Schreiber's Secret (24 page)

“Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes, I was working as a presser. I was a bit of a loner really, although I did have one friend. Avraham was his name. He worked the presses by day and studied the Torah by night. He had payers, you know, sidecurls, and looked a pukka Jew
.
[Sighs
]
That was his downfall. I’ll never forget Kristallnacht. It means Night of Broken Glass. I was sixteen at the time and it was my first job. Goldberg was a bit of a slave-driver.  There were about fifty of us working in his factory. We were on the night shift that night. November the ninth, 1938. I’ll never forget it.

“Look, Mr Edwards, you’ve got to understand that up until that year there had been a lot of decrees and things but not a lot of violence. They started by stealing Jewish property. We had a couple of Jews of Polish origin and they were forcibly deported. They were nice guys. One of them, Mietek, taught me Polish. I learnt basic Polish in six weeks. Can you believe that? I had this tremendous knack for learning languages. I taught myself English, too. I listened to the BBC all the time. English is my favourite language. It is so rich.  “Anyway, it all started because my namesake, some young Jew named Herschel Grynszpan, assassinated the Secretary of the German embassy in Paris. That was all the excuse the Nazis needed for a pogrom. There we were, slaving away at our presses, when the front doorbell rings. It was enough to wake the dead, that bell. It had to be what with the noise of the presses and sewing machines. Anyway, we opened the door and there was this Jew standing there. White as a sheet, he was. He was shaking all over. He asked for Goldberg. Said we should all get home as quickly as possible. Said Nazi gangs were running amok in the streets. He said synagogues everywhere were burning. Can you imagine? The stranger then ran off into the night. No one waited for Goldberg to decide anything. Everyone clamoured to get home to their parents or their wives and children. All except Avraham and me, that is. We were both orphans with no families to go home to. Goldberg let us share a room at the back of the workshop. He had taken pity on us. He worked us hard but he was fair.

“Anyway, Goldberg himself turned up a few minutes later. He was also shaking. ‘I’ve got to lock up, boys,’ he said. He told us to keep to our little room at the back. ‘Don’t venture out into the streets, boys,’ he said. ‘Don’t act like heroes. Wait till it all blows over.’ So Goldberg went home and there was just me and Avraham. Alone and frightened in our little back room. We played cards, drank tea and ate a few sandwiches. The usual routine, really. It was our little den and I suppose it gave us a false sense of security.

“
[Breathes deeply
]
Then came the banging on the front door of the workshops. They rang the doorbell again and again. The sound went right through us. Then the banging got louder. We knew they must have been using a sledgehammer. There was the terrible noise of splintering wood and shattering glass. Avraham was shaking and wide-eyed with fright. I’ll never forget his eye
s
[pause
]
. Then we heard their voices. Venomous, they were. ‘Juden Raus,’ they screamed. They were getting more agitated because the place was empty. We heard them smashing up the workshop. We knew we must hide because there was no escape. The only way out was past the thugs. There was a small trapdoor in the floor but there was only space for one. Instinctively I dived into it. I pulled the trapdoor to and then suddenly all was silence. Then I heard a familiar squeak. It was our clothes cupboard door. The only problem was, if I heard it, then so did the Nazis. Suddenly I heard the door to our room smashed open and the clump of jackboots above my head. Within seconds they had discovered Avraham. I’ll never forget their curses and his pleas for mercy.

“
[Pause
]
There were terrible screams that seemed to go on for ever. Then I heard the jackboots disappear and then silence. It must have been a further ten minutes before I ventured out of my hiding place. I had to heave with all my might because something was holding the trapdoor shut. Eventually I managed to get the door open and haul myself out
.
[Breathes deeply
]
It was terrible. I had never seen a human being reduced to something unrecognizable. There was blood everywhere. My friend Avraham was dead and it could so easily have been me. I feel guilty for it even until this day
.
[Whistle in background
]
There goes the kettle. Let me make you a cup of tea, Mr Edwards.”

Clic
k
.

“Well, what do you think so far?”

Dani stared at the tape recorder. “It’s pretty powerful stuff,” she said. “He certainly tells a good story. Funny, though ...”

“Yes?”

“There is a point of coincidence in his story and Henry Sonntag’s.”

“What’s that?”

“They were both born and brought up in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin. Strange, that.”

“Hmm.” Edwards grimaced. “Maybe.
Maybe not. Remember, Soferman claims Sonntag stole his identity. Anyway, if I recall correctly, it all becomes clearer later on. Let me make a cup of tea and then I’ll switch it back on.”

Click.

“Where was I? Oh, yes. Poor Avraham. He was one of a hundred Jews murdered on that night, you know. Hundreds of synagogues were destroyed and thousands of shops and offices were looted. Imagine. I had to sit with his body the whole night until Goldberg came back the following morning. Sometimes, when I consider what happened to me afterwards, I wish I had been in his place. But I think it was from that moment that I knew I would survive; that I would live to bear witness against these monsters.

“From that day on it was a hand-to-mouth existence. I found another room and moved from job to job. Eventually, the pressure on Jewish businesses became so intense that I went back to the orphanage to help look after the younger children. It didn’t pay anything, but at least I had a roof over my head and food to eat. However, with all the hardships it’s ironic that we German Jews were relatively better off than Jews elsewhere in Europe. The Jews in the east, mainly Poland, suffered first. With all the madness going on around us, Berlin was relatively a safe haven. 

