by Gerald Green
“You know your mother doesn’t like you fighting,” he said.
“I know she doesn’t. But if anyone swings at me, I’ll swing back.”
He shook his head. Papa had always been a handsome man—tall, straight-featured. Now he seemed to bend a little every day, his face growing lines. “Well, you’d better wash up. Inga and Karl are coming for dinner.”
“I can bet what we’ll talk about.”
He took my arm. The medical odor was stronger. When I was injured, he’d tape my ankle, patch my wounds. We used to joke that if he ever failed as a doctor he’d make a great trainer for a soccer team. “Do you want me to put some iodine on that?” He pointed to the cut.
“No. I’ve had enough of them so I know how. Thanks, Papa.”
Dinner that night was one of the saddest I remember.
The same talk, the same discussions. Why hadn’t we left in 1933? Or at least after Karl was married? My poor father. He was in awe of my mother. She was beautiful, a born lady. Hoch-deutsch, he used to call her. A family whose ancestors had been “court Jews”—friends of princes and cardinals. And Josef Weiss of Warsaw? His father owned a little pharmacy that my Uncle Moses now ran. They’d saved every penny, and borrowed, to send my father to medical school. It was my mother’s parents, the Palitzes, who, in spite of their objections to their daughter marrying a Polish Jew, had helped him open his practice.
Inga and Karl had come to dinner. They were talking about this man with the railways who might get us out.
Karl, always a bit gloomy—he’d gotten thinner, quieter—shook his head. “But there’s no place left to go,” he said.
“France, perhaps,” my father said. “Switzerland.”
“Turning Jews away,” Karl said.
“Nobody wants us,” I said.
Karl smiled bitterly. “Fellow at the United States consulate the other day told me that the Americans won’t even fill their quota for German Jews. They can let some more in, but they won’t.”
Anna spoke up. As always, she was courageous, spunky. “Who cares? We have each other, don’t we, Mama? And that’s what matters.”
My mother nodded. “Absolutely.”
“That group that was taking children to England,” my father said. “Perhaps if we asked …” His voice dwindled into silence.
“Closed down,” Karl said. “Inga and I asked.”
“We could run into the woods and hide,” Anna said.
My mother told Anna and me to clear the table. We got up and began removing dishes. No one had eaten very much.
“I’m not sure of anything any more,” my father said. “Poland, perhaps. Technically I am still a Polish citizen.”
“I won’t hear of it,” my mother said. “Things are not much better there.”
In the kitchen I said to Anna, “Mama always has her way.”
“Maybe ‘cause she’s always right.”
When we got back, my mother had taken command of the situation. She was convinced that Hitler would let up on us. He had Austria, he had Czechoslovakia. What more did he need? He was a politician, like any other politician, and he had used the Jews to unite the country. Now he could forget us.
Karl was shaking his head, but he did not argue with her. My father tried to put up a brave front. He never, as long as I knew him, wanted to hurt Mama’s feelings. The kindness he showed his patients, the poorest and meanest of them, was always reflected in the way he treated his family. I can never remember him striking any of his children. And God knows I, at least, deserved it more than a few times.
My mother asked me to turn on the radio.
A newscaster was describing an outrage of some kind that had taken place in Paris. Vom Rath, a German diplomat, had been shot by a Jew. We froze in our places as the voice droned on. A seventeen-year-old named Grynszpan had fired the shots. He was the son of Polish Jews recently expelled from Germany.
“This vicious, bloodthirsty act of the international Jewish conspiracy will be avenged,” the newscaster was saying. “The Jews will be made to pay for this cowardly attack on a German patriot, an act which illustrates the murderous plotting of international Jewry against Germany, indeed against the civilized world.”
“Louder, Rudi,” my father said.
I turned up the volume. No one spoke.
“Already, spontaneous acts of reprisal by the German people are taking place against the Jewish plotters.”
“Turn it off,” my mother said.
Karl grimaced. “For God’s sake, Mama, stop closing your eyes and ears to the truth.” Inga took his hand.
“I said, turn it off.”
