Darkness into Light Box Set

by Michael Dean

  Outside, Hendrik straightened up from his polishing and pulled at his white moustache, clearly about to ask if he was needed. Hirschfeld scurried by, eyes averted, giving him a muttered ‘Dag, Hendrik’ in passing. He walked quickly along the Binnen Amstel and crossed the Blaauw Brug, glancing up occasionally. There were high, wispy, cirrus clouds in a blue sky - not a typical Dutch sky at all.

  On the Blaauw Brug, he passed a Jewish family heading for the Tip Top – a father, mother and two small boys. They were shabbily dressed; the father was carrying a suitcase, the little boys were clutching books and toys.

  His head was exploding. Had the Nazis got hold of the lists from the Public Records Office? Manny, in that speech at the Jewish Council meeting, attacking him, assumed they had. He was not so sure. They had had no time to send out letters, to people listed as Jewish. And surely he would have heard something, seen at least one letter, if they had? They were relying solely on Asscher’s announcement and public notifications.

  Weren’t they? And in that case …

  With no clear plan in mind, he made his way along Nieuwe Amstel Straat, which runs alongside the Waterloo Plein Market. Even at this early stage, it was obvious that the numbers obeying the call to deportation were low – a trickle, where Rauter would have expected a stream.

  Nearer the Tip Top, he saw the first people he knew. It was like a blow in the face. There was Abraham Katz, with his wife and what must be his oldest daughter. He had a small yarmulke, for outside, pinned to the back of his head.

  ‘Reverend!’ Hirschfeld touched him on the arm of his shiny black jacket. The cantor jumped, but seemed relieved to put his suitcase down. ‘Reverend, ladies. What are you doing?’

  ‘Dag, Max. I didn’t expect to see you here.’

  With that enigmatic remark, the cantor nodded his head and solemnly pulled a cutting from his pocket. It was the notification from Het Joodsche Weekblad for Jews to report to one of the two designated Assembly Points. The date and places had been underlined in pencil.

  Hirschfeld looked round, wildly. There were plenty of NSBers in their black uniforms, but no sign of the Orpos. ‘Reverend, did anyone come to your house, to tell you to leave?’

  The reverend’s wife was looking alarmed, clearly fearful that they had made some terrible mistake. The daughter, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, was studying Hirschfeld coldly.

  ‘Come to my house? Did people come to my house?’ Katz said, reflexively looking at his wife for support. ‘No. No. Bella, did anyone come to the house?’

  ‘Nobody came to the house,’ Bella Katz said. ‘Should they have done?’

  ‘Did you receive any sort of personal notification?’ Hirschfeld was still shouting. ‘Say, a letter?’

  All three of them silently nodded no.

  ‘Then go!’ Hirschfeld shouted. ‘Turn round and go home.’ Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two NSBers watching him curiously.

  ‘Go home?’ the cantor said. ‘But the notification in the newspaper …. We thought, better to be among the first. We could help the later ones get settled. You see, I hope to establish a small synagogue, wherever it is we are going. It’s to the east, isn’t it? Poland, they say.’

  ‘Reverend, turn round and take your family back home. You will be safe. Nothing will happen to you. I give you my word.’

  The daughter had been watching Hirschfeld’s face. She narrowed her eyes against the weak sunshine. ‘Why are you saying all this?’ she said, suspiciously. ‘What do you know?’

  Hirschfeld made a noise between a sigh and a sob. ‘The Nazis are not, at this stage, working from a specific list of Jews. They’re just hoping that people will … This is a shot in the dark, on their part … They will never know. Please. Please, Reverend, I beg you. Go home.’

  He had won the daughter over. She touched her father’s arm lightly, as if waking him from sleep. ‘I think he may be right, Papa. We’ll go back, eh?’

  The old man hesitated. ‘Well, it would be nice to …. Alright we’ll go back. Thank you, Max. For your good advice.’

  ‘That’s alright, Reverend.’

  ‘You should come to synagogue, you know. It can be a great comfort in these difficult times. Come to keep your sister company, if for no other reason.’

  ‘I’ll … I’ll try.’

  The cantor and his wife and daughter turned and made their way back, the way they had come. Hirschfeld feared the NSBers would try to stop them, or would harass them, but they didn’t. One of them, however, was speaking into a radio.

