The Last Jews in Berlin

by Gross, Leonard;

  But even if the rumors were true, even if Frau Hohn’s advice made infinite sense, Ruth couldn’t accept it. She could not let her mother starve or face the Russians alone. “We’ve made it this far together,” she said. “If we have to die, we’ll do that together too.”

  That night there was no train for Berlin, so Ruth and Herr Barsch were forced to wait another day. They left the following night, with bags of food strapped to their backs and bundles in their arms. They had mutton, chicken, bacon, eggs, potatoes, onions and flour—the kind of food that hadn’t been seen in Berlin for months. The flour was full of sand from the grinding stones, but it would more than do.

  They took the train to Goldbeck, where they were told it would not go any farther. They walked to the road and stopped an S.S. truck loaded with hay. Herr Barsch sat on the hay. Ruth sat with the driver. Aircraft flew above them shooting tracers, but Ruth had no idea whose they were. Suddenly what she thought was lightning flashed across the sky. She turned around and saw more lightning. “Is that a thunderstorm?” she asked.

  “No,” the driver said. “Those are the Americans.”

  So they were that close. It was true. All she had to do was wait and she would be in an American-occupied zone. Thousands of Germans were on the road, walking west, toward the Americans.

  By the time the truck arrived in Stendal the town was nearly empty. There was no train. Soldiers advised Ruth and Herr Barsch to flee to the west. Herr Barsch turned to Ruth. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “Go to Berlin.”

  Barsch shook his head. “I’m staying. The Americans will be here soon. Then the war will be over for me.”

  They said goodbye. Ruth walked out to the road and tried to hitchhike. But no vehicles stopped. Finally she stepped into the path of an oncoming truck. “If you hadn’t been good-looking I wouldn’t have stopped,” the driver said when she got in.

  The truck was carrying munitions. It stopped at an armaments depot just outside Berlin. Ruth hailed another truck, which took her to Charlottenburg. As she got down from it she spotted a pay telephone. Why not, she thought. I’ve been lucky this far. Perhaps the phone will work. It did. Any doubts she might have had about her decision to return to Berlin vanished the moment she heard the joy in her mother’s voice.

  It took her two hours to reach Pankow. She could not believe the devastation. Buildings crumbled. Trees uprooted, lying across the streets. The streets strewn with brick and pocked with craters. People moving slowly, their hair gray from the dust of crumbled brick and plaster, their bodies sagging, their faces drained by fatigue.

  It was growing dark. Ruth had no idea where she would find Hilde at this hour. She would try in the morning. There was something she had to do first. Throughout the return journey she had been sustained by the thought of what she would fix to eat as soon as she returned home. She’d decided on dumplings cooked with bacon and onions. And that was exactly what she began to prepare within two minutes after she stepped in the door.

  But just as Ruth finished cooking, the air was filled with a terrible sound. Hissing and howling, Russian artillery shells rent the air overhead and hit their targets with such force that neighboring buildings shook. From the streets came the terrified screams of pedestrians caught in the sudden bombardment.

  Her mother’s eyes grew so wide they seemed to fill half her face. “Come to the basement,” she cried.

  “No!” Ruth said.

  Her mother looked at her in astonishment.

  “I’m going to eat my dumpling,” Ruth said. “I’ve spent two days and three nights going for this food, and now I’m going to eat it.”

  For a second Mother regarded Ruth as though she were seeing a madwoman. Then, without another word, she rushed out of the apartment and down the stairs. Ruth took her plate to the window and ate her dumplings as she watched the flashes from the guns in the distance and the shells explode on Pankow.

  42

  THE RUSSIANS had advanced to the outskirts of Berlin, but the center of the city—technically, at least—was still in German hands. During the daylight hours, however, Russian air attacks made movement impossible. Berliners driven by hunger to stand in line for food were mowed down by strafing aircraft that flew too low and moved too fast for the civilians to take cover. Whatever needed doing could be done only at night, and even then the hazards were enormous. One evening late in April, Marushka and Brumm left the flat to forage for food. All about them the city seemed to be exploding, as though a well placed shell had set off a chain reaction in a great munitions dump. Shells screamed and whistled through the sky, so filled with crisscrossing patterns of light that they could have read a newspaper. The air was so thick with smoke and the acrid smell of explosives that they could taste it, so hot from the fires that it singed their nostrils and parched their throats. An elderly woman, her dark hair turned white by plaster and dust, walked by them, as oblivious of where she was as of the blood running down her face. On the wall of a building was a splattered poster warning that those who surrendered would be shot or hanged.

