I took off my hat and Etta’s coat as my mother fussed and my father reminded me that I had not joined the church football club for yet another year.
‘I am hoping I won’t have time for football soon enough.’
My mother clasped her face. ‘Oh Willi! She is pregnant! She is pregnant!’
Etta waved her down. ‘No, no, Frau Beck! The news is all for Ernst.’
‘Let them sit, Mila,’ my father pulling out glasses and Madeira. ‘What is it, Ernst? You have not signed for the army?’
The glasses to the white paper tablecloth with the cherries decoration. The same tablecloth as when I lived here. My crayon marks still on it.
‘No, Papa. Better. I have a job.’
He took our coats. ‘A draughtsman? A real job. You hear this, Mama?’
Her hands had not left her face. ‘Oh, Ernst! My boy!’ And then the hands were on my face. ‘My clever boy! When did this happen? How?’
My father poured wine. The Madeira meant it was Mama’s pickled pot roast for dinner. I cannot drink more than one glass of the sickly stuff but I would wait to see if a beer would come. Sunday after all.
‘So, you can start paying me back at last!’
‘Willi!’ My mother dropped my face. ‘Let the boy sit. Give them some wine. Let him talk.’
The wine in the thin glasses was already in our hands, Etta’s knees against mine on the small sofa, the same seat where I once put my little cars to bed before myself.
‘Topf and Sons were hiring. A junior position but—’
‘Of course. Why not?’ My father lifted his hands as if bargaining for a rug in a bazaar. ‘That is how men start. A year or two and you will have your own department.’ He slapped my knee.
My mother sat and tightened her shawl. ‘Topf, you say? My, my. Such a fine company.’
Father saluted his glass.
‘The oldest firm. The proudest. The world will open to you now. What are you working at, Ernst? Or is it secret?’ Eyed me in a way I had not seen before.
‘Why would it be secret?’
He shrugged.
‘Maybe they have some war works or such.’
I drank my syrupy wine.
‘They have contracts with the prisons. And for military parts.’
Etta touched my hand. Patted it.
‘Ernst is, unfortunately, only working on new oven designs for the camps.’ Not looking at me. At my mother. I took my hand away. ‘Unfortunately,’ she had said.
My mother’s shawl tighter.
‘The camps?’ Her voice as a whisper. ‘Buchenwald?’
‘All of them,’ I said, let Etta’s disparaging of me pass. She had suggested this visit. I thought because of pride in her husband. Maybe she had hoped a different reaction from my parents about the camp. ‘I am to work on new patents.’
‘New?’ My father nodded sagely over his glass. ‘You see, Mama? They give him new projects to work on.’ And then straight to it. ‘How much does it pay? Salary? Not week?’
‘Forty marks a week. No trial. I have already started. May I smoke, Mama?’
She stood. ‘I must get to my roast.’ I took that as yes and brought out my tobacco, and father’s pipe came from the drawer by his chair.
Etta stood.
‘Let me help you, Mila.’ And the men were alone.
An age for my father to suck his pipe into life. The sound of my childhood.
‘Ernst.’ He shook out his match into the glazed ashtray I made him at school. ‘Tell me about the ovens?’
I exhaled with him.
‘Topf created crem—’ Etta’s ear turned. ‘Created ovens for use in chapel, in ceremony. They invented the petrol oven and the gas fuelled. They export all over the world. But the prisons use coke for cost. As such I understand they need repairs. Often.’
‘Why so?’
I watched the cloud of him reach to the yellow-stained ceiling.
‘Overuse. Brick ovens. Typhus is in the prisons. Coke ovens and brick are not able to cope with the demand.’
‘So why use coke?’
‘Cost. Petrol is too expensive. Too crucial to waste on ovens. The SS are all about cost I gather.’
He leant forward.
‘The SS?’
‘You know they run the camps?’
‘I did not think they bought the ovens?’
I drew long on my cigarette. ‘Nor did I. I have learnt that much already.’
