by Steven Uhly
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Five days later Josef Ranzner died in his bed. No one was present. The body was only discovered when the police forced their way into his apartment to arrest him after Simon Wiesenthal had contacted them to press charges. It looked as if he had passed away peacefully.
183
Two days before her grandson’s ninth birthday, Anna Stirnweiss went back to Berlin.
184
Set in a lawn at Hüttenweg 46 in Berlin-Dahlem, and surrounded by fir trees and beeches, stood a U.S. army church-cum-synagogue, a white building that could have been mistaken for a gymnasium had it not been for the tall, slim bell tower.
On September 2, 1977, an unseasonably warm Friday morning, Lisa Kramer married Shimon Sarfati. To begin with they had been unable to agree on a joint surname. Lisa wanted to be called Sarfati. Shimon wanted finally to be rid of Peretz’s name, but he recoiled from the German “Kramer.” Just before their civil marriage at the town hall in Neukölln they decided that the father should have the same name as his son.
From Neukölln the wedding party—Anna Stirnweiss, Marta Kramer, Peretz Sarfati, Lana Sarfati, Tobias Weiss and his companion, Mosche and Selma Teichmann, the entire Schwimmer family with Gudrun Kruse, the four musicians from Shimon’s band with their instruments, some of his friends and acquaintances from the Israeli consulate-general in West Berlin, some of Lisa’s student friends from the history seminar at Berlin’s Free University, Tom’s best friends and their parents and the newly established Kramer family—went to Dahlem for a Jewish wedding ceremony in the church-cum-synagogue at Hüttenweg 46.
Lisa was not wearing a remodeled curtain, she did not sit outside surrounded by rubble, it was not cold and wet, no military vehicles patrolled the streets, no refugees were in sight waiting for something to happen with their salvaged lives. And yet, as the rabbi spoke his text in Hebrew and German, Anna could not help looking over at Peretz, their eyes met, silently she asked for forgiveness and then reached for Lana’s hand, who was sitting beside her mother, and told herself it was for the sake of love, which had been triumphant after all.
From Dahlem they went to Schlachtensee, this had been Lisa’s idea, to swim and have some fun after all the formalities.
185
While they were still at the lake, sitting on blankets under shade-giving trees and eating the picnic they had brought with them, a discussion began as to whether Josef Ranzner had said “Kaminski” in the same way he would say “Polack,” or whether it might indeed be Piotr’s surname. Maybe the answer was both.
The only person who was convinced that she had something to work with at last was Lisa. Of course you’ve got to believe it, Esther said, after all, it’s what you’ve been wanting to find. Anna said nothing, she had her doubts. The thought of Josef Ranzner made her shudder. She could not rid herself of the idea that by appearing at his apartment she had fulfilled his greatest desire.
Gudrun was watching Tom play with his friends in the water. Into the middle of the conversation between Esther and Lisa, and without taking her eyes off the boys, she said, Anything’s possible . . .
Lisa nodded, if anything was possible she had to try it. Shimon had not heard any of the conversation, he had swum out into the lake with his musicians, Lisa saw them far in the distance, tiny black dots in the middle of the glittering blue lake. She decided to do some investigating before broaching it with him. She glanced at her grandmother. The old woman was sitting on a folding chair beside Anna, smiling at her granddaughter, not giving away what she was thinking, My child you have everything now, what else do you want?
186
“There’s a chance, Shimon. Why shouldn’t I seize it? Why shouldn’t I go on looking?”
“What do you want to find? An old man at most, or a grave. Kaminski! There are millions of Kaminskis!”
Lisa did not respond straightaway. In the dim light of the bedroom she could barely make out her husband. Sinking back into her pillow she stared at the ceiling.
“What have you got against it, Shimon? Tell me the truth!”
After a while, Shimon said, “You’re starting to come across as addicted as I was. You might not be taking drugs, but you just can’t stop. I did stop, I did it for us. But you . . .” He broke off.
