A Jew Must Die
Page 2
Following these exploits with the poster and the Bladt house, Fernand Ischi and Georges Ballotte, his apprentice, write anonymous threats and send them to Jewish families around Lausanne and La Broye. Then, on Lugrin’s orders, they plan two attacks on the synagogues in Lausanne and Vevey. “We’ll send it sky-high, their tabernacle!” sneers the sinister pastor, smoothing his brow with both hands, his gesture of serene satisfaction. These attacks will never be carried out for lack of time and local accomplices. In Vevey, and Lausanne especially, the Jewish community is more substantial and better organized than in Payerne. Anyway, the anonymous letters, intimidations, telephone threats, plans to dynamite or set on fire, all these activities will be ordered and overseen by Pastor Lugrin, who will continue to provide the conspirators in Payerne with lists and maps.
To relax properly in peace from his responsibilities, Fernand Ischi very often awakens the young Annah in the middle of the night and terrorizes her, forcing her to act out sadistic scenarios.
“On your knees, Annah. Let’s pretend you’re a Jewess. On your knees, Annah. You’re a Jewess, Annah.”
“You’re completely crazy,” says Annah.
She is naked. Trembling, she obeys.
The belt whistles, biting into the girl’s back and thighs. Blood spurts. Kneeling by her, Ischi licks the blood that has flowed: “Your Jewess’s blood, Annah, a sow’s blood.”
Beyond closed frontiers, very far and very near, the Panzerdivisionen and Luftwaffe have obliterated every defence. Poland has fallen, as have Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Belgium; France is occupied; Italy is an ally; Japan has joined in the dance; now the Panzers, the black, indestructible Panzers, have been thrown against Stalin. Death to Judeo-Bolshevism! Total victory is only weeks away. A few months at most. By the end of this year, 1942, all Europe, and Russia, will be in Hitler’s grasp. Let his dominion begin. And let it be right here in Payerne that the first steps are taken towards Nazi rule in Switzerland, a dominion within his dominion, of which Gauleiter Ischi, with his party of brave men, will be the cleansing chief.
7 p.m., Monday 6 April 1942. The sun is setting in the sharp, buoyant, spring air. Ischi has taken his motorcycle and set out for the hills that dominate Payerne to the east. He stops in the hamlet of Trey. Now he is gazing at the vast plain lit by scattered sunlight. What can he be thinking, Fernand Ischi, at this melancholy moment of spring, facing this expanse bathed in mist and the hills that rise and fall to the horizon at Surpierre, to the crests of the forests by Lucens? Is he moved to the depths of his spirit by the memory of his family, good people, loving people, on whom, by committing his hideous crime, he is about to inflict the greatest sorrow of their lives? So many friends have already turned their backs on him. His anguished wife has so often begged him to abandon his plan. And his children... their entire future. But at this word “future” Ischi feels a surge of energy; he baulks, gets a grip on himself and immediately reproaches himself with his moment of weakness. The future is the German victory. The future is the Northern Province with him as its Prefect, its unchallenged, efficient Gauleiter. The future is Adolf Hitler and the triumph of the New Order over a Europe rid of its vermin and united into a Great Reich. So what of these small hills, with these little evening vapours that soon dissolve from their outer edges? With a wave of his hand he dispels these old daydreams like the mists, gets back on his motorcycle, a rugged hero, and pays a visit to young Annah, her buttocks striped by the lashes from a belt, in the one-room apartment on Rue des Granges lent him by the waitress in the Winkelried.
Note:
Subsequently, living abroad in occupied France from 1941 to 1944, Georges Oltramare became a newsreader and presenter on the Nazi-controlled Radio-Paris. He had a regular spot under the name Dieudonné.
5
In 1942 several Jewish families are living in Payerne, including the Bladts, the Gunzburgers, who sell cloth and work clothes, and the Fernand Blochs, who have brought their parents from Alsace to live with them. Mme Bloch has to suffer the sarcastic, threatening remarks of the official in the municipal offices whenever their residence permit has to be renewed. Very often the Bloch’s son is insulted and set upon on his way home from school. Stones are thrown at him; he is struck with tree branches. “Filthy Yid,” shout the boys, whose efforts their parents continue with jeers and blows. Terrified, young Bloch goes to earth at home and refuses to return to school.