  Hirschfeld made his way to the Tip Tip, which had now been closed down. Here, the crowd of Jews leaving their homes was thicker, but still, Hirschfeld thought, nowhere near what Rauter would have expected. To warn his fellow Jews here would be too risky. There were a couple of Orpos in evidence, taking names and processing. Hirschfeld walked away again, stationing himself, eventually, in an open area where Waterloo Plein met Jonas Daniel Mayer Plein.

  Here, he stopped Jewish families at random, always asking if they had had a visit or a direct communication from the Occupying Authority. None of them had. ‘There are over seventy-thousand Jews in Amsterdam,’ he would point out, in what quickly became a practised patter. ‘If your name is not on a list now, you do not have to leave. You can go home.’

  Many of the Jews he stopped mistrusted him - some knew who he was, some did not. They ignored his pleadings and continued to the Assembly Point of their choice. Others listened, as the cantor had, and turned back.

  Just as he was growing hoarse from his efforts, a car crossed Jonas Daniel Mayer Plein and screeched to a halt next to him. It was full of WA-men. Meinod Marinus Rost van Tonningen leaped out of it. Never the calmest or most controlled of men, he was positively gibbering.

  ‘Now you’ve done it, Hirschfeld. I’ve got you now! You’ve revealed yourself in your true colours.’

  ‘Have I?’

  The Jewish family he had just warned were heading back, away from the Assembly Point, as they spoke. Van Tonningen, though, was so intent on berating Hirschfeld that apparently it did not occur to him to have them seized and questioned, as to what Hirschfeld had said to them.

  Van Tonningen’s pointy little face was bright red. ‘Warning your fellow Jews, eh? Undermining the Occupying Authority’s cleansing of Amsterdam.’ His voice rose to a scream. ‘You are under arrest, Hirschfeld.’ Van Tonningen turned to his WA escort. ‘Take him!’

  Two of the WA troopers seized Hirschfeld under the arms, and bundled him into the back of the car. It drove off at top speed.

  11

  Robert checked his watch. It was time to set off for his meeting with Huib Lievers. On a whim, he asked Joel if he had heard of Lievers, who was just a name to him.

  ‘He’s a crook,’ Joel said.

  ‘So you know him?’

  Joel shrugged. ‘To greet in the street …’

  ‘But you know what he looks like?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Robert thought hard: Towards the end of the SOE coding course, they had sat in while girls at the coding section in Grendon Underwood – known as the FANYs - decrypted messages from agents in the field. Very frequently, there were indecipherables – the incoming message in code could not be read.

  The girls would drop everything else and work flat out, in teams, for hours, to decrypt an indecipherable. Robert had seen the FANYs in tears, many times, when they couldn’t crack one of these messages, because to ask for a re-send would expose the agent to mortal danger.

  There were many indecipherables from France; there were quite a few from Norway and Belgium. But none from Holland. Not one. Never. At first, as Robert recalled later with some embarrassment, he had been filled with patriotic pride at this. He thought it meant that the agents in Holland were better, more efficient.

  But one day, with a chill, it dawned on him what the lack of indicipherables from his homeland meant. It meant that the agents there had plenty of time to plan what they wanted to say, and send cle
ar messages. And there was one reason, and one reason only, why these agents would have plenty of time. Because they had been caught. They had all been caught. Every single one of them was being played back against London.

  Once one agent was captured and turned, this was all too horribly possible. Over a few stiff tots of whisky, he told Fat Laming – all eighteen stone of him - what he feared. Laming said he was talking rot, and defeatist rot at that.

  Robert was still thinking, pacing up and down. Such was the aura of authority round him that Joel, Manny and Tinie fell silent.

  He did not know what Lievers looked like, Robert thought. The Moffen would know he didn’t know. If Lievers had been captured, they would hardly risk sending him to a meeting in a café in the middle of Amsterdam, at least not unnecessarily. They would send someone else, and brief him on the codewords. Robert would know it was a trap only when they grabbed him.

  ‘I’m not going to the meeting with Lievers,’ Robert said. ‘You are, Joel. If Lievers shows up, use the codeword I’ll give you. Set up another meeting. If there’s no sign of Lievers, come back here immediately.’

