn’t ... Well, just once more.”
This time Wolf pulled her gently to him and they felt each other and it was even more wonderful. Her arms reached around him and held him against her and it was so good. “Oh, Wolf,” she whispered.
She tugged away from him and walked toward the door. “Rachael.”
“Yes?”
“Shall I see you soon?”
“Yes,” she said, and ran inside.
Chapter Thirteen
PAUL BRONSKI GENERALLY BROUGHT his work home from the Civil Authority after hours. The census had been a demanding task. There had been a wild scramble for “Aryan” Kennkarten not stamped with the demanding J. Many of the Jewish population were trying to buy their way out of the country or otherwise make the census count very difficult. Three hundred and sixty thousand Jews had registered with the Civil Authority.
It was the new directives and continual organizational work that kept Paul busy until late each night.
Deborah, who spent the days at the orphanage and the evenings schooling her children, took time out from their studies to make tea for Paul.
When she entered the study he was slumped over the desk, his eyes red from reading, and he was pale with fatigue. As he sipped the tea she stood behind him and massaged his neck. It always felt so good when Deborah did that.
“Anything bad?” she asked.
“Just weary,” he answered. “This stump aches. Acts up in the damp weather.”
“Can’t you take anything?”
“Don’t want to get into the habit of too much pain killer.”
“Paul, you’ve been working too hard. Why don’t we take a few days off together? We can slip off somewhere. You can get a travel pass.”
“I wish I could. My belated responsibilities to the Jewish community are rather time-consuming.”
She sat on the desk. He smiled and pushed his papers back. “We aren’t spending much time together,” she said. “Orphanage during the day—but they’re so short-handed—our children’s lessons at night. I’ll cut off a few hours at the orphanage.”
“No,” Paul said. “I won’t be able to get home earlier, anyhow. Besides, it makes a good impression to have the wife of a Civil Authority member volunteering in the Orphans and Self-Help program.”
There was something Deborah didn’t like about that. Paul had reacted with a sense of duty to his new status, but he was still groping for prestige—still thinking in terms of doing the proper thing.
“When is all this going to end?” Deborah said glumly. “Once I was foolish enough to think nothing could be worse than during the siege.”
“Well, no one really knows what the Germans are up to. But even they only can go so far. It will level off.” He switched the subject quickly. “I saw Chris today.”
“Oh ...”
“He’s been able to transfer most of our accounts to American banks.” Paul laughed ironically. “There’s a paradox for you. We are getting richer all the time.”
Deborah worked hard to mask the sudden shock at the mention of Chris’s name. “How is Chris?” she said quickly.
“Fine—fine.”
“I didn’t know that he would be allowed to continue here. Susan Geller told me Ervin Rosenblum was concerned about a possible closing of Swiss News.”
“Seems he has gotten himself in thick with this Von Epp fellow. Naturally, his agency wants him to keep operating as long as the Germans let him. Incidentally, we decided that for mutual interests we shouldn’t see each other except in emergency. There’s no use alerting the Germans that we have business, and I could endanger Chris’s position here. We don’t need the funds, fortunately, and if we do we can always work through Rosenblum.”
“Yes,” Deborah said, “that’s sensible.”
“Dear,” Paul said, “while we’re about it, I want to speak to you about this business of sending Stephan to Rabbi Solomon for study. Let me say that I am in sympathy with your motives, but it’s dangerous business.”
Deborah’s sweetness suddenly vanished. “Dangerous for whom?”
“For the boy himself.”
“Have you thought about the shock he has received in the past few months?”
“Of course I have. Deborah, be sensible. We are very lucky. We have been spared all the harrowing things going on in Warsaw.”
“Is that really it, Paul?” she said sharply. “Protecting our position?”
“Did you ever think what would happen to us if I’m thrown off the Civil Authority? I’m not a criminal for wanting to protect my family.”
Paul had never seen Deborah look so stubborn. Almost always he had been able to talk her around in the past.
“Our son is being humiliated and persecuted because he is a Jew,” Deborah said. “He should at least have some moral fortification to withstand these shocks. We cannot let him stumble through this without knowing why he is a Jew.”
Deborah wanted to say more. She wanted to tell Paul that if he assumed his responsibility as a Jewish father he would give his son instruction and training as other Jewish fathers were doing since the outlawing of the cheder schools. But what she said carried an authority he had never heard from her before. She let it stop there because Paul was tired and confused and she did not wish to hurt him.
The doorbell rang.
Paul opened it. Gawky Wolf Brandel dangled before him. “Good evening, sir,” he said, his face reddening.
Paul smiled slightly. He quickly tried to change the atmosphere of the argument. “Good evening, Mr. Brandel. Did you come to visit with Stephan or Rachael?”
“Rachael—I mean Stephan, sir.”
“I will let you have them both for the price of one chess game.”
Oh darn, Wolf thought. Bronski was a tough chessplayer. It would take an hour to beat him. Then a lovely thought occurred. He would throw the game on purpose. This would kill two birds with one stone—please Dr. Bronski’s vanity and allow him to see Rachael quicker.
That night Deborah lay awake. The mention of Chris had stirred a restlessness in her. She ached for him. She closed her eyes and began to remember moments of coming up the path in the Saxony Gardens ... his touch, the warmth of him. The music in his room as they lay in the shadows. She squirmed about the bed.
She had run from him in anger and fright. But always in the back of her mind she knew she would see him again. Now ... cut off, completely. Not even a stolen glance ... a touch ... not even his voice on the phone. He must have been terribly, terribly hurt. But he is still in Warsaw ... he is still here. She wanted him to touch her. Oh, Chris ... Chris ... Chris ... please touch me.
Her tears fell on the pillow.
Paul reached out for her, and her body turned tense and rigid as it always did. Deborah forced the tears to stop and breathed deeply several times to make herself relax, and she rolled over to her husband.
Paul was in trouble. He was walking a tightrope. In the old days before the war he was so sure of himself, so independent and clever. He was floundering and now he had to lean on her more and more.
“You aren’t angry about what I said about Stephan? If it means so much to you, then we will chance it. We’ll let the boy continue with Rabbi Solomon.”
His hand went beneath her waist. She put her arms about him as he lay his head on her breast.
“I need you so much,” Paul said.
After sixteen years of taking her for granted, it was the first confession he had ever made.
Chapter Fourteen
Journal Entry
SOMETHING NEW HAS BEEN added. As if we don’t have enough to worry about, we were presented with Sturmbannführer Sieghold Stutze. Despite the lowly rank of SS major, it looks as if Stutze holds great power.
He came from Globocnik’s SS, SD, Gestapo capital in Lublin. Like Globocnik and Hitler, Stutze is an Austrian. He arrived with a detachment of SS troopers who are billed as “specialists in Jewish affairs.” We are learning that Globocnik and not Governor General Hans Frank is the real boss of Poland. It may hold true then that Stutze and not Rudolph Schreiker will be the real boss of Warsaw.
Whereas Rudolph Schreiker has shown himself to be a plain and simple pigheaded bully, Stutze is exhibiting a maniacal lust for cruelty. He is small in stature, thus a Napoleonic complex. He is slightly deformed in one leg and has a limp. This is a clue to his sadistic delight in inflicting pain. We are very concerned about this development.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Although religious study had been banned, this merely meant it would be carried on in secret places, as had been done by the Marranos during the Spanish Inquisition and a hundred times in a hundred places where it had been banned during Jewish history.
Stephan Bronski had entered a most impressionable age. After a lifetime of immunity, the sudden branding of being a Jew made his trips to Rabbi Solomon’s home part of a great adventure of discovery. He liked the secrecy of it. He was fascinated by the strange cryptic scrawlings in Hebrew and much awed by the infinite wisdoms of the rabbi. The gradual understanding of the two thousand years of unspeakable persecution did much to alleviate the confusion within him.
His class had six other boys. They studied in the basement beneath the home of Rabbi Solomon. They spoke in whispers. All about them were the treasures taken from the synagogue for safekeeping. The synagogue’s library of many thousand books of Talmudic and Jewish literature was there. The menorah, the sacred candelabra, were there. The heart of Judaism, the Torah scrolls from the ark of the synagogue, were there.
The boys learned Hebrew prayers, ethics of the fathers, and prepared for the bar mitzvah.
The old man would walk from one to the other and pick up the chant of their prayer, pat one on the head, twist another’s ear who was lagging. Although he was ancient, the boys could not put anything over on him, for it seemed he could see in back of his head and hear all seven of them at the same time.
Stephan Bronski asked the rabbi if he could be excused for a moment and it was granted. He stood up, and then he saw them!
There were three Nazis in black uniforms in the doorway. Major Sieghold Stutze stood before the other two.
“Rabbi!” Stephan cried.
And they all froze in terror.
Sieghold Stutze limped into the room. “Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
The children flocked behind the rabbi, quivering in fright. One vomited. Only Stephan Bronski stood in front of the old man. His eyes burning with anger, he looked at that moment very much like his Uncle Andrei.
Stutze brushed Stephan aside as he tried to “protect” the old rabbi and grabbed him by the beard and flung him to the floor. He took the dagger from his belt, straddled the fallen man, and cut off the earlocks worn by religious Jews because King David had worn them.
The other two Nazis broke into laughter. They walked around the room, throwing the books to the floor, overturning the desks, trampling on the symbolic ornaments from the synagogue.
“These will make a lovely bonfire,” Stutze said. His eyes searched the room carefully. “It is here, somewhere—now where is it?” He walked to a large canvas. “Could it be beneath here?”
“No!” shrieked the rabbi.
“Aha!” Stutze said, pulling the canvas away, revealing the Torah scrolls.
“No!” shrieked the rabbi again.
Stutze took off the breastplate, tore off the velvet cover, and took out the scrolls which formed the heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the five books of Moses. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. “Here it is, the prize.”
The rabbi crawled to the Nazi and threw his arms about his knees and begged him not to harm the scrolls. Stutze answered by sending his boot thudding into the old man’s ribs.
As he dangled the tree-of-life lambskin Torah before Solomon’s nose the old man cried prayers.
Stutze laughed and his troopers laughed. “I understand old Jews often die for this trash.”
“Kill me, but do not harm the Torah!”
“Shall we have some amusement? You! Boys! Line up against the wall! Hold your hands over your heads and put your faces to the wall.”
The boys did as they were ordered. Stutze dropped the Torah to the floor. Rabbi Solomon crawled quickly to it and covered it with his body.
Stutze took out his pistol and walked to the boys. “All right, old Jew, dance for us. Right on the Torah.”
“Kill me first.”
The Austrian cocked his pistol and placed the barrel against the back of Stephan Bronski’s head. “I shall not kill you, old Jew. Let me see how many of the boys I will have to kill first. Now dance for us.”
“Don’t do it, Rabbi!” Stephan shouted.
Stutze went into a spasm of hysterics. “Sometimes when I play this game we have to kill two or three before they do their dance.”
The old man got to his knees, grunting in anguish.
“Now dance for us, old Jew.”
As Stutze tantalized the boys by placing the pistol against their skulls they cried, “Rabbi! Rabbi!”
The tears streamed down the old man’s cheeks.
He brought his foot down on the Torah and shuffled a grotesque dance on the sacred lambskin.
“Faster, old Jew, faster! Wipe your feet on them!”
“Now, old Jew—piss on them! Piss on them!”
While the Nazis convulsed in laughter at the desecration of the Law, Stephan Bronski had in the flash of a second made a lightning dash for freedom.
Chapter Fifteen
Journal Entry
NEVER A DULL MOMENT since Sturmbannführer Sieghold Stutze has honored us with his presence. He calls his SS detail the “Reinhard Corps” after Reinhard Heydrich, the SD chief in Berlin. This gives us a clue to the chain of command. Hitler, Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Globocnik, and, in Warsaw, Stutze. In this week’s meeting with Emanuel Goldman, David Zemba, and Simon Eden, they gave me a raft of notes for my journal.
The Reinhard Corps swept into the northern Jewish area in large trucks and emptied Jewish stores of all their merchandise.
The Reinhard Corps has been going into individual homes and taking clothing, pots, pans, lamps, books—which are burned—pillows, blankets.
The Reinhard Corps has emptied supplies from Jewish warehouses, including Zemba’s American Relief supplies. This has created shortages in medicine and food. Then Dr. Koenig sold us back the things that Stutze had stolen at a six-hundred-per-cent markup.
Fuel ration has brought on pneumonia this winter, Emanuel Goldman tells me. He says another cut in food ration was ordered by Schreiker yesterday.
Not to be outdone by the Reinhard Corps, Rudolph Schreiker has hundreds of thugs from Solec and even mobs of children and students to roam the Jewish area and smash store windows, beat up Orthodox Jews on the street, and loot. It is understood that no Pole will be punished for a crime against a Jew. Special rewards are offered to Poles who turn over Jews with “Aryan” Kennkarten.
Rabbi Solomon’s synagogue was burned to the ground, as he was caught by Stutze teaching cheder in his basement. (I could have sworn young Bronski was receiving instructions. Maybe not. He did not show up among those turned in at Pawiak Prison.) Rabbi Solomon’s congregation was fined twenty thousand zlotys to free the boys and to pay for petrol which the Germans used to burn the synagogue. Zemba’s American Relief put up half the fine in American dollars.
All teen-age orphans in our orphanage in Powazki and a dozen other orphanages were forced to donate blood to the German army. Does Hitler know his Aryans will be transfused with impure blood?
Simon Eden says the trade in poison is getting large. Everyone is carrying a capsule for suicide. No one gets more than a few hours’ sleep these nights. Whistles, rifle butts, pounding boots. We sleep with one eye open. A hundred different rape cases reported. “Juden ’raus [Jews, come out]!” is heard every night, all night.
If we are to hand out prizes for ingenuity, Stutze’s Reinhard Corps must win. They force the old Orthodox to scrub sidewalks under bayonets. They have made them dance naked. They make them exercise with heavy cobblestones. They make them beat each other with galoshes. They make them crap their pants. Still, through it all, I am proud of these Jews. They refuse to shave off their beards or earlocks. They walk with their heads erect in great dignity despite the fact that their very appearance will bring them abuses. They are stubborn and honorable and of Rabbi Solomon’s breed, and we Zionists could learn a thing or two from them.
Schreiker, jealous of Stutze and not to be outdone, turned loose mad Gerta, an ethnic with a psychopathic hatred of Jews. She has been allowed to wander through the northern quarters with a lead pipe.
A.B.
Chapter Sixteen
Journal Entry
THE GERMAN HAND IS being revealed more each day. The Krakow Gazette keeps hammering on a theme of “segregation of the Jews on reservations.” That is fancy talk for ghettos.
More talk about sending Jews from Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany into Poland.
Yesterday it became true. A ghetto was decreed in Lodz. Chaim Rumkowski was appointed chairman of a Council of Elders. Ana Grinspan is there now to see if we can organize a “self-help house” like Mila 19. There are around two hundred thousand Jews in Lodz.
At yesterday’s meeting with Emanuel Goldman, David Zemba, and Simon Eden, Goldman thinks we are heading into a week of crisis in Warsaw. He says that all the abuses up to date have been merely to soften us up. A new Nazi, Oberführer Alfred Funk, has arrived, and that means trouble because Funk is the direct liaison between Berlin and Globocnik in Lubin and is no doubt carrying a pocketful of candy on new German policy.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
SS Brigadier Alfred Funk was the young blond blue-eyed Aryan about whom Adolf Hitler bragged. He was an intelligent and industrious man who cut a smart figure and would have been successful in any capacity he sought in life. He was shrewd and astute and dependable, unlike the bumbling bully Rudolph Schreiker, the timid conforming opportunist Franz Koenig, the half-mad Sieghold Stutze, and the cynical, lazy Horst von Epp.
Like Von Epp, he calculated that the rise of Nazism was unstoppable. Unlike Von Epp, he felt that Hitler could bring the German people to their peak position in history. Like most of the German people, he willingly chose to be a part of this “march to destiny.” He accepted the traditional German obedience to authority without question. He desired to be a large and important man and he became what he desired. Alfred Funk had a few qualms at first about Nazi methods but soon realized that the political tyranny of the concentration camps, the abolition of civil liberties, and the destruction of the intellectual opposition were merely fundamentals clearing the path for this Greater Germany. He became a deputy of tyranny with conviction. The tools of tyranny were not questions in his mind—only the best methods of using them.
Golden hair, trim body, Alfred Funk was a man of undeniable strength who was able to impose his authority. As the master blueprints came from Berlin from Heydrich and Eichmann of the 4B section of Gestapo, Oberführer Funk received the position of special liaison to Globocnik in Lublin.
When Emanuel Goldman was summoned to the city hall to see Oberführer Alfred Funk, he had already surmised Funk’s mission in Warsaw.
Funk spoke impassively. “We are concerned about the unsanitary habits of Jews. Your homes are filled with lice. Lice cause typhus.”
Funk was, indeed, starting on an interesting tack, Goldman thought. “I am not a doctor like the eminent Franz Koenig,” Goldman answered curtly, “but your regulations denying us sanitary facilities are the cause of the outbreak of lice.”
Funk stared. He did not blink or budge. The old man is tough.
The Nazi picked up a paper. “Our facts scientifically prove otherwise. Everyone knows Jews are filthy. Look at those bearded people. A perfect nesting place for lice.”
“We didn’t have a bit of trouble with them in the past,” Goldman answered.
“But there’s trouble now, isn’t there, Goldman? Now, Goldman, I want your Civil Authority to help us protect the citizens of Warsaw. Have this Orphans and Self-Help Society of yours set up delousing sheds. Each Jew will get a stamped card when he is deloused. He will have to have the card in order to receive rations. We will carry out extensive inspections of personal dwellings in order to stamp out this scourge.”
You mean looting parties under the guise of medical inspection, Goldman thought.
“In order to control this condition which the Jews have brought on Warsaw, we have blacked out certain areas of the city which will be under quarantine.”
Goldman knew ... here it comes.
“All Jews must move into the quarantine area within two weeks under punishment of death.” He shoved a map of Warsaw over his desk at the old man. It was blacked out from the northern rail bridge below Zoliborz down to Jerusalem Boulevard. The eastern boundary was a zigzag line past the Saxony Gardens, and the western boundary roughly in a line with the Jewish and Catholic cemeteries. Funk was watching him. There was no use arguing with the German.
“Goldman,” Funk continued, “you do agree we are at war with the Jews.”
“I cannot disagree.”
“Therefore, we consider that Jewish property, personal and otherwise, is legitimate booty—spoils of war. Therefore, when the move is completed into the quarantine area, you will begin a registration of all Jewish property. I have appointed Dr. Koenig as registrar and custodian of Jewish property. That goes for business inventories, bank accounts, jewels, furs, et cetera, et cetera.”
Koenig! My, he has come up in the world. ...
“One final thing, Goldman. Because you Jews have imposed these deplorable dangers and have consistently disobeyed our directives, we are fining all the Jews three hundred thousand zlotys. We are holding fifty people in Pawiak Prison to assure payment of the fine within a week. Your Civil Authority is expected to make the collection. You are to draft directives covering the things we have discussed and you will return here tomorrow for me to study them.”
