The Last Jews in Berlin (16 page)

With Marushka's return Hans would feel that he had been released from prison. If she looked particularly tired he would tell her to lie down and then bring her supper on a fastidiously arranged plate. He would try to convince her that his own day, spent in solitary confinement, had passed easily and happily. Only when he saw Marushka relaxing would he begin to bombard her with questions about her day. He had to know everything. He would open up her handbag, pull out its contents and demand to know where she had obtained each item. Usually there was a story attached to every object, because Marushka was such a proficient dealer on Berlin's black market. That market had commenced, as elsewhere in Germany, at the outset of the war. Within a few years it thrived to a degree the Nazis were reluctant to acknowledge. While food was the major trading item, false documents ran a close second, particularly as the war dragged on. Such documents—ration cards, priority cards, tickets, identifications—were Marushka's stock-in-trade. A false document could bring in hundreds of marks, which she would then exchange for food.

Marushka treasured her independence. She believed she could support herself and Hans by her black market transactions as well as her jobs. At the time Hans moved in with her, she estimated it would cost 1,000 marks a month to feed him, because all of his food came from the black market. Later the figure went much higher. But she always found a way—even performing an occasional abortion, for which she charged 3,000 marks.

One day a veterinarian Marushka knew was called upon to inspect a herd of cattle that had been shipped in from the Ukraine in an obviously unhealthy state. The veterinarian diagnosed a rare liver disease. Unfortunately for him that disease existed only in tropical climates. The man was fired, and Marushka got his job. Each Sunday when she went to the countryside to inspect the livestock, the peasants would load her up with fresh vegetables. What she didn't need she would trade for other foods.

To fill their stomachs she was not above a little mischief. One day she picked up her telephone and, because of crossed wires, overheard a conversation between a woman she knew, a Mrs. Zifkowitz, and a man who sold poultry on the black market. Mrs. Zifkowitz was in the process of ordering an extremely large goose. As soon as the conversation ended, Marushka telephoned Mrs. Zifkowitz. Using a deep voice, she identified herself as a police officer and said that she had overheard the conversation and intended to report the episode. However, she said, she was the father of nine children; if Mrs. Zifkowitz agreed to leave the goose in a certain shed in a park near her home, she would not be reported. The next evening Marushka collected the goose.

Stories like these meant more to Hans than the food itself. He doted on Marushka. She was the most marvelous person he had ever known, a free and independent spirit, with an exotic background that he never tired of hearing about even when he had heard the same story dozens of times before.

She would tell him about her father, the count, the only member of her family she truly liked. He was descended from a line of Maltzans who had come into Germany from Sweden with Gustavus II, the “Lion of the North,” during the first part of the seventeenth century—Protestant knights come to war upon the Catholics. They were granted estates in Silesia and East Prussia. Maltzan went one better; he married the only daughter of the ruler of Silesia—there were no sons—and thus succeeded to his title.

Marushka's father, Andreas von Maltzan, inherited a German estate of 18,000 acres. Although he lived in the twentieth century, he was as much a lord of the manor as his forebears. Any of the inhabitants of the estate who wished to marry were married by the count. Von Maltzan was respected—not liked, but he had a liberal conscience. He created hospitals, orphanages and old-age homes.

The Von Maltzan estate had passed rhythmically through the centuries between heirs with a head for business and those more interested in the arts. Marushka's father was in the latter category—his passions were paintings and antiques—but if he knew little about farming, he had the good sense to employ competent people.

When Andreas read to his daughter, he eschewed fairy tales in favor of more substantial works. By the time she enrolled in school she was reasonably well educated in history, and, not surprisingly, one of her first acts was to challenge her teacher's knowledge. In the ensuing uproar the count came to the school to investigate, and that evening he advised Maria: “Be kind to him. He doesn't know anything.”

