I Am Juden Read online

  The language of wonder was common currency when my team discussed camp life. ‘The miracle of Moda.’ ‘An island in a sea of horror.’ ‘Finally, someone heard my prayers.’ If talk turned to the Chaze himself, it was with the hushed reverence normally reserved for a saint. I nodded along, but found my fellow clickers’ adulation difficult to reconcile with the ill-tempered little man who’d purchased Ronen and I like cattle and displayed about as much concern for our welfare. But are we not asked to judge a man by his actions, rather than his words. In providing refuge for a hundred Jewish craftsmen (the number rising by the day), Herr Ritter had acquired his own grateful tribe. Or an army of slave labour, making him as rich as Croseus. Ronen and I had simply exchanged one prison wall for a better-appointed one, but I didn’t want to appear ungrateful as I sat there dunking bread in the man’s tomato soup.

  Especially not since today, I discovered, was the Chaze’s birthday – the ‘big night’ to which Oswald had alluded. Festivities were planned for later that evening, when the man himself would be joining us. A family of bakers had been steadily squirrelling rations from the kitchen for a sponge cake and two young violinist sisters had managed to acquire instruments for a celebratory recital. The Chaze would be providing the wine – surely a joke.

  Oswald appeared at my shoulder during my third cup of tea and offered to show Ronen and I to our bunks.

  We followed through the silent, resting factory, past the foyer’s oak staircase and stained windows into the cubed building where I’d seen the SS men loitering, in brazen defiance of the Chaze’s edict. Perhaps they wanted a one-way ticket to Russia. Through a ground floor window, I saw now that I’d been mistaken: the four men in the courtyard were nothing more than wooden tailor’s mannequins on wheels, draped with partially stitched jackets and trousers.

  ‘Clever, eh?’ Oswald said. ‘Better than a scarecrow to keep the bastards away.’

  Regarding the living quarters, I had been expecting a drawback sooner or later. Moda would provide a basic cell for sleeping, not unlike Lukiskes, but perhaps more crowded. Instead, Oswald threw open the un-bolted door of a freshly-painted bedroom, complete with curtains, a desk, and wooden shelves. True, it had a proper bed instead of bunks, but there was only the one. I could sense Ronen trying to get my attention by coughing into his hand, but I stared straight ahead, nodding politely at the four walls as Oswald concluded his spiel.

  ‘This gets the best of the morning light,’ he said. ‘But the opposite one overlooks the forest and is a bit quieter.’

  I was about to ask, ‘The opposite what?’ when Oswald said, ‘I’ll leave you two to sort it out between yourselves. The bell goes in five minutes, then straight back to work.’

  Without waiting for an answer, he walked back to the stairway.

  Ronen turned, speechless, and for once, I was inclined to agree.

  Our own private bedrooms? With better furnishing than the student dormitories in Kiel? I walked in a circle around my new room as if examining a museum exhibit. I tried the bed, gingerly siting on the edge of the mattress. When no concealed snake or steel-trap sprang up behind me, I swiveled my feet round and lay down with my head on the clean cotton pillowcase.

  I closed my eyes. Without doubt the last twenty-four hours were the strangest of my life. Last night I’d been working at gun-point in a greasy garage, sucking out engine oil until I vomited. Then I was thrown into prison. Now I was part of a hand-picked band of artisans working in the middle of the forest, well-fed and generously accommodated.

  I slipped my fingers into my jacket pocket and removed the three black and white photographs, curled by the warmth of my chest. Shoshana striking a karate pose in our Pilies Street garden. My mother as a beautiful young woman at a crowded harbour on the Black Sea. Both of them in Cracow last year, before the Nazi purification of the city began. The photographs had not left my side since I departed for Kaunas and Yukiko Sugihara in June. I lined them up on the shelf above the desk, spacing them out against the wall.

  ‘Knock knock,’ Ronen said, hand raised at my open door.

  ‘Ah, my fellow guest from across the corridor,’ I said, attempting some levity. ‘Come in, good sir.’

  ‘Did you want to see the other room?’

