The Death's Head Chess Club

by John Donoghue

  On Monday morning, Meissner was in his office at seven. Eidenmüller was there before him, a pot of coffee bubbling on the stove. Meissner had sensed that the Rottenführer would be useful to have around, and he had been right: he was a born fixer, a wizard at acquiring all sorts of items that were otherwise difficult – if not impossible – to obtain.

  Meissner greeted his orderly by saying, ‘What do you think about us starting a chess club, Eidenmüller?’

  The Rottenführer kept his face deadpan. ‘What, here, sir? In the office?’

  ‘No, you idiot. I mean a camp chess club, for all the SS.’

  ‘Officers and men, sir?’

  ‘Yes. All ranks.’

  Eidenmüller thought for a moment before replying, ‘Well, I suppose it depends, sir.’

  ‘Depends? Depends on what?’

  ‘On whether we would be able to lay a few bets on it, sir.’

  ‘A few bets?’

  ‘Yes, sir. If the men were able to lay a bet or two on the games, I’m sure they’d be all for it. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t think there’d be much interest, to be honest.’

  Meissner suppressed a smile. ‘This is supposed to be adding to the cultural life of the camp, not creating opportunities for more of your shady dealings.’

  Eidenmüller’s features remained impassive. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So, let me get this straight – if I allow betting on the games, you think a chess club would be popular?’

  ‘Very popular, sir.’

  ‘And who exactly would run this gambling enterprise?’

  ‘I might know one or two people here and there, sir. I could ask around – with your permission, of course.’

  Meissner merely grunted and sat down.

  The orderly picked up the coffee pot and, filling a cup to the brim, placed it on the officer’s desk. He turned to go.

  At the door, Meissner called him back.

  ‘Eidenmüller, while you’re asking around, find out how many chess sets you can lay your hands on, will you?’

  Eidenmüller smiled. ‘It will be my pleasure, sir.’

  1 Wirtschafts und Verwaltungshauptamt, the SS Economic-Administrative Main Office, which included the Concentration Camps Inspectorate.

  6.

  ZUGZWANG

  Tuesday, 11 January 1944

  Auschwitz-II, Birkenau

  It is night and the train has stopped in the middle of a forest. Packed into fifteen cattle trucks, over a thousand people wait anxiously. There is no sound, apart from the wind howling through the trees and the freezing rain that gusts along the sides of the train. In every truck people are huddled together for warmth, for the wooden-slatted sides offer little protection from the biting cold.

  It is still dark when the train resumes its journey. The regular clack-clack of the wheels, which has been a constant companion for close on a week, lulls nearly everybody back to a fitful sleep.

  Less than half an hour later, the train stops for the final time.

  Bright lights come on, assaulting the numbed senses of the passengers even through the wooden sides of the trucks. With a crash that has the quality of an explosion to those inside, the doors are thrown open and from the unnatural brightness outside comes the harsh, angry barking of orders shouted at people who do not understand them.

  Beyond the opened doors is a long concrete platform. The passengers are forced out and herded away from the train. Possessions must be left where they fall. Now the passengers can see their tormentors: dark figures in the grey military uniform of the SS.

  In one truck there is hesitation. A hand reaches up to the nearest person – an elderly man – and pulls at him roughly. He falls heavily onto the concrete below and rises uncertainly. He looks like he has broken an arm. One of the uniformed men calmly unholsters a pistol and holds it to the old man’s head. A shot rings out. A woman screams. Her cry sounds disembodied, as if some banshee is shrieking in the dark beyond the floodlights. The body is kicked off the platform to fall beneath the wheels of the train.

  It is as if a spell has been broken. To cries of ‘Raus! Raus!’ the remaining passengers surge out of the trucks knowing that their lives depend on it.

  On the platform an SS officer asks, ‘Wer kann Deutsch sprechen? Does anyone speak German?’ Emil raises a reluctant hand. ‘Come with me.’ He is led to where several other officers are standing with an air of impatience, as if waiting in the cold for a bus that is late. A few more prisoners arrive. Each of them is told to go with an officer and translate orders.

