I Am Juden Read online

  The office was filled with the sound of the wooded point squeaking against his teeth.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult,’ Ritter said. ‘When you told me you’d lived there, we searched your employment records. You’re an extremely valuable commodity.’

  I didn’t know what he meant, and I managed to say as much.

  ‘Let us get you papers.’

  ‘What sort of papers?’

  ‘This sort.’ Ritter removed his wallet from his trousers, unfolded his identity card and pushed it across the desk. I leaned forward. The scrappy yellow card told me nothing I didn’t already know, that he was Julius Ritter of Aryan descent, German, born in 1893.

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘The one thing you won’t find,’ Ritter crowed. ‘The letter J’.

  In Nazi-occupied Europe in 1941, the letter J didn’t only stand for Julius, but Juden.

  ‘You?’ I said. ‘You can’t be…’

  ‘It’s alright.’ The Chaze twirled past me with a surprising grace for a man of his proportions and placed his hands over the Führer’s bronze ears. ‘Hear no evil, see no evil.’

  ‘He’s…’ I studied Ritter’s face like a mystic reads a palm. ‘You’re Jewish?’

  ‘Julius Ritterstein, from Gdansk. Yasher koach, my friend.’

  ‘Best bookkeepers in the western world,’ the Chaze said, producing a thick cigar, biting the end off and spitting to the floor. ‘If Hitler had a Julius Ritterstein to dot every ‘t’ and cross every ‘i’, we might actually win this thing. I knew he was too good to wear the tin star the first time I saw him at Gestapo. So I told him to throw it away.’

  He sucked on the cigar, the flame flaring, until it was lit and smoke leaked out his mouth like steam vent.

  ‘Simpler times,’ Ritter said. ‘Much has changed. Even out here, we have to be careful.’ Turning his attention back to me, he folded his card back into his wallet. ‘The work was completed before we left the city. But don’t worry, we can get more. We use a very good man, total discretion. He gave a discount for taking the ‘stein’ off at the same time as the ‘J’ – six letters for the price of five.’

  ‘Now you believe he’s Jewish?’ the Chaze said, cigar wagging in his mouth like a baby’s arm. ‘Or we need to drop trousers? No? Good.’ He took a pound of my cheek in his hand and pinched it very lightly. ‘So what do you say, Professor? You going to help us out?’

  Before I could answer, a flushed secretary burst through door.

  ‘Please, sir. You’d better come and see.’

  ‘What is it?’ the Chaze said.

  The secretary pointed out to the turquoise room’s front window, where her colleague stood, clutching a glove to her mouth. As our Council of Four approached, I saw a large garrison of SS troops assembled at the gates, and a column marching up the driveway towards us.

  Unbeknownst to the Chaze, who had received a complementary call from Hinrich Lohse the previous evening, the Reich Commissar had been appalled by to see drunken soldiers dozing in the huts outside the fence and outraged to discover they had not set foot in the camp since arriving forty-eight hours previously. The men were all dismissed from their positions overnight.

  A new permanent detachment had been deployed, the secretary said. SS Einsatzkommando 3, under the command of Unterscharführer Rausch, fresh the success of the Kaunas Ghetto, with strict instructions to be based inside the compound at all times.

  I had heard the term Einsatzkommndo once before, in a report from Cracow. They were the Special Duty Group who moved in after the first Kazimierz Aktion, rounding up Jews in the Stara Boznica synagogue, before shooting them all and setting it on fire.

  There was no time to lose. Fraternizing with the camp leaders was a punishable offence, so Oswald Zgismond and I lurched downstairs before the soldiers entered the buildings.

  Even Herr Ritter collected his belongings from that beautiful room for the last time and followed us down, installing himself in a hot and airless office behind the leather store. Not that Commander Rausch would be availing himself of the spare desk; the Unterscharführer believed very much in ‘hands on’ management. I wondered if Ritter would continue the pretence of his Aryan nationality from his new position on the factory floor, and what any of this meant in terms of the work we had pledged. No doubt the four of us would re-group and take stock, but for the foreseeable future, everything was changed.

