The Last Jews in Berlin (28 page)

“Is it true that they're killing Jews?” Fritz asked.

“It's true,” he said. The weak and the strong were segregated on their arrival. The weak disappeared at once, never to be seen again. The strong ones worked until they became weak, and then they too disappeared.

They were sitting on the floor in the hallway. The young man leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes and began to breathe deeply through his nostrils. “I saw a child separated from his mother,” he said at last. “The mother went off with the strong, and the child was kept with the weak. He became hysterical. His screams annoyed the guards. They picked him up by the legs and swung him against a wall until his head was smashed.”

Fritz covered his eyes with his hands and, moaning softly, began to rock back and forth. Almighty God, he prayed, please never let them get Lane.

From the moment of his capture Fritz had been looking for ways to escape. It seemed hopeless. There were bars on all the windows. The doors were locked. They were never let outside. At night the prison was bathed in light and patrolled by guards with rifles and dogs.

Fritz, however, had managed to communicate with Marlitt. There was a barber, a Jew, who came every day to shave the prisoners because they were not permitted to have razors. He was a privileged Jew because his wife was non-Jewish and his children were being raised as Christians. He still lived at home. One day as Fritz was being shaved he said to the barber, “I would like to ask a favor. I have a girl friend. I would like you to contact her and tell her that I'm being held.” Fritz offered the barber his briefcase, which had been returned to him after it had been emptied of money and jewels. “It's yours,” he said.

“I'll give it to my son for Christmas,” the barber said.

Had he heard the line in a play Fritz would have laughed aloud. Now he simply stared at the barber and turned silently away.

Fritz had given the barber the telephone number of his Russian friend Makarow, knowing that Makarow would contact Marlitt. The next day the barber told Fritz that his girl friend had been to see him. He had told her that Fritz had “gone out of this life” and was on his way to Auschwitz. She had brought along several pair of wool socks and some underwear, which the barber now slipped to him. With the clothes was a note. It said that they were well and he was not to worry. It said nothing of her anguish.

Each day the barber returned with little bits of clothing and another note. Each night he left the building with a note from Fritz to Marlitt. Most of the notes contained nothing but small talk. But on December 5 Fritz wrote, “Leave Berlin. Berlin will be destroyed.”

He did not tell Marlitt that the Jewish prisoners now numbered fifty.

It was time for his last desperate try. For days he had been conspiring with a man named Metz, who seemed to exist in some kind of twilight zone. Perhaps he was half Jewish; whatever the reason, he had a privileged status, something like that of a prison trusty. But Metz had one important privilege that trusties seldom have: he was allowed to leave the prison. Some of Fritz's fellow prisoners thought Metz worked as a catcher when he was away from the Grosse Hamburger Strasse building. He was scarcely a reliable ally, but he was the only chance Fritz had.

It was Metz who had made the approach. He had seen thousands of Jews come and go, he said. He knew that the number of deportable Jews in Berlin had dwindled to almost nothing, because whereas each of the first transports had consisted of a thousand Jews, now they were leaving with fifty. When the last Jews had gone off to Auschwitz and he was no longer needed, what would happen to him, he had asked himself. The answer was not comforting. It was time for him to walk from the prison and disappear into the underground. But he also knew how much money it would take to survive as a “U-boat,” and he didn't have a pfennig.

That was where Fritz came in.

He knew all about the jewels Fritz had been carrying when he was arrested, Metz said. He assumed that Fritz had good contacts in the city. Metz had access to the keys to all the locks; he was sure their escape would go smoothly. He wanted 5,000 marks at the outset, and another 5,000 marks as soon as they were free. Could Fritz arrange for that kind of money?

He could, Fritz said.

Fritz gave Metz a note to the Russian Makarow instructing him to pay Metz 5,000 marks. The note was signed with a number: 5.39. That was the weight in carats of a stone Fritz and Makarow had recently bought together.

Later, as Fritz was being shaved by the barber for what they both supposed would be the last time, Fritz asked, “Do you have ten pfennigs?”

“What do you need ten pfennigs for in Auschwitz?”