Lisa was shocked. It was some time before she was able to assemble a clear thought. Then she said, deliberately, “That’s not fair, Shimon. I’m not abandoning anybody. I’m not unpredictable. And I don’t love you any less just because I’m on the hunt for this man.” She turned to him, propping herself on her elbows, and tried to look him in the eye.
“In any case, you didn’t do it for us,” she said, “you did it for yourself. There isn’t a pact between us, Shimon. Isn’t it enough that we love each other?”
Shimon said nothing, he had closed his eyes. Lisa gave up. She turned onto her other side, she wanted to sleep.
As she was drifting off she felt Shimon press up close and put his arm around her. Bringing his lips to her ear, he whispered, “I’m sorry. Can I help with your search?”
GLOSSARY OF HISTORICAL CHARACTERS
AVIGUR, SHAUL, né Saul Mayeroff, later Saul Meirov (b. 1899, Dvinsk, now Latvia; d. 1978, Israel), was a Jewish secret intelligence agent and politician. In 1939 he became commander of the Mossad LeAliya Bet’s operations (Institution for Immigration B, “B” standing for “illegal”), organizing from Tel Aviv and Paris the flight of European Jews to Palestine.
BEN-GURION, DAVID, né David Grün (b. October 16, 1886, Płonsk, Congress Poland; d. December 1, 1973, Tel HaShomer, Israel), was one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Israel, party chairman from 1948 to 1963, and the country’s first prime minister.
BEN-NATAN, ASHER, né Artur Piernikarz (b. February 15, 1921, Vienna; d. June 17, 2014, Israel) was the first Israeli ambassador to West Germany. As a Jew he was forced to flee Vienna in 1938, but he returned to Austria immediately after the war. As leader of Bricha in Austria he facilitated the emigration of large numbers of Jews.
BEVIN, ERNEST (b. March 9, 1881, Winsford, Somerset; d. April 14, 1951, London) was a British trade union leader, Labor Party politician and secretary of state for foreign affairs from 1945 to 1951.
BIDAULT, GEORGES-AUGUSTIN (b. October 5, 1899, Moulins, Auvergne; d. January 27, 1983, Cambo-les-Bains) was a French politician. In the Second World War he was an active member of the Résistance. After the war he served as foreign minister in Félix Gouin’s provisional government until the Constituent National Assembly elected him president of the provisional government on June 19, 1946. He again took over the foreign ministry.
BORSODY, EDUARD VON (b. June 13, 1898, Vienna; January 1, 1970, Vienna) was an Austrian cameraman, editor, film director and screenplay writer of Hungarian origin.
CHECKER, CHUBBY, né Ernest Evans (b. October 3, 1941, Spring Valley, South Carolina) is an American rock and roll singer.
DANTZIGER, SAMUEL, 37 years old, survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp, was shot dead on March 29, 1946, by a German policeman in a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart during a raid, after he had identified the man as a former Auschwitz guard. As a result of this incident the American Military Government forbade German authorities from entering Jewish D.P. camps.
DEKEL, EPHRAIM, né Ephraim Kresner (b. 1903, Litin, Ukraine; d. August 22, 1982) came to Israel in 1921. In 1923 he joined the military secret intelligence service of the Jewish underground army, Haganah, in Tel Aviv, later becoming its head. From 1928 to 1948 Dekel was also head of the fire service in the British Mandate of Palestine, which in reality was a front for Haganah. In 1946 he became the European commander of Bricha, based in Prague.
ELEAZAR BEN JUDA BEN KALONYMOS, known as Eleazar of Worms (b. ca. 1176, probably Mainz; d. 1238, Worms) was a German rabbi, author and cabbalist. One of his books was Ha-Rokeah (The Perfumer), a work on ethics and Jewish law. On the night of 22 Kislev 1196 he was busy writing a commentary on Genesis when two crusaders forced their way into his house and killed his wi
fe, Dulcina, his two daughters, Belat and Hannah, and his son, Jacob. His wife ran a shop selling parchment rolls to support the family, allowing him to dedicate himself to his studies. A large proportion of his liturgical writing is a protest against Israel’s suffering and expresses hope for redemption and revenge against the tormentors.
