Underground in Berlin (41 page)

They were surprised when I shook my head and replied with something amusing in French. They repeated their offer a couple of times, but I decided I would rather go on filling my bag with rabbit food than lift the hem of my skirt. So I watched the banknotes, which would have been legal currency in Germany for some years yet, go up in flames.

Later I was very cross with myself for not taking the money. At the time a bread roll or a cube of margarine cost hundreds at black-market prices. Only a few months earlier, when I was still living underground, such a decision would have put me in mortal danger. But looking on the positive side, those times were over.

Hannchen Koch had always wanted a baby, and now, for the first and only time in her life, she was pregnant by that one act of sexual intercourse with a Russian. Many women of child-bearing age soon felt the same consequences.

In our neighbourhood there was a practising doctor by the name of Hering, and the residents all went to her. This doctor, an ardent supporter of Nazi principles, was of course a passionate opponent of abortion. But now she was carrying them out as if on a conveyor belt: German women must not bear children by the enemy – such was the ideology.

The doctor performed these operations two days a week, with a younger male colleague as her assistant. Afterwards, the women were taken home by their husbands in padded handcarts.

Frau Koch applied to her when the necessity became obvious. On the morning when Emil took his wife to the doctor, I knew that this would not be a good day for me. I must be at Emil Koch’s disposal – and I hoped to God for the last time. For in spite of the friendship between us, he identified me with the Russians whom I loved as my liberators. I must pay for what they had done to his wife.

It wasn’t the first time. The relationship between Frau Koch and my father, many years ago, had been extraordinarily hard on Emil. And I had already paid for it then. He was the first, when I was still going to school and my mother was alive. I thought it was horrible. He had always proved to be humane, totally anti-Fascist and faithful to us, but I had paid the price, and I secretly hated him for that.

None the less, Emil was much more normal than his wife, and he was a decent human being. When it was over, he asked, ‘Why did we do that? I felt as though we had to, but it was no fun for me, and I don’t suppose it was for you either.’

‘That’s the way life sometimes goes,’ was all I said.

Emil Koch heard a good deal that wasn’t in the newspapers from his acquaintances, and they in turn heard more from theirs. People who worked as truck drivers or canteen waitresses quickly learned what was going on among the higher functionaries and in the administrative departments. And so, once the Americans and British had moved into Berlin at the beginning of July, Emil found out that the municipal authority had set up a new translation service and needed people to work for it. He suggested that I should apply. Well, I couldn’t go on picking rabbit food for ever.

There was a bus running from our suburbs to the city centre now, although I had to walk for a long way through the woods to reach the bus stop. The buses themselves were crammed full, with people hanging from them like bunches of grapes. I let several buses pass before I ventured to board one and make the journey; after all, I didn’t want to risk my life at this late stage.

I was pretty well exhausted when I finally reached the city council buildings. The translation service’s office was near Klosterstrasse. I was seen by a British or American lieutenant. As it turned out, he was a German Jew who had emigrated at the last moment.

He was just finishing his breakfast, and had a half-empty cup of coffee in front of him – real coffee, made from coffee beans – as well as a plate of sliced bread. I had to bend my head so as not to show that my mouth was watering. It was white bread, white as snow, the kind I hadn’t seen for ages, buttered and even with another spread on top of the butter: an unimaginable delicacy.

We spoke a bit of French together first, but when he changed to English I dried up. I was so hungry that everything was going black in front of my eyes. At that moment a maid put her head round the door and asked if she could clear away now. With a nasty grin he tipped the contents of an over-full ashtray on the remains of his beautiful breakfast and said, ‘Yes, take it away, I’ve had enough.’ I could have screamed and slapped this officious character’s face on both cheeks. A man who acts like that, I thought, should be tried in an international Jewish people’s court and given a severe sentence.

Smiling unpleasantly, he helped me out with the English word that I hadn’t been able to find. ‘So you speak a little French but hardly any English,’ he said, adding in a very superior tone of voice, ‘And if my idea of you is correct, you can’t touch-type either; I guess you use two fingers.’

‘You guess right,’ I said. But ultimately none of that mattered to him. I was to start at once, and I was paid at once too. I was to sit at a typewriter in a large room typing out French and English texts. My colleagues were two or three young girls who had been to language school. They talked and giggled the whole time, and said that as we were all getting on so well, shouldn’t we call each other
du
? ‘No,’ I said rather brusquely. ‘I won’t be staying long.’ I couldn’t simply fraternise so easily with these girls, or whatever the equivalent is with sisters, not when they might have been members of the League of German Girls only a few months ago.

When they took out their sandwiches they asked where mine were. I replied brusquely again, hoping to get them to call me by the formal pronoun
Sie
.

‘But mothers always send one to work with something to eat!’ said one of them.

‘I don’t have parents any more. I’m entirely on my own,’ I explained. They looked at me sadly, shocked.

I arrived late on every one of the few days I spent working there. I got up very early, but then I had to wait ages for a bus that wasn’t overcrowded with passengers. I typed very slowly and made a great many typing mistakes. I could see for myself that my work was a dead loss for my employers, who were throwing money away. So I soon went back to the lieutenant and asked to end our agreement.