  Men are told to stand to one side and women to the other. The SS men separate out the elderly and children. Emil is anxious about his two boys, but the officer tells him not to worry: adults of working age will go to a work camp and the children will be sent to the family camp, where they will be cared for by those who are too old for manual labour. He says it with the weary calmness of a man who has given this reassurance a hundred times before.

  It has the ring of normality, of truth. But it is the first of many lies in the land of liars. ‘Family’ is a word the Nazis have violated so that it has lost its natural meaning. In Auschwitz, ‘family’ means death.

  With Emil interpreting, the officer sorts through the men who are fit for work. How old? Any special skills? It seems they have a quota to fill for able-bodied workers. Those with skills are an added bonus. Emil is lucky. He can speak German and is a master watchmaker. Emil sees that his wife, Rosa, has been told to stand in the column of women who have been selected for work. Their children, Louis and Marcel, are on the left with their grandmother.

  All is now silent. One shooting is enough to subdue any resistance until one woman sees her children and breaks from the ranks to go to them.

  A single blow from a rifle butt puts her on the ground.

  ‘Stupid bitch,’ one of the officers says as she rises unsteadily to her feet, wiping at the blood that runs down her face, then: ‘Fine – let her go with them.’

  The left column is marched away and disappears into the maw of the misty darkness that surrounds the area lit by the arc lamps.

  Emil mouths a quiet, ‘Au revoir,’ to his children. ‘Be good for Granny.’

  He does not know he will never see them again.

  Emil is shaken awake by Yves. He was shouting in his sleep. Now he is crying, inconsolably. ‘My children, my children,’ he wails.

  Yves tries to comfort him. If Emil does not quieten, the night guard will report him to the Blockältester and he will be punished for disturbing everybody’s sleep.

  ‘My beautiful boys . . .’ Emil weeps. ‘I don’t even have a photograph of them. I can’t remember what they look like.’

  7.

  ELOHIM AND THE

  POWER OF JUDGEMENT

  1962

  Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, Amsterdam

  Friday morning saw the official opening of the World Chess Federation Interzonal tournament, to be followed by a formal lunch.

  Rumours were rife that the German Grand Master would not show up for his opening match against the Israeli. At a hastily convened press conference, Harry Berghuis had answered all questions concerning the matter with: ‘We shall have to wait and see.’

  The vast hotel ballroom, with its spectacular high glass ceiling, had been cleared, and rows of tables set up, each with two chairs, a chessboard and a game-clock. There was an atmosphere of high expectation as a gaggle of arbiters stood opposite the entrance, waiting for the contestants to take their places.

  All eyes were on table 7, where the game between Clément and Schweninger was to take place. Outside the entrance, the corridor was jammed with reporters and photographers. Rarely did the press show so much interest in a game of chess.

  Wilhelm Schweninger pushed through the crowd, using his bulk to force people out of the way. To a shouted question: ‘So, you won’t be withdrawing from the competition, then?’ he had roared, ‘Of course not! What do you take me for – a coward? I’m not frightened of him or
of any of the rubbish he spouts.’

  There had been several notes in Emil’s pigeon-hole at the hotel from journalists requesting interviews, and a telegram from his publisher. He had ignored them all; he had a game to prepare for. He had chosen to make a more discreet entrance than Schweninger, cutting through the hotel kitchens, arriving at the service entrance to the ballroom just before time.

  At the appointed hour, the doors to the ballroom were firmly shut: no more contestants would be admitted. This created a buzz of expectation among the press outside, who assumed that the Israeli was a no-show. Inside, the tension was even greater as, without a word of greeting to one another, the two at the centre of all the attention took their places. An arbiter held out her hands concealing a black pawn in one, and white in the other. With a contemptuous shake of his head, Clément indicated that the German should choose.

  Schweninger touched the arbiter’s left hand. It opened to reveal white. Without ceremony he advanced his king’s pawn two spaces and started the clock.

