The Odessa File

by Forsyth, Frederick

  There was one old woman who had foreseen this and stood in the front rank. She must have been close to sixty-five, but in an effort to stay alive she had put on high-heeled shoes, a pair of black silk stockings, a short skirt even above her knees and a saucy hat. She had rouged her cheeks, powdered her face and painted her lips carmine. In fact she would have stood out among any group of ghetto prisoners, but she thought she might be able to pass for a young girl.

  Reaching her as he walked by, Roschmann stopped, stared and looked again. Then a grin of joy spread over his face.

  ‘Well, what have we here!’ he cried, pointing to her with his quirt to draw the attention of his comrades in the centre of the square, guarding the hundred already chosen. ‘Don’t you want a little ride to Dunamunde, young lady?’

  Trembling with fear, the old woman whispered, ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And how old are you then?’ boomed Roschmann as his SS friends began to giggle. ‘Seventeen, twenty?’

  The old woman’s knobbly knees began to tremble.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she whispered.

  ‘How marvellous,’ cried Roschmann. ‘Well, I always like a pretty girl. Come out into the centre so we can all admire your youth and beauty.’

  So saying he grabbed her by the arm and hustled her towards the centre of Tin Square. Once there, he stood her out in the open and said, ‘Well now, little lady, since you’re so young and pretty, perhaps you’d like to dance for us, eh?’

  She stood there, shivering in the bitter wind, shaking with fear as well. She whispered something we could not hear.

  ‘What’s that?’ shouted Roschmann. ‘You can’t dance? Oh, I’m sure a nice young thing like you can dance, can’t you?’

  His cronies of the German SS were laughing fit to bust. The Latvians could not understand, but started to grin. The old woman shook her head. Roschmann’s smile vanished.

  ‘Dance,’ he snarled.

  She made a few little shuffling movements, then stopped. Roschmann drew his Lüger, eased back the hammer and fired it into the sand an inch from her feet. She jumped a foot in the air from fright.

  ‘Dance … dance … dance for us, you hideous Jewish bitch,’ he shouted, firing a bullet into the sand beneath her feet each time he said ‘Dance’.

  Smacking in one spare magazine after another until he had used up the three in his pouch, he made her dance for half an hour, leaping ever higher and higher, her skirts flying round her hips with each jump, until at last she fell to the sand unable to rise whether she lived or died. Roschmann fired his last three slugs into the sand in front of her face, blasting the sand up into her eyes. Between the crash of each shot came the old woman’s rattling wheeze that could be heard across the parade square.

  When he had no more ammunition left he shouted ‘Dance’ again and slammed his jackboot into her belly. All this had happened in complete silence from us, until the man next to me started to pray. He was a Hassid, small and bearded, still wearing the rags of his long black coat; despite the cold which forced most of us to wear ear-muffs on our caps, he had the broad-brimmed hat of his sect. He began to recite the Shema, over and over again, in a quavering voice that grew steadily louder. Knowing that Roschmann was in his most vicious mood, I too began to pray, silently, that the Hassid would be quiet. But he would not.

  ‘Hear O Israel …’

  ‘Shut up,’ I hissed out of the corner of my mouth.

  ‘Adonai elohenu … the Lord is our God …’

  ‘Will you be quiet. You’ll get us all killed.’

  ‘The Lord is One … Adonai Eha-a-ad.’

  Like a cantor he drew out the last syllable in the traditional way, as Rabbi Akiva had done as he died in the amphitheatre at Caesarea on the orders of Tinius Rufus. It was just at that moment that Roschmann stopped screaming at the old woman. He lifted his head like an animal scenting the wind and turned towards us. As I stood a head taller than the Hassid, he looked at me.

  ‘Who was that talking?’ he screamed, striding towards me across the sand. ‘You … step out of line.’ There was no doubt he was pointing at me. I thought, ‘This is the end then. So what? It doesn’t matter, it had to happen, now or some other time.’ I stepped forward as he arrived in front of me.

