by Michael Dean
But one quite sizeable group of workers, none of them Jews, stumbled on three Orpos down an alleyway near the Burg Wal. Before the Moffen had time to mobilise their weapons, the workers rushed them and beat them unconscious. Then they dispersed.
Just as Lard Zilverberg was leaning out of the window in Batavia Straat, Joel Cosman and Manny were knocking on Karel Polak’s door. When the NSB guards had fled Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein, the tyre seller had returned to his flat, overlooking the Oude Schans canal, to be with his wife and their new-born son. When Joel and Manny arrived, he had packed a bag and was saying goodbye.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said to Joel and Manny.
The two knokploeg boys were armed with staves, which looked incongruous in the neat, though threadbare, flat. Both of them were embarrassed by their intrusion.
‘We’re going to … fight back,’ Manny said.
‘Not here you’re not!’ Polak stroked his ginger moustache, bent his lean frame over Manny, and said ‘I’m giving myself up. I’ll do my stint of labour in the east, then I’ll come back. I’m gonna see my wife and son again. You’re not going to ruin that for me. Now fuck off!’
As Joel and Manny sheepishly turned to leave, Karel Polak picked up a cushion and threw it at them. It hit Joel in the back. ‘Putting my family at risk. Arrogant pricks!’
Outside, Manny put a hand on Joel’s arm. ‘Let’s stop this,’ he said miserably.
He felt foolish carrying the stave. He was ready to admit to himself, though not to Joel, that he wanted to give himself up – get it over with. The comparative safety of the Collection Point was developing a fiendish attraction.
He just wanted a rest. His battered, bruised body was screaming for peace. His forehead was bleeding. To his horror, he realised that in his exhaustion from the constant danger, he actually wanted the Moffen to tell him what to do next. He badly needed a crap, and was afraid he might shit his pants from fear, out there in the street, in front of Joel.
‘Do what you like,’ Joel said, airily. ‘I’m going to see Marinus.’
Manny nodded, trotting along behind him, afraid of being left alone. He thought of Tinie, like a talisman, like touching his love for luck. He was glad she was safe – well, what passed for safe in the nightmare the Moffen had made of the world.
Marinus Glim lived round the corner, on the Oude Wal, overlooking Eilandsgracht. The streets were deserted, they could hear only the Moffen, in a silence that was like the end of the world.
*
As soon as the deaths of two comrades was reported to him - shot in the back on the steps in a tenement in Batavia Straat - the Orpo commander on the ground radio’d Rauter. He asked if he could attack the building, in which he reported armed resistance. Rauter forbade that, instantly and firmly. He ordered the building surrounded, the area around it evacuated. The bodies of the two dead soldiers were to be recovered, if at all possible. Then wait.
Rauter then radio’d the two SS-Totenkopf battalions standing by their vehicles. He ordered them to the Jewish Quarter. They set off from Zandvoort and Amersfoort, with full battle equipment.
The Obergruppenführer hardly dared think how this would look to Himmler. He seized the radio again and ordered an SS tank into action, in support of the troops heading for the Jewish Quarter. Five minutes later he radio’d again. He ordered the synagogue destroyed.
*
Ben Bril had chosen this alleyway very carefully. It led from Valkenburger Straat, where he was born, to the Uilenburgergracht. He had played in this alley as a boy, gone there when he wanted to be alone, especially when he was hurt. He was hurt now, because the Nazis had just killed his mother - beaten her to death.
Two of Gerrit’s Catholic boys had flanked him, while he carried her home in his arms. They had then knelt, crossed themselves, and prayed for the old lady’s soul. It had consoled Ben more than he would have believed possible.
Ben Bril peered down into the turgid waters of the canal. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He walked slowly the short distance to the intersection with Valkenburger Straat, walking with the floating, almost dancing, walk of a boxer, weight on the outside of his feet.
There was a spot at the end of the alley where you could peer down Valkenburger Straat without being seen. The street had been sealed off at one end. It was swarming with troops. But none of them were passing the high walled alleyway. Not yet, anyway.
