Holocaust (8 page)

“Name of the whore that shit you?”

“What pimp screwed her to make you?”

“What crime were you arrested for?”

As Karl waited his turn, shivering, fearful, a burly
young Jew with the look of a truck driver refused to answer these insults. He protested; his mother was no whore, his father no pimp, and he had committed no crime. At once he was dragged into an adjoining room. There were screams, thudding noises.

A few minutes later, beaten and cowed, he was dragged back in, his head a bloody pulp, one eye closed, and whimpering, he answered all the questions.

Karl was next.

He gave his name, his address, and his occupation: artist.

An SS sergeant carrying a short whip walked up to Karl and shoved the butt end into his side. “One of those Jew Bolsheviks, Weiss? Drawing lying cartoons for some Communist rag?”

“I’m a commercial artist,” Karl said. “I don’t belong to any party. I—”

The whip cracked across Karl’s face.

When Weinberg told me this, all I could think of was Karl, always skinny, a kid who was naturally picked on, chased. I was four years younger, but I was always strong, fast, and my creed was, if you hit me, I’ll hit back. I wanted to weep when I spoke to Weinberg, but my wife Tamar was present, and she does not believe in tears.

“The whore who shit you?”

“No … my mother …”

Crack
. The whip landed again.

“Berta Palitz Weiss,” Karl said. “The pimp who raped her?”

“Josef Weiss. Dr. Josef Weiss.”

“What crime did you commit to be sent to Buchenwald?”

“I … I did nothing.”

“Try again, Jewboy. What crime did you commit?”

“Nothing. Honestly. I was at home, painting. These men came for me. There are no charges filed.”

“You’re a Jew. That’s reason enough.”

“But … but that’s not a crime.”

They laughed at this. The sergeant and two other louts dragged Karl into the adjacent room and beat
him senseless. He awakened in a dark barracks, where he met Hirsch Weinberg, who tried to teach him some tricks of survival.

Still unaware of where Karl was, or what was happening to him, we all went to see my father off for Poland. It was the last day of November, 1938.

I remember the scene at the bleak railroad station. About a thousand Jews, most of them older and poorer than my father, with their miserable bundles and packages of food. There were rumors the Poles were turning them away. The Jews would be left in a no man’s land, floating between Germany and Poland.

But my father tried to be cheerful. “If you cry, Berta,” he said to my mother, “you’ll make me angry.”

She dabbed at her eyes. No, she would control herself. Around her, other families made no secret of their sorrows. They wept, they begged, they tried to keep their loved ones from boarding the train for the Polish border.

“Why, this may be the best thing that’s happened to us,” my father said. He was a terrible actor. Yet who could tell? Maybe he was right.

“My brother Moses said he’d meet me. We’ll head right for Warsaw. Moses has connections. I’m sure I can get work at the Jewish Hospital.”

We listened to him—silent, attentive, concerned. As yet, the shock of his leaving had not sunken in. Karl gone, my father forced to leave. The blows were falling one after another.

“I’ll go with you,” my mother said. “They’ll let me. I’ll get my papers tomorrow.”

“No, no,” my father said. “The children need you. I’m told the Poles are being difficult about even letting Polish Jews back in, let alone Germans.” He took Inga’s hand. “And we must be optimistic. Inga will find Karl, she’ll get him freed, and you’ll all be together again.”

As I write this, I am again appalled at how so many of us, my parents included, could have deceived themselves for so long. Tamar claims it was a form of
mass hysteria; a self-deception that spread among Jews. I argue that many were helpless, without money, with no place to go. Few countries would take them. Fighting back was unknown to them. We had been a people who accommodated, gave in, bent, tried to make arrangements, hoped that tomorrow would be better. Now, to the east of our kibbutz, Syrian guns are firing again. But this time we fire back. Morality is a marvelous, admirable thing; but I have yet to hear of a moral stance, a righteous position, that ever deflected a bomb or a bullet.

Anna began to sob. She threw her arms around my father, crying, “Papa, Papa, don’t leave us. I’ll be afraid without you. Please, Papa, stay with us.”

Inga took Anna aside, brushed her hair, kissed her. “Papa will be all right, Anna darling. He will come back.”

Anna was truly bawling. “Shut up,” I said. “You make it worse.”

My mother asked, “Josef, how did this happen to us?”

