Holocaust

by Gerald Green

  “A street expression. You look shocked.”

  I stared at him. Heydrich escorted Marta back to me. She bowed to him, told him what a great honor it had been. He kissed her hand. He said we would have to arrange another opera party some evening.

  Marta then recognized Uncle Kurt, threw her arms around him and kissed him. Heydrich watched.

  I made the introductions. “General, my uncle, Kurt Dorf.”

  Kurt said it was an honor to meet the head of the SS and that he had encountered many of his field commanders in Poland.

  Heydrich studied Kurt’s strong face, the civilian tuxedo for a moment, then said, “Dorf, Kurt, engineer and road-building expert. Assigned to General von Brauchitsch. In charge of roads and termini in the occupied territories. Correct?”

  “Totally. I had no idea your office was so well informed about humble road builders.”

  “We’re well informed about everyone.”

  Heydrich moved away. The music resumed. Marta suggested I dance with Eichmann’s wife. It would not hurt my career, she hinted.

  Uncle Kurt escorted Marta to the bar. They drank champagne. What followed was a most curious conversation, a bit disturbing to her. Kurt, not especially diplomatically, said in a rather low voice that Heydrich did not at all seem to him what some people called him—the party’s “evil young god of death.”

  Marta was shocked and said so. Who would dare say such a thing? Oh, the usual political enemies. Marta informed my uncle that we both worshipped Heydrich. He was the shining example of the Germany of the future—fearless, sensitive, intelligent, noble. Kurt tried to apologize; he was an engineer, not a politician, a mere road builder. That’s why he had remained outside party politics, a civilian. He changed the subject, and praised Marta for being so beautiful, for having a successful husband and a lovely family.

  “It was simple,” my wife said. “We became part of the new Germany, with all our hearts and souls.”

  “So you did.”

  “You could sound a bit more cheerful about it,” Marta said.

  “Oh, I’m part of it too. I know what a good job the regime’s done. People back at work—even though it’s mostly at wartime jobs. No strikes. A stable currency. And once France and England ask for peace—the future is ours.”

  “Then you and Erik are in agreement. The only difference is, he wears a uniform and you don’t.”

  “Oh, dear Marta. How wonderfully you simplify things. Still, you may be right.”

  He asked her to dance, apologizing for his age, his stiffness from hiking up and down the bad roads of Poland. She obliged. It was a marvelous evening—seeing Kurt again, Marta making such an impression on the chief. There really is nothing standing in our way.

  Rudi Weiss’ Story

  As I have mentioned, my father and my Uncle Moses were members of one of the first Jewish councils organized in Warsaw, in December 1939.

  Much has been written about them—good, bad, neutral. What could they do? They were helpless, without arms, without friends. The Poles were only too delighted to see the wrath of the Nazis descend on Jews, not realizing that the day of reckoning would come for them also—slaves to the New Order.

  So my father and my uncle served the council, tried to make life a little better for the hundreds of thousands now being crammed into Warsaw. The same thing was happening in Lublin, Krakow, Vilna, and other cities in Poland. We know now what it meant—a step toward Hitler’s final solution.

  Trains arrived almost daily, cattle cars packed with poor, hungry, frightened Jews. People died en route. Children smothered. The passengers wallowed in their own filth. There was no water, only the parcel of food they were allowed to bring along. And always the clubs and whips of the guards. Not only Germans, but many Poles, who joined the SS as auxiliaries.

  They were lied to, these Jews, as they would be for years to come, and they believed the lies. Resettlement. Your own community. Your own cities. Away from the Poles …

  A man who lived through such a transport recalls my father and my Uncle Moses meeting such a train on a wintry day. There were frozen bodies on board. Two babies had suffocated.

  They tried to make the people welcome. Lowy worked with my father, assigning people to quarters. The Jews lived eight and nine to a room. Sanitary facilities broke down. Roofs leaked. There was no fuel to heat the buildings. Each day, more beggars appeared on the street.

  One woman on the train refused to give up her dead child. A rabbi had to convince her that the child had to be properly buried, returned to earth.

