The Prosperous Thief (14 page)

‘Alice has no future here,’ Dora continued.‘No Jew does. Even if Hitler and his National Socialists were defeated tomorrow, too much damage has already been done. It’ll be years, if ever, before Germans will feel comfortable around us.’

This same thought had occurred to Renate but she had quickly brushed it aside: too terrible to think that once having left Germany she might never return. Now she forced herself to consider that bizarre phenomenon whereby a perpetrator of wrongdoing through some extraordinary twist of logic comes to resent and eventually blame the victim. She had seen it in certain bad marriages when the philandering husband turns his resentment on his patient and forgiving wife, blaming her for his reprehensible behaviour. And in commerce too, when gains were made dishonestly and the person who benefits resents the one who was cheated.

People don’t like to be reminded of their wrongdoings, it introduces conflict into a character otherwise at ease with itself. Renate knew Dora was right, that when all this was over, Germans would want to forget their foray into barbarism, or at least convert it into something justifiable. They would not appreciate the presence of Jews to remind them of the truth.

So it happened that by the close of day, both Willi and Alice were registered for the
Kindertransport
. Willi’s chances of being accepted were, they believed, good given his age, his own political activism and his father in Buchenwald. Alice was less of a certainty despite Martin’s incarceration; however, Renate and Dora believed her chances would be increased if she were partnered with Willi.

‘It won’t be for long,’ Renate said to Alice.‘And soon we’ll all be together, you, me and your father, probably in England –’ she and Dora had checked their applications at the British Passport Control Office last thing that afternoon, ‘but if not England, somewhere safe.’

Thus she reassured her young daughter, herself too, all the while wishing Martin were here to share the decision and take some of the pain.

They then settled down to wait. The first
Kindertransport
left Berlin early in December with most of the two hundred children being boys of Willi’s age and circumstances. So, too, for subsequent transports. Renate despaired Alice would ever be chosen and at the same time despaired she would. It was a terrible cruelty to send your child away, to plan for it and work hard that it may happen, knowing you’ll miss her like your soul has been wrenched out of you. Each time a list was posted, Renate would search for her daughter’s name, sickened by the same distressing brew of hope and loss. And when her name was not on the list, an even worse brew of joy that Alice was not leaving and terror of what might happen if she remained. She would see the relief on the other mothers’ faces and think:Why not my daughter? What must I do to save my daughter? And soaking through her a sense of foreboding, a sense that the worst was still to come, a sense that the last
Kindertransport
to depart really was the last.

Several times Dora rang her sister in Oxford.Was she sure she had done everything required of British sponsors? Would she contact Bloomsbury House just to make sure all the papers were in order? Yes, contact them again, for until the travel permits arrived from England there was little chance of Willi or Alice being included on a
Kindertransport
list. And there were daily visits to the headquarters in Berlin to gather with the same panic-stricken parents waiting to ask the same questions of the same community workers who said they were doing all they could. Every day the same distressed parents, some quietly nursing their fears, others loudly accusing the workers of favouritism, everyone acting as if their children were more important than all the others. Selflessness, Dora and Renate soon learned, was counterproductive in a time of crisis. It was a harsh but simple fact that when survival was threatened there was a hierarchy, and those you loved were on top.Within a week, Renate and Dora were as pushy as the other parents. But without travel permits it was useless.

In January, within two days of each other, Martin was released from Sachsenhausen and Erich from Buchenwald. In a mere eight weeks, Erich, long known as Papa Bear to his family – Dora was Mama Bear – had shrunk to a fraction of his normal size and had aged ten years. His face was a mess of sharp, grime-filled wrinkles separated by patches of tight, grey skin. He and Martin compared notes on food, shelter and treatment by the guards. Sachsenhausen won hands down.

‘I’ll book in there next time,’ said Erich.