When Goldman returned to the Civil Authority building at Grzybowska 28, he summoned the board immediately. Goldman relayed his conversation with Brigadier Alfred Funk to seven pasty-faced men.
“The quarantine order is merely a thin disguise for a ghetto. If we collect this mass fine for them, there will be others. Registration of property. I don’t have to explain that to you. The most dreadful part of their whole scheme is to make us issue the orders. Now, we on the Civil Authority believe we could be of some service to the community and be a protective wall between the community and the Germans. The Germans are converting the Civil Authority into their own tool for carrying out their dirty work.”
The room was stricken with fear. Everyone knew what the Germans were up to. Everyone also knew he was facing a moment when he had to search the depths of his own soul to see if it held a hidden reservoir of courage. So long as they carried out German orders, they and their families were safe. Defiance could bring them instant death. Was this worth dying for? Emanuel Goldman, their chairman, thought it was.
One by one they revealed themselves. Weiss, who had been an army officer all his life, had never been much of a practicing Jew. He considered himself an assimilated Pole. He was angry. He banged his fist on the table. “Certainly, as conquerors, they will give us the choice to withdraw in honor,” he said.
What nonsense, Goldman thought. Weiss is still playing colonel. “These are not soldiers, but Nazis,” Goldman said. “I do not know if they will let us resign.”
Now Silberberg. Once he had written plays in which vaunted ideals bounced from the rafters of the theaters. He had been terrified into conformity. He sulked. He hated himself for it. “We are not collaborators,” he said, finding his reserves of strength.
Seidman, the engineer, was Orthodox. “Misery is nothing new for the Jewish people. We have lived in ghettos before.”
As he talked he began to sound like Rabbi Solomon, but Goldman knew that Seidman spoke from conviction and not fear.
Marinski, the factory owner. He had spent a lifetime building his leatherworks. The new orders would end in confiscation of his factories, he was certain of it. He had to calculate. As a member of the Civil Authority, can I save my factory or shall I gamble that the Germans will back down if we have a show of strength? There was another thing worrying Marinski. He was a just and proud man. The right and wrong seemed clear. “We must make a stand,” he said.
That was the way Schoenfeld felt too. He was a brilliant lawyer. “No matter how complete the occupation. No matter how strong their authority, they have to base every action on cause. They gave you a cause with the excuse of a quarantine. A determined effort by us, and I am certain we can force them to adhere to the rules of basic decency. Make them negotiate.”
And Paul Bronski spoke. “We have no choice. To whom can we appeal? An outside world who won’t listen to us? Schoenfeld, you are a fool if you think we can negotiate them out of a ghetto. They want it, they’ve ordered it in Berlin, and they’ll have it. There is nothing we can do.”
“Yes there is,” Goldman answered. “We can behave like men.”
Boris Presser, the merchant, who had an art of being anonymous, said nothing except to vote with Paul Bronski and Seidman against making a protest to the Germans.
“It is voted five to three that we protest to Funk.”
A sudden wave of nausea hit Paul. He stumbled to his feet. “We are under no bylaws stating that we can vote. We are merely independent department heads. If you want to go to Funk with a protest, do it in the name of the others—not me.”
Was it an outburst of cowardice? Was it an outburst of self-preservation? Goldman wondered. He wondered if it was not all a useless gesture. There would be fifty more men like Paul Bronski to replace them and fifty more to replace them. What good would a protest do? Bronski was the realist there. The Germans would have what they wanted, regardless.
Emanuel Goldman was very tired. He was seventy-three years old. His children were all married. He lived alone with only his housekeeper.
He had had a good rich life. He had traveled and brought fame to his people and his country. A quirk of fate had put him into a position he did not wish, but he had accepted the position without protest. He had been made the chairman of the Civil Authority because Franz Koenig thought he was a weak man. Goldman was far from weak. He was an idealist who did not know how to back down from the things in which he believed.
He spent the night tying up all the loose ends of his business and took them to his friends, David Zemba of American Relief and Alexander Brandel. He left them knowing he would probably not see them again.
In the morning he reported to Oberführer Alfred Funk. He sat opposite the German very calmly, a picture of self-assurance, with the old flamboyance still in his mannerisms. Funk knew the moment Goldman entered the room, but his icy blue eyes did not betray the thoughts whirling behind them.
“You have drafted the directives?”
The old man shook his head.
Funk registered neither surprise nor anger.
“I won’t put my name on a ghetto order,” Goldman said.
“Do you speak in behalf of the entire board?”
“I suggest you ask them,” he retorted.
“I am curious,” Funk said. “Why are you doing it?”
Goldman smiled. “I am more curious. Why are you doing it?”
It was Funk who broke off the staring contest.
Goldman arose, bowed slightly, sending his long white silken hair awry. “Good day,” he said, and left.
Alfred Funk thought for a moment about the various possibilities, then shrugged to himself and methodically lifted his desk phone. “Find Sturmbannführer Stutze. Have him report to me instantly.”
Journal Entry
Emanuel Goldman was murdered last night. It appears to be the personal handiwork of Sturmbannführer Sieghold Stutze. He was beaten to death with a pipe. His body was dumped on the streets before the Civil Authority building as a clear-cut message.
Boris Presser, whom none of us know, has been appointed Civil Authority chairman and Dr. Paul Bronski given wider powers.
I must now deal with Bronski on all matters concerning the Orphans and Self-Help Society. We cannot expect from Bronski anything near what Goldman did for us.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Chapter Seventeen
Journal Entry
IT IS SUMMER OF 1940 already. News from the outside world, our one great source of hope, lists one disaster after another. Norway and Denmark have fallen. The Low Countries and the debacle at Dunkirk. Italy has been dragged into the war. German power is still on the rise, unchecked. France has paid for a decade of appeasement.
Rudolph Schreiker has no more trouble with the Jewish Civil Authority with Boris Presser as chairman. Paul Bronski’s co-operation with the Orphans and Self-Help Society is rigidly guided by German directives.
The poor Jews have had their personal property stripped and carted away. They have no choice but to register for slave labor in one of the dozens of new German factories and enterprises springing up all over the Warsaw area. Dr. Franz Koenig owns three or four factories outright. When short of labor they merely pull people off the streets in roundups and they simply disappear.
The rich are able to do better. There is wild trade in gold and jewelry and false Aryan papers. Everyone in the upper classes scrambles for himself. As for our countrymen, we do get superficial help from certain classes, but the bulk of the Poles show us nothing but apathy.
Any questions about who runs Poland? They are answered. SS Gruppenführer Globocnik in Lublin. It is known that Governor General Hans Frank protested to Hitler about having Jews deported from all over Europe into Poland. He was overruled. They are pouring in by the tens of thousands to the sixteen Jewish “reservations” in that curious master plan in Berlin calling for “resettlement’ of all Jews in occupied countries.
Some of the German and Austrian Jews are pretty haughty. They have been able to rent themselves nice flats and look down upon us poor Polish Jews as inferior. However, the vast majority arrive destitute. Dr. Glazer, who heads the medical staff of the Orphans and Self-Help, fears epidemic conditions and possibly mass starvation if we get another ration cut. Can Dave Zemba’s America Aid keep up with the massive new problems we face?
What is the ultimate aim of the Germans’ master plan? As German victories increase, their fear of world opinion lessens. I hear that the 4B section of the Gestapo on Jewish affairs under Adolf Eichmann on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin is an empire within an empire.
A.B.
It was getting more dangerous for Andrei each time he traveled outside Warsaw. On his last trip he had a close call when a sudden inspection was pulled at a siding. He slipped the Pole who spotted his fake travel pass a three-hundred-zloty bribe and it worked. He always carried the bills folded and placed in his papers so the inspector could be bought on the spot.
When Emanuel Goldman headed the Jewish Civil Authority, Andrei was issued travel permits under the guise of Orphans and Self-Help business. Now that Paul Bronski was the liaison, he shut off all but legitimate permits.
Andrei had to travel with false papers as a non-Jew. His Kennkarte read “Jan Kowal.” Normal hazards were increased by bands of hoodlums who hung out around the train depots detecting hidden Jews, whom they either extorted or turned over to the Gestapo for rewards.
Andrei’s Aryan appearance and obvious physical prowess had got him through six false-permit trips. How long he could evade capture was a moot question.
He arrived at the central terminal on Jerusalem Boulevard and walked directly toward Mila 19 to report to Alexander Brandel. He had gone only a few blocks when he stopped and watched the surge of humanity pouring into the Jewish quarantine areas. First they had come from other parts of Warsaw, then from the surrounding countryside. Now they were being transported in from outside Poland. Barbed-wire accordions were laid across dozens of streets and placed under guard to define the quarantine districts.
A stream of miserable dazed human beings filled the street from the northern terminal for several blocks south. Iron wheels on the cobblestones set up a din. Some of the wealthier of the new arrivals had their belongings on horse-drawn wagons. Others had their goods piled high on bicycle-driven porter carts, still others on hand push-carts. Most carried their possessions wrapped up in a single blanket slung over their backs.
Hawkers tried to sell them armbands, pots, pans, books—anything. Self-Help workers were trying to organize the chaos.
“Where are they from?” Andrei asked another onlooker.
“Belgium.”
No matter how many times Andrei saw it, the sight disgusted him. Anger churned him into a hot flush. He abruptly turned away from the direction of Mila 19 and walked quickly to Leszno 92, the headquarters of Simon Eden.
Leszno 92 had a line of refugees outside it that ran for a block. Volunteers were aiding in registration and working the soup kitchen for the new arrivals. He walked past the line. They became a blur of faces.
He entered the main room and was recognized immediately.
“I want to see Simon,” he whispered to one of the girls behind the counter.
Because Simon Eden was the most powerful Zionist in Warsaw, he lived in semi-seclusion in the attic. Three buzzes would let him know a friend was coming up. A different signal would send him to the safety of the rooftops for hiding.
Andrei climbed the ladder into the attic. Simon pulled him up the last step. They slapped each other on the back and went into his small garret quarters. It was wilting from the midday heat which had come through the roof and settled in the airless room. Andrei opened his shirt and took off his hat. Simon smiled as he saw that Andrei was still wearing his boots in symbolic defiance of the enemy.
Simon opened and closed a half dozen desk drawers until he discovered a half-filled bottle of vodka. He took a swig and passed it to Andrei.
“How was the trip?”
Andrei shrugged. “Good and bad.”
“Did you see any of my people?”
“Krakow. The underground press is getting important. At least it keeps the people aware of German motives.”
“What about the ghetto in Lodz?”
“I don’t know if we can set up Self-Help houses there. This bastard Chaim Rumkowski is acting like a mad emperor. He walks around with a pair of German guards.”
Simon grunted. Andrei relayed the rest of the events, city by city, and a pall of gloom as thick as the heat settled on them. Simon needed no expert to disseminate the news. His dark rugged features strained with the words of a uniformly worsening situation.
“What does Alex have to say about all this?”
“I haven’t seen Alex yet,” Andrei answered. “I came straight here from the terminal.”
Simon looked at him curiously.
“What’s on your mind, Andrei?”
“You were an officer in the army, Simon. We’ve been friends since I can remember. Out of everyone in this whole business, you and I think the most alike. When all this started I wanted to cross the border and get arms. Alex talked me out of it. I’ve gone along with everything, but ... after this last trip ... Simon, we’ve got to start hitting back.”
Simon took another nip of vodka from the bottle and scratched his unshaven jaw. “Not a day passes by that my stomach doesn’t turn over. It is all I can do to keep from exploding.”
“If I go to Alex he’ll talk me out of starting a resistance movement. He can talk a leopard out of his spots. But if you and I went to him—you, speaking for Federated Zionists—and issued him an ultimatum, he’d have to start giving us some of the funds from American Aid to buy arms. We’ve got to do it now. Thompson is afraid the Germans are watching him. If they send him out of Poland, one of our chief sources to get dollars in is gone.”
Simon Eden wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and walked to the tiny window which looked straight down for six stories. Hundreds of impoverished refugees lined up before Leszno 92 for a bowl of soup and a Kennkarte which would give them the “privilege” of joining slave labor.
“What about them down there?” Simon asked. “We are all they have.”
“How long can you get slapped in the face without raising your hand!”
Simon spun around from the window. “What the hell can we do!”
“Kill the bastards! Make life hell for them!”
“Andrei! Denmark, Norway, Poland, France, Belgium, Holland! Will they give in to us? Twenty, thirty, a hundred to one in reprisal for every one we kill, and they’ll murder women and babies and old men. Can you take that responsibility?”
“You’re a damned fool, Simon, and Alex is a damned fool. Do you really think they will stop with ghettos and slave labor? They mean to wipe us off the face of the earth.”
The two giants glared at each other, portraits of anger and frustration. Simon shook his head.
“One of these days we will be at the twelfth hour, and by God you’ll know then there is no way but to fight our way out,” Andrei said.
Andrei left Simon Eden in a huff. He did not go to Mila 19 to see Alexander. There would be hours of reports and bickering. Alterman and Susan and Rosy would listen to his monotonous repetitions of the fear of new ghettos, the continued murder of intellectuals, the slave-labor camps, the unbelievable abuses. And they would try to put up a new Self-Help house in Bialystok or Lemberg. They would try to print a one-page paper. They would put up a few bags of sand to hold back a rising, rampaging river.
Andrei walked fast for Gabriela’s flat, trying to shut out the sight and the sound of the agony around him. Many people were becoming anonymous in Warsaw these days. Gabriela was one of them. It was an unwritten code that if you ignored a friend who recognized you in a public place it was understood.
Gabriela had moved from her flat to a smaller one on Shucha Street. Through Tommy Thompson she sent messages to her mother and sister that it would be dangerous for her if they were to communicate with her. She stopped her allowance from coming into Poland and took an inconspicuous job as a tutor in French and English in the small, exclusive school in the Ursuline Convent.
Andrei stopped before her flat on Shucha Street Across the street stood Gestapo House. It was ironic, but he thought Gaby’s flat was probably in the safest place in Warsaw. It was early. She would not be home yet. He dashed off a note and put it in her mailbox so she would not be startled.
Andrei threw off his cap and flopped into a big armchair and fought with himself to relax the burning pains of tension in his chest. It had been a terrible trip. He did not realize until this moment that he had not slept more than a few hours in three days. His eyes closed and he rolled his face into the sun’s rays to catch its warmth, and he dozed quickly.
... The sound of footsteps brought him sharply awake. Gaby had read his note. She was running up the steps. The door to the flat flung open and closed quickly, and she set down her parcels of food and looked for him in the evening shadows. She curled up on his lap and lay her head on his chest, and they clung to each other with no sound except for her deep sighs of relief and no movement except for her trembling.
She looked at him. His face was so drawn and tired. Day by day she watched the energy being sapped from him. After each trip he was drained. He was eating himself away inside.
Now, at this moment, she could transfuse life back into him. Andrei smiled with pleasure at the feel of her fingertips tracing the lines of his face and her lips brushing his eyes and ears and neck.
“It was very bad this time,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer I can take it.”
“I’ll take care of you, dear. ...”
She unbuttoned his shirt and felt his chest and shoulders, and the knots of tension slowly melted away.
“I’ll take care of you,” she whispered.
“Gaby ...”
“Yes, darling ...”
“When you touch me like this it all seems to go far away. Why are you so good to me?”
“Shhh ... shhh ... rest, darling ...”
“Gaby, when will they stop? What do they want from us?”
“Shhh ... shhh ... shhh.”
Chapter Eighteen
Journal Entry
DON’T HIDE YOUR GOLD ring, Mother,
Your chances are quite nil,
That if the Germans do not find it,
Kleperman, the
goniff,
will.
That verse is attributed to Crazy Nathan, a half-wit who roams the ghetto making rhymes and some rather clairvoyant observations. No one knows where Crazy Nathan comes from, who his parents are, or even what his last name is. He wears filthy rags and sleeps in alleyways and cellars. Everyone looks upon him as a harmless goof and treats him with benevolent tolerance. Crazy Nathan shows up at the best cafés in the Jewish districts and, after a few new verses, earns his meal. He prefers fish so he can share it with the dozen or more alley cats who follow him. He has named his cats after the board members of the Jewish Civil Authority.
A.B.
Max Kleperman was a product of the slums. He learned at a tender age that it was easier to live off his fellow man than, God forbid, bend his back in honest labor.
By the age of five Max was a fast-hand artist. He could wander through the smelly, noisy trade in Parysowski Place and rifle wares off the pushcarts of the old bearded Jews with dazzling deftness. By the time he reached seven he was an expert in fencing his stolen goods.
While good Jewish sons like Andrei delivered chickens for their fathers and were robbed and beaten by hoodlums, naughty Jewish sons like Max Kleperman showed a natural aptitude as middlemen. He would purchase all stolen chickens and other goods from the hoodlums and resell them on the Parysowski open market at stunning markups.
By the age of fourteen he had been a guest of the Pawiak Prison three times. Once for theft. Once for extortion. Once for swindling.
By the age of sixteen he went to his natural habitat, to live in the Smocza area populated by the Jewish underworld of Warsaw.
At seventeen he was accepted as a full-fledged member of the Granada Night Club, the most notorious hangout for thugs and gangsters in Poland.
As Max grew older his varied talents expanded. He became the head of a gang of strong-arm men who muscled in on the building-trade area on Grzybowski Square. The square was lined with building-material shops, craftsmen, contractors, teamsters, ironworks, and brick shops. Plying his talent as a middleman with the help of husky friends, Max elbowed his way into the square until his “clearance” became standard for most normal operations. Only the opposition of the labor unions kept him from absolute czardom.
His hand was in every pie from blueprint to finished product. His little finger bore an eight-carat diamond and his cigar ashes dripped on half the building deals made in Warsaw.
Max was at home at the Granada Night Club or even with the goyim underworld in Solec, where he was respected; but strangely, he reached a point in life where he began to wonder what all his hard labor was for. He was, in fact, nothing but a bum.
Max Kleperman did not want to be a bum. He wanted to be as respectable as the “new rich” who promenaded on the Avenue of the Marshals on the Sabbath. He could not muscle himself into their affection, and this annoyed him. So he set about to purchase respectability. First the beautiful old mansion of a nobleman living in France. It did not help. His neighbors looked upon him as a social leper.
Max was determined. He hired an expensive lawyer with a three-word dictum, “Make me respectable.”
The lawyer’s first move was to buy a pair of seats in the Great Tlomatskie Synagogue. Max could parade in during the High Holy Days when the synagogue was filled to capacity and uniformed police held back the mobs of onlookers who “ohed” and “ahed” at the elite.
Max was put on a program of philanthropy. He donated to the poor and he patted orphans on the head and sponsored scholarships for students who never did amount to much.
His work was so good that he was accepted into membership by a half dozen professional societies. Then followed a series of lavish parties.
Soon Max Kleperman was so respectable he fired his lawyer.
To consolidate his hard-won position, Max had to get rid of his ignorant wife, who was constantly a source of embarrassment. She was delighted with the settlement. Max then shopped around through the professional match-makers for a nice homey girl from a good religious family.