  He did not say anything, but his face was twitching like a maniac. Then it relaxed and he gave his quiet, wolfish smile that struck terror into everyone in the ghetto, even the Latvian SS men.

  His hand moved so quickly no one could see it. I felt only a sort of thump down the left side of my face, simultaneous with a tremendous bang as if a bomb had gone off next to my ear-drums. Then the quite distinct but detached feeling of my own skin splitting like rotten calico from temple to mouth. Even before it had started to bleed, Roschmann’s hand moved again, the other way this time, and his quirt ripped open the other side of my face with the same loud bang in the ear and the feeling of something tearing. It was a two-foot quirt, sprung with whippy steel core at the handle end, the remaining foot-length being of plaited leather thongs without the core, and when drawn across and down the human skin at the same time the plaiting could split the hide like tissue paper. I had seen it done.

  Within a matter of seconds I felt the trickle of warm blood beginning to flow down the front of my jacket, dripping off my chin in two little red fountains. Roschmann swung away from me, then back, pointing to the old woman still sobbing in the centre of the square.

  ‘Pick up that old hag and take her to the van,’ he barked.

  And so, a few minutes ahead of the arrival of the other hundred victims, I picked up the old woman and carried her down Little Hill Street to the gate and the waiting van, pouring blood on to her from my chin. I set her down in the back of the van and made to leave her there. As I did so she gripped my wrist in withered fingers, with a strength I would not have thought she still possessed. She pulled me down towards her, squatting on the floor of the death-van, and with a small cambric handkerchief that must have come from better days staunched some of the still flowing blood.

  She looked up at me from a face streaked with mascara, rouge, tears and sand, but with dark eyes bright as stars.

  ‘Jew, my son,’ she hissed, ‘you must live. Swear to me that you will live. Swear to me you will get out of this place alive. You must live, so that you can tell them, them outside in the other world, what happened to our people here. Promise me, swear it by Sefer Torah.’

  And so I swore that I would live, somehow, no matter what the cost. Then she let me go. I stumbled back down the road into the ghetto, and halfway down I fainted …

  Shortly after returning to work I made two decisions. One was to keep a secret diary, nightly tattooing words and dates with a pin and black ink into the skin of my feet and legs, so that one day I would be able to transcribe all that had happened in Riga, and give precise evidence against those responsible.

  The second decision was to become a Kapo, a member of the Jewish police.

  The decision was hard, for these were men who herded their fellow Jews to work and back, and often to the place of execution. Moreover, they carried a pickaxe handle and occasionally, when under the eye of a German SS officer, used them liberally to beat their fellow Jews to work harder. Nevertheless, on 1st April, 1942, I went to the chief of the Kapos and volunteered, thus becoming an outcast from the company of my fellow Jews. There was always room for an extra Kapo, for despite the better rations, living conditions and release from slave labour, very few agreed to become one …

  I should here describe the method of execution of those unfit for labour, for in this manner between 70,000 and 80,000 Jews were exterminated under the orders of Eduard Roschmann at Riga. When the cattle train arrived at the station with a new consignment of prisoners, usually about 5000 strong, there were always close to a thousand already dead from the journey. Only occasionally was it as low as a few hundred, scattered between fifty cars.

  When the new arrivals were lined up on Tin Square the selections for extermination too
k place, not merely among the new arrivals but among us all. That was the point of the head-count each morning and evening. Among the new arrivals those weak or frail, old or diseased, most of the women and almost all the children, were singled out as being unfit for work. These were set on one side. The remainder were then counted. If they totalled 2000, then 2000 of the existing inmates were also picked out, so that 5000 had arrived and 5000 went to execution hill. That way there was no overcrowding. A man might survive six months of slave labour, seldom more, then, when his health was reduced to ruins, Roschmann’s quirt would tap him on the chest one day and he would go to join the ranks of the dead … At first these victims were marched in column to a forest outside the town. The Latvians called it Bickernicker Forest, and the Germans renamed it the Hochwald or High Forest. Here, in clearings between the pines, enormous open ditches had been dug by the Riga Jews before they died. And here the Latvian SS guards, under the eye and orders of Eduard Roschmann, mowed them down so that they fell into the ditches. The remaining Riga Jews then filled in enough earth to cover the bodies, adding one more layer of corpses to those underneath until the ditch was full. Then a new one was started.

