A Murder in Auschwitz (37 page)

Auschwitz, 9th February 1944

MEYER’S face was swollen. His teeth hurt and his gum was bleeding. He had not slept the previous night as the dull pain had grown and begun to throb until it felt like someone was pushing a sharp piece of glass through his gum. But the pain in his mouth was nothing to what he felt in his heart.

He had thought about Anna and Greta all through the night; about the last time he had seen them, about the very first time he had laid eyes on them, in the apartment in Berlin, the surprise when he saw that it was twins. He remembered the first day at school for them both, the walks in the park, taking them to Wertheim department store to look at the toys. All gone and in the past, now no more than memories.

Geller had tried to help while they were in the forest. He had made Meyer tell him about his girls and joined in with stories about his boy, Franz. It had been an attempt to let Meyer express his love for his children, but the pain was too great. Both Meyer and Geller shed tears that day while they discussed better, safer times with their children, Geller blaming the wind for his watering eyes and Meyer blaming his toothache.

Soup and hard bread sat in front of him in Kolb’s cell. He was hungry, but the pain was too great. Kolb sat opposite him at the table with his arms folded. Meyer thought that his uniform looked even shabbier than it had the previous evening and wondered if that was possible. Was Auschwitz draining the colour from Kolb now that he was a prisoner, claiming another victim, turning Kolb into a ghost?

“Why don’t you eat?” asked Kolb, but Meyer did not answer.

The door to the cell opened as Fuchs arrived. His blue folder was balanced on top of a typewriter, along with paper and some envelopes, which he carefully placed down on the table. “Hauptsturmfuhrer Kramer has agreed to myself and Hauptscharfuhrer Kolb visiting Straus’ office. I explained the reason and he insisted on accompanying us in person. He said that he will send a guard here when he is ready to take us across.”

Fuchs began to organise the paper and envelopes in one pile, then, opening his folder and looking through his notes, he pulled out and checked some handwritten sheets. He then sat down and placed a blank sheet of paper into the typewriter, releasing the paper lever and turning the thumbwheel.

“Why the typewriter, Heinrich?” asked Kolb.

“I need the notes I have taken over the past few evenings to be in order and easy for me to present at the hearing. As Meyer has pointed out, your case rests on the order of events in the run up to Straus’ murder. I am going to have them ordered on a sheet so I can refer to them and explain each one to the court martial.

“I have already spent the day typing up the rest of the notes I have. Here is the sheet on Ritter,” said Fuchs, holding up a typewritten sheet. “His details, his history in the SS, the camps he worked at, and his time here, including the failed requests for transfer. I also have one on Straus and one on you, Wolfgang.”

Kolb held out his hand so that Fuchs would pass his notes to him. He read through the sheets and then handed them back. “Is it entirely necessary to mention the blackmailing of Straus?”

“Yes,” said Fuchs, emphatically. “As Meyer has pointed out, they are not going to shoot you for blackmail. Especially the blackmail of a homosexual.”

“It allows us to bring in an unsavoury element,” said Meyer, rubbing his jaw. “Straus was a homosexual, a crime in the Reich punishable by being sent to a death camp. We can implicate Ritter in this, suggest that he may also be homosexual, adding uncertainty to the mix and a further possible reason that he may have wanted to kill Straus. A lovers' tiff.”

“Ritter is not on trial. It is I who am on trial.”

“I once had a highly respected lawyer tell me that when attempting to prove the innocence of a client, one of the best ways is to deflect blame. Find someone who may have had equal, if not more reason to commit the crime. It doesn’t matter if they are guilty of the crime, it puts uncertainty into the minds of the jury. Or in your case, the panel.”

“Was this a Jewish lawyer?” asked Kolb.

“No. He became a member of the Gestapo,” replied Meyer.

“The Gestapo? And where is he now, this Gestapo lawyer?” asked Kolb.

“Dead. Shot by the SS for daring to think for himself.”

There was a knock on the cell door and an SS guard explained that he was there to take Fuchs and Kolb over to Straus’ office where Kramer would meet them. The two men left the cell. The door was locked behind them, leaving Meyer staring at the typewriter, the blank paper, and envelopes.

It was just over half an hour before Kolb and Fuchs returned. Kolb had a wide smile across his face.

“We found it,” said Fuchs. “It took us about twenty minutes but it was there, just above the skirting board, behind where Straus’ desk sits.”

Meyer nodded. “That is the final piece of the jigsaw. We have a full account of what happened that night, the reason for only a single shot being heard, and a second bullet hole which matches Hauptscharfuhrer Kolb’s story.”

“Hauptsturmfuhrer Kramer was impressed when we found it and has agreed to confirm its existence tomorrow at the court martial,” said Fuchs. “I have quite a bit of work to do tonight to prepare for tomorrow. I will have you escorted back to your hut, Meyer.”

He stood up from the desk to go to the door to shout on the guard.

“Before you shout on the adjutant, I didn’t get the chance to ask Hauptscharfuhrer Kolb my question about the Pfeiffer case last night,” said Meyer.

Kolb smiled. “I know what you would like to ask me. But I think Heinrich should give us a few minutes together so that I can answer this final question.”

The pain in Meyer’s gums had receded slightly, and he felt that the swelling in his face was going down. “I think that it is important that Scharfuhrer Fuchs understands the Pfeiffer case and why it is so important,” said Meyer.

“What can possibly still be important in a case that happened ten years ago? There is nothing in the Pfeiffer case that Heinrich needs to know,” replied Kolb.

“I disagree, Wolfgang,” interrupted Fuchs. “It was the case where Herr Meyer first demonstrated his skills as a lawyer to you. And I know that there is something about that case which you are holding back. I think that if you consider me a friend, and fellow officer, and you want me to represent you tomorrow, for God’s sake, you should trust me with whatever it is that you are trying to hide.”