However, I had been earning pretty well, and at last I could repay the Kochs some money. I didn’t tell them that I had given in my notice. I went on starting out early in the morning, and then lay down in the woods to sleep for another hour or so. Then I went into the city centre. I desperately wanted to find out which of my friends and acquaintances were still alive, and how I could find my way back into a normal, legal life. I was particularly interested to know whether the university still existed and if you could enrol there again.

Once, before the bus began running again, I had gone on foot to the city centre. Then I had taken the U-Bahn, or the part of the line from Alexanderplatz towards Pankow that came back into service in May 1945. My first visit was to be to my uncle Karl Jalowicz. I wanted to find out whether he had survived as soon as I could.

Even from a distance I saw that his house at Number 2 Berliner Strasse was still standing. I raced excitedly up the steps. And then I saw him in the doorway: Karl was just saying goodbye to a woman patient who had had a dental appointment with him. Although he had had to use improvised methods, he had reopened his practice immediately after the end of the war.

‘Mariechen!’ he cried when he saw me, with delight such as I’d never known in anyone before. Not only was his whole face beaming, the whole stairway seemed to be brightly lit all of a sudden. It was wonderful.

I was also anxious to register myself as soon as possible with the Jewish Community at Number 8 Oranienburger Strasse.
*
On the way there I met Mirjam Grunwald at the Alexanderplatz U-Bahn station. My former classmate – the one who had borrowed Eva Deutschkron’s husband – had also survived. She had jaundice, she was yellow in the face, and I felt terribly sorry for her. The hope of seeing her mother again had kept her going all those difficult years. And then the first news to reach her from the United States was that her mother had just died. After we had exchanged a few friendly words, Mirjam smiled her familiar bitter-sweet smile and said, ‘You’re still the same as ever.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Untidy, untidy, a strand of your hair has come loose,’ she said reprovingly, tugging it. ‘If I had a pair of scissors I’d cut it off.’ I made haste to say goodbye.

Only a little way further on, the next person I met was Edith Rödelsheimer. The musicologist with whom I had done forced labour at the Siemens works was coming towards me in Münzstrasse. When she saw me she simply dropped her handbag in the road. We hugged joyfully. Edith and her husband had been hiding in a summerhouse belonging to non-Jewish friends. She told me that during the week, when the owners of the allotment garden and its summerhouse weren’t there, they hardly dared to move, and they couldn’t cook anything for fear of steaming up the window panes on the inside.

A villa belonging to the most powerful Nazi in this residential area was in the immediate vicinity of the summerhouse. Sometimes they had seen people going into and out of the house late in the evening or early in the morning, and feared that they were under observation. Only at the end of the war did they discover that half a dozen Jews who had gone underground were living in the supposed Nazi’s villa. These Jews, in their turn, were terrified of the people hiding in the summerhouse.

Feeling very excited, I soon went to Kreuzberg to find out what had happened to Trude Neuke and her family. When I turned into Schönleinstrasse, I breathed a sigh of relief. There were no gaps in the row of buildings. I ran up the steps to the door of the Neukes’ apartment, but there I had a terrible shock. I leaned against the wall, weak at the knees. The Neukes’ familiar oval porcelain nameplate was gone, and there was someone else’s name on the door.

I could only ring the Steinbecks’ bell. Trude’s former neighbour opened the door. ‘Hello. I’m glad to see you haven’t been bombed out,’ I said politely. ‘Can you tell me what’s happened to the Neukes?’

‘She came back. They’re in the grandest part of Kreuzberg now, they’re living in Urbanstrasse,’ she replied in unfriendly tones. That was the way such people thought: in the old days the Neukes had been at the bottom of the heap and the Steinbecks at the top of it, and now it was the other way round.

I hurried to the address that Frau Steinbeck had given me. Even on the stairs I could hear Trude’s voice. ‘No, no, not pink! You can’t wear a pink blouse with such a pale grey. It’s a pretty two-piece suit, a strong, sunny yellow would be just the thing!’ She was standing in her front hall saying goodbye to a neighbour. Before she could close her door I called, ‘Leave it open, Trude, it’s me!’ And then we were in each other’s arms. That really was a great, wonderful moment.

There were huge expanses of parquet flooring in Trude’s new apartment, all polished to a shine. The familiar old pieces of furniture looked rather lost in these spacious rooms, as if a bird had left a few droppings around – here the desk, there a sofa. ‘And here,’ she announced, after we had seen round the front of this grand apartment, ‘are my children’s rooms.’

When I saw her again, a little later, she was already saying, ‘I must have been out of my mind. I’ve been toiling like a slave, keeping those floors polished. What are we to do with a great big riding stable like that? We need light, air and sunshine.’ The Neukes soon moved house again, and they went on moving at frequent intervals to the end of their days.

My best friend Irene Scherhey and her mother had also survived, and were still living in Prenzlauer Allee. After our first joy at our reunion, however, Irene was something of a disappointment: we couldn’t establish the old, close connection between us again.

Irene had always been hyper-nervous. She talked very fast, kept interrupting herself, and wouldn’t let anyone else get a word in edgeways. After the end of the war she had worked for a few weeks as an assistant teacher. Then she got a job with the Americans, and soon became attached to a GI. From then on she would speak only American English so as to practise the language, which infuriated me. ‘Can’t we talk in German?’ I asked her several times. After all these years, there was so much that I’d have liked to discuss with her. But she only smiled and replied in English. Irene was crazy about all things American, and her heart was set on emigrating.