The Last Jews in Berlin (37 page)

A possibility appeared in February 1945, when Count Folke Bernadotte, vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, arrived in Berlin on a complex mission. Bernadotte hoped to persuade the Germans to let the Red Cross evacuate all Scandinavians held in concentration camps. He proposed to do this with a fleet of buses and trucks that would be shipped from Sweden to Germany. Bernadotte had a secondary objective, which was to evacuate, as well, many hundreds of German citizens of Swedish origin, most of them the wives and children of German men who had been killed or were missing in action. Some Swedish-born Germans had already succeeded in getting out, and the stories they told on their arrival in Stockholm—of air-pressure bombs that could kill people in shelters even without a direct hit; of Germans, their shoes torn away by the blasts, wrapping their feet in newspapers; of young men strung from lampposts by the S.S., with signs around their necks saying “He didn't fight hard enough,” or “He left too soon”—as well as the sapped and frightened and disheveled look of the refugees themselves, had created strong public sentiment for a bolder evacuation program.

Bernadotte was a man well suited to his mission. He had the bearing and cultivation of an aristocrat, but he was at heart an unpretentious man with enormous compassion and inexhaustible patience. He was also a keen observer and, most important, an optimist who believed in human decency. He would need all of those qualities, for he would be dealing with Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the S.S. and Gestapo as well as the German police system, Minister of the Interior, Commander in Chief of the Home Army and commander of the regular German armies fighting the Russians on the Oder River front—“the man who,” Bernadotte would later observe in his memoirs,
The Curtain Falls
(1945), “by means of his terror system had stained politics with crime in a manner hitherto unknown and who, by means of this very system, had up to now held the tottering Third Reich upright.” Small, ascetic, with a receding chin and an enigmatic smile, Himmler was mindful of his reputation as history's most productive executioner, a fact borne out by his conversational references as well as two classical psychological signs of guilt—chronic stomach cramps and a hand-washing compulsion. The second most powerful man in the Reich, Himmler was devoted to Hitler and his objective, particularly to the perpetuation of the “master race,” although he himself was the physical antithesis of the model “Aryan.”

Himmler's initial reactions to Bernadotte's proposals were negative. He became particularly heated when Bernadotte suggested that the Norwegians and Danes in the camps be moved to Sweden and placed under custody there. “If I were to agree to your proposal,” he said, “the Swedish papers would announce with big headlines that the war criminal Himmler, in terror of punishment for his crimes, is trying to buy his freedom.” He was less emotional but no less hostile in regard to Bernadotte's second proposal. “I don't feel inclined to send German children to Sweden. There they will be brought up to hate their country, and spat at by their playmates because their fathers were German.” When Bernadotte pointed out that German fathers would be comforted to know that their children were safe in Sweden, Himmler replied, “Their fathers would no doubt much rather see them grow up in a shack in Germany than have them given refuge in a castle in a country which is so hostile to Germany as Sweden is.”

But Himmler soon changed his mind, possibly because the idea for a negotiated peace with the West had already taken root in his mind and he saw Bernadotte as the logical go-between. In any case, he sent word to Bernadotte that Swedish women were to receive exit visas. If any of these women had been in trouble with the police and might as a consequence not receive their visas, he would personally review the matter.

Bernadotte returned to Sweden to prepare his expedition. Within a few weeks he was back again with buses, troop carriers, mobile field kitchens, ambulances and 250 volunteers. Their principal work was to move Norwegian and Danish prisoners to a camp near Hamburg, as a preliminary to evacuation, but by mid-March they were also assisting in the evacuation of the Swedish-born women and their children. In Berlin the assembly point for the operation was the Swedish church on the Landhausstrasse. In the crush of people one morning the figure of Officer Mattek was scarcely noticeable. Slowly he made his way to the church, where he found Erik Myrgren, and led him to a corner. “There's no Gestapo control today,” he said softly. “If you want to send some Jews out on the buses, do it.”