FRANK, ERICH, later Ephraim, code names Ernst Caro and Aroch (b. March 4, 1909, Gelsenkirchen, son of Emma and Herman Frank; d. March 17, 1996, Israel). Until the Wannsee Conference in 1942, Frank organized the emigration of German Jews in personal negotiations with Adolf Eichmann. He escaped in the last ship down the Danube, making it to Palestine via the Black Sea and Mediterranean. After the war he returned to Europe at the request of David Ben-Gurion, to take command in Munich of German Bricha, the organization that arranged the transit of surviving European Jews to Palestine.
GEHLEN, REINHARD (b. April 3, 1902, Erfurt; d. June 8, 1979, Berg am Starnberger See) was a major general in the Wehrmacht, head of the Foreign Armies East (F.H.O.) department of the German general staff, head of the Gehlen Organization and first president of the Federal Intelligence Service (B.N.D.).
HAARER, JOHANNA, née Barsch (b. October 3, 1900, Tetschen, now Czech Republic; d. April 30, 1988, Munich) was an Austrian-German doctor and author of best-selling educational guides (before and after 1945), which were strongly in accordance with National Socialist ideology.
HARRISON, EARL GRANT (b. April 27, 1899; d. July 28, 1955) was an American lawyer, academic and civil servant. In summer 1945 he was sent by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to visit a large number of the displaced persons camps in the American zone of occupation, and compiled the so-called Harrison Report about the unacceptable conditions he witnessed there, thus alerting the U.S. government to the particularly difficult situation of the displaced Jews. This led to the Americans, as the only one of the four occupying powers, setting up D.P. camps that were exclusively for Jews and also run by them.
HÖNOW, GÜNTER, (b. October 21, 1923, Stahnsdorf near Berlin; d. January 25, 2001, Berlin-Zehlendorf) was a German architect of the post-war modernist school.
JAKUBOWITZ, ZWI (b. ?; d. July 18, 1947) was a fifteen-year-old refugee on the President Warfield (Exodus) who was shot dead when the Royal Navy boarded the ship. Three other people died during the hours-long battle to take the ship: a British soldier, boatswain William Bernstein and Mordechai Boimsteing, a passenger. More than one hundred people were seriously injured.
KLEPPER, JOCHEN (b. March 22, 1903, Beuthen an der Oder, now Poland; d. December 11, 1942, Berlin) was one of the twentieth century’s most important composers of liturgical songs. On March 28, 1931, he married Johanna Stein, the Jewish widow of a lawyer and thirteen years his senior. She had two daughters, Brigitte and Renate. As Johanna and her daughters were Jewish the family came under increasing pressure after Hitler’s takeover of power. On December 18, 1938, Johanna Klepper was baptized in the Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin-Mariendorf. Afterward the couple were given a Christian blessing. Klepper’s elder stepdaughter, Brigitte, managed to emigrate to Britain via Sweden shortly before the war broke out. At the end of 1942 the younger daughter’s attempt to leave Germany for sanctuary abroad failed and she was on the verge of being deported. From a personal communication he received from Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, Klepper also realized that mixed marriages would be compulsorily dissolved and that his wife was under threat of deportation too. In the night of December 10–11, 1942, the family committed suicide with sleeping tablets and gas.
KÖPCKE, KARL-HEINZ (b. September 29, 1922, Hamburg; d. September 27, 1991, Hamburg) was a German newsreader.
KOVNER, ABBA, (b. March 14, 1918, Sevastopol; d. September 25, 1987, kibbutz Ein HaHoresh, Israel) was an Israeli writer, resistance fighter and partisan leader.
LEIBOWITZ, JOSEF (b. ?, Lithuania; d. ?). Holocaust survivor. Ephraim Frank’s right-hand man in the Munich years.
LEIBOWITZ, YESHAYAHU (b. January 29, 1903, Riga; d. August 18, 1994, Jerusalem) was an Israeli scientist and philosopher of religion.
LEVI, PRIMO (b. July 31, 1919, Turin; d. April 11, 1987, Turin) was a Jewish Italian writer and chemist. He is best known for his work as a witness and survivor of the Holocaust. In his autobiographical report If This is a Man, he recorded his experiences at Auschwitz.
