Mendelevski's Box

by Roger Swindells

  ‘That’s awful, you mean a Council of Jews worked with the Germans?’

  ‘He said they were meant to look after Jewish people, but the Germans started to put pressure on them and they started to cooperate with them instead of resisting.’

  ‘What about this, the Cetem?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy, let me look.’ He took it from her. ‘I thought so, this is very precious, it has memories for me and clearly had for my father as well. It’s the local paper, it was printed in the Jodenbuurt on Sundays after the football matches. This is the last match he ever took me to, the big match, Ajax versus Feyenoord, before he resigned as a member at Ajax.’

  ‘What do you mean resigned? Was he a player or something?’

  ‘No, silly, he was a member of the club. He resigned and so did a lot of other Jews when the Germans started to make rules about where we could go in the ground and things. It was only a matter of time before we were banned from going to matches. Jews weren’t allowed to play for them anymore and father resigned before the club followed the Germans’ wishes and cancelled his membership.’

  ‘Did he like football?’

  ‘Like it? He virtually lived for it and for his precious Ajax. He was passionate, it broke his heart not going anymore. The last game we went to was the most important one of the season, Feyenoord was our biggest rival. Sunday afternoons when Ajax was playing was the best part of the week, I couldn’t wait for it. The Jodenbuurt was always busy on Sundays with all the Jewish market stalls, lots of Jews worked but father’s business meant he didn’t have to. We used to catch a tram from Weesperplein, it was always crowded and the atmosphere was very exciting to me. I was a young boy, only about eleven, when father first took me. Ajax had just moved to a new stadium: de Meer. We went to every home game for five or six years, we even went after the Germans came. The Cetem paper was sold in our neighbourhood every Sunday, it had all the football results from the whole country and people used to wait in crowds for it to arrive.’

  ‘So he kept this edition to remind him of his last match?’

  ‘I think he was hoping to see his beloved Ajax again one day, but deep down he probably knew that would never happen.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments.

  ‘I’ll make coffee, you play with Irene for a while, we’ve been neglecting her.’

  He drew birds, horses and dogs for Irene among her rows of flowers and her sky full of butterflies.

  She looked up at him. ‘Simon, why did you kiss Maaike?’

  He paused. ‘I thought she was upset so I kissed her, just like your Mama kisses you when you fall over.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Apparently satisfied she returned to her drawing, her tongue out of the side of her mouth as she concentrated.

  Maaike finished making coffee and called through from the kitchen, ‘Very well put and very quickly thought out. Can you come and get the coffees? There’s a drink of milk for Irene and a biscuit. Grietje said she needed building up, all the little children suffered terribly in the winter. She’s nowhere near as big or strong as she should be for her age. Now, where were we?’

  ‘There’s the stamp album and the album of photographs, I thought we could look through them together if you’re interested.’

  ‘Not the stamps maybe, but photos of you in your school uniform and short trousers, I’d love to see those.’ She giggled again. It was infectious, and he giggled too.

  ‘These letters between my parents, I can’t understand a word, but I must keep them. Maybe if I find anyone from the shul who was close to us and speaks Lithuanian I can get them translated one day. There are some letters from people in Amsterdam which might be of interest, I’ll read them tonight.’

  ‘That just leaves these.’ She handed him the insurance policy envelope and the papers about Dijkstraat.

  ‘There are four policies here, one each on mother and father, one on me and one on Esther. What can I do with them?’

  ‘What are they exactly?’

  ‘Mother’s and father’s are for life insurance. Mine and Esther’s are twenty-five-year policies which look like father took them out when we were born.’

  ‘Can you cash them?’

  ‘Presumably yes, I’ll have to get in touch with the insurance company, it’s in The Hague. It doesn’t feel right getting money because they’re dead.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, that’s exactly why your parents took the policies out, for you and Esther when they died.’

  ‘To pay for their funerals maybe, but they never had funerals, did they? Their bodies were burned, they have no grave, and I had nothing to pay for.’

  ‘But you’re entitled to the money, plus of course yours still has four years to go then it pays out to you, which is what your father set it up for.’

  ‘But will they pay out anyway? The premiums won’t have been kept up, nothing has been paid since we went into hiding.’

  ‘You’ll have to find out, get in touch with the company, you won’t be the only one in that position. Also there are those,’ she pointed to the paperwork about Dijkstraat. ‘They might prove the house belongs to your family, not those Dutch people.’

  ‘How do I go about that?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask...’

  He interrupted her. ‘I know, don’t tell me, I’ll have to ask Jos.’

  They both collapsed with laughter.

  ‘This is a new start for you, you have money, maybe property. Think what you can do, you’re a rich man. You can get new clothes, go to the dentist, you’re always saying you hate your teeth, get your own place to live.’

  ‘I’d rather have my family and anyway, I can’t enjoy any of this until I find out how and why we were betrayed, I owe that to my father, mother and Esther. When I do start to enjoy this good fortune, I want you to share it with me, I want you to share my life with me.’

