"Nevertheless, there may be a way to reach him," Shibata said to the men seated anxiously around him. "There is a Japanese woman here in Shanghai who is a member of the nobility, not far removed, it is said, from the imperial family. She knows the head of the kempeitai. But what is most important about this woman is, she is very, very close friends with a Jewish man, Fritz Brahn. If you could inform this Fritz Brahn, of the extermination plan, perhaps he could try, through that woman, to reach the kempeitai chief."
It was a dangerous course to follow. No one knew Brahn very well, and he would be one more potential leak, and the leaders were trying to avoid a general panic. But it was a chance they would have to take.
Feeling he had done all he could and fearing the Speelman house might be under surveillance, Shibata left before the others, but not until each of the Jews there had thanked him emotionally for his warning and had promised him that its source would never be revealed.
After Shibata left, the seven continued to sit in Michael Speelman's living room. The difficult world outside now threatened to become devastating.
"There is one other person who might be able to help us," Boris Topas said, "Dr. Abraham Cohn."
His suggestion was met with approval but not enthusiasm. All seven men knew of Cohn, but each of them mistrusted him.
When Topas spoke with Cohn the next day, he discovered to his amazement that the doctor knew about the extermination plans.
Even in cosmopolitan Shanghai, Abraham Cohn was unusual. The fellow was unquestionably Caucasian: a tall, broad-shouldered Rumanian with fair skin, black wavy hair and handsome features. Also unquestionably, he was a Jew. But he was more. Cohn had been raised, from the age of six, in Nagasaki, long after the foreign community had moved from that city to Yokohama. Necessarily, he had had to study for his bar mitzvah under a Jesuit Hebrew scholar, but other than that his education had been entirely Japanese - kindergarten through medical school. Thus in many ways, the thirty-four-year-old Cohn was totally fluent in every aspect of Japanese culture. He was an award-winning master of the haiku poetic form and a triple-black-belt karate expert.
Cohn's karate skills had been put to an ironic use during the last of his Nagasaki days. The violently anti-Semitic White Russian General Gregorii Semonov had moved to that city after his defeat by the Communists in 1922. Late one night in the narrow dark streets of the city, Semonov was attacked by two Russians who blamed him personally for the Communist victory. Cohn, walking home down a nearby street, heard the commotion and rushed to prevent what was clearly about to be a violent murder. After both the assailants were on the ground, unconscious, Cohn took the victim to the hospital - and only there learned who he had saved. Semonov's views of Jews remained unchanged by the incident, but he considered himself to be a man of honor. "You have without doubt, saved my life tonight," he said. "If ever I or any of my family can help you, we will consider it an honor to repay the debt." At the time, Cohn shrugged off the proffered thanks, but the incident would have repercussions years later.
Cohn was entirely too Japanese to be trusted by Topas or any of the other Jews: all too often they couldn't understand him, verbally or philosophically. And yet, they were greatly in need of, under these circumstances, those traits of his that they mistrusted. Topas was not happy to be meeting with him but he was very curious as to how the doctor had learned of the extermination plans.
Abraham Cohn had been practicing as a physician in Shanghai since his arrival from Hankow in 1939. He was popular among all the refugees and well liked also by many of the port's bar girls whose unique problems he treated with discretion for low fees. One evening, as he told Topas, he had been having a drink at the La Conga bar when a White Russian waitress named Vera approached him.
"There are some German soldiers at my table," she had whispered. "They are talking about the most horrible plans for the Jews here!"
Cohn had asked her a few questions, realized how serious this might be and asked her to keep the soldiers drunk and occupied for a while. Audaciously, he then went next door to the hotel where the Germans were staying, talked the Japanese desk clerk into giving him their key and went upstairs to search their room. Neither the Germans nor the waitress had been exaggerating: Laid out on the bed were plans, charts and maps for "dealing with" the entire Jewish population of Shanghai. Cohn touched nothing. He walked out, went downstairs, signalled Vera that he had finished and went home.