Erich had suffered diarrhoea for the entire eight weeks, and would never, he said, rid himself of the stench of his own excreta. In the camp he was forced to rise hours before dawn, drag his rancid body out to the mustering ground to line up with the other prisoners on the freezing asphalt. Aching, starved and silent he would stand while roll call was conducted with bullying slowness, all the while cursing his loose bowels. Should anyone want to go to the latrines – although never want, always need – he was more likely to be punished for asking, rather than given leave to go. The clock above the watchtower totted up his pain, fifteen minutes, forty-five minutes, one hundred and twenty minutes, slow-motion time yet the only movement in the grim morning. And throughout the long bleak days of chill and dust quarrying stones for Hitler’s new Germany, the same punch punch punch of pain.

Some of the
Kristallnacht
Jews at Buchenwald had been put to work in the latrines. At first Erich had counted himself fortunate to have been spared what was indisputably the worst of the camp labour, but as his bowels rebelled he was no longer so sure. Soiled all the time and with precious little water, if he had the choice of water to clean himself or relieve his thirst, he would drink and hope he stank no worse than anyone else. Although the guards, all of them such experts in humiliation, were quick to remind that every last one of them was shit.

‘Belongs in an abattoir,’ a young guard had said about Erich. ‘Not that his carcass is fit for eating.’

Physically Martin had fared better than his brother-in-law, but in other respects his suffering had been worse. Every facet of human functioning had taken a beating in the camp. Kindness, respect, selflessness, caring for others, all those qualities necessary when strangers were thrown together, were soon under threat.

Most of the men at Sachsenhausen had been incarcerated since
Kristallnacht
, and by the time Martin arrived many were sick and weak. In his barracks there was one man whose wounds had become septic. Martin tended the wounds using his own allocation of water and bandages made from his own underclothes. The man needed more food than the usual prisoner rations in order to regain his strength, so Martin gave him some of his food, and initially he managed to persuade a few of the other men to part with a little of theirs. But soon he was caring for the man alone. And when the man eventually died, no one thanked him; even the man himself had blamed Martin for prolonging his agony.

Weakness was dangerous in the camp, and too often kindness was seen as weakness. Of course men would look after family members, and friends would look after friends, but when you’re starving and cold, when your life trembles on a tightrope, only a fool is a good Samaritan, or so one of the other prisoners said of Martin. Gradually it dawned on him that goodness in the camp was a bit like a tub of water in the middle of the desert, and he too began to dry up.

The cold bored into him, his stomach shrieked for food, kindness was washed away along with the diarrhoea. And through it all, the incessant cruelty of the guards, most of them members of the Death’s Head Squad of the SS. They were the basest of beings, true barbarians, as far as Martin was concerned. And so young, many of them not much older than Willi, and chilling to see boys, their values not yet fully formed, behaving with such savagery. Martin would watch them puff themselves up and stride around like young sadistic gods, so proud in their uniforms, the ghastly human skull on their collars.

‘You’d never dare look them in the eye,’ Martin said one evening soon after he was released.‘So the skull, I always imagined it was my skull, always seemed to be staring at me.’

‘They’ve thought of everything,’ Erich said. ‘Train men in the art of brutality while they’re still young and receptive, and in time there’ll be an entire population willing to torture and kill on command.’

The same thought had occurred to Martin while still in the camp, but he had kept it to himself. These were Germans after all, his countrymen. Could he, Martin Lewin, be capable of the same violence if exposed to similar training? The question plagued him as he saw how brutality flared randomly like sparks from a fire. It was as though the German reverence for order was being deliberately sidelined to allow the guards to express whatever primitive violence lurked within. Let off the leash, away from their families and without any civilising restraints, these young fellows were running wild. Martin would see them look around to make sure they had an audience before they laid into some poor fellow. He would watch a group work together, each taking turns to thrash an inmate until they’d thrashed the life out of him. It was a lesson in pack mentality, each man gunning his performance to greater extremes. Sachsenhausen taught him there were no certainties about human behaviour, and no limits to human brutality.