He carefully took a bandage and some ketchup from a canvas bag he had brought from home. He bandaged his right thigh, using the ketchup to create a bloody-looking wound. Then he waited. As soon as two Orpos approached the alleyway, he lay on the ground, moaned and cried for help, in Dutch, then in German. The two Orpos peered cautiously down the alleyway.
‘I’ve been shot,’ Ben Bril called out in German.
They advanced, holding their rifles out ahead of them, as he hoped they would.
‘Hands up!’ one of them called nervously, as they approached.
Ben struggled to his feet and held his hands up. ‘I want to surrender.’
They were near enough now. One of the Moffen made to take him by the arm. Ben swung a right hook into his nose, smashing him to the ground. Spinning round he left jabbed the second Mof in the solar plexus, doubling him up, before getting him with a haymaker in the face, with another right.
Both Moffen were now unconscious on the ground, in the dirt of the alleyway. Ben stood over them, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. Their bayonets were in holsters around their belts, not clipped to their rifles. Ben took a bayonet from one of the Moffen, just as the man started to regain consciousness. He slit his throat with it, the way Robert Roet had shown him; the way the SOE had shown Robert. Then he turned to the other one and slit his throat, too – side to side.
He threw the bayonet in the canal, then threw his makeshift bandage after it. Making sure nobody saw him leave the alleyway, he turned into Valkenburger Straat with his hands in the air.
‘I surrender,’ he called out in German. ‘I’ll go to the Collection Point.’
As two Moffen took him at rifle point to Jonas Daniel Mayer Plein, Ben Bril husbanded his strength, the way he had been taught to do, during a bout. He gathered every scrap of will in his being. He was going to survive this war. However long it took, whatever happened to the people he knew, to the world itself; he, Ben Bril, was going to be alive at the end of it.
*
Manny and Joel Cosman went to see Marinus Glim, at his ground-floor room in Jodenbree Straat. Glim’s cousin, Hollander, was with him. They had both packed suitcases. They were sitting, washed up, on Glim’s bed, prepared to leave, but putting off the moment. Outside, an Orpo megaphone announcement from the roadblock at the end of Jodenbree Straat was telling all young males to pack one suitcase and report to Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein.
‘We were thinking of giving them a bloody nose,’ Joel said, laconically. ‘Manny and me.’ Manny still had his stave, which he waved in ironic greeting. Joel had abandoned his – preferring to use his fists. The dried blood on his face gave him a piratical look.
Marinus Glim stood up, appearing to swell in the tiny room. He was only slightly shorter than Lard Zilverberg, and if anything, even heavier. ‘That’s the best news I’ve had all day,’ he said.
‘A new cure for toothache,’ Manny murmured, referring to the cousins’ stall, selling toothache cure.
Nobody laughed.
They could hear the Moffen in the next building. Manny looked out the window. He watched them herding young Jewish men into groups, hands behind their heads, then leading them off, under the control of one armed guard, toward the Collection Point. One young Jew, in a long tweed jacket and a peaked cap, made a break for it. A dog handler released one of the Alsatians, which had been straining at the leash. It caught him in seconds and brought him down. He was brought back to the main group.
The Moffen were coming into their building – they could hear them. There was a rap on the door. Marinus op
ened. There were two of them. Marinus and Joel leaped forward and dragged them into the room. Manny swung his stave and caught one on the knee. Hollander shoved the other one against the wall, where Marinus laid into him, beating him bloody. Joel smashed the other one, again and again, face-body-face.
Manny had never seen Joel like this. Joel deserved it, Manny thought. So did the Mof.
There were shouts and cries from outside.
‘Come on,’ Marinus called. ‘Out the back way.’
They got out through a landing window, dropping down to an alleyway, hoping to make their way through to Waterloo Plein.
‘Walk,’ Joel hissed at the others. ‘Don’t run. Manny, drop the stave.’
Manny dropped it. He and Joel went left at the end of the alley, across a patch of scrub. Joel motioned Hollander and Glim to go right. Manny lost sight of them. As they walked toward Waterloo Plein, they nearly walked into three helmeted Moffen with fixed bayonets.
