by Michael Dean
Hartog Mof, the rag dealer, was bawling his wares the loudest; you could hear him the length of the lane. Tijpie was selling her eggs, hard-boiled or soft-boiled, four for a dubbeltje – ten cents. On the other side of the lane there was Cross-eyed Ko, selling watches and clocks, all piled up anyhow. Hirschfeld doubted that many, if any, of Ko’s timepieces could be relied on.
Hollander had the stall next to Ko. He sold toothache pads – leek chopped up fine and put in tissue paper. As Hirschfeld drew level with his stall, Hollander’s cousin, Marinus Glim, a great bull of a man, was roaring in pain and demanding relief from toothache. Glim was Hollander’s shill, his accomplice, paid to be the first to buy. Hollander sold him a pad. Glim loudly regaled the passers-by with the sweet salvation, the blessed relief from toothache, the pad was affording him.
As the smiling Hirschfeld walked on, Hollander made three more sales as a result of this charade with his shill. How gullible and in need of care the populace was, thought the Secretary General.
The crowds were even more solid here, towards the middle of the lane, and the noise unabating, as the stallholders competed in bawling their wares: ‘Nougat here, two cents a brick!’ ‘Max’s fabric, seventeen cents a yard!’ ‘British sailors’ jackets, made in England’ - this was followed by a stream of ‘English’, which was mainly Yiddish, in praise of the goods.
‘I suppose you would be tempted if the price was right.’
Some of the traders didn’t just bawl a pitch, they told long stories or quick fire jokes, anything to pull people in. Professor Kokadorus was a master of the shaggy-dog story. He’d tell these long involved tales, with no point or punch-line, about how he’d had tea with the King of England. He was selling shoes – nothing to do with the King of England.
In a gap between two stalls, Karel Polak had drawn a curious crowd to his tyre demonstration. Polak, as everyone called him, was a tall, cadaverous figure with black hair and a ginger moustache. He was known as a character, even in an area thick with characters. He had tyres by Dunlop, Heven and Engelbrecht, all second-hand. He was demonstrating the efficacy of the patches he had put on them. He pumped one up:
‘Look at that! Last you a lifetime that will! Ride anywhere you want on that. Where d’you want to go lady?’
He was addressing a tubby matron in a sage green coat and felt-brimmed hat, at the front of the crowd. The matron turned to her friend in delighted confusion, arms outspread, indicating that she had no idea where she wanted to go. She shrieked incoherently, to confirm this.
‘How about England?’ suggested Polak. This drew a roar from the crowd. ‘Put you on the handlebars, mevrouw,’ Polak offered. ‘Over the Narrow Sea. You won’t fall off, not with my arms round you. I’ll give you a smooth ride. I’ve never had any complaints.’
‘Ooooh!’ went the matron, in mock outrage.
The threadbare tyre Polak was selling popped. There was a roar of laughter, the tubby matron pointing accusingly at her would be knight-of-the-bicycle, as if this was his just deserts for his cheek.
‘There!’ The unabashed Polak swept the crowd with his gaze. ‘That was to show you what it looked like inside.’
Many of the crowd, Hirschfeld included, had heard this line before, as the bursting of Polak’s threadbare tyres was a regular occurrence. The laughter was of recognition as much as amusement. As the Secretary General walked on, the popular Polak was raking in quarters as fast as he could shovel them into his apron pockets. Shoppers and browsers hung his tyres round their necks, or put them under their arms; walking off, with a smile.
Hirschfeld bought some cigars from one of the myriad cigar-sellers. The cigar-sellers didn’t bawl their wares. Tobacco was a serious business. But further on, there was the loudest yelling Hirschfeld had heard yet. It was a swimmer - a trader with all his wares on a tarp on the ground. This was poor stuff: broken jewellery, rusty pocket-knives, used razor blades, pieces of shaving soap. Hirschfeld’s disgust showed in the pursing of his lips – this was not worthy trade.
The Secretary General had finished his apple. He thought of throwing the core on the ground, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wrapped it carefully in his crisp handkerchief. Else, his adoring sister, four years younger than him, had lovingly starched it. Now it was wet from the apple core. What a waste! But still, he did not begrudge helping out old Mother Bril with his purchase.