Meanwhile Pastor Lugrin will convince Ischi and his Nazis to act. The time is ripe for the band to set an example for Switzerland and for the Jewish parasites on its soil. So a really representative Jew must be chosen without delay, one highly guilty of filthy Jewishness, and disposed of in some spectacular manner. Threats and warnings. A good house-cleaning. Purification. A means to hasten the final solution. Sieg heil!
Only the victim is lacking. One of the Yids in Payenne? Jean Bladt tops the list. Anyway, like all these parasites, his turn will come. And the sooner the better. Avenches? That would create less of a sensation than Payerne, where they must strike hard, for it is to be the seat of the new government.
In the end the heinous choice falls on the devout, well-to-do Arthur Bloch, a Jewish cattle-dealer from Berne, well known to the farmers and butchers throughout the area, making him an obvious and exemplary victim. The next livestock fair will take place in Payerne on Thursday 16 April. Arthur Bloch will attend. That is where they must act. That will be the day to set a resounding example.
The idea comes from the Marmier brothers and their farmhand, Fritz Joss. But who are the Marmier brothers? In the garage, a disreputable group has quickly formed around Gauleiter Fernand, and among its members are two ruined small farmers, the brothers Max and Robert Marmier, and their burly farmhand Fritz Joss, a taciturn, strapping fellow from Berne, who blindly follows his masters. Fritz Joss is your perfect henchman, a hard, tireless worker. The Marmier brothers managed their farm poorly. A ferment of vengeance. They turned to carting, offering to convey provisions between farms, markets and the recently constructed barracks at the military airport, three miles outside town towards Grandcour. Business has improved somewhat over the past two or three years, but the Marmiers cannot get over the loss of their farms and fields. Still, they have bought a rural, a small farm building, in Payerne itself, on the old Rue-à-Thomas. As we shall see, these very modest premises will very soon take on a sordid significance in this story — a story infused with the poisonous breath of Pastor Philippe Lugrin, the evil genius of the Movement, who perpetually adds new names to the list of Jews to be terrorized, who regularly summons Fernand Ischi to his office in Prilly to dictate to him orders from the SNM, who, on three long evenings each week, harangues and indoctrinates the Movement’s members and sympathizers in Payerne and around, and who acts as liaison with the German Legation.
On Saturday 4 April, he summons Fernand Ischi to Prilly. “The time has come,” Lugrin tells him. “We can’t wait any longer. Heil Hitler!”
Elated, as he is on each of his visits to Prilly, Fernand Ischi looks at the wall with its Nazi trophies, decorations and large portrait of Hitler in his brown uniform, Iron Cross on his chest, wearing the Nazi armband. On the wall and on the bookshelves he can see the photos of Rosenberg, the theoretician of Nazism, Himmler, Albert Speer, Dr Josef Goebbels and the indomitable Riefenstahl. To beguile him, the pastor invites him to sit opposite him in his study shaded by a lime tree with fresh green leaves, offers him a packet of Laurens Reds, Ischi’s favourite cigarettes, and opens a bottle of Rhine wine, a gift from the German Legation. Lugrin approves the choice of Arthur Bloch. He smooths his forehead with the long, slim fingers of both hands, and smiles at Ischi, who is on edge. “Good plan,” he says flatteringly. “Clever strategy. In Payerne everyone knows Arthur Bloch. A household name! And before long the town’s precious sacrificial victim!”
Fernand Ischi returns home from Prilly highly elated and brimming with pride. At last, the proof expected of him. A Jew, as an example. Recognition. Now there wi
ll be no mistake. Time for the Jewish community in Switzerland to realize what awaits it. And just at the right moment, you might say. On 16 April Arthur Bloch is disposed of. Adolf Hitler’s birthday falls on 20 April. They can be sure the German Legation will announce the glad news to the Führer that very day; he’ll remember the gift when the New Order, now so close at hand, arrives.