  As he had in the coffee house, Clément composed himself in an attitude of prayer. He ignored the ticking of the clock, which seemed unusually loud. When he opened his eyes, he peered searchingly at his opponent for several moments, then moved his king’s knight to sit two spaces in front of the bishop. Schweninger smiled. As he had expected, Clément’s opening move was defensive, conceding the initiative to his opponent. He advanced his pawn one more space to attack the solitary knight. The knight moved to sit beside the pawn. The white queen’s pawn moved forward two spaces. The black queen’s pawn advanced one, offering itself to the white king’s pawn. The German refused the gambit and attacked the knight again, this time with his queen’s bishop’s pawn. Clément allowed his knight to retreat to sit two spaces in front of its brother.

  Harry Berghuis sidled up to the arbiter and whispered, ‘How is it going?’

  ‘Unbelievable. The German is using a three-pawn attack, and Clément is employing the Alekhine Defence.’

  Berghuis raised an eyebrow. ‘We might have expected Schweninger to be aggressive. But the Alekhine? That’s reckless, surely. I don’t think it’s been seen in a major tournament for nearly twenty years. What is the Frenchman playing at?’

  ‘Perhaps he knows something we don’t.’

  The night before the tournament, Emil Clément had retrieved a small velvet bag from his suitcase. It contained ten ivory tiles onto which were etched the first letters of the Hebrew alphabet. He emptied them onto a table, face down, and arranged them in the shape of the Sephiroth, creating the structure of the ten attributes through which the Divine Essence of Infinity is revealed. He turned the seventh tile, Netzah. He had chosen it because its significance was ambiguous: it could denote either ‘victory’ or ‘eternity’, and it lay beneath Hesed, the promise of mercy and healing. He turned the tile to reveal the letter ה – He – representing the sword of the Almighty and the strength that flows from the limitless power of God.

  So be it: victory, not compassion.

  His path now clear, Emil slept. When he discovered the next day that his game was to be played on table number 7, his faith in the power of the tiles was confirmed.

  *

  Emil’s refusal to be drawn perplexed his opponent. Schweninger’s attacking opening meant his pawns were now sitting in the centre of the board, to little purpose.

  Having succeeded in unbalancing his rival, Clément set about his destruction with seemingly effortless calm.

  His victory caused uproar. Schweninger’s defeat had been accomplished in less than an hour.

  8.

  THE RÉTI OPENING

  March 1944

  Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-III, Monowitz

  It is a Sunday, one of two rest days that are permitted each month. Warmer air is coming from the south and the chill of winter is fading. Though the warmth of the morning sun is slight, it is still pleasant, for the mosquitoes that plague the camp in summer have yet to emerge.

  Emil is squatting on the bare earth beside the dormitory block, leaning back against the wall, enjoying the all-too-brief respite from work. He has been up for a while; on rest days, the inmates are permitted to use the washrooms, if there is any water available. He was one of the first into the showers and to go for lice control and have his head shaved. Now he is eating his morning bread ration slowly, trying to remember what it was like not to be hungry.

  Time has no meaning here: it is too painful to contemplate the past and impossible to conceive of any future. There is only now, which is seared, like a brand, upon the consciousness; the struggle for this day, this hour, this minute, is all there is.

  Yves settles beside him. He has lost much more weight than Emil, which is to be expected, for he works outside in a construction Kommando, while Emil has an indoor job that does not involve heavy physical labour. He eyes Emil’s bread covetously, feigning indifference but failing. Emil offers him some, but he shakes his head. ‘One of us,’ he says, ‘has to live to get out of here, if only to tell the rest of the world what is happening.’

  Emil holds the bread out again, but Yves pushes his hand back firmly. ‘You’re a good man, Emil, but if you have too many scruples you won’t make it.’

  ‘And if you end up a Muselmann,1 it will help neither of us,’ Emil objects, pushing the bread into Yves’s hand.

  Yves smiles. ‘D’accord – but only this once. And if anything comes my way . . .’ He pulls a knife from under his jacket and cuts a chunk off before giving the rest back.

