Freedom (Jerusalem)

by Colin Falconer

Lubanski said nothing. He always looked as if he was about to spit.

  “We have a new one,” the supervisor said.

  “Another of your ghetto Jew bitches?”

  The supervisor shrugged. It was fun baiting this one. He was mad. Completely verrukt.

  “No, this one is a good Aryan.”

  “What’s a German girl doing in here?”

  “Who cares? You’ll like her, Lubanski. She still has a lot of fight in her.”

  Lubanski tried not to show his excitement. He must control himself. He had killed whores before, in Hamburg. But he dared not do it here, not to a Reichsdeutscher. The SS might not like it.

  The supervisor heard screams coming from the room at the end of the corridor. He was accustomed to it. Some of the girls got a little hysterical when they were told to do something unusual.

  He checked his clipboard to see who was using the room. Lubanski! He should have known! Well, he hoped he did not mess the girl up too badly. She had become something of a favorite with some of the SS, and fresh meat was getting harder to find.

  As the Russians advanced, trains continued to pour into the railway yards of Oswiecim, but now they came from the east, and only the sickest and weakest of their cargo were fed to Birkenau. Since the reverses of the summer, the Gestapo High Command viewed the Jewish problem from a different perspective; they realized the Jews might be more useful alive, as labor for their crippled armaments factories.

  As the numbers inside the camp swelled, conditions deteriorated even further, even for the Prominenz. Rations were reduced, and the scarlet fever, diphtheria and typhus that the refugees had brought with them did not honor the hierarchy. Microbes did not mind if you were a guards, a Häftlinge, a Blockaltester or an officer.

  And every night the bombers came.

  Netanel was at the Buna railyard during the first daylight raid. He heard the sirens and instinctively looked skywards; when he looked back his kommando were already running for the shelter of the trees. There was nothing to do but follow them.

  He had barely reached the treeline when the first bomb hit the quartermaster’s hut and the ground jumped under his feet. Hissing wood and metal whizzed through the air around him, scything through branches and saplings.

  He kept running.

  A second explosion, a third.

  He threw himself face down into the soft grass. A shipment of rolling stock filled with gasoline exploded into a fireball. A stick of bombs chased each other along the railyards, and the ground shook underneath him, crump-crump-crump-CRUMP!

  Destroy it, Netanel thought. Destroy it all.

  He heard someone cheering.

  His kommando, his fellow prisoners, his enemies, lay all around him in the grass, lying on their swollen bellies, chewing the dandelions and chicory leaves from hunger even as they sheltered from the bombs. They would like to kill me, Netanel thought. Soon they may have their chance.

  But they are too late. I am already dead.

  He watched the railyards burn.

  Lubanski unfastened the buckle of the belt securing the girl’s wrists to the bed. She groaned and rolled on to her side. There was blood on the mattress. The sight of it excited him, and he would have liked to have stayed to continue the session with her but the supervisor was hammering on the door. His time was up.

  The sirens were wailing. It sounded as if the Russians were bombing the railyards again. It was the first time they had attacked in daylight. They must be very close.

  He dressed quickly. The girl was still crying. When the war was over and he got back to Hamburg he must pay for one just like her and do the job properly.

  Chapter 22

  SS Major Rolf Emmerich looked up from his desk. The sergeant saluted and led the prisoner into the office. Rolf dismissed the guard, put down his pen and picked up his cigarettes.

  They had cut her hair. A pity. He preferred her hair long. There were plum-colored bruises around her eyes, and her lip was split in two places. But the starkest change was in her demeanor. The tilt of her head was gone. Her eyes were empty.

  This was better.

  Rolf lit his cigarette and relaxed in his chair. “Have you nothing to say to me?”

  “Please,” she whispered.

  “It’s strange, you know. So many girls want to be popular, and I hear you have been very popular. But you don’t seem to like it very much.’

  “Please, Rolf...”

