The Last Jews in Berlin (35 page)

But it did happen, or almost happened, because of another unbelievable indiscretion on the part of the Papendicks.

On December 23, a Saturday, the gate bell rang, sending tremors through all of them. Kurt and Hella immediately slipped from the room and went upstairs to hide. But there was no place to hide the Papendicks.

Beppo peered outside. An elderly man and woman were standing at the gate. He did not recognize them. Then Figa Papendick took a quick look. She let out an almost mournful sigh. “I know them,” she said. “Their name is Zagemann. You mustn't let them in.”

“How did they find us?” Beppo whispered.

Figa was so ashamed that she could not look at Beppo. “I gave them your name,” she confessed.

Beppo was speechless. It took him a full minute to gain control of himself. Finally he went to the gate. The Zagemanns told him they were looking for the Papendicks.

“The Papendicks aren't here,” Beppo said. “We are in danger. Everyone has gone.” He could be forgiven a lie, he told himself, if it was to save the five people inside his house.

The Zagemanns explained that they had lost their sanctuary in Brandenburg. They begged him to let them stay.

“But we have no room,” Beppo said, holding out his hands. He could not stand the expression on their faces. “Look,” he said abruptly, “perhaps I can find you something. Come back in a few hours.”

Back in the house, Beppo conferred with Kadi. They decided to try a devout Catholic couple who lived across the street. The man was middle-aged and worked as a watchman at Beppo's installation. The Catholic couple agreed to take the Zagemanns for two days, no more.

The Zagemanns remained eight days, to the consternation of their hosts, who kept pressing them to leave. They had no space for another couple. They were aware of the penalty to themselves if caught. But the Zagemanns wouldn't leave. They kept insisting to Beppo that the Papendicks were staying in his home. Beppo kept denying it. He felt he had no alternative. If the Zagemanns were caught, they might tell the Gestapo, either because they were tortured or because they might try to bargain for their own lives. Beppo was furious with the Papendicks. Some of his fury escaped, but much of it he held inside, where he could feel it corroding his stomach. The Papendicks, for their part, were aghast at what they had done.

On the eighth day, to everyone's relief, Beppo found the Zagemanns another place to stay. But a few days later the people in the second place of refuge asked Beppo to take the Zagemanns away. Their insistence shortly became an ultimatum. Finally, in a crescendo of emotion, Beppo delivered an ultimatum of his own to the Zagemanns. Either they left Wittenau or he would inform the “Jewish Gestapo.” When the Zagemanns finally left, having at last made contact with another family they knew, Beppo cried, and felt so ashamed he would talk to no one for days.

Fritz Croner could only wonder, as he completed his second year of life in the underground, if there was another Jew in Germany in a more anomalous position. He could hardly be accused of living luxuriously, but the truth was that, thanks to his prosperous jewelry trade, he, Marlitt and Lane had all the food they needed in a country where food was now gold. For Lane there was even hot chocolate when she wanted it, and for Fritz, each evening, if he wished, a fine after-dinner cigar. And yet the taste that prevailed in their mouths each day was fear.

The neighbors weren't a problem any longer; they had not forgotten who had put out the fire on the top floor of their building. The real problem was what it had been from the outset—trading on the black market for the money to buy food, and then for the food itself. Each visitor's arrival, ostensibly to buy or sell jewels, could be a ruse. Each journey by Marlitt into the city could mean the end of their lives together. They had lived illegally for so long now that they were as accomplished at it as anyone in Berlin. And therein lay the risk—that they would take their deftness for granted. That they couldn't afford, because each day they faced a different battle, due to the constantly changing situation as Berlin was being methodically destroyed. A rendezvous used successfully each day for months might not be there the following morning. A black market connection whose reliability had been tested many times might have vanished overnight, picked up by the S.S. or Gestapo, whose paranoia seemed to deepen with each new military defeat. Every change required adjustments, a fact brought home to them more forcefully than ever as December 1944 arrived.

