“- dirty Jew lover - ”
“What do we do with her?”
“Bring her inside, let the colonel decide - ”
She heard another voice calling from the kitchen, soft and dreamlike, a voice from another time, when the world was ordered and sane. It was Frau Rosenberg.
“Josef,” she called to the darkness. “Josef, is that you?”
PART FOUR
GERMANY AND POLAND , 1942-3
Chapter 11
Ravenswald
The platform was jammed with people, most of them women and children and old men, clutching cardboard suitcases and tiny bundles tied with string. With so many people, Netanel thought, you would expect a hubbub of voices; but no one spoke above a whisper. The fear was tangible. It hung in the air like a chill mist. In the dull light of the station lamps the soldiers with their machine-pistols looked as blank and grey as the walls.
“Where are we going?” Frau Rosenberg said.
Netanel kept his arm around her to guide her through the mass of bodies. People instinctively drew away from him. He supposed the blood crusted on his face must mark him out as a potential source of trouble. “I don’t know, Mutti.”
“I don’t understand. Who were those people? I want to go home.”
They had not even allowed them to dress. His mother was still in her nightgown, he had on only the thin shirt and trousers he had thrown on to answer Marie’s knock.
Marie!
Where was she? They would not bring her here, not with the Jews. But what would they do to her? If only he knew she was safe.
All he remembered was waking up on the ground surrounded by soldiers, and hearing his mother’s screams. Then he was dragged to his feet and a Gestapo officer had shone a torch in his face. “Are you Rosenberg?”
He could not see his inquisitor but he recognized Weber’s voice. He did not answer but Weber knew him anyway: “Yes, it’s him.”
He and his mother were bundled into the back of a military lorry between three soldiers. He was afforded a brief last glimpse of the white portico glinting in the moonlight like dry bones; then the lorry roared away and he knew with a certainty he would never see his home again.
He tried to talk but his head was still numb from the blow he had taken to his head and his tongue felt twice its normal size. “Where’s Marie?” he whispered to his mother but one of the soldiers hit him with the butt of his machine-pistol - oh they loved beating up defenseless Jews! - and he blacked out again.
A train pulled into the station, brakes squealing, steam curling from the boiler in dense white clouds. There were perhaps a dozen enclosed wagons behind. The German guards came alive; the wagon doors were thrown open and they began shouting and pushing people inside.
Netanel was carried forward by the press of people. He clutched his mother’s hand. He was terrified they would become separated. She could never cope on her own.
“What’s happening?” she shouted.
“Just hold on to me.”
“I want to go home now.”
“We can’t.”
“I want to go home!”
A man in a broadcloth cap tried to shove his way between them. Was he so eager to die? Netanel wondered. He brought his elbow up sharply into his nose, snapping his head backwards. The man stared at him in dull surprise and cowered back.
Netanel pulled his mother closer. They were shepherded into one of the boxcars. People were packed tight against the back doors. Somewhere a child was crying. Netanel found a space for them against the front wall of the wagon. As he squatted down he felt someone shove him. “Look out!” a man’s voice said. “Watch where you’re treading!”
“Do you think I want to sit on your lap, idiot?”
“I don’t like this,” Frau Rosenberg said. “Let’s go home!”
“I told you, we can’t!”
“Why are you angry at me? I haven’t done anything.”
“I’m sorry, Mutti. Just don’t ask me that any more, all right?”
The doors slammed shut and they were left in darkness. A woman started to scream.
“Shut that cow up!” a voice yelled.
Someone struck a match close by and someone else lit a candle. The flame illuminated a man’s face. “See, it’s not so bad,” he said. “A little cramped, but not so bad.”
The man’s voice was familiar. Netanel realized he knew him; it was Mandelbaum, the man from the pawnbroker’s, the joker, Herr Cheerful. He suppressed a groan. He would have preferred the Gestapo dungeons. Perhaps Mandelbaum would not recognize him in the gloom.
“I know you, don’t I?” Mandelbaum said.
“I don’t think so,” Netanel answered.
“Yes, of course, don’t you remember? In the pawnbroker’s? Mandelbaum, Amos Mandelbaum! You’re der Chef’s son? Hey, everyone, Netanel Rosenberg is here!”
“So, we should have a celebration?” someone said.
“What happened to you?” Mandelbaum said. “That’s a nasty cut on your head.”
“It was an accident. I walked into a Gestapo colonel.”
“You should have that fixed when we get to Czechoslovakia.”
“Where?”
“That’s where we’re going. They’re sending Jews there from all over Germany. You have to work but there’s plenty of food at least.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I heard some soldiers talking. Trust me. Have you met my family? This is Rula, my wife, and these are my children, Ruth and Sophie.” He shone the candle on their faces; Netanel saw a tired-looking woman with lank, grey hair and two teenage girls, their eyes wide and frightened.
“Do I have the honor of addressing Frau Rosenberg?” Mandelbaum held out his hand to Netanel’s mother. “I was sorry to hear about your husband. He was a great man, a truly great man.”
Frau Rosenberg drew back from the proffered hand as if it were a dirty rag. “Josef will be back from his cards soon,” she whispered and hid her face in Netanel’s shoulder.