One was found for him. Sonia Fischstein filled the bill. Her family was Orthodox, respectable, traditional, and acceptable to a settlement on their daughter. Rabbi Solomon was called in to negotiate the terms.
Rabbi Solomon saw right through Kleperman’s fraud. Max was enraged at the rabbi’s attitude. He even invited the notion of having him rubbed out. Then he learned that Rabbi Solomon was really respectable—in fact, the most respectable man in Jewish Warsaw. He set out to cultivate the great man.
Rabbi Solomon was not fooled. He considered everything. Max would never change, but his quest for respectability would keep him in check and there was some hope that a little of the decency he was exposing himself to would rub off on him. Besides, Sonia Fischstein was quickly running out of chances to marry. So he agreed to the match.
Rabbi Solomon became the earthly custodian of Kleperman’s soul. Max realized under his puffy jowls that his one link with the Maker was through the rabbi.
When the Germans invaded Poland, Max was sad because no one liked Germans. However, he was a realistic man. His past made him perfect for the type of business that was flourishing—black market, smuggling, money exchanging. In fact, opportunities were never so great. Moreover, the Germans could be dealt with. Before the smoke of battle had cleared, Max Kleperman got in touch with Dr. Franz Koenig and impressed him that his organization would be indispensable to the Germans.
At that time, Dr. Koenig had the problem of opening brothels for German soldiers, a venture in which the Jewish Civil Authority had refused to co-operate. Eager to prove his own mettle to Rudolph Schreiker, Dr. Koenig gave Max his first assignment, the rounding up of a hundred whores. Max had pimped in his younger days but not since he became respectable. Nevertheless, his contacts in the Solec were still active and he came through for Koenig in two days.
Dr. Koenig knew he had a real ally.
With a license to operate, Max Kleperman gathered around him the most immoral gang of chiselers in Warsaw. His tentacles spread everywhere.
When the Germans introduced slave labor, Max had at long last broken his enemy, the labor unions. He grabbed firm control of the building-trade industry and from there poached on dozens of legitimate businesses. With the strong arm of the Germans behind him, it became realistic to do business with Max and his partners.
The main windfall was the sale of protection. If a father or son was picked up off the street in a German roundup and taken to the slave-labor camps outside Warsaw, Kleperman could arrange a release for a price.
It was in this area that he posed as a benefactor of the people. When they came to him for a release of a relative, Max treated them with great sympathy, all the while appraising them for how much he could shake them down. He would tell them it took a lot of money to make a fix with the Germans. There is honor among thieves. Max refused compensation until he arranged the release. Dr. Koenig, Sieghold Stutze, and Rudolph Schreiker had also hit a windfall in kickbacks.
Max’s interests became so large that he and his six minor partners leased a building on the corner of Pawia and Lubeckiego streets, opposite the Pawiak Prison, to direct their enterprises. The organization became known as the Big Seven.
When the Germans ordered registration of Jewish property, Dr. Franz Koenig became custodian of all Jewish-owned dwellings in Warsaw. The Big Seven became the agent for Koenig.
During the quarantine directives, Jews had to move from all parts of Warsaw into the new restricted area. Eighty thousand Christians who lived in the quarantine area were to be replaced by a hundred fifty thousand incoming Jews. In the two weeks of the move, with a quarter of a million people suddenly upheaved, the Big Seven made a killing.
Amid the frantic turmoil and the endless streams of wagons and pushcarts, there was a frenzied scramble to find living quarters for a hundred fifty thousand people in an area designed to hold eighty thousand.
Property was at a premium for the Jews. As agent for Koenig’s office, Kleperman was able to rent and sell at astronomical figures, even “doing a favor” to those wealthy enough to afford it.
Property values again jumped when the mass deportation of Jews from occupied countries into Poland began.
Dr. Franz Koenig and the other German heads preferred to deal with the Big Seven mostly because of the language barrier that existed with the Poles. Most Jews spoke Yiddish.
Toward the end of the summer of 1940, Max Kleperman was summoned to the city hall to the office of Dr. Franz Koenig. When he was ushered into the office he was surprised to find Rudolph Schreiker and Oberführer Alfred Funk there also. Max did not mind doing business with Koenig, but he did not like Schreiker and he knew that when Funk was in Warsaw trouble was brewing, for Funk carried the messages from Berlin. No matter how decent Max was to Schreiker, Schreiker always bullied him around. Kleperman had made a large donation to the German Winter Relief, yet this did not placate Schreiker.
Max betrayed his nervousness by incessantly squeezing his cigar. He deftly slipped the eight-carat diamond into a vest pocket lest it end up in German Winter Relief.
He had never met Funk before. Funk was arrogant. Max could see immediately the disdain Funk held for him.
Max’s upper lip dampened with perspiration, and ashes dropped on his trousers.
Rudolph Schreiker opened a map of Warsaw on a conference table. Max mopped his brow and studied it. A heavy black grease-pencil line was drawn encircling the areas which the Germans had placed under quarantine. Much of it followed the route of the barbed-wire rolls in “epidemic” streets.
“I have studied the past several weeks Warsaw and I am aghast,” Alfred Funk said. “You Jews have been guilty of the most blatant infractions of our regulations. We have notified the Jewish Civil Authority that the Jews are fined three million zlotys and they must collect it within a week.”
Kleperman nodded and squeezed his cigar.
“As you know, you are a filthy people,” Funk continued. “We cannot seem to do anything about your sanitation habits. Typhus is reaching epidemic proportions despite our delousing operations. Therefore, for the protection of the people of Warsaw, and in order to further segregate you dirty Jews, we have decided to build this enclosure around the quarantine areas.”
Max dared not take his eyes off the map.
“General Funk is willing to consider having an outside building group construct the enclosure. I suggest the Big Seven, provided your bid is in order,” Dr. Koenig said.
Max was able to pick up all the meanings of Koenig’s statement. Kickbacks down the line for the Germans. A continuance of the pattern of forcing the Jews to carry out German directives and thereby justifying the German claim that “Jews were doing this to Jews.”
Max had an infamously gained knowledge of construction. He clamped the cigar in his teeth, and his fat finger ran down the lines marked by the Germans.
“What type of an enclosure do you have in mind?”
“A brick wall, ten feet high. Triple strands of barbed wire on top.”
Max licked his dry lips. The line ran for eleven or twelve miles, more or less. He jotted down a page of figures to approximate the number of bricks, miles of barbed wire, mortar needed.
“About labor costs?”
“The Jewish Civil Authority will recruit three battalions of labor.”
Good, Max thought. Slave labor. They worked for rations. He went back to work on his figures. With slave labor, inferior materials, salvaged brick, he could bring it well under the fine of three million zlotys with a huge profit for himself.
“With the price of the zloty,” Max whined. “It was five to one—now it is a hundred to one and still climbing.”
“Don’t steal so much and it may go down,” Rudolph Schreiker snapped.
Max toyed with the figures and looked from one to the other. “I am sure I can come up with a satisfactory figure,” he said.
“Yes, I am sure you will,” Funk agreed.
Journal Entry
In ancient days Jewish slave labor built monuments to Egyptian glory. Now we build one to German glory. We pay for it with a fine. We watch it happen with a strange fascination. A lot of people are relieved that the ghetto is coming. Safety in numbers. Well, we’ve got numbers. The population has swelled to over a half million and they are still pouring in.
Each morning labor battalions are formed in various parts of the quarantine area. They split into a dozen or more smaller groups, all working in different places.
A row of bricks here ... a row of bricks there. Two rows, three rows. It seems aimless, without a plan. Now and then two groups connect.
The Krakow Gazette has stepped up its tirades on page four with the campaign about the uncleanliness of Jews, asserting that we “sub-humans” must be segregated.
The wall grows higher. Two feet, three, four. It follows a weird, unexplainable course. From the slums of Stawki Street and Parysowski Place, which is crammed with refugees, it follows south along the Jewish cemetery and stops at the fashionable Sienna Street, running there to Wielka Street, north again.
The wall is shutting off the Saxony Gardens and the Great Tlomatskie Synagogue. We are even denied the squalid Krasinski Gardens. I do not believe there will be a single tree in the ghetto.
For eleven crooked, reasonless miles. Who planned this? In some places the wall cuts right down the middle of the street, putting half of the houses in the ghetto and half outside. On Leszno Street it slices right through the middle of the courthouse. Chlodna Street is a finger of land on the Aryan side, splitting the ghetto into two parts. The big ghetto is on the north. A smaller ghetto is to the south, and this holds the elite—members of the Civil Authority, Militia, wealthy, German and Austrian deportees. A bridge covered with barbed wire crosses Chlodna Street, connecting the two ghettos. It has been named the “Polish corridor.”
Seven, eight, nine, ten feet. The wall is connected in all parts. Tens of thousands of jagged pieces of glass have been cemented on top to rip off the hand of anyone who tries to scale it. A triple strand of barbed wire is on top of the glass.
There are thirteen gates. Never has the unfortunate number had a more sinister use. There are guards at each gate. A few of the Reinhard Corps bossing the unarmed Polish Blue Police. There is a rumor that a Jewish police force will be formed inside the ghetto.
Irony. One Catholic church on Leszno has been included in the ghetto. The Catholics have put it to work. Franciscan Father Jakub has been sent in to take care of Jewish converts who are forced to live as Jews now but still carry on Catholic ritual.
Statistics? The ghetto is a thousand acres, or one hundred square blocks, or fifteen hundred buildings. Any way you cut it, it’s pretty rough to find places for a half million people.
On November 7, 1940, the Big Seven had completed the wall and the ghetto was declared. In a fell swoop tens of thousands who were working at jobs outside the quarantine area were jobless.
Sieghold Stutze’s Reinhard Corps had the task of ghetto security. True to early rumor, a Jewish Militia was formed. On paper it was under the direction of the Jewish Civil Authority, a guise in keeping with the German policy of trying to create the illusion that the Jews were imposing this upon each other. Stutze was the ruler of the Jewish Militia.
He chose as his chief a former sub-warden of the Pawiak Prison named Piotr Warsinski, who had a long-time reputation of brutality to prisoners, especially Jewish prisoners.
Piotr Warsinski was squat, bald, and sported an immense mustache. A tormented youth filled with fear of a brutal father had left him impotent and seething with hatred. Warsinski blamed his demented soul on being a Jew. He converted. Conversion left him with an unreasonable hatred of Judaism. Now the Germans forced him to be a Jew again and it intensified his hate.
Warsinski gathered about him the dregs of Jewish society. Men and women with limited mentality, criminal records, without conscience. They were given truncheons, special armbands, blue caps, and they were issued black boots, the symbol of power. They were given preferential rations and quarters for themselves and their families.
There was one condition. Warsinski made it utterly clear that their personal survival depended upon complete obedience.
As 1940 closed, a half million people in the Warsaw ghetto formed the largest human stockyard the world had ever known. They were at the complete mercy of the greatest military power ever experienced by man. The Germans had craftily carried out their master plan by forcing Jew to rule Jew through the impotent Jewish Civil Authority backed by the potent Jewish Militia under the sadist Warsinski. To augment their problems, the Big Seven continued their legalized swindles.
All that was left to protect this swell of humanity was a thin line of Zionists, Socialists, and the Orphans and Self-Help Society with American Aid.
Chapter Nineteen
Journal Entry
I THINK THAT SUSAN Geller will die of a broken heart. The Germans have ordered her to abandon our orphanage (and pride and joy) in Powazki and move inside the ghetto. Their directives order Susan to leave all equipment attached to the floors and walls, and that constitutes some of our most expensive things. Even the Orphans and Self-Help Society has a hard time renting property these days. Space is at a premium. We were able to find Susan a building on Niska Street, which she must completely convert. It is hardly comparable to the place in Powazki.
Thank the Lord for my dear Sylvia and for Deborah Bronski. Between the two of them, they kept Susan from a breakdown on moving day. It is so strange how different Deborah and Paul Bronski are. Yesterday I had to argue for three solid hours to convince Paul Bronski to petition the Germans to allow us to keep our farm in Wework running. You never know how the Germans will react. Paul just phoned me that the farm will be allowed to operate. Tolek Alterman will be overjoyed.
I am sending my son Wolf out to the farm in Wework. It will be good for him out there.
We have received our first group of Dutch Jews. The trip to Poland was very hard. They were jammed in cattle cars.
Where can we put them? I don’t know. The ghetto has over five hundred fifty thousand people in it now.
Mila 19 has been divided up by the Bathyran Council. On the first floor we have the ghetto administrative offices of the Orphans and Self-Help. We have a soup kitchen that can be entered from the back alley (Orphans and Self-Help now runs sixty soup kitchens), and we have a dispensary for minor ailments and a delousing shed as demanded by our German friends.
Second story. Bathyran families. Our rule is one family to a single room, regardless of the size of the family. The kitchen for the entire house is also on the second floor.
Twenty-one families ... sixty-two occupants, including Sylvia, me, and baby Moses (now that Wolf is gone).
Third floor. Walls have been broken through. Our dormitory for single girls. We have thirty. Divided right down the middle; fifteen work in the dispensary and soup kitchen and fifteen are hired out as domestics in the small ghetto on the southern end. I cheat by supplying our domestics with green armbands denoting a Self-Help employee in order to allow them to move about unmolested by Warsinski’s overeager Jewish Militia.
Fourth floor. Fifty of our boys have a dormitory. Twenty of them work in Mila 19. Thirty work at various jobs around the ghetto, mostly as bicycle porters and riksha drivers.
The problem is shaping up. Of our eighty “kids,” most have left families to live with us in the communal. How many members of their families can we take in—the aged, the ill? This is going to become serious.
In the attic we have cut up a dozen cubicles for the married couples. They are living on the second floor, mostly more than two to a room, so they must have a place where they can duck off for a few hours to have privacy. There are preset signals on the doors to advise whether the cubicles are in use or not. Sylvia and I are fortunate. With Wolf gone and the baby still an infant, we manage very well in our room.
The unmarried who wish privacy have to work it out for themselves. We neither officially encourage nor discourage it. Off the record, the unmarried know that the basement is available to them.
Irony. David Zemba, who wins more and more respect from me all the time, went in to see Schreiker and demanded that American Aid be allowed to open an office in the ghetto. So, he gets it. The dollars he receives from American Jews are our main support, but we can’t keep up with the flood of refugees, mass fines, and confiscations.
Dr. Glazer says the typhus death rate is becoming alarming. Pneumonia, TB, and malnutrition will be critical problems.
We are able to get passes in and out of the ghetto with relative ease. We know the situation won’t last long, so we are lining up people in the Jewish Civil Authority and the Jewish Militia who control passes who can be bribed in the future.
Orphans and Self-Help with American Aid money has taken over another important function, running all the Labor Zionist farms and ours at Wework. We have managed to open two more farms and we can also buy food and transfer through this farm system. The over-all operation is called Toporol.
A straw in the wind? Perhaps, I don’t know. For all the astute planning for which the Germans are famous, they are pulling an enormous blunder. In the ghetto we have thousands of building-trade people, craftsmen, tailors, engineers, etc. If used properly, these people would be of tremendous value to the German war effort. There is no rhyme or reason for the way people are slapped into slave-labor battalions. Carpenters are sent to the Brushmaker's factory, doctors are set to digging ditches and building airfields (for an attack on Russia?), and this inconsistency draws me to two conclusions.
1. The Germans are not quite certain why they are herding Jews into Poland.
2. A “final solution” of their “Jewish problem” has not been decided.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
In the winter of 1940 and the spring of 1941 Wolf Brandel worked on Toporol Farm 2 situated northeast of Warsaw, near the village of Wework.
Each time the produce and milk were taken in to the ghetto the farm workers sent letters in to their loved ones. Wolf wrote to his mother and father and Stephan Bronski, who looked up to him very much. And he wrote to Rachael Bronski.
Dear Rachael,
It is sure different out here on the farm. Like in another world away from the ghetto. There are seventeen girls and thirty of us fellows. I’m one of the youngest. We live in dormitories (separate, boys and girls).
Tolek Alterman, who has been to Palestine, keeps us hustling. He gives a continual lecture about living Zionism almost every night and we have slogans posted everywhere about keeping production up and getting milk and fresh vegetables in to the children in the orphanage.
We work very hard. I’m milking cows. I’m lousy at it. I like everything, including Tolek. He needs a haircut, however.
Would you write to me? Your mother can give your letters to Susan Geller and they will reach me. Also, please have Stephan write.
Your sincere friend,
WOLF BRANDEL
Dear Wolf,
It was nice to hear from you. I will write to you regularly. Stephan studies you know what and you know where and he is getting good at it. He misses you. He admires you greatly. I am very happy for you being out of here—if you know what I mean.
With fondest regards,
RACHAEL BRONSKI
Dear Rachael,
I’m milking better. However, the real important work in the winter is the hogs and I’ve asked to be transferred. Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone we are raising hop. The rabbis would raise h--- if they knew, but with meat so scarce, we must. I’m certain that God will let the kids at the orphanage into heaven, anyhow.
At night it is swell here. We have a kind of game room. We have a community meeting to talk about production, farm problems, and division of work. Then a lecture by Tolek. Afterward we can debate, hear music, study and read and play games. (I’m chess champion.)
Almost always before bedtime we start up a song fest and sing the songs that the Bathyran pioneers sing in Palestine and we dance horas.
We don’t even have to wear the Star of David unless we go to the village.
Please write.
Most sincerely,
WOLF BRANDEL
Dear Wolf,
It sounds nice on the farm and I’m so glad for you. Winter here has been—well, you can imagine. Momma says things are very bad at the orphanage. We have 100% too many children and 50% too little rations and medicine. That is why your job is important. I suppose you hear about the things happening in the ghetto. I don’t want to write you about them, you’ll worry.
Fondly,
RACHAEL BRONSKI
Dear Rachael,
Hey, guess what! I am learning to play the accordion and the guitar. Tolek Alterman is teaching me. He knows all the Palestine pioneer songs, as he has been there. I’d like to teach them to you.
Warmest personal regards and kind wishes and thoughts.
WOLF
Dear Wolf,
I would indeed like to learn your songs. But when? When will I ever see you? I mean, Stephan misses you.
I am busy with my music too. I play recitals all the time and quite a few concerts. Sometimes eight or nine a week. I have learned about fifty children’s songs and singing games (also in French and German) so I can go around to all the orphanages and entertain them.
Do you dance with the girls? I think I am envious.
Very fondly,
RACHAEL
Dear Rachael,
We are celebrating Succoth in memory of Moses and the ancient tribes in the wilderness and giving thanks for the first fruits of the harvest.
You lived in Zoliborz before the war and they don’t allow celebrations now, but ask your mother about how Succoth used to be. Almost all the upper balconies and courtyards in Jewish homes had little “succah” huts built of branches and twigs and leaves to commemorate the way the Jews lived during their wandering.
Out here we have constructed a giant “succah” and it is covered with hundreds of fruits and vegetables and we have all our meals under it. Don’t worry, we are sending all the food in to the orphanage just as soon as the holiday is over.
To answer your question candidly—I do dance with girls. However, I play the accordion most of the time for them while they dance.
