Mendelevski's Box

by Roger Swindells

  ‘Thanks Jos, I will. Can I leave the main box and all the tools here for now?’

  ‘Of course, but even the watches? You trust me with them?’

  ‘I trust you with my life, you’re a good friend. I think I may need your advice on lots of things before all this is finished.’

  ‘It’ll all be quite safe in the cellar, I’ll put the watches with my valuable things in the special place.’ He looked sideways at Maaike and put his finger to his lips. ‘Right, push the big box over here and I’ll put those tools in. Make sure you have all the paperwork.’

  Simon pushed the box along the floor to Jos, who took hold of the edge to pull it nearer to him.

  ‘There’s something wrong here, it’s still heavy, too heavy in fact.’

  ‘It’s empty. I can see the bottom.’

  Jos looked at the box. ‘You think you can, you can see a bottom, yes, but it’s not the real bottom. Look.’

  ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘Maaike, lend me one of your crutches. Now look.’ Using the crutch as a measure he placed it inside and then outside the box. There was a difference of at least ten centimetres. ‘Now do you see? It’s a false bottom. I’ve seen them fitted in all sorts of crates down the docks to smuggle things past the customs men. Let’s try and work out how to get into it.’ He scratched around in the box for a few moments, then disappeared down the cellar and returned with a screwdriver. ‘Right, watch and learn.’ Scraping with the screwdriver in each of the four corners he uncovered a screw-head hidden with a layer of putty. The screws turned easily and the whole floor of the box lifted in one piece.

  Three heads craned to look inside. The false compartment was subdivided into six, two large and four smaller sections, to stop the contents sliding around. There were items wrapped in hessian cloth in the two largest compartments. Three of the smaller compartments held cloth bags and the other a package wrapped in brown paper.

  ‘Oh Simon, it’s so exciting.’ Maaike gripped his hand, her nails digging in. ‘Come on, open them.’

  He picked up the brown paper package and tore it open. ‘It’s money! Jos, Maaike, look, it’s money!’ He removed the rest of the paper wrapping. ‘But they’re all old guilder notes, what can I do with them?’

  ‘My God, they’re five hundred and two hundred guilder notes, I haven’t seen them for years and I certainly haven’t owned many. There must be thousands of guilders there.’

  ‘Yes, but what can I do with them? They’re no good now. I can’t think where he got them from, these must be either my father’s savings or the proceeds from what he sold off when the business closed. There were a lot more things than the two boxes of tools; drills, other things attached to the work bench for cutting little wheels and things, and a big stock of parts. He said he wasn’t going to tell the Germans or put the proceeds into that ‘Liro’ bank they were running to collect all the Jews’ money but I had no idea it was this much. He obviously couldn’t know that they’d change the currency after the war.’

  ‘Don’t worry, leave it to old Jos, there are ways and means. You can’t just change them at the bank, that’s for sure, amounts like this are just what they are after, it looks like money from the black market. I know it’s not, but you can’t prove it. Being in such large notes doesn’t help either, in fact the five hundreds might have been withdrawn during the war. I can do it through contacts of mine, but it will be two for one or maybe even a worse rate.’

  ‘Do you have a contact for absolutely everything, Jos?’

  Jos laughed. ‘Pretty much Maaike, pretty much.’

  He reached in and took out the first large parcel wrapped in hessian. Releasing the string he revealed an oil painting of a boy in a gilt frame.

  ‘I remember this, father had a pair of them above his workbench at Peperstraat, there was a boy and a girl. He obviously valued them very much.’

  ‘Open the other one.’

  He hurriedly unwrapped the second package, expecting the second painting. ‘This is father’s stamp collection. I wonder where the picture of the girl can be? He loved his stamps, he used to go to the stamp market on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. I know he spent a lot of money on stamps and never told mother just how much. There were a lot of Jews there dealing in stamps, even though it was on the Sabbath, but so many were arrested that he eventually didn’t go anymore.’

  ‘Go on, open one of the bags.’ Maaike was getting more and more excited.

  He took the first cloth bag, loosened the draw string, emptied the contents onto the table, and sat back in shock and surprise.

