The Keeper of Secrets (10 page)

Chapter 18

Berlin

November 1938

T
he doors to the synagogue opened, and people poured out into the weak late-autumn sunlight. Men, women, and children wore coats, jackets, and suits, with hats or yarmulkes on their heads and gloves on their hands. They were laughing and talking, walking in pairs, purposefully ignoring the small group that stood on the sidewalk at the bottom of the path. These people looked exactly the same, except there were no yarmulkes and no laughter.

“Jew!” one of them yelled as the people began to pass by.

Still the families ignored them.

“Dirty Jew! Get out, leave us all in peace!” As a woman passed close by him, one of the protesters spat at her face. She stopped, pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, wiped her face, and continued to walk, without looking in his direction.

“Jewish whore! Filthy bitch!” he shouted after her furiously.

The Horowitz family walked in three groups of two, Benjamin and Elizabeth arm in arm in front, the twins almost running, with Rachel’s black plaits bobbing against her scarlet coat, and Levi and Simon together bringing up the rear. As he’d instructed them to do, Benjamin’s children chatted to each other and ignored the abuse being screamed at them less than three feet away.

I
n four months, Simon Horowitz would turn eighteen. He lay on his bed listening to the sounds floating in on the night air, laughter and shouting and something that sounded like anger and then every so often the noise of a siren or a loud truck. It was early November and the city of Berlin was winding up into festive mode. His elder brother, Levi, was twenty-one and stayed out late almost every night. Simon, who took after his father, was not very tall but stocky and strong. Simon’s face had lost the chubbiness of youth, and the flashing eyes and wild brows offset his hooked nose. He wasn’t sure about the dimple in his chin; it was fine on his mother and as a child he’d been proud of it, but now he wondered if it made him look too young.

He switched on the light above his bed. His room was quite plain compared to the rest of the house, but he liked it that way. Two huge portraits dominated the pale walls. One was Paganini playing his 1742 Guarneri violin, Il Cannone, and the other was a late-eighteenth-century portrait of another of his heroes, Antonio Vivaldi. Simon’s violin case lay beside the music stand and a box full of sheet music. The rest of the room was tidy; clothes were in the wardrobe, and the top of his nightstand neatly displayed his hairbrush and comb, a mirror, a china bowl and pitcher, and, in a wooden frame, a line drawing of himself playing the violin, by his younger sister, Rachel.

He picked up his book on composition and thumbed through it. Officially, both he and Levi were waiting for things to improve before starting college; unofficially, they knew that in the current political climate, no college would take them. Levi was working as a clerk in his father’s bank, and Simon was giving music lessons to the children of Jewish friends. It was hard to find Gentiles who would teach them; in fact, in some parts of town it was hard to find Gentiles who would serve them in shops. There were so many restrictions now—they weren’t allowed to carry guns or own radios, and for several months they’d carried identity cards. It wasn’t compulsory to do so, but that day wasn’t far away.

Very few businesses were now openly owned by Jews, and most of those premises were being continuously covered in graffiti, as were many of their friends’ homes. Simon was used to the Gentile reaction. If he was called names, spat at, or, worse, had things thrown at him, he just put his head down and hurried on. Things would get better; Papa was convinced of it. This Hitler was Austrian; he wasn’t even German and the Germans would see through him and his sadistic thugs, vote them out in the next election, and everything would return to normal. Papa told them that it was just these extremists who made life difficult. Most people were as friendly as ever, and his customers had stayed loyal.

In fact, Simon suspected that his papa didn’t really discuss the situation at the bank with anyone except Mordecai. Levi told him that accounts were being closed and funds withdrawn every day. People were very apologetic; it was nothing personal, but they’d been told it was unsafe to do business with a Jew. One woman even told him she hadn’t known he was “dirty.” Mama told them that when Uncle Avrum suggested they sell the bank and come to New York, their papa had been horrified by the idea. The current atmosphere might be very hard, but it was temporary and it would pass; it was no reason to leave their home and start again somewhere else.

At least they still had their musical evenings, although those attending were more likely to be just family now. Many of their friends were too frightened to go out at night in case they got assaulted by roving bands of Nazi youth. Simon and his papa played the violins, separately and together, and the old thrill was always there. His reverence for the Guarneri remained as strong as ever. Sometimes it sounded close to perfect, and at other times it made him look like a novice. His skill had been widely recognized, and he clung to his dream of studying music and playing in the Berlin Philharmonic when this madness came to an end.

“Good book?”

He looked up. Levi stood in the doorway.

“Not especially. Can you hear the noise out there? Sounds like another busy night for the police.”

