The Last Jews in Berlin (29 page)

27

T
HE GAME WAS ON
in earnest now. No more loud singing of Hebrew prayers at night. No more capricious walks in the streets. No more restlessness translated into spontaneous trips to the railway station to meet Marushka. At last Hans was willing to take his enemy seriously, to see him for what he was. He knew that his lair had been marked. Officially he no longer existed, but it would take only one insistent catcher or a Gestapo agent to remedy that.

The first order of business after the catcher's visit was to stop all traffic to the flat. At least ten illegals might show up the next day to get their ration cards. Marushka telephoned a friend, a Fraulein von During, and arranged a meeting. At the rendezvous she gave her a list of names and addresses. Each person she found was to receive the same message: “Stay away from the flat.”

The next order of business was to get Hans away for a while, because Marushka was sure that the Gestapo would be back. She called friends who owned a home on the Lake of Ferch, near Potsdam. They agreed to shelter him. Now the problem was how to get him out of the house without being observed. They knew they were under surveillance. The morning after the catchers' visit a man with a newspaper was standing under the streetlight across from the flat when Marushka left for the university in the morning. He was there again the next morning.

On the third morning Marushka crossed the street and went up to him. “Look,” she said, “I'm quite late for an appointment. Your taxis are paid for by the Gestapo. Could you give me a lift?”

For a moment the man looked at her incredulously. Then suddenly he grinned. “By all means,” he said.

The next day he was back, but a day later he was gone. Were there others, in other places? They couldn't take a chance. That weekend Hans slipped out the back and went through a passageway of a neighboring building that led to the cross street. For good measure, he took the dogs with him. Who would suspect a man who was walking his dogs?

As it turned out, Hans had left just in time. That evening one of the cats tensed as she sat next to the kitchen window. Marushka looked out the window but saw nothing. She was fairly sure, however, that she heard what the cat had heard—the movement of people.

Each evening for the next week the cat noticed something, and then Marushka would hear the noises. Finally she determined to put an end to whatever was going on. Early the next evening she went into the garden and rigged several trip wires. Then she poured hot water—which freezes very quickly—over the stone path. An hour later there was a tremendous thud and a lot of swearing. Marushka immediately called the police. They were there within minutes, confronting—along with a dozen neighbors—two agents of the Gestapo.

A few days later the Gestapo dropped its surveillance. After a fortnight Marushka brought Hans home.

Wilhelm Glaser had been raised in a religious home. He had been bar-mitzvahed in the Lindenstrasse synagogue. By 1920, however, his religious enthusiasm had lapsed considerably under the influence of scientific explanations of the creation of the universe and the arguments of his Marxist friends. But in the time since his life had come apart he had begun to pray once again, and he had prayed in recent months more than he ever had before. When misery is the greatest, God is the closest, he would tell himself.

He was homeless once again. He had run through all of the safe houses Gilbert Mach could find him; friends of Mach's had been willing to hide him for a night or two but not longer. And although Mach had found him a series of part-time jobs, he was currently unemployed and almost out of money. And yet, in the bitter cold of the winter of 1944, Willy was beginning to believe once more that he was being watched over by God. One could say that he had been lucky—but, then, the luck had to have come from somewhere. God must have apportioned him an extra share.

There had been the day a few weeks after the destruction of the glazier's shop when, achingly cold from a night of sleeping in the park, he had gone to a popular coffeehouse on the Moritzplatz. Drinking his coffee, and hungry for news of any kind, he had just gotten his turn at the
Völkische Beobachter
when he heard a voice say, “Let me see your papers.” He looked up slowly from the newspaper. A man from the Gestapo stood before a customer at the table next to his. Willy reached for his hat and briefcase, rose and, nodding to the Gestapo man, returned the newspaper to its rack. Then he walked from the coffeehouse and sauntered away, his body tensed for the command to halt that would hit him like a bullet in the back.