The Christmas season was upon them. To Fritz and Marlitt that had never meant anything before. But they were living as Gentiles now, and in an apartment building filled with Germans who, if they were anything like their countrymen, would be completely caught up in the season. All of the emotions they brought to the holiday, whether they were practicing Christians or not, were focused on its most prominent symbol, the Christmas tree. A tree with candles was a tradition as old as the German people, and may well have originated with them before spreading to other lands. Whatever their circumstances or difficulties, Germans always seemed to find a way to have a tree at Christmas. All this the Croners understood, as well as the problems it could portend.

Lane was three now, able to converse, and the darling of the shelter inhabitants at Bayerische Strasse 5. Fritz and Marlitt did not require much imagination to anticipate the questions the other tenants would ask their daughter when they all gathered in the shelter during the raids. They would want to know if she had a pretty Christmas tree, and what kind of a present she had asked for. To continue their masquerade, the Croners decided, they would have to “celebrate” Christmas.

One day Fritz brought home a tree, which they decorated with candles, in the traditional German way. And Marlitt found a toy for Lane to give to her at Christmas. Considering their circumstances, it did not seem strange at all. But as he lit the candles for the first time, and watched Lane's eyes fill with wonder, Fritz prayed silently for the day when he would be able to light the menorah candles for her in celebration of Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. He couldn't do that now, any more than he could give her a Chanukah present, for she would surely tell the neighbors.

All through the war Fritz had kept a record of the Jewish calendar so that he could know when to celebrate the Jewish religious holidays. No printed calendar had been available for years, so he had had to make his own calculations, helped by an old calendar he had preserved. If his calculations were correct, the eight-day festival of Chanukah had begun on December 11.

Each night since then Fritz and Marlitt had waited until Lane was asleep and then had stuck little candles into a piece of bread, lit the candles and recalled the miracle of Chanukah, when, 2,100 years before, the forces of Judah Maccabee had routed Syrian invaders from the Holy Land. Back in their temple, which the Syrians had desecrated with a statue of Zeus, the Jews sought to rekindle the Eternal Light, which burns in every temple as a reminder of God's spirit. Although they found only enough oil to keep a flame burning in the cruse for a day, the flame burned for eight days, proof to the Jews of God's presence.

Uncounted times since then the Jews had been driven from their temples; now, 2,100 years later, it had happened again. When they had finished the traditional prayers Fritz and Marlitt added another—for some new Chanukah miracle, some further proof of God's presence.

38

H
ANS AND
M
ARUSHKA
could not get over the maturity of their new Russian wards. They had been afraid that Lucie, the seven-year-old, would reveal to someone in the street, when she played, that a Jew was living inside their house. They need not have worried. Tamara, her thirteen-year-old sister, lectured Lucie on the need to say absolutely nothing about the people she was living with, and from that moment on, Lucie never said a word.

Since coming to Berlin, Tamara and Lucie had been baptized as Catholics. The girls insisted on saying their prayers each night and on going to church on Sunday. After Mass on their first Sunday together Marushka walked the girls over to the Swedish church, where they were given a big meal as well as soap and toothbrushes. Thereafter the girls frequently took their midday meal at the church, which was an easy walk from the flat. They quickly established themselves as favorites among the church personnel, as rare and welcome in the midst of the unending struggle as flowers in December.

It was the same wherever Marushka took them. One day they accompanied her to a nunnery, where Marushka was to inspect a quantity of butchered meat. “I'm sure you must have your hands full,” the Mother Superior said to Marushka after she had met the girls. “Why don't you have them bring your laundry over here?” Each time the girls delivered or picked up the laundry the nuns would present them with underwear and rag dolls they had sewn for them.

The girls were as different in manner as they were in appearance. Lucie was a wild child who could not wait to run out and play in the street with the few German children who were left in the neighborhood. Tamara never played at all. After her lessons she wanted most of all to help around the house. Every day she walked the dogs. On the street she was so protective of Lucie that she seemed like a harried mother. Only when they had returned to the flat did Tamara become a child again.

One evening, two weeks after they had arrived, Tamara came up to Hans. “I want to talk to you,” she said.

