by Michael Dean
*
Tinie’s frequent bouts of morning sickness, in the coal shed hideout, made it clear to everybody in the knokploeg that she was pregnant. Tinie was embarrassed, both by her state, and by the smells and sounds she was producing, so closely confined with Manny and Joel. But she was also quietly joyful at Manny’s child growing inside her.
Manny himself was like a clockwork toy with its mechanism jammed on fast. All flailing arms and jerky movements; his manic solicitude, the joy exploding out of his small body knew no normal bounds. He was sick as often as Tinie was. His happiness was other-wordly - he had never been more irritating.
Fortunately, planning the blowing up of the Armenius distracted the knokploeg from the worst excesses of Manny’s happiness. The launch ceremony, in particular, was a godsend. With everybody preparing for the ceremony, distracted by it, there could not have been an easier time to slip into the docks. And there was no shortage of informants, happy to tell them about Nazi plans for the day.
The knokploeg focussed in on the catering arrangements. Tinie, delighted to be of use, was busy altering or making black trousers, white jackets and white gloves, as worn by the waiters. Lard Zilverberg, assisted by Manny, had constructed an ingenious gurney: The flat top of it was formed by the limpet mine, covered with a sheet of hardboard. A crisp white tablecloth fitted neatly over it.
They gleefully discussed timing the explosion for the middle of the Reichskommissar’s launch speech. The Dutch mockingly pronounced Seyss-Inquart’s name as zes’n quart - six and a quarter. Manny, in particular, was all for blowing him into his constituent quarters, during his speech. But they reluctantly agreed it made more sense to sneak in earlier, while the bustle of preparations would cover their movements.
*
On the day of the launch, they drove up to the docks in the caterer’s van - the caterer being a patriotic Dutchman who was only too pleased to help. Just as they drove in, Manny had what he regarded as an other-worldly experience.
He saw Hein Broersen walking along, just outside the shipyard - Hein, who was either at the bottom of the sea or in London. Manny shrugged his shoulders. The impossible was impossible. There was nothing not composed of matter - call it God or anything else. So he was mistaken. Simple as that. Hein was Everyman – lots of men looked like him.
Inside the shipyard, Joel, Ben, Lard and Manny, dressed as waiters, pushed a gurney full of sandwiches and cakes along the quayside, a good hour before Seyss was due to arrive. The Arminius was in wet dock, facing out to sea.
Shipyard workers passed them, either ignoring them or concentrating their glances at the goodies on the gurney. There were Dutch police at the gates, but there were none in evidence on the quay. Seyss would be accompanied by an SD guard, when he arrived, which was another reason for getting the limpet mine attached early.
A groin led nearly a mile out to sea, along one side of the wet dock. It was slippery with lichen. The four of them steered the gurney with care. Ben Bril went ahead and set up a small collapsible table, to give them a reason for heading along the groin with sandwiches and a cake. In a nice touch, Ben even planted a small Dutch flag on the table. When they were past the ship, distant yet visible from the quay, they stopped the gurney.
The trickiest part of the operation was coming now.
The other three shielded Joel from view, while he stripped off his shoes, socks, shirt and trousers. They had practised this manoeuvre for hours in the hideout, and got the time down to under thirty seconds. Joel had trunks on. He slipped into the water.
Lard put Joel’s clothes in a specially built compartment, under the top of the gurney. They lifted the top of the gurney off, transferring sandwiches and cakes to the small table. Then the hardboard cover was pulled off the limpet mine. It was slid over the side, down to Joel, who dived underwater with it.
Manny, hardly daring to breathe himself, sneaked a look at the distant quay. Nobody appeared to be paying them any attention. The ship’s bulk hid them from anyone who wasn’t directly opposite the groin.
Joel was swimming freely, just under the water, the mine, for the first time, easily manoeuvrable. He dived to half way down the Armenius’s hull and attached the magnetic mine to the metal ship. It held, as firm as the limpet it was named for.
The timer had been set to blow in half an hour, the shortest setting available. To his horror, Manny saw the L-fuse - the long-lead yellow delay fuse - bobbing in the water, above the mine. As he stared at it, in the clear water, it curled into a question mark shape, making itself more and more obvious, demanding attention. Manny looked at Ben and Lard, in alarm. Ben shrugged, but he looked tense. Lard was expressionless.
