Mendelssohn is on the Roof (18 page)

The commander had been a high officer in the German Army during the First World War, not in the
Austro-Hungarian
Army, which the SS members scorned, and he had received several decorations for bravery. He observed military decorum, to which he easily added the habit of screaming he had picked up from his Nazi mentors. He addressed the ghetto guard bluntly: ‘I need eleven people. All former soldiers step forward!’

There were only nine former soldiers, and so the
commander
picked two additional non-soldiers. Reisinger had
been a corporal in the First Republic. The two people on either side of him breathed a sigh of relief: they hadn’t been chosen.

The commander asked the eleven to come closer. The others stood behind them. He barked out: ‘Are there any veterans of the First World War here?’

Only one of the eleven responded, but he had been drafted during the last weeks of war and never got to the front.

The commander looked at them scornfully. They all waited in suspense to hear what he would say next.

‘Ten chosen men will assist at the execution tomorrow. They are to report to Untersturmführer Bergel tomorrow at nine o’clock at the moat of the Ustecky barracks. The others will be assigned special tasks.’

A wave passed through the rows of ghetto guards. What execution? Executions didn’t take place in the ghetto. People were hanged or killed in the Small Fortress. They couldn’t understand it. What did he mean?

The commander realised that he owed them an
explanation
. He spoke brusquely, as if snapping out orders during a military drill: ‘Today at two o’clock in the afternoon the Jewish Council of Elders was called into the Command Office. The ghetto commandant swore them to secrecy on penalty of death and informed them that several residents of the ghetto would be executed by hanging tomorrow. He ordered a double gallows to be constructed in the moat of the Ustecky barracks and twenty-five coffins to be prepared. Nobody is to know of this event. Everything must be prepared by nine o’clock tomorrow. At three in the afternoon I was called into the Magdeburg barracks, where the Jewish Council of Elders was meeting. I received this information there and was instructed to procure ropes for
binding the hands and feet, and two strong ropes for the hanging. And further, to pick ten men to supervise the execution along with myself. I am carrying out this order now and binding you to secrecy as well. I picked eleven men. The others will be assigned other jobs. So one of you may be released from the obligation of participating in the execution.’

The brusque words, delivered in military fashion, fell on the ears of the men. It took them a few moments to take in the horror that was about to happen. In the silent room you could hear the sighs of relief of those standing behind the eleven chosen ones. Those eleven stood as if riveted to the floor. They didn’t want to believe the terrible
assignment
that was awaiting them. But they knew it was true. The news was so sudden that for a few moments they stood there numbly, unable to utter a single word, and yet they had to take a vote – one of them would be let off. Every one of them hoped to be that man; every one of them hoped to avoid this job, to forget he had ever heard about it. The one to be relieved of the duty to assist at the execution should be a weak person, one whose nerves couldn’t stand such a terrible sight. So when they began to consider who it should be, they all turned their eyes to young Bauml, who was already shaking, obviously about to break down.

‘Who will it be?’ the commander asked sharply. ‘You must decide quickly.’

Reisinger replied in the name of the others: ‘We are recommending Bauml here, he’s the youngest of us; he was never actually a soldier, but was simply drafted in May 1938.’

Perhaps he didn’t have the right to speak for all ten,
perhaps any number of them were sorry not to be in Bauml’s place. But nobody spoke up. And so Bauml stepped out of the line.

The commander gave further orders – to find ropes, to prepare twenty-five coffins, to erect the gallows. Those tasks were given to the others who didn’t have to assist at the execution. But since it was necessary to preserve secrecy, how were they to avoid answering the inevitable questions of those who would be assigned these various jobs? Those assigned the job of weaving the rope out of hemp might be put off somehow, but what were they to tell the carpenters who were to construct the gallows and to set it up at the Ustecky barracks? They would have to let them in on the secret, at least partially, and force them to take a vow of secrecy also. They would have to draw them into the monstrous circle. The commander explained that the director of the technical division had been notified directly by the Council of Elders to arrange for the gallows to be designed and constructed and for the graves to be dug. The role of the participating guards would be to make sure that everything was ready by nine o’clock in the morning. That meant that the groups who received the orders from the director of the technical division would have to work the whole night.