  Apart from the secretaries banished to their turquoise tower, nobody else in the camp knew of the soldier’s arrival or the change in regime it signified. It was down to the three of us communicate with maximum haste and minimum alarm what was happening.

  I thank God for the foresight the Chaze and Ritter had already shown, the changes to food rations, and the uniforms. Imagine the contemptuous report if we’d had a full-scale examination yesterday, instead of a bespoke shoe fitting for one very large and exhausted man with a bad limp. Well-fed, content, jovial Jews strolling around in their own clothes like they owned the place!

  Moda had to look every inch the furious hive of disciplined, high-quality artisanship that the Chaze had built his reputation on, or we were doomed. What the three of us agreed not to disclose as we raced down the oak staircase was that Commander Rausch’s men were here to stay. The knowledge was dangerous, and could have unleashed a general panic. Far safety, we judged, our comrades should slowly work out the truth for themselves.

  We divided the factory into thirds to cover, each of us managing to get word out that a snap inspection had been called. The prisoners took the news in their stride. Most of them had been resigned to as much, after the ‘pampered poodles’ comment of the previous day. As one of them shrugged, ‘We knew this day was coming. By a miracle of Moda, we’re actually prepared.’

  And so we were. When Unterscharführer Rausch entered the clicking room after twenty of the most anxious minutes of my life, flanked by his deputy and finally the Chaze, nobody at the benches batted an eyelid.

  And, more importantly, nobody called him the Chaze.

  Lunch was our next test. The bell rang shortly after the inspection party had moved on, and there was an awkward pause where nobody was quite sure what to do. Knowing that I had recently been admitted into Herr Ritter’s inner-circle, the supervisor looked to me for direction.

  ‘Business as usual,’ I told him. ‘We go, we eat, we come back.’

  For the second lunch running, there was no piped-in music. We queued for the same thin watery stew as yesterday, seemingly from the same batch. Scraps of rotting cabbage disintegrated under my quizzical spoon. Tomato soup was now was rare as liquid mercury.

  The main change in the canteen was the seating arrangements. Instead of sitting with our work teams, we had to squeeze in at a reduced amount of tables in order to accommodate the new garrison. Forty soldiers occupied the two tables nearest the entrance, where they could best keep an eye out. Back in school in the shtetl, you would have to sit with the teachers if you couldn’t drink your milk without slurping. Today our master’s had steel helmets with death-head insignia. I was heartened to see the soldiers were at least fed the same stale soup as the rest of us. Their predecessors used to have three-course meals delivered to their huts, courtesy of the Chaze.

  Ritter was eating with us now, I noted, although he had not yet exchanged his bow-tie and cardigan for a uniform. Another change, when our bowls were dry: before returning to our labour, there would be a roll call, to ensure all prisoners were accounted for.

  Roll call involved standing completely still in front of the Admin Block, underneath the flagpole – henceforth to be called the Appelplatz – while the Kapo, a prisoner functionary, counted the number of prisoners before reporting to the SS officer on duty. Since we had no Kapo, one first had to be chosen, which took a little time. The Chaze was invited to make a selection. I was relieved when he walked up and down our lines and stopped in front of Oswald Zgismond.

  The eventual
tally was a hundred and fourteen, but it took poor Zgismond two re-counts to arrive at.

  Wasted minutes, Unterscharführer Rausch announced, would be doubled and added on to the end of the day. With that, we were sent back to start work

  The afternoon shift wore on much like any other, except that every twenty minutes we were interrupted by a chubby, pink Lagerführer called Nickel who insisted on making each man and woman stand ten inches away from their workbench while he patrolled between us, scouring the floor. Every scrap of leather had to be accounted for, he shouted, as if we were deaf. Jews stole like rats. It was our nature.

  In between Nickel’s patrols, news spread from the rest of the factory floor: the Chaze was leading a delegation on a tour of the perimeter fence, to check for weaknesses. While my comrades groaned, my thoughts turned instantly to the air-raid shelter on the southern side of the compound.