  She smiled, not knowing what to say. ‘Don’t be silly, that sounded like a proposal. I’ll make lunch and then we can start reading the rest of those papers.’

  The afternoon passed quickly, and they didn’t have an opportunity to discuss what they’d found or look at the photographs before Grietje arrived to collect Irene. ‘Well, this is cosy, have you two been together all day?’ She sounded irritated.

  ‘There’s just so much stuff to go through, Maaike and Irene have been helping me. Irene has done some nice drawings for you.’

  ‘Thank you darling, that’s beautiful.’ She took the drawings from Irene. ‘Oh, by the way, did you hear, the French have executed Laval, the Vichy leader who helped the Nazis against the French resistance. They shot him for treason this morning. Let’s hope Mussert gets his too.’

  ‘I’ll come up with you, Grietje. I’ll see you tomorrow, Maaike. I’ll finish my lot of papers tonight and then we can compare notes and see if there are any clues.’

  Grietje looked dubious. ‘Have you thought about that you might have betrayed yourselves? You might have shown a light, you might have been seen at the window or made a noise. It may not have been some evil individual known to you at all.’

  ‘I know, and I have thought of that, but if I can identify anyone who had dealings with my father after we went into hiding then I can maybe eliminate them. I’m concerned that one of father’s customers might somehow have got our address, perhaps father did something stupid, I don’t know. Once I’ve explored every possibility then us making a mistake with lights or even Gerrit being seen going into the house with bags of food will be all that’s left. I just think father buying from and selling to people while we were hiding is worth checking out.’

  ‘Jaap once told me that they suspected there was a large group of men, collaborators, employed and paid by the Nazis to find and betray people who were in hiding. Their leader was a man called Henneicke or something like that, there were twenty or more Jaap said. He told me there was a ‘special operation’ against him in 1944 and he was killed by a resistance group. If it was any of his gang then they probably had nothing to
do with your father at all.’

  ‘I know, it’s probably an impossible task, but for my family’s sake, and mine I suppose, I just have to try.’

  ‘It sounds like you and Maaike are going to have to work very closely together then.’

  Tuesday 16th October 1945

  ‘So what are your plans for today?’

  He and Grietje were having breakfast together. She was rushing to work as usual and he was anxious to speak to Maaike about the paperwork. He had sat up until the early hours looking through the letters and the photograph album. There were photographs of family occasions before the war that he had totally forgotten, everyone was happy and smiling, still ignorant of the horror that was to come.

  As he expected, most of the letters were of a personal nature. He couldn’t read them but they appeared, from the dates, to have been written during his parents’ courtship in Lithuania. There was, however, a number of letters which appeared to relate to business matters. This puzzled him as he knew how strict his father had been about keeping business records, even if the business they related to was occasionally less than legitimate. He found it strange that they were mixed with what was obviously private mail. He tried to remember the names Maaike had read out from the 1942 invoices as he thought some of them might match the ones on the letters.

  ‘Simon, answer me please. What are your plans for today? Are you going to speak to those people you told me about?’

  ‘No, not yet. I want to try to work out which were reliable, regular, loyal customers of my father and which might have somehow betrayed him, then maybe I’ll go to see them.’

  ‘You’re going to take Maaike, I suppose?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Some of the addresses are too far for her to walk so we’d need to take trams and I haven’t a clue about them, not in this area anyway, plus of course she only gets one full day off.’

  Grietje sounded angry when she said, ‘She gets good money from me for looking after Irene, she doesn’t do it for love you know. I don’t get much free time either, but I can come with you at the weekend if you want, I know the tram routes. I don’t have work this Saturday. We could take Irene along when we talk to the people, as if we are a family.’

  Her idea disturbed him and he frantically looked for an excuse. ‘I have to work early on Saturdays and during the week I start work about the same time in the afternoons as you finish, so it might be difficult. I think I’ll have to start off on my own.’

  ‘Just as you like, the offer is there if you need me.’ She was obviously disappointed that her idea had been turned down.

  She went straight out and, after collecting the letters and photographs from his room, he took Irene down to Maaike’s.

  ‘Good morning! How are you this wonderful day?’

  She yawned. ‘Tired, I was going through your father’s sales and purchase invoices half the night. Coffee?’

  She disappeared into the kitchen.

  He looked out of the window. ‘It’s a lovely day, we may not have many more mornings like this, autumn is here.’

  ‘We should go out, take Irene to the park or something. Coffee’s ready.’

  ‘But we still have to cross check all the names and things in father’s papers.’