Thus ended the pronouncement, and the ten who were to assist at the execution the next day were given time off. They were given permission to get some sleep – but how could they sleep? Nobody, not the commander of the ghetto guards or the Council of Elders, knew who was to be executed. Twenty-five coffins had been ordered, and so there would be twenty-five people executed. How long could such an execution last?

A great frost gripped the fortress town, and fog descended on it. The ghetto guards had gone out into the darkness to escort the transport on its final journey – and they were returning to their dormitories in the darkness to wait for the bitter morning.

F
RANTISEK SCHÖNBAUM set to work on the assignment given him by the director of the technical division. He knew that the messenger would not be a single minute late. To design a gallows that could be quickly constructed by carpenters was not such a difficult task. It was easier than the ‘secret armchair’, than the crazy kidney-shaped tables, than the chair on which one could recline but in no way sit. Of course, a gallows is not furniture, nor is it a cart for human carthorses: a gallows is destined for an execution. The director of the technical division didn’t know who was going to be hanged, or perhaps he was pretending not to know. In any case, he ordered Schönbaum to design the gallows and told him that an execution would be held the next day at the Ustecky barracks. No more and no less.

Why did he have to be told that there would be an execution? It would have been enough to tell him to design a gallows, period. At least he could have found comfort in the thought that the gallows was only intended to scare people and would then be taken to the Small Fortress, where executions took place daily. But this way he had become a direct and conscious accomplice of the murderers. He was drawing so that people could be hanged. His own people. It might be a friend who had slept in a bunk directly above his own, someone he had shared packages with. The multi-layer bunks had also been constructed according to his design. Bunks, of course, are for sleeping, but when each person in the fortress town is
allotted one-and-a-half square metres, then multi-layer bunks are the only answer.

But a gallows? This drawing would haunt him to his dying day, though he had nothing to do with the execution personally, though he knew nothing more than what the director of the technical division had told him about it.

The messenger did indeed arrive exactly one hour later, and Schönbaum handed him the drawing in a sealed envelope. Now he had nothing to do, because the director of the technical division hadn’t assigned him any other job. But he didn’t feel like leaving the warm little room to go out in the freezing cold or to the reeking dormitory, where there was hardly enough air to breathe. His mind wandered back to the plays he had once designed sets for, and the two actor-comedians who were always greeted with thunderous applause in those final days of the theatre, when they used to sing their song about the millions who go against the wind, a song that had become virtually a hymn at the time of Munich.

What he had designed might actually be considered a sculpture; indeed, the only sculpture permitted in the fortress town. It had a curious T shape. Of course, in the avant-garde French magazine called
Minotaur
he used to subscribe to, many abstract sculptures had that shape. Back then, when he used to go through its pages, it never occurred to him that he would become the first and only Terezin sculptor. His sculpture would be made of wood, like the old statues of saints. His statue would be a Pietà, and at the same time a symbol of the martyr’s crown. But it would be erected for the benefit of those others, to be helpful to them in carrying out their murderous trade.

There was no escape for him now. All those who know the
secret and who take part in preparations for an execution of their own people are condemned in advance. Even if his role was insignificant, still he would pay for his crime. For those who work behind the barriers at Command
Headquarters
and who run the ghetto will want to hide their crimes and erase any record of them. This was the first time he regretted that the only thing he had accomplished in the world was to design meaningless furniture that future architects would ridicule when they came upon it in junk stores. But the gallows-sculpture he designed would
undoubtedly
live on in the memories of survivors. They wouldn’t know who designed it, however, and that was good. Slowly his fear began to subside. At least he’d gain a little time, and who knew what might happen in the
meantime
. The Germans were losing on all fronts, they were dying of cold in the Soviet offensive. Maybe they’d be defeated soon and the fortress town would be liberated. Tomorrow he must find the latest reports from the front.