  My father hated his work on the council, but he stayed with it. He much preferred working at the Jewish Hospital, as overcrowded, understaffed and miserable as it was. But he had gotten into a bitter argument with a German army doctor, and he had been temporarily suspended. The German physician had been treating typhus patients with a drug called uliron. It did not cure them. It killed them, under conditions of dreadful pain. My father protested, argued with the German. They threatened my father with punishment, beating, imprisonment, but he refused to back down. Temporarily, the use of uliron was suspended. (Later, far more fiendish experiments were performed on Jews; we were their guinea pigs, their laboratory animals.) But for the time being, my father was limited in the hours he could spend at the hospital, at his first love, medicine.

  Returning from the train that cold day, with the new shivering arrivals from western Poland, my father told Uncle Moses he hated the business of deciding who got what house, how food should be distributed, and so on.

  “People respect you, Josef,” Moses said.

  “Do they?”

  “Oh, yes. Just as I do. Ever since we were kids here, hitching rides on those same trains. You were the smart brother, and I was the slow one. I remember the day you won the chemistry prize—how proud Papa was.”

  My father smiled. “Yes. And that principal wouldn’t let me accept it in the auditorium, because, as he put it, I was of the Hebrew persuasion.”

  “Right. And I stole it from his office. A certificate and fifty zlotys. Where did I find the nerve? It was the last brave thing I ever did.”

  “God, how you remember.”

  The brothers walked into the ghetto. As yet the wall had not been erected. They passed from the so-called Aryan side into the old Jewish neighborhood.

  “And that run-down drugstore,” Moses went on. “That was my reward for not being as smart as you.”

  My father took Moses’ arm. “I hurt you. I didn’t mean to. There was money only for me to go to the university.”

  “No, no …”

  “The pampered son. And how often did I call you, or write to you? I wonder. Subconsciously, was I ashamed that my family were poor Polish Jews?”

  “Of course not. You were a busy man. A career, wife, children.”

  My father stopped. Around them walked the hungry, beaten, eternal victims—the Jews of Eastern Europe. “I’m sorry, Moses.”

  “No apologies are needed. We’re joined together again, in a kind of fraternal misery. Let’s do the best we can for these people.”

  There was a reunion at the Helmses’ apartment on New Year’s Eve, 1939. Karl had not been released from Buchenwald. But Hans, Inga’s brother, was home from the Polish front. And Muller, in the uniform of an SS sergeant, was present.

  My mother and Anna still shared the old studio next door. They, of course, did not attend. My mother had her pride. And Anna, guest though she was in Inga’s (and Karl’s) old home, made no secret of her resentment of the Helmses’ attitude toward her.

  Although the German armies had been victorious in Poland, and the French and English seemed reluctant to fight, sitting in their bunkers in the Maginot Line, a wartime economy was in effect. Oddly, the Germans did not seem to be suffering. They were looting Poland and Czechoslovakia systematically. Shortages could be made up simply by taking food from the occupied countries.

  But for Jews, life had grown unbearable. The wearing of the yellow sta
r was mandated. Jews were easy targets on the street. My mother, too proud to submit, became a recluse. Anna occasionally ventured out to visit a friend unlucky enough to have been left behind. They could not attend the cinemas or the theater, ride public transport, shop in Christian stores. Inga still supplied them with food—a dull diet of starches, a bit of meat, ersatz coffee. Inga had taken a secretarial job at a factory. She had had difficulty in getting employment locally whenever it was learned she had a Jewish husband in prison.

  But for the Helms family, it was a time of celebration. Poland, gone. The Allies, trembling with fear. Hans Helms, drunk, talkative, was bragging about the way their tanks and 88s had cut through Poland.

  Muller chuckled. “Like a hot knife through butter, eh, Hans? Gave the Polacks a run for the money.” He drained his beer stein, eyed Inga. “Me, I’m too old for combat. I’m a damned prison guard. Buchenwald.”

  Inga, who had been silent and full of sorrow most of the evening, sat up. “Buchenwald? Have you seen my husband?”