“Of course,” Hans said.

“Lucie and I would like you and Marushka to be our mother and father.”

Hans was so moved that for a moment he couldn't speak.

Tamara frowned. “Is that not all right?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” Hans said, recovering, “it's very much all right.”

From that day on, Tamara and Lucie not only addressed Hans and Marushka as “Father” and “Mother,” they referred to them that way in their conversations with each other. “Mother's back,” Lucie would cry out. “She's brought something good to eat.”

And then Brumm, Marushka's beloved nephew, came home on leave and moved into the flat with Irmelin, his exquisite fiancée At first the girls did not know what to make of him. No assurance that either Hans or Marushka could give them could get around the fact that he wore the uniform of a German soldier. The breakthrough finally came one evening during an air raid as they sat in the cellar shelter.

“Brumm,” Tamara said abruptly, “are soldiers frightened in war?”

“Oh, yes,” Brumm replied.

“Are you frightened?”

“Of course I'm frightened.”

“I'm also frightened,” Tamara said. It was obviously an important admission, and just as obviously comforting for her to know that a soldier could be frightened too. Lucie, of course, agreed with Tamara once her sister explained what she had learned.

It was the beginning of a great friendship between Brumm and the girls—and also the beginning of the tales of “The Big Fat Fly Philip.”

Hans had listened to the discussion in silence. After the raid he came up from the cellar and said to Marushka, “This just won't do. We can't let the children be frightened.” The very next time they went to the shelter he said to the children, “Don't listen to the bombs. Listen to me.” And he began to tell them stories about Philip—how he would fly onto Hitler's picture and deposit little black marks on it, how he would fly into the flats of the important Nazis and put little worms in their butter, how he would settle down in the street on a pile of manure and then walk across some Nazi's sandwich. The girls and Brumm would howl with glee and even make up adventures for Philip on their own.

About this time Marushka received word that another of her nephews, Giessbert von Reinersdorf, a lieutenant on the Russian front, had been killed in action. She had not been as close to Giessbert as she was to Brumm, but she had cared for him just the same. Moreover, his death had an added significance because it was the latest in a series of family casualties. Marushka went to her writing desk and searched for a picture of Giessbert, and then sat staring at it, feeling the sorrow lodge in her throat, fighting to hold it there, fearing that if she let it move up it would unplug all of the anguish and grief she had managed to suppress in the past. She shut her eyes, unable to look at Giessbert's image any longer, but the darkness became a theater, and her lids a screen, for the moments in her life that had linked her to her nephew. Then, gradually Marushka became aware that someone was at her side. When she opened her eyes, there was Tamara. “He was my nephew,” Marushka said. “He was a soldier, and he was killed.”

Tamara looked at the photograph but said nothing. A moment later she walked away. The next morning, however, she approached Marushka with a look that was more appropriate for a funeral. “I know that I should be happy when any German soldier is killed,” she said. “But I'm not happy. I thought about your nephew all day and all night, and I believe now that any death is a bad death, whether it's a Russian or a Jew or a German.”

Amazed and near tears again, Marushka swept Tamara into her arms.

Just before the New Year, Brumm was called back to his regiment. The girls were not at all happy when the time came to say goodbye. Tamara confessed that she was afraid Brumm would be killed, just like his cousin Giessbert. She wanted his assurance that he wouldn't let that happen. “You see, you're our cousin now, and we can't lose you,” she explained.

“I won't be killed,” Brumm promised. “Just wait for me. I'll be back one day.”

“He's a very good soldier and he'll be very careful,” Marushka assured the girls when Brumm was gone. It didn't help very much. They cried for a long time.

The new year did not start well. Two episodes made it clear to Hans and Marushka that, next to the Swedish church, their flat was the best known address in Berlin among Jews in danger. One night, a few weeks after Brumm had left, there was a knock on their door. Hans slipped quickly into the bedroom and got ready to hide in the couch. At the door Marushka found a frantic, distracted young man so out of breath he could scarcely speak. “Let me in, let me in,” he begged, trying to push past her and through the door.