“Just a souvenir,” Fritz said idly.

The barber shrugged and gave him a ten-pfennig coin. Then he turned away. As he did, Fritz grabbed a pair of the barber's scissors and put them in his pocket. He had never stolen anything before. He did not even know what use he would make of the scissors, only that they were a weapon of sorts.

Through the day and evening Fritz prayed. The next morning he looked at Metz's face to see if his prayers had been answered. But Metz refused to look at him. Finally Fritz walked up to him. “Did you get the money?” he asked.

When Metz looked at him, Fritz could not read what was in his eyes. “Yes, I got the money,” Metz said. “But I was searched when I returned.”

Without a word Fritz turned away. He did not believe Metz. He did not think he had been searched. He believed that the man had lost his nerve and turned the money over to the Gestapo, sucking up, trying to make an impression, believing the money would somehow buy him his life. Whether he was right or wrong, Fritz knew that his last hope was gone, that he was on his way to Auschwitz—and that his last, bungled attempt to save himself could have compromised Makarow.

That night the Jews were lined up in the corridor and informed that the next morning they would be taken to the freight yards in Charlottenburg to be placed on a train. It was a man from the Gestapo who made the announcement, a rough-looking, middle-aged man. When he finished he walked down the line and stood in front of Fritz and, his head not a foot away, glared into his eyes. “Are you Croner?” he demanded in a loud voice.

Suddenly the figure in front of Fritz did not seem to be standing still any more. This is the moment, he thought. He crumpled to the floor.

“A doctor! A.doctor!” the Gestapo officer called.

One of the prisoners stepped from the line, bent over Fritz and listened to his chest. “It's his heart,” he told the officer.

“Get him into my office!” the officer demanded.

Several prisoners carried Fritz into the office of the commandant. He waited until Fritz opened his eyes and then he said, “Croner, I've got your money.”

“What money?” Fritz said. “I gave you all my money when I came here.”

The commandant smiled. “Here,” he said, opening his desk drawer. “I've got your five thousand marks.” He took out the money. “You were going to escape with this money, weren't you? How? Whom were you going to bribe?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

But the Gestapo officer obviously thought that he was onto something big. If there was corruption in his administration, he would find out where it was. For this inquiry he needed a healthy witness. “Take him up to the sick bay,” he told the guards.

As the guards led him away Fritz could not help thinking how ludicrous it was. He was too sick to go to Auschwitz! In a few days he would be murdered, but he was too sick to keep the appointment.

The sick bay was on the third floor. It was a small room with two beds. A man of thirty and a little boy were lying on one of the beds. Between the beds was a window. Fritz walked to it. He could not believe his eyes. The window had no bars. He turned to the man, an obvious question on his face. The man nodded his understanding. “I couldn't try it because of the boy,” he said. He reached under the mattress and began to pull out a homemade rope.

“Wait!” Fritz whispered. He took a broom handle and inserted it through a handle on the door, so that anyone pulling on the door from the outside could not open it.

The rope had been fashioned from strips of blanket. The moment he tugged at it, Fritz knew it would never hold. But there was more material. Fritz made another rope. Then he braided the two ropes together. As he worked he told the man about the transport that was scheduled to leave for Auschwitz in the morning. They agreed that they would try to escape that night.

That evening the lights outside the building went out, and a few moments later Fritz could hear the drone of the approaching bombers. Soon the bombs were whistling down on the city. The first explosions sounded like the beat of muffled drums. The fires from the incendiary bombs slowly spread along the horizon, and the darkness of the night lifted like a curtain rising on hell. At ten o'clock Fritz opened the window very slowly and eased his head outside. The guards were gone—in their shelters, no doubt.

There were several raids that evening. Each time a new wave of bombers came over, the explosions moved closer. Now all of the sky was red, and there were fires only a few blocks away. Several times during the raids Fritz peered out the window. There were no guards, and the street was empty.

“We'll go at two,” Fritz whispered. The man nodded. “I'll go one way, you go the other,” Fritz said. They played a game from childhood to determine who would choose. The game was rock / scissors / paper. Fritz showed scissors. The man showed rock; rock dulls scissors, so he had won. He elected to go to the left.

