The Street Sweeper (58 page)

The distant, potentially fruitful lead was in Melbourne, Australia. It presented not merely a financial challenge but an emotional one too. Melbourne, his late mother’s home town, was the city he’d grown up in after his parents had separated when he was three. It was where his grandparents had helped his mother bring him up, where he had gone to school before college and where he still felt he should have been when his mother had died. But then surely this lead, more than any he’d found since stumbling upon Border and the wire recordings, was too tantalising to ignore. Adam had tracked down to Melbourne a Holocaust survivor, one he definitely knew to be still alive, who claimed to remember being interviewed by Border in Zeilsheim DP camp. He had come across the woman’s name in Border’s papers but he hadn’t yet come across the transcript of her interview. It might have been one of the transcripts that Sahera Shukri and her staff hadn’t yet reached or the Melbourne woman could have been on one of the wire recordings that nobody had heard since Border had recorded it.

‘Sweetheart, you can’t wait for this woman’s transcript to turn up. It might not turn up until you get all the recordings digitised and transcribed and translated,’ he heard Diana’s voice tell him. ‘In the meantime, the woman might die.’

‘I’m already shelling out money on this thing left, right and centre.’

‘Adam, you’re not
shelling out money
, you’re investing in a project that might be very important both for your career and for what we know about those times.’

‘ “Might be”, are the operative words.’

‘Adam, are you seeing a pattern here … in your life? You’ve got to show a little faith.’

‘Of course you’re right. Now if you could just meet me at the corner of 109th and Broadway, we can sell the faith I’m meant to have to my Chase personal banker and then I can go to Melbourne to interview this woman.’

‘So you’re still with Chase?’

Suddenly the buzzer to the intercom rang.

‘You expecting someone?’

‘You know I’m not. You live in my head.’

‘I might live there but sometimes I go out.’

The buzzer rang again and this time Adam answered it. ‘Hi, I think you’ve pressed the wrong buzzer.’

‘No, I haven’t. It’s me.’

‘Sonia?’

‘Can I come up?’

‘Sure.’

‘Do your parents know you’re here?’

‘Comin’ up!’

Adam stood around with his hands in his pockets waiting for Sonia to knock at the door. When she knocked he opened it. She came in, a little out of breath, and they hugged as they always had since she was a child, but this time he noticed she was slower to let go.

‘Do your parents know you’re here?’

‘Yep.’

‘Really?’

‘You don’t think I’m gonna lie, do you?’

‘No, of course not. You’re not capable of lying. Other people are but
you’re
not.’

‘Hey, what do you mean by that?’

‘So your parents really do know you’re here?’

‘I’ve answered that.’

‘That’s true. It’s just that … Weren’t you meant to call before coming over?’

‘Are you … 
entertaining?’

‘Ooh that hurts! You really know how to hurt a guy. I could’ve been working.’

‘Are you?’ ‘I
was
actually.’

‘Sorry, Adam. You want me to go?’ She looked at him plaintively.

‘No, I’m nearly done. Why don’t you grab a soda and I’ll be with you in a few minutes? I’ve got to finish reading something.’

She walked over to his refrigerator and opened it. Adam was about to go back to his desk when he noticed that she was just standing there,
seemingly transfixed by something inside the refrigerator. She had her back to him and wasn’t moving.

‘Sonia, you don’t have to defrost the fridge.’ She didn’t move. It was as though she hadn’t heard him.

‘Sonia?’ She stayed still and silent, just staring into the refrigerator. He walked over to see what it was she was staring at.

‘Sonia? What are you looking at?’ She turned around and he could see tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘Hey, little one, what’s wrong?’ He took her in his arms and hugged her again. ‘Was I meant to save the last Dr Pepper? What’s wrong, sweetie?’

‘Everything’s all different now. Nobody says anything, like it’s all still the same. But it’s not.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you and Diana ever going to get back together again?’

‘Is that why you’re crying? You’re not s’posed to cry about that. That’s
my
job.’

‘Do you cry about that?’

‘All the time.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure, what else have I got to do? But why are
you
crying?’