  ‘I’ve looked through every sales invoice from 1939 to when you all went into hiding and every purchase invoice for the same period, and there’s only the one sale to Berger on Lijnbaansgracht, the one we found last night. The strange thing is there are only three purchase invoices for things your father bought after the middle of 1942. One from a regular supplier from before the war, one from David Meijer, whom you said he knew well, and one from Berger just days before the sales invoice. He didn’t deal with your father in any way at all before then.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit odd? Your father did no business, buying or selling, with Berger before you went into hiding when your father was trading at Peperstraat, but they did business together afterwards? How did he find your father? How did he get in touch? Why did he buy a watch from him? At least I think it was a watch purchase, I can’t read it clearly and there’s some other writing, but it was over two thousand guilders, so I don’t think it was a repair.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘The address is fairly close, let’s have a walk down there.’

  ‘And speak to him, you mean?’

  ‘No, not yet, let’s just see what sort of house it is and if it’s one where the owner can afford two thousand guilders for a watch.’

  It was further than Maaike thought and both she and Irene were tired before they got to the address. They crossed Elandsgracht and she stopped, easing her hands from the crutch handles.

  ‘It’s somewhere here, just one more block, you sit somewhere, and I’ll go on.’

  ‘I’m alright, we must be close now.’

  He walked ahead calling out the numbers. ‘189, 190, 191, it’s here, it’s a shop.’

  ‘And it’s empty.’ Her voice echoed her disappointment. ‘Now what?’

  He looked up. ‘Well, that’s his name alright, look above the door, ‘Edwin Berger Antiek’.’

  He tried to look through the shop window, but it had been covered with old newspapers from 1942. Through the letter box he could see uncollected mail lying on the floor. He turned to her, clearly frustrated, ‘There’s no notice saying where he’s moved to.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone out of business, perhaps he’s dead or was taken for work in Germany like my father, who knows.’

  ‘I suppose that’s one we can cross off the list then.’

  ‘Not yet, there’s a cafe on the next corner, let’s have a drink and a rest, and maybe we can ask the owner if he knows anything.’

  A little voice piped up, ‘Can I have a glass of milk, please?’

  The café on the corner of Looiersgracht was not unlike Café van Loon. He went to the row of stools in front of the bar while Maaike and Irene sat at a table. He ordered coffee, lemonade for Maaike and milk for Irene.

  It was approaching lunchtime and he bought two slices of an apple pie from under a glass dome sitting on the counter. The man behind the bar reminded him of Jos, he was jolly and fussed around Maaike and Irene with forks and a second plate. Irene ate enthusiastically while he shared with Maaike.

  ‘We were looking for Meneer Berger at 191, the antiques shop, but it’s empty. Do you know what happened to him?’

  The man eyed him suspiciously. ‘Are you relatives?’

  ‘No,’ Maaike cut in, ‘just friends.’

  ‘Well, if you find him tell him he owes me ten guilders, he just disappeared one night in early 1942. I thought he’d been arrested by the Germans, but someone came in a van and took away his stock. It wasn’t the Germans or the police stealing it like they usually did when they’d arrested someone, it was a local haulage firm. The driver came in for a beer. I got talking to him and he said Berger was moving to another shop somewhere in the city, but his stock was going into storage until it was ready or possibly until the war was over, he wasn’t sure. No one has seen him or heard of him since. Perhaps he was arrested after he left here, perhaps he’s dead. Who knows these days? Maybe he was in the NSB and he’s in a camp somewhere awaiting trial. He’s gone, that’s all I know. I don’t even know who owns the shop. I think it was rented, maybe he owes the landlord money too.’

  ‘Did he live above the shop?’

  ‘No, the door at the side goes to the apartment upstairs where an old lady was living but she died of cold or starvation or both last winter so it’s empty too. I’ve no idea where he lives, I only ever saw him after he closed up each day. If I knew where he lived I’d be knocking on his door for my money. He obviously wasn’t short of a few guilders, that’s why I gave him credit. There was a huge amount of stock and it was good quality stuff too. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if some of it was from Jews who’d been deported.’

  They thanked him and left, mak
ing their way back to Slootstraat.

  Simon was disappointed. ‘That’s the end of that one then, there’s nowhere to go now, it’s a dead end.’

  ‘Maybe, but just think, how did he get the watch from your father? According to the invoice he bought it while you were in hiding, but the café man said he left the shop early in 1942.’

  ‘Maaike, I don’t follow at all.’

  ‘Remember we thought your father must have either posted the invoices or that Gerrit delivered them? He would also have had to post the watch or get Gerrit to deliver it. How could it happen that way if Berger had already left the address?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Look, as far as your father knew, according to the address he put on his invoice, and you said he was very particular about his records, Berger was still at the Lijnbaansgracht shop. The invoice Berger sent to your father a few days earlier was on his Lijnbaansgracht notepaper, although he had already left there. How did Berger’s invoice get to your father, he couldn’t have posted it as he didn’t know where your family were and how did whatever he sold to your father get to him? There’s nothing to say your father had any clue about where Berger was other than Lijnbaansgracht. Something’s wrong somewhere.’