Fritz undid his belt and extracted two hundred marks from a secret pouch and gave it to the man. Then he gave him a fresh pair of socks from the supply that Marlitt had sent and told him to pull the socks over his shoes so that they would cut the scent.

At a few minutes before two Fritz lashed the little boy to his father's back. Then he eased the window open and nodded to the man. The man stepped over the sill. Even in the darkness Fritz could see the whites of his eyes. The little boy was also frightened, but he didn't make a sound.

As soon as the man reached the ground Fritz went over the side. They waited together on the ground for an instant. “Go,” Fritz whispered. The man disappeared to the left, the boy still on his back.

Then Fritz began to run. It was as though all of his life he had been tied to the earth with ropes and they had suddenly been cut from his feet. The socks on his shoes muted his footfalls, but they echoed through the darkness nonetheless. He heard shouting behind him then, and knew the man and boy had been caught. The sounds drove him even faster. Five hundred yards from the building he ducked into a bombed-out house, found the cellar, and leaned against a wall, trying to still his breath. He could hear the dogs. Their barking grew stronger and stronger. They were no more than a hundred yards away now. He could no longer make a break for it—the dogs would run him down.

Then, miraculously, the barking sounds receded.

Fritz remained in the cellar for an hour. While he waited he used the scissors he had stolen from the barber to clip off his mustache. At last he went up to the street. The streetlights were out and there was no moon. He walked so close to the buildings that he brushed the walls with his shoulder. He walked for half an hour, moving south, until he was well out of the neighborhood. Only then did he go into a phone booth.

He reached into his pocket for the ten-pfennig “souvenir” he had been given by the barber, placed it in the telephone and raised his finger to dial Makarow's number.

He could not remember the number. He had dialed it hundreds of times, but as much as his life depended on it, he could not remember it now.

Only Makarow could get word to Marlitt; he, Fritz, would not dare jeopardize her and Lane by going directly to them. He would have to go to Makarow's, he decided now. He would still be taking a risk, because Metz might have given the Gestapo Makarow's name. But he had no other choice.

He walked through the empty streets until he reached Makarow's block. Fifty yards from his building he stopped. Were his eyes playing tricks or was that the glow of a cigarette in the dark? Fritz edged backward until he reached the corner. Then he walked around the block and approached the building from the other side. Once more he could see the tip of a cigarette, and now he saw a man. He turned quickly and walked away. Were those footsteps behind him? He walked faster. The footsteps sounded closer. He looked around. Two men were following him. He ran then, and they ran after him, but he had that feeling again that he had been cut loose from the earth, and he was sure they wouldn't catch him unless they used a gun. He ran to the Hauptstrasse. A tram was coming down the tracks. It was not yet in service, on its way from the barn to where it would begin its run. Only a motorman was aboard; there was no conductor. Fritz ran into the street and jumped onto the open platform. Only then did he look back. His two pursuers had stopped running. He wasn't sure, but he thought he recognized them. They were from the Grosse Hamburger Strasse building, privileged Jews,
Mischlinge
, perhaps, or Jews married to Gentile women. If so, they hadn't been that interested in catching him. Had they been catchers, he would have been a dead man.

Just then Makarow's phone number flashed into his head. A few blocks farther on, Fritz dropped from the tram and telephoned. “It's Fritz,” he said. “I escaped.”

“Thank God.”

“The Gestapo may be watching your house. Go see if anyone's outside.”

A moment later Makarow returned and told him no one was there.

“Get in touch with Marlitt. Tell her I'm in Halensee. She'll understand.” Even Makarow hadn't known that Fritz had a hiding place there.

The streets were filling now as the working day began. Fritz lost himself in the crowd and walked to Halensee. There he found the caretaker, who let him into the store after he explained that he had just returned from his engineering job in Poland and had forgotten his key. He drank several glasses of water. Then he undressed, put on his pajamas and lay down on the bed. An hour later a knock on the door awakened him. It was Marlitt. She fell into his arms.