The count did his utmost to instill principles in Maria, but he was not a preacher. The lessons he taught her were usually given in a more practical form. One day Maria, then seven years old, rushed in to report that the cottage of her nursery maid had burned to the ground. “I know,” her father said. “Don't worry, the insurance will pay for it.”

“No, it won't,” Maria said, and then repeated what she had heard her distraught guardian discussing with her husband. The family had been cutting hay the previous evening by the light of an open fire. Embers from the fire had started the blaze on the cottage roof. They knew that the fire had resulted from their own carelessness and that the insurance company wouldn't pay.

Count von Maltzan thought for a moment. “Maria,” he said then, “how much money do you have in the bank?”

“Two hundred and seventeen marks.”

“I suggest you go and get it. Berta has cleaned your shoes and taken care of you for a long time. Now you must take care of her.”

That day Maria gave Berta two hundred marks.

Although Maria had three sisters and a brother, she led a fairly lonely life, which accounted considerably for the fierce love she developed for animals, including birds and even reptiles. The estate abounded in snakes; when Maria found one she would seize it, stroke it until it relaxed, examine it, and then let it go. One day she found a pile of dead snakes, and learned that the gardeners had killed them at the behest of her brother, who loathed reptiles. That day Maria invited her brother for a ride in her new boat, which she had bought with the proceeds from the sale of white mice and guinea pigs she had raised. When they were far enough out in the lake she pushed him overboard, grabbed his legs and held him so that his head remained under water. She would have drowned him if her father had not intervened.

To Maria, growing up was a war of survival. From her earliest years she believed that everyone ganged up on her, and with reason. When she was seven her sisters would contrive to send her to the stable on some pretext just before teatime. Their mother had an inviolable rule: anyone who did not have his or her feet under the table exactly at four o'clock got black bread at tea instead of buttered toast, jam and pastries. Each time Maria would be late, there would be more buttered toast and pastries for her sisters and brother to share. One day Maria finally figured it out. She went to the garden, grabbed a
Kreuzotter
, a poisonous three-foot snake, behind the head and marched with it into the dining room. “I want a good tea,” she announced. “I want my buttered toast and jam and pastries. Either I get it or I let the snake go.” She got her good tea.

She also ran her own little world. She made all her own decisions and took care of herself, partly because no one else would help her, partly because she surmised—correctly, in most cases—that she was more capable than the others involved, and only her combativeness would enable her to survive. Her mother had made it plain to her when she was very young that she didn't like her. “Every other child I delivered in less than three hours,” she once said. “You took twenty-seven.”

The countess made no effort to disguise her biases. She favored some of her children more than others. Her favorite of favorites was her son, the youngest child; her feeling for him was reinforced by the loss of an older boy. She cared for her husband, but was dismayed by their provincial life. Her most active biases were those against the Jews. Over the years a series of neighboring estates had been subdivided, and many of the smaller estates had been bought by Jews. Inevitably, intermarriages resulted, and when one countess converted to Judaism on her marriage to a Jew, Countess von Maltzan was beside herself. “I don't want
you
marrying a Jew,” she warned Maria.

If Maria had any doubts about her mother's lack of affection, they were banished in her thirteenth year, at the bedside of her dying father. “Your mother doesn't like you,” he told her. “But try to be polite and do what you should do.”

To Hans the notion of an uncaring mother was all but incredible. His own grief at the departure and certain death of his cherished mother was minimized by Marushka's strength. He knew that in some respects he had traded one mother for another. He lived for Marushka's presence, and rejoiced at each return, as if it were a reunion following a prolonged separation.

Which made her abrupt, inexplicable departures in the night all the more painful.

They had begun almost at once after Hans moved in. There was no pattern to them. She might remain at home for weeks without going out in the evening. Then there would be weeks when she'd leave the house several evenings in a row. Often these sudden departures would be preceded by a phone call. It was obvious to Hans by the way she answered the phone that something was going on. Even if she was sitting right next to the phone, she wouldn't respond until it had rung three times. Sometimes the caller hung up after two rings. When that happened Marushka would look at her watch. About a minute later the phone would begin to ring again. Once more Marushka wouldn't answer—and once more the phone would ring twice and then stop. A minute later the phone would begin to ring again. Only then would Marushka answer.