“But it couldn’t last, Mr Edwards. Eventually our turn came. By this time I was assistant director at the orphanage. The director, Otto Zimmerman, relied on me to look after the acquisition of food and clothing for the children. There were about fifty at the beginning. But by early ’43 the numbers had swollen to almost double. Other orphanages were opening up all over the place because of the numbers of parents who had been rounded up by the Gestapo. It was pitiful to see the new arrivals. They were so frightened. Each sad face mirrored my own. I knew what they were going through. That’s why they could relate to me.

“Then came the inevitable. It was November. I remember, it was windy and wet and the morning air was cold enough to chill. There came this persistent ringing at the front doorbell. It reminded me of that terrible time on Kristallnacht. Somehow something told me that our time was up. I was the one who opened the door. About fifty men stormed into the house, pushing me aside roughly. Some of them wore long black coats with the collars turned up.
They were the Gestapo. The others were a mixture of soldiers and police. “Don’t harm the children. Please don’t harm the children,” Zimmerman pleaded.

“They will not be harmed as long as you follow orders,” said one of the men in black coats. He was a small, weedy man and I couldn’t help smiling to myself that this was supposed to be an example of the master race. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we had half an hour to get all the children’s belongings together. Their fearful cries resounded throughout the building. I tried to calm them down but some of them were inconsolable. Fear was gnawing away at me, too. On the one hand I wanted to run away and on the other I knew I must help the little ones. I stayed, of course. But in the eventuality it was only until we got to the station. I was all set to board the train with them – by the way, it wasn’t a cattle-car like they used to transport the Polish Jews – when the weedy man pushed me to one side with his riding whip. ‘You stay here,’ he said in his squeaky voice. ‘You’ll be taking another train.’ He then sent me to join a group of young men in a
waiting-roomwhich had been cordoned off
.
[Pause
]
I never saw Zimmerman and the children again. I can only presume that they were transported directly to one of the death camp
s
[sound of rattling china and tea being slurped
]
.

“Anyway, there I was with these other
guys. We thought we were being singled out to be shot. In the event we were put on the next train. We didn’t know where we were going at first. Then, when the sun came out, we could tell by its position that we were headed more or less due south. We were relieved. Anything was better than the east. There were rumours that anyone going east would never return.

“We ended up in Bohemia, in a place called Terezin, not far from Prague. Ah, Prague. The most beautiful city in Europe, you know. I only got to know it after I escaped from Theresienstadt. I went back there to visit some old friends during Dubcek’s Prague Spring.
A magical city.It has a very famous Jewish Quarter. Hitler did not want to destroy it because he wanted to turn it into a museum of an extinct people
.
[Pause
]
Now, where was I? Yes, Theresienstadt. It had been an old fortress town and was now turned into a transit ghetto for Jews on their way to the death camps. We didn’t fully realize they were death camps at the time, of course. The whole place buzzed with rumours. I’d never seen so many Jews crammed together in one place. It was a real tower of Babel.

“It’s funny, you know, when you reach a place like that you find out that the most important thing in life is not money or jewellery or things like that. I mean
,the most important thing was food. If you had enough food to eat and could avoid the transports to the east then life was tolerable. Fortunately I met up with a guy called Oskar Springe
r
[Pause
]
from Frankfurt. He was a little man with pointed ears and big bright eyes. He became like a brother to me. He helped me to survive those first terrible weeks when any newcomer was at a disadvantage. He helped get me on the detail that collected all the belongings from the new arrivals. As long as all the valuables were collected, the Germans turned a blind eye to the food we used to scavenge. Unfortunately, one day our luck ran out. That was when we got sent to the Small Fortress. It already had a terrible reputation. Everyone said that no Jew ever left it alive. I’d already heard about Hans Schreiber, the Beast, and now I was going to meet hi
m
[Pause
]
.  “No words can truly describe the awfulness of that place or the bestiality of Hans Schreiber, th
e
mumse
r
. From almost the start he picked me out. I remember Oskar telling me that we looked alike. I didn’t think anything of it then. Only recently.
[Pause
]
We were on top of one of the fortified walls, supposedly to carry out some repair work. Suddenly there was an explosion and the rampart gave way. Because we were on top we survived with a few cuts and bruises. Some of those at the bottom were less fortunate. They were buried alive. But it’s what came after that sticks in my mind. For some reason Schreiber said he liked me. He said that Berliners should stick together. He said that because of my blond hair I did not look like a typical Yid. ‘But you’re Yid enough for me,’ he said
.
[Pause
]
I’ve never forgotten those words but they did not have any relevance until the murders. You must also remember that he collected everyone’s identity papers on arrival. It made it easier for him to steal someone’s identity.

“Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Schreiber then led me through a courtyard and into a small room. There was a horse-trough there with a hosepipe leading into it. The water made me feel very thirsty. He made me look inside the trough. At the bottom were two blocks of ice. I’ll never forget the smell of lavender that always surrounded him. It was a fetish with him. The next thing he did makes me physically sick to this day. He had an elderly Jew brought in and made him strip. A guard then picked the old man up and heaved him into the trough. The man was weak and Schreiber held him down under the water with his whip until he drowned
.
[Pause
]
He then made me drink from the trough
.
[Lengthy pause
]
Then this monster began saying again how much he liked me. I was like putty in his hands. I felt numb and yet I remember telling him all about myself. I actually revealed almost every detail of my life to him. Can you imagine, standing there in a room with a drowned man talking about my life history with his murderer
?
[Pause
]
But it got worse, Mr Edwards, it got worse.

“I became Hans Schreiber’s favourite in a game that he loved playing. He would arrange gladiatorial contests in which Jew would be pitted against Jew in a fight to the death. He would even photograph us. It was his favourite hobby
.
[Pause
]
In order to live I killed four of my own people. Fou
r
[sobbing sounds
]
. Four.”