Martin and Erich spoke little about their experiences, they wanted to protect their families and they wanted to forget. Although it was easy to surmise from the almost indecent alteration in their appearance and behaviour. Erich spent hours every day on the toilet. He could be heard groaning behind the closed door and sometimes the voiceless gasping of a grown man crying. And sniffing, always sniffing at himself. It was different for Martin. Winter dug its heels in earlier than usual, according to Martin, and saved its worse for Sachsenhausen. He hovered around the stove and Erich around the toilet, and now and then they would talk in whispers to each other as they regained their health.

Dwelling on hardship is the prerogative of either the malingerer or the one whose suffering is past. Within twenty-four hours of arriving home, Erich returned to his political work and Martin joined Renate in the struggle for visas. It helped blot out the camps, but more to the point, there was the present to attend to and a future to fix.

Fritz, the Lewins’ best hope, had disappeared. Martin approached people in the music world, but if anyone had any information they had decided not to reveal it; in fact, very few people were willing to speak to him at all. Then one evening he received a phone call from a man describing himself as a friend of Fritz’s, not a musician but a friend – this said with emphasis. He talked low and quickly and Martin had to strain to hear. It emerged that Fritz, Martin’s distant abrasive brother, had led a secret life. Prior to
Kristallnacht
, he had been arrested for perversion at a haunt where men went for sex with other men. He had not been seen since.

His brother, his own flesh and blood. Martin could hardly take it in.And yet there was no time to dwell, no time to make sense of the revelations – how to make sense of such revelations? – and certainly no time to mourn, not with so many other losses threatening, not with his wife and daughter to protect. He would deal with it afterwards, he told himself – always assuming there would be an afterwards.

When the next
Kindertransport
list was posted both Willi and Alice were included. Then such a rush, photographs to be taken, medical examinations to be performed, and Alice with a cold and Renate and Martin terrified she would be rejected, entry certificates into Britain, identification numbers assigned. And there they are at Anhalter train station in the middle of a January night, along with several other parents and a couple of hundred children, most aged between ten and sixteen but also a few younger ones like Alice. Many are already alone, having arrived at this point from other destinations in Germany. Police order the children onto the platform while the parents are forced to remain behind the barriers – there’ll be no emotional scenes on this German station, although who would be observing at two o’clock in the morning is anyone’s guess. Willi and Alice each have a knapsack, a small suitcase and a woollen blanket, each grip the other by the hand.

‘Stay together,’ the parents say to the children.‘And remember, we’ll be seeing you soon.’

There are more hugs, Renate straightens the identification card around her daughter’s neck, Willi tells his parents yet again that as soon as he arrives in England he’ll contact the Palestine people.

Then he and Alice pass through the gate onto the platform and into an eerie silence.

Of all the extreme circumstances on that extreme night, including sending a six-year-old girl to a foreign country to live with people she doesn’t know, most bizarre of all is a couple of hundred children, many of whom have never before been separated from their parents, making no noise. And in that solemn silence, a fear and tragic awareness that the worst one can imagine may in fact eventuate.

There are police and guards and
Kindertransport
escorts directing the children: the miserable ones who know the truth of this journey, and the smiling ones who have been told they are going on holiday. As Renate watches her small daughter she wonders what makes one parent lie and another tell the truth, and when parents concoct their pretty explanations are they doing it for themselves or the children? And who, she wonders, will silence the sobs and wipe the tears when alone in a foreign country their child learns the truth?

She watches Alice walk away from her along the endless platform. Her daughter, her only child, old and young in equal proportions, now being severed from everything and everyone she has ever known. And at last Renate acknowledges the grotesque truth: she and Martin are sending away their daughter to save her life. It is an utterly preposterous proposition. She wonders – no, more visceral than that, she fears she will never see her daughter again, and is horrified at the thought. It can’t be forever, she won’t believe it is possible. It is one thing to hate Jews as Hitler clearly does, and quite a different matter to seize each and every one of them and kill them. Barbarians in ancient times might kill a whole race, but surely not Germans in 1939. Of course she’ll see her daughter again. Of course she will.