The announcer went on. “Herr vom Rath is in critical condition. Whether he survives or not, the government states, the Jews will be made to pay for this vicious act.”
“Good for you, Greenspan, or Grinspan, or whoever you are,” I shouted. “You should have killed the son-of-a-bitch.”
“Rudi!” my mother cried. “I said turn it off!”
“Do as your mother says,” my father ordered.
As I turned off the radio, there was a loud noise of shattering glass. It came from downstairs, from my father’s waiting room, which looked out on Groningstrasse. I flew downstairs. Anna was a step behind me.
The living room was a mass of broken glass. A brick lay in the middle of the carpet. I ran to the window and shouted through the jagged hole: “Cowards! Lousy cowards! Show us your faces!”
But they were gone.
Behind me stood my family—frightened, pale, silent.
Erik Dorf’s Diary
Berlin
November 1938
Vom Rath died last night. Heydrich’s office called me in the middle of the night, and at once I dressed in my uniform and called for a taxi.
As we waited, the children woke up and came into the kitchen, where Marta had made fresh coffee for me. They were rubbing their eyes and seemed frightened. There were shouts in the street, sounds of glass breaking.
I tried to explain to Peter, who is only eight, that some bad people had killed a good German man in France.
“Why did they kill him, Papa?” asked Peter.
“Oh … they were evil. Crazy.”
Marta took Peter close to her, pressed his blond head against her bosom. “They were Jews, Peter. Bad people, who want to hurt us.”
I added, “But they will be punished.”
Laura asked, “Are all Jews bad, Papa?”
“Most of them.”
“Papa’s going to punish bad people,” Peter said. “That’s why he’s got a gun.”
Laura began to weep. The child is only six. “I’m scared, Mama. I don’t want Papa to go away.”
Marta, equal to any crisis, calmed the children and put them back to bed. Then she helped me into my tunic, my boots, my belt.
“What will happen now?” she asked.
“It’s begun already. Reprisals. We can’t let any crazy Jew who gets an idea into his head kill a German diplomat.”
“They won’t expect you to—”
“Me? Marta, Lieutenant Dorf is a memo writer for Heydrich. Besides, this sounds like Goebbels’ show. He’s jealous of the Security Police.”
There were street noises filtering into the room now—marching sounds, a band, men singing the Horst Wessel. Distantly, I heard glass shattering. Marta cocked her head and listened. “What will all this mean for you? Your career?”
I told her I had no intention of throwing bricks through the windows of Jewish shopkeepers to advance my career. I am not a brawler, a hoodlum. But what am I, then? she asked. A clerk, I replied. An argument was about to begin, and I could not stomach one before going to work. But Marta persisted. She admonished me to speak up, to make suggestions, to give Heydrich ideas. If I were not a street brawler, I had a mind. He’d hired me for my mind and here was a chance to use it, she said firmly.
She was right. I suspected some major moves against the Jews were in the works and that I would be involved. T
he usual programs were too trivial, I knew. Boycotts. Expulsions. Expropriations. I’ve signed papers, issued orders, but I’ve never been up close to the action. The nearest I’ve gotten to it was my brief visit with Dr. Weiss. It does not appeal to me. Although I understand Heydrich’s concern over the Jewish problem, I am confused, uncertain. Yes, actions have to be taken. But what kind? By who? These were the jumbled thoughts that were running through my mind as I left for work before the sun was up.
All day Heydrich kept calling junior officers in and out, raging at the way Goebbels’ thugs had jumped the gun on the reprisals. His SA gangs had been breaking Jewish store windows, beating Jews, burning synagogues. All this without informing Himmler or Heydrich.
I often take my lunch at my desk, and it is only rarely that I attend the elaborate meals served in Heydrich’s private dining room. This day, he was out of sorts, and seeing me eating alone, sipping my coffee, he seemed to take an interest in me. It was as if his immediate subordinates had disappointed him, and he was looking for someone to talk to.
“Dorf, when you’ve finished your lunch, come in,” the chief said.