“It wasn’t our doing, Berta. We had no control over events.” Then he smiled. “But you must believe me. I’m feeling optimistic. This will open our eyes. I have a feeling we’ll be reunited in Poland. Or somewhere else. England, perhaps.”

“I made you stay,” my mother whispered.

“Now, no more of that,” Papa said. He was brisk, businesslike. (And no worse a businessman ever practiced medicine.) “Berta, you should sell the clinic. Find a smaller apartment.”

She wiped her nose, managed a smile. “And you must not go running out on night calls. Wear your rubbers in the rain. Poland is a very damp place.”

“I will, if you promise not to sell the piano. Anna must continue her piano lessons, no matter what.”

Two Berlin policemen approached. People were being herded toward the train. “Move it along. We’re boarding in five minutes.”

Mama turned to us. “Children. Rudi, Anna, Inga. Say goodbye to Papa.”

Anna was uncontrollable now. “Papa, Papa … we’ll come to live with you! Uncle Moses can find us a place!”

“Of course, Anna, my darling. But meanwhile, you must look after Grandpa and Grandma, and we must find Karl. Work at your music, Anna.”

He hugged me, looked into my eyes. “Rudi. Maybe you should go back to school.”

“If I can, Papa.”

“The world doesn’t begin and end with a soccer game, you know. You must prepare yourself for a career.”

What could I say to him?
Career!
But I played his game. “I’ll try, Papa. Maybe I can be a physical-education teacher—as you once said I should be.”

“Splendid idea.”

People surged forward. Among them, I noticed Max Lowy, the printer. He was a Polish Jew also; he was being deported. He seemed undismayed, ready to accept fate’s blows.

“Hey, Doc!” Lowy shouted. “You too? I thought they were just kicking out guys like me? You know the wife, doc.”

A tiny dark woman nodded at my father. He tipped his hat, always the gentleman. In fact, on seeing the Lowys, he turned to my mother, who was still crying, and said cheerfully, “You see, Berta? I’m the only physician deported with his own supply of patients.”

They hugged for the last time. I heard him say, “They cannot defeat us. So long as we love one another.”

“Josef …”

“Remember your Latin, my dear,
Amor vincit omnia
. Love conquers all.”

The crowd shoved him away, and they were separated. At a barrier, a policeman and an SS guard examined my father’s papers. A loudspeaker was bellowing instructions: “Follow the guards to the train. This is the special train for the border only….”

My mother ran to the iron railings, and we followed her. She was waving to him, calling, “Goodbye, Josef, goodbye. Let us know where you are. We’ll come …”

I turned my face away to hide my tears. What I really wanted to do was to hit somebody—one of the Berlin policemen, the guards directing people to the trains. What right had they to do this to us? What had we ever done to them? There was a suppressed fury in me. I could have killed them—the grinning party members, all of them in boots and uniforms, braggarts, bullies, liars …

“Oh, you’re so brave,” Anna taunted. “You’re crying also.” Her eyes were wet, her cheeks soaked.

“I am not. I don’t cry.”

She grabbed me, and held me, and we both wept. But I forced myself to stop. “They’ll never do that to me,” I said. “Never.”

“Won’t they?”

“No. I won’t go the way Papa and Karl did, and Mr. Lowy, just giving in.”

I was boasting to buoy my courage. But as I look back at the moment, I realized I had made a vow to myself. They would not humiliate me, force me to do their bidding, the way they had forced so many others. Jews were supposed to agree, be polite, obey, listen, accept. But I had never understood this. I did not look for fights in the street, but I never ran away. And when I played soccer I played to
win
. And if the other fellow played dirty, I could trip and shove, and if need be, throw a punch.

“What will you do?” Anna asked, still weeping.

“I’ll fight.”

We watched my father climb aboard the train and wave to us a last time. My mother put her arms around us. Inga stood just behind us, shaking her head in sorrow. I could see there was shame in her face—shame for her own people.

“Let us go home, children,” Mama said. Her voice was calm again.

All prisoners in Buchenwald had to work. Karl was an artist, so it was assumed he was accomplished with his fingers. He was assigned—through Weinberg’s influence—to the tailoring shop.

Weinberg explained to him how much better off he was working inside. At least it was reasonably warm, and the work was not exhausting. Outside, prisoners died daily in the quarries, the road-building teams, the so-called “garden” detail, which consisted of ditch-digging.