Hans could never understand the conversation. It would be too fragmented, or oblique or guarded. Often she would leave at once after the call and be gone for several hours. On the few occasions when he had tried to find out what she was up to, she had brushed his queries aside.

One evening in the summer of 1942 Marushka came in especially late. Hans was waiting up for her. She went immediately to the bathroom and put some antiseptic on a neck wound.

“For God's sake, Marushka, that's a bullet wound!” he cried. “What the hell's going on?”

She looked at him coolly. “Hans … one thing. Never ask me about where I've been or what I've done. It's better that you don't know.”

III

CAPTURE

15

S
EVERAL WEEKS
had passed since the seizure of Kurt Thomas and still there was no word from him. All of Ruth Thomas' anguished pleas for intervention by her husband's former wife, Lea, had been unavailing. He had simply vanished from her life. To Ruth it seemed that nothing the Nazis could do now would be worse than the seizure of her husband.

And then, one evening in March, Ruth learned how wrong she was. A doctor told her that she herself was being hunted—and that the hunter was a Jew working for the Gestapo.

Earlier that day, the doctor said, he had been visited by a young man who helped make up the transports. The young man had shown him a photograph of a woman whose maiden name had been Rosenthal and who had gone underground late in 1942. The picture had come with a letter from an anonymous informer who said that the Jewish woman was living with an S.S. officer's wife. “It was a picture of you,” the doctor said softly.

Who could have denounced her? Ruth managed to ask herself in those first paralyzing moments of fright. Lisa Krauss! It had to be. Lisa, the young woman with whom Ruth had spent her first days of illegality and with whom she had remonstrated when she found that Lisa was using the possessions her Jewish employers—the pastry-shop owners named Dubrin—had left with her for safekeeping. One of the brothers had gone into exile in England. Two others had been sent to Theresienstadt but had bought their freedom. Here was Lisa wearing their wives' furs and displaying their works of art as though they belonged to her. Ruth had acted on impulse that day. She hadn't thought it through. What else was Lisa to do with the possessions? Why not use them? But none of these thoughts had occurred to her then. Instead she had lost her temper. “You don't really feel pity for the Jews,” she had said, sobbing. “You just want to have our things.”

A few days later a woman who knew them both said to Ruth, “Lisa is very annoyed with you.”

“Why?” Ruth asked.

“Because you made those remarks to her.”

And so Lisa had denounced her. It had to be.

Ruth rushed to a telephone to alert Hilde. “If the Gestapo comes, say you didn't know I was Jewish.”

But Hilde had her own ideas about how to handle the Gestapo: no excuses, no apologies and, above all, no hints of the fear that was making her legs feel unsteady. When two men from the Gestapo arrived within the hour, she gave the performance of her life. “Oh!” she cried and stalked about the room, waving her arms in anger. “I don't know this woman—and I don't associate with Jews.”

“But we have a report, Frau Doctor Hohn—”

“To hell with your report!” she shouted. “My husband's an officer in the S.S. I would have to be crazy to hide a Jew. Do you think I'm crazy? Do you?” She was screaming at them now, and while she was lying, her anger was no longer pretense. She could feel a surge of frenzy bordering on hysteria. “Here!” she ordered, stalking to a wardrobe. “Come here!” She threw open the doors. “Look at these dresses! They are all the same size.” The Gestapo men hesitated. “Look!” she screamed. “I demand that you look!” She was crying now, all of her fear and anguish released into this confrontation.

Now the Gestapo men were nervous and obviously uncomfortable. “Frau Hohn, I assure you—”

“LOOK!” She was out of control now, and she knew it, but it didn't matter. She had them on the run.

Reluctantly one of the men moved forward and examined the dresses. He nodded to his partner. They were both eager to leave.