Joel swam round the prow of the ship, coming up and taking his first breath on the far side, where the ship itself would hide him from the quay. There were steps up to the groin. The others hid him, clustering round him, while Lard produced a towel from the compartment under the top of the gurney, and vigorously dried him. Joel then got his clothes back on, as quickly as he could.
They wheeled the empty gurney back to the quay, out of the docks and back to where the caterer’s van waited for them. In another half an hour, the Arminius – the newest addition to the Nazi navy – would explode.
*
Secretary General Hirschfeld was to be a guest on the platform, a couple of rows behind Rauter, one row behind Rost van Tonningen, for the official launch of the Arminius. He had prevailed on Else to accompany him, as she did to most formal functions.
His sister had needed a lot of persuasion. Since hearing the tape in Rauter’s office, she had changed toward her brother. She refused to cook for him; she barely spoke to him. She spent hours alone in her room, crying loud and bitter tears.
Dressed in her best, but looking utterly miserable, she took her seat, while Hirschfeld went to find Lambooy. The Production Director had insisted that he report to his office on arrival.
Lambooy droned on, praising his latest anti-sabotage measures and production initiatives. Then he insisted they walk about, supervising the last-minute detail of the arrangements. Such was the Director of Production’s dominance, he did not even wait for an answer, striding off ahead, letting Hirschfeld follow in his wake.
Facing the ship, bleachers had been built. There was a red carpet, a forest of Blood Flags, and a brass band from Radio Amsterdam. A workers’ honour guard would be standing to one side, carrying an assortment of tools, but they had not turned up yet.
A microphone had been put in place, for Dr Seyss-Inquart to say a few words, as he had so tellingly done in The Hague, when he had promised to respect Dutch law, Dutch customs and Dutch freedoms, days after Nazi soldiers had seized and occupied the Netherlands.
The Armenius itself - H class cruiser - looked glossy and imposing bobbing gently in its wet dock. Lambooy walked past it and looked along the groin. There, in the distance, was a trestle table with sandwiches and a Dutch flag on it.
‘What the hell’s that doing out there?’ Lambooy said.
Hirschfeld shrugged. ‘No idea.’
‘Let’s go and have a look.’
‘Why don’t we just take our places? Eh? The Reichskommissar will be here shortly.’
Lambooy looked at him suspiciously. ‘No he won’t. There’s a long time to go yet. Come with me.’
‘Very well.’
Lambooy’s long strides took him ahead, with the flabby Hirschfeld struggling along in his wake. They were half-way along the groin, when Hirschfeld spotted the coil of fuse, just below the surface of the water. He caught Lambooy up and touched his arm.
‘I wouldn’t mind a sandwich myself, actually.’ He laughed – it broke and came out as a squawky giggle.
Lambooy had reached the table. ‘There’s no swastika here,’ he said. ‘Just a Dutch flag. Why is that?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘Did you know these sandwiches and cakes were going to be here?’
‘I am in charge of trade and indust
ry in this country, Lambooy. I do not concern myself with catering arrangements.’
Lambooy shot him a glance. ‘Something’s going on,’ he said.
‘Alright, let’s go and find the company responsible for the catering, and ask them.
Come on.’ Hirschfeld tried to turn back, positioning himself between Lambooy and the all too visible fuse.
But as Lambooy walked back, he was peering into the water. As they drew level with the fuse, Hirschfeld touched him on the arm again. ‘I’ll speak to the caterer about having that table removed, Lambooy. Leave it to me.’
Lambooy saw the fuse. ‘What the …? You knew about this, Hirschfeld, didn’t you? You’ve been trying to distract me. Guard! Guard!’
‘No, of course I didn’t …’
Hirschfeld was shaking. Two Dutch police were coming onto the groin, in response to Lambooy’s shout. He thought they were coming for him. He pictured himself in the Colonial Office again, faced by van Tonningen and Rauter. This time it would not be mere questioning, however unpleasant. This time they would send him down to the torture cells.
‘Lambooy, please …’ he said.