  Three bags full.

  The Chaze wouldn’t have had time to move them.

  It was no good, I couldn’t concentrate on my work. Laying my work down on the bench, I told the supervisor that I had to speak to Herr Ritter on an urgent matter concerning the work I was doing for Hinrich Lohse.

  ‘Five minutes,’ he said.

  I didn’t need even that much. The large pink guard had taken up permanent residence on a chair in the corridor. As I emerged through the doorway, Nickel raised his legs as if to trip me.

  ‘I thought you lot had been scurrying around. Where do you think you’re going now?’

  ‘Toilet, please, sir.’

  ‘Get back inside. All temporary sanitation release permits must be applied for in advance.’

  Temporary sanitation release permits was not a word string I had ever heard before.

  ‘Yes, sir. Can I ask how much advance is needed?’

  ‘Twenty-four hours,’ he snapped, as if was the only logical answer.

  ‘I’ll be sure to do that in future. However, on this occasion, I also need to speak to my boss, Herr Ritter. As I’m sure you know, we are currently outfitting the Reich Commissar himself, Hinrich Lohse. He will be returning in a couple of days for the first fitting.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘I assure you it’s true. I myself took his foot measurements only yesterday.’

  ‘Where’s your proof?’

  ‘I could show you the Adelaide brogue I’m making, if that would satisfy you?’

  ‘Work order?’

  ‘None was given to me. At least, not in writing.’

  ‘Nice try. Without proof, you’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘But the Chaze is my proof, you must ask him!’

  It was obvious that a pig like Nickel would not speak Yiddish, and I believe I might have got away with my indiscretion, had I not compounded my foolishness by gasping as soon as I realised what I’d said.

  ‘What’s the Chaze?’

  I made a split-second decision that, for the future of the hundred-plus prisoners in the camp, if I had to incriminate anybody, it couldn’t be Jensen Gertenberg.

  ‘Herr Ritter,’ I said. ‘It’s a nickname we have for him.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  I gulped and said, ‘Father.’

  I’ll need to get permission before I let you out of my sights.’ He shooed me away. ‘Go on, shut the door.’

  Back inside, I passed on the news about the temporary sanitation release permits, to stop anybody else wasting their time.

  ‘Twenty-four hours?’ Hirschel groaned. ‘So they’re staying another day.’

  ‘If he’s being serious,’ I said. ‘I suggest we do what we can to satisfy them for now.’

  And so we began the process of inventorying the capacity of our bowels, in order to submit requests for the next day. The supervisor drew up a list of names, and next to them wrote our preferred ‘release’ times, one per shift so as not to appear overly demanding. When the schedule was complete, the supervisor suggested it might be better if I was the one to submit the application.

  I knocked to leave the room. Nickel shouted, ‘What now?’

  ‘We have our sanitation release paperwork.’

  ‘Come.’

  I approached Nickel’s chair, and placed the application at his boots as requested.

  He bent down to pick it up, nodding judiciously as he studied the columns. As his finger traced down the list, he stopped halfway and brought the sheet closer to his eyes.

  Behind the paper, he started growling, then cleared his throat, hacking volubly.

  Finally, with a wet whistling hiss, he hocked out a spit-ball with such velocity that it tore a hole right through the middle of the sheet, which he then proceeded to crumple and hand back to me.

  ‘Application denied,’ he said.

  That night after roll call, most of the soldiers retreated to the huts at the entrance gate, leaving the estimable Lagerführer Nickel outside the barracks door and six on guard in the courtyard beyond the windows. On my first day in Moda, I had gleefully spied a cluster of wooden mannequins in SS uniforms out there. Now we had the real thing.

  In the brief period of relaxation before lights out, conversation turned to how long Rausch’s inspection would last. No other work teams had been told the same twenty-four hours nonsense but most men agreed with Hirschel, that the soldiers wouldn’t be leaving in a hurry. Some were more concerned than others. Almost half the men were convinced that the SS reinforcement was a good thing, despite their petty vindictiveness. For weeks now, in the face of German setbacks on the Eastern Front, rumour had suggested that that the Chaze and his garrison could be redeployed at any point, leaving the future of Moda as a specialist labour camp in doubt. A strengthened military presence could only bode well for our long-term survival, or so it was argued. I feared the worst of both possible worlds.