Levi sat down at Simon’s desk and picked up a fountain pen. He resembled his mother, tall and willowy with long limbs and fingers. Her coloring, auburn hair, moss-green eyes, and golden skin dusted with freckles, made him different from the other children, who were like Benjamin, with his dark hair and almost black eyes. Levi would’ve made a beautiful female, as his mother was, and already seemed to posses her innate grace and elegance in his movements. Simon knew that many fathers would’ve struggled to understand Levi’s passion for art, design, color, and fabric, all things exquisite and perfect, but Benjamin had a strong cultural flame in his own soul and he respected his eldest son’s talent. His sons, in turn, respected him.

“Should be fun. Want to come?”

Simon hesitated. Levi was suggesting a covert operation, and he knew his parents would vent their disapproval in the morning.

“No thanks, too cold for me, and I want to practice the sonata again, for tomorrow night.”

Levi shook his head with obvious amusement.

“You know what they say, Si, all work and no play. That bloody violin rules your life. If you change your mind, we’ll be at Das Festmahl till midnight.”

He pulled himself to his feet.

“Have fun and be careful,” Simon said, returning to his book.

“Always.”

An hour later, Simon stood in his room doing fingering exercises on his own Victorian violin. It was boring, repetitious, and time consuming but, according to Herr Eisenhardt, absolutely necessary if he was to achieve the dexterity he craved.

Suddenly the night was split by the sharp sound of glass breaking. Simon went to the window. A group of men were using a piece of wood to shatter all the windows of a Rolls-Royce parked up the street; the scene was almost as bright as day. Farther on he could see a big black police wagon with its rear doors open and men being manhandled into it. Downstairs he heard the telephone ring. He crossed the room and went out onto the landing. His father’s conversation was brief, and then he heard his mother’s voice. He moved farther down the stairs.

“He’s out with friends,” she said.

“Where?”

“I don’t know, Potsdamer Platz or maybe the Friedrichstraße. Why?”

Simon could hear the panic in her voice.

“That was Franz. The bastards have launched a pogrom. He says we should get the children and come to his house. It’s got a hidden cellar.”

“Oh my God, Benjamin—”

“I’ll take you and the children to Franz, and then I’ll find Levi.”

Simon ran back into his room. He grabbed his coat from the peg on the door and thrust his feet into his boots. He knew he had precious little time to get out of the house before his mother came. They’d never let him go alone, so he had to get out now and find Levi. He grabbed a piece of paper from his desk, dipped the fountain pen into a pot of ink, and scrawled a note.

“Mama, I know where Levi is. Get Papa to take you to Herr Reinhardt’s. We’ll meet you there soon. Don’t worry, your loving son, Simon.”

He could hear his mother going into David’s room. He pulled the window up as far as the cord would allow, swung himself out onto the massive branch of the tree, and crawled along to where he could swing down onto another branch. In a few moments he was on the ground and moving toward the gate.

Chapter 19

T
he street was a seething mass of people. Simon stood on the sidewalk and watched the chaos with a mixture of horror and excitement. Groups of SS officers and storm troopers were running from window to window, smashing the glass with their truncheons or long sticks, and the sound was like a thousand bells all chiming at once. Men were carrying armfuls of furniture and books out of the shops to add to a growing pile heaped in the middle of the road. He could see two officers trying to set fire to one corner of the pile. Terrified people were running in every direction, yelling and screaming and trying to avoid the storm troopers’ truncheons. A group of officers was clustered tightly around an Orthodox Jew, laughing and cutting his hair while he stood staring straight ahead, his hat in his hands, offering no resistance. A truck rumbled into the street and screeched to a halt. Uniformed policemen pulled up the back canopy.
Now we’ll get some order,
Simon thought with relief. But, to his amazement, the SS officers and storm troopers started grabbing men as they ran past and pushing them toward the tailgate of the truck.

An icy dread trickled down his spine, and his legs felt suddenly weak. Without understanding how or why, he knew that this night was different from all the abuse they’d suffered before. This was on a new scale.

He began to run down the sidewalk, leaping instinctively over piles of glass that lay underfoot like snow. The cold wind was blowing it onto the folds in his clothes and up into his face and hair.

Suddenly a large man blocked his path. He’d run out from a shop doorway holding a piece of jagged glass in front of him like a weapon. Simon saw terror on the man’s haggard face as the hand thrust the glass out and upward toward him, then a softening to some form of recognition and acknowledgment. The man was wearing a yarmulke.

“Run!”

It was a half-uttered cry, choked off in his throat, and he was gone. Simon forced himself to start running again. The truck passed very close by him, swerving to avoid pedestrians, and he could see the desperation in the eyes of the men sitting in the rear. As he passed the top of the blind alley, something in his peripheral vision caught his attention, a pile of familiar-shaped objects in the middle of the dimly lit street. It pulled him to a sudden stop and he turned back. Violins!