MCNARNEY, JOSEPH TAGGART (b. August 28, 1893, Emporium, Pennsylvania; d. February 1, 1972, La Jolla, California) was a high-ranking U.S. Air Force officer. Between November 1945 and January 1947 he was commanding general of U.S. forces in Europe and military governor of the American occupation zone in Germany.
MÜHSAM, ERICH KURT (b. April 6, 1878, Berlin; d. July 10, 1934, Oranienburg concentration camp) was a German anarchist writer, publicist and antimilitarist. As a political activist he played a key role in establishing the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for which he was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, although under an amnesty he was freed after five. In the Weimar Republic, as a member of the Red Aid, he fought for the release of political prisoners. On the night of the Reichstag Fire he was arrested by the Nazis and murdered by S.S. guards in Oranienburg concentration camp on July 10, 1934.
NEHLHANS, ERICH (b. February 12, 1899, Berlin; d. February 15, 1950, Soviet Union) was, alongside Hans Münzner, Leo Hirsch, Leo Löwenstein, Fritz Katten and Hans Erich Fabain, a founder member the Jewish Community in Berlin, of which he was also chairman for a time.
PRIMANN, MORDECHAI, né Friedman (b. May 2, 1932, Jerusalem) was, from the 1950s, a broadcaster on the radio station “Kol Israel” (The Voice of Israel). He became very popular on account of his charming voice. Later he taught at Lifshitz College in Jerusalem. He has two daughters, one son, sixteen grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
RIESENBURGER, MARTIN (b. May 14, 1896, Berlin; d. April 14, 1965, Berlin) was a German rabbi.
RUDOLPH, WILMA (b. June 23, 1940, Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee; d. November 12, 1994, Brentwood, Tennessee) was a U.S. athlete and Olympic champion. Her achievements earned her the nickname “The Black Gazelle.”
TRUMAN, HARRY S. (b. May 8, 1884, Lamar, Missouri; d. December 26, 1972, Kansas City, Missouri) was an American Democratic Party politician and, from 1945 to 1953, the thirty-third president of the United States.
WESSEL, GERHARD (b. December 24, 1913, Neumünster; d. July 28, 2002, Pullach) was, from May 1, 1968, to December 31, 1978, president of the Federal Intelligence Service and a former lieutenant general.
ZAMARET, SHMARIA (b. October 17, 1910, Babruysk, Russian Empire, now Belarus; d. August 26, 1964, kibbutz Beit HaShita, Israel) had the codename Rudi Siegelbaum. From the start of the Second World War, he worked for the Mossad LeAliya Bet in France, Greece, Switzerland, Belgium and other countries, later becoming Ephraim Frank’s contact in France.
ZEVE, SALLY (b. 1910, Kaunas, now Lithuania; d. ?) Holocaust survivor. Between December 1945 and his sentencing by an American military court in July 1948, he was the joint owner of the Bavarian Truck Company in Munich, Barer Strasse 27 (the barracks at the Alte Pinakothek). According to Shlomo Kless, who himself worked for Bricha as an envoy from Palestine, the real purpose of the Bavarian Truck Company was to organize lorries for secretly transporting Jews out of Germany.
STEVEN UHLY is a writer and journalist born in 1964 in Cologne and is of German-Bengali descent, with roots also in Spanish culture. He has studied literature, served as the head of an institute in Brazil, and translated poetry and prose from Spanish, Portuguese, and English. He lives in Munich with his family. His book Adams Fuge was awarded the “Tukan Preis” of the city of Munich in 2011. His novel Glückskind (2012) was filmed as a prime-time production by director Michael Verhoeven for ARTE and the 1st German Channel ARD.
JAMIE BULLOCH is the translator of Timur Vermes’ Look Who’s Back, longlisted for the IMPAC award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast, which won him the Schlegel-Tieck Prize and was runner-up in the IFFP, and novels by F.
C. Delius, Jörg Fauser, Martin Suter, Katharina Hagena and Daniel Glattauer.