Kolb took a deep breath. “You had better sit down, Heinrich. I’m sorry, you are right, of course. If I can’t trust you on the night before my court martial, then I can’t trust anyone. I didn’t want you to know in case it made you think that I was guilty of Straus’ murder.”

“Why would it make me think that?” asked Fuchs, taking his seat at the table once more.

“Because although Hauptscharfuhrer Kolb was found innocent of the murder of Josef Pfeiffer, he told me a couple of nights ago that he had in fact been guilty,” said Meyer.

Fuchs was silent for a while, allowing the information to sink in, before responding. “You were right not to tell me. If it had not been for Meyer realising that the first shot fired, the one which killed Straus, had been masked by the crack of thunder when you were still in the courtyard, then you would now be looking for another representative.

“So, this whole Pfeiffer case hinged on a missing murder weapon, is that correct?”

“Yes, Herr Fuchs,” replied Meyer. “The innocent verdict was based around the fact that the murder weapon was not found at the scene. It was the key to the whole case. It was the subject of the question which I was going to ask Hauptscharfuhrer Kolb. In spite of the police making a thorough search of the area the murder weapon was not found. It was an upholstery tool, of which, the name escapes me.”

“A star tack hammer,” Kolb reminded him. “It was unfortunate at the time that it had been the first thing which came to hand. It was sharp and killed Josef almost instantly, but it is was the only one of its kind in the whole place, and had such an identifiable head that using it put me in quite a corner.

“Once I realised what I had done, using the easiest murder weapon to identify in the whole building, I knew that I had to make sure that no-one would ever be able to find it.”

“So where did you hide it?” asked Meyer.

Kolb began to laugh. “It was there in the workshop the whole time. Once I realised that Josef was dead, I had to get rid of the star tack hammer. There was only one place where I had a chance that no one would look. We had been working late to finish the re-upholstery of a sofa and we had gone to the beer hall because we were nearly finished. We just had the base cloth to go on, so that was what I did. I sewed the star tack hammer to the frame of the sofa and then put on the base cloth. When the police came to search the workshop for the weapon, they carried the sofa outside and Josef Pfeiffer senior delivered it to the customer himself.”

Meyer stared at Kolb’s laughing face, aware that his hatred for the man was written across his own.

Berlin, 20th July 1943

LIFE in the capital had become extremely difficult. British and American bombers targeted the city regularly, forcing Meyer and his family to scramble through the dark to the safety of their secret shelter.

Food had become impossible for Meyer to buy, but every week, a messenger boy would arrive with enough to keep them going for the next seven days. Often there was a note, perhaps a sentence or two asking if anything in particular was required by Meyer or a simple line saying that everything was okay at the firm, always signed 'F'.

Occasionally, there was a luxury, a bottle of wine for Meyer and Klara or sugar sweets for the children. Meyer was not sure how Bauer managed to supply another family with enough food when everything was rationed, but he was extremely grateful.

Apart from the trips to the old coal bunker, none of the family left the apartment. After their attempted arrest, Meyer had told them that they all had to stay inside and keep as low a profile as possible. He did not want Frau Fischer reporting his or his family’s movements to whatever authority she felt compelled to report to. It was bad enough seeing her door ajar every week when the messenger boy arrived.

Klara kept up Anna and Greta’s education, splitting the day up into periods similar to the structured of a school day, covering all of the relevant subjects throughout the week. In an attempt to keep in touch with the passage of time, Saturday and Sunday were kept as days off. The girls did not have to study on these days and looked forward to them as much as if they were at the local school.

Meyer and Klara tried to make the weekend as special as possible. On warm days, all of the windows were opened, allowing a pleasant breeze to sweep through the apartment, and they would have indoor picnics as though they were in the park. On dark, rain-soaked weekends, Meyer would organise treasure hunts around the apartment, where the prizes were the sugar sweets which Bauer had sent.

In the evenings, Klara and Meyer would take it in turns to read stories, and the girls would write their own and read them aloud. Often, Klara would have competitions, quizzes on different subjects, or debates, or poetry readings, again with the sweets as prizes. Jigsaws were completed and recompleted, board games were played, and card games were invented.

Time was filled and the family survived on the food donated by Friedrich Bauer, but Meyer wondered for how long this could last and what the future truly held for them.

It was one o’clock in the morning exactly when the knock at the door came. It was the knock that, at the back of his mind, Meyer always knew would come again.

“Open up!” came the shout. “It is the police. Open up!”

Meyer got out of bed leaving Klara crying on the pillow. “No, Manfred, not again,” she sobbed.

He opened the door to the apartment. Outside was the same officer as before, Scharfuhrer Mahler. However, this time he was accompanied by a man in civilian clothing as well as the complement of soldiers.

“Manfred Meyer?” asked the man, holding up an identification wallet for him to see. It contained the man’s photograph, over-stamped with the Reich eagle on one side and his name and rank, Kriminalkommisar Abel, with Geheime Staatspolizei printed across the top and SS runes in one corner.

“Yes,” replied Meyer.

“You and your family have been selected for deportation to the east. You have twenty minutes to dress and pack. One bag each.”

Scharfuhrer Mahler and Kriminalkommisar Abel stood to one side while two of the soldiers entered the apartment to keep guard inside. “Twenty minutes,” he reminded Meyer.

Meyer returned to the bedroom, but Klara was gone. He checked the living room but only the soldiers were there. When he entered the girls’ room, Klara had already woken them and had them getting dressed, as she organised two piles of clothes for them.

“Why are the soldiers here again, Papa?” yawned Anna.

“They say we have to leave. Go to a new place,” he replied.