Most sincerely,
WOLF
Dear Wolf,
Hanukkah has passed. The holidays in the ghetto were terribly gloomy. Everyone spoke of the old days when the Tlomatskie Synagogue was jammed with people in fancy dress and there was an air of gaiety everywhere. Now we can’t even see the Tlomatskie Synagogue. Hanukkah seems almost like a mockery. Silly, celebrating the Maccabees storming into Jerusalem, throwing out the tyrants and rebuilding the Temple, when we are cowered in a ghetto.
I think the worst of all was Yom Kippur, earlier. We were all sitting and meditating and atoning for our past sins. The stillness this year was horrible. There was no breath of movement anywhere. Everyone was really asking God what we have done so terrible as to deserve this punishment.
Sony to be so glum.
RACHAEL
Dear Rachael,
I worry about things in the ghetto all the time. Tolek keeps telling us we are front-line soldiers and how important the farm is. I try to make myself believe him.
I think about you often.
With affection,
WOLF
Dear Wolf,
I think about you, too, but I guess you’re really not too lonesome with all those girls out there. If you know what I mean.
Also, with affection,
RACHAEL
Dear Rachael,
I will be frank with you.
I have had offers (not exactly offers) to kiss and play around, but I am not interested. Most of the girls like to neck. I think one or two even will do more (so it is rumored).
I don’t know how you will take this, but I miss you more all the time. I didn’t think I would, but I do. This sounds awful, but I think mostly about those four different times we kissed and held each other. You’ll probably stop writing to me and I won’t blame you.
WOLF
Dear Wolf,
You didn’t write anything bad at all. I wish you were here right now so I could kiss you.
With deepest affection,
RACHAEL
Dear Rachael,
I sure don’t know why anyone would want to kiss me. Especially someone like you, so beautiful. I never said it, but I have always thought so. You are very beautiful.
I look at your picture every chance I get and I memorize your letters. The once or twice they didn’t come in I was pretty miserable.
Candidly speaking, I am pretty certain I am in love with you.
Love,
WOLF
Dear Wolf,
I am not certain what love is, so I can’t be sure. I do know that I have a funny feeling inside me when I think about you and that is almost all the time. I know, too, that it hurts me to be apart. I didn’t know anything could be so painful. I cry at night sometimes. That’s because I’m a girl, I guess.
Isn’t it curious? I liked you very, very much before you left (I wouldn’t want you to think I’d kiss a boy I didn’t like very, very much), but since you’ve been away I guess it must be love or something very close to it.
RACHAEL
Dearest Rachael,
If two people feel the same way about each other and are forced to be apart and nothing was decided upon before they parted, then they find they miss each other more and more all the time, I think an understanding could be reached.
I would like you to be my girl, candidly speaking. I promise I won’t have another girl or fool around until I see you. I wouldn’t impose the same conditions on you except to ask you to promise you will let me know immediately if you feel seriously inclined toward anyone else. Then, when we see each other, we can decide how we really feel.
WOLF
Dearest Wolf,
I think your idea is wonderful, but you can be sure that I am not and won’t be interested in anyone else. The thought of any other boy than you touching me makes me shudder.
Love,
Your girl,
RACHAEL
A great deal of that calm and witty shrewdness that was the mark of Dr. Paul Bronski’s personality had vanished. It seemed as though he was worried all the time. At home he was often irritable and many times he snapped at the children for trifles. Deborah tried hard to compensate by comforting him, but Paul’s burdens were running ahead of her powers to transmit sympathy. As the deputy under the chairman, Boris Presser, Paul had to carry out the German directives, deal directly with both Piotr Warsinski as well as the Orphans and Self-Help Society, and was often the scapegoat for all sides. He got little or no support from Boris Presser, who was a complete robot of conformity.
Deborah waited several days after she and Rachael had had their confidential talk in order to find Paul in a proper restful mood. As they prepared for bed one night, Paul had let it be known by the innuendoes married couples develop that he desired sex. Deborah, as always, prepared to comply. It was in that moment that he seemed a little relaxed as he sat in the big chair near the bed and sipped tea and watched her put up her hair as she sat before the mirror.
As he looked at her he thought it amazing how she managed to keep herself so beautiful. Deborah worked eight, ten, twelve, and often fourteen hours in the orphanage on Niska Street. She had kept up Stephan’s studies and Rachael’s piano and she had been a good and comforting wife. There was not a line in her face, no gray in her hair, no telltale sagging of her body.
Perhaps there was envy on the part of Paul. Once Deborah had been retiring and obedient and passive. Now she seemed the stronger of the two. Paul resented his growing need for her.
Deborah twisted the long black strands of hair into tight curls on her forehead and deftly darted pins into them to hold them in place. Then she picked up the hairbrush and went into her nightly stroking exercise.
“Paul, dear.”
“Yes?”
“I have been thinking that, with both of us gone a good part of the day and conditions as they are, wouldn’t it be nice if Rachael were able to get away for a change of scenery? I could take Stephan along with me to the orphanage. There are dozens of boys his own age and he enjoys it there. ...”
Bronski furrowed his brow. “It would be nice if all of us got a change of scenery. What about your plans for Rachael to debut with the symphony? Besides, this is so much nonsense. There is no place she could go but to another ghetto.”
She watched him in the mirror out of the corner of her eye. “We could send her to the Toporol farm in Wework.”
He put his cup down. “Wework? The damned place is just a front for Zionists. The whole place is staffed by former Bathyrans.”
“But it’s healthy and there are girls her age and she will have a chance to look at trees and flowers and something other than misery.”
“You know the morals of these Zionist children.”
“No, I don’t,” snapped Deborah.
“They’re very loose.”
“Has it occurred to you that Rachael is nearly as old as I was when I met you?”
Bronski paled at the verbal slap. Then his eyes narrowed. “Just a minute. Isn’t that where the Brandel boy is?”
“Yes. And before you say another word, I think he is a fine young man who would be overly aware of not violating her. Besides, it’s something that they will have to work out for themselves whether we like it or not.”
“My, listen to the voice of modern sophistication. Have you become a free-love advocate? Are you going to spend the rest of your life throwing up to me your debauching?”
“Paul, she happens to be in love with the boy. Lord only knows they have little or no chance for a normal life, and I cannot see that it is a sin for her to want to be near him.”
He stood up abruptly. “There are other considerations. The Toporol farms are open only on a technicality. We have no guarantee the Germans won’t take a notion to raid them and ship everyone off to labor. If she is caught out there, I won’t be able to help her.”
Deborah lay down the hairbrush and spun about on the vanity bench. “Is there a guarantee they won’t come in here in the next ten minutes and haul us away? Living itself is a plain and simple day-to-day risk.”
The issue was clear. Paul would continue to retrench, to play it close, cautious. Deborah was willing to let her daughter take the risk to pursue a normal, healthy impulse.
Compromise, Paul, compromise! Caution! She had done everything but call him a coward.
He paced the floor, then spurred into one of his more frequent tantrums. “Dammit! There are nearly six hundred thousand people in this ghetto! I have to find place for four thousand new families by the end of the week! There is no space! People are sleeping in courtyards, alleyways, basements, attics, warehouses, hallways.”
“I don’t see what one has to do with the other.”
“Everything has to do with everything! I’m sick and tired of being chastised by my own wife for trying to protect my family. Isn’t it enough that I let Stephan keep on with this whim of yours to study with Rabbi Solomon? He barely escaped with his life once. Do you know one of those children caught was shot? It could have been your own son. I am still the head of this family, and that girl is not going to Wework.”
She nodded and turned and picked up the brush again and stroked her hair. More and more she saw him going down. So long as Mrs. Bronski, wife of the JCA deputy chairman, works in an orphanage and so long as his daughter plays in morale-building concerts and the status is not besmirched, that was all that really mattered. The words never left her lips. She wanted to cry that there had to be an end to the price he was willing to pay for his skin—but she merely stroked her hair and said, “Yes, Paul.”
Chapter Twenty
Journal Entry
WOLF WANTS TO COME home. I don’t know why. I thought he would be happy on the farm. Tolek says he is one of the best people out there. What could it be?
The brief marriage of convenience between Germany and the Soviet Union has been abruptly annulled. Russia was attacked last week (June 21, 1941). This year’s casualties have been Greece, Yugoslavia, Crete, and North Africa. Rumania and Bulgaria have declared war against the allies. (What allies?) The news reports that Britain is getting a fearful bombing by the Luftwaffe. London is catching it even worse than Warsaw did. Hard to believe.
The prospects of four to six million Jews in the Soviet Union in the path of Germany’s unchecked onslaught is a terrifying prospect.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Old Rabbi Solomon entered the headquarters of the Big Seven on the corner of Pawia and Lubeckiego streets opposite the prison. Many of the sleazy characters around the anteroom were accomplished rabbi baiters. They stared at the old man. He carried a holy dignity in his stature, almost as though he had a mystic power to invoke God’s wrath.
“Announce me to Max Kleperman,” he ordered sternly.
“Ah, my rabbi,” beamed Max. “My own holy rabbi,” he cooed to the personal guardian of his soul. Max rushed from behind his desk and pulled the old man in by the elbow, shoved him into a chair, and raced to the door and shouted, “I am with my rabbi. I am not to be disturbed for anyone. Not for a fire—not even for Dr. Franz Koenig!”
He winked to relay his fearlessness. Rabbi Solomon let him play out the role. “What can I get you? Maybe a chocolate. Hershey’s from America—or coffee, Swiss Nestlé’s, personal stock.”
“Nothing at all.”
“You have received my food packages?”
Solomon nodded. Large bundles arrived each week with butter, cheeses, eggs, bread, fruits, vegetables, meats, candies. They were promptly turned over to the Orphans and Self-Help Society.
The rabbi said he wouldn’t mind if Max smoked in his presence, so Max went through the ritual of nipping the end of a cigar, coddling it, squeezing it, lighting it, puffing it, admiring its taste, pointing it. “Confidentially, I wanted to speak to you, Rabbi. You have been forgetful. This business of teaching Talmud Torah after you were caught twice, and then that Passover seder you conducted in prison yet. Your last trip to Pawiak Prison cost me sixty thousand zlotys in gifts to the German Winter Relief. They take winter relief in the middle of the summer, those goniffs.”
The old man did not dignify Max with an answer. It seemed as though lightning shot out from his eyes, and his white beard fairly bristled in anger.
“Rabbi, can’t you take a joke? You know Max Kleperman stands behind you.”
“I should like Max Kleperman to stand beside me. The situation in the ghetto is degenerating. The plight of the street urchins anguishes me. Many of them are starving. Without families, they will turn into wild animals.”
“It is terrible, terrible,” Max agreed, his forefinger fishing around, up his nose. “Confidentially, Rabbi, I and my partners are bringing a few things into the ghetto to alleviate the situation. For this I ask no thanks, mind you. And my sweet wife Sonia, God love her soul, spends every day working in an Orphan and Self-Help soup kitchen.”
Rabbi Solomon’s bony hand slammed down on the desk top. “Stop this mockery, man! You have not seen your wife for two months, and in that time you have lived with eight different prostitutes.”
“So, I have a few minor weaknesses! You are supposed to tend to my spiritual needs, Rabbi. ... Only yesterday two of my men were shot at the wall of Muranowski Place trying to bring flour into the ghetto for food for babies.”
“I am certain you will arrange appropriate funerals, and when their funeral vans return to the ghetto they will be filled with black-market food which you will sell at a thousand-per-cent profit.”
“Shut up, old man!” Max raged suddenly.
“Smuggler, liar, thief!”
Max raised a bulky paperweight. His veins popped from his neck. He grew purple. He would not tolerate such talk from anyone but the Germans. No, not even from Piotr Warsinski. He had warned Warsinski that if the Jewish Militia touched any Big Seven business he would personally break his skull like an eggshell. Warsinski knew Max was not kidding. Why take these insults from this bearded old bastard! Crack his head in! What was this strange power the old man held over him? What was this fear of the beyond Max had?
He slid into his chair and wilted.
“Do you think our God is so shallow in His wisdom that. He does not detect your scheme to bribe your way into heaven through me?”
“Rabbi,” Max whined, “you don’t understand the fundamentals of business matters. Business is business.”
He avoided Rabbi Solomon’s eyes, mumbling about how misunderstood he was. Suddenly his hand turned the desk key and he withdrew an iron box and opened the lid. Sweat rolled down his face as he dipped his fat hand into the till and peeled off a large number of American dollars.
“Give this to the sick in the name of Max Kleperman!”
“You dare bribe me with this pittance?”
“Pittance! These are American dollars. Two hundred zlotys apiece!”
Rabbi Solomon stroked his beard thoughtfully as he looked at the money. Max watched him, praying that he would pick it up.
Which was the wiser of the decisions? Leave the money and leave Max to fry in hell for eternity? Or take back some of what Max stole? After all, nothing could make the man change his ways, and this could do so much for so many children.
“Is there enough here to open up an orphanage to take a hundred children off the streets and feed them?”
“An entire orphanage? My partners ... the price of the zloty ...”
Max’s cigar billowed with the fury of a locomotive.
“It would do much to alleviate some of the unpleasant talk about you and the Big Seven. An orphanage named for Max and Sonia Kleperman.”
Max had to think about that. It would look good. He would again become a benefactor of the people. Besides, his new smuggling operations were reaping a fortune. “How much would it cost?” he asked with caution.
“Two thousand dollars a month.”
Max slammed his hand on the table. “Done.”
“That is, two thousand a month, taking it for granted that the Big Seven will supply food and medicine.”
“But—but—but—”
“But what?”
“But of course.”
“Now, if you’ll be so good as to make a lease assigning one of the properties you manage, I shall make arrangements with Alexander Brandel.”
“My own property!”
“I think the house at Nowolipki 10 will be the most suitable.”
“Nowolipki 10! Rabbi, you’re a worse goniff than Dr. Koenig!”
Max Kleperman whined through all the tortures of losing one of his most formidable properties. He, personally, would have to kick back the lease money to Franz Koenig from his own pocket.
Goddamned little orphan bastards! Goddamned old rabbi bastard! God shook you down worse than the Germans did, Max thought.
Rabbi Solomon snatched the money and the papers from Max Kleperman’s desk, stuffed them into a big pocket in his long black frock, and asked the good Lord to please forgive his dubious methods.
Alexander Brandel shook his head in disbelief.
“How in the name of God did you manage to shake Max Kleperman down for this property?”
“You’re right. It was the name of God.”
Alex grunted at the irony. He tied the muffler around his neck as though he had a chill, even though it was the middle of summer and the room was like a furnace. No one, including Alex, seemed to know why he wore the muffler.
“It is a miracle,” Alex said. “A hundred children. We will find room there for two hundred—it is a miracle.”
“God works miracles, Alex. Believe a little more in him and a little less in Zionism.”
Alex put the papers and money in the desk. He had not seen Rabbi Solomon since the bris of Moses. The old man seemed in fine fettle. He commented upon it.
“I am kept alive by the Almighty so that I may carry my share of today’s burdens,” the rabbi answered.
But Alex did not look so good. Rabbi Solomon said nothing. Alex had always been a bit untidy. He was seedy now. He did appear as good as a man could be expected to on three or four or a luxurious six hours’ sleep a night. He sat behind that desk day and night bargaining, pleading, juggling lives, juggling Kennkarten and rations, juggling medicine. Fencing with the crushing pressures from all sides. Debating for hours on end with Paul Bronski to wheedle an extra gram on the rations.
“Why have you done this, Rabbi? I came to you once and asked you to help us unify and you refused.”
“I do not question the word of God. I merely follow his instructions.”
“Are you saying you have done this out of divine revelation?”
“I say that I find nothing in the Torah or the Holy Laws which commands me not to help starving children. It is hard for me to walk in the streets and see them these days. I studied the situation for many hours and I searched my soul as well as the word of the Law. I conclude that self-help has always been a God-meant key to Jewish survival. For some strange reason God has picked a goy like you and a goniff like Max Kleperman as his instruments of self-help. Mind you, I still do not subscribe to these radical theories or Zionism and physical resistance.”
As usual, Alex thought, Rabbi Solomon has all the answers. Perhaps he has an answer that has been nagging at me for weeks now. For a long time Alexander longed to show someone his journal. He desired a concurrent opinion that his notes and hours of work at it really had some significance. He knew that Simon Eden and David Zemba had been more or less indulgent of a former historian. Time and again he was tempted to take someone into his confidence. But whom? Rabbi Solomon? Beneath that crustiness lay a shrewd and brilliant mind. One thing was certain—the man could be trusted. Alex started to clear his throat for the proclamation.
“Alex. Already, what is on your mind? You are like a little boy with a secret. Nu?”
Alex smiled and walked to the door and bolted it. He went to the big floor safe behind his desk, dialed the combination, and pulled the heavy iron doors open and took out three volumes of thick notebooks wrapped in a large canvas cloth and placed them before the old man.
“Nu?” said Solomon, putting on his thick glasses. “What is the great mystery?” He bent his face down so that his nose nearly touched the page to give vision to his semi-blind eyes. “Alex, you are a goy. You even write in Polish.”
“You will find some in Yiddish, some in Hebrew.”
“Hummm—let me see. Let me see what is so important. ‘August 1939. This is the first entry in my journal. I cannot help but feel that war will begin in a few weeks. If the lessons of the past three years are any barometer, something awesome is apt to happen if Germany makes a successful invasion. ...’ ” He looked up quickly to Alex and back to the book, and only his mouth moved, forming the words as he read more rapidly.
Rabbi Solomon seemed spellbound as he turned page after page. It was all there. From the first declaration of Alexander Brandel’s intuition of a unique event to the daily record from the moment of occupation. There were limericks by Crazy Nathan, gossip, German directives, his personal diary, events of the world outside, ghetto poems, songs, poetry. The names and number of Yiddish theatrical productions. The recording of the sudden departure of friends. The constant groping for an answer.
At the end of the first hour, when he had closed the initial volume of the journal, Rabbi Solomon knew he had read a remarkable history of his people going through another siege of Rome and Greece and Babylon.
His eyes stung and were watery, but he quickly opened the second volume and thumbed through page after page with pulsating wonder.
Then he stopped.
“Who knows about this?” he asked in a hush.
“Eden. Zemba. Emanuel Goldman, before his murder.”
The rabbi was on his feet “When have you had time?”
“At night, in my room.”
“Amazing! Your intuition of a holocaust. Your wisdom in putting it all down on paper before the events occurred.”
Alex shrugged. “Time and again Jews have written secret histories from intuition.”
“Intuition? I wonder. The Lord works in His own ways. Moses was a goy, like you. Alex, you must not leave this about. Not even in the safe. Hide it.”
“Rabbi, I have never seen you so excited. Are you certain of its importance?”
“Certain! This will sear the souls of men for centuries to come. This journal is a brand that is to be stamped on the German conscience so that a hundred of their unborn generations will have to live with these words with guilt and shame!”
Alex sighed and nodded with contentment. He knew now that all those hours through the night when he had been drugged from lack of sleep and forced his hand to write out another line had not been in vain.