‘That is what you must do. Learn every day. Ask everything. Show that it is more than just a job. And then when they are looking for the next top man they will look for the one who shows the most interest in the company. He drummed his words out on the arm of his chair. ‘That is the way.’
‘I am doing something on that tomorrow. I am going to Buchenwald with my department head to inspect for a new oven.’ I looked to Etta not smiling at me from the kitchen.
He put his pipe on his knee.
‘You are going inside the camp?’
My mother’s voice. ‘Who is? Who is going to the camp?’
‘Ernst is, Mama,’ my father called over his shoulder. ‘Ernst is going to Buchenwald. Tomorrow.’
She came into the room, drying her hands. Always drying her hands.
‘Why? Do you have to work in the camps? That is not so good, Ernst.’
Erfurt not far from Buchenwald. The prison almost ten years old but known for disease now, for more than criminals. To my mother even the air of the place would be corrupt.
‘No, Mama. It is just to view on-site the work that we do. It will be good experience.’
Etta gone from the kitchen doorway. I heard the tap running. Running louder as my father spoke. His pipe neck pointing at me.
‘And it will show how keen you are to learn. When I worked for Littman, at the pharmacy, that man would teach me nothing. Nothing I tell you. Everything was a secret to him. I was too old to apprentice so to him I was worthless. When Quermann took it over, when a German took it over, he showed me true respect. A gentile cannot work for a Jew. You just become their chattel. I have always said it. Now it is Germany for the Germans we all look after each other. Nothing to gain but a better country for us all. Working together for the good. Not for the purse.’
Mother slapped him with her cloth that was always attached about her.
‘It was Littman who gave you that job, you old fool! Me running around scrubbing floors with Ernst in my belly and you with holes in your pockets. Quermann did not hire you. You were stolen.’ She groaned back to the kitchen. ‘That man, that man.’
I finished my wine and the bottle came back, which was a first for him.
‘All the same,’ he went on. ‘You learn from these men, Ernst. They are doing well. Government contracts. Always there is work there. When we conquer Stalin think how much work will be needed.’
‘The ovens is a small department, Papa. But they design silos and malting equipment. And gas jets and aeroplane parts. That is what I want to do.’
‘And why not? Mercedes you could work for. Build me a car for my old age. This country is for the young now. My war gave us a broken country. The Bolsheviks and the Jews conspiring to destroy us. Nothing but unemployment unless you were in their families. And now it is Germany for the Germans, the best men for the jobs, not just for the good connections. And my son has a career with one of the largest companies in the land.’ He thumped his chair. ‘This is how good life begins. I am proud of you, Ernst.’
He had not said these words since I had graduated.
Women were laughing in the kitchen, and the waft of steaming food came from rattling pots, and I would not have to ask awkwardly to borrow ten marks. I realised it could be good to visit parents.
*
We walked home arm in arm through afternoon light burnishing the wet cobblestones. I waited until the river’s rushing was behind us to ask Etta why she had called my work ‘unfortunate’.
‘I only meant that you should be doing higher things. No
t drafting ovens. For the SS.’ Her head down now, moved close into me. ‘Not what I want for you.’
‘I’m sure it will not be for long.’
She stopped, looked about and took my hand.
‘But what if it is? What if it is for long? Do you not think of the ovens, Ernst? Why they need so many?’
‘The typhus. The disease. The sick. Prisons need ovens, Etta. I’ve told you this. It is unpleasant but it is fact. Would you question Paul buying a new oven?’
‘Coal ovens. Yet you tell me they order gas jets from Topf. What are they for if not for the ovens, Ernst? Do they not heat with coal?’
‘I don’t know. It is not just Topf, Etta. What company does not work with the SS now? Would you be concerned if a hospital wanted gas jets?’
She dropped my hand, put hers to my back as Klein did when he wanted me to understand something, guided me along.
‘But hospitals aren’t run by the SS, Ernst. Why are the camps run by them? Shouldn’t that be a government thing?’
The beer and wine flushed on me. A temper at defending my work. Now. Before my first pay.