The older man—he’d been a tailor by trade—explained that deaths by beating and torture for any infraction were the order of the day. Late for roll call, answering back, talking out of turn—all these resulted in severe beatings. And anything considered more grave—an attack on a guard, theft—meant a quick death, usually in a special room where the prisoner was made to stand in a corner. Through a hole behind his head, an unseen executioner killed him with a single shot.

“Does anyone ever get out?” Karl asked.

“Heard stories of some rich guys buying their way out.
Goyim
mostly. Maybe even a few Jews. The SS runs this like a racket. They keep the valuables, the gold, divide it up. So it might even be the bastards take a bribe from some rich Jew and let him go.”

The kapo—the prisoner-guard or trusty—came by and warned Weinberg to shut up. Weinberg made some excuse—he was just explaining the ropes to Karl. (This kapo’s name was Melnik, a big fellow, a pickpocket on the outside. The Nazis often took common criminals—Jew and Gentile—and put them in positions of authority. It helped terrify the other prisoners.)

When Melnik was out of hearing, Weinberg took a box of cloth patches and started to explain them to Karl.

“So you’ll know your fellow inmates,” he said. He began to hold up triangles of varying colors. “Red means a political prisoner. Anything from a Trotskyite to a monarchist. Green, a common criminal. Purple, Jehovah’s Witness. Black, what they call shiftless elements—beggars, tramps, so on. Pink is for homosexuals. Brown is for gypsies.”

“Gypsies?”

“Buchenwald’s full of them. They give the guards fits because they won’t work. The SS ordered two of
them buried alive yesterday. When they dug them out their tongues were sticking out like salamis.”

Weinberg then showed Karl the six-pointed yellow star.

“I know what that is,” my brother said. “But what’s this?” He picked up a cloth patch with the four letters
BLOD
on it.

“Idiots, morons, feeble-minded,” Weinberg explained.

“But … what crime can they have committed?”

“Considered useless by the state. You should see the way the guards have a field day with them—teasing, dressing them up. Some of the guards take the feebleminded women and do things …”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Can’t you? Listen. I’ve heard stories. There’s a house not far from here where they take the crazies. Halfwits, cretins, cripples. They gas them to death.”

“Gas?”

“Some guy on a truck detail swears it’s true.”

The kapo came by and shut them up again, threatening Karl with his truncheon. The kapos wore dark caps and dark jackets, in contrast to the striped suits of the prisoners. Everyone hated them.

Suddenly music was piped over the loudspeaker. Not recorded music, but real music, from the Buchenwald orchestra.

Weinberg winked at Karl. “Half the Berlin Philharmonic is in here. The guards like good music. Germany will go to hell listening to
Das Rheingold.”

One morning, in March 1939, my mother and I heard voices downstairs. My father’s office had been closed for months, of course. We couldn’t imagine who it could be.

I followed Mama down to the old office—my mother still dusted it every day, kept it clean, in the vain hope that some day Dr. Josef Weiss would practice again—and we opened the doors.

A tall shaven-headed man wearing rimless eyeglasses, along with two workmen, was taking inventory and moving things about.

The bald man clicked his heels and bowed. “Ah, Mrs. Weiss. I am Dr. Heinzen. I have been assigned to take over your husband’s office. You’ll recall my telephone call? The keys, please.”

Mama sent me for them. I could hear Heinzen checking out my father’s equipment. “X-ray … basal metabolism … diathermy … autoclave …”

I returned with the ring of keys and gave them to my mother, who handed them to Dr. Heinzen. “These are all of them, doctor. Office, rear and front entrance, garage, basement.”

“You are most kind.”

“I am unable to say the same for your people.”

“I apologize for the abrupt manner … still, it was a pity to let this office, this equipment go to waste. I knew your husband professionally, and I am personally sorry.”

“You knew him before he was fired from Central Berlin Hospital.”

“Other times, other customs, madame. I am a party member, and the party has ordered me to take over the clinic and the house.”

My mother’s eyes were on fire. “And our reimbursement?”

“The party medical board is reviewing your case.”

Mama gave him a slip of paper with an address and phone number on it. It was Karl’s old studio, Inga’s apartment. “If you have any word for us, Dr. Heinzen.”