  Oswald Zgismond was nowhere to be found amongst our number that night. I hazarded that he had been kept out of the barracks in case of reprisals for his beating of old man Blau, until I was put straight by a diligent Czechoslovakian hole-puncher called Libor, sent to Moda from camp Stuthof. Once selected, Libor explained, Kapos never slept with the rest of the men. The duties of Polish Kapos went far beyond keeping count at the Appleplatz. Over time they became more like prison wardens, accountable for the performance of the men’s work, for their cleanliness, for even the solid workmanship of new bunk-beds. The Kapo soon learns how hard he must drive his men. The moment the SS become dissatisfied with him – and they always found a reason - he is no longer Kapo, and must return to sleeping with his men. Libor recalled one such Kapo who fell out of favour: on his first night back with his former friends, they beat him to death.

  Shivering beneath my blanket, I turned over and find the shadow of Ronen Kesselman kneeling at my pillow, softly sobbing.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. ‘What’s wrong? We’ve got through worse.’

  ‘At least I could pee in prison. The guard threated to have me sent to Stuthof if I didn’t stop pestering him.’

  ‘We can get the doctor to certify you,’ I said. ‘Something in writing. They’ll have to respect that.’

  ‘Like they respected Ernst?’

  There was no answer for that.

  ‘You may need to wear something,’ I said.

  ‘I’m wearing this uniform, aren’t I?’

  ‘Something like…’ Bereft of a tactful phrasing, I didn’t pursue the idea, and Ronen didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘I usually need to go twice a night, even on a good day. Do you think the guard will let me out?’

  I thought back to Nickel’s reign outside the clicking room. ‘Probably best not to push your luck tonight.’

  He groaned. ‘I don’t know how my parents will cope in here. My dad’s even worse than I am, up and down every five minutes.’

  I pushed myself up. ‘Everything’s changed now, Ronen. The old ways aren’t the same anymore. There won’t be any special favours from now on.’

  ‘No, no, Oswald pro
mised me he’d find them.’

  ‘Shh!’ someone piped from a nearby bunk. ‘The fool’s going to get us shot.’

  Ignoring him, I tried to talk to my friend. ‘You have to accept… It might be a while before you see your parents again.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Do you think if we wrote to the prison, their photographs might have turned up?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ I said. ‘They’re gone, and they’re not coming back.’

  Again, the coward called, ‘If you don’t shut him up, I will.’

  ‘Try to get some sleep,’ I offered weakly, and followed up with a lie. ‘Things will seem better in the morning.’

  I could see Ronen roll his lips and brow, giving this last remark much more thought than my weasel words deserved. Apparently consoled, he said, ‘You always know best, Jozef. Good bye, old friend.’

  If I’d listened more carefully that night instead of worrying about my own welfare, I might have been able to stop what happened next. Ronen hadn’t wished me ‘good night’ but ‘goodbye’.

  ***

  The next morning, the usual ritual: canteen, Appelplatz, another fumbled count. Ernst Blau was still with us – I could see his bandaged head in front of me – yet somehow Oswald Zgismond contrived to arrive back at his original tally.

  A hundred and fourteen faces sunk into a hundred and fourteen palms.

  Of all the Jews in Europe, the Chaze had picked the one who couldn’t add up.

  Zgismond was about to learn the consequences of falling out of favour with the SS, when from the side of the factory came the harsh piping of a patroller’s pea-whistle, followed by a soldier’s shout for help.

  Rausch calmly raised a hand as he considered his actions. With the same hand bunched into a fist, he extended the long barrel of his index finger and pointed out six of the meanest looking soldiers. The men immediately unholstered their pistols, sprinted past us, through the courtyard and disappeared behind the barracks.