‘Do you not want me to work? You were the one who wanted to go to my parents to celebrate. Now you want to deride my employers? Nothing happens in this world, Etta, unless someone sells something to someone else. Nothing.’ I walked on, left her behind me until her voice came.
‘I’m sorry, Ernst,’ she said. ‘Ernst?’ Like a charm. Holding me to the street.
I turned back to look at her framed in the sun. She walked out of it to me. Took my arm again.
‘I’m very proud of you. For you. Maybe it’s that you are going to the camp tomorrow. I’m worried. For you. I am being foolish.’
We walked on.
‘I promise you,’ I said, calm now, ‘I won’t do anything for you to worry.’
Chapter 6
‘Here. Put this on.’
Monday morning. We were in Hans Klein’s black Opel on the main road outside Kleinmolsen, the groan of the wipers unable to cope with the sheets of rain but Klein did not slow his speed. I could feel the water on the road hitting the panelling like waves. The tyres almost skating along. He had taken his hand off the wheel to pass me a Party pin.
It was plain tin, not enamelled. I did not question and put it on my lapel. His was enamelled and, again, as we slid along the road, he put it on with one hand.
‘It does not hurt to wear it,’ he said. ‘Gives a good impression. I am personally not political. Yourself?’
‘No, sir. I have not given it much thought.’
‘Prüfer is of course. And the Topfs. But then they would have to be dealing with the SS. Are you a union man?’
My interview had contained this question. The usual standard. ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party?’
Who would say, ‘yes’?
‘Are not unions banned?’
He nodded, managed to light a cigarette with one hand.
‘I’m sure that some of our workers are members of the KPD. Communists. And the SDP. There was a faction of them at the factory in the 30s. I think the Buchenwald workers are influencing ours. The camp is nothing but communists. I’m sure Sander is on top of it. But keep your own ear out and let me know if you hear anything. I will make you my top boy on the floor!’ He shifted a gear down at last. ‘I cannot trust the old ones.’
The countryside blurred past. Twenty minutes in the roaring car, a super-six, and Klein showed it off. Twenty minutes. A camp a short drive from Erfurt and Weimar. I had only been in taxis before and probably only half a dozen times in my life. I did not appreciate cars, or watches, shoes and suits, but I was beginning to think that Klein thought such things impressive.
‘It is a nice car, Herr Klein.’ I looked around as if it was the Sistine Chapel, trying to admire it as we rolled across the railway line, the rail that led to the camp.
‘Twenty-five hundred marks,’ he said for reply. I imagine that is how he judged the world. The price of things. He pivoted the car between a gap in the forest with just a gear change, no brakes, and I was braced against the door.
A good gravelled road, the beech forest cut back from it with maintained grass all along. Buchenwald. Beech Tree Forest. A name for holidays. As the camp came in sight, set in a clear plain, the rain slowed, I wiped the condensation from the window, sure that I had seen men outside, outside on the grass. They were cutting the grass, had stopped to watch the car. Mowing in the rain. Their garb unmistakeable.
‘There are prisoners out there?’ I looked at him. My professor now. ‘Outside the prison?’
Klein did not even check.
‘Of course. Why not?’
‘But might they not escape?’
‘Where would they go? What would they do? Escape to starve? To be shot? Not everyone is the Count of Monte Cristo, Ernst. Some men know they belong in prison. Some men know they do not like work. Career criminals. Why escape one prison for another? Why buy your own bed and food when we can buy it for them.’ He put his arm across me to point to an outcrop of rocks not far from the barbed fence. ‘They even have a zoo. Bears, monkeys, birds of prey. You could take kids here. Although the zoo is for the guards of course. The prisoners have a cinema and theatre. A brothel for the non-Jews.’