6
Arthur Bloch is sixty. Wide mouth, thick lips, round cheeks and a high forehead surmounted by a head of smooth hair, still black and shining, neatly parted on the left. Medium height, stoutish, always soberly dressed with a waistcoat and black tie, his suit jacket buttoned all the way. He has his clothes made by M. Isaac Bronstein, a tailor in the capital, so that he can have many inside pockets in his jackets and overcoats. Not liking to be burdened with an attaché case or briefcase, he always carries the large banknotes needed for his purchases tucked in his wallet. A watch chain bare of trinkets lies across his stomach.
Deaf in his left ear, Arthur Bloch bends his head when in company to catch the conversation. Often has a Sonotone hearing aid in his left ear. Invariably wears a black or very dark grey felt hat, round in shape, and rarely ventures out without his willow walking stick gripped in a fist that gleams with sweat, for when he is buying he has the habit of prodding and poking the animals in the ribs and hindquarters with his stick in order to judge them better.
Arthur Bloch was born in 1882 in Aarberg, Canton of Berne, the only boy in the family and elder brother to four girls. Arthur Bloch was nine when his father died in 1891. His mother sent him to learn the language at the French Institute; after that he did his military service in Lucerne and Thun, in the cavalry - horses already. In 1914, when war broke out, he served in the federal army, in the dragoons. It was then he lost the hearing in one ear.
In 1916, aged thirty-four, he took over the cattle dealership belonging to his uncle, Jakob Weil. The business prospered. In 1917 he married Myria Dreyfus, a girl from Zurich, and the couple set up house in Berne, at 51 Monbijoustrasse, an elegant street not far from the railway station. The Blochs were still living there in 1942.
Their first child died in infancy. Then, in December 1921, Liliane Désirée came into the world, and in March 1925, her younger sister, Éveline Marlise.
Arthur Bloch was a kind, generous, even-tempered man. Rabbi Messinger would speak of his calm manner. And Georges Brunschwig, president of the Jewish community in Berne, would recall Arthur Bloch’s attachment to Switzerland, his father having become a citizen of the country and of the Canton of Berne at Radelfingen, near Aarberg, in 1872.
A cattle-dealer for more than twenty-five years, Arthur Bloch is a familiar figure at livestock markets in La Broye and makes regular business trips to Oron and Payerne - but it is Payerne he prefers, for he is personally acquainted there with all the farmers and butchers who attend on such occasions.
Arthur Bloch usually covers the short distance between Monbijoustrasse and the railway station on foot, stepping out to the rhythmic tap of his stick. He gets into the first train to La Broye, which reaches Payerne via Avenches. He likes this ninety-minute trip through the stretches of meadows and valleys still filled with mist in the early-morning light.
Arrival in Payerne at 6:18. Chestnuts in bloom, silken hills, bright weather, all the more beautiful since threatened from within and without. But Arthur Bloch is unaware of the danger. Arthur Bloch does not sense it.
At the fair, purchases are settled in cash, in full. No complications, nothing on paper. Merely a handshake. Arthur Bloch’s wallet is heavy with the large notes with which he is going to pay for the red cows and bullocks he will pick out on the square. He is respected, he pays well; he willingly downs the glass of white wine poured for him at the fair itself or in the cowshed, sealing the deal and showing that the door is open to future transactions. He will also sit at a table in the cafés where his customers are drinking: the Vente, the Croix-Blanche, the Cerf, the Lion d’Or. He knows a lot of folk, buys his round and jots down new appointments. Flushed faces, sweaty brows, big hands, the smoke of Fivaz cigars and Fribourg pipes, waistcoats buttoned over wallets swollen by excellent deals. And all these voices with their heavy accent, exclamations and cries, excited and heated after several hours spent drinking Belletaz wine.
Afterwards Arthur Bloch takes the train back to Berne, and returns home, at peace with himself, to the house on Monbijoustrasse, where Myria has prepared an evening meal that the couple consumes in tranquillity, obedient to a law that Arthur never breaks.
7
At dawn on Thursday 16 April it is chilly; a light breeze is blowing on Payerne. By seven o’clock the farmers have tethered their beasts on Market Square to the wide metal railings that clank whenever the cows, bullocks and bulls pull on their halters and chains. Armed with metal shovels and large willow brooms, the stable lads collect the dung and throw it into the cart parked for the purpose at the railway-station end of the square, beside the train track, beneath the chestnut trees already in full leaf.