  ‘It’s all my mother’s jewellery. She hardly ever wore it. I think some was her mother’s, or maybe some was from my father’s family. Father would have done anything to stop the Germans getting this.’

  Jos cast a knowing eye over it. ‘There’s a lot of silver but some gold, look at the rings, it’s going to be worth good money.’

  ‘It’s worth more than money to me. This is going nowhere, I’ll never sell it.’

  ‘Of course not, I’m sorry, I didn’t think.’

  ‘Will you keep it here with the money and the watches, you know in your special safe place?’

  ‘Of course, lad, but come on, you’ve still got two bags to open.’

  ‘You open one, Maaike.’

  ‘I can’t, they’re yours, your father wanted you to have them.’

  ‘Please, you do one and I’ll do the other.’

  She took the first of the two remaining bags, untied it and emptied a pile of gold coins onto the table. He did the same, doubling the number of coins.

  Jos gasped. ‘I’m sorry Maaike, close your ears again. Bloody hell, do you know what you’ve got here?’

  Jos looked closely at the coins. ‘They’re gold five and ten gulden pieces, they stopped making them in the early thirties I think. Look, there’s our Queen Wilhelmina. There are some with her as a young girl with long hair and there’s some of King Willem, from when?’ He picked up a coin. ‘This one’s dated 1875. There are some silver guilders. The Nazis stopped us using them and issued those horrible paper one silver guilder vouchers. There’s even some old German gold twenty mark coins from before the Great War. Where could he have got this lot from?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, but they’re old currency just like the notes surely.’

  ‘Wake up, lad. No one has been spending the gold ones since about 1933. It’s not the guilder value here that matters, they’re gold, think about it, gold. That’s where the value is. They’re not bits of paper, they’re like gold bars but circular and flat.’

  ‘How much are we talking about?’

  ‘I don’t know, it all depends on the price of gold. The ones of King Willem are earlier, they might be purer gold. I think the price must have gone up in the war. I paid through the nose to buy that gold jewellery of mine, but that was because I was getting rid of a little bit of, shall we say, surplus money.’ He winked conspiratorially.

  Maaike had been counting. ‘There are eighty-two of the gold twenty gulden ones, a hundred and thirty of the gold five gulden, a lot of silver guilders, I remember those, we used them until quite recently, and fifty-two of those gold German twenty marks ones. There are six of these too, I think they’re Russian fifteen somethings from 1897.’

  ‘Whatever they are, they look like gold too. Like I said, the value depends on the weight and the price per gram. I’ll find out.’

  ‘I’ll take all the paperwork and leave everything else here if that’s alright?’

  ‘It’s fine with me if it’s alright with you.’

  ‘Let’s go home, Maaike. I want to go through this lot, it’ll take us all day tomorrow if we do it together, and I want to show Grietje. She helped father pack up the workshop, perhaps she knows something about the contents of the box. We’ll have to hurry, I forgot about Grietje’s lamb. Goodbye Jos and thanks for everything.’

  They hurried back to Slootstraat. He was quiet and she realised that, far from being excited
at his newfound wealth, he was more distressed than ever at the loss of his family, brought home to him by the personal items carefully stored in the box by his father in the desperate hope that at least some of the family might survive and one day return.

  Monday 15th October 1945

  The day dawned wet and miserable. He lay in bed as long as he could, listening for Grietje dropping off Irene and going out to work before he got up. The lamb had been wonderful but overall the atmosphere during the meal had been strained to say the least, and he wished he hadn’t subjected Maaike to it, with Grietje making veiled references to the two of them being a couple all evening.

  He’d arrived back very excited, as always, to tell Grietje his news. She, however, seemed unmoved and possibly even jealous when he mentioned the watches. He remembered how she had cleaned for his family for years, almost certainly for a pittance, so he had not told her any more details, deciding not to mention the cash or the coins in the false bottom, asking instead if she knew about the correspondence and other contents of the box.

  She told him his father had actually packed the box, that she had just passed items over to him and that the contents they had found yesterday were different to those on the day she and his father had cleared the workshop. This made sense, as clearly his father would have added the more valuable items at Dijkstraat. She remembered the pictures, insisting his father had packed the pair, not just the one they had found.