  “You don’t look well. Have they not been looking after you? I shall talk to them, see if we can improve your conditions there.”

  Her shoulders trembled. “Don’t send me back ...”

  Rolf grinned. He should have done this a long time ago. “I don’t know, Marie. I have a new housemaid now. She is very good to me.”

  “Please.”

  He sighed, as if his own generosity was draining his resources. “I offered you my friendship, my protection. You laughed at me.”

  Marie slowly raised her eyes. “Please don’t send me back.”

  How wonderful to see her this way! “It is beyond my power now.”

  She dropped to her knees. “I’ll do anything.”

  “Do?” He sounded puzzled. “What is it you think I want you to do? All I wanted was your friendship.”

  “I. . . I am . . . s-sorry.”

  He grinned. “Are you, Marie?”

  “I was wrong. Don’t send me back. Please don’t send me back.”

  He crossed the room, took a handful of her hair and made her look at him. “Say you love me.”

  “I. . . love ... I love you.”

  “Say it like you mean it.”

  “I love you, Rolf.”

  He let her go. “I don’t know. I think it’s too late for that now.”

  “I love you!”

  What a change! A few weeks in the Frauenblock had worked a miracle. A shame about what it had done to her appearance. “My little Marie. I’ll do what I can. It won’t be easy. Would you like your old quarters back?”

  Marie started to cry.

  “You can come to my room tonight. We shall see if you have learned to be truly grateful. Then I shall decide.”

  He had the guard take her away just as the Fliegeralarm started up again. Bastard Russians. Well, they were too late. He would be far away from here by the time they arrived.

  New Year’s Eve.

  The starless night smelled of snow. Netanel stood at the window of his Stübe and stared at the wire. There was no one out there tonight. Last year the SS compound had been full of shouting, drunken Germans but tonight it was deathly quiet. The camp was starting to empty; the most able-bodied workers had already been sent west to Germany to work in the armaments factories.

  Chaim walked in. He had organized some schnapps. He poured steaming coffee from the kettle on the stove into two tin cups and tipped it in. He handed one of the cups to Netanel as he joined him at the window.

  “They are going to abandon the camp very soon,” he said.

  Netanel nodded and said nothing.

  Chaim sipped his coffee. “Six years I have been here. It is almost like home to me now.”

  Netanel stared. God in heaven, he was serious.

  “We should make plans.”

  “Plans? How can we make plans?’

  “I’ll follow the SS before I stay behind with the prisoners.”

  “They will not give us that opportunity, Chaim.”

  Somewhere in the camp a voice began to sing the Internazionale. Other voices joined in, the men first then the women. Something is stirring in the warm ashes of Birkenau, Netanel thought. From the charred soot of all the Amos Mandelbaums we are going to rise as an army of phantoms and of men, and that army’s anthem shall be: Never Again.

  Rolf Emmerich heard the singing too. So it is finally over! I have lived twelve glorious years of a patriot’s dream, and I shall never experience its like again. Like every true warrior, I shall cherish this, my great campaign, for the rest of my life.

&nb
sp; Marie was asleep. He turned on the bedside lamp and her eyes opened, wary and afraid. Until the last few days he still thought she might one day show him some genuine affection. It had been a vain hope. Perhaps it was better this way. If she had ever really loved him, he might have tired of his obsession long ago.

  And what was life without obsessions?

  He studied her critically. He had had his barber cut her hair properly - they had just chopped it off in lumps in the Frauenblock - but there was nothing to be done about the rest of her. He drew back the sheet. She had lost weight in there. He would get her some Red Cross rations, perhaps.

  A part of him wished for the Russian planes to come again. He enjoyed doing it during a bombing. Danger always added something to the experience.

  “Say you love me,” he said, and rolled on top of her.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “Beg me to make love to you again.”

  “Do it to me, Rolf.”

  “Say it like you mean it.”

  “Please, Rolf. Make love to me . . .”