Richard Reisinger slept fitfully. He woke early in the morning – it was still dark. Everyone else was already up. He turned on the electric light, one twenty-five-watt bulb, though it was forbidden at that hour. At first everyone kept silent. Nobody wanted to talk about what was awaiting them. Finally someone couldn’t hold back – fear forced him to speak. He longed to hear the words of others. But what words could console them? There was no consolation for them. They must be witnesses at an execution. Yet why did the murderers require them to watch as their victims perished? They wanted to draw them into their crime, they wanted to turn them and the Czech troopers into accomplices. Everyone fell silent
again and seemed half asleep. All words were now useless. They were waiting for the commander’s order to leave for the Ustecky barracks.

The commander of the ghetto guard was already up. His position in the ghetto administration was equal to that of a member of the Council of Elders. But although he had been an officer in the German branch of the Reich army up until the time he had been sent as a Jew on a transport to the East, his position was just as tenuous as that of the members of the Council of Elders. The ghetto guard could be dissolved at any moment, and then none of his decorations would save him from the transport, not even the Iron Cross, first degree. Of all the ghetto residents, only the commander knew what was happening in the East. He had been in the death camp himself until the Security Police pulled him out, sent him to the fortress town and assigned him his present position. But he would never tell a soul of his experiences in the death camp. Any careless word would cost him his life.

People were afraid of him, the whole ghetto was afraid of him, because he had been brought in from somewhere by the authorities, because he did not belong among the inhabitants of the fortress town, and because he had even more to do with Command Headquarters than the head of the Council of Elders did. He was thought to be a spy, although he wasn’t. He had been forced to take on that role, and he took it on with all its consequences, because he had come from that place whence no one – except him – had ever returned.

At seven in the morning a messenger from the
Magdeburg
barracks burst into his room, generally called the Mansard, and handed him a sealed letter. The messenger
asked him to sign for it in his delivery book and then ran off. The commander opened the letter. It contained a summons from the Council of Elders to come immediately to the Magdeburg barracks. From the early hours of the morning he had been waiting with his men to take part in the execution, waiting all dressed, shaved and washed – he could afford such luxuries because he received a special allotment of good soap.

He came upon the head of the Council of Elders and his deputy in a small room. Both were agitated and it took a few moments before they were capable of speaking. The head of the Council of Elders was a melancholy man, glum and always tired. His office lay upon him like a heavy weight. He was responsible for everything and obediently carried out the wishes of the SS. He was a Very Important Person in the ghetto, and many people licked his boots, hoping that he might save them from the transports. But at Command Headquarters he was a humble servant. On occasion they even beat him up when they felt their orders hadn’t been carried out quickly enough. And yet he endured all the kicks and shoves, yet he fulfilled all their wishes: he expedited the transports to the East and established an eighty-hour work week that applied even to children over fourteen. He was an accomplice in all the deceptions blinding the eyes of neutral countries abroad. He didn’t do it to save his own life. He had no doubt that he, too, was condemned to death. He had an idea of what was hiding behind the ghetto commandant’s chance innuendoes. And still he believed it was possible to misdirect, to delude, to hoodwink. He believed it was necessary to give the appearance of following without question every order he received, even if it meant the death of tens of thousands, in
order to have a chance to save the lives of children – children, the only hope of the future.

Now he had to arrange all the preliminaries to the murder that the SS chose to call an execution. He knew who was to be executed. Nine people had been chosen, men who had been arrested for small transgressions in the ghetto for which they had been found guilty by the ghetto court. It was a ridiculous court, another trick intended to demonstrate to the world the independence of the ghetto. In fact, if any of its inhabitants were caught committing a somewhat graver offence, they were taken off to the Small Fortress and never seen again. He thought he could make a pact with the devil, he thought he could give the devil a great deal in order to save at least something. He couldn’t have known of the folder with the strictly designated
deadlines
. He couldn’t have known that that very folder
contained
a resolution made at a secret conference which established that children, biologically the most valuable, must be exterminated above all others. It was the very folder the dying Reich Protector had been clutching in his hand, the folder that contained the plans on which the highest Reich police officer in Berlin was basing his latest orders.

