Schreiber's Secret (2 page)

“Look at this,” he enthused, pulling a wad of banknotes from the pocket of his grubby and torn trousers. “Nice, aren’t they? They’ve all got a portrait of Moses on them. Everyone has a bankbook and receives a monthly salary from our very own bank. There are bills in all denominations.
Ten kronen, fifty, a hundred. Whoever comes here for a day or even a few hours is really impressed with the lot of the Jews. But you can’t buy anything with this money. It’s worthless. The whole thing’s a farce.”

Soferman soon learned the significance of Springer’s first words to him when he arrived at Theresienstadt. In a frenzy of activity, signs were being erected outside various buildings. The banner at the entrance to the ghetto read “Welcome to Theresienbad” as if the place were indeed a spa. In other locations were other placards, some proclaiming “Ghetto Paradise”, “Buy Your Own Homes”, “District for Jewish Settlement and Jewish Self-Administration”.

“What’s happening, Oskar?” asked Soferman, his small brown eyes bright with curiosity.

“We’re about to have another visit, my friend,” Springer chuckled hoarsely. “Let’s see if we can wangle a bit-part in the farce. At least we might get some decent food in our bellies.”

“But you said never to volunteer for anything,” the Berliner protested.

“It’s okay, Herschel,” the elf replied excitedly. “I’ve acted in one of these tragic-comedies before. You’re about to become a film star.”

And thus it was that Herschel Soferman from Berlin, by dint of his friend’s connections with the Judenaltester, the head of the Jewish self-governing body in the ghetto, discarded his ragged garments for a reasonably well-fitting grey flannel suit and a seat in Theresienstadt’s most luxuriously furnished “coffee house”.

The coffee and cake had tasted real enough as the cameras whirred and members of the visiting delegation of the International Red Cross passed through the café on their way to the hurriedly decorated children’s homes and other sterile sections of the “model Jewish settlement”.

Soferman and Springer had smiled at the guests as the camp orchestra struck up a promenade concert. Food was the name of the game and nobody cared what th
e
Vol
k
back home thought.

The visiting foreign delegates were accompanied by their Nazi hosts, and Soferman realized with a shock that they were the first SS men he had seen since his arrival at the camp. Springer had informed him that, but for the occasional German checkups, the illusion of Jewish self-government was allowed to run its course.

The little Frankfurter had proven to be a mine of information, thanks mainly to his contacts in the Jewish Council, though how these were made and maintained remained a closely guarded secret. Through Springer, Soferman learned of the various illusions the Germans employed to create an air of normality in the ghetto, the greatest of these being the apparent non-existence of SS men. Discipline and punitive punishment were meted out by the Jewish kapos, while the Czech gendarmes remained onlookers.

“But there are more SS men running this place than you can imagine,” the wiry man had told his friend. “That is why they carry out so many extensive registrations. They justify their existence by gathering detailed statistics, graphs, surveys and reports. It’s efficiency gone mad. And those pen-pushers eat and breathe efficiency only because they don’t want to get sent to the front. It makes our life difficult but at least it keeps us alive. As long as we can avoid ending up on a transport to the east, we too have a better chance of survival.”

And thus the two men become willing and silent accomplices as the fat-cats from Sweden and Switzerland passed their table, laden as it was with the sort of food the prisoners could normally only dream about. Obeying orders, Soferman and Springer kept their eyes averted from the guests lest they betray the true nature of the farce. It was all part of the game, and none of the inmates selected for the show was about to trade good food for posthumous glory.

“You certainly treat these people very well,” said one of the Swiss.

Soferman imagined the Nazi host smiling in smug satisfaction.

The delegation came and went and the actors returned to the vicissitudes of life in the barracks. Their room became so overcrowded that beds had to be shared. Good food became scarce, although Springer managed occasionally to procure the odd delicacy, a complete loaf of bread here, a whole potato there. He had not hesitated to share the treasure with his new bunkmate.

“How are you going to keep me warm in winter if you’re all skin and bone?” he would joke. There was never a hint of sexual ambivalence. It was just that there was nothing more vital to survival than true comradeship. Loners did not last long in the ghetto.

By normal standards, Soferman and Springer starved. But by the parameters existing in Theresienstadt, the two men could count themselves among the privileged few. Springer was an expert in stealth and seemed to have contacts everywhere, especially in the kitchens and clothing stores.

  “It’s all done by what the Czechs cal
l
sloj
s
,” Springer explained. “We call i
t
schleus
e
. It’s the ghetto word for pilfering.”

He reminded his friend that, upon arrival, each new transport had had to pass through the outbuildings where searches for valuables were carried out.

  “The Nazis called it th
e
schleus
e
,” Springer went on, “because it’s like a sluice-gate, a kind of dividing line between the place where the transport came in and the ghetto itself. Everybody passes through there and is robbed of most of his possessions. They rob. We pilfer.”

  Soferman learned that most of the pinching was carried out by the children of the ghetto, their morals corrupted speedily by the need to fill their empty bellies and those of their families.

  “I have an aunt who works in the kitchens,” Springer beamed. “She’s checked every time she leaves her work. But she has a son and she always gives him four helpings instead of one. They never check the children. It keeps them, and us, alive. My friend, the children here seeeverything and know everything. Nothing in our lives remains secret from them. They will look into your eyes and know whether you are a cheat or a pervert or, God forbid, whether you steal from your comrade
.
Kameradschaftsdiebstah
l
is the worst of our crimes here.”

“What happens if somebody gets caught?”

“Stealing from your comrade or from th
e
schleus
e
?”

“Both.”