The animals’ coats, hindquarters and nostrils steam in the cold air. The cattle low and bellow. A small herd is unloaded from a red-painted wagon, swelling the already considerable number of animals tied up there - almost 160 head in all, for this is the first market of the year and no one wants to miss it.
On this Thursday 16 April 1942, Arthur Bloch arrives on Market Square at 8 a.m. He greets his acquaintances cheerily and chats with Thévoz from Missy, Avit Godel from Domdidier, Bruder the butcher and Bosset, Jules Brasey and, of course, Losey, from Sévaz. He spends some time looking at the animals brought by Émile Chassot from Villaz-Saint-Pierre, a splendid pair of red bullocks with white horns and glossy coats; their bluish nostrils are moist; they are well shaped in the neck, broad in the belly, with full haunches, promising meat of high quality. Twenty-five years as a cattle-dealer have not exhausted Arthur Bloch’s curiosity. He likes to see, feel, smell and prod the animals he is buying in order to resell, sometimes coming across them at other fairs. With the point of his stick he presses on the flank of one of the animals from Villaz-Saint-Pierre, reaches out a hand, moves back to feel its haunch and gently strokes its neck... Arthur Bloch is deliberate, never peremptory or imperious. Unruffled and perspicacious, he displays the same wise caution as the local farmers. Rubbing shoulders with them, despite his difference he has long felt at one with them, that they esteem and respect him.
Something Arthur Bloch has failed to notice, too busy examining and buying bullocks from Godel, Chassot, Jules Brasey and Losey from Sévaz, is that for the past half-hour a silent little group of men in leather jackets, with blank expressions, are furtively moving around the fair without ever losing him from view. At first they kept their distance, but now they have come closer and are watching him.
They are the band from the garage. The Nazis of Ischi’s Party: Ischi himself, the ringleader, the apprentice Georges Ballotte, the two Marmiers, Max and Robert, and the brawny farmhand, Fritz Joss.
But the conspirators know they have been noticed, and become uneasy.
“We’re too obvious,” says Ischi. “We stand out too much. I’m going back to the garage. Diversion. Max, you go and have a drink to see what they’re saying in the cafés. Robert, with Ballotte and Fritz, you bring the Yid to Rue-à-Thomas, and dispatch him there. I’ll join you with the orders.”
This leaves Robert Marmier, the apprentice, and Fritz Joss, the farmhand. Suddenly Robert makes up his mind and speaks to Arthur Bloch just as he is putting his hand in his wallet to pay for the heifer he has just bought from Cherbuin of Avenches.
“Monsieur Bloch, if you don’t mind...”
But Arthur Bloch chats with Cherbuin, then Brasey and then Losey. He goes off with them to look at some other animals, haggles, prods with his stick. Time is passing. It is a quarter to ten. It is beginning to grow hot on Market Square; the three plotters are sweating.
“This time, here goes,” says Robert.
Again they approach Arthur Bloch.
Then he continues at the top of his lungs: “M. Bloch, my brother has a cow to sell. It’s on Rue-à-Thomas, in the cowshed just round the corner.”
“Rue-à-Thomas,” repeats Arthur Bloch, suspecting nothing.
He is merely surprised that the animal is not on the square with the others.
“My brother didn’t have time to bring her. He was sick this morning. But the animal’s in good health! She’s a grand beast, Monsieur Bloch. Healthy. A good milker. And my brother wants to sell her.”
Arthur Bloch is tempted. He agrees. The two men set off under the now very warm sun; Ballotte joins them, and the farmhand completes the group.
8
They reach Rue-à-Thomas. On the way, no one has spoken. Arthur Bloch still suspects nothing. Is he tired? Jaded after the morning’s good business? It seems surprising that such a level-headed man should be so lacking in discernment towards Robert Marmier, a failed, degenerate farmer, or the farmhand with his uncouth features, and especially young Ballotte, whose loutish exterior should have made him uneasy. But there is no logic in death. When he enters the cowshed on Rue-à-Thomas, Arthur Bloch is unaware, fails to sense, that the most horrible butchery awaits him.