A ripple ran through the crowd, ahead of him; there were some raised voices, a commotion. Hirschfeld shut his eyes for a second. He knew it would be NSB - the Dutch Nazi party. They were detested with a sharp, knife-in-the-guts loathing, more immediate and painful than the wary, dull fear the German conquerors inspired.
Sure enough, it was two NSB biff-boys from the WA, the Weer Afdeling – their so-called military section - modelled on the German SA. They were in black uniforms with black peaked caps. A couple of young Jewish toughs had confronted them. The Jewish boys wore long, waisted jackets and caps – Hirschfeld thought they might be diamond workers. The NSBers were going the same way as Hirschfeld; they had their backs to him. The oncoming Jewish lads were facing him, close enough for Hirschfeld to see their faces.
Every time the NSBers made to go round them, skirting the crowds between the stalls, the two Jews stepped in front of them and blocked them. One of the Jews was grinning. The other one was tense with hatred, both fists clenched. He really looked like he wanted a fight.
‘Let us pass, will you!’ one of the NSBers shouted. He sounded scared. The NSB – including their WA thugs - did not carry guns. If it came to a fist fight, the two Jews looked as if they would beat the hell out of them. Hirschfeld thought of Rost van Tonningen, one of the men he was shortly due to meet. He was second-in-command of the NSB.
‘Joden niet gewenscht!’ called out one of the Jews, raising his clenched fists. It was the sign the WA put on public places throughout Amsterdam – ‘Jews not wanted.’ ‘We’ll show you who’s wanted here,’ the Jewish youth yelled out.
‘Leave it!’ Hirschfeld shouted, to the Jewish lads. The NSBers whipped round as he spoke; they looked relieved. Some of the passers-by were smiling at the scene. A few had stopped, in the hope of witnessing a fight. If any of them joined in, Christians or Jews, it would be on the side of the Jewish boys. Hirschfeld feared a riot.
‘Leave it,’ Hirschfeld repeated, softly, to the Jewish toughs. ‘They’re not worth it. Not worth the trouble.’
In his double-breasted suit of best English tweed, and his expensive Fedora hat, Hirschfeld exuded authority, despite his flabby physique and horn-rimmed spectacles. He was also, obviously from his appearance, a Jew himself. The bigger of the two Jews smiled at him. They walked on, shouldering into the NSBers as they passed.
‘Oh, well-done, Uncle Max! Maxie the Peacemaker! Pax Hirschfeldium!’
Hirschfeld wheeled round. His mouth fell open. The diminutive figure of his nephew,
Emmanuel Roet, Else’s boy, wearing a costermonger’s apron, was standing in front of a stall. He was applauding ironically, his hands clapping above his head.
‘Manny! What on earth are you doing here? Why aren’t you at the shipyard?’
‘What, on a lovely day like this, Uncle Max? All this fresh air around us. The sun shining …’ Manny indicated the sun, shooting his left arm skyward, in case his uncle had any doubt as to its location.
And then Hirschfeld saw the wares on Manny’s stall: A couple of carbide lamps, a little machine for grinding seeds into cooking oil, aluminium pans – lots of them. As Hirschfeld knew only too well, all this was made illicitly from metal stolen from the shipyard. This economic sabotage was putting work behind schedule, not by days but by weeks.
‘Have you gone stark staring mad?’ Hirschfeld addressed his beaming nephew.
It could only be a matter of time before he was caught. And then, even an uncle who had the ear of the Occupying Authority would not be enough to save him. He would be on the next labour transit to work in a German factory.
; Young Manny did a jig on the spot; waving his hands in the air, shaking his head so his stiff, curly hair danced in syncopation. His spectacles nearly fell off. Hirschfeld suspected, not for the first time, that the youth was deranged.
‘Go to hell, Uncle Max,’ the boy said, conversationally.
Manny turned away from him, and began calling out his wares. As Hirschfeld watched, two burly German soldiers in field-grey, presumably Wehrmacht on leave, stopped and began to examine a frying pan. Manny shot a stream of broken Jewish Dutch at them, interspersed with gibberish and a smattering of the few Hebrew words he knew. It was something like ‘You lumps could fry up your dinner-winner in this pan, while you rape our fuckocking country.’
The soldiers looked at each other. One of them held up a pan, pointed to it and asked Manny the price, in exaggeratedly slow, Bavarian-accented German. Hirschfeld’s nephew, whose German was excellent, looked goggle-eyed and slack-jawed in stupid incomprehension.