  Suddenly, as they approached a horse-drawn ammunition truck, Brumm tackled Marushka chest-high and crashed with her through a door and down a flight of cellar steps. An instant later there was a deafening roar as a Russian shell hit the truck, and truck, horses and driver were blasted into small pieces.

  Almost all military supplies were moved about the city by horse-drawn vehicles now because there was no longer any gas. The streets were littered with dead horses. At night many Berliners crept from their shelters, knives in hand, to cut up the horses for food. Everyone was possessed by the same idea—to stash away a supply of food in anticipation of the Russians. Once they arrived, everyone was convinced, there would be no food for some time.

  Marushka did her share of butchering these days. Even with a mob about her fighting over a horse, she was at a distinct advantage. Their knives were sharp, but hers was a veterinary knife, suited to the purpose. Moreover, she knew exactly which portion of the horse she wanted, the flesh between the shoulder and the leg. One day, coming upon a group of Berliners shoving one another about, she shouted, “Don’t behave like idiots. Stand quietly and let me divide the horse, and everyone will get a part.”

  Brumm was still in uniform. Without it he would have been dead. The S.S. patrolled the streets for deserters, shooting anyone on the spot whose papers seemed the least bit suspicious. Hans remained hidden in the house with the girls. Marushka refused to let them out; she didn’t want them to see the carnage in the streets—an arm here, a leg there, heads without faces, bodies without heads.

  The big task was to get ready for the Russians; to hide their valuables—Marushka put her jewelry and a gold dinnerware set into the couch, her money in ceramic pots which she then filled with grease—and to heal Brumm’s hand, find him civilian clothes and get him some civilian papers so that he wouldn’t be taken prisoner.

  It was Tamara who came up with the great idea. “You must say he has consumption,” she announced. “Russians are frightened to death of consumption. When the Russians come I will tell them that he is your nephew and that he has got consumption.” Then Tamara was told to round up some handkerchiefs and spot them with eosin, a red-colored substance that looked like blood, especially when it dried.

  Beppo Wirkus no longer went to work. He spent his days in the cellar of the house with the others. If a bomb dropped close to the house, he would rush upstairs to check for fires. One night four phosphorus bombs fell next to the house. He put them out as quickly as he could, praying as he worked that his silhouette would not invite some rifleman’s fire. He had no idea where the Russians were, but he was sure they must be close.

  The cellar wasn’t large. It extended only under the kitchen and hallway. The space was so cramped that it was next to impossible for all of them to lie down at once. Most of the time they sat or reclined in camp chairs. The noise of battle above them, as well as their tension and excitement—for they all
knew that the end was near—made sleeping extremely difficult. Soon all of them were punchy. Even Hella and Frau Papendick were feeling claustrophobic. The air didn’t help; there wasn’t enough of it to support so many people for so long a time, and it soon became rank with the smell of unwashed bodies. To add to everyone’s discomfort, stomachs and bowels protested the adversity by going out of order.

  And then one morning the shooting stopped.

  They waited for several minutes, almost unwilling to express the joy that lay compressed in their hearts. Then Beppo led the others upstairs, and while they waited, he peered outside. Russians were walking down some nearby railroad tracks. “We’re free,” he cried. The others rushed outside. But their joy was premature. Polish and Ukrainian forced laborers had also been freed, and now they rushed into the town and began to plunder the stores. Beppo and Kurt looked at each other as the same thought crossed their minds. “Come on,” Kurt said. They raced to the store of a man who had befriended them even though they were sure he suspected the Riedes’ identity. “Leave this store alone,” Beppo cried out on an impulse. “The man who owns it is a Jew.”

