The Last Jews in Berlin (25 page)

It was then that Perwe moved them into the church.

The staff had never liked the violinist Müller—he was testy, complained a great deal and kept insisting that Perwe arrange his escape to Sweden—but they responded powerfully to the Weissenbergs, who were so obviously grateful for the assistance they had been preferred, so cheerful and so eager to help in any way they could. Margot Weissenberg busied herself with household work, and Martin Weissenberg became the house expert on air raids. He had a large map of Berlin that looked something like a game board. Letters ran along the top and numbers along the side. As Allied planes approached, the flak center near the zoo would track their flight and broadcast the patterns on the radio. “Bomber squadron entering A2. Heading direction G5.” By plotting the information on his map Weissenberg could tell the others whether there was a chance that their building might be hit.

The staff had access to the bomb shelter at the Swedish legation in the Tiergarten, and, while the legation was several miles away, there was always sufficient warning of a raid for them to get there if they wished. But they vastly preferred to remain at the church during the raids, because they knew from experience that this was when many Jews and other hunted persons—using the cover of the raids—would come to them for assistance. So most of the time the staff used a homemade shelter they had rigged up in a potato bin in the garden. If the bombs came very close, the illegals joined them.

Martin Weissenberg was listening to a radio broadcast one day when two uniformed policemen walked unannounced into his sanctuary. His heart turned over. They immediately made it clear, however, that they were there not to pick him up but to monitor the broadcast with him. It was Weissenberg's first encounter with Erik Perwe's two greatest allies—the constable and chief of the police station across the street. The constable's name was Hoffman. He was a stocky, middle-aged German, with a bushy mustache, who managed to look well fed in a period when no one got very much to eat. The chief's name was Mattek. He was a small and sturdy man, also middle-aged, with a dapper mustache, a dimpled chin, and a perpetual grin that could turn into a magnificent smile that wrinkled his face. Both men had been old-guard Social Democrats, but they were Prussian to the core. Like many policemen, they resented the crude, unprofessional and illegal methods of the Nazis; policemen, in their book, did not seize people late at night and without proper papers.

Hoffman was in charge of all outside investigations for the station; he was anti-Nazi and didn't try to hide it. But it was Mattek, the chief, who was the more outspoken of the two. He hated Joseph Goebbels. “The little clumpfoot's telling fairy tales again,” he would announce after each pronouncement by the propaganda minister.

Both Hoffman and Mattek were regulars at the church. They would come to listen to the BBC or to have an occasional game of chess with the pastor. Both of them not only knew that Jews were being hidden in the church but went out of their way to converse with them. Perwe made certain that both men received coffee, butter, liquor, cigars and whatever staples they might need to feed their families—which, in Mattek's case, eventually included a deserter he kept hidden in the cellar of the police station. The policemen, in turn, made certain that no unsympathetic-looking visitors lurked about the church. On one occasion Hoffman arrested two men who had been prowling in the vicinity of the church, and pretended to be very surprised when he found out that they were from the Gestapo. On another occasion a man from the Gestapo came to the police station and seated himself at a window that looked out onto the street, from where he could observe anyone who entered or left the church. Moments later Mattek slipped out the back door of the station, walked down the block, cut across the street and made his way through a series of connecting basement passages to the church, where he told Perwe about the Gestapo observer. The minister posted sentries at either end of the block to warn illegals away.

Perwe of course was his own best sentry, given his innate capacity for caution and his guarded, watchful manner. Part of his defense was to maintain the appearance of the person he was supposed to be—the minister of the church of a neutral country—and he worked hard at doing that. He was a frequent guest at diplomatic receptions, where he mixed amiably—or so he made it seem—with Nazi party officials. Martha always went with him, an incongruous presence in her drab dress of a preacher's wife, dark stockings and Salvation Army-type shoes, and chaste hairdo. But the hair, pulled back into a bun, only served to heighten the lines of her chiseled face, and the guests were invariably fascinated with this woman, who held a wine glass from which she never drank and chatted with diplomats as though she had done it all her life. If anything, it was her husband who was occasionally lacking in tact. At one reception he watched a brother of Heinrich Himmler smoking a cigarette whose ash grew longer and longer. “Ah,” Perwe said at last, “the final solution.” Himmler's brother quickly flicked off the ash.