  ‘Lord, no, I’m fine here,’ I said. ‘Unless you wanted to swap?’

  ‘No, no, it’ll do me. I prefer quiet to sunlight any day of the week.’

  ‘Good. What do you think then?’

  ‘You should see the toilets. Nobody to ask permission, no bucket. A proper lavatory, with a flush.’

  ‘I’ve never known anything like this.’

  ‘Me neither, my friend.’

  ‘I hate to be the voice of caution, but when things are too good to be true, usually it’s because…’ I let the silence finish my point.

  ‘We’ve just seen a hundred happy souls in that factory who disagree. Are they all putting on an act?’

  I could not answer.

  ‘Why would they?’ he pressed. ‘Good work, own clothes, enough food, these rooms. Everybody’s due a bit of good luck sooner or later. I wouldn’t question it if I were you.’

  ‘I know. You’re right.’

  Ronen’s capacity for self-delusion was almost as impressive as my own. We would enjoy the sunshine while it lasted. He gave my room the customary tour of inspection, stopping at my pictures on the shelf.

  ‘Nice,’ he said.

  ‘Sister and mother.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Poland. Near Cracow.’

  ‘Not the Ghetto?’

  ‘They managed to get out,’ I said. ‘To the countryside.’

  ‘Probably safer there.’ Ronen reached up to the picture in the middle. ‘May I?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He turned it over and checked the back where I’d scribbled my name last night in the Lukiskes ballroom.

  ‘You put them in those little leather pouches they handed out?’

  I shrugged. ‘I had no choice. They were returned as soon as I said the magic words.’

  ‘And your wallet?’

  ‘All of it.’

  ‘Strange,’ Ronen said. ‘I got my money back, but not the photo of my parents. Why would that happen? They’d give me the money but not the photo. Doesn’t make any sense.’

  I didn’t tell him what I’d seen through the crack in the ballroom door, the mountains of jewellery and purses and photographs that were never going to be returned. The picture of Ronen’s parents must have been lost in there. It was only because I’d been one of the first to be processed that I managed to get mine back.

  The bell began ringing from the factory floor at that point, and we returned to our respective departments for the afternoon shift.

  As Oswald had promised, we finished an hour early, in honour of the Chaze’s birthday, which might have explained why Herr Ritter was so grumpy that morning. When you reach a certain age, birthdays stop being a cause for celebration. Either Ritter had left the camp since, or he never came out of his office, for I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him all day. In the Chaze’s absence, party preparations had begun well before the end of shift. Scores of women started making their way back to the canteen after three o’clock to deck the walls with ribbons and lay the tables for cake and wine. A little after five, the final bell rang and the various departments hurried to their pre-arranged positions. I followed the clickers outside to the flagpole where the prison guard had deposited us from his truck. The closers were already out there, slouching in the fierce afternoon sun. It was the two smallest departments who had been selected to welcome the Chaze’s return, about forty of us in all.

  After a few minutes, we began to attract the attention of the SS garrison stationed on the other side of the fence. Soldiers started to crowd around the gates, just as we were doing in front of the factory. Separated by a hundred metres of concrete road, the two groups watched each other in silence, until the soldiers retreated back to the sides and the gates swung open.
A gleaming black Daimler nosed through the opening and glided down the hill towards us. My co-workers stood tall and rigid, a pose that to the watching SS must have looked like deference not devotion.

  The Daimler circled the grass island and came to a halt under the becalmed flag. Bright sunlight bounced off the car windows, shielding its occupant from our stares. After a minute of uncertain idling, the engine fell silent and the driver’s door creaked open. Herr Ritter’s grey cardigan emerged from the darkness. I was about to start clapping when my neighbour placed a firm hand on my forearm and said, ‘Not here.’

  Without acknowledging his audience, Herr Ritter strolled round the rear of the vehicle and opened the far side passenger door. I was expecting him to lift out a crate of wine, but instead he stepped back as an enormous Marschsteifel black boot swung out and planted itself on the gravel like a tree trunk. A grey-green flared hip followed, then the second boot and a tight eight-button woollen tunic with the double lightning bolt studded to the black collar.