The guns turned toward them. Manny and Joel put their hands up.
*
Lard Zilverberg could just see the overvalwagens and the Orpos who had blocked off the top end of Batavia Straat, as he leaned out the window. He fired again, hitting the overvalwagen. He had the satisfaction of seeing a scared looking Dutch police driver trying to start the vehicle, to pull it back, and failing.
Lard was surprised they hadn’t tried to storm him. He guessed they wanted to avoid any more casualties – it would look bad. They had sent up a sniper to the top floor of the tenement opposite him. The sniper had fired one round into the Terveen flat from the fire escape, then ducked into the flat opposite and fired single shots from there, whenever Lard leaned out of the window. His shots made a high-pitched pinging sound, very different from the dull cough of the rifles Lard had taken from the dead Mof.
There was a flash of light from the tenement opposite, and a bullet pinged into the wall above his head. Lard glanced at the pearly sky, then fired back. A Mof in Wehrmacht field-grey slumped out of the window, the weight of his body pinning his rifle to the sill. Lard glanced up at the sky again. ‘Thank you, God,’ he said.
*
Over two-hundred infantry troops from the SS 4th Regiment rolled in from Zandvoort and Amersfoort in the early evening. They mustered in Rembrandt Plein, just outside the Jewish Quarter, until their tank had been brought up. This vehicle, a six ton Panzer I, rolled at walking pace over the Blaauw Brug into Waterloo Plein, followed by black-uniformed SS infantry on foot, with fixed bayonets.
The tank headed for the centre aisle of the Jewish Market, then steered slightly right, flattening every stall in its path. The troops behind pulled down any stalls that remained, smashing them with rifle butts, occasionally stopping to steal watches, jewellery or any other portables that took their fancy. Nothing of the market was left standing.
About half-way along, the tank opened fire with one of its two machine guns, spraying the tenements around the square indiscriminately with bullets. One of the houses hit had once been the home of Baruch Spinoza. It was now occupied by a dry-goods merchant by the name of Isaak Kramer, who had come to Holland from Germany, in 1938.
Kramer had reported to Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein, but had been sent back – he was too old. He was having a brandy to celebrate what he regarded as divine deliverance, when he and his wife were killed instantly by the machine gun bullets.
As the tank headed deeper into the Jewish Quarter, the SS troops behind it fanned out.
About one in three of them carried light machine guns. Their officers spoke to the Orpo at each block the Green Police had set up, then raked each street indiscriminately with a burst of machine gun fire. They then called for the surrender of all male Jews between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, or the street would be destroyed. Each street gave up its remaining young Jewish males.
At the roadblock at the end of Jodenbree Straat, the tank commander asked for directions to Batavia Straat. At the top end of the street, an Orpo lieutenant gave a crisp salute and indicated to the tank commander the house where Lard Zilverberg was holed up. The overvalwagens were manhandled out the way, to let the tank through.
The tank rolled slowly opposite the tenement where Lard Zilverberg waited, supported by troops on foot. Lard saw it. He feared capture, but not death. His mind was clear. He pictured his father, the person he loved most in the world, then closed the picture down. He leaned out of the window and fired. He was aiming for the tank, but winged one of the SS soldiers.
The driver stopped the tank and manned one machine gun, while the commander took the other. A solid sheet of bullets zipped upwards into the flat where Lard had offered his defiance. SS soldiers ran up the stairs and fired machine guns through the door, into the flat.
Two of them brought Lard’s body out and dragged it to one of the overvalwagens.
By the time the SS had completed their sweep of the Jewish Quarter, and the tank and the troops returned to Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein, it was getting dark. The square was jammed solid with captives – even to the naked eye it was clear that there were over four hundred.
Their guards had been making them do gymnastics – an element of humiliation being an essential of any Nazi dealings with the Jews. Rauter had specifically ordered that the Jews were to be kept in the square, to witness the destruction of their synagogue.