The head of the Council of Elders could hardly speak. The news he had to give to the commander of the ghetto guard was terrible, unbelievable. Untersturmführer Bergel, completely drunk, had appeared at the Magdeburg barracks at six-thirty and summoned the head of the Council of Elders. His order, which the head now passed in turn to the commander of the ghetto guard, was as follows: ‘You must find two criminal types by nine-thirty. They need hangmen.’

The commander looked uncomprehendingly at the Chief
Elder. ‘Criminal types? That’s ridiculous. Where would I find them? There aren’t any here.’

‘I’m sorry, but that’s the Untersturmführer’s order. And he received it from the commandant.’

‘He can’t ask me to do such a thing.’

The Chief Elder explained in a tired voice that it wasn’t his fault, but a whim of the lunatics, and what was he to do? They began to consider how they might find a
hangman
among the ghetto residents. The residents were weak with hunger. There were neither rowdies nor criminals there. People submitted to the meaningless orders of their enemies. Time was passing – it was already eight-thirty and still they couldn’t find a solution to their problem.

The Chief Elder said sharply, ‘If you don’t find a
hangman
and bring him in by the required time, the
Untersturmführer
will order you to be hangman yourself. Or he’ll have you shot.’

The commander wanted to answer that he wasn’t responsible for the ghetto and that the Untersturmführer was more likely to assign the role of hangman to the Chief Elder, but at that moment the building managers, who had been told to assemble here at eight-thirty, began to file into the room. The building managers were old and careworn, beaten down by constant quarrelling with people stuffed into the dormitories. They had no privileges other than the little rooms where they lived and worked. The residents of the buildings hated them because the managers had to enforce the rules, which they in turn received from the Council of Elders in the Magdeburg barracks. No one besides the managers even dared go there without a special pass, and that’s why people vented their fury on the managers. At the Magdeburg barracks the managers were
treated no better than anyone else. They were threatened with the transport if they didn’t carry out their orders. They were caught in the middle.

The managers never expected that the Chief Elder would order them to be observers at an execution. Their job was to guard the residents of the buildings and keep them in line. Now they received orders to watch people being hanged. But the managers could not refuse or talk their way out of it. They were part of the ghetto administration and they always submitted to their superiors.

The Chief Elder added that it was also their responsibility to make sure that none of the inhabitants of the ghetto went outside into the streets or courtyards during the hours of the execution. The windows were to stay closed and no one was to go near them. This was not a difficult order, and the managers guaranteed it would be followed even in their absence. Every dormitory room had its own manager, who reported to the building manager. It would suffice to call together the room managers and tell them about the order. Heads bowed, the managers stumbled out of the Chief Elder’s room. First they had been astonished. Now the burden that had been placed on them began to sink in. That was why their gait was so unsteady. Some of them actually stumbled on the threshold as if blinded.

The last one out of the door was the manager of the Sudeten barracks. He was almost outside when the
commander
of the ghetto guard grabbed him by the sleeve. ‘You stay here!’

The manager was confused. He couldn’t imagine what the commander wanted with him when all the other managers had been released. Neither the Chief Elder nor his deputy knew what was going on either.

The commander turned to the Chief Elder: ‘I have an idea. The Sudeten barracks have the most people of all the buildings, and they also have the most butchers.’

‘Butchers? Why butchers?’ Then the light suddenly dawned. ‘Yes, I see.’

The commander of the ghetto guards told the manager of the Sudeten barracks to take him to his building. They walked through the empty streets in the bitter cold. Here and there a trooper’s bayonet appeared out of the fog. The troopers were patrolling the streets to make sure nobody went out. The troopers stopped them but immediately recognised them and didn’t even ask to see their passes.

When the commander of the ghetto guards arrived in the Sudeten barracks with the building manager, he spoke to him again in a sharp, military tone. He understood that his order was unusual and hard to carry out. But he couldn’t talk to the manager in a friendly manner to ask for advice. The manager was capable only of carrying out orders because horror had numbed his brain.