  I gasped, but those around me broke into smiles at the sight of the uniform.

  What was happening? Surely the beloved Chaze wouldn’t have been so crass as to invite an SS officer to his birthday party? Unless this was one of the senior Nazi clients that Oswald had warned about, come for a surprise fitting. But there seemed nothing unexpected about his arrival. If anything, it was waves of relief spreading across my co-workers’ faces. In contrast, the SS man’s jowls trembled against his starched collar and his clenched mouth carved a crevice into each sweating cheek. There was something swinish in the pink stripe of features beneath his field cap, the broad snout and dark narrowed eyes.

  Out of the car he towered well over six-feet, with the malicious physique of a rearing bear. His scent too was overpowering, an opulent musk of leather and spice. As the officer turned to face us - a Hauptsturmführer, according to his insignia - the crowd raised their right hands in salute and parted, forming a guard of honour that stretched to the ornate Administration block. With his broad back to the perimeter fence, his stern mask slipped and a transformation stole across his face: eyes crinkled into benevolent chinks and a set of crooked teeth flashed between his lips.

  Finally, I understood.

  Herr Ritter was his secretary and glorified chauffeur. When we’d met him upstairs, I saw the Herr Direktor sign behind his desk, and assumed he was the man in charge. The true proprietor of the camp, the much-loved Chaze - the Protector, our Fatherly Friend - wasn’t a beleaguered businessman with a limp bow-tie but an SS officer, Hauptsturmführer Jansen Gerternberg.

  We followed the two men inside. The Chaze swiped the cap off the top of his bald head as soon as he was through the doors and released the strangle-hold of his collar’s top button. Cutters and closers swarmed behind him, offering best wishes, clapping his shoulders, seizing his meaty fingers. It was a kind of adulation I had never seen before, more fitting for a Hollywood starlet than a hulking brute of a Nazi warlord.

  But unlike the parade I’d just witnessed, the affections were genuine, on both sides. I studied the Chaze’s round face for signs of duplicity. There was one slight roll of the eye at a particularly unctuous greeting and a split-second when the muscles of his cheek tired and his grin threatened to collapse, but otherwise the German clearly considered himself amongst friends. Of all the extraordinary sights I had witnessed since the Nazi party came to power in 1933, this reception was by far the most bizarre.

  Camp Moda’s hundred-strong workforce were waiting in the canteen, and unleashed a mighty cheer when Herr Ritter ushered the big man through the double-doors. Confetti and streamers rained down and the two pretty violinists began to play a waltz on a podium behind the gargantuan iced cake, as big as a buckled hat-box. Chilled bottles of wine from the Chaze’s own reserve – Perrier-Juet Brut champagne no less – were dispensed into fluted glasses by a fleet of young artisans in radiant white shirts. Most of my co-workers looked tipsy after a couple of sips. I didn’t even need that much. My head couldn’t have felt lighter if it was inflated through the ear with a bicycle pump.

  I wondered if Herr Ritter or the Chaze might step up to the podium and make a speech after mingling with the well-wishers and cutting the cake, but it became evident it was not that kind of affair. If anything, the Chaze actually became less visible as the night proceeded, disappearing at one point to change out of his uniform, and spending most of the evening in the canteen’s far corner behind a protective huddle of Herr Ritter, Oswald Zgismond and an older man on crutches, missing the lower half of his right leg. A bemused onlooker might have concluded this wasn’t a party for the Chaze at all, but rather a celebration to mark the beginning of Camp Moda, and our own good fortune at finding refuge.

  The thought was a sobering one, even after a glass of champagne, and I retreated into my own circle of solitude. Where was the justice in a world where one man could be plucked to safety while Mrs. Ormandyova and the remaining Jews of Wilno were subject to the terrors of the Snatchers, of forced labour, imprisonment and worse?

  Perhaps sensing my disenchantment, Herr Ritter appeared at my side with another bottle of Perrier-Juet.

  ‘Thank-you, no,’ I said, blocking with my fingers. ‘Not just yet.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You can’t talk to him with an empty glass in your hand.’