Quickly the pastor went to the cellar and spoke to half a dozen Jews, one of whom, Erik Jacob, had lived in the church for a year. When the buses rolled out an hour later the six Jews were on them.

In the basement later that day Myrgren saw his friends the Weissenbergs. They had lived in the church now for nearly two years. They would have liked to be on a bus, but they were unwilling to risk the trip without papers. They did not want Myrgren to see their depression, but they weren't very good actors.

“Don't worry,” the pastor said, “you'll be next. We've got a plan for you.”

In mid-March the younger son of Robert Jerneitzig, the greengrocer who had befriended the Riedes two years before, contracted diphtheria. A fortnight later he was dead. Jerneitzig received a leave of absence from his unit to return to Berlin for the funeral. After the funeral he brought his wife and second son to Wittenau and informed the Wirkuses and Riedes that he was deserting.

That night Beppo and Jerneitzig burned the grocer's uniform and papers, then buried the charred remnants in a compost heap in the garden. The next day, after a restless night in the overcrowded house, Jerneitzig went to stay with a friend in Helmstedt. But two days later he was back for good.

So now Beppo and Kadi were harboring four Jews—Kurt and Hella Riede and Hella's parents, the Papendicks—and a deserter. It never occurred to either of them that there was anything else to do. They tried their best to arrange comfortable sleeping annexes in the cellar and the corridor.

March 30 was Good Friday. That morning Erik Wesslen received a telephone call from the Gestapo directing him to appear for questioning by the end of the day. He said he would come. Then he put the phone down slowly and carefully and stared at it for a long time.

He'd been expecting the call for months. Considering the work he'd done to save Jews and others from the Nazis, it was a miracle that it hadn't come before this. He'd hoped that if and when the call did come, he wouldn't lose control. Too many people were dependent on him for him to be able to indulge his emotions. He tried now to think of his problem as systematically as he had thought through all of his rescue efforts and black market arrangements and bribing of the right people in the Gestapo and S.S. But in spite of his efforts to maintain control, he had the distinct feeling that a linchpin had been pulled from his body and it would disassemble into a thousand parts if he so much as moved.

He was still at his desk twenty minutes later when Myrgren found him. The pastor, who had just finished the regular 11:00
A.M.
service, was wearing his Swedish clergyman's dress, a black gown that reached to his feet and a stiff white collar with two linen tabs hanging beneath his chin. That morning he had preached on the passion and death of Christ, citing the suffering and disasters that the wickedness of men had inflicted on all mankind. The sight of the pastor, whose work in the last four months had removed all his initial doubts, served now to release all of Wesslen's blocked emotions. Quickly he blurted his story.

Myrgren sat down heavily and stared at Wesslen. “It must be Okhardt,” he said at last.

Okhardt was a young German connected with the resistance who had been sent to the church by Countess von Maltzan. Myrgren and Wesslen had found a safe house for him with the help of Reuter, the church's caretaker.

Now the two men regarded each other in silence, both of them with the same thought: What would happen if the Gestapo tortured Wesslen in an effort to make him talk? Would he? Would the church and its allies such as the countess and all of the Jews and other refugees sequestered in homes around Berlin be exposed so late in the game, when it was almost won? Four months earlier it had been the pastor's courage that Wesslen had questioned. Now it was his own. Suddenly he was shaking. “I'm finished,” he said softly.

Myrgren shook his head. “You have no reason to be afraid,” he said. “The war will be over soon. The Gestapo's too busy. They'll never get around to you. Just don't go.”

40

D
EATH WAS EVERYWHERE NOW.
Bodies lay in doorways after every raid, dragged there by survivors. Hours later burial details would appear to cart the bodies off, not to graves but to funeral pyres. There were too many dead for graves.

Each day there were stories of more deaths in the newspapers, but Hans and Marushka read the stories with the same sense of resignation with which they might read of an increase in the price of bread. They had passed the point of feeling—or so they thought, at least—until word reached them that Irmelin, Brumm's fiancée, had been killed in an air raid.