Rarely do I get invited into his office alone. I somehow knew this was the chance Marta had told me to look for. I gulped my coffee and entered Heydrich’s office. At once he began to berate Goebbels. He had nothing but contempt for the man he called “that damned cripple.”
I commented that some kind of reprisals were necessary after the Vom Rath outrage. He seemed surprised that I offered an opinion.
“Yes. But we should be doing it,” Heydrich said. “And doing it as the police arm. No foreigners, including foreign Jews, should be molested. No non-Jewish property should be burned. We should be holding rich Jews hostage for reparations. Taking them into protective custody, that sort of thing.”
What a brilliant man he is! Goebbels, for all his noisy chatter, his bombast, is a failed screenwriter. Heydrich is a genuine intellect.
“Suppose,” I said, “we let our men take over.”
“In SS uniforms? That’s all we need, Dorf.”
“No, sir. As civilians. No banners. No insignia. No marching bands and songs. Punish the Jews, arrest those under suspicion, but make clear that this is the righteous anger of the German people rising spontaneously against the Jewish Bolshevik plot.” The words tumbled out of my mouth.
“Not a bad idea, Dorf. Go on.”
I explained that we should teletype orders to local police forces to stay out of the action. They could discreetly stand by and watch. Tell them to act accordingly—which, of course, means they are to keep hands off the demonstrators, our own SS men.
Heydrich was smiling at me. “That’s the kind of legal mind I can appreciate, Dorf. Put the order out. We’ll get away with it, and we’ll beat Goebbels at his own game.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Business suits and topcoats. I like that. The enraged citizenry. And why not? We’ve got the whole country behind us. Germans understand police power. They like the authority we impose on them.”
As our meeting concluded he told me that my papers for promotion from first lieutenant to captain would go through immediately.
This day is imprinted in my memory—November 10, 1938. It is the day I finally came out of my shell, as Marta has wanted. Heydrich has just been waiting for me to “open up,” as it were. Now, in a crisis, he has made use of my intelligence.
And as if in celebration of my new importance and the manner in which as man and wife we have revived my career, Marta and I made passionate love tonight. Marta has always been a little tentative, hesitant in her lovemaking. More of that proper North German upbringing; a strict father, a timid mother. (She confessed to me tonight that she was sixteen before she really understood the sexual process, where babies came from.)
But my new boldness, the manner in which I had, through the use of my brain, strengthened my position with one of the most feared and powerful men in Germany, gave us both a kind of sexual arousal; we hid nothing, forbade nothing, explored our bodies in a new relationship, which seemed of a piece with my new status.
Rudi Weiss’ Story
The world now knows it as Kristallnacht—the night of broken glass. It marked the true beginning of the destruction of our people. I saw it; was in the midst of it. And if ever I lacked sufficient understanding of the aims and methods of the Nazis, I had the evidence now.
The cowardly bastards came down the street on which Grandpa had his bookstore. Smashed windows. Burned merchandise. Beat up any Jew they could lay their hands on. Two men who tried to fight back were beaten to death on the spot—Mr. Cohen, the furrier, and Mr. Seligman, who ran a dry-goods shop.
They broke the window with the gold lettering: H. PALITZ BOOKSTORE. Grampa was a tough old bird. Like my mother, he was convinced—even at this late date!—that he was a better German than they were, that his Iron Cross would protect him, that some miracle from Heaven would make them go away.
So he came out of the store waving his cane, after the first brick had shattered the glass, and shouted at them to go away. The mob answered by throwing his books into the street—rare editions, old maps, everything—and setting them afire. They called him an old kike, knocked him down, beat his back with canes.
He kept protesting that he was Captain Heinrich Palitz, formerly of the Second Berlin Machine Gun Regiment. It made them angrier. My grandmother looked from the window, screaming for the police. Three Berlin policemen stood on the far corner and watched as the gang, seven or eight, knocked Grandpa down again and again, turned his head into a bloody pulp, ripped his jacket off.
One of them made him get on all fours and rode him, as if he were a horse.