Springer shrugged. “If you steal from your comrade, the others will make sure you suffer more than you gained. I once saw a thief forced to lie on the ground. A small plank of wood was placed on his neck. Then another man jumped on it
.
Fertig
!
He was finished. The Nazis usually don’t get to know about what’s happening in th
e
schleus
e
unless somebody squeals.”

“And if they do get to know about it?”

Springer’s eyes widened like black ink-spots on parchment. “If they’re lucky they get shot,” he said matter-of-factly.

“And if they’re unlucky?”

The little man shuddered, whether from the cold or from a vision of some terrible fate Soferman was unable to tell.

“Then”, the Frankfurter replied hoarsely, “they get sent to the Small Fortress.”

There was a pregnant silence. One man sought the words to express the horrors that had been related to him while the other waited for his curiosity to be satisfied.

“There was this priest, a Catholic priest,” Springer began at length. “He was being sent from the Small Fortress on a transport to the east. I was on a clothing detail at the weir and managed to snatch a few words with him.”

Again there was silence.

“What did he tell you, Oskar?” Soferman asked quietly. Springer looked at his friend sadly, the ink-spots deepening. “He told me that no Jew ever left there alive. He told me to try to imagine the most bestial of acts that man could perpetrate against man. He said that my imagination would pale in comparison with the truth.”

“Did he elaborate?”

“No, not much. There was not enough time. He said all the SS there were sadists. He mentioned the commander’s name, Jockl, his underling Storch and, especially, Obersturmführer Hans Schreiber. Apparently, Schreiber’s favourite pastime is carving or branding a swastika on a victim’s forehead after dispatching him with a bullet through the nape of the neck. It’s a macabre ritual with him.”

Oskar Springer fell silent once again. It was clear to Soferman that there had been no more time for his friend and the priest to continue their dialogue.

“What further horrors can possibly await us, Oskar?”

Springer stared ahead resignedly. Then quietly he said, “As we parted, I told him that if he ever lived to tell the story, he should let the whole world know what is happening to us.”

Tears began to trickle down the desiccated husks of the little man’s cheeks. Soferman, towering over him, gently pulled his friend’s head to his chest and stroked the matted black hair gently. “I’ll never leave you, my friend,” he whispered. “Whatever happens, we shall remain together until the end.”

Soferman and Springer survived the ghetto of Theresienstadt a further six months before an incident at th
e
schleus
e
sealed their fate. Six months in which the population of the ghetto had been decimated by further transports, with fewer victims arriving to replace them. Six months in which Oskar Springer had used every ounce of ingenuity within his slender frame to ensure that he and his friend were not loaded like cattle onto one of the transports.

It was the dreaded commander of the ghetto himself, Obersturmbannführer Karl Rahm, who proved the catalyst. Rahm, a choleric brute who was rumoured to have personally strangled two devout Czech Jews, was visiting the schleuse after welcoming a group of Dutch Jews from Westerbork. The Dutch had arrived looking relatively prosperous and laden with food, tobacco, valuables and money.

“The Dutch transports are best,” Springer had told Soferman eagerly the day before. “I’ll arrange for us to get on th
e
schleus
e
detail. Little Emil will see to it.”

Little Emil was a waif who was fifteen but looked half his age. He was lupine, a Springer in miniature, as Soferman once commented. Emil was a Czech Jew whose parents and sister had disappeared into the unknown two years earlier. To have survived so long in the ghetto needed more than luck. It needed resourcefulness of almost heroic proportions. Every risk Emil took was calculated. With no family to care for or be cared for by, he survived by wits alone, organizing small gangs of children to pilfer from the schleuse and then distribute the items, mainly food, to the starving longer-term inmates of the ghetto. The survivors from the old transports eagerly
awaited the new. But now they were becoming fewer and their precious bounty was even more coveted. Thus the inmates had good cause to revere Emil, the Waif, as he was called.

“Come, Soferman, Springer!” the high-pitched voice had called urgently one morning as a shaft of warm summer sunlight pierced the barrack room, empty now save for the two forms lying on adjacent beds at the far end. “Wake up! The Dutch have arrived.”

Soferman raised himself on one arm and rubbed his eyes. “Is that you, Emil?” he asked wearily.

“Quickly, Soferman. Wake Springer and be at th
e
schleus
e
in no more than five minutes. I’ll be in trouble with the gendarme Novotny if you aren’t.”

Springer and Soferman did not need to be told twice. Thanks to the Waif they had eaten better than most for a long time. But there had not been a transport for over a month and now even they were suffering the compassionless pangs of chronic hunger.

Upon their arrival at th
e
schleus
e
the scene was of the usual pandemonium. The Dutch were incredulous at being ordered to divest themselves of all of their most treasured possessions.

The detail, under the morose eyes of the Czech gendarmes, busily collected whatever came to hand, including food. Jewellery was of infinitely less importance to the old hands. One simply could not eat a gold ring. But valuable trinkets were of great interest to the Nazis and the new arrivals were warned that discovery of anything undivulged would render unto the owner the ultimate punishment.

“You!” barked Novotny. The plump red-faced gendarme pointed at Emil, Soferman and Springer. “Join the food collection detail.”

The three needed no second invitation. Novotny always put on an act of severity at th
e
schleus
e
in order to impress the new arrivals and any Nazis who might be around. But the Czech had a heart of gold and had endangered his life on many occasions in order that some ghetto Jews might have a little extra to eat.

Soferman stood behind one of the counters, which were scratched and pitted from the countless possessions that had scraped across them. The owners of the goods were jetsam too, he thought. They too had been tossed by fate into this maelstrom of iniquity. He could not bear to look at them squarely, for their eyes spoke eloquently of their indignation that it was now men wearing yellow stars who were robbing them. But those that had the good fortune to remain in the ghetto would learn quickly that this was the way of things and that anything was preferable to transport to the east.