At this question she began to cry harder, her shoulders rising and falling involuntarily in time to the internal rhythm of her sadness.

‘Adam, they’re always fighting. I hate it. I really hate it. Grandpa didn’t come for dinner tonight like he was meant to. Nobody said why. It didn’t used to be like this, did it?’ And then from a space between his arms and inside his chest she asked, ‘When did it get like this?’

*

It was night and Henryk Mandelbrot, again on the day shift, was in one of the barracks used to house the
Sonderkommando
. Zalman Gradowski, one of the stokers, wanted to talk to him but Mandelbrot was going to have to wait. Gradowski had still not finished his evening ritual. Each night at the end of his shift, after the
Appell
, the roll call, and after he had eaten, Zalman Gradowski would put on a
tallis
, a Jewish prayer
shawl, that had been found among a victim’s possessions and he would recite
Kaddish
, the mourner’s prayer, for all of the people he had just incinerated. He did this every day. Every day he also recorded in secret a running account of the work of the
Sonderkommando
and of all that he’d witnessed. Henryk Mandelbrot knew what he was doing and why. He’d had to know. Mandelbrot was one of two other men with whom Gradowski shared a wooden bunk and it would not have been possible to hide his writing from them. The other man, also named Zalman, was Zalman Lewental, a Polish Jew from the town of Ciechanow. Zalman Lewental was also keeping a record of the work of the
Sonderkommando
.

Gradowski and Lewental, who had been in the
Sonderkommando
longer than Mandelbrot, had explained to him their purpose. These writings, they had said, were acts of resistance. Since it looked to them as though no Jews would survive the war and it was close to certain that none of the
Sonderkommando
would, they had decided to produce a written account of the destruction of European Jewry down to the last detail and to bury it in the hope that it would survive. This was the whole point of surviving as long as they could. News, or, more accurately, rumours, had spread that the Russians were getting ever nearer and that the camp would soon be liberated but rumours of all sorts had always spread throughout the camp every bit as fast as lice, typhus and dysentery. The Nazis might sooner or later lose the war against the Allies but they would win their war against the Jews. The two Zalmans, Gradowski and Lewental, would record as much of what they saw as they could despite the certainty of immediate death if they were discovered. When they thought the time was right, they would bury their testimony as securely as was possible somewhere near the crematoria where they worked … This was what kept them going – the need to tell what would otherwise have been unimaginable.

It wasn’t his writing that Gradowski wanted to talk about to Mandelbrot. While Lewental looked out, Gradowski took Mandelbrot outside the barrack and when he was certain no one was paying them any attention, he spoke to him very quietly. ‘You know Lewental has a brother here?’

‘Yeah, I know, an electrician, right?

‘Right … an electrician,’ said Gradowski. The flames from the pits lit up the night sky. The work of the night shift was well under way. Not every one of Birkenau’s slave labour details were divided into day and night shifts. The
Sonderkommando
was. Its work never stopped.

‘So … Lewental’s brother is an electrician, that’s what you wanted to tell me?’

Whatever it was Gradowski had wanted to tell him, he now seemed extremely reticent about it, almost as though he were having second thoughts about taking him aside. The smell of charred flesh hung in the air even as a new transport was being unloaded. ‘Lewental … thinks we ought to tell you …’

‘That his brother is an electrician?’ Gradowski looked around them again. It was still safe to talk. It was almost a whisper.

‘Henryk, have you heard anything about a resistance movement?’

‘In the
Sonderkommando?’

‘Throughout the camp.’

‘No, is there one?’

Gradowski nodded that there was.

‘Yeah?’ questioned Mandelbrot. ‘Zalman, what exactly have they achieved? Look over there. It’s business as usual.’ Henryk Mandelbrot pointed up at the night sky lit up by the flames from the pits where the night shift was trying to hurry things along. ‘This resistance, whoever they are, they’re doing a great job.’

‘Yeah, well, so far, yes, they’ve spent too much time arguing with each other to be of much use to anyone but themselves,’ Gradowski had to admit, ‘but there’s been a change recently. We’re hoping for better.’