He then launched into a mime show, consisting partly of the palms-out, shrugging shoulder gesture beloved of Nazi stereotypes of Jews. He topped this off by rubbing thumb and fingers together – meaning ‘money’ - in another Jew-hatred stereotype.
Hirschfeld felt sick.
The two soldiers started laughing. They conversed in Bavarian dialect, imagining nobody could understand them. Hirschfeld could.
‘How much?’ one of them said, again, taking out his purse and miming paying.
Manny held up a hand with two digits splayed. ‘Two guilders for a set of five,’ he said in decently clear Dutch.
The soldier nodded, handed over two guilders and helped himself to a set of pans. Manny gave an idiotic smile and mumbled ‘Thank you merry much, ye Moffen.’ Hirschfeld went white. Moffen was the insulting Dutch term for the Germans. It was a word German soldiers were likely to know; at least, the ones based in Amsterdam would. But these two went off happily enough, with their pans.
As the German soldiers walked away, Hirschfeld considered trying to reason with Manny, but reasoning with Manny was like filling a bath with water when the plug was out. And anyway this was not the place to do it. His nephew was due at his home, to share the sabbath meal with himself and Else. Hirschfeld resolved to have it out with him then.
The Secretary General walked on, past the Kattenburg Raincoat Factory, which flanked the market. His mood improved when he reached the Tip Top theatre, at the market’s far end. He began to hum a ditty from a Tip Top show Had-je- me- maar - If You Could Only Catch Me:
If you could only catch me, with a two guilder bribe,
If you could only catch me
With a little coaxing on the side.
Hirschfeld loved variety-theatre, and the cinema; he and his sister went to one or the other once a week. He could practically taste the gesause mangelen - the roasted peanuts - they sold at the Tip Top.
He looked back at the market, in the distance; all that energy, all that teeming life. It would be gone, forever, by the end of the week – obliterated - if he wasn’t clever enough at this meeting with Rost van Tonningen and Rauter. The market and the market traders – their lives depended on him.
2
Behind his thick spectacles, Emmanuel Roet’s tiny eyes were like two burnt currants at the bottom of a jar. Just as his face creased into its characteristic frown, at the sight of his Uncle Max, he caught sight of Ben Bril and Joel Cosman. The crowd parted for them, like Moses and Aaron leading the way through the Red Sea.
They were stars in Amsterdam’s Jewish firmament – Ben Bril, who boxed with a Star of David on his shorts, and Joel Cosman, who had just broken into the Ajax first team. Peering short-sightedly through the crowd, Manny watched as Ben and Joel bullied two NSBers. And then his Uncle Max popped up and spoiled all the fun.
As the two Jewish toughs stopped in front of his stall, Manny gazed raptly at them. He wanted to be like them, not like himself. He wanted to be tough, and to hell with being clever. The Nazis had closed down his university, hadn’t they? He had been lucky to get a twenty-two guilders a week job in the shipyard. And if Tinie hadn’t found him a room near hers, in Batavia Straat, he’d have been back with his Uncle Max and his mother.
‘Dag, Manny!’ The easy greeting was from Joel, the bigger one, the leader.
‘Dag, Manny!’ Ben Bril was Old Mother Bril, the peddler’s, son.
‘Dag Joel! Dag Ben! I saw you torment those NSBers, you boys.’
Joel smiled. He was easy-going, chummy, less intense than Ben. ‘Funnily enough, Manny-boy, we’re just on the way to give them a right pasting.’ He smiled at Ben. ‘Us and a few friends.’
‘What, you mean …’
‘The WA have been coming into the market. Beating up Jews. We’re on our way to teach them a lesson.’
‘Can I come?’
‘Manny-boy, we’re gonna beat the shit out of them, not draw them.’
Manny was a talented painter. He laughed at the gentle jibe. ‘I want to fight with you.’
They both looked sceptical – especially Ben Bril. But Manny knew who would make the decision. His currant eyes grew blacker, staring at Joel Cosman.
‘I need this, Joel. I’ll fight with every ounce of my strength. I won’t be a liability, I swear it. If I am, leave me where I fall.’
Joel was hesitating, his hawk-like face sharpening with doubt.
‘Joel, please. I am Dutch! I am Dutch!’