Curiosity overcame fear, and he ducked into the shadows on the far side of the alley. Carefully and quietly he made his way from doorway to doorway until he was opposite the building. Two storm troopers were carrying three or four instruments in each hand out of the shop and throwing them onto the pile. The wood splintered as it hit the cobblestones. Simon could see an officer beating a man with a truncheon and recognized the victim, Jacob, Amos’s assistant. There was nothing he could do to save Jacob or the priceless violins from the fires of hatred, and his common sense told him that his intervention could prove fatal, but still the violence and desecration filled him with incandescent rage and a sense of complete helplessness. Breathing deeply against the desire to attack the thugs only feet away from him, he crept back to the main street and began to run.

“Simon!”

Ahead of him was a café with its tables and chairs strewn upside down on the sidewalk among the debris, bright tablecloths crumpled in the glass. Rolf, a friend of Levi’s, was beckoning frantically to him from the open door. He sprinted inside. The lights were out, but the room was lit by the flashlights and streetlights outside. A group of young men and women were huddled in a corner, away from the gaping hole that had been the front window.

“Levi!”

The brothers embraced.

“What are you doing here?”

“Franz rang Papa and said the Nazis had launched a pogrom. They’ve taken the twins to Franz’s, he has a cellar. I knew where you were. We have to get to the Reinhardts’.”

Rolf grabbed Levi’s sleeve. “You’ll be arrested. If they find you on the streets, they’ll take you. Stay with us, you’re one of us.”

“We can’t stay here. It’s not that far—”

“At least leave your cards behind and lie about your names.”

Rolf was pleading with him. Levi pulled his identity card out of his jacket pocket and threw it across the room. Simon felt in his coat pockets.

“I don’t have mine.”

Levi and Rolf hugged each other, and Rolf put the palm of his hand against Levi’s freezing cheek. “Try and stay safe,” he said quietly.

Simon followed his brother out the door and into the mayhem. They ducked around the corner and down an alley. About two feet to their right, a blond woman was flat against the brick wall and an SS officer, his trousers around his ankles, was raping her. When she saw them over his shoulder, she began to struggle again, twisting her head from side to side and beating her fists against his back, but his large body pinned her securely. Simon stood frozen to the spot until Levi pushed him roughly.

“Come on,” he whispered, “we can’t help her.” Reluctantly Simon tore himself away and sprinted after Levi’s departing shadow, through a stone arch and onto another main street. Billowing gray smoke was rolling toward them.

“It’s coming from down there.”

Levi pointed to the far end of the street.

“The synagogue.”

“We can’t go that way, they’ll be watching it burn. Up here, we’ll have to go in a circle.”

Levi set off at a jog in the other direction. There was glass everywhere, crunching underfoot with every step. The freezing cold wind was blowing straight at them, but at least it was keeping the acrid smoke at bay. Just before the end of the street, they saw a large gathering of SS officers, mostly standing with their backs to them, smoking and laughing. Levi grabbed his arm and pulled him into a darkened doorway. Simon could feel his heart pounding against his ribs, and his breath was coming in short, ragged gasps. He pressed his back as flat as he could against the hard surface.

One house down, the door swung open and an elderly woman put her head and shoulders out, glancing up and down the street. She looked straight into the frightened faces of the two young men and smiled at them.

“You Jews?” she asked.

Levi hesitated and then nodded. The group of officers was breaking up, and some were walking down the middle of the street, toward the clouds of smoke. She beckoned to them.

“Quickly, in here!”

She opened the door fully and they scrambled inside. It was a bare hallway with black and white tiles on the floor and a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Ahead of them was a steep staircase.

“Up there.” She gestured toward the stairs. At the top she opened a door and waited for them to go past her into a cozy lounge. Two chairs and an overstuffed red sofa filled the room, and a large electric heater threw off a fierce heat. Floral curtains were drawn, and there was classical music coming from the radio on the table. It was Wagner.

“What are your names?” she asked gently.

Levi cleared his throat.

“I’m Levi Horowitz and this is my brother Simon.”

“Well, hello, Levi and Simon. I’m Maria, Maria Weiss. Welcome to my humble home. Shall we have some coffee and chocolate cake while we wait for the morning?”

She was a plump woman, not as old as he’d first thought, with silver-streaked black hair pulled back in a bun, and she beamed at Simon as she picked up a large ginger cat from one of the chairs.

“Come on, Wolfgang, find yourself somewhere else to sleep. Take off your coats and have a seat; do make yourselves comfortable. I’ll make some coffee and you can tell me all about yourselves. Since my Herman died I don’t get many visitors, so it’ll be lovely to chat with two young men.”

“You’re not Jewish, are you, Mrs. Weiss?”

“No dear, I’m not.”

Levi looked at the door, and Simon could feel his uncertainty; who knew what it would mean for her if they were found here. Some Gentiles lured Jews in and then betrayed their presence to earn a few extra marks.

“Are you sure about this? We don’t want to get you into any trouble.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks! No one worries about an old woman who lives up a flight of stairs. And I’ll have any visitors I choose in my home. Now, how do you like your coffee?”