Then he saw Heinz Muller, the friend of the Helms family. Factory worker, union man, he was some kind of minor official in the local Nazi Party now. He was in civilian clothing, leading a singing gang. As usual, the Horst Wessel song. They wanted Jewish blood.
They dragged Grandpa to his feet—the police were still watching, smiling those flat, cold smiles—and Muller handed my grandfather a toy drum.
“You’re such a fucking war hero, Palitz,” Muller said. “Lead the parade. Beat the drum, you old Jew liar.”
Behind grandfather were a half-dozen other Jewish store owners. Their shops had been smashed, looted, burned. The street was ablaze.
That bastard Muller! My grandmother watched, weeping, terrified, as Grandpa began to beat the drum, and the Jewish merchants, with signs reading JUDE hanging on their necks, were paraded down the street.
And no one lifted a finger.
My grandmother called our house and told us what was happening. We knew. We could hear glass shattering all over our neighborhood.
My parents stood frozen in the living room.
“I shall call the police,” my father said. “This is intolerable. Yes, there are laws against us, but this kind of violence …”
My father’s pathetic belief that there still was some kind of justice in Germany almost made me cry. Being a just man, he could not believe otherwise.
“We must wait … wait and pray,” my mother said. “It can’t last forever. What good can it do them?”
“You can wait,” I said. “I’m going out to get Grandpa.”
My mother grabbed my sleeve and tried to hold me back. She was used to having her way, forcing her children to bend to her will.
“I forbid it, Rudi! You can’t fight them all!”
“Yes,” my father said. “They are looking for excuses to kill us! We mustn’t fight back!”
“They’ve got all the excuses they need.”
I pulled away from my mother and ran down the stairs. As I was putting on my sweater, Anna came running after me.
The street was a wreck. Every store had been smashed. Most were on fire. Mr. Goldbaum, a jeweler, was playing a fire hose against the remains of his shop. Everything he owned had been stolen. Those patriotic Germans, those aroused citizens, eager to avenge Vom Rath’s death,
were ordinary crooks and murderers.
A truck came rumbling by. I grabbed Anna and we hid in an alley. It was an open truck. Some men were carrying photographs of Hitler, swastika banners. There were men parading up and down with signs denouncing the Jews. Mr. Seligman, from whom my mother used to buy draperies and bed linen, was lying face down in a pool of blood and broken glass.
The truck stopped and the hoodlums jumped off.
“Look who’s with them,” I said to Anna. “That rat Hans.”
“Rotten pig. I always hated him.”
“Yeah, Inga’s brother. I wonder about her sometimes. Boy, I’d like to get him alone for five minutes.”
Then we saw the parade. Grandpa, his head bloodied, one eye closed, was being forced to lead it, beating on the toy drum. Every few steps, he and the other storekeepers would be beaten with clubs and chains. Hans Helms was talking to Muller. Hans was a weak sister, a yellowbelly. He was stupid and lazy. Someone like Muller could lead him around.
I stepped out of the alley. Beyond the street the sky was turning orange with fires. I could hear women wailing. And more glass breaking, as if they meant to break every Jewish-owned window in Berlin.
The mob seemed to be getting weary of its game. Muller’s gang began wandering off. Grandpa was still standing erect, refusing to cry, or beg, or plead.
I walked up to him and took his hands. “Grandpa. It’s me. Rudi.”
Anna came running out and took his arm.
At the rear of the column of Jews, a drunken young man was rifling pockets—stealing wallets, pens, watches. Muller shouted at him. “Hey. The party says none of that. This is a patriotic demonstration, not a fucking robbery.”
“That’s what you think, Muller,” the man said.
“You obey orders,” Muller shouted. Then he looked at me in the dim light and walked toward me. There was a moment of recognition, almost human, in his eyes, and I wonder now, could there have been something decent in this man, something that was crushed? After all, he was not, like some of the SS, a gangster or a tramp, a rootless troublemaker; he had a trade, he knew respectable people. What had impelled him to become a brute? I’m not sure I know yet; nor am I sure that it matters any more. An honorable man who turns criminal, especially if he moralizes about it, is perhaps more to be hated than a habitual burglar or murderer.