  He moved his hips in slow luxury. “Wrap your arms and legs around me.”

  She groaned. She is a good actress, he thought, she submits well when she wants to, and that is all that matters. Invasion and conquest. It was the only real pleasure to be had in life.

  There was a revolver in the middle of the table.

  Marie did not know the other girl. She had blonde hair and china blue eyes and she would have been beautiful if not for the grayish stains under her eyes. She doesn’t sleep at nights either.

  She watched Marie from beneath hooded eyes with the air of a beaten dog.

  Rolf lit a cigarette and leaned against the windowsill. “She is a Jewess,” he said to Marie. “Can you believe it? They brought her here from the Poznan ghetto. A Jewess! Blonde hair and blue eyes and a Jew! I wonder what Julius Streicher would say?”

  Marie looked at the girl, then at the gun.

  “Her name is Rebecca,” Rolf said. “She is seventeen years old. She is my other housemaid. I hope you’re not jealous.”

  Marie cleared her throat. “Why have you brought me here?”

  The rumbling of distant artillery rattled the windowpane. “Can you hear that, Marie?”

  “The Russians.”

  “Yes, the Russians.” He looked out of the window. “They will be here any day. The army has lost its balls. They don’t want to fight any more. We should never have invaded Russia. It was der Führer’s one mistake. There’s too many of the bastards.”

  Marie could not take her eyes from the revolver.

  “In an hour, I and a few brother officers shall be leaving here. Unfortunately, there is room for only one more passenger, and I am having much difficulty deciding who I shall take with me.”

  Well, that was not completely true. If they were going to rush ahead of the rest of the troops, they would require an “important prisoner” to escort urgently to Berlin. Two prisoners would be an unnecessary indulgence, when so many of the other officers were also eager to leave. “Which one of you shall I take?”

  “Why don’t you choose?” Marie said. “I am sure either of us will be prepared to make the sacrifice and stay behind.”

  Rolf smiled. “I care for you both too much to leave you to the mercy of the Russians. Who knows what they will do to you?” His fingers drummed on the windowsill. “So this is my idea: we shall let fate decide. On the table in front of you is a revolver. There is one bullet in the chamber. You will simply hold the gun to your temple and pull the trigger and whoever finds the bullet first. . . well, she has to stay behind.” Rolf picked up the gun. He snapped open the mechanism and spun the chamber with his index finger. He slapped it back in position and removed the safety.

  He put the revolver in front of Rebecca. “You first,” he said.

  He returned to his position by the window.

  Rebecca looked at Marie then at the gun. She picked it up; it was heavy for her, and she had difficulty coiling her index finger around the trigger. She lifted the gun to her temple.

  “Don’t do it,” Marie said.

  The click of the trigger echoed in the room like a thunderclap.

  Rolf laughed. “Well, Marie, now it is your turn.”

  Rebecca slammed the gun down and pushed it towards Marie.

  Marie did not move.

  “If you decide not to play my little game, I will have to shoot you anyway,” Rolf said. “There is only room for one more in the car and if you forfeit your chance, well …

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  Marie picked up the gun. It was unbelievably heavy. Do it, she thought. Do it and get it over with. There’s no choice anyway.

  It was difficult to support the weight and work the stiff trigger mechanism as well. As she fired, it jerked in her hand and if there had been a bullet in the chamber it would have blown off her face.

  She dropped the gun.

  “The odds are getting shorter,” Rolf said.

  “Don’t do it,” Marie said. “If we both refuse to play his little game, he will have to decide himself. This is one pleasure we can refuse him.”

  Rebecca did not seem to hear him. She picked up the gun and held it to her head, her eyes clenched shut. Her hand shook.

  “Don’t!” Marie shouted.

  Click!

  Rebecca pushed the gun across the table to Marie with both hands.

  “One chance in three,” Rolf said. “The game becomes more interesting.”

