Schreiber's Secret (40 page)

The old man wilted in his wheelchair, tears streaming down his gnarled face.

“Please, go on, Herr Doktor,” said Edwards hoarsely. He looked at Danielle and shook his head slowly. The concern in her face mirrored his own.

“I told him, Herr
Edwards ...” The doctor winced. “And when I told him, I knew then that I had lost him forever. I was glad to lose him forever. I told my adopted son who had become this animal ... I told him that he was a Jew.”

EPILOGUE

The following day, Mark Edwards and Danielle Green drew up at the Jewish cemetery at Waltham Abbey. The sun was spreading its warmth over the serene Essex countryside. The dawn chorus itself seemed to have extended into late morning as if the birds were determined to mark this day as a new beginning.

The journalists had been moved by the extraordinary story of the blind old doctor. But there were still many questions left unanswered.
Questions that no one could now answer. Did Hans Schreiber ever feel contrition for his awful deeds? Did the revelation that he was a Jew cause him crises of conscience, or did it simply make his subterfuge an easier game to play? How did Helmut become Herschel? Did his mother get married again, to a man named Soferman? And if so, what happened to them? The questions could go on forever. But the biggest question of all would never be answered. Who had been the real Hans Schreiber?

The couple parked their car and walked silently, hand in hand, the few yards to the main office. Edwards donned his skullcap before asking the sexton the whereabouts of the graves of Herschel Soferman and Henry Sonntag.

“Block G, Row L, numbers 112 and 113,” came the reply.

“What do you mean?” said Edwards incredulously. “Does that mean they’re buried next to one another?”

“Yes.” The man shrugged. “That’s the way they came in. One straight after the other. Neither was married and needed a double plot and neither of them had any families to object, so ...”

The pair thanked the sexton and continued to walk for a further hundred yards before they came upon the two fresh mounds. They were unmarked apart from small sticks bearing their respective numbers. According to Jewish tradition, headstones would only be set some months later.

“Mark, we don’t know which grave belongs to whom,” said Danielle with concern.

“Does it really matter, darling?” the reporter said, extracting a slip of paper from his pocket. “They were brothers who
were born Jews and have been buried as Jews.”

She stared at the fresh earth and sighed. “This is going to make a helluva book. Have you thought of a title yet?”

“There can only be one title, Dani. He took it to the grave with him
:
Schreiber’s Secret
.
”

Then in halting Hebrew, the gentile read aloud the Mourner’
s
Kaddis
h
that Danielle had transliterated for him.

“Yitgadal, ve’Yitkadash, Shemai Raba...”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The motivation behind the thriller you have just read was the trial in Israel of John Demjanjuk.

The Ukrainian-American was deported to Israel in 1986 to stand trial for war crimes, after being mistakenly identified by Israeli Holocaust survivors as “Ivan the Terrible”, a notorious guard at the Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Demjanjuk was accused of committing murder and acts of extraordinarily savage violence against camp prisoners during 1942-43. He was convicted of having committed crimes against humanity and sentenced to death in Israel in 1988. The verdict was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993, based on new evidence that Ivan the Terrible was probably another man, Ivan Marchenko. Following the trial, in September 1993, he returned to his home in Ohio. In 1998, his citizenship was restored after a United States federal appeals court ruled that prosecutors had suppressed exculpatory evidence concerning his identity.

Demjanjuk was born in Ukraine, and during World War Two was drafted into the Soviet Red Army, where he was captured as a German prisoner of war. In 1952 he emigrated from Germany to the United States, and was granted citizenship in 1958 whereupon he formally anglicized his name from “Ivan” to “John”.

On 12 May 2011, Demjanjuk was convicted by an ordinary German criminal court, pending appeal, as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at Sobibor concentration camp. He was sentenced to five years in prison. The interim conviction was later annulled, because Demjanjuk died before his appeal could be heard.  He was later released pending trial and final verdict by the German Appellate Court. He lived at a German nursing home in Bad Feilnbach, where he died on 17 March 2012. Despite decades of legal wrangling and controversy, Demjanjuk died a free man and legally innocent.

I wanted to write a thriller revolving around a question of identity. To this end, I did major research into aspects of the Holocaust, especially Nazi bestiality at the small fortress of Theresienstadt. I had already visited the transit camp in a visit to Prague during the Prague Spring of 1968. I also gathered as much information as I could about what it took to become an SS officer, including the extraordinary lengths that the Nazis went to in order to make sure their members were of “pure” Aryan stock. I stayed with my nephew in Eindhoven, Holland, from where I visited the closest German town, which happened to be Straelen. The town archivist was of great assistance in helping me to define Hans Schreiber’s birthplace.

Being a reporter, I had covered many crime scenes and court cases during my career. Nevertheless, I needed more authenticity with regard to police procedures and the language used by barristers during murder trials. Thankfully, Detective Inspector Frank Wetherley of the Metropolitan police, and Nigel Lithman, QC, one of Britain’s leading barristers, came up with the goods. I am indebted to them.

I appeared on the Sky TV Book Show with Eve Pollard, prior to the selling of the film rights.

Schreiber’s Secre
t
followed my first book,
The Winds of Kedem
, for which I drew on my experience as a war correspondent in Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The story revolves around an Arab nuclear terror plot to destroy Israel.

My third book,
Cry of the Needle
, is a medical thriller, spawned when my journalistic career was cut short by an invasive spinal procedure. It is a story of medical malpractice, and of the type of revenge that is best served Irish.

High Heels & 18 Wheels: Confessions of a Lady Trucker
is a work of non-fiction. The story (mainly in her own words) of Bobbie Cecchini is a tale of triumph over adversity. It tells how a girl from Philly overcomes a series of personal horrors, four failed marriages and one of the most painful illnesses in the medical lexicon.  But first and foremost
,
High Heel
s
is the story of Bobbie’s adventures on the road as a lady trucker. Bobbie and I share the same incurable condition, adhesive arachnoiditis.

My work tends to be eclectic, so I am currently working on an anthology of short stories entitled Tales of the
Unexpected.

Word-of-mouth is crucial for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed the book, please consider leaving a review at
Amazon
, even if it’s only a line or two; it would make all the difference and will be very much appreciated.

You can also visit Roger’s
blog
. Alternatively, you can get in touch on
Facebook
.

             
                                                                       Roger Radford, 2013