This much of the story Cohn related to Topas. The rest, he did not.
The following morning, Cohn went to visit one of his former classmates from Nagasaki, a Mr. Akiyama, who was now in the Police Department in Shanghai. Traditionally, such early friendships remain for life: without hesitation, Akiyama agreed to arrange for Dr. Cohn to meet with the director of refugee affairs, Tsutomu Kubota.
The two men met a few days later in Kubota's office. The director, as was his custom, had called in an interpreter before his foreign visitor arrived. When his secretary knocked on the door and ushered in the foreigner, Kubota bowed perfunctorily and waited for an incomprehensible stream of words to begin.
To his amazement the foreigner began speaking Japanese. Not only the right words but the right forms, with the right gestures. Politely hiding his surprise, Kubota asked his visitor to be seated. After a few minutes, he dismissed the interpreter. After half an hour, he rang for his secretary and cancelled the meetings he had called for the rest of the afternoon. This foreigner was a godsend! He knew Japan as well as any well-educated Japanese; and more important, he knew what had always been a total mystery to Kubota, the whys and wherefores of Western culture.
Satisfied with the impression he had obviously made, Cohn spoke calmly and casually about matters of no particular importance. All he wanted from this first meeting was to establish a relationship but Kubota was willing to waive the normal courtesies when he saw an opportunity.
"Would you be willing to act as our agent among the foreign community?" the Japanese asked Cohn. "To help keep us informed of what is going on, particularly among the Jews?"
There was a moment of silence.
"No," Cohn said clearly, "I will not do that."
"But why?" Kubota asked, surprised. "Japan is your home, you have said as much - and Japan is in control here now."
"Japan is my home," Cohn agreed. "But the Jews are my people. I will help both. But I will not help either side against the other."
Another silence.
"You are a Jew?"
Kubota was dumbfounded. He was one of the leading experts on Jews in Japan. He had studied Jews for years. He had read scores of books, written dozens of articles, given many, many lectures on Jews . . . but he had never met a Jew before.
Seizing the opportunity of Kubota's silence, Cohn embarked on the strategy he already had outlined in his mind.
"It should not surprise you too much, Kubota-san. No doubt, you are familiar with the theory that the Japanese and the Jews were at one time closely related?" Cohn happened to believe in the theory of the common origin of the Japanese and the Jews.
Kubota needed no briefing on the theory that the ten lost tribes of Israel had wandered across Asia as far as Japan, intermarried with the Japanese and mixed in their culture as well as their blood. Certainly, this was a most logical way of accounting for the wealth of little details that the traditional Shinto religion shared with ancient Judaism.
The theory was also, for the purposes of both Cohn and Kubota a mutually acceptable point of interest. Before he left the Japanese official's office, the physician promised to stop by the next morning at eight with a book on the subject. Not a word had been said about the pogrom - an entirely proper Japanese way of beginning a serious discussion of it.
Cohn's relationship with Kubota developed slowly. It was not till the third or fourth meeting (always at eight in the morning) that Cohn mentioned, in passing only, that he had been distressed at the recent flurry of strongly anti-Semitic newspaper articles appearing in Shanghai. Despi
sing any group of people was not part of the Japanese way of thinking he said, so he believed there must be a foreign influence working on the Japanese.
Kubota did not immediately reply. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest and looked steadily at Cohn. "Do you know who I am?" he asked.
"You are the director of refugee affairs for Shanghai."
"Yes. And that is no accident, Cohn-san. For nearly twenty years I have been engaged in studying the Jewish conspiracy in the world. I have written for journals devoted entirely to the Jew race. I have given lectures at the War College on Jews and Jewishness. I have shared in panel discussions and seminars about Jews so often I have lost count. But still, I was not the government's first choice for this position. First choice was General Shioden, now a member of the Diet. But, as we know, 'the frog that opens his mouth reveals his whole body."
Cohn smiled at the well-known Zen proverb.