  “Is he there?”

  “You said so yourself … that he was probably sent there.” “Did I?”

  Muller played cat-and-mouse with her, as she pleaded for help. He agreed to look Karl up in the camp records. It was a huge place, she realized. But Muller would try. Once he touched her knee and she recoiled. He wanted to assure her that Buchenwald was not too bad a fate for Jews. Her brother, Hans, could tell her stories of what was done to them in Poland!

  Drunk, but aware of what he was saying, Muller talked about how much worse things would get. Why had France and England gone to war? Jewish bankers, of course. Inga’s father joined in. He hated the idea of their hiding two Jews next door—in-laws or not.

  Inga was furious, shouting that she barely recognized them as her family. When Hans taunted her as a kike-lover, one who had brought shame to them, she hurled a stein of beer in his face. Muller and Hans roared with laughter. Inga ran out of the room, to spend the night with my mother and sister.

  They had become virtual prisoners in the studio. My mother’s last bank accounts had been confiscated, although she had managed to hide some cash in the lining of a coat. It was impossible to get medical care any longer, even from Christian doctors who had known my father. No one would lift a finger to help Jews.

  Inga recalls that as she entered the studio, the radio was celebrating the New Year with a Bach chorale.

  “Sebastian Bach, Inga,” my mother said. She was writing to my father again. Most of the letters never reached him. The Nazi authorities in what was called the “Government-General” of Poland intercepted mail to the ghettoes.

  “I wonder if anyone plays our piano these days,” Anna said softly.

  My mother looked up. “The old Bechstein? Goodness, I can’t imagine. That dreadful doctor who took over Papa’s clinic did not seem very musical to me.”

  “He stole Papa’s clinic,” Anna said. “I hope they break their fingers if they try to play it.”

  Looking back, I see that damned piano as symbolizing an anchor, a deadweight that kept us in Germany, gave us a false sense of security. Some years ago, here at Kibbutz Agam, a Czech professor of languages confessed to me that he too had owned a fine piano in Prague—a Weber. He and his wife had always had the feeling that no possible harm could come to people who owned grand pianos.

  My mother sealed the envelope. Inga saw the address to Dr. Josef Weiss, care of the Jewish Hospital in Warsaw. She kissed Mama.

  “There is no harm in trying,” my mother said. “Perhaps 1940 will be a better year.”

  “That’s right, Mama,” Inga said. “We mustn’t stop hoping.”

  She sat opposite my mother in the darkened room and took her hands, saying, “You’re cold, Mama.”

  “I’m always cold. Josef used to say it was my blue blood.”

  Anna looked up from her book. “What was your family yelling about in there?”

  “Nothing important. Hans is drunk.”

  “They want to throw us out,” Anna said.

  My mother said, “Perhaps … perhaps we could find one of Josef’s old patients who would take us in.”

  “Mama,” Anna said angrily, “Papa’s patients are gone—in prison, or escaped, or just gone.”

  “Anna, my child, we could try.”

  Anna’s voice rose. She was seventeen then, tall and fine-featured, like my mother, and with the same strong spirit. But my mother’s will was breaking, and Anna was young enough to show anger. “There’s no hope, Mama, none. Karl is in prison. Papa is in Poland … and the Nazis are there now too, almost as if they came after him. And Rudi ran away. We’ll never see any of them again.”

  My mother said nothing.

  “Mama, you act as if this were a play, as if nothing bad has happened to us. Writing letters, talking about Papa’s patients, as if any of them were left.”

  Inga tried to calm her. “It does no harm, Anna.”

  Anna was not listening. “You always had the notion you were someone special. So fine, so educated. And you taught us to feel that way. Oh, the Nazis would never hurt you or your children—and look what happened to us!”

  “Anna, your mother is not to blame!” Inga said. She came to my sister and hugged her, tried to stop her from crying.

  “New Year’s Eve!” Anna wept. “None of us will be alive next New Year’s Eve!”

  Inga talked to her gently. My mother shut her eyes, rested her forehead on her clasped hands.