The train trundled through the night, squealing and rattling, stopping for minutes or hours, then rumbling on again, jerking, slowing, stopping, rolling again, endless. Occasionally there were curses and the exchange of blows over the unavoidable encroachments on space. Some cried, others argued and kicked, while still others, like his mother, sat silent and withdrawn, half mad from the shock of what had happened to them.
Pray God this journey is not a long one, Netanel thought.
The train rumbled to a stop once more, Mandelbaum shook Netanel from his reverie. “What’s the matter?” Netanel asked him.
“I can never sleep on trains.”
I can never sleep on trains. Was this another joke, or was he serious? Was he mad or simple in the head? “Have you ever been on a train like this one?”
Mandelbaum took a wallet out of his jacket pocket and opened it. Inside, there was a photograph of a young man. Netanel examined the snapshot in the flickering light of the candle.
“Your son?”
“Shimon. He went to Palestine when he was sixteen. He sends us letters. He is working on something he calls a kibbutz near Jerusalem. As soon as everything is normal again here, we will bring him back home. It’s no life for a young man out there in the desert. We told him, but he wouldn’t listen. The Zionists had filled his head with nonsense.”
“You would rather he was here with us, in this cattle truck?”
“This will pass.”
Someone fidgeted behind them. “Ruhe! Ruhe! Can’t you be quiet! We’re trying to get some sleep!”
“Sleep?” Netanel shouted back. “How can anyone sleep in here?”
Mandelbaum grinned sheepishly and took back the photograph. “He’s right,” he whispered. “There are other people to consider.”
He put the snapshot in his wallet. He reached into the leather bag that was propped between himself and his wife, took out a Thermos and poured coffee into a tin cup. He passed it to Netanel.
Netanel guiltily accepted it. So, you don’t like the man but you are still prepared to drink his coffee! “Thank you,” he said. The coffee was black and strong and sweet. It warmed his insides and he felt a little better.
He was aware of his mother’s head on his shoulder. It felt heavy, a good sign. She was asleep. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her towards him, making her as comfortable as he could.
Netanel saw a shadow rise from the huddle of sleeping bodies. Near the doors was a large tin can, the only means they had been given for relieving themselves. A small boy straddled the can, and Netanel heard the splash of his water. Suddenly the train jerked into motion and the boy stumbled forward and kicked the can, spilling it over the floor. Men and women howled in disgust and the boy started to cry, stumbling away over the sleeping bodies to his family on the other side of the wagon. Curses and insults followed him.
“It was an accident!” Netanel shouted. “Leave him alone!”
“It’s all right for you,” a voice called back. “You haven’t got to sleep in piss the rest of the night!”
Netanel closed his eyes. Let this nightmare be over soon!
The lemon yellow tracings through the slats of the boxcar were the first clue that a night had passed. He could not remember sleeping. He peered out.
They had stopped yet again, at a station in the middle of nowhere. The platform was deserted, except for two German soldiers with machine pistols. He could make out a sign further up the platform: Trebon. So, Mandelbaum was right. They were inside Czechoslovakia.
A gang of railway laborers trudged past, carrying picks and shovels, bare feet limping on the gravel. They had yellow stars pinned to their clothing. They were mostly women, some of them very old, but there were also children as young as five or six. Two Brownshirt guards walked behind them, rifles slung casually across their shoulders.
For a moment one of the women looked up at the railcar, her face etched with misery. This is the future, her eyes seemed to say. Then she was gone, and the sound of the Brownshirts’ boots on the gravel receded in the distance.
Netanel turned away. God help us all.
The day went on forever, minutes dragging by, peaks of hope and troughs of despair. Once the train shunted to a stop and did not move for hours, while the sun turned the boxcar into a gloomy and desperate furnace. Men and women groaned and cursed, stripping off to their underclothes. The air was soon thin. It was not yet one o’clock by Netanel’s watch when panic set in.
A young man jumped to his feet and beat on the doors with his fists, screaming for water. Another man joined him, then another. Suddenly there was a stampede towards the doors. A woman and two young children screamed, caught up in the mêlée.
“Look at these people,” Mandelbaum said. “It’s shameful!”
They were fighting each other with their fists and their feet. A man screamed and fell, holding his face.
“We have to stop this,” Netanel said.
Mandelbaum made a clucking noise with his tongue. “People should maintain a certain standard,” he said. Despite the heat, he still wore his tie, and his jacket was draped neatly over his knees.
“Give us water!” someone was shouting, his fists beating time on the door. “We are dying! Give us water!”
A rifle butt hammered against the side of the boxcar. “Shut up in there!” a soldier shouted. “What do dead men need water for?”
Silence.
The men crowded around the door went back to their places, and a terrible silence fell over everyone. There is no refugee camp in Czechoslovakia, Netanel thought. It’s just another one of Mandelbaum’s fictions. They were being sent somewhere to die. Was that so surprising?
Mandelbaum offered Netanel the last of his coffee. It was tepid and bitter, but he took it gratefully. He offered some to his mother. She shook her head. “I want to go home now,” she said.