She had stood the war so much better than all of them that her death seemed particularly unjust. She had never complained of discomfort, never broadcast her fears. She'd been the one they'd always counted on to walk the dogs or run the countless errands that neither one of them could do—Hans because he was hiding and Marushka because she was working. All she had asked in exchange was to be part of the household when Brumm was in Berlin. Now they could not imagine Brumm's presence without his exquisite fiancée, so wise beyond her years. Seeing their love had measurably strengthened their own belief that a future existed for them all. Now that belief had been assailed and—for days after they heard the news—all but destroyed.

Once, after their baby had died, Marushka had argued to Hans that every life, no matter how brief, had a purpose. As senseless as Irmelin's death seemed, it did soon fill Marushka with a sense of purpose. Brumm had been wounded again—a piece of shrapnel had lodged in his hand—and evacuated to an overcrowded military hospital near Berlin. Marushka was determined that her nephew would never fight again. She went to the hospital and looked up the chief medical officer. “I have a proposition to put to you,” she told him. “Let me take my nephew back to my flat. I'll tend to his wound, and you'll have a free bed.” The doctor was delighted. As soon as Brumm was in the flat Marushka infected the wound with a culture from a diseased animal. Then she carefully rebound the bandage. Within two days Brumm's hand was so swollen that he could not have possibly handled a weapon; it would be weeks before he would be fit for duty again, and by then, presumably, the war would be over.

Certainly the final scene of the tragedy seemed about to be performed. The Yalta Conference had just ended. It was no secret in Berlin that Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had pledged a final coordinated attack on Germany from all sides. In the east the Russians had already penetrated the Reich. In the west the Americans and British had launched their massive assault on the Rhine. There was no doubt whatever about the outcome of the tragedy. It was evident from everything that had gone before that Hitler would fight to the end, regardless of the cost. Berlin would be defended, and Berlin would be destroyed.

For the thousands of helpless Berliners the one overriding task was to avoid being destroyed with their city.

Her success in keeping her nephew out of further combat emboldened Marushka to try to help a number of acquaintances who, for one reason or another, had avoided the draft but were now being called up for the defense of Berlin. In her practice she had frequently used a somewhat unorthodox treatment for restoring the paralyzed limbs of animals. The animals were deliberately injected with a serum designed to produce jaundice. The jaundice produced a high fever, which spread through the body; that, in turn, caused blood to flow to the fevered parts. It was the flow of blood that restored the limb, and once that happened the jaundice could be cured. Why not induce jaundice in her friends, Marushka asked herself. A number of them agreed to the plan. For good measure she gave them a second injection to induce diarrhea and vomiting.

Some days later a doctor she knew stopped Marushka on the street. “There's the damndest bug running around,” he told her. “High fever, symptoms of jaundice—God knows where that came from—accompanied by diarrhea and vomiting. We're seeing it only in men—and two days after we've cured them they're sick again.”

“Odd,” Marushka said,

And then one day a small and sickly-looking German in his thirties came to see her at the flat. He had a heart condition that had kept him out of the service, he explained, but now he was being conscripted along with everyone else. He'd heard about the injections she'd been giving. He was afraid to take those because of his heart condition, but could she possibly break his arm?

“I'd really prefer not to do that,” Marushka said.

“I want you to do it,” he insisted.

Marushka sighed. “As you wish,” she said. She drew a chair next to the stove, sat him down and tied him so that he wouldn't fall. Then she put him out with a dose of ether. Next she placed two bricks on the stove, and then placed his left arm so that his elbow rested on one brick and his wrist on the other. Then she took an axe and hit his forearm with the dull end. Nothing happened. She swung again, and again nothing happened. She knew what was wrong; she wasn't swinging hard enough; she couldn't bring herself to inflict that kind of pain on a human being.

Out came Hans, wearing his dressing gown and pajamas. “Here, let me do it,” he said. He picked up the axe and raised it over his head.

Marushka screamed. “Not with the blade, you idiot.”

Startled, Hans checked his swing. He looked first at Marushka, then at the axe, then back at Marushka, a sheepish look on his face.