Perwe knew that he was suspect, if only because of his predecessor's reputation, so he was constantly on the alert. One day a woman appeared at the church and told Perwe a classic tale of deprivation. She had been separated from her family, she was without papers and food, she had no place to stay, and had been walking the streets for weeks. Could he help her? she asked. Perwe eyed her coldly. “Anyone who is as well combed, well dressed and well fed as you hasn't been walking the streets for weeks.” He stood and gestured toward the door. “If you please,” he said.

Incredibly, another woman tried the same inept routine a few weeks later. Perwe was sure they were from the Gestapo. He could only wonder how much the Gestapo knew.

Throughout, Perwe continued to keep his diary. His commentary was invariably terse, but it aptly summarized the troubles with which he was engaged, the uncertainties he suffered and the rewards he experienced as he helped someone to freedom.

September 7, 1942:
Visit from Miss Elias, “non-Aryan,” from the refugee staff in town.

September 11, 1942:
The Jew Müller concerning his son Rolf living in Sweden.

September 16, 1942:
Müller with fiancée—in deep distress and great danger.

September 30, 1942:
Reception. Several inquiries regarding relatives in Theresienstadt.

October 16, 1942:
At the legation, concerning permission to communicate to Eidem information on certain significant circumstances for Christianity … Permission denied.

October 17, 1942:
Burial of a young man, Nyberg, who had been mentally ill and “as usual” put to death at the hospital.

October 21, 1942:
Mrs. Ida Kuransky, concerning her child whom she wishes to send to Sweden.

October 23, 1942:
A number of German authorities in the area of education, among them a government secretary and a brother of Himmler's. A great deal of Heiling and such.

October 31, 1942:
A woman, Jewish, with two small, star-marked girls. Wanted to have the children adopted in Sweden.

November 17, 1942:
Reception. A woman concerning the Swedish Red Cross's relationship to Theresienstadt, to which her mother had been deported.

November 18, 1942:
Received as a guest for a few days Miss Rubin, Jewish, who is bound for Sweden.

December 11, 1942:
Received word that the German author, Klepper, took his, his wife's and daughter's life last night. His wife and daughter had been threatened with deportation. They were
Mischlinge
! [
Mischlinge
, progeny of mixed marriages, were of special concern to Perwe, but the case of Jochen Klepper was not quite what the minister thought it was. Klepper, a devout German author and hymn writer, was a pure Gentile who had married a Jewish widow and then adopted her two daughters. The elder daughter had emigrated to England in the mid-1930s, but the younger elected to remain with her mother. Klepper was despondent at the failure of his own Evangelical Church to make more than a few feeble protests against the treatment of the Jews.]

December 12, 1942:
Car to Tempelhof with Miss Jenny Rubin, who happily moves to Sweden.

December 14, 1942:
Reception. Among others Miss Tali Paul, who criticized the party yesterday, defended Jewish politics and revealed a distorted view of Christianity: God bears responsibility—guilt—for everything. Mrs. Wehmeir, who also criticized the party, discussed politics and persecution of the Jews among others.

December 16, 1942:
Supper with Bishop Meiser. Interesting man but exceptionally careful. [Bishop Meiser, a German, told Perwe he had three pieces of advice for him: “One: Be careful. Two: Be careful. Three: Be careful.” “Then I might just as well pack my bags and return to Sweden,” Perwe replied.]

December 29, 1942:
Many “non-Aryans” because of the aggravated situation.

January 1, 1943:
Visit from a Jewish couple who needed housing. Berg-Weissenberg.

January 4, 1943:
Many homeless Jews.

January 13, 1943:
Many unhappy non-Aryans.

March 1, 1943:
Air raid of worst kind. Three fire bombs in the house, one of which in my room in the apartment. The blue hundred-year-old sofa and a black table destroyed. We succeeded in the nick of time in dousing the flames. Berlin is a sea of fire.