  From the ghetto we could hear the chattering of the machine guns when each new consignment was liquidated, and watch Roschmann riding back down the hill and through the ghetto gates in his open car when it was over …

  After I became a Kapo all social contact between me and the other internees ceased. There was no point in explaining why I had done it, that one Kapo more or less would make no difference, not increasing the death toll by the single digit; but that one single surviving witness might make all the difference, not to save the Jews of Germany, but to avenge them. This at least was the argument I repeated to myself, but was it the real reason? Or was I just afraid to die? Whatever it was, fear soon ceased to be a factor, for in August that year something happened that caused my soul to die inside my body, leaving only the husk struggling to survive …

  In July 1942 a big new transport of Austrian Jews came through from Vienna. Apparently they were marked without exception for ‘special treatment’, for the entire shipment never came to the ghetto. We did not see them, for they were all marched from the station to High Forest and machine-gunned. Later that evening down the hill rolled four lorries full of clothes, which were brought to the Tin Square for sorting. They made a mound as big as a house until they were sorted out into piles of shoes, socks, underpants, trousers, dresses, jackets, shaving brushes, spectacles, dentures, wedding rings, signet rings, caps and so forth.

  Of course, this was standard procedure for executed transports. All those killed on execution hill were stripped at the graveside and their effects brought down later. These were then sorted and sent back to the Reich. The gold, silver and jewellery was taken in charge by Roschmann personally …

  In August 1942 there was another transport from Theresienstadt, a camp in Bohemia where tens of thousands of German and Austrian Jews were held before being sent eastwards to extermination. I was standing to one side of the Tin Square, watching Roschmann as he went round making his selections. The new arrivals were already shaved bald, which had been done at their previous camp, and it was not easy to tell the men from the women, except for the shift dresses the women mainly wore. There was one woman across the other side of the square who caught my attention. There was something about her cast of features that rang a bell in my mind, although she was emaciated, thin as a rake and coughing continuously.

  Arriving opposite her, Roschmann tapped her on the chest and passed on. The Latvians following him at once, seized her arms and pushed her out of line to join the others in the centre of the square. There were many from that transport who were not work-fit and the list of selections was long. That meant fewer of us would be selected to make up the numbers, though for me the question was academic. As a Kapo I wore an armband and carried a club, and the extra food rations had increased my strength a little. Although Roschmann had seen my face, he did not seem to remember it. He had slashed so many across the face that one more or less would not attract his attention.

  Most of those selected that summer evening were formed into a column and marched to the ghetto gate by the Kapos. The column was then taken over by the Latvians for the last four miles to High Forest and death.

  But as there was a gassing van standing by also at the gates, a group of about a hundred of the frailest of the selected ones was detached from the crowd. I was about to escort the other condemned men and women to the gates when SS Lieutenant Krause pointed to four or five of the Kapos. ‘You lot,’ he shouted, ‘take these to the Dunamunde convoy.’

  After the others had left we five escorted the last hundred, mainly limping, crawling or coughing, to the gates where the van waited. The thin woman was among them, her chest racked by tuberculosis. She knew where she was going, they all did, but like the rest she stumbled with resigned obedience to the rear of the van. She was too weak to get up, for the tailboard was high off the ground, so she turned to me for help. We stood and looked at each other in stunned amazement.

  Behind me I heard somebody approach, and the other two Kapos at the tailboard straightened to attention, scraping their caps off with one hand. Realising it must be an SS officer, I did the same. The woman just stared at me unblinking. The man behind me came forward. It was Captain Roschmann. He nodded to the other two Kapos to carry on, and stared at me with those pale blue eyes. I thought it could only mean I would be flogged that evening for being slow to take my cap off.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Tauber, Herr Captain,’ I said, still ramrod at attention.