  Grietje had been unable, or unwilling, to help with any advice on train travel and suggested Maaike would need to check at Amsterdam Centraal whether her journey was possible.

  He got up and made coffee. The news on the radio from the East Indies was bad—the Indonesian People’s Army had declared war on the Netherlands and the British troops together with the Japanese peacekeepers were under attack. Dutch troops had yet to arrive. Jos had said the East Indies’ demand for independence would turn into a war, and that he was surprised that, after years of Japanese occupation, there was a willingness for more fighting and bloodshed in the colony.

  He and Maaike, Irene permitting, were going to sort through all the paperwork, both personal and business, found in the box together. He was excited about finding his personal papers, which would confirm his identity if not actually his existence, but saddened at the thought of seeing all the photographs of his family in happier times.

  He put the cardboard box and loose paperwork down on Maaike’s kitchen table.

  ‘Where shall we start?’

  ‘Let’s do this stuff first, it looks like it’s all invoices and papers relating to father’s business.’

  They sat next to each other. She took out each document and passed it to him. Irene sat opposite and wanted to join in, becoming agitated when he wouldn’t give the papers to her.

  ‘Here, look, this is a blank invoice pad, can she have this? I’ll give her a pencil so she can draw. It will keep her quiet, we’ll never get through this or have a chance to study things carefully otherwise.’

  She handed Irene a stub of pencil and he slid one of his father’s invoice pads across to her after checking it was all empty. Peace reigned as Mendelevski Senior’s precious invoices were covered with flowers and butterflies.

  ‘Look, these are all copy invoices, and some are dated middle to late 1942. Weren’t you at Kromme Palmstraat by then?’

  He looked at the dates. ‘August, September, October, yes we were. These must be for repair work he did or watches he sold while we were hiding. I knew he was trying to work upstairs but I didn’t know he was actually trading. How did he get the invoices out to the customers? By post through Gerrit I suppose, but how did people pay him and how did they get their watches? Surely he didn’t give them the address.’

  ‘The invoices have got the Peperstraat address on them, so any payment would have gone or been taken there.’

  ‘But what about the watches? How did they get to the customer after he’d paid? I’ll ask Bart if he knows, he was still upstairs at the workshop address. How many invoices are there and who are they addressed to?’

  ‘There are five after the middle of 1942, one to Matthijs van der Meer on Johannes Vermeerstraat, one to a Mevrouw de Groot on Wilhelminastraat, one to a Cornelis Dykstra on Tolstraat, one to a David Meijer on Rapenburg and one to an Edwin Berger on Lijnbaansgracht. Are you thinking one of them could be the one who betrayed you?’

  ‘I suppose if they knew the address it’s possible, but not David Meijer, he was a family friend, a Jew from our shul. He was like an uncle to me and Esther.’

  ‘The others then? We’ll have to find them.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I don’t know, ask how they knew my father I suppose, and if they got watches from him during the war.’

  ‘I think three are probably for repairs, judging by the price, and the other two look like they’re for four very expensive new watches. They’re hard to read though.’

  He smiled. ‘That was father, he kept everything in duplicate but refused to get new carbon paper. Are any of the earlier invoices to any of those names? That will tell us if they were long-standing customers from before the war.’

  ‘There are hundreds here, it will take a long time.’

  ‘Sorry, my father never threw away anything to do with the business.’

  ‘Leave them with me and I’ll go through them tonight after Irene’s gone.’

  ‘What else have we got?’

  ‘All these seem to be invoices for things he purchased for the business. I can’t see anything being bought after 1941 at first glance.’

  ‘That would be right, but can you check those for those names too? It might help to know who he knew well and who knew him. Can you look for the purchases of the gold watch cases as well, I’ve no idea of their value.’

  She laughed. ‘I’ll be up all night at this rate. Right, the next lot seems to be letters, you’d better check those in case they’re personal family stuff.’

  ‘Alright, but I doubt it. Knowing my father, he wouldn’t have mixed the business with personal things, they’ll be business letters for sure, he even used to keep copies of letters he’d sent. I’ll do them later.’

  ‘Let’s see what’s in the cardboard box, then.’