There was a thudding of boots on the concrete groin as the two Dutch police drew close. They saw the fuse. Both of them dived into the water, mercifully ignoring Hirschfeld. One of them grabbed the fuse and yanked it clear of the mine.
‘Excellent!’ Hirschfeld croaked out, to Lambooy. ‘You see that? We’re saved! Thank heavens! The attack has been stopped!’
Lambooy gave him a hard look, then turned away.
The next edition of the resistance newspaper, Geuzenactie, published a photograph of Hirschfeld, as the man who had foiled the blowing-up of the Armenius. It was captioned A Traitor to the Dutch People.
PART III
14
The sealing off of Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter was as complete as it was going to be. The Nazis could not completely encircle such a huge, irregular area with barbed wire or walls. But people increasingly behaved as if they had. The inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter joined all the barriers and all the wire together, in their minds, mentally closing the physical gaps. Manny called it an optical ghetto.
The optical ghetto encompassed a large chunk of east Amsterdam: It ran round the outside of Waterloo Plein, taking in the Jewish Market; Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein, with the Portuguese Synagogue; then north-east up Rapenburger Straat to Rapenburger Plein.
For a long stretch, the ghetto ran parallel to the Oosterdok, where the Arminius still rolled at anchor, then across the fetid Oude Schans, along the canal - the Eilandsgracht - eventually dropping steeply due south along Kloviniers Burg, then east again until it met the guard post at the Blaauw Brug – the southern entry to Waterloo Plein.
Rauter, Seyss-Inquart and Himmler, at a meeting in Berlin, agreed that this area was now sufficiently sealed-off to be attacked, as they had always intended, in revenge for the killing of the German Orpo.
At the meeting, Rauter gave a situation report: The voluntary deportations of Jews had met with only limited success; there was serious unrest among the Christian population at the anti-Jewish measures; the take-up of labour places in the Reich by Dutch workers was poor; there were continual acts of industrial sabotage, culminating in the failed attempt to destroy the cruiser Arminius.
Himmler decided that the attack on the Jewish Quarter should culminate in the taking of hostages - Jewish males, aged between fifteen and twenty-four. The exact number was not determined, but Himmler wanted hundreds. He also wanted the hostage-taking left to the NSB.
Rauter bowed to this success for Rost van Tonningen, but insisted that the disarming of the NSB, and their military wing, the WA, was not to be reversed. As nobody seriously believed the Jews had any weapons, despite the calls for them to be handed in, an unarmed NSB/WA force was believed to be up to the job. The Amsterdam police were detailed to assist the Dutch Nazis, where necessary.
Though he didn’t say so at the meeting, Rauter had mixed feelings about the coming attack on the Jewish Quarter. It would make future deportations more difficult. It would disrupt production - he could almost hear Hirschfeld saying that, and he agreed. It was bad for public order – like the boycott of Jewish shops had been, in Germany, in 1933.
But there was no alternative. The attack was to go ahead.
*
It was the involvement of the Amsterdam police which produced a leak of the planned attack. The warning came from patrolman, Felix Klomp, once a tough centre-half for the Ajax junior team. Klomp had known Joel from his Ajax days. It rankled with him that a player who could have become an Ajax great was no longer allowed to play. Felix Klomp could see no good reason for this.
Klomp, naturally, had no idea where Joel Cosman was, but Amsterdam is a village – a big village, but a village. He told the nearest Jew he could find. Joel got the news, via Lard Zilverberg, within hours. He called a meeting of the knokploeg, at the coal shed hideout.
The mood was subdued after the failure to blow up the Arminius. The fates, or luck, or God, seemed to have abandoned them. Gerrit Romijn and five of his Catholic boys turned up. They were quiet these days, too – there was no more teasing their old foes from the battles on Rapenburg Bridge.
‘Thank you all for coming,’ Joel said. He was sitting cross-legged on the cement floor. He didn’t need to stand, or raise his voice. Everybody was listening. ‘We can’t expect the NSBers to be kind enough to trap themselves, by marching over the Blaauw Brug again,’ he said. ‘They could come past any or all of the guard posts, into the ghetto. We’ll just have to pick the most likely ambush points. I’ve divided us into four groups. More than that, and we’ll be spread too thin. ‘
The stationing of the four groups was : The north end of Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein, guarding the synagogue; the intersection of Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein and Waterloo Plein, guarding the market; the intersection of Jodenbree Straat and Zand Straat, at the southern end of the Oude Schans canal; and lastly Rapenburger Straat, at the northern end of the canal.