“May God forgive me for saying this, Alex, but that journal is like a new chapter of the ‘Valley of Tears Chronicle.’ ”
Journal Entry
Rabbi Solomon has an infectious enthusiasm for the journal and he has paid me the most magnificent of compliments. He calls it a new chapter in the “Valley of Tears Chronicle!” (The “Valley of Tears” lists fifteen centuries of Jewish martyrdom, particularly detailing the massacres and suffering of the Jews under the Crusaders during the Middle Ages. The lifework of Rabbi Yosef Hacohen was discovered by Rabbi Eibeschutz in 1850 and translated and has become a part of our lore, prayer, and tradition.)
Rabbi Solomon insists I expand the journals and that it should be hidden more carefully and even duplicated in case of the destruction or German discovery of the original. Such precautions! He and I have gone to the basement of Mila 19 and made a hiding place by moving bricks. I think it is nonsense, but so long as it pleases him ...
We have formed a secret society of contributors. We call ourselves the Good Fellowship Club. Simon Eden and David Zemba are left over from the original contributors.
All of the executive council of the Bathyran (except Andrei Androfski) are members of the Good Fellowship Club; i.e., Susan Geller, Ervin Rosenblum, Tolek Alterman, and Ana Grinspan. Other members:
Silberberg, the former playwright, who is on the Jewish Civil Authority and our closest ally there.
Rodel, Communist leader in the ghetto. He has been in semi-hiding since the occupation but has been valuable in both children’s aid and contacts on the Aryan side.
Dr. Glazer, chief of medical staff of Orphans and Self-Help.
Rabbi Solomon, of course.
Father Jakub, priest of the Converts Church. I have known him since 1930. He is one of the few who has had a long record of sympathetic understanding toward us. (Incidentally, Orphans and Self-Help does not have much to do with converts. The converts and half Jews fare much better than most in the ghetto. It seems as though the Catholic Church is determined to take care of “their” Jews.)
From time to time we will vote in new members to the Good Fellowship Club.
Ervin Rosenblum, who still works on the Aryan side and has less demands on his time than we do, has agreed to spend his spare time classifying and cataloguing the information now pouring in.
Rabbi Solomon is making duplicate copies of the first three volumes (in Yiddish and Hebrew only). In the Jewish tradition, special scribes write all our Torah scrolls by hand. That is why they have been so accurate for millennia. Seeing Rabbi Solomon copying the journal reminds me of that.
It is thrilling to see this come alive and the belief that the work is important.
I must admonish everyone to write more neatly, especially Father Jakub.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Chapter Twenty-one
“RACHAEL.”
“Wolf!”
They stood facing each other in the hallway outside the main recreation room of the new Max and Soma Kleperman Orphanage on Nowolipki Street. Children swirled around them before herding nurses who clapped their hands sternly.
“Wolf, this is such a surprise, seeing you.”
“I didn’t know I was going to be able to come in. I didn’t have any time to write.”
“How did you find out where I was?”
“Stephan told me. I was with him all morning. I’ve been here for an hour. I was watching you give the recital from out here. You were very good.”
“Why didn’t you come in?”
“I don’t know. I got to watching you singing and playing and watching the kids all laughing ...”
The hallway suddenly became empty. It was shadowy and hard for them to see each other, and they were wordless as the impact of the sudden meeting lessened.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Wolf said.
“Will you be here long?”
“That depends. I don’t know.”
Wolf looked about and grunted. “Could we take a walk or something? Here, let me hold your music.”
“All right.”
Wolf tried to think. There was no place to walk in the ghetto, nor bench to sit upon, nor nightingale to hear. There was only misery and beggars and stone and brick without a leaf of grass or the green of a tree.
“I’d like to sit and talk someplace,” Wolf said.
“So would I. We have so much to talk about.”
“Where can we go?”
“If we go to my place Stephan won’t leave you alone. Then Momma and Daddy will come home and Daddy would make you play chess.”
“Sure can’t go to Mila 19. The minute we walked in the door there’d be all kinds of gossip. Besides, there’s no place there to be alone.”
“We can’t stand here.”
“I’d sure like to talk to you.”
“We could try Uncle Andrei’s place. I stop there often to talk to him. Most of the time he isn’t there and his door is never locked.”
“Boy! If he caught me there with you he’d break my neck.”
“Oh no. Uncle Andrei’s bark is much worse than his bite.”
“Well ... all right.”
They did not see each other on the entire walk to Andrei’s. Wolf’s eyes were cast down, looking at the pavement, and Rachael had learned to walk through the streets looking dead ahead to shut out the terrible things happening on all sides. The beggar children were more pathetic every day, and in the last week corpses of starved persons were beginning to appear in the gutters.
Suddenly they found themselves all alone in Andrei’s flat. Wolf turned on the light over the table in the center of the room while Rachael caught her breath from the climb up the stairs.
Now they could see each other. Wolf had changed. His elongated, gangly body had filled out and his white, blemished skin was unblemished and deepened to a tan from working in the wind and the sun, and the scraggly hair on his chin had turned to a hard beard which could legitimately be shaved every other day and the shaky voice was now a steady baritone.
Rachael had changed too. She had been more like a girl before. Now she was much different. Round and soft, like her mother. Her eyes were filled with sadness and weariness.
Wolf suddenly turned his back and scratched his head.
“Heck! This isn’t the way I figured it would be,” he blurted.
“It’s very strange, isn’t it? Almost as if we were just meeting each other for the first time.”
Wolf sagged into a chair, disappointed at his own weak performance. How many nights he lay awake at the farm thinking about this very moment when he would see Rachael again and simply sweep her off her feet. Now both of them seemed like strangers to each other and both wondered about all the passion and promises they had written.
“Wolf, you’re disappointed.”
“Just at myself. Candidly speaking, I’m not one for fancy talking.” He stood up slowly, towering over her. “I have missed you,” he managed to say. Rachael leaned against him slightly and he put his arm around her shoulders. Her arms found their way about him and she began to tremble, and as they held each other close the terrible uneasiness inside them ebbed. Wolf audibly gulped and sighed with relief. They searched each other out and kissed and then they were both calm.
Rachael and Wolf stood before the window, watching darkness come. They looked down on the street, and from this height they could see beyond the wall into the “Polish corridor” which separated the big and little ghetto and they could see the dome of the forbidden Tlomatskie Synagogue. His arm was about her waist and her head was on his shoulder.
“This is wonderful,” Rachael said.
“It sure is.”
“You have become terribly handsome and mannish.”
Wolf shrugged. “Rachael, I meant all the things I wrote to you.”
“So did I. I know that now.” She pulled away from him. “Wolf ...”
“What?”
“Would you answer one thing, honestly?”
“Sure.”
“Did you have any girls on the farm?”
“Heck! What kind of a stupid question is that?”
“I think I’m a terribly jealous kind,” Rachael answered.
“I’m sure not much to be jealous about.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“I messed around a little.” Then he added quickly, “But that was before we made promises.”
“Messed around?”
“You know, messed around.”
“More than ... kissing?”
Wolf patted his flat chest to demonstrate. “Messed around.”
“Oh.”
“Before we made promises.”
“Did you do any other things?”
“Rachael ...”
“I think I should know everything before we can be certain of our relationship. What else have you done?”
“Rachael, I’m a boy and boys are different, and if I tell you you’re liable to get very mad.”
“I’m sixteen, almost seventeen. I’ve been a woman for several years. I know about these things—I mean, Momma and I have had long talks about growing up.”
Wolf was flustered. Rachael was adamant.
“Wolf ...”
“What?”
“Have you ever ... done it?”
“You sure ask a lot of questions. This isn’t something a man wants to discuss with his girl.”
“If we are really sweethearts, the way we say we are, then there shouldn’t be any secrets.”
“I tried it once,” Wolf croaked. “Even before I went to the farm. It was on my birthday. My sixteenth—almost two years ago. You don’t want to hear about it.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, I was with three of my pals. One of them was older—he was nineteen—and he knew a woman in Solec. One of those kind of women.”
“What kind?”
“Who does it for money.”
“Oh ... one of those kind.”
“So, anyhow, it was my birthday and all that and we were at this guy’s house and he snitched a bottle of vodka from his parents’ liquor cabinet. I never drank before, except a sip now and then. I got to laughing and couldn’t stop. Then we started talking about ... things, and he said he knew this woman in Solec. Next thing you know, it was a dare and I was feeling pretty good.”
“And you went there?”
Wolf nodded.
“And you did?”
“Well, it wasn’t so hot I got scared as hell and I didn’t know what to do. Boy, I’ll bet you hate me now.”
“No. I admire your honesty. Now I know that you will always be honest with me.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Momma explained that certain things are very normal for boys—that is, men. And she says I should not suppress my emotions and feelings too much because that can lead to frustration.”
“She’s sure smart.”
“Sometimes I think she says it to me because she’s frustrated. I can feel that she hasn’t been too happy with Daddy.”
“That’s too bad. My folks are happy. Poppa doesn’t seem to need it too much because he works all the time, but I know he and Momma are happy. Rachael, you sure are understanding.”
“Wolf ... do you ever think about us ... doing it?”
“Yes ... I never would try or force my attention on you or ever do anything to hurt you. But it’s not my fault that I cant help thinking about it. It’s supposed to be a sin to think about it, but I can’t help it.”
“I think about it too,” she whispered.
“I ... didn’t know that girls thought about it. The way boys do.”
“Yes ... the same way. All the time you were away I began to wonder if I would see you again. And I knew that if mere wasn’t a war and a ghetto and the awful things that are happening, I would grow up a little slower, like we’re supposed to. And we could play coquette like girls are supposed to. But this fear hanging over us all the time ... Waking up in the middle of the night when the whistles are blowing outside during roundups and walking the streets when their sirens blow and the loudspeakers shout ... Now, those little children dying in the streets—it all made me change. I’m terribly aggressive, aren’t I?”
“I think you are the most wonderful person who ever lived.”
Rachael threw her arms about Wolf and clutched him desperately. “I love you in a different way than Momma loves Daddy. She is trying to tell me. Wolf, I don’t want to die unhappy like Momma!”
This kiss was different from all others, for in the instant of its impact they reached manhood and womanhood, and they wanted each other and there was neither restraint nor control. Her eyes closed and her cheeks were damp with the wonderful feel of him and her teeth found his shoulders and her hands clawed at his back and his fingers fumbled for the buttons on her blouse. ...
The door slammed!
They looked in terror at Andrei across the room. He took two, three menacing steps toward them.
“You little son of a bitch,” he hissed.
Wolf stepped in front of Rachael, and she buried her face against his back and wept.
Andrei looked from one to the other, the fury twitching his face.
“Get out of the room, Rachael,” Wolf said softly.
“He’ll kill you!” Rachael cried.
Andrei stopped. Wolf Brandel abusing my niece. But look. It is not Wolf any longer. A tall, strong young man waiting like a fool for me to tear him apart. And Rachael ... Strange. Not until this moment did I realize that she is a woman. Wolf Brandel. I diapered him when he was a baby. Has he ever been anything but a fine person? God, Andrei! What is the matter with you? These two love each other!
Andrei relaxed.
“In the future,” he said, “if you leave your armbands in the mailbox I’ll know you are up here and won’t disturb you. And for God’s sake, lock the door.”
Chapter Twenty-two
THE NEXT DAY WOLF Brandel returned to Andrei’s flat.
“I want you to know,” he said to Andrei, “that I am not messing around with Rachael. I feel more deeply for her than I’ve ever felt for anyone. I love her. I’m sure not much, but she feels that way about me too.”
Andrei nodded. “I thought about it. I believe you.” He poured himself a short drink of vodka. “Do you drink this stuff?”
“I had it a few times at the farm. I don’t care too much for it. I want you to know that—well, how much we appreciate your confidence. There’s hardly a place where two people can be alone in the ghetto.”
“It was a shock, all of a sudden seeing someone you thought as a little girl in the arms of someone you thought of as a little boy. Under normal conditions things would have happened more slowly. One has to grow up quickly these days, there is no choice.”
“Andrei, I don’t really want to do anything to her.”
“I appreciate your good intentions, but they will become lost in the heat of the moment one day. Just be as gentle as you can and make her be careful.”
Wolf blushed violently. “I think I’ll try a little vodka.” He sipped and made a face as it burned its way to his stomach. “I wanted to see you about something else too. I’m not going back to the farm.”
“Oh? Tolek Alterman tells me you are his best worker. I am certain he can arrange for you to come in once a week with the milk so you can see her.”
“That’s not really why.”
“What is it?”
“Life is easy out there. I think I ought to be doing more.”
“Don’t be so noble.”
“I’m not noble. It would be easier if you left Warsaw, but you stay.”
“Look, Wolf. Be happy your father is in a position to put you on the farm.”
“That’s just my point. I’m getting preferential treatment because I’m Alexander Brandel’s son. That’s not right. I talked to Momma and Poppa last night after I took Rachael home. I told them I wasn’t going back.”
“How did they take it?”
“Momma cried. Poppa argued. You know how he can argue. Between him and Tolek Alterman I’ve heard enough Zionist logic to last for six lifetimes. Anyhow, I may not look it, but I can be stubborn. When Poppa knew I wasn’t going back he began to blame himself for not being a good father and not spending more time with me. He always does that So, the baby started screaming and all four of us were going at once. Then later we sat in his office, just the two of us. We don’t do that too often. He’s convinced that I’m right by wanting to stay. He told me to come to see you. You would have work for me.”
“Did he say what kind of work?”
“No. But I know that you must be mixed up in important things. I want to be a runner.”
“What makes you think you can be a runner?”
“Well, I don’t look too Jewish.”
“We use women as runners, Wolf.”
“I can do the job as well as a woman.”
“You said you don’t look Jewish. I say you do. Know what would happen if you got picked up? They’d march you to Gestapo House on Shucha Street and unbutton your pants. Your father put you in a covenant with God when he had you circumcised so that God would recognize you as a Jew. Only trouble is that the Germans use that for recognition too.”
The thought did not appeal to Wolf.
Andrei looked the boy over. Eighteen. Tall, strong. Smart—smart as a whip. The shyness was a decoy. Wolf Brandel had mastered his studies as a brilliant scholar. Ideals. Wonderful. So many people without them, these days. Taking the hard road to satisfy an inner desire to do right. A good soldier in any army.
“Come on, let’s take a walk, son.”
They walked down Leszno Street past the Convert’s Church and the huge new complex of houses forming a factory to make and repair German army uniforms. “A Franz Koenig Enterprise,” the big sign said. Koenig also had part ownership of the woodwork factory in the little ghetto and of the huge Brushmaker’s complex at the extreme northern end. Dr. Koenig had become a millionaire.
They waited on the corner until a red and yellow streetcar came along and hopped on the back of it. Its sides and tops showed large Stars of David. The Ghetto lines were operated by the Big Seven.
At Smocza and Gensia, Andrei got off. Wolf walked alongside him until they reached the wall that ran down the middle of Okopowa Street. He was filled with the adventure of it all. They walked up the street to the middle of the block. Over the wall was the Jewish cemetery. This was a neighborhood for a lot of smuggling. People could hide in the cemetery with black-market goods. In this area the wall was heavily guarded. Andrei stopped at the old abandoned Workman’s Theater. Before the war it had been one of the showplaces of the vital Yiddish stage. Now the lobby had been converted into yet another soup kitchen. The rest, empty.
Down the alleyway to the stage door. Andrei looked about quickly, thrust the door open, and shoved Wolf inside. They were on the stage. It took a moment to adjust their eyes to the darkness and their noses to the musty smell. Andrei whispered to be careful of cables and obstacles. The house was ghostlike. The hard-back seats in a state of disrepair. A faded backdrop of a Polish gentry’s garden hung behind them.
Andrei listened. He could make out very dim sounds from the soup kitchen. He tiptoed to the light cage and threw a switch. Wolf was entranced. Nothing lit up. Some sort of signal, he was certain.
Above them a trap door opened. Andrei scooted up it quickly, the boy behind him. They were in a large loft. The trap closed after them.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Andrei said, “you all know our newest worker.”
Wolf’s mouth hung open in awe. There were four people present, all former Bathyrans who lived at Mila 19. Adam Blumenfeld was at a radio receiver with earphones on. “Hello, Welvel,” he greeted the boy by his nickname.
Pinchas Silver worked at a box of hand-set print. Beside the small press were copies of the underground paper, Liberty. Pinchas smiled and welcomed Wolf in. A forgery table and camera were in one corner.
The Farber sisters, Mira and Minna, were there, studying to become runners.
“Any news?”
Adam Blumenfeld took one earphone off. “I’ve got BBC. Something about American destroyers being loaned to England.”
“How about the Home Army?” Andrei asked in reference to the quickly growing Polish underground force.
“They keep changing frequencies. Unless we can get their schedule, we can only pick them up hit or miss.”
Andrei grunted. His most urgent job was to set up a solid liaison with the Home Army, but he had been unsuccessful. He turned to Wolf. “Two lessons. First, live with access to the top floor. In danger, we go to the rooftops. Second, this work is neither romantic nor exciting. It is dull and exacting.”
For the next few weeks Wolf learned to stand radio watch and work the printing press. Then Andrei made him memorize the entire Jewish Militia and know which police would “play” for bribes and how much. One by one he learned the secret rooms behind bakeries, in abandoned synagogue basements, where Simon Eden and Rodel, the Communist, and the small nucleus of the underground carried on their sub rosa business.
His prime duty: to distribute the copies of Liberty. Dump them in the market places, drop them at secret rooms, post them on conspicuous walls. As Andrei had warned, it was exacting and tedious work. The streets were more dangerous to travel each day. Piotr Warsinski’s police were pulling people in by the hundreds for the continued feeding of the slave-labor factories.
Dr. Franz Koenig took a quick trip to Berlin to be received by Himmler, personally, and brought back with him a contract for a great portion of the German army’s brushes. The Brushmaker’s complex in the north had to be tripled. When there were no people on the streets, Warsinski ordered indiscriminate raids on homes or the bulging refugee compounds for workers.
Wolf accepted his duties without protest. He envied the Farber sisters. Blond and blue-eyed, they fitted the bill as “Aryans.” Learning the paths of a runner was only a small part of the training.
They had to learn the Catholic Bible forward and backward, how to pray in Latin, how to pray with the rosary. They had to learn to go deaf to the sounds of Yiddish and German, the languages with which they had been raised, in order to “prove” they were not Jewish.
There was one more regular who worked in the loft of the Workman’s Theater, and that was Berchek, a former commercial artist. From time to time “Aryan” Kennkarten, travel papers, and even passports were obtained. These had to be doctored for use by underground members. Berchek taught Wolf the principles of forgery and allowed him to work on the simpler tasks of fixing photographs on the papers.
Andrei was terribly proud of his protégé. The boy learned quickly and responded to orders without question. In one or two tight spots while distributing Liberty, he kept himself out of trouble by quick thinking.
When Wolf went off duty he spent part of the time at home with his parents and his baby brother at Mila 19. Some of the time was with his “adopted” brother, Stephan Bronski. He taught the younger boy his Hebrew and tutored him in basic subjects and played chess and answered a thousand searching questions.