Much later, when he had stopped shaking, Willy would conclude that it had been his choice of newspaper that had saved him. Since the advent of the Nazis the
Völkische Beobachter
had been Germany's leading newspaper—which was not saying much. It had achieved some degree of sobriety since its prepower days as a cheap and lusty tabloid, and it did manage to contain some bits and pieces of real news—the reason that Willy had chosen it—but it was still a party-line newspaper. If you were a member of the Nazi party, or even a nonparty member who wished to demonstrate your devotion to the state, you read the
Völkische Beobachter
. Seeing Willy with the newspaper, the Gestapo man must have assumed that he was loyal to the cause.

Another day, waiting for a train at an S-Bahn platform, Willy was aghast to see two soldiers with dogs appear on the platform. It was part of the dreaded
Kettenhunde
patrol, which combed the streets for deserters. One of the soldiers looked Willy's way, then turned and spoke to his companion. The two of them started down the platform with the dogs. Just then the train rolled in. Willy got on board, waited until he saw the soldiers board another car, and stepped out of his car as the doors were closing.

But Willy's best break by far was his chance encounter with a woman at the workshop of a tailor named Lowental. He went to Lowental's shop every so often to deliver some textiles he had managed to acquire on the black market. From time to time Lowental let him spend the night on his cutting table. One day, just as Willy was leaving, the woman came in to Lowental's shop. “Who is that man?” she asked the tailor. He replied that Willy was in essential war work. Hearing this, the woman turned at once to Willy. “Sir,” she said, “my husband is in the army, I live alone with my daughter, and I'm deathly afraid of the air raids. I assume you live in a furnished room. Perhaps you would like to move in with us.”

Willy could scarcely believe his luck, but in his wildest dreams he couldn't imagine the reception that awaited him when he arrived at five o'clock that evening. There on the table was the best dinner he had seen in years.

That night he slept in the woman's bed, with her daughter between them. If it was a precaution on the woman's part, it was needless, because she was so unattractive he did not even consider sex. In the morning she gave him coffee and rolls, and then made him some sandwiches on the assumption that he was going to work. Dutifully Willy left, spent the day walking around, and returned that night.

It went on like that for several weeks. Each night they would undress in the kitchen and go to sleep to the sound of music on the radio. When the air raid alarm sounded, Willy led them to the shelter. The woman marveled at his courage and was more than content with their bargain.

Then one day her husband returned. He was not the least bit bothered that a man had been sleeping in his bed. In fact, he expressed his gratitude to Willy for taking care of his family.

But then, once more, Willy Glaser was homeless.

28

S
INCE
A
UGUST
1943 young Hans Rosenthal had been a conscientious spectator of the Allied bombers' massive nightly attacks on Berlin. The attacks were the highlight of his existence, not because he wished ill-fortune for the mass of Berliners whose city was being destroyed, but because he knew that each attack brought the end of the war closer, and also because each night he could stand outside, under the fruit trees twenty feet from Frau Jauch's house, and feel that he was free. He was absolutely certain that his presence would be unobserved. Not only did prudence dictate to the Germans that they remain in their shelters during air raids but the law forbade them to be on the streets. Of one thing he could be certain, Hans knew: Germans obeyed the law.

In the last months, however, Hans too had been driven indoors, partially by the onset of winter, with its wet and penetrating cold, and also because the bombs were coming closer with every attack. Hans knew that a direct hit would kill him whether he stood in the garden or remained in the tool shack, and he was resigned to that, but he saw no point in shortening his odds by making himself a target for shrapnel.

And then one night, as he huddled in his shack, a bomb came whistling down as though it were aimed at his head. It exploded no more than twenty yards from Frau Jauch's house, in a corner of the garden. The explosion collapsed three houses around hers, but her own house remained standing. Only its windows were shattered. Hans was shaken but unhurt.

To Frau Jauch it was clear that God had spared her house in order to save her Jew. Hans knew better: the explosion had created a vacuum that sheltered objects nearest it. But he said nothing.