  Yves’s knife was a gift from Emil. Making knives has become Emil’s métier in the camp. In the workshop to which he has been assigned, he has access to sheets of steel from which he fabricates and repairs various instruments for the Buna factory. The factory is a vast maze, as large as a town. Unknowable thousands toil here, coming and going constantly. In Buna, Emil sees the fable of the Tower of Babel, for many different languages are spoken, from across Europe and the East. In this shapeless tangle of concrete, iron and smoke it is in the nature of things to be insignificant and unnoticed, like an ant, and so it is easy for Emil to organize a small piece of steel, shape it and add a crude handle to make a knife. He manages one or two a week and sells them in the market. The going rate is half a bread ration. It is something, but it is not enough, not for Yves. He is slowly starving to death.

  Yves coughs, a long, laboured rasp, before saying, ‘I have some news for you.’

  ‘What sort of news?’ Emil prays daily for news of his wife. He has heard nothing since they were parted during the selection on that first night. He harbours little hope for his mother and his children. He is certain they went up the chimney the day they arrived.

  Yves hears the faint stirring of hope in Emil’s voice. ‘Nothing very important,’ he says quickly, ‘but something I think you’ll be interested in. The Blockältester in Block 46 has a chess set. I’m told he plays every night.’

  Emil leans forward eagerly. ‘Whom does he play?’

  ‘I don’t know. But there’s only one way to find out.’ Yves finishes his bread and stands. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No. I can manage by myself. You should rest.’

  The blocks in Monowitz are all built to the same pattern: at the front, the door opens to reveal a small day room, furnished with a brick-built stove that offers some meagre warmth in the winter if wood can be found to fuel it. The day room leads to a much larger dormitory with rows of three-tiered wooden bunks in which the inmates huddle together to sleep. At Block 46 Emil stands respectfully at the entrance to the day room, cap in hand, and asks if he may speak to the Ältester. A short, stocky man comes to the door. He looks well fed, which is not surprising, for the block elder is a German and wears the green triangle of a convicted criminal on his uniform.

  ‘What do you want?’ The man draws on a cigarette. Even though it has probably been made with Mahorca, the dreadful adulterated tobacco that circulates in the camp, Emil eyes it enviously. He has not had a cig
arette in months.

  Emil clears his throat. ‘I have heard that chess is played in your hut.’

  ‘What if it is?’

  ‘I like to play chess. Before I came here, I was quite a good player.’

  ‘And you think you’re good enough to join our little circle, eh?’ The block elder belches, takes another puff of the cigarette and flicks the still-glowing butt at Emil’s feet. ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘I make knives.’

  The elder glances at the red and yellow Star of David on Emil’s chest. In an instant he weighs the value of what Emil might bring to his little fiefdom. ‘No Jews,’ he says, with a tight little shake of his head, and walks back inside.

  Emil concludes that if he wants a chance to play chess he must do something extraordinary. Walking back to his block, he decides what he will do. It is risky, but it is worth it.

  Yves cannot understand why Emil would take such a risk. ‘If you are caught bringing it into the camp,’ he says, ‘you could get a dozen lashes, or more. I don’t understand why you would do such a thing just for the sake of a game.’

  Emil cannot make Yves understand the divine nature of chess. It is much more than a game. It is a connection with the intangible Wisdom of Creation; sublime; the possibilities limitless. It is the game created by the Ophanim to please God.

  Emil would rather die than never play again.

  The following Monday, he puts his plan into operation. At his work-place, he makes an offer to the civilian supervisor. Wartime shortages mean that items like watches are difficult for civilians to obtain, apart from cheap, unreliable ones. Emil asks if the supervisor has any watches or clocks that need mending. In return for one broken watch, Emil will mend two others, using scraps and tools from the instrument workshop. He does the work during the break that the prisoners are allowed for lunch. The supervisor is delighted with the result. Word gets around quickly, and it is not long before Emil is asked to repair watches for others.