The dogs were barking in the distance. The work of the night shift was progressing without diurnal variation. The sun was irrelevant to this work. The blinding lights were on. The screams had started right from the unloading ramp. The more screams the more the beatings. It was a rough equation, all the more true the earlier the screams began. If the people were already panicking there was no point trying to keep them calm. It was already too late. So the SS would just want to hurry them up. Spare the deception and hope to save time with more than usual beatings. This was going to be an especially difficult shift. Not only were
too many people panicking too early, but the victims were going to have to wait. There were still corpses to be unpacked in the gas chamber of Crematorium III. They were falling further behind and it made the SS especially irritable.

‘Who are these people, these resisters? Where are they?’

‘Shhh! Listen to me carefully. I’ll tell you what I know. There’s an Auschwitz-Birkenau branch of the Polish underground, the Polish Home Army. They act in coordination with the Polish underground outside the camp.’

‘The AK?’

‘Yeah, the AK has a branch inside the camp. There’s another resistance group in the camp, the
Kampfgruppe Auschwitz
, made up of leftists of all different nationalities, including some of the Jews in the different work details. Then there are various small groups of Jews who’ve formed resistance cells on the basis of … I don’t know … ideological grounds or just based on their hometown ties.’

‘So much resistance all over the camp!’ interrupted Mandelbrot. ‘It’s a wonder anyone has time to be gassed.’

‘Well, it’s only the Jews who get gassed, isn’t it? Okay, some Gypsies and homosexuals too, but the rest of them, the Poles, the Russians, the French, all the leftists and everyone else, they have time to make all sorts of plans, argue with each other about every detail, ditch the plans and start over again.’

‘And they hate each other more than they hate the Germans.’

‘Yeah, maybe. Perhaps that’s why you’ve never seen any of their plans bear fruit.’

The filing had started in the dressing room of Crematorium III. The first five came down the stairs; all women – a hairdresser, a widow, a photographer’s assistant, a teacher, and the cousin of a violin teacher well known in his town who played very well herself. The first of the next five pushed into the back of the violinist. She turned around and already another five were coming down.

‘There seems to have been a change recently,’ Gradowski whispered. ‘The Auschwitz branch of the AK and the
Kampfgruppe Auschwitz
have put aside their differences.’

‘I’m happy for them.’

‘Well you might be. They’ve established what they’re calling the joint Auschwitz Military Council …’ Gradowski leaned in closer, ‘with the intention of planning and executing an uprising.’

‘An uprising?’

‘Yes and the
Sonderkommando
are to be included in this uprising. Not only is the plan for there to be a mass escape from the ranks of the entire camp, it’s planned that the gas chambers and crematoria be blown up and destroyed.’

‘So that’s where the
Sonderkommando
comes in?’

‘Well, we have the privilege of living and working here. And we’re going to die here anyway. Plans have been made and in fact efforts are already being made to enable prisoners to acquire weapons.’

‘Weapons?’

‘What do you know about the
Weichsel Union Metallwerke
factory?’

‘Nothing, what is it?’

‘One of the labour details is dedicated to the
Weichsel Union Metallwerke
factory. It’s a munitions factory near the main camp. You passed it when they brought you in. We’ve wanted to acquire gun powder from there for the purpose of making our own incendiary devices, bombs or grenades of some kind. There’s a Russian –’

‘Who are
we?’

‘Henryk, so many questions! I need to get this over with. Some time ago we made contact with two Jews who work in the
Weichsel Union Metallwerke
munitions factory, Israel Gutman and Joshua Leifer, Polish Jews.’

‘They’re part of the resistance?’

‘Yes, they were trying to make contact with the women who worked in what the Germans call the
Pulverraum
, the gunpowder room. Only women work there, no men. But the women in the
Pulverraum
are under the strictest supervision imaginable so they haven’t been able to even contact them and sound them out about getting hold of gunpowder.’

‘And they work in the same factory?’

‘It’s a big factory. They’re under tight supervision.’

‘So no gunpowder.’

‘We don’t even know if they’d agree to do it.’

‘Well, if no one can even contact these women it’s off, this part of it, right?’