He put his arm round her. Frau Rosenberg wept. Just let it soon be over, Netanel prayed to the darkness, to the God in whom he had not believed since he was a child. Let it soon be over.
Night fell.
The day had beaten them, sucked them dry; now they lay in the fug of their own stink, sprawled across each other in an imitation of death, too weak to protest against their treatment, too drained to beg.
Netanel was propped against the wooden slats of the wagon, his mother’s head resting on his lap.
Suddenly there was a piercing shriek in the darkness.
“My baby!” a mother was screaming. “My baby is dead!”
She just kept screaming, wouldn’t stop. Netanel heard someone trying to comfort her, but she would not be still. A man’s voice, perhaps a rabbi, started reciting the Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer.
“Baruch dayyan emeth,” he heard someone else say, in Hebrew.
Blessed be the infallible judge.
The mother sobbed right through the night. Oh I don’t know, Netanel thought. I think the child’s better off out of this.
Chapter 12
How long had it been since the journey began - two nights, three? He couldn’t remember. Consciousness blurred into his nightmares. Which was worse - what he dreamed or what was real? And how to tell the difference? He would find himself stretching out a hand for a cold glass of water and then his body would jerk awake and there would be nothing there except the darkness and the stink and the moaning.
He sat up and looked around. Mandelbaum was awake, his daughter’s head cradled in his lap. At first Netanel thought she was dead. Her eyes were sunk in her head like a cadaver. But then she called out in her sleep and Mandelbaum stroked her hair to soothe her. His own tongue was swollen with thirst; he said something but Netanel shook his head, unable to understand him.
“All ... a mistake,” he repeated.
A mistake! How long could he cling to such stupid self-deceptions? How many Mandelbaums were there in Ravenswald, in Germany, how many good little Jews like his father who thought things could never get worse? Even when the Germans beat them and took everything they owned and crammed them into stinking railcars they thought, well, tomorrow perhaps, things will be better, someone will say they are sorry, it is all a terrible mistake. Then all the little Mandelbaums of the world would nod their heads in understanding and start all over again.
That is why I am here, he thought, because my father was a Mandelbaum. My whole race is made up of Mandelbaums!
The baby’s death had been followed by others; mostly old people, some of the younger children. Who knew how many? Even the most pious were now too exhausted to repeat the Kaddish, and the stench of death and excrement was unbearable. How long would this go on? Or did the Germans plan to shunt the train endlessly around Europe until the human cargo inside was all dead? Perhaps a fitting end for people who had never had a homeland of their own.
A man crouched by the door, pulled out his penis and urinated into his cupped hand. Then he brought his hand to his mouth and gulped down his own piss.
Netanel looked down at his mother. She was asleep, her mouth open. He could see the outline of her skull. Her nightgown was filthy and he gathered the neck of the garment to cover her modesty. All her life, he thought, she has been sheltered, first by her father then my father. But it but was a house of straw. There is no shelter for the weak.
Oswiecim, Poland
The doors opened with a crash.
It was night, but the platform was floodlit and people screamed as they tumbled onto the platform, covering their eyes against the piercing glare.
“Raus, raus!' There were SS marching up and down shouting at them. “Schneller!” One of them jumped into the boxcar and kicked at the sprawl of occupants with his boots. “Raus! OUT!”
Netanel shaken from a black and empty sleep, stared at in confusion, trying to remember where he was. The soldier grabbed his shirt and threw him towards the door. He stumbled onto the platform. There were people milling everywhere, clutching suitcases and bags, calling to each other, disoriented
by the bright lights and the blows from the guards and the sudden release from their terrible prison.
“Mama, where are you?”
“Here!”
“Where’s here?”
“Esther, Esther!”
“What’s happening? Will someone please tell me what’s happening?”
“My husband! I’ve lost my husband!!"
Netanel stared at the boxcar that had been his prison for . . . how long? Someone had scribbled on the side, in chalk:
DANGER! CONSIGNMENT OF DIRTY JEWS
And underneath:
Jews will be destroyed by German Kultur.
The platform was strewn with luggage, suitcases yawned open, empty; here, a tortoiseshell brush, there a tin saucepan and a child’s doll. Where had they come from? There was classical music being piped through the station loudspeakers. “Die Valkyrie.” Wagner. The SS guards were laughing. Something was obviously very funny but Netanel felt like a man who has arrived at a conversation too late and has missed the point of the joke.
Where was Mutti?
He pushed his way back through the crowd to the boxcar. The floor of the wagon was littered with bodies. My God! So many?
“Mutti!”
A guard hammered his truncheon into Netanel’s stomach, winding him. As he doubled over, he brought it down hard across his back and sent him sprawling across the platform. Netanel brought up his knees, prepared for a beating, but it did not come. There was no venom in this attack. It was just standard procedure.
Someone pulled him to his feet. “It’s all right!” Mandelbaum whispered. “Look!”
A row of lorries were drawn up outside the station. Some of them had a white circle with a red cross painted on the side. The guards pushed them into lines, separating the older men, women and children. Mandelbaum tried to cling to his wife and his daughters but a guard shoved him away. “Rula!” he shouted. “Sophie, Ruth!”
Freedom (Jerusalem) Page 8