  ‘Well, there are these.’ He held up the ID cards. ‘They’re the ones the Germans insisted were issued to everyone. It says April 1941 and soon after that we had to take ours in to be stamped with the ‘J’ for ‘Jood’. Father said once that the resistance was getting false ID cards for Jews but he thought it was too dangerous, so we just kept our cards and as we didn’t go outside at all while we were hiding we didn’t need them really, they were never used. I suppose I can still use mine now as proof until I can get a new one issued.’

  ‘I don’t know how long they’re valid for, until you can get a new one probably. You’ll have to check, but it’s more than you did have. Mine is from when I was fourteen and it was issued under the Germans too. Everyone’s will need renewing, I suppose, if we continue with them, that is.’

  ‘I hope I can get a new one soon, I hate this one because it was issued on the orders of the Germans and even more because it showed we were different and easier to identify. At first father said he would not register himself as a Jew and wouldn’t get a card with ‘Jood’ on it, but in the end he had to. Just look at little Esther’s face and my mother, she was lovely.’

  ‘Please don’t upset yourself, Simon.’

  ‘I can’t help it. Why did they die when I lived? How can that be right?’

  They both fell silent. He looked at the four cards laid out on the table, reluctant almost to put them away yet reticent to touch them.

  She gathered them up and put them in the pile for him to take. ‘These are all the birth certificates.’ She passed across an envelope. ‘Two are your parents’. I can’t read them. Is that Lithuanian—some of the letters look strange?’

  ‘It’s a slightly different script I think, but I don’t really know. We a
lways spoke Dutch at home, Esther and I were Dutch and didn’t really know anything else, well just a little bit of Yiddish maybe. Father wanted to integrate and become a Dutchman, not a Lithuanian. He and mother spoke Lithuanian Polish, Lithuanian Russian, Yiddish or all three together sometimes as mother’s Dutch was poor.’

  ‘If I read it correctly your father was born in 1894 and your mother in 1898 in Vilnius, and I think this must be their marriage certificate. They were married on 4th of March 1919.’

  ‘That’s about right, they came to Amsterdam soon after they were married. My father wanted to come earlier, as soon as the war was over, but he didn’t want to leave without my mother and her parents insisted they were married before they left but wouldn’t let her marry until she was twenty-one. There was a local war going on after the Germans left at the end of the Great War. Father said the Russians took over just before he married mother, and then the Poles took over in April and fighting went on until 1920. Father and mother left in the summer of 1919.’

  ‘And here’s your birth certificate: ‘Simon Nojus Mendelevski born Amsterdam 17th of July 1924’. Nojus?’

  ‘It means Noah. Father wanted a Dutch name, I was nearly a Johannes or something, but mother insisted on keeping it traditional.’

  She giggled. ‘I’ll be alright if there’s a flood then.’

  ‘I love it when you laugh, you are so beautiful.’ He leaned over to kiss her.

  ‘Stop it, we’ll never get this done.’

  ‘Sorry, I couldn’t resist.’

  ‘Right, so you’ve got the ID cards, birth certificates and your parents’ wedding certificate. What’s next?’

  He reached into the box. ‘Old newspapers by the look of it. I wonder why he kept these?’

  She opened them out. ‘Joodsche Weekblad, I’ve never heard of this one, or this, Cetem, it seems to be sport.’

  ‘Now I know exactly why he kept them. This one, the Joodsche Weekblad, was a newspaper issued by the Jewish Council, the Judenrat. The Germans started them all over Europe under the leadership of local prominent Jews. Father said the idea was for the Jewish Council to pass on instructions to the Jewish community and help things to go smoothly. It was organised by a sort of council of elders, they asked him to be part of it as he was an important man at our shul, but he refused, he didn’t trust them or Cohen, the leader. He thought the Council would be manipulated by the Germans to get the Jews to do as they were told. He told me they were putting together a record of all Jews, but it was actually only helping the Germans to identify Jews, so they could be sent to the camps. They also told Jews not to hide and to cooperate with the invaders. There was other Jewish news in it too, births, marriages, Bar Mitzvahs and things—this one must have had something of interest to him.’