And two or three nights a week he would meet Rachael in Andrei’s flat.
Each time they met, they brought their relationship one step closer to culmination. Each time they chastised themselves and groped and damned. They wanted to try it, desperately. First Wolf, then Rachael took turns in being the stronger to resist. Each time they parted, they parted heartsick but eager for the next rendezvous.
The thought of seeing each other kept them alive. It was able to make them somewhat oblivious of the horror around them. More and more terrible things were happening. So long as there was that electric second when he ran up the final flight of steps into her arms, the rest did not matter so much.
Journal Entry
Last night the Good Fellowship Club met to discuss the latest disaster.
Yesterday morning twenty-five Reinhard Corps Nazis, under the personal direction of Sieghold Stutze, entered the ghetto at the Zelazna Gate. Their barracks are directly outside the wall, so there is little or no warning. They proceeded directly to Nowolipki 24 and surrounded the house. Fifty-three occupants—men, women, and children—were pulled out and loaded aboard two army trucks.
As they drove off, the Jewish Militia posted signs all over the building that it was “contaminated by typhus, rodents, etc. ...”
The fifty-three were taken to the Jewish cemetery. On the north wall they were forced to dig a huge ditch, undress, and stand on its edge. They were shot in the back and, after they fell into the ditches, were bayoneted.
The Militia entered the Nowolipki property and carted off every single belonging.
We have had mass executions at the cemetery before. Usually a group accused of “criminal” activities or intellectuals. Never have fifty-three people been indiscriminately lopped off without excuse.
Although the property was “condemned as contaminated,” I was able to lease it this morning as an orphans’ home. Now I hear that the Germans are going to do a series of legal explanations of their actions to “justify” the executions. “Fear of epidemic” is their main reason as well as the catchall phrase “criminal activities.”
We in the Good Fellowship Club are rather certain this mass execution was a test case.
Other distressing signs. A further ration cut was ordered this morning. Dr. Glazer says this puts us below starvation level. This means that anyone obtaining enough food to live is a “criminal,” according to Nazi logic. Who figures these things out for them?
It is in the Soviet Union where the real terror is going on. More and more word comes back about special SS “Action Kommandos” massacring Jews all over the Baltics, White Russia, and the Ukraine just as quickly as the German army presses forward.
We heard something about a plan to send all the Jews to the island of Madagascar. (It might be a vacation.)
Hans Frank has lost his battle, once and for all. Not only are Jews still pouring into the General Government Area, but criminals, homosexuals, gypsies, “Slavic types,” political prisoners, prostitutes, and others deemed as “subhuman.” So, the General Government Area has become the “cesspool” for Germany’s non-Aryans. Several huge new concentration camps are under construction. One in particular, Auschwitz in Silesia, I hear, is mammoth.
The Good Fellowship Club reasons that this transporting of Jews and “sub-humans” is a burden on the rail system, especially for the German army on the Russian front. It is taking tens of thousands of their manpower also.
Conclusion: The Germans have reached their decision for a “final solution” for us. I fear further executions until they reach the desired level for slave labor.
The phone interrupted Alex.
“Hello, Alexander Brandel, here.”
“Alex. Shalom aleichem,” a voice on the other end said. It was a greeting from a contact named Romek on the other side of the wall.
“Shalom,” Alex answered.
“Alex, I hope you didn’t forget we have a lunch date.”
“Ach, what a stoop I am. I forgot to mark it down.”
“Yetta’s house at two o’clock.”
“Good, good, I’ll be there.”
Alex quickly locked the volume of the journal in the safe and went upstairs to his room. Wolf was playing with baby Moses on the floor.
“Son,” Alex said, “get Andrei at once. Wanda has arrived from Krakow with a package. Tell him to send one of the Farber girls to the Old Town Square. He’ll understand. Time is important. Wanda will pass at two o’clock.”
When Wolf arrived at the loft over the Workman’s Theater, only Adam Blumenfeld was there on radio watch.
“Where is everyone? A runner is in from Krakow.”
“Lord,” Blumenfeld grunted. “She wasn’t expected till tomorrow. Andrei, the Farber sisters, and Berchek are all on the Aryan side. Pinchas Silver can’t go. Get back to your father and tell him right away. He’ll know what to do.”
Alex drummed his fingers on the desk top, trying to think. It was one o’clock. Only an hour to the pickup. It was so unexpected that all four of the Bathyran runners were on the other side.
Think, dammit, think, Alex said to himself.
His usual unalterable calm became thready. Eight to ten thousand dollars were in the package. Nice, wonderful, untraceable dollars from Thompson at the American Embassy.
He looked at the phone. Call up Romek over the wall. No, that would be breaking the cardinal rule. Never phone a contact on the Aryan side under any circumstances.
What if Wanda saw there was no contact? They had completely lost one package like that.
Alex lifted the phone and dialed the Orphans and Self-Help Division at Leszno 92, Simon Eden’s headquarters and asked to speak to Atlas.
In several moments Simon Eden was on the phone.
“Atlas, here.”
“Brandel.”
“Yes?”
“I got an invitation from Romek to be at Yetta’s house for lunch at two o’clock. I simply can’t get away from my desk. Could you keep it for me?”
“That’s less than an hour. Hold on a moment and I’ll see if I can rearrange my appointments.”
Three more precious minutes ticked off. It was twelve after one.
“Alex.”
“Yes!”
“Can’t do it. Impossible.”
Alex put the receiver on the hook slowly. Lost! The package is lost! He looked up slowly and saw his son at the edge of the desk.
“I’ll go, Poppa.”
“No.”
“I’ve got false papers and I’ve been in training—”
“I said no!”
“Poppa ...”
“It’s damned well bad enough I let you talk me into this business of leaving the farm. It has nearly killed your mother.”
“I swear,” the boy said softly, “I’ll never talk to you again.” Wolf turned and walked toward the door and unbolted it.
“Wolf, for God’s sake, don’t ask me to—” He knew his boy. Gentle but stubborn. Even more stubborn than Andrei. Alex steadied himself. “All right. Leave everything identifying you on the desk. Take only your false papers. Time is running short You’ll have to go out of one of the three northern gates—there should be a guard ‘playing’ at one of them.” Alex opened a drawer. “Here, twelve hundred zlotys, mixed notes. That will get you in and out of the ghetto. Go to the Madam Curie Museum in the Old Town Square. Buy some blue violets on the way and wrap them in a newspaper. Wanda is Rebecca Eisen. You know her.”
“Anything else?”
“If ... anything happens ... you are not Wolf Brandel.”
“Don’t worry, Poppa. Nothing will happen.”
“Son, we haven’t spent enough time together—now, all of a sudden—”
“Poppa, you mean so much to so many people. I’ve always been very proud of you.”
Wolf walked briskly for the closest gate at Dzika and Stawki streets, only a few blocks from Mila 19. He made a false run past the gate to study the Jewish militiamen on guard. He did not recognize any of the three, so it was certain they did not know who he was.
He walked to the man of highest rank and snapped out his Kennkarte. The guard unfolded the three-part document and deftly palmed the folded hundred-zloty note. The guard studied the document. It was obviously a false paper, for it was not marked with a J. A clue that this was underground work or smuggling. He’d try for more.
“My old mother is very sick,” the guard said.
“She should see a doctor,” Wolf answered, slipping the man another hundred zlotys.
A windfall. “What time are you coming back?”
Bastard wants more, Wolf thought “Few hours.”
“Too bad. I won’t be on duty. Try my cousin Handelstein at the Gensia Gate. Tell him you spoke to Kasnovitch.”
“Thanks,” Wolf said.
Fifty zlotys on the other side of the gate took care of the Polish Blue Police.
Wolf walked rapidly for the Old Town Square. Time was running out.
For several weeks the Gestapo had been watching the movements of Tommy Thompson at the American Embassy in Krakow. They knew his sympathies and were relatively certain he was passing money and information to the Jews. The Gestapo allowed him to continue, in the hope that they could trail his contacts successfully and break up the ring at the Warsaw end.
Recently Thompson started a new activity. The Home Army, a large Polish underground, was forming and growing quickly and he had been working with them. This was a more serious matter. He was earmarked to be thrown out of Poland shortly.
The Gestapo decided to make an arrest of the next runner who left Thompson. From the moment that Thompson passed a package of eight thousand dollars to Wanda, the Bathyran runner, they were on her.
Trained and alert Wanda became suspicious when there had been a dragnet at the Warsaw railroad terminal and she was allowed to pass through the inspection far too easily, her fake papers not scrutinized and her package unchallenged.
She entered the Old Town Square with the intuition she was being tailed. The square was not badly crowded—only thirty of forty people. Yet it was impossible to spot a stakeout because the quadrangle of five-story buildings could have hidden a hundred pairs of searching eyes. She entered on purpose from the corner opposite the Madam Curie Museum and walked cater-corner over the cobblestones. From the corner of her eye she glanced at the partly bombed-out museum. A lanky young man leaned against the wall. She came closer, still moving diagonally, calculated to pass him at a distance of some twenty or thirty meters in order to study him.
Click-click-click went her heels on the cobblestones.
Blue violets wrapped in newspaper. She shot a glance upward. It was Wolf Brandel. Smart boy, Wanda thought. He sees that I am going to pass him by.
Now Wanda had put a block and a half of open space behind her. If she was being tailed they would have to show themselves in the vast square or face the danger of losing her. She wanted to look back but dared not She. could not make her contact with Wolf until she was certain.
Wanda spotted a grate next to a sewer hole. Perfect! She walked over the grate and intentionally jammed her high heel into it so it would stick. She knelt down to free herself and in doing so stole a look behind her. Two men stopped dead in their tracks halfway over the square.
Trap!
Wolf was watching her closely. He saw the men trailing her. He saw her quickly throw the package into the sewer, pull her heel loose, and walk from the square. In a moment the place was flooded with Germans rounding everyone up. Wolf held fast.
“Violets for your mother, sonny?”
Wolf looked into the eyes of a pair of waiting Gestapo.
Chapter Twenty-three
AS A MATTER OF standard operational procedure, any Jew caught on the Aryan side was personally interrogated at Gestapo House by the chief, Gunther Sauer.
A few moments after Rebecca Eisen, known as Wanda, disposed of her package of dollars she was arrested and the forty-two people in the Old Town Square were rounded up and hauled in for questioning. Four hidden Jews were found among them.
Gunther Sauer’s appearance was deceptive. Pouchy, elderly, and of medium build, he owned an extraordinarily high forehead with a widow’s peak of neat silver hair. His eyes were a bit puffy and half closed and his voice was gentle.
One would easily mistake him for a kindly grandfather instead of a Gestapo chief. He was, indeed, an adoring grandfather.
And Gunther Sauer loved animals. A bright-eyed dachshund named Fritzy sat beside his desk in a cushioned basket all the time. Sauer would break from his work at intervals and go into spasms of laughter when Fritzy performed for a tidbit.
He was, first and last, a policeman utterly devoted to his job, a master of his profession, and living in that world apart, as policemen often do. Sauer was a master at political terror, which became the prime job of the state police after the Nazis took power. The eradication of political and intellectual opposition was a dogma which had to be executed with ruthless objectivity.
He was also a master of the psychological warfare that one uses to break down the nerves and will of the opponent. Intellectuals were putty. Business competitors of the Nazis even easier. The intelligent application of fear could win the battle of a hundred armies.
Unlike many of his Gestapo compatriots, Gunther Sauer never used terror or torture for its own sake, but as a tool of the trade to gain an end. Torture did not always work on some people, nor did psychological fear tactics. In his estimation, it was a waste of time and energy to dismember someone who was not going to help you solve your “police” problem. Sauer abhorred the brutality of Sieghold Stutze, who received personal pleasure from inflicting pain.
One had to be completely objective about his victim. After a study of a person he could fairly well establish the limit of his moral endurance. He never used torture on prisoners whom he knew would not break under torture.
On the other hand, he never hesitated when he spotted weakness. And it never annoyed him that he resorted to torture more often than not. Once or twice, early in his career, he had spent sleepless nights after torturing a child in front of its mother, but he learned to harden himself to it as part of a day’s work.
Sauer interrogated the first three Jews. All of them were nervous and talky. The first was a smuggler who implied a bribe and friends in high office.
The second, a fool who had escaped from Lemberg, a vagrant.
The third, one of the many thousands of “hidden” Jews living as Christians in Warsaw on the Aryan side. This man gave such a garbled version to cover his tracks and contacts that he was most suspect as the contact for Rebecca Eisen.
Wolf Brandel was shoved into the office. Sauer was leaning over his desk, scratching Fritzy’s chest. The dog whined and begged as Sauer teased the animal by opening and closing the drawer containing the box of tidbits. Fritzy won his prize, ran in a happy circle, then settled on the rug and crunched the hard biscuit.
Wolf snatched his cap from his head and stood at attention.
A quick appraisal. Eighteen or so. Not too Jewish in appearance. Strong, well fed, therefore resourceful. A perfect size and shape for a runner. He shifts from one foot to the other, nervously, but his eyes are innocent. He looks forward at me.
“Jew?”
“Yes, sir, I got caught.”
“Name?”
“Hershel Edelman.”
“Where are you from, Hershel?”
Watch his sweet talk, Wolf. They had the line on Sauer. Deceptive. He’ll tie you in knots.
“I’m from Wolkowysk.”
“How did you get to Warsaw?”
“My family was taken to the ghetto in Bialystok. I hid in the church during the roundup. After, I walked to Bialystok to look up a friend of my father outside the ghetto.”
“What was the name of the church in which you hid?”
“St. Casimir’s.”
“What was the name of the priest?”
“I don’t know, sir. He didn’t know I was hiding there.”
“Go on.”
“So I saw this friend of my father. He used to do business with him.”
“What is his name?”
“Wynotski.”
“What’s your father’s business?”
“Schoychet.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s a man who kills chickens and cows so the meat will be kosher.”
“Fritzy, bad boy. Now get in your bed and stay there. ... But, Hershel, you said Wynotski did business with your father. If Wynotski sold kosher meat, wouldn’t he be in the ghetto?”
“No, sir. Wynotski has a gift shop. You see, sir, my father carved chessmen in his spare time and sold them to Wynotski. If you lived around Wolkowysk and Bialystok, you’d have heard about my father’s chessmen.”
“Go on.”
“So, anyhow, Wynotski got me this Aryan Kennkarte and travel pass.”
“I take it Wynotski is not Jewish.”
“Half Jewish, I think. Anyhow, his house and gift shop was lousy with crucifixes and rosaries and Bibles and stuff like that.”
“Where did Wynotski get the Aryan Kennkarte?”
“Most likely bought it from a family where someone died and it wasn’t recorded. Anyhow, I didn’t ask questions. I mean, sir, under the conditions, you just take it and don’t ask questions.”
Clever young man, Sauer thought. Either a magnificent fake or entirely honest.
“Continue,” Sauer said.
“So, I came to Warsaw.”
“Why?”
“Why not? It’s the biggest city in Poland. I figured I’d have the best chance to stay hidden because I don’t know anybody here and wouldn’t get recognized.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Three days.”
“Where have you stayed?”
“I found a loose window in back of the men’s room at the railroad station. Anyhow, it’s like a storeroom for mops and buckets and stuff and I’ve been sleeping there.”
“What were you doing standing in front of the Old Town Square statue?”
“The Madam Curie Museum,” Wolf corrected. “Waiting for someone.”
“Who?”
“Well, you can imagine. I’ve got to figure something out. I start prowling around. My money is running low and stuff. So, pretty soon you hear talk and stuff, and so I went to the Solec because they said you can get fixed up there for just about anything. I went to the Granada Club. Sure got tough guys in there, and I met this—well—whore.”
Sauer was entranced.
“So, I find out she is Jewish. Selma is her name. I’m sure it is a fake name. So, anyhow, I’m cautious at first because I think she may be helping look for runaways like me, but it’s kind of funny how two Jews can spot each other. So, Selma says she knows someone who can help me but for me not to come back to the Granada because the hoodlums in there are looking for hidden Jews and to meet her next day at the Old Town Square.”
“What were you doing with violets?” Sauer snapped.
Wolf scratched his head and blushed. “This whore was sure nice to me, sir. I just wanted to buy her violets.”
Sauer talked softly to Wolf for two hours. The questions were masked in huge traps. Every so often Wolf would whimper, “Sir, if you are trying to confuse me, you sure are succeeding. I’m getting mixed up trying to remember the honest truth.”
That night Wolf Brandel spent alone in a cell. The screams of torture pierced his eardrums from down the hall.
Gunther Sauer, in his meticulous, grinding way, listened to wire playbacks of the interviews with the four Jews. He was oblivious of the cries of pain coming from Rebecca Eisen in the main interrogation room.
In the morning Sauer called Gestapo in Bialystok. In the afternoon they phoned him back. Yes, there was a gift shop run by a half Jew named Wynotski who had disappeared. There was record of a schoychet from Wolkowysk who was sent into the ghetto and who had a son who had escaped. Edelman was, in fact, famous for his hand-carved chessmen.
The whore in Solec? Untraceable. The moment the Nazis approached the Granada Club no one would know anything. Even their informers could not be counted upon. Whores had dozens of names. Selma could be Elma or Thelma.
The weeks of meticulous training were put to the acid test. Each of the underground assumed an identity of an actual person who could not be traced. The identities were taken from information supplied by Bathyran runners in other cities. Wolf Brandel’s story had been carefully worked out for weeks before he was given the name of Hershel Edelman. The real Edelman was obviously masquerading as someone else, somewhere in Poland.
“Bring back Hershel Edelman,” Sauer said.
The boy seemed no more frightened than a night at Gestapo House would demand. Sauer played for the one possible loophole. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a chessboard and a set of chessmen.
“Sit down.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Black or white?”
“Your preference, sir.”
“I have seen you defend yourself, Edelman. Now I should like to see your attack. Take the white.”
“Sir,” Wolf said haltingly. “Sir, this is very awkward. I mean, under the circumstances, I’m rather afraid to win.”
“You had better win, young man.”
Wolf did. In nine moves.
He was sent into the main interrogation room to sit alone on the single chair beneath the spotlight. There was nothing else in the room. Gunther Sauer had hit a dead end. His only choice was shock identification—or resort to torture. He was puzzled by the boy and not certain he would break down. Even if he did break down, he might have been telling the truth and could reveal nothing.
Sauer proceeded to the booth next to the interrogation room. There, through an arrangement of mirrors, he could watch the interrogation without being seen. Sensitive microphones piped sounds back to him, refined to pick up heartbeats.
“Bring in that woman,” Sauer ordered.
He watched closely as Wolf sat fidgeting in the hard chair. All Wolf could think of now was to keep his mind on Rachael and keep thinking of her and keep saying to himself that she would be proud of him, no matter what happened.
The iron door creaked open.
Wolf looked toward it slowly. Two Gestapo men stood on either side of the figure of a woman, holding her up. They let her go. The woman staggered, then fell face first to the floor.
Wolf edged out of the chair toward her.
Sauer watched and listened. ...