  The laborers backed off then, but instead of being grateful, the grocer rushed at Beppo. “Are you trying to get me killed?” he cried. “What if the Germans counterattack?”

  “Don’t worry, they won’t,” Beppo said.

  “You’re dead if they do,” the grocer raged.

  An hour later they did. As soon as they saw the Russians falling back, the Wirkuses, Riedes, Papendicks, and Jerneitzigs hurriedly packed a bag apiece and fled on foot in the direction of Hampstedt, six kilometers distant. None of them even tried to count the number of bodies the S.S. had strung from lampposts and trees.

  After eating her dumplings Ruth Thomas had finally gone to the basement shelter. But she had been unable to sleep there and had returned to their apartment. Just before nodding off she had told her mother, “In the morning there will be no more shooting, and the war will be over.”

  Now it was morning, and her mother was leaning over her and shaking her awake, her eyes like two clear pools, a crazy smile on her face. “Listen!” she said.

  Ruth listened to the silence. Then she leaped from bed and threw her arms around her mother. Together they hugged and danced about the room. “We made it! Mother, we made it!” Ruth cried over and over again.

  Then they heard voices. Together they crept to the windows that no longer had glass in them, only shutters to cover them, and they peeked through the cracks and saw Russian soldiers standing in their back yard.

  One of the strategies the women of Berlin had discussed in regard to “it”—the prospect of rape by Russian soldiers—was to make themselves appear as unkempt and old-looking as they could. But for Ruth this was no time to take such precautions. Her soul rejoiced. She ran to her dresser and took her nicest scarf from the drawer and wrapped it around her head. Then she took a white handkerchief and, waving it, danced down the stairs.

  “Be careful,” her mother called.

  Two Russian soldiers met her at the foot of the stairs. One was fair, the other dark. Their appearance stunned her. They were tall and broad through the shoulders and chest, with thick necks supporting heavy big-boned faces. Their uniforms not only fitted them well, they seemed surprisingly clean and well kept, as though they had never been worn in battle.

  In crude German the Russians demanded to know if German soldiers were hiding upstairs.

  “No soldiers,” Ruth said, shaking her head for good measure.

  The soldiers then indicated with signs that they wanted to inspect the upstairs, and they insisted that Ruth lead the way.

  Ruth’s mother, watching from the landing, shouted, “Don’t let them come up! Don’t let them come up!” But even if she had wanted to, Ruth could not have stopped them, and, besides, as happy as she was feeling, she didn’t see the harm.

  In the kitchen of their apartment the fair-haired soldier pointed to his wristwatch. “Uri! Uri!” he demanded. Ruth assumed that he was asking if she had a wristwatch. She indicated that she didn’t.

  Suddenly the blond soldier pushed Ruth’s mother into the hall and slammed the door behind her. Then the dark-haired soldier seized Ruth. “No! Not me! I’m Jewish!” Ruth shouted. She struggled free of the soldier, then scooped up the seam of her gray flannel skirt and ripped it open. Inside were her real identity papers, which she shoved at the Russian.

  “Jewreka?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  The soldier grinned now. “Mama Jewreka,” he said. She could not understand what he said next, but she sensed his message. Since his mother was Jewish, that made them part of the same family—and so it was all right if he took Ruth. Again he tried to pin her down, but Ruth fought so hard that he finally let her go.

  Ruth ran into the hall. Her mother wasn’t there. Then she ran to the basement. She wasn’t there either, and no one knew where she was.

  When even the German radio stations were acknowledging that there was fighting within Berlin, there could be only one conclusion in the mind of Willy Glaser. His first sight of a Russian soldier only confirmed the fact. Here and there pockets of resistance still kept up the fight, but Willy didn’t let that stop him. He walked from one side of the shattered city to the other, certain that if God had guided him this far through the danger he would not forsake him now. The closer Willy got to Ruth Gomma’s house the faster he walked, and by the time he reached her block he was running. He raced up the stairs and burst into the room without bothering to knock. He swept the startled Ruth into his arms and cried, “The Russians are here! The war is over! My name is Wilhelm Glaser!”