  ‘But, Joel’s wanted,’ Manny said.

  They ignored him.

  Joel Cosman grinned. ‘Sure I’ll do it.’

  Joel had managed to hold onto his bicycle – despite a so far ineffective attempt by the Moffen to seize them all. He cycled off to the Café Sterrebos, for the five o’ clock meeting.

  He didn’t come back. It was dusk, then dark outside. Robert was pacing the hideout, afraid he had sent the young Geus leader into capture – or death.

  Then Joel returned. He was full of apologies for the delay – a puncture on the way back. He had spotted the contact, waiting, but it wasn’t Lievers.

  Joel Cosman put an arm round Robert. ‘You’d better stay here,’ he said. ‘With me and Manny.’

  Robert nodded, indifferent to where he would stay. ‘If the SOE has been penetrated, to that extent,’ he muttered to himself. ‘arranging an explosives drop is impossible. And without an explosives drop, how do we blow up the Armenius?’

  *

  Once the hydraulic lift-bridge had lowered the car, there was little space left in the concealed room. Fortunately, the three bunks were recessed into the wall. But a spirit duplicator had been brought in, to roneo off articles for the Guezenactie newsletter - that took up precious space. Some of the stolen blank ID cards, ration cards and clothes coupons were stacked against the walls, though most were buried in woods nearby.

  It was claustrophobic and stuffy. Lard Zilverberg or his father brought food in, and took clothes away to be washed. Robert Roet, Manny Roet and Joel Cosman took it in turns to empty the toilet, to wash, and to cook on a primus stove. They went for a walk once a day, one at a time – thankful to get out.

  Manny’s frequent vomiting, followed by profuse apologies, put a strain on all three of them. He had had this nervous vomiting – pyloric stenosis - since babyhood. It was getting worse, as he realised his long-lost father was as indifferent to him now as he had been when he left.

  For the first twenty-four hours, shut in with his father, Manny hardly stopped talking.

  He was trying to catch-up. For a while, after that, he continued, more and more desperately, to demand love, for himself, for his mother. But after their initial warm reunion, his father lapsed back into nothingness – a black void.

  Manny consoled himself with the Geuzenactie newsletter. He had scored a Dutch royal crown into the stencil, flanked by the words NEDERLAND and ORANJE in block capitals. Under the crown, he blocked out the royal motto: JE MAINTIENDRAI. Then he wrote articles in longhand onto the stencil for duplication. The articles were of two sorts: factual/argumentative and satirical/mocking.

  An early satirical one was a proclamation, written in Rauter’s name, imposing a curfew on dogs as a punishment for activities against the Occupying Authority – such as relieving themselves against the wheels of German tanks. He also wrote a satire called Last Order of the Day - written in the name of Adolf Hitler, on the day of German capitulation. Joel had praised it, though he couldn’t get Robert even to read it.

  The first of the factual/argumentative articles was an attack on Nazi anti-semitism. It was headed The Bomb of Anti-semitism Should Blow up in their Faces. Manny had written it in one draft, sitting on his bunk, his tongue protruding slightly between his lips.

  The Germans have the tendency, with peoples they wish to subjugate, not only to conquer them with weapons. They also try to strangle the life out of them with their ideology. Anti-semitism is one of the ways they do this. They try to make the presence of Jews a bone of contention. They try to use anti-semitism as a battering ram to drive a wedge between the various segments of society. German anti-semitism is, in this sense, an example of the time-honoured technique of divide and rule.

  Robert did read this one, but was dismissive of his efforts: ‘It’s just words,’ he said. He was slurring his own words, permanently drunk on jenever.

  ‘If anything is ever “just words”, then they have won,’ Manny said, trying to hide his hurt.

  Robert was walking round and round the car, a bottle of jenever in his hand. ‘We can’t beat them with words. We have to beat them with fists and guns. Then the likes of you can write and draw all you like.’

  There was no reply; because deep down Manny agreed with him.

  The other job he worked on was the forging of ID cards, once Lard had shown him what to do. The false ID cards and ration cards had to be distributed to onderduikers by people who had a valid reason to be on the streets. Anybody could be stopped by the Moffen, either at checkpoints, or on trams; or sometimes they would seal off a street at random at both ends and search every passer-by.