"Shioden was such a blatant anti-Jew and his views were so well known, he was thought to be too obvious for the job. So, here I am."
"You are an 'expert,' Kubota-san, and yet you didn't recognize that my name is the oldest and most 'Jewish' Jewish name in the world?" Cohn said mildly.
"You have been a problem to me from the start, Cohn-san. To be candid, I like you; I find you interesting. But I don't know that I can trust you."
"I am very trustworthy," Cohn said, accepting a cigarette from the proffered pack.
Kubota nodded noncommittally.
"Even my 'sworn enemies' will tell you so. Isn't Semonov one of the strongest anti-Semites in Shanghai? Semonov? Ask Semonov about me. Even he will tell you. . . ."
Kubota snorted with disbelief. The Semonov now in Shanghai was the son of the famous general. Kubota himself had served under General Semonov in the Siberian campaign, and he knew how he felt about Jews. "Semonov is like his father: he has no use for any of you! He'd see you all dead very happily."
"Nevertheless, Kubota-san, ask him," Cohn said. "See what he says."
At their next meeting, Kubota made no reference to Semonov; but he looked at Cohn through new eyes. Semonov had kept the promise his father had made so many years before.
In the same period that he was meeting with Kubota, Cohn was also meeting regularly with Topas. Their mutual distrust did not diminish over time, however Cohn's aloofness - and his disdain for the Jews' lack of understanding of the Japanese position and national personality - only grew. At Cohn's request, Topas had promised to include him at all meetings of the other leaders. In fact, Topas did not. And for his part, Cohn never spoke openly of his discussions with Kubota. By nature, he was a loner. In this crucial situation, the last thing he needed was to have to carry a bunch of clumsy foreigners on his coattails.
Weeks passed. The Hebrew month slipped from Av into Elul. Rosh Hashanah was only twenty-nine days away. Nothing had been heard from General Matsui in Nanking. From Dr. Kaufman in Harbin came a promise that he would try to exert his influence in Tokyo. Even more promising, though, was the news that Fritz Brahn, the Jew with the aristocratic girl friend, had been granted an appointment to meet with the chief of the kempeitai.
Brahn was carefully coached on what to say. He should not try to do too much. He should merely sound out the kempeitai chief. He should express the concern of the Jewish community at the sudden barrage of anti-Semitic articles - untrue, defamatory, totally out of keeping with the Japanese ideals of brotherhood which had been appearing in the Chinese press for the past few weeks. He should impress upon the chief that the Jews in Shanghai were loyal members of the community and that they were not opposed to the Japanese. Definitely he should not say anything about extermination plans. Brahn understood and agreed. But his meeting with the kempeitai officer was very unpleasant from the beginning. The chief did not want to see him, couldn't understand why he was making such a fuss over "a few" newspaper articles, was very unsympathetic and antagonistic from the start. In the heat of what became a kind of confrontation, Brahn inadvertently let slip that he had heard a great harm would be done to the Jewish people in Shanghai. The kempeitai chief reacted with fury. Brahn was propagating false rumors! Who had said such a thing? Where had Brahn gotten this information? Terrified, Brahn implicated the Jewish leaders. Within forty-eight hours, Topas, Hayim, Speelman, Bitker, Kardegg, Kaufmann, Peritz and vice-consul Shibata had been arrested.
Without hearing or trial, all were sent to the infamous Bridge House Prison which was already jammed with "saboteurs," "foreign agents," and others who had somehow aroused Japanese suspicions. The eight men had no chance to correlate their stories. Seized individually, they were held in separate cells: Interrogators played heavily on their lack of knowledge of what the others might have confessed to.
Conditions in the prison were grotesque. Prisoners were forced to sit cross-legged for twelve or fifteen hours at a time, allowed less than fifteen minutes of exercise a day, and fed nothing but a weak gruel of boiled rice in water. Lice were the constant companions of all the Bridge House inmates: and the typhus that spread from man to man was responsible for as many deaths as the punishments of the Japanese guards. Neither advanced age nor social position had any bearing on one's treatment in the Bridge House. Even Shibata's position as vice-consul did not protect him from the kempeitai. They were a law unto themselves. After weeks of beatings, Shibata was deported in shame back to Tokyo, under threat of immediate execution if he so much as set foot in China in the next fifty years.