SS troops duly entered the three-hundred year old synagogue, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. Standing with his hands behind his head, alongside Joel, Manny watched them, defiantly dry-eyed. He remembered that the scrolls of the law are always hand-written, on parchment with a quill pen. According to Jewish custom, if a single mistake is made, in the writing, the whole work must be destroyed, and started again from the beginning. Because the word of God must be perfect.
Inside the synagogue, SS soldiers set about desecrating what the Jews regarded as the word of their God. Bayonets ripped into the velvet of the covers, the silver pointers and bells were trampled, or looted, for their monetary value. The scrolls were submitted to filthy indignities – because they, too, had to be humiliated. When the desecration was complete, the lovely place was set on fire.
It was still burning when the Promi propaganda unit went into action to create lies, and fix them in the mind of mankind so firmly they would blot out the truth, as surely as the palls of black smoke coming from the synagogue blotted out the sky.
The Promis were in civilian clothes. They selected a few unwounded Jews and collected clothes from other Jews around them with some care. The Jews to be photographed were kitted out in wide-brimmed trilby hats and belted mackintoshes. The Promi unit had brought props with them. These, to the watching Manny’s amazement, included sten-guns – presumably not loaded. The Jews were made to hold these guns, in their wide-lapelled macks and their sinister hats, while they were pictured.
Finally, the Nazis had got the weapons of resistance they had insisted the Jews hand in.
*
None of the knokploeg ever found out who betrayed Tinie, and their hideout, but no grudges would have been borne, even if they had known. The standard first interrogation the Nazis used, the Long Interrogation of forty hours – usually accompanied by beating and sleep deprivation, sometimes by torture – would break most people
Tinie knew the Jewish Quarter had been overrun, but she had nowhere else to go – or she felt she hadn’t. To go to her parents would put them in danger. She did not trust Hirschfeld. And, anyway, because Manny hated him so, going to him would have felt like betraying Manny.
So she burned her nurse’s uniform, hid her bicycle, and waited in the hideout. Old meneer Zilverberg told her that his son had been killed, and that as far as he knew all the others had been captured. They cried together.
Meneer Zilverberg had been with her when the Moffen came. He held her hand – for as long as they let him. Then they were both taken away.
15
Just as Else was beginning to recover, to a degree, from her imprisonment
at Rauter’s hands, rumours reached her that Robert Roet was dead. Somebody at the synagogue told her. Else said nothing, but went into a silent decline.
She had already stopped cooking for Hirschfeld; now she no longer cleaned their home. She abandoned her Hebrew studies, then took them up again, with ferocious intensity, then abandoned them again.
She became obsessively observant, insisting on Jewish laws and rules Hirschfeld had never heard of: He found his clothes re-organised – and some of them destroyed - so wool was not mixed with linen. She insisted that mezuzim were fixed over every inner doorway and cupboard. Crockery and cutlery they had had for years was buried in the garden, to purify it. He feared that the strange ululations he heard from her bedroom were accompanied by flagellation.
She spent hours in her room, crying. Hirschfeld could hardly get her to speak to him. She seemed to blame him for Robert’s fate – whatever it was. At eight o’ clock, every night, heavy curtains were drawn, so she could listen to Radio Oranje without being seen from the street. She listened for Robert’s codeword with desperate intensity, willing it to disprove the rumour of his death. It never came.
*
And then the Nazis attacked the Jewish Quarter. Hirschfeld had had no inkling that it was coming. He had started, that very day, drafting a report to Rauter on the sabotage attempt against the Arminius. He blamed Peter Lambooy, pointing out that security was part of his remit as Director of Production. He knew he had to do everything to get rid of Lambooy, before Lambooy got rid of him.
He left the report on his desk, unsigned and undated. He was still staring at it when the first news of the attack on the Jewish Quarter came through to him.
One of his senior clerks, a sycophant by the name of Pieter de Haas, came in and said he’d heard it on the news, on the wireless. Hirschfeld held his head in his hands. The razzia was the end of the precarious balance he had tried to maintain between the Dutch population, including the Jewish members of it, and the Occupying Authority.