March 2, 1943:
Worked at home preparing for air raids to come. God be with us!

March 5, 1943:
Martha and the children to Sweden. Sad but necessary. God keep them all!

March 7, 1943:
Worked late with Dr. Lehfeld on a report to the Swedish government re persecution of Jews.

August 17, 1943:
Air raid. A terrible attack by 900 planes with five thousand men. Seventeen hundred tons of bombs. Two bombs at a distance of 300 meters, phosphorous bombs in the park, twenty meters from the house … two burning houses next to ours, many broken windows … Church and house all undamaged. Helped at the house next door. To bed at 6:30
A.M.

August 24, 1943:
Worked with our broken windows. The city looks horrible.

November 22, 1943:
Air raid, the worst of them all. The home, legation's house in ruins, city in turmoil. Helped evacuate legation. Then by car to the church. Three hours struggle against fire and smoke.

November 26, 1943:
Air raid, two hours. Horrible. New and terrible damage. Thirty percent of Berlin gone. The church stands. Praise God.

December 31, 1943:
So ends this year, a terrible year. May God have mercy on the deeds of this year, their perpetrators and their victims.

24

S
O HE'D BEEN CAUGHT
by a Jew! Fritz Croner could hardly believe it. He'd been warned about the catchers months before. “These people are working for the Gestapo,” another underground Jew had told him. At first he'd all but dismissed the notion, because the idea was so repellent. Nonetheless, he'd taken no chances. A few weeks after the warning he'd seen another Jew approaching him on the street and ducked inside a building before the man could spot him. But he had slipped up this time, and so now, thanks to Fedor Friedlander, he was a prisoner, awaiting shipment to Auschwitz.

Although Fritz had no way of knowing it that day, he had been arrested by one of the two most notorious catchers who roamed the streets of Berlin and other major cities between 1942 and 1944, under instructions from the Gestapo to look for “black hair and big noses.” His name was Rolf Isaaksohn, he was young and short and pretentious, and for a long time before he himself was captured by the Gestapo he had traded in false identification papers for illegal Jews.

On the day of his arrest Isaaksohn had been arranging to sell identification papers to a woman tailor who was working for a non-Jewish friend and living in the friend's home. Isaaksohn collected the payment—money and a suit—and said he would return with papers. He never did. The tailor, a Mrs. Mecklenburg, became frightened and fled from her friend's apartment. The next day the Gestapo arrived to inquire of her whereabouts. Mrs. Mecklenburg was probably the first Jewish “U-boat” Isaaksohn denounced.

The only catcher whose reputation exceeded Isaaksohn's was the woman he had spoken to in the beauty parlor just after capturing Fritz. Her name was Stella Kübler; at the height of her activity she was just twenty years old, an extravagantly pretty woman who came to be called the “blond ghost.” Kübler and Isaaksohn often worked as a team; between them they were said to have accounted for the arrest of 2,300 Jews but that figure has never been corroborated.

Kübler was born Stella Goldflack in 1923. Her father was a well known composer, her mother a cabaret entertainer. During her schooldays she was always prominent and popular because of her good looks. She was particularly popular with a boy named Manfred Kübler. Stella and Manfred were married in 1941, but she was only eighteen at the time, and the marriage didn't last. By 1943 Stella and her mother were working together in a large factory; they were at their jobs on February 27, but managed to avoid being taken in the roundup by hiding in a crate filled with sand. By morning they were near suffocation; the sound of their gasping attracted two foremen who were having breakfast on the crate.

There are contradictory accounts as to when Kübler began to work for the Gestapo and under what circumstances. One story is that she volunteered for the work after factory employees turned her and her mother in. Another story is that she was arrested with Isaaksohn in a cafe in March 1943 as he was in the process of selling her false identity papers for herself and her father. As proof of her willingness to cooperate with the Gestapo, she was asked by her interrogator, one S.S. Hauptscharführer Doberke, to denounce her husband. She did. Kübler agreed to work with Isaaksohn, and other catchers, one of them Fedor Friedlander, Fritz Croner's tormentor.