He closed the car down the gears as we approached the gated walls. All the roads leading off the main marked by decorative wooden signs, this one, the road to the main gate designated ‘Caracho Road’ – Caracho Spanish for ‘double-time’ – decorated with four swarthy-looking men hunched and hurrying close together in prison clothes. Some of the prisoners here would have been from the Spanish war. The building like a factory except for barbed wire instead of walls. A red-timbered building like a Swiss chalet sat atop the entrance, a balcony all around, a clock above, a flagpole rising out of it. The flag just a red swathe. Beaten by the rain. Taller than this I could see the square tower of the crematoria, to the right of the gate, almost opposite the odd zoo. Not far from the main building. Good. We would not have to go deep into the camp.
Klein reached to the back seat, passed me his briefcase as we waited for the guards to come.
‘You take the notes. I will measure and photograph. I have my own Leica. Better than Sander’s Zeiss he would have you use. One hundred it cost me.’
The latticed door in the gate opened. Words were written in the iron tops but I could not make them out. They were reversed. To be read from the other side only. A black-painted slogan on the stucco wall above the gate read to those who approached:
‘RIGHT OR WRONG THIS IS MY COUNTRY.’
A grey uniform and box-cap stepped through, his jacket instantly dappled with the rain.
Klein stubbed out his cigarette.
‘You have your identification, Ernst?’ His window opened. I passed the card and Klein gave the guard his grin with our papers.
‘Good to see you again, Simon. Pity about the rain, eh?’
Simon smiled back but became stern when he looked at our cards. This was his purpose. His moment. It would be his hand that waved the gate open.
‘We are here to meet the Senior-Colonel,’ Klein said without being asked. ‘About new ovens. Another breakdown, eh?’
‘All the time.’ Simon handed back our cards. ‘Build a better one for us.’
‘Pay us more money, eh?’ Klein winked.
A circus going on around me. A joviality incongruous to what was about to happen. I was outside a prison. About to go within. I had never handed a soldier my identification before. I could only see his holster from my view in the car, another guard watching from the gate with a rifle slung. To see them so close. The shape of a gun hidden by leather a few feet from my eyes. I was in a dream. Klein knew an SS soldier’s name and had asked him for more money. An anxious dream. A little nausea, from this scene or the chicory coffee of my breakfast. Not even an oat biscuit in the house to settle my stomach.
Klein’s window closed and the gates opened.
The Opel into gear. As usual he noticed or sensed everything.
‘Don’t worry, Ernst. It is quite natural to be nervous around soldiers. And prisons. You will get used to it.’ He leaned over, grinned. ‘As long as you are not forced to get used to it, eh?’
We parked on the left. There were trucks beyond the gate, waiting for their work detail and then another strange sight to add to my dream.
There was a full band in the courtyard, an orchestra almost, dressed in red trousers and green vests. Tubas and horns, even a man with a great drum on his chest like a circus parade. We got out and Klein grinned at me over the roof of the car.
‘Ah. We are in time for the band. This is good, Ernst. Every morning and evening they sing the camp song.’
I could not stop myself blinking, waking from my dream.
‘Camp song?’
‘Of course. Pride in their camp. Good for morale.’
The rain gone fully now and the brass of the band glistened from it, some of the band conscientious enough to wipe their instruments with their sleeves, proud of them, did not wipe their own faces. Their box-caps flat on their heads where they had stood in the downpour.
I flinched to the sound of loudspeakers along the fence crackling into life, the distinct sound of needle scratching record.
Trumpets and oboes blared, a fast drum beat. I would almost call it a ‘swing’ tune as the crash of cymbals came in and Zarah Leander’s voice came tinnily out.
‘To Me You’re Beautiful’ the song. I did not know if the colonel in the red-framed building knew it but this had originally been a music-hall Yiddish song. No. Maybe he did know.
The jolly song used instead of a klaxon. Hundreds of men were coming from huts like bees from a hive. The mass of them terrifying and I stepped back to the security of the steel car and Klein laughed at my reaction.
‘This is just the main camp-men. The work details. With the sub-camps there are almost sixty thousand here. Filthy. Diseased. Typhus. Do not worry, it is clean here. This is the good side.’
I could only stare. The only word for it. Stared. For such a sight. There was something familiar in it. Something I could not place. In the bones of us perhaps. Such sights.
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