  The knokploeg used a butcher’s boy, on his bicycle; a doctor who could always claim to be making house calls; and Tinie. Tinie cycled around Amsterdam in a nurse’s uniform, she had made for herself. She also sewed a couple of pockets inside the legs of a pair of voluminous bloomers, to carry documents about.

  She visited Manny every day, bringing him stories from life up above. Manny dubbed these stories Tinie’s Tales From Mokum. Mokum – the place - was the Jewish name for Amsterdam. The Jews called it the place because Amsterdam had given them a haven, in Spinoza’s time. Manny would sit on the bunk, pat the spot beside him, and demand his tale, as soon as Tinie appeared, in her nurse’s uniform.

  Some of Tinie’s Tales From Mokum were happy, some were not: One family had taken in two onderduikers, a father and daughter. The daughter was behaving like a prima donna, refusing to sleep in the same room as her father.

  Then there were the sad stories of onderduikers being tricked and cheated. Tinie had come across Jews, people she knew, paying a fortune for shelter somewhere, agreeing to an advance payment, being told to turn up at the station – usually - and finding it was all a trick. The Nazis had put a bounty on Jewish onderduikers – five guilders a head, financed by the office they had set up to seize Jewish wealth – and there was no shortage of takers.

  But for every story like this, Tinie regaled Manny with another two of the citizens of Mokum risking their lives for people they hardly knew - or sometimes did not know at all.

  *

  ‘So why did you leave us, mother and me?’ The tone was challenging, consciously irritating – digging.

  It was ten in the morning. Robert already had a bottle of jenever on the go. Joel had gone for a walk.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Robert said. ‘It just happened. The older you get, boy, the more things just happen. And you stop giving a damn why they happen.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s something to look forward to, then. As I get older.’

  Manny started sketching Robert. He sketched him over and over again, as if trying to finally fix him – nail him down. Robert refused to pose. The sketches were growing less and less flattering. One showed Robert asleep, drunk and drooling. His father found it and tore it up. Then he tore up all the other sketches
of himself. By starting another sketch, Manny was deliberately provoking him.

  Robert and Joel were rubbing along well enough together. Robert not only considered Joel a man – unlike Manny - but a man he could respect. Their first talks were about the success of German counter-espionage, in particular the turning of Lievers.

  Manny listened; analysing, judging. To Manny’s fascination, Robert wasted no time – as Robert himself saw it - on the hows and whys of the past. Manny wanted to know what had made Lievers turn traitor, but Robert didn’t. Robert was interested only in the actions which needed to be taken, as a consequence.

  ‘London needs to organise a blind drop,’ Robert said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Joel was respectful, without being subservient.

  ‘Dropping an agent with no reception committee. Nobody would know his codes, his sched, his frequencies. That’s why I can’t radio London for explosives, you see.’ Robert nodded at his transmitter, now reclaimed from Central Station, taking up more of their precious space, in a corner. ‘Everything’s blown They could pick up the signal and we’d never know. We’d just be donating explosives to them.’

  ‘Let me ask around,.’ Joel said. ‘I’m sure we can steal you some explosive from somewhere.’

  Robert nodded. ‘OK.’

  *

  Tinie Emmerik stood on tiptoe, to peer out of the grimy dormer window of her room. Batavia Straat, usually alive with talking, laughing, screaming, shouting, remonstrating and reconciling, not to mention selling and buying, was completely silent. And then she saw them - two Orpos with coal-scuttle helmets, rifles slung across their chests, walking in the road, about a foot in from the pavement. They passed by, out of sight under the window, but she knew they’d be back.

  Sure enough, there was a rapping on the door, a few minutes later. Two Orpos, not the two from the street, were followed into the room by a bustling, resolute-looking mevrouw Kuipers.

  ‘Dag, mevrouw Kuipers!’ sang out Tinie, cheerily. ‘How nice to see you.’ Mevrouw Kuipers nodded, grimly. The gesture made the mole on her chin, with a single bristle through it, bob up and down. ‘Not gone yet, then?’ Tinie added, brightly.