The next morning danger appeared, in a form far more threatening to Hans than the bombs. Two S.S. officials arrived to inspect the damage. As they walked from garden to garden Hans could hear their voices. Frantically he hid all objects in the room that might give away his presence, and then he crawled behind the couch and lay against the wall, an open knife in his hand.

He had been there only a minute when the S.S. officers arrived at Frau Jauch's house. They explained to her that if she wished to replace the windows they must first make out a request. “Please,” she said.

The S.S. officers began to inventory the broken windows. “What about that one over there?” one of them said, pointing to the tool shed.

“Yes, that one too,” Frau Jauch said.

“Perhaps we should look inside,” the other S.S. man said then.

“By all means,” Frau Jauch said as loudly as she dared.

Hans's grip tightened on the knife. If they find me, I'll take at least one of them, he vowed.

He heard their steps in the kitchen, and then he heard Frau Jauch pull aside the curtain and open the tool shed door. They were within five feet of him now.

And then he felt the couch pressing hard against him. The S.S. men had sat down. He could hear papers rustling. One of the men must be making out a report, he concluded.

“Would you like some tea?” he heard Frau Jauch say. Her voice sounded calm. She seemed completely composed. The S.S. officers accepted with thanks. Frau Jauch left the room. Neither of the men spoke. Hans could hear their breathing. He was certain his own was audible; only because they suspected no other presence was it going undetected. But if he coughed …

He felt a tickle in his throat. He shut his eyes and willed his mind against it, constricting his throat, swallowing, praying. But the tickle persisted, and became more intense. Slowly, carefully, he took an enormous breath through his mouth and held it in his lungs, and at last he felt the tickle subside, just as Frau Jauch came in with the tea.

The pressure against him eased as the S.S. men leaned forward. Hans knew they must be picking up their tea. A moment later the couch pressed against him again as the visitors settled back. Hans could hear their slurping, and then one of them was telling Frau Jauch not to be excited or upset by the bombing. “We'll win the war,” he assured her. “Everything will be over soon.”

Suddenly the tickle returned, so surprisingly and forcefully that Hans was sure he would cough. Again he opened his mouth and swallowed air, but this time it did no good. And then he heard Frau Jauch's voice, and he thought, If I cough, it's all over for her too.

He was gripping the knife so firmly now that his right hand shook from the effort and his nails dug into his palm. With the utmost care he moved his left hand to his throat and scratched the skin in the little hollow between the collarbones. Somehow that sensation seemed to draw his mind from the tickling in his throat.

Leave! he prayed. Leave!

Five minutes later they did. As soon as he heard the door close Hans began to cough. For a long while he couldn't stop coughing or shaking.

At last the long winter ended. The frozen ground began to soften. The fruit trees flowered. Their fragrance filled the air—a scent as incongruous as perfume on a corpse. Anyone with the least amount of objective vision could see that Berlin was doomed, its life inexorably destroyed a little more each day by the fusillade of bombs.

One night a fire bomb landed thirty yards from Frau Jauch's house and set a neighboring cottage on fire. A strong wind showered sparks directly onto her house, as well as many others. Hans could hear the neighbors outside agreeing that the only way to save the other cottages was to push down the one on fire. He knew that if he ran outside to help them they would wonder who he was. But if he didn't go and the fire spread, he could burn to death. There was really no choice. He eased himself outside.

A few of the neighbors were fighting the fire with picks and shovels, but most of them worked with their bare hands, trying to drag away the parts of the house that hadn't yet caught fire. The roof was the greatest problem; like those of the other cottages around it, it was covered with tar paper, and now the heat was melting the tar and turning it to liquid. As Hans grabbed a portion of the roof he could feel the tar burning the skin on his left hand.

As soon as he saw that the fire was under control Hans drew slowly back from the crowd, then turned and retreated to Frau Jauch's house, making certain that no one was watching as he stepped through the door. Inside, he looked at his hand. The molten tar had burned away the skin on his palm and little finger. The pain was so intense and the burn so ugly that Hans knew he would have to see a doctor.