Joel laughed. ‘OK, Manny-boy. You’re in. Get someone to cover the stall’
But Emmanuel Roet was already tearing off his costermonger’s apron, and handing it to Manus Fransman, the herring seller. .
*
De Jonge Bokser was a Jewish boxing club in a room behind the Café De Kroon, on
Rapenburger Straat. It stank of turpentine oil, leather and sweat. There was a single, battered punch bag hanging from a butcher’s hook in one corner.
In the middle of the room, on the floor, were posts on bases and ropes which could be assembled to make a boxing ring. Round the walls, there was a thick cluster of photographs of Jewish boxers, some in singlets, some just in shorts and plimsolls. They were mostly in groups, but some stars, like Ben Bril, were pictured alone, with gloves raised.
Ben had boxed for the Netherlands, when the Olympics were held in Amsterdam. He was just sixteen. Rumour was, if the Dutch Boxing Federation had found out how young he was, he would have been disqualified.
Seeing Manny looking at the photographs and devouring every word of the captions, Joel slipped an easy arm round his shoulders:
‘One year, this club had all the champions of Holland in all the weight classes,’ he said: ‘In the flyweight class, Folie Brander; in the bantam class, Nathan Cohen; in featherweight, Japie Casseres; lightweight, Appie de Vries; welterweight, Ben Bril; middleweight, Sam Roeg; and in the heavyweight class, Japp Barber.’
‘That’s fantastic!’
‘So it is, Manny-boy! So it is.’
‘I read somewhere that … studying Talmud helps with boxing. I mean …Jews have quick reactions because the Talmud teaches us to be resourceful and … and precise.’
Joel looked solemn. ‘Maybe there’s something in that, Manny-boy. And then again, maybe there isn’t.’ Without realising it Joel had dropped into the nasal accent the Amsterdam Jews used to identify themselves as Jewish, even without using Jewish Dutch. Manny beamed at him.
Joel looked round the room, appraising. There were fourteen or fifteen of the Jewish boxers, most of them getting restive.
‘We gonna use weapons?’ Lard Zilverberg , a massive fellow at the back of the crowd, asked. Manny knew he meant staves and wooden palings.
Joel shook his head. ‘Sticks would just get in the way. And we could be spotted on the way there. We’ll just use our fists.’
This drew a murmur of approval. It was cut short by a thunderous banging both on the window and the locked door. Joel wheeled round. Manny and everyone else in the room feared the same thing. Had the WA got wind of the at
tack and ambushed first? Or it could be the Amsterdam police. It could even be the Orpos. And they would be armed. Worst of all, it could be the German Security Police - Sipo/SD.
‘Open up!’ The cry was in Dutch, but not Jewish Dutch.
‘I’ll go,’ Joel Cosman said. He walked to the door, unlocked it and pulled it open. Three toughs in workers’ clothes swaggered in.
‘Hello Joel,’ said the first one. He looked arrogantly round the boxing club, then called over his shoulder to the other two. ‘Hey, look, fellas! Jews! Never seen so many Mozes in one place!’
‘Gerrit Romijn!’
The Jewish boxers behind Joel Cosman relaxed. Some dropped their raised fists.
Manny knew Gerrit, too. At least he knew who he was.
The Jewish Seminary was a few doors further along Rapenburger Straat from the boxing club. There, the Jewish boys learned Talmud and studied for their barmitzvah. Abraham Katz trained the synagogue choir there. In the evening, as the Jews came out, the Catholic toughs, who mainly lived in the poor area around Folie Straat, were waiting for them.
The two sides fought on the Rapenburg – the bridge over the canal. They were armed with heavy pieces of wood, stolen from the lumber yards on Joden Houttuinen. Gerrit Romijn led the Christian boys; Joel Cosman led the Jews.
Manny always knew when one of these rumbles was taking place - everyone did. He avoided them, making a huge detour round Wertheim Park, on his way home, to keep out of the way.
Occasionally, a bunch of Catholics would taunt him: ‘Hey! Brilejood!’ - Jew with glasses. But if you didn’t want to fight, you could keep out of it. Sometimes the Jews won these fights, sometimes the Catholics did. Manny didn’t take much notice.
‘Gerrit, we’re in a hurry,’ Joel Cosman said. ‘Some other time, maybe. Bring your girlfriend, huh? I’ll give her a fuck with my circumcised schwanz. The other boys here tell me she likes that. The groove makes her wriggle about.’