He knelt and rolled the woman over. It was Rebecca Eisen. Her face was bloated and distorted. One eye was locked tight, a multitude of colors, and blood gushed from her broken mouth and her torn fingernails. She quivered the other eye open. They recognized one another.
“Lady,” Wolf said, “lady, are you alive? I wish I could do something for you, lady.”
“Boy ... boy ... water ...”
A small smile crossed Gunther Sauer’s lips. If they were actors, they had played it to perfection. Hershel Edelman was obviously clean, but the story was so pat—so untraceable—the boy mystified him so. ...
“What do you think, sir?” an assistant asked.
“They don’t know each other,” Sauer said. “On the other hand, they don’t have to if he was actually a contact. The violets—I’m not sure of the violets.”
“Shall we send a dog in there?”
“Let me think about it.”
The Club Miami on Karmelicka Street inside the ghetto was the Jewish counterpart of the notorious Granada Club in the Solec as the center of smuggling, fencing, and prostitution. At the moment, members of Max Kleperman’s Big Seven were the ruling gentry.
The Club Miami had a unique distinction as a “free trading zone.” All activities within the bounds of this unholy sanctuary were looked upon as “off the record.” This confidence was respected even by the Germans. The Nazis realized that, as often as not, they too would need the facilities of a “free trading zone” and thus allowed the operation to exist. A half dozen rooms in back of the main bar were used to carry out transactions which were never taped, nor were the transactors followed or photographed. Unwritten law, gentlemen’s agreement, honor among thieves.
Max Kleperman knew that something strange was afoot when he received a phone call from Rabbi Solomon to go to the Club Miami.
Max arrived, filled with eager anticipation of a huge deal. The bartender advised him his contact waited in one of the back rooms. He entered and closed the door. Andrei Androfski turned and faced him. Max’s inevitable cigar smoke billowed around the room. Extraordinary for Androfski himself to come to him.
“One of our people has been picked up,” Andrei said.
Max grunted in disappointment. From time to time the Zionists had come to him to arrange releases for those stupidly picked up by Piotr Warsinski for the labor battalions. Kleperman had made one big killing when Rodel, the Communist, was thrown into Pawiak. It may be a big one again, Max hoped. After all, Rabbi Solomon personally made the call and Androfski personally made the contact.
“Who?”
Andrei halted for a moment. “Wolf Brandel.”
Max whistled. It was getting interesting. He polished his outlandish ring hastily on his vest.
“Where is he?”
“Gestapo House.”
Max put his cigar down and shook his head. Work camps ... easy to make a fix. Pay off a few shnook guards. Koenig’s factories in the ghetto, a little harder. The money went right to Koenig and cost more. The Jewish Militia, hadn’t found one yet who wouldn’t go for two hundred zlotys. Pawiak Prison—difficult, but he always came through.
“Gestapo House,” Max said. “Brandel’s boy. I don’t know.”
Max calculated the pros and cons quickly. He could rat on the Brandel boy and endear himself to the Germans. It would be genuine proof of his honesty and sincerity. Question was, would they appreciate it? On the other hand, the Big Seven and the Orphans and Self-Help Society were doing more and more business with him all the time. He could lose a lot of face in the ghetto if word of a sellout got around. But ... suppose he tried to get the Brandel boy out and failed or the Germans got wind of it. He’d be out on his ass, but good.
Max stood up quickly. “Leave me out of it. Hands off. I’ll forget everything you said.”
“Sit down, Max,” Andrei said softly. “Max, that order of flour for the Orphans and Self-Help—just cancel it. We’re opening up a new source.”
Max slipped into his chair. “Damn you, Androfski, I went to a lot of trouble to ship that wheat in here. I brought in so goddamned much flour that half the bakeries on the Aryan side had to close.”
“Just talking off the top of my head, Max, but forty or fifty of our own people think we can run the smuggling operation just as effectively.”
The message was clear. The Brandel boy had to be freed at any price. Androfski was one of those bastards who didn’t bluff. Max opened his wallet and took out his estimation pad and began to scratch figures down.
“It will cost plenty.”
“We’ll pay.”
“I’ll have to work in gold or dollars. We can only move through high-class people.”
“I’ve only got zlotys,” Andrei lied.
“So have I got zlotys. A warehouse full of them. They aren’t worth the goddamn paper they’re printed on. Gold or dollars, three thousand dollars.”
“Three thousand dollars!”
“Your hearing is excellent.”
Andrei’s eyes watered in anger. He turned his back on Kleperman to conceal the rage inside him. Filthy stinking scum. Bargaining for a life as if it were a secondhand suit on the Parysowski market Goddamned son of a bitch, Kleperman. Rachael’s eyes. Day and night she waited in his flat. Could he look at Rachael’s eyes again?
“It’s a deal,” he whispered.
“Let’s have the details.”
Andrei sat down opposite Max and held his face in his hands. “He got picked up in the Old Town Square carrying an Aryan Kennkarte made out for a fictitious Stanislaw Krasnodebski. He was sent out as a contact for a pickup from one of our girls from Krakow. Now the Germans hauled in forty, fifty people. Mass questioning. No doubt they’ve looked at his penis and know he’s Jewish. We’ve got reason to believe several Jews were grabbed in the dragnet.”
“One of my boys was taken in on the same roundup,” Max said, and added ironically, “He isn’t as lucky as Brandel. Doesn’t have his friends.”
“So, he goes on a story of being Hershel Edelman from Wolkowysk. If we’re lucky, he hasn’t been identified.”
“He’ll need more than luck with Sauer working him over. I’ll find out what his status is. If he is under suspicion we can’t touch him at Gestapo House. That will only endanger him. Sauer doesn’t take bribes. Just hope the boy doesn’t crack. We have to wait until he is transferred.”
Andrei nodded. Max stood up.
“Max ... I know the Big Seven can put us out of business, but if there’s a double cross you’ll get it first from me, personally.”
Chapter Twenty-four
EIGHT DAYS PASSED.
Rachael Bronski waited in her Uncle Andrei’s flat twenty-four hours each day, resisting consolation, eating only enough to keep her alive.
Each time Andrei walked in and shook his head the shock recoiled through her like the jagged glass on the top of the wall. She kept her eyes open in vigil until she collapsed from exhaustion, and then only a few nightmare-filled hours’ respite could be found.
She twitched and sweated on the bed and woke up with her heart thumping and the sweat pouring into her eyes, and Wolf would be standing there at the foot of the bed, gory and dismembered, and she would cry out the horror within her and then start her slow, zombie-like pacing of the room.
All of this silly war of morality I fought with him. All this modesty—all this fear ... Wolf was locked up in that terrible place. I have sent him to his grave, unloved. I have sent him to his grave, unloved. If Andrei comes through the door and tells me Wolf is dead, then I must die too.
Rachael developed a superhuman sharpness for sound. From four flights up she could hear the door of the lobby open and close. Each time it did she would walk to the door of the flat and lean against it and begin to count footsteps.
It took sixty steps to get to Andrei’s flat.
She would count. Sometimes the sound of footsteps would stop on the first landing or the second or third. She could tell if they were climbing stairs or walking in a corridor.
She could tell if their sound was taking someone up or down.
The ninth day.
She washed her face with cold water and fixed her hair and sat by the window. The door opened and closed in the lobby. Rachael listened and began her count.
... ten ... eleven ... twelve ...
The footsteps had reached the first landing.
... sixteen ... seventeen ... eighteen ...
She was able to distinguish between footsteps as they rose higher. The flat, weary shuffle was a man. The sharp sound was a woman’s heels. The soft sound, the child.
... thirty-three ... thirty-four ... thirty-five ...
Two men! Two men walking up slowly. Everyone walked slowly these days.
... forty-three ... forty-four ... forty-five ...
Her heart began to race. Two men on the third-floor landing. Oh God! Please don’t let them go into a flat down there. Please, God! Please make them come up to this floor. Please, God! I have never heard two men come up to the fourth floor! Please! Please!
... fifty-one ... fifty-two ... fifty-three ...
Rachael backed away.
... fifty-nine ... sixty
The door opened
Andrei walked in ... someone behind him.
“Wolf!”
He walked in slowly and took off his cap. Rachael pitched forward into his arms and fought off the consuming blackness that took hold of her.
For many, many moments she was too terrified to look up. Was this another dream?
No ... no ... no dream. She looked up. He was fine. Just a scar on his cheek. And then she allowed herself the luxury of breaking wide open in convulsive tears.
“Rachael,” he whispered, “I am all right. Please don’t cry. I am all right. ...”
Andrei left them, closing the door behind him.
Alex and Sylvia sat in their room, ghost-faced, drained of life. Neither of them had spoken a word for an hour since Wolf had left to go to Rachael.
Andrei knocked softly and entered.
“Dr. Glazer examined him. None of the dog bites are infected. He’ll be all right.”
The bit of information brought forth a new burst of crying from Sylvia. And then the baby shrieked and Sylvia picked him up and clutched him to her breast and rocked him back and forth, oblivious of Alex’s words of consolation.
Alex nodded to Andrei to leave Sylvia alone. He tiptoed from the room, both of them retreating to his office. Alex began berating himself.
“Stop sniveling,” Andrei demanded. “He is a courageous boy.”
“Where is he now?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Should I?”
“He is with his girl.”
“His girl?”
“My niece.”
“Oh, I didn’t know.” Alex began berating himself again for being such a bad father that his own son would not confide his love life.
“Shut up, Alex, the boy is alive and safe.”
Alex kept rambling. “All these eight horrible days I said it was right to get Wolf out. We have bought freedom for our people before. Rodel cost us nearly two thousand when they took him to the Pawiak Prison, and he isn’t even one of ours. The Communists didn’t even pay me back for Rodel’s release. It was all right, buying Wolf out. We would have done the same for any of our people.”
“You want to hear it, I’ll tell you!” Andrei raged. “It was not all right! You should have left your son to die before crawling in front of Max Kleperman!”
“Don’t talk like that, Andrei!”
Andrei snatched him from his chair and grabbed his lapels and shook him as though he were weightless. “Grovel! Beg Max Kleperman for mercy! That three thousand dollars could have bought guns to storm the Gestapo House and take your son out like a dignified human being!”
Alex fell against him and wept, but Andrei slung him into his chair. “God damn you, Alex! God damn you! Open your goddamned precious journal and read to me about the Jewish massacres in the Soviet Union!”
“For God’s sake, leave me alone!”
“I want money! I want to buy guns!”
“No—never. Never, Andrei. We keep twenty thousand children alive—not one zloty for guns.”
Alexander Brandel gasped violently for air as the room whirled around him. He had never seen the anger of the big man who glowered over him. Cornered and beaten, his soul cried out instinctively for the lives of the children.
“I’m through,” Andrei hissed.
“Andrei,” Alex cried pathetically.
“Roast in hell!”
“Andrei!”
The door slammed on his plea.
Andrei Androfski wandered in a fog, aimlessly through the ghetto streets. It was done. There was no turning back. He walked and walked and walked in a daze that shut out the sight of corpses and the pitiful moans of the child beggars or the brutal clubs of the Jewish Militia.
And he found himself standing in the lobby of his apartment house before the bank of mailboxes. His hand groped instinctively in slot 18. He pulled out two armbands. Two white armbands with blue stars of shame. The kids were still upstairs. Wolf and Rachael. He shoved the armbands into the slot and dug around in his pocket. Two bills. A hundred zlotys each. Always when he plunged lower and lower one word kept him from reaching the bottom—“Gabriela.” Two hundred zlotys. Enough to get him to the Aryan side. He needed her desperately.
“I have quit,” Andrei said.
“What are you going to do?” Gaby asked.
“Try to contact the Home Army. They’ll give me a command. The Home Army needs men like me. They won’t argue and quibble, they’ll fight—tired of all this damned arguing—all this dealing with Kleperman.”
Gaby watched him mumble aimlessly.
“Roman. That’s the name of the commander of the Home Army in the Warsaw district Roman. I’ll get to him somehow. You’ll stick with me, Gaby?”
“You know I will.”
He put his arms about her waist and buried his head in her belly, and she stroked his hair. “Are you certain?”
“I am certain—absolutely certain.”
Rachael and Wolf lay side by side on the bed, awed by the magnificence of their experience.
Wolf was completely exhausted. Rachael held him and petted him, and her lips sought him again and again.
She felt so elated from the wonderment of fulfillment.
It was not ugly or difficult. She felt no shame when they saw each other for the first time. Wolf had been so gentle and tender. He knew the awkwardness in her.
He was happy. She had made him happy. He was tired, but he wanted her to touch him.
Poor dear Wolf, Rachael thought. He is so shy he cannot say words he wants to, but I feel every word he wants to tell me by the way he touches my breast and kisses me and whispers to me.
It felt good ... so good ... and I am so proud I was able to be a woman for his sake. Now anything can happen and it won’t be quite so bad.
I am so sleepy. ... Uncle Andrei must be furious. I hope he went to see Gabriela, because I’m not going to leave. I’m going to snuggle close and sleep for a little while, then I’ll wake him up and try it again. ...
Chapter Twenty-five
Journal Entry
NO ONE HAS SEEN Andrei for ten days. We assume that he is living on the Aryan side. After so many years of working together, it is difficult to believe he is really gone. None of us knew till now what a symbol of security he was. It has been a terrible blow to the morale here at Mila 19.
We now operate ninety soup kitchens and have some twenty thousand children under the care of Orphans and Self-Help.
Dr. Glazer tells me we have a new trouble, venereal disease. Before the war, prostitution was never a Jewish social problem. Nowadays I hear more and more of wives and daughters, many from fine old Orthodox families, taking to the streets.
For a family to get a daughter married to a Jewish militiaman is an achievement.
Tommy Thompson has been evicted from Poland. We have lost a dear friend. However, we have been expecting it for a long time. Ana Grinspan has already made a new contact to pass in American Aid funds. Believe it or not, a chap named Fordelli, who is the second secretary at the Italian Embassy. Although he is a good Fascist, he takes exception to the German treatment of the Jews. Is Ana having an affair with him?
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Alex was instinctive about bad news. The moment Ervin Rosenblum walked into his office he knew something had gone wrong. Ervin paced and wrung his hands.
“Out with it.”
“My pass to the Aryan side has been revoked.”
“Has De Monti protested?”
“He left for the eastern front four days ago. He doesn’t know yet.”
“Confidentially, it is just as well you are inside the ghetto with us.”
“But all the contacts on the Aryan side ...”
“It was getting more difficult for you to see anyone, and De Monti refused to co-operate. You were being watched every minute. Ervin, I’ve been thinking. You can fit right in here at Mila 19. We need you in several positions.”
“Like for example?”
“Orphans and Self-Help cultural director. Nu, don’t shrug and make faces. The arrangement of debates, concerts, theater, chess tournaments becomes more and more important to give the people something to think about other than misery. What do you say?”
“I say that you are a good friend.”
“Another thing. The Good Fellowship Club. I can’t keep up with all the material coming in to the journal. I have been thinking for a long time. Build a secret room in the basement. With you putting time in, we could really expand the archives.”
Ervin shrugged at what he felt was charity.
“Think it over, Ervin. Let me know.”
That evening Susan Geller came to Ervin’s flat. Since the ghetto, they had had little time for each other. Susan was nearly completely married to the orphanage and Ervin was on the Aryan side most of the time. They met about once a week at Good Fellowship Club meetings, usually too weary to pursue personal pleasures. Their unofficial engagement seemed destined to go unresolved.
“Susan!” Momma Rosenblum cried with delight.
“Hello, Momma Rosenblum.”
“You heard?”
“Yes.”
“So maybe cheer him up a little.”
Ervin sat on the edge of his bed, staring glumly at the hole in the toe of his bedroom shoe. She sat beside him, creaking the bed.
“So maybe you’ve come to pray over the corpse,” he said.
“Shut up. Alex has offered you a responsible position. So, stick up your nose. Be a martyr.”
“I am glad you stopped by to cheer me up with your tender consolation.”
“Ervin, you’ll take the job?”
“I have a choice, maybe?”
“Stop krechtzing. Alex is very excited about the plans for a secret room in the basement. You know how important the work on the journal is.”
“All right all right I’m bubbling with happiness.”
“Confidentially, Ervin, I am just as happy that you don’t go to the Aryan side any more. I have been afraid for you, even with your fancy super-official papers.”
“That’s something. I didn’t think you had time to think about me.”
“Ugh, you are in a mood. Of course I think about you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ervin,” she said, taking his hand, “on the way here I was giving this all a great deal of meditation. We’re not getting any younger and God knows I’ll never grow pretty. With conditions as they are and so forth and so forth and so forth, perhaps we should consider getting married. In addition to the fact that already we should be having a little pleasure now and then, there are very practical reasons. For example, you’ll be working at Mila 19 most of the time. It will be difficult for you to keep up this flat. So, why should we waste space? If we are married, Alex will give us our own room on the second floor and you can move Momma in and so forth and so forth.”
He reached over and kissed her on the cheek. “How can a man resist a proposal like that?”
Journal Entry
Ervin and Susan were married yesterday by Rabbi Solomon. It is about time.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Chapter Twenty-six
CHRIS RETURNED TO WARSAW from the eastern front to find Rosy gone, his office and apartment thoroughly searched and filled with hidden microphones, and his private line to Switzerland unavailable.
He dialed Rosy’s number in the ghetto, to learn the phone was disconnected; then stormed to the Press Division at the Bristol Hotel, where his attempt to see Horst von Epp was thwarted by a minor bureaucrat.
“I am sorry, Mr. de Monti. Herr von Epp is in Berlin for a conference.”
“When will he be back?”
“I am sorry. I don’t have the information.”
“Well, where can I reach him in Berlin?”
“I am sorry. I don’t have that information.”
A second minor official was equally sorry and uninformative about the revoking of Ervin Rosenblum’s credentials, and a third minor official was sorry about the suspension of Chris’s wire to Switzerland.
“Sorry, Mr. de Monti. Until further instructions you will have to file all dispatches here at the Bureau for Censorship.”
Chris was tired and his head was fuzzy from the long trip back from the front lines. He stifled his irritation, knowing nothing could be done until he could put the pieces back in place. A hot bath and a tall drink and the things that a man looks forward to after living in the mud were in order.
While he soaked arid sipped he decided not to pursue it any more until he could get his mind straight after a night’s sleep.
Chris hid himself at a corner table at Bruhl House to avoid conversation and nibbled his way halfheartedly through a leather-tough schnitzel. The room was filled with guttural sounds of talk about the eastern front, the voices sharp with confidence.
“You are not hungry tonight, Mr. de Monti?” the waiter asked patronizingly as Chris gave up. “It is getting more and more difficult to put together an eatable menu. They ... get it all.”
Chris signed the bill and wandered out into the street. Warsaw was a gay place these days. The city was filled with German troops having their last fling before shipment to the eastern front. Although the Polish people were open in their hatred of the enemy, there were enough women not annoyed with patriotic considerations to give the German lads a good time. Brothels reaped a fortune, beer and vodka and goldwasser flowed in the taverns, and even the ancient streetwalkers struck an unexpected vein of gold.