  “Don’t you understand how much your mother loves you, Anna?” Inga asked. “And how much she loves your father, and the boys? She writes letters, and talks about them, and stays hopeful to keep you happy.”

  “No! I won’t listen! It’s all a bunch of lies.”

  Inga said, “But people sometimes need lies to get from day to day.”

  “I don’t! I want my father and Karl and Rudi …”

  “Don’t cry, child,” Mama said. “Please don’t cry. Rudi wouldn’t like it, if he knew. And he was your favorite.” The memory of me seemed to rouse her. She put on her eyeglasses again and began thumbing through old letters—letters from years back, reminders of the life we once had.

  “I know we will hear from Rudi,” she said. “I know he’ll find a way for us to get out.”

  Anna leaped from the sofa-bed and knocked the letters from the table. “No! More lies! I won’t listen any more! I’m running away also!”

  It was a bitter-cold night. Anna grabbed her coat from the hook on the door.

  “Inga, stop her,” my mother cried.

  “Anna,” my sister-in-law said, “you have no money … no place to go. Rudi is strong and tough.”

  “Oh, let me alone. I know I can’t run away. I just have to get out of here.”

  Worried, my mother got up. “Anna, please …”

  But Anna raced past them, into the dark corridor, and down the winding stairs to the courtyard. Normally there was a guard on duty outside the apartment building. But it was the New Year and everyone was drunk, eating, celebrating.

  Anna ran into the street. As if denying what had happened to us, she ripped the yellow stars from her coat.

  Anna had always had this rebellious, independent streak in her. My father had spoiled her terribly. The baby of the family, the only girl. Instead of making her soft and timid, it had the reverse effect—she was aggressive, perky, almost impudent at times. My mother was always admonishing her—“Anna, ladies don’t use such language,” or “Anna, dear child, can’t you be less noisy when your friends come over to play?”

  Moreover, she was extremely bright, a much better student than Karl or me. Things came easily to her—studies, music, perceptions that eluded older people. There was a kind of life force in her, young as she was, a desire to experience a great many things, to plunge into whatever her passion of the moment was—collecting butterflies, American jazz music, needlepoint.

  The suppression of her talents, her very freedom, the denial of her natural desires to
mature, to have boy friends, must have been painful in the extreme to her. She told me once, before I ran off, that any of the eligible boy friends she had scoffed at, now gone, would be welcomed back with a kiss. Quite an admission, for the daughter of Dr. Josef Weiss.

  And so, heedless, foolishly rebellious, she walked the darkened streets. Wartime security measures were in effect. Berliners being the law-abiding folk they were, the streets were empty.

  Apparently Anna walked unseen and unmolested for several blocks. She wanted to look at our old home on Groningstrasse. She stood in front of it for a few minutes, thinking about the warm, close family life we had enjoyed there. The music. The games in the back yard. The park across the street where we had played soccer and tennis. Papa’s patients waiting, thanking him; the comings and goings.

  As nearly as Inga could reconstruct what happened, from Anna’s hysterical account told before she lapsed into silence, three men approached as she stood shivering under the street light.

  Two were civilians. One was in the uniform of the local Storm Troopers, an older man assigned to nighttime duty as a street warden. At first they assumed she was a prostitute, disobeying the curfew for a little business on New Year’s Eve.

  But a look at her young, fresh face told them she was not a whore. Then one of them saw the dark patch on the woolen coat, where she had ripped away the star. They were drunk, celebrating. One of them—Inga was never sure which one—even recognized her as the daughter of Dr. Weiss. He must have been a local man; perhaps even someone who had once been a patient.

  She tried to run away. They held her back. She pleaded that she had just come out for some fresh air. She explained she lived some distance away, and that if they wished, they could escort her home, to make certain she was not up to any unlawful business.

  One of the men then suggested they “talk it over” in the little park across from our house. It was deserted, the ground frozen, light snow covering the packed earth. At first she believed them, but when they began clutching at her clothing, tearing at her coat, violating her body with drunken hands, she realized what their intentions were. She screamed.