  ‘Talk to who?’

  But my nostrils already knew the answer: the perfume of spiced leather betrayed mein host. As I whirled round, Herr Ritter thrust the bottle at me, splashed the bottom of my glass and said in German, ‘Jansen, allow me to introduce our newest recruit, a very useful cutter from Kiel.

  I was face to face with the Hauptsturmführer himself, although from his heavy-lidded, impatient stare, he clearly didn’t share my excitement at the encounter.

  ‘Good evening, sir,’ I stuttered. ‘It is an honour to work for you.’

  He nodded, rubbing those jowls that up close bristled with salt-and-pepper stubble. ‘You were brought in last night?’

  ‘Transferred this morning, sir,’ I said, not wanting to correct the great man.

  ‘From Luskiskis?’

  ‘Yes, sir. But I’m not a convict. I was part of a group - ’

  ‘Siegler completed his apprentice with J.P. Donelaitis,’ Herr Ritter said, wisely cutting short my blather. ‘Formerly of Pilies Street, opposite the Cathedral.’

  The Hauptsturmführer clicked his tongue. ‘Unless he trained with Signore Ferragamo on the Via Whatever-the-fuck in Florence, you can spare me the details.’ He forced his face to relax, flashing those crooked teeth. ‘Please, Mr. Siegler, forgive my manners. We had a very rough night, as I’m sure you know. Welcome to Camp Moda. You’re part of the expansion of these works now, and you’ll be safe here, I give you my word.’

  And with a wink, he was gone, lumbering back into the crowd, in as much as a man of his size was able to make himself scarce.

  The only other time I heard him speak that evening was when he raised his voice at a freckled youth who’d had the temerity to enquire if there was any news about when his mother might be joining the camp. The youth had submitted her name and address six weeks ago, and had heard nothing since. ‘Who do you think I am, the Red Cross ?’ the Hauptsturmführer snarled, momentarily silencing the violinists.But his annoyance was short-lived and the freckled youth was shepherded away by Oswald Zgismond, who once more added his mother’s name to his little red book.

  While the Chaze himself was more present as an aura than a man, conversation rarely strayed from the subject of his exploits. Over the course of the evening, I was able to piece together a serviceable biography of the man.

  Jansen Gerternberg’s humble background bore little resemblance to the rest of the elite SS. He was born in the Francovian town of Herzogenaurach in the first year of the new century, which made him as old as myself, although his bloated size added an extra decade to his appearance. In common with most of Camp Moda, he had trained as a cobbler. His father worked in a shoe factory
, and it was always supposed that Jansen would follow in his footsteps. But the son possessed a rogue streak of ingenuity. After serving as an infantryman in the Great War, he returned home and started making sports shoes in his mother’s laundry room. Through his father, he became acquainted with the Zehlein brothers, who produced spikes for track shoes in their smithy. Gradually the two businesses merged, until Gertenberg became the dominant partner, and was able to buy the brothers out. By the 1928 Olympics, he was equipping many of Europe’s top athletes and come 1936, the company’s reputation had spread to America. Jesse Owens won his gold medal in Berlin wearing Gertenberg shoes, although Jansen had sold up by that point, and gambled away a succession of small fortunes in the intervening years.

  In 1933, when I was lecturing at Kiel, Gertenberg joined the Nazi Party in Silesia and served in the Wehrmacht. He married in 38, entered the Luftschutzpolizei a year later and served in a police reserve unit in Poland.

  When I met him, Gertenberg had only been in Wilno for six weeks, arriving with the Nazi invasion of June 1941. His rise since then had been spectacular. In the basement of Gestapo headquarters in the former courthouse of Tuskulenai Manor, Gertenberg was assigned to an SS Komando workshop using Jewish artisans - one of whom was Julius Ritter – to manufacture leather goods. As Officer of the Watch, Gerternberg’s chief duty was to lead a small unit of SS men who steered the Jewish workers to and from the Manor each morning and night, to protect them from roving semi-legitimate Snatchers like the two Lithuanian thugs who’d murdered the old man outside the bus station and marched me to work in the garage.