  ‘Well, Tauber, you seem to be a bit slow. Do you think we ought to liven you up a little this evening?’

  There was no point in saying anything. The sentence was passed. Roschmann’s eyes flickered to the woman, narrowed as if suspecting something, then his slow wolfish smile spread across his face.

  ‘Do you know this woman?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Herr Captain,’ I answered.

  ‘Who is she?’ he asked. I could not reply. My mouth was gummed together as if by glue.

  ‘Is she your wife?’ he went on. I nodded dumbly. He grinned even wider.

  ‘Well, now my dear Tauber, where are your manners? Help the lady up into the van.’

  I still stood there, unable to move. He put his face closer to mine and whispered, ‘You have ten seconds to pack her in. Then you go yourself.’

  Slowly I held out my arm and Esther leaned upon it. With this assistance she climbed into the van. The other two Kapos waited to slam shut the doors. When she was up she looked down at me, and two tears came, one from each eye, and rolled down her cheeks. She did not say anything to me, we never spoke throughout. Then the doors were slammed shut and the van rolled away. The last thing I saw were her eyes looking at me.

  I have spent twenty years trying to understand the look in her eyes. Was it love or hatred, contempt or pity, bewilderment or understanding? I shall never know.

  When the van had gone Roschmann turned to me, still grinning. ‘You may go on living, until it suits us to finish you off, Tauber,’ he said, ‘but you are dead as from now.’

  And he was right. That was the day my soul died inside me. It was August 29th, 1942.

  After August that year I became a robot. Nothing mattered any more. There was no feeling of cold nor of pain, no sensation of any kind at all. I watched the brutalities of Roschmann and his fellow SS without batting an eyelid. I was inured to everything that can touch the human spirit and most things that can touch the body. I just noted everything, each tiny detail, filing them away in my mind or pricking the dates into the skin of my legs. The transports came, marched to execution hill or to the vans, died and were buried. Sometimes I looked into their eyes as they went, walking beside them to the gates of the ghetto with my armband and club. It reminded me of a poem I had once read by an English poet, which described how an ancient marin
er, condemned to live, had looked into the eyes of his crew-mates as they died of thirst, and read the curse in them. But for me there was no curse, for I was immune even to the feeling of guilt. That was to come years later. There was only the emptiness of a dead man still walking upright …

  Peter Miller read on late into the night. The effect of the narration of the atrocities on him was at once monotonous and mesmeric. Several times he sat back in his chair and breathed deeply for a few minutes to regain his calm. Then he read on.

  Once, close to midnight, he laid the book down and made more coffee. He stood at the window before drawing the curtains, looking down into the street. Further down the road the brilliant neon lights of the Café Cherie blazed across the Steindamm, and he saw one of the part-time girls who frequent it to supplement their incomes emerge on the arm of a business man. They disappeared into a pension a little further down, where the business man would be relieved of a hundred marks for half an hour of copulation.

  Miller pulled the curtains across, finished his coffee and returned to Salomon Tauber’s diary.

  In the autumn of 1943 the order came through from Berlin to dig up the tens of thousands of corpses in the High Forest and destroy them more permanently, either with fire or quicklime. The job was easier said than done, with winter coming on and the ground about to freeze hard. It put Roschmann in a foul temper for days, but the administrative details of carrying out the order kept him busy enough to stay away from us.

  Day after day the newly formed labour squads were seen marching up the hill into the forest with their pick-axes and shovels, and day after day the columns of black smoke rose above the forest. For fuel they used the pines of the forest, but largely decomposed bodies do not burn easily, so the job was slow. Eventually they switched to quicklime, covered each layer of corpses with it and in the spring of 1944, when the earth softened, filled them in.1

  The gangs who did the work were not from the ghetto. They were totally isolated from all other human contact. They were Jewish, but were kept imprisoned in one of the worst camps in the neighbourhood, Salas Pils, where they were later exterminated by being given no food at all until they died of starvation, despite the cannibalism to which many resorted …