There were nods of approval, nobody argued, everybody understood his reasoning. Joel had put the four sub-groups towards the south west corner of the ghetto, close enough to each other to communicate, clustered around the targets they assumed would be attacked. They all assumed the Nazi intention was to destroy the ghetto. Joel then allocated each of the men present to one of the four groups.
Gerrit Romijn raised his hand.
‘Yes Gerrit?’
‘You’ve kept all my group together. I reckon you should spread us out.’
‘Why?’
‘There are maybe … things that could happen … where we can help by being …’ He tailed off.
‘By not being Jews, you mean?’
‘Yeah.’ Gerrit was looking down at his boots.
‘I think that’s right,’ Joel said. ‘I’ll redo the groups.’
Joel changed the list in front of him, with a pencil, and read out a revised list.
‘What about me?’ It was Manny. ‘You missed me out, you shmerul. I wasn’t on the list, either time’
‘You’re staying here, with Tinie.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Somebody’s got to stay. We can’t leave this place unguarded, Manny.’
‘Don’t give me that. If they find the hideout, all the guards in the world won’t help.’
‘And suppose we need the car?’
‘I can’t drive.’
That got a laugh.
Manny had been sitting on the floor, with the others. He stood, walked over to Tinie and sat next to her on the bunk. He put his arm round her. Then he put his hand on her stomach, where they were waiting for a bump to appear.
‘How can I tell my son, I …’
‘… or daughter,’ Tinie said.
‘Shut up, woman! I’m making a speech here! How can I tell my son or daughter that
I didn’t try? I mean it, Joel. I want to be a better father than my father was to me. I already have t
he shame of being Hans-Max Hirschfeld’s nephew. Don’t let them say we didn’t fight. Eh, Joel? Me as well as you. Even if we go down, don’t let them say we didn’t try. I’m asking you to give me a place, Joel, but I’m going anyway.’ He turned to Tinie. ‘You understand, don’t you?’
Tinie nodded, hugged him and whispered ‘I love you’ in his ear. She put her hand over his, on her stomach.
Joel nodded at Manny. ‘OK. Well, given that you’re completely useless … I mean, you can’t even run messages, because you don’t listen, and you’d probably get lost. You’d better stay with me and Gerrit, so we can look after you.’
Manny put his tongue out, then ran his fingers through his bristly hair. ‘That’ll do. And perhaps I’ll surprise you, Joel.’
‘I doubt it. One more thing,’ Joel added. ‘Weapons. Well?’
‘We’ve got some knuckle-dusters,’ one of Gerrit’s boys said. ‘That’s about it.’
‘We could do with some wood from the timber yard,’ Joel grinned at Gerrit. ‘Remember?’
Once again, Gerrit didn’t respond to the joshing. He looked down at the cement floor, without a word.
Joel shrugged. ‘We could maybe get some timber staging from the shipyard. Other than that, its chair legs, iron bars, improvise and God-bless-you.’
Gerrit suddenly jumped up and went over to Joel. Joel stood, so they were toe- to-toe, standing close. Everybody else was sitting down. There was dead silence in the hideout. Not knowing what Gerrit wanted, Ben Bril glanced at Lard Zilverberg and tensed, ready to spring at Gerrit, if he went for Joel.
Gerrit Romijn pulled the cross at his throat, so the thin gold chain that held it snapped.
‘There’s something I want to say to you,’ he said, as if they were alone.
‘What’s that then, Gerrit?’
‘Sorry!’ Gerrit blurted out. He was red in the face. ‘Sorry, Joel. If the Nazis are Christians, then I’m not.’ He threw the cross on the floor, at Joel’s feet. It rang against the cement.
Joel bent lithely and picked it up. He gave it back to Gerrit, putting it in his hand and closing his fingers over it. ‘Keep your cross, Gerrit. The Moffen aren’t Christians. They aren’t even worthy Germans.’