  For weeks now Hans Rosenthal had been waiting restlessly in Frau Schönebeck’s house for his long ordeal to end. For three years he had eluded the Gestapo. For twenty-seven months of that time he had lived in virtual solitude. He could scarcely contain his desire to run into the streets and embrace his liberators.

  When he had removed his Star of David early in 1943 at the suggestion of Alfred Hanne, the manufacturer of canned heat, Hans had carefully hidden it among his few belongings in anticipation of this day. The night before, with shaking fingers, he had sewn the star back onto his coat. In the morning he heard tanks on the asphalt roads. He crept from his house, crawled to the street and looked through the bushes, only to find himself staring into the cannon barrel of a Russian tank. “Don’t fire!” he shouted. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and waved it frantically. Then he stood and raised his hands and watched the Russian soldiers come forward. It was the longest moment of his life. Only in that interminable moment did he realize that, although he had made it to the end of the war alive, he could be killed by Russians.

  “Jude! Jude!” he shouted. “Ich bin Jude!” He was sweating and trembling.

  The Russian soldiers apparently understood that much German. But they shook their heads and trained their guns on him.

  Just then a Russian officer rode up on a bicycle. “What’s the trouble?” he demanded. He listened to the troops, all the while staring at Hans’s star. At last he approached. “You’re a Jew?” he said in German.

  “Yes!” Hans said.

  “Say the Sh’ma.”

  A gasp of relief escaped from Hans. “Sh’ma Yisroel adonoy elohenu adonoy echod,” he recited as forcefully as he could.

  The major turned to the troops. “He’s a Jew,” he announced.

  The soldiers smiled. They nodded. Then they shouldered their rifles.

  The Russian officer, a major, turned back to Hans. “These soldiers are from a division that found many S.S. who had sewn on Jewish stars. They had orders to shoot them all.”

  Later that morning Officer Mattek decided that he had better have a look into the church to see how his friends were doing. As he was crossing the street from the police station to the church a grenade exploded at his feet and tore his legs off. He died before anyone could reach him.

  By evening the Russians had reo
ccupied Wittenau. The four couples and two children returned to the Jerneitzig house. When Beppo went into the kitchen the following morning he saw a Russian in the garden with a sack over his shoulder. When the Russian saw Beppo he made signs for him to open the gate. Beppo did and the Russian left. When Beppo turned around he realized that the hens were gone.

  He could not be bitter. Let him have them, he thought, as he savored the first silence he had heard in months.

  An hour later the bell rang. “I’ll go,” Herr Papendick said. He had learned Russian as a soldier during World War I. He walked to the gate now and spoke to the Russian soldiers there.

  “Are there any German soldiers hiding in this house?” one of them demanded.

  “No. We are Jews here. The Germans in this house hid us.”

  The soldiers raised their eyebrows and looked at one another. Then, apparently willing to believe someone who spoke their language, they waved goodbye and moved on.

  Later that day the Russians set up a field kitchen, from which they distributed soup with meat in it to the German civilians. Seeing this, Kadi and Hella set out to get their allotment. On the way back they spoke with a Russian officer whose German was flawless. He told them that the red flag was flying from the Brandenburg Tor. He said there was a rumor that Hitler had burned to death in his bunker. He had been to the bunker, the Russian said, and had seen the bodies of the Goebbels family. Frau Goebbels and the children looked very peaceful, as though they were asleep. It was very sad, the Russian said.

  In one inconceivably calamitous moment the most joyous of days had been transformed into a nightmare. Her mother was suddenly, inexplicably lost. Ruth Thomas could feel the waves of hysteria cresting, then crashing in her body.

  The basement was filled with Russians—sturdy and well nourished to a man, wearing starched and clean uniforms, orderly, businesslike, paying Ruth scant attention. She moved among them asking for someone who spoke German. At last she found an officer who did. “I’ve lost my mother,” she cried. “Can you help me find her? For the love of God, can you help me find her?” The officer shrugged and shook his head. He explained that the Germans still held the other side of the building. He guessed that Mother must have inadvertently gotten onto the German side.