But the worst treatment was received by Boris Topas. Topas was beaten without mercy. Under interrogation, he was burned on the back and chest. His fingernails were pulled out. And worse was to come. One of the Japanese officers in the prison had been involved, nine years before, in the Manchurian kidnapping and murder of Simon Kaspe. Topas had written and signed a widely circulated statement protesting this brutality, and now fate placed him in the hands of this same Japanese officer. Topas was led to the old stonebuilt section of the prison, to the top of a long flight of sharp-edged steps leading down to a cellar. Suddenly, with no warning, he was thrown headfirst down the stairs. The guards came right down after him. Seizing him by the wrists, they pulled him up, across the sharp edges of the treads, to the top . . . then hurled him down again, over and over till his broken body lost all consciousness. It was treatment Topas never would recover from.
The seven community leaders were punished severely, but they were neither executed nor allowed to die. Except for Topas, who was held for six months, in a matter of days or weeks, the other Jews were released. Before being freed, however, each was subjected to a stern lecture by the prison sergeant. "How could you believe such nonsense, that we Japanese would harm you? We are your friends! We are your protectors! We have always treated you well. We will always treat you well. The only reason you were brought here was that you didn't have faith in us. Now go - do not spread any more false rumors. And tell your co-religionists that no harm will come to them from the Japanese."
And none did. Kubota had been unwise in his initial reaction to Meisinger's proposals. Slaughtering the Jews of Shanghai did not bear scrutinizing by Tokyo. Once Dr. Kaufman in Harbin got word of the extermination plan to Matsuoka with his contacts in the Foreign Ministry and to Yasue with his friends in the upper ranks of the army, Meisinger's dream was doomed. The beginning of the Great East Asian War might have forced Japan to reappraise her relationship with world Jewry, but neither the Gaimusho nor the military saw any reason to alienate that community unnecessarily. Registration of Jews, internment of Jewish, as well as non-Jewish "enemy nationals," strict and continuing surveillance of all Jews - these measures were in order and had been officially sanctioned in Foreign Ministry memos as early as January, 1942. But very prominently paragraphed in Foreign Minister Togo's overriding "Emergency Measures for Jewish People" was this directive: Nothing shall be done to or with the Jews that might inspire "enemy counterpropaganda." Even to accommodate her ally, the Japanese government was unwilling to enga
ge in a "final solution."
Rosh Hashanah, the first days of the year 5703, came and went in peace. Nothing more was heard of the Butcher of Warsaw, his rudderless ships, his salt mines and medical experiments. In Europe, six million Jews - an entire people - would die. In Shanghai, a tiny remnant of European Jewry would live.
How they lived was another matter. "I was originally sent to take your head," Kubota once said to Cohn. "I must at least take an arm."
In November, 1942, a top-secret dispatch was sent from the Japanese consul general in Shanghai, Seiki Yano to Kazuo Aoki, minister of Greater East Asia: "Relative to measures pertaining to the Jewish people in the Shanghai area, the plan established by the Japanese navy of that area, having been approved by the central government, will shortly be carried into force. ... It is as follows: A Jewish district will be set up in the Hongkew area. The Jewish people scattered within the city will be collected together in order to live in this district. Surveillance, control and guidance will be a military function."
The Japanese did not carry out a pogrom - instead, they created the first Jewish ghetto in Asia.
17
A RAW FEBRUARY WIND blew in gusts past the tattered, nondescript buildings lining Tongshan Road. Getzel Syrkin, hunched up against the cold, stared without expression at a notice pasted to a brick wall. Stiff, black letters, stood out arrogantly against the unbleachedwhite paper:
The Fugu Plan Page 27