Most of Warsaw’s musicians were Jews. German soldiers and their girls slipped into the ghetto to dance and live it up in one of the fifty night clubs, mainly operated by the Big Seven, for the music on the Aryan side was dreadful.
Chris walked for several blocks. He was weary and unsettled from the shocks of war and hung in limbo by the sudden turn of events in Warsaw.
From the taverns, there was riotous singing from Germans as drunk as Poles and from Poles as drunk as Poles. In order to avoid further accosting by the streetwalkers, he crossed at Pilsudski Square and stopped to get his bearings.
Back to his car and home? No. Damned apartment gave him the creeps.
Track down a party? A good bender and maybe a little action afterward? No.
Chris looked around, then found himself walking up a footpath in the Saxony Gardens, which seemed more delightful with every step because it put the sounds of Warsaw behind him. It grew darker and dimmer as he walked. All he could hear now were occasional squeals from the bushes by roomless couples consummating their deals. Now and then a self-conscious pair emerged from the thickets or down the path, avoiding his eyes.
Chris walked past the swan lake. So often he had waited there for Deborah ... sitting on the bench ... waiting for her to appear. That first wonderful instant he would see her ... That moment never changed, never dulled.
Damned fool, sitting here. Deborah isn’t coming up the path—there won’t be a tryst. No beautiful Deborah to see through the velvet curtains. Only a roomful of microphones and hidden eyes.
Chris was magnetically drawn to the ghetto wall. He crossed the Saxony Gardens and wandered along Chlodna Street, which divided the big and little ghettos. On both sides of him was the wall. The night lights caught the broken glass cemented on the top, causing it to sparkle like the sudden glint of a rat’s eyes.
So dark ... so quiet. It was hard to comprehend that six hundred thousand people lay in silence on the other side. All that could be heard was the sound of his own steps, and all that could be seen of life was his shadow, which grew longer and longer as the light contorted the angle of his movement.
He stood underneath the bridge. It was covered with barbed wire. He had come there many times during the day and stared at it, watching the Jews cross from one ghetto to the other over the “Polish corridor,” hoping beyond hope he could catch a glimpse of Deborah.
He stood for a half hour.
What the hell, he thought, and walked away quickly.
From the corner of his eye he detected movement in an indentation in the wall ahead of him. Quickly two men stepped out and blocked his path. Chris stopped and looked over his shoulder. Two more men were behind him. He could not distinguish their faces, but the bulky cut of their clothing and leather workers’ caps and their size intimated that they were thugs.
“Waiting for somebody under the bridge, Jew boy?” a voice came from one of the figures.
Hoodlums out Jew hunting. Big sport, these days. Good source of income. What to do? Show his papers and pass through?
“Come on, Jew boy. Two hundred zlotys or you’ll take a walk to Gestapo House.”
Chris’s blood boiled. “Go to hell,” he snapped, and walked straight at the pair ahead of him.
One from behind hooked his arm and turned him around. Chris drove his fist into the figure’s mouth and the man fell backward, hit the curb, and landed on the flat of his back.
Damn! Damn my temper!
Two leaped on him, and while he struggled to free himself the third brought a blackjack to the side of his cheek.
A surge of raw strength threw the men from him. As he shook himself free, the first one got up and caught him in the eye with a hamlike fist, and for an instant Chris was blinded. He reeled, then stopped abruptly as his back hit the ghetto wall.
Chris grunted as the blackjack found its mark again. He sank to his hands and knees and wobbled on all fours and the ground spun around him.
“Get up, Jew boy!”
Chris looked up. They hovered over him. One with the blackjack, another with a jagged broken bottle. Another, bloody-mouthed from his blow. He could not see the fourth man.
His head cleared and the ground steadied. Chris lurched up, ramming his shoulder into the one with the glass bottle to crack out of the ring. With the air suddenly smacked from his lungs, the hoodlum fell and sat on the ground, gasping.
And then Chris sank under a rain of fists and boots. He was jerked to his feet and propped against the wall, his arms spread-eagled as in the position of a crucifixion. The leader could not resist one last smash into the stomach of his helpless victim. A light was held to Chris’s face. His dark Italian features were studied. “He’s a Jew, all right.”
Chris’s head rolled up and his eyes opened and he snarled. The leader pressed the jagged glass close to his eye, so he dared not move.
Chris brought his knee up into the man’s groin and the man shrieked and staggered back, then came forward, enraged and intent on cutting up his face.
“Wait. He fights too good to be a Jew. We had better make sure he is.”
“What’s the difference now? Just take his money.”
“Holy Mother! Look at these papers! He isn’t a Jew.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
Footsteps ... faded ... they’re gone ...
Chris slipped down to the ground, bloody, and pawed around to pull himself up.
Someone stood over him. He managed to hold his head up enough to see the faces of a frightened middle-aged couple.
“Help me ...”
“Don’t touch him, Poppa. Can’t you see he’s a Jew? He jumped over the wall. Leave—leave before the guard comes.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
A WEEK PASSED BEFORE Horst von Epp returned to Warsaw. He entered the Holy Cross Church, spotted Chris kneeling in the first row, and knelt beside him.
“Good Lord,” Horst said, “what happened to you?”
“I was mistaken for a Jew.”
“Bad mistake, these days.”
“You should have seen me a week ago.”
“I thought we’d better meet out of the office,” Horst said, nodding in the direction of the little black box on the altar containing Chopin’s heart. “Let’s take a walk. That box may have a microphone hidden in it. Matter of fact, I bit into a microphone planted in my breakfast bun this morning.”
They shaded their eyes from the sun. Chris put on dark glasses to cover the bruises, and they strolled down New World Street. Across the street a pair of men began to follow them, and Von Epp’s car drifted alongside at a crawl. “Lovely system,” Von Epp said. “This way no one knows exactly who is watching who. How did you find the Russian front?”
“Nothing but victory for the Fatherland. Trouble is, I’m having a time getting my dispatches through about your glorious achievements.”
“Sorry about that. Your line to Switzerland was restored this morning. Bloody blockheads. I knew the moment I left Warsaw there would be a panic.”
“Restoring Rosenblum to me too?”
They crossed the street.
“Your silence is deafening, Horst.” Chris pressed.
“Be reasonable.”
“He’s like my right arm.”
“I told you I didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep him out of the ghetto.”
They walked in quiet unison for the rest of the block, then stopped at the junction where Jerusalem Boulevard turned into the Third of May Boulevard. A screaming set of sirens froze all movement. A pair of motorcycles followed by a command car followed by a convoy of a hundred trucks filled with fresh soldiers poured past them. From two or three of the trucks they were able to catch a note or two of a marching song. The convoy swept toward the newly reconstructed bridge to Praga.
Meat for the eastern front, Chris thought. The blitzkrieg had swept over the steppes. The fantastic military machine was slicing up the vastness of Russia from the Black Sea to the gates of Moscow. Horst and Christ drifted in the wake of the convoy to the bridge, and they stopped in the middle and leaned on the rail.
“Schreiker called me in and questioned me about Rosenblum. They were all on me about him. For both of your welfares it is better this way. It is impossible to have him out of the ghetto without casting all sorts of suspicion on you. Obviously he’s mixed up in some sort of contacts around Warsaw and probably two steps ahead of being hauled into Gestapo House. Now don’t press me on this matter, Chris.”
Von Epp was right. Rosenblum was in thick as a courier. The Germans would be fools to allow him to continue to run loose.
“If you need another man, for Christ sake, find yourself a nice untainted Aryan.”
Chris nodded. The Vistula River was filled with barges bearing the tools of war for transfer to the eastern front.
“Any of all this bother you, Horst?”
“Everyone knows the Jews started the war,” Horst recited from the principal dogma.
“I saw a few things out there behind your lines that may be pretty hard to explain.”
“Believe me, Goebbels will find explanations. And the rest of us? Hell, we’ll all shrug with blue-eyed innocence and say, ‘Orders were orders—what could we do?’ Thank God the world is blessed with short memories.”
“Where does it end?”
“End? We can’t stop until we either own it all or get blown up into a billion pieces. Besides, don’t be too hard on us. Conquerors have never won prizes for benevolence. We are no worse than a dozen other empires when they ran the show.”
“Does this make it right?”
“My dear Chris, right is the exclusive property of the winning side. The loser is always wrong. Now, if I were you, I’d string along with us for awhile because the way things are going we may be Rome, Babylon, Genghis Khan, and the Ottomans combined for many hundred years.”
“Christ, what a prospect.”
Horst laughed and slapped Chris on the back vigorously. “Trouble with you, you bastard, you’ve been out on the front looking at the seamy side of things. Warsaw is the warriors’ reward. Unbend a little. How about a private party tonight? You, me—a pair of ladies. Hildie Solna said you were rather nice to her last time out.”
“Once in a while my chemicals get out of balance. Hildie restores them. Usually when I’m tailing off a drunk.”
“Tell you what. To hell with Hildie. Tonight I’m lending you number one from my private stock. Eighteen, built like a ripe peach. And where this dear girl picked up so many tricks in her short life—fantastically beautiful muscle control, and she does a thing of rubbing on baby oil ...”
A roaring truck blotted out further dissertation on the orgy.
Chris again became entranced by the river barges. Horst von Epp was correct. “Right” was the winning side. He sure was with the winner. Five hundred years of Germany? Could be. The trip to the eastern front was the clincher. No matter how dark things had been in Spain, in Poland he always felt that the pendulum would swing back the other way. But would it? A breakthrough in Egypt would put Rommel on an unstoppable path to India. Moscow was digging in for a siege. The frantic preparations in America—too little, too late. He had seen the German power unleash a fury that made the conquest of Poland look like child’s play. Kiev, a half million Russian soldiers trapped. What could stop them?
Chris looked at Von Epp, who was enjoying a cigarette. Orders are orders. A wall of indifference built around him that shut out a struggle of good and evil.
And then ... the thoughts of the massacre outside Kiev seared into his mind. Chris had to make his move. Make it soon. Now ... now ...
And Horst von Epp was his only chance.
Do it, Chris prodded himself, do it—tomorrow may be too late.
“I want to go into the ghetto,” Chris said quickly, fearing his own courage.
“Come now, Chris,” Von Epp said, concealing his delight. “It will put us both in a bad light.” All of Horst von Epp’s patience was beginning to pay off now. Chris had held a card up his sleeve from the beginning. His desire to stay in Warsaw at any cost. His reluctance to join the parties after a reputation as a lothario in other places at other times. Chris wanted something. Von Epp knew that from the start. Now the card was being played with caution.
“I’ve got to see Rosenblum and clean up a lot of odds and ends.”
“If you insist on this ...”
“I insist.”
Von Epp threw up his hands in “defeat.” “All right.” He glanced at his watch. Enough for one day, he thought. He looked for his car, which had trailed them and parked at the foot of the bridge. “Can I drive you into town?”
“I’ll walk. I’ll see you later.”
“Try to change your mind about going into the ghetto.” Horst turned briskly as he started for his car.
“Horst!”
The German turned to see Chris walking grimly toward him, on the brink of a terrible decision.
“Suppose I want to get someone out of the ghetto?”
“Rosenblum?”
“No.”
“A woman?”
“And her children.”
“Who?”
“My grandmother.”
Horst von Epp smiled. Christopher de Monti had played his card. Every man had his price. Von Epp always found it With most, petty bribes ... favors. That was for petty people. Christopher de Monti? Tough. An idealist in the throes of conflict. Blackmail often worked. Almost everyone had dirty tracks they tried to cover. Von Epp found them too.
No matter how tough, how idealistic, how clean, every man had his price. Every man had his blind spot.
“How important is this?” Horst asked.
“Everything,” Chris whispered, culminating the decision, putting himself at the mercy of the German.
“It can be done, I suppose.”
“How?”
“She can sign papers that she isn’t Jewish. We have handy form letters for all occasions, as you know. Marry her, adopt the children. A ten-minute detail. Then send her into Switzerland as the wife of an Italian citizen.”
“When can I pick up my pass for the ghetto?”
“After we settle on the price.”
“Like Faust? My soul to the devil?”
That’s right Chris. It will be steep.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
ANDREI WAITED FOR TWO restless, mood-filled weeks before he could corner the man known to him as Roman, the Warsaw commander of the fledgling underground Home Army.
Time and again Andrei had to stifle his desire to go back into the ghetto with his friends. He drank heavily in the evenings, and when his mind became fuzzed he was filled with remorse. He had been intolerant of Alexander Brandel’s struggle. He had acted wrongly to friends who believed in him.
He thought about everything since the war had come. Bullheaded ... angry. Perhaps he was no good for a command again. There was a time when he had settled down and moved about Poland on mission after mission. He had pieced together a secret press. He had acted with a cool head and a quick mind.
But always, anger surged. Rebellion against tyranny. He was overpowered by this drive to throw off his containment and fight.
And Gaby. He was remorseful about her too. What kind of life had he given her? He had taken her from a world in which she thrived and placed demands upon her, giving little or nothing in return. When the command in the Home Army comes, maybe I will get away from Warsaw. Then perhaps she can forget about me slowly and find the thread of a decent life.
At long last the word came back through super-cautious networks of information that Roman would see him. It was with an immense feeling of relief that he followed out the instructions. A contact in Praga. A blindfolded ride back over the river. Two dozen false turns to throw off his sense of direction. Men whispering, leading him up a dirt path. A door, a room. Where was he? He did not know exactly.
“You may take off the blindfold,” a high tenor voice said in immaculate Polish.
Andrei adjusted his eyes to the shadows of the room. They were in a large shed. Crude curtains shutting out light. A kerosene lantern on a shelf. A cot. A few garden tools.
Roman’s face came across the flicker of light. He had seen the prototype of Roman a thousand times in a thousand places. Tall, erect, blond, high forehead, curly hair. He wore the unmaskable glower of perpetual arrogance of a Polish nobleman. It was the sneer of a Ulany colonel, the innuendo of superiority, the thin mocking lips. Andrei could almost tell Roman’s story. The son of a count. Landed gentry. Misused wealth. Medieval mentality. Roman most likely lived in the South of France before the war. He cared damn little about Poland except to bleed his estate dry with the blood of legalized serfdom. He saw damned little of Poland except during the social season.
Andrei’s estimation was deadly accurate. Like many of his ilk, Roman had become suddenly smitten with latent Polish “nationalism” after the invasion. He joined the government in exile in London because it was the fashionable thing to do. London was jammed with Poles who gathered to hear Chopin and recite poetry and live memories of Warsaw in the “good old days.”
He parachuted into Poland to work with the Home Army, a play of immature romanticism. Despite the guise of workman’s clothing, Roman’s frailties shone like a beacon. “You are persistent, Jan Kowal,” Roman said to Andrei.
“Only as persistent as you are evasive,” Andrei answered.
“Cigarette?” American, of course. He’d rough it later with the local product. No use carrying nationalism to extremes.
“I don’t smoke.”
Roman did. With a long cigarette holder.
“You’re Androfski, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“I remember seeing you in Berlin in the Olympics.”
Andrei began to have that uneasy feeling he had had a thousand times in the presence of the Romans. He could read the thoughts hidden behind Roman’s eyes.
... Jew boy. We had Jewish families on our estate. Two of them. One was the village tailor. Had a little son with earlocks. I beat the hell out of him with my horsewhip. He wouldn’t fight—only pray. The other Jew ... grain merchant. Thief. Cheat. Always had my father indebted to him. The inbred hatred of centuries could not be belied by Roman’s small, tight smile.
“I am afraid,” Roman said, “that our position is such that you cannot expect too much co-operation from us at the present time. Perhaps later, as we are better organized ...
“You mistake my mission,” Andrei said. “I represent only myself. I wish to place myself at the service of the Home Army. A fighting command, preferred.”
“Oh, I see. That puts a different light on everything.” Roman’s slim elegant fingers caressed the long cigarette holder. “The Home Army does not work under conditions of a peacetime military force, naturally. All our people are volunteers. The maintenance of discipline cannot be as simple as a day in the guardhouse or the loss of pay. Discipline is life and death.”
“I don’t understand what you are trying to say.”
“Merely this. We wish to avoid in advance the creation of unnecessary problems.”
“Such as?”
“Well, we don’t solicit your services. It may be impossible to get our men to respond to your leadership. And ... you might feel rather uncomfortable with us.”
“No room for Jews!”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Your army represents the government of Poland. Thirty thousand Jewish soldiers died in Polish uniform during the invasion.” Andrei stopped. He knew his arguments were falling on deaf ears. Roman’s eyes now said, “If it weren’t for the Jews we would not be in this situation.” Oh, they’d have a few Jews all right, Andrei knew. A nice quota system like all the quota systems he’d lived with all his life.
“I’ll make you a counteroffer. I know my way in and out of all sixteen ghettos. Let me organize my own unit of the Home Army.”
Roman turned his back on Andrei. “My dear—er—Jan Kowal. That would only increase the friction. Can’t you see?”
“It is disgusting,” Gabriela snapped.
“No, I should have known.”
“What now?”
“There is no turning back. I am leaving in the morning for Lublin.” Gaby’s face became drawn. Sooner or later Andrei would reach a fearful conclusion. “The Bathyrans there have a good collection of foreign passports and visas. For old times’ sake they will give me one and enough money to travel. I’ll pick up the underground railway. We have sent a number of people out of the country that way. Goes into Germany to Stettin. From Stettin it will be a relatively easy matter to make a deal for a boat to Sweden. From Sweden I’ll get to England, then join the Free Polish Forces. If they refuse me a command, I’ll join the British army.”
Gabriela listened to every word with mounting fear. Andrei stopped his pacing. “Someone in this world must let me fight.”
She nodded. She knew. There would never be peace for him again until he was able to strike back.
“What about us?” she whispered.
“Go to Krakow to the Americans. Thompson is gone, but you still have friends there. They will get you out. We will meet in England, Gaby.”
She bit her finger and brushed the hair back over her shoulder nervously. “I don’t want to be parted from you.”
“We can’t travel together.”
“I’m afraid of it all, Andrei.”
“There is no choice.”
“Andrei, it is such a wild scheme. So many, many things could go wrong. If you leave tomorrow and I never see you again—”
He put his hand over her mouth gently, then wrapped his arms around her in his wonderful way, which he had not done for a very, very long time. “And when we meet in England, do you know the first thing we will do?”
“No.”
“Get married, of course, woman!”
“Andrei, I’m so afraid.”
“Shhh.” He petted her hair and rubbed the back of her neck and she purred and smiled weakly. “I must go into the ghetto. There are a few things in my flat. Nothing of value but sentimental. I should like Rachael and Stephan and Deborah to have them.”
He broke from her and put on his cap. “Strange ... I wanted so badly to see Stephan have his bar mitzvah. Well—no matter now.”
“Hurry back, darling. ...”
The return to the ghetto after his absence was shocking. In the few weeks he had been away the situation had collapsed with fearful speed. With winter coming on, the sight of corpses in the streets was commonplace and the smell of death, the low moan of misery, and the tautness of expectant doom cast a pall of gray in the midday sun.
Andrei shoved his hand into the mail slot in the hope that Rachael’s and Wolf’s armbands would be there. He might be able to speak to them ... say a few words ...
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