  “I won’t do it,” Marie said.

  Rolf unclipped the holster at his waist. “Would you like me to do it for you?”

  Marie picked up the revolver. She held it to her temple with two hands to steady the weight. If she had the bullet she wanted it to go where it should. The lever resisted her.

  Click!

  Marie lowered the gun. A drumming noise on the table, like a death rattle. It was Rebecca, her entire body was shaking.

  No! Let it be me! Marie thought, and she raised the gun again. But Rolf was already standing beside her and he snatched the gun from her grasp. “You’ve already had your turn,” he said.

  He walked to the other side of the table. Rebecca did not move. A loop of saliva had spilled on to her chin.

  “I think she is quite caught up in the excitement of the game, aren’t you, liebling? Would you like me to take your turn for you?” He put the barrel of the revolver against the blonde girl’s head. The drumming got louder. “This to win the game,” he said and fired.

  Click.

  Rebecca started to cry. She folded her arms across her chest and her head sank on to the table. Rolf set the gun on the surface of the tabletop and slid it across to Marie.

  He grinned wolfishly. “What a shame,” he said.

  Marie picked up the gun.

  Wrapped her finger around the trigger.

  Pointed it at Rolf’s grinning face.

  And fired.

  Click.

  Rolf threw back his head and laughed.

  Marie pulled the trigger again and again.

  Click, click, click.

  Rolf took the gun from her fingers and snapped open the chamber. He showed it to her; it was empty. “I am sorry,” he said. “Just my little joke. I was playing with a stacked deck.” He placed both hands on the table and leaned towards her. “I wanted to see what you would do.”

  “I told you one day I’d kill you,” Marie said. “I meant it.”

  “It seems all this gratitude has just been hollow. You have been deceiving me.” He took the Luger from his holster and put the barrel between her eyes. “What should I do with you?”

  “Kill me.”

  Rolf grinned. Perfect white teeth. “All right,” he said. He turned his head and looked at Rebecca. She was sobbing, her lower lip quivering like a small child’s. Rolf shot her in the head.

  Marie stared at the wall. There was a fine spray of blood nearly to the ceiling. Rebecca’s legs were splayed over her
upturned chair.

  Rolf holstered the pistol and lit another cigarette. “I was beginning to tire of her anyway. You are far more entertaining.” He exhaled the smoke through his nostrils, in a long sigh of near regret. “We leave in half an hour.”

  Chapter 23

  It was evening when the word went through the camp: evacuation. Most of the SS officers had already left in their staff cars, someone said. It was the end; and the end, Netanel guessed, would be the most dangerous time of all.

  The snow crunched underfoot, the wind stung like a razor. The crump of artillery rumbled across the horizon and the sky was illuminated by the flash of rockets. One landed very close, panicking the guards. The SS were jumpy and dangerous. Netanel heard the crack of gunfire as a guard punished those slow in joining the march; the guard dogs howled, infuriated by all the noise.

  They marched through the wrought-iron gates for the final time.

  Corpses dotted the sides of the road, like litter, frozen into bizarre postures. Netanel trudged through the snowdrifts with his head down, keeping close to the man in front to shelter himself from the wind. Chaim had organized rucksacks for them and loaded them with extra rations of bread and treacle and margarine that he had stolen from the kitchens. God alone knew where they were going and how long it would take them to get there. It was worth the extra weight on your shoulders to know at least you would not starve on the way. Netanel and the rest of the kapos were well fed and in much better condition than the Häftlinge; they had the best chance.

  “I heard we are going to Matthausen,” Chaim said.

  “I heard there are machine-guns set up along the sides of the road and they are going to cut us all down and leave us for the Russians to bury.”

  “They won’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Chaim stared at him and did not have an answer.

  An old Müsselman stumbled and slumped to his knees, exhausted. An SS man rolled him out of the line of marchers with his boot. He held his Schmeisser at the man’s head and fired. He walked on.