Berlin at War (63 page)

a little bit, scraped together out of their own need, fought for amongst

bombs, forced labour, failing communications, and personal hardship,

gained by defying every prohibition, law, and propaganda decree.47

There were myriad additional concerns. As Erich Neumann dis -

covered, if a Jewish refugee died under Aryan care, it was extremely

difficult to dispose of the body. A conventional burial for an anonymous

corpse with no documentation was out of the question; likewise,

300

berlin at war

simply dumping a corpse often raised profound ethical concerns. In

Erich’s case, a solution to the problem of what to do with the body

of Wolfgang – the refugee he and his mother had been hiding – was

eventually forthcoming. A regular at his mother’s café, who was often

required to collect air raid dead, was prevailed upon to take Wolfgang’s

body and dispose of it in the local cemetery, along with other air raid

casualties, at the next opportunity.48

Correct documentation, therefore, was vital. Forged or stolen docu-

ments could afford a fugitive a certain degree of independence, enabling

him or her to receive ration cards, medical care, even legitimate accom-

modation. Yet, they were fairly hard to come by. Though there was a

roaring black market trade in original documents or in forgeries, the

prices were prohibitively high. In 1941, one forger was charging over 400

Marks for identification documents, but in subsequent years his fee

would rise to as much as 4,000 Marks.49

There were, however, other sources. The lucky few were able to

persuade Berlin’s oppositionally minded citizens to part with their

documents, which they could then report as lost. In some cases, no

persuasion was necessary. In one peculiar instance in 1941, a young

Jewish woman working in a factory noticed that she was attracting

the close attention of one of her colleagues. Leaving the factory one

evening, she found herself following her Aryan colleague, who deliber-

ately dropped her identity papers on the pavement, before walking

on. Though no words were ever exchanged between the two, this

single act of selflessness enabled the young Jewish Berliner to survive

the war.50

In later years, as the air raids increased in intensity, there were other

opportunities. The daring could simply present themselves to the

authorities as refugees from the bombing, whose homes and records

had all been destroyed, and demand new documentation. As Charlotte

Joseph recalled:

I chose a district in which not only the Police Station, but also the

Rationing Office had been destroyed . . . Schöneberg . . . there I told

them that I had lived in that area and had been bombed out. As my

details could not be checked, I received a so-called ‘Bomb Certificate’

as a refugee . . . with the name Elsa Hohberg.51

against all odds

301

Later, Charlotte – or Elsa – presented herself at a state-run shelter for

refugees at Rüdnitz, just outside the capital, where she was housed

and supplied with ration cards. While her worries were far from over,

she would at least survive the war.

For those
Taucher
who did not choose this method, there was

always the chance of finding a fresh corpse – preferably one with

some physical similarity to themselves – from which identity docu-

ments and ration cards could be ‘liberated’. Hanna Sohst was one

of the lucky ones:

When the all-clear was given, I saw that there were people lying dead

on the street. Then I got the idea, check if they have an identity card

on them. Everywhere, at all times, and at every opportunity I kept my

eyes peeled for papers, day and night . . . like a man dying of thirst

looking for a mirage. And then . . . I struck gold!52

In their desperation to source documents, some Jews fell into the

clutches of criminals and swindlers. Early in 1942, three individuals –

one of whom was a Berlin lawyer – were arrested in the capital for

running a scam in which wealthy Jews were persuaded to pay 5,000

Reichsmarks on the understanding that strings would be pulled with

the authorities to provide them with Aryan identities.53 The three men

were successfully prosecuted for fraud, while their ‘victims’ – who

had testified at the trial – were deported.

Life in the underground put enormous mental strains on Jewish

refugees. In addition to the normal difficulties of living in a city at

war – the bombing, rationing and so on – they had to cope with isola-

tion, exhaustion and the constant fear of capture. In response, some

abandoned the pretence of a ‘normal life’ altogether and found a

refuge of sorts in crime and prostitution.54 In the netherworld of

Berlin’s bordellos, they were often free to rent rooms with no ques-

tions asked, and could come and go without attracting attention to

themselves.55

The young in particular seemed to have exulted in the sudden freedom

of life as a fugitive, relishing the thrill of being on the run and living

on their wits. In one case, two female
Taucher
found accommodation

with a fanatical Nazi woman by telling her that they were agents engaged

on a secret mission for the Führer. They only abandoned their refuge

302

berlin at war

when the woman suggested that they might like to meet her son, an

officer in the SS.56 Cioma Schönhaus, meanwhile, liked to spend the

profits from his forgery business by dining in the best Berlin restaurants,

often surrounded by Nazi functionaries. His logic, it seems, was that

the best place to hide was in plain sight.57

Another such daredevil was Margot Linczyk, a sixteen-year-old

Berliner, living with her mother under false papers:

I thought our life was a great adventure. I got us hiding places. I

could steal, I could lie – it was fun! I think it was a reaction to my

Germanic upbringing, always having to sit up straight and so on. I

got my identity card from the post office by yelling ‘Heil Hitler!’ so

loud that they got scared I might report them for not responding

fast enough.58

The remarkable memoir by Larry Orbach testifies to this para-

doxical ‘liberation’. Orbach had just turned eighteen when he went

underground in the winter of 1942. Under the Aryan identity of

‘Gerhard Peters’, he robbed, cheated, lied and fornicated his way

through Nazi Berlin, demonstrating by turns tremendous courage and

astonishing nerve. In one instance, he and a friend hatched a plan

whereby they would team up to swindle rich Aryan men. His friend

would pose as a rent boy, while Orbach would play the role of the

Gestapo man who caught the two
in flagrante
, only to be bribed into

silence. For all the undoubted perils that Orbach endured in surviving

wartime Berlin, his memoir has a thoroughly uplifting, even optimistic

tone. For him there were ‘flashes of light and warmth’ in the dark-

ness; there was ‘romance, friendship, delight and adventure in the

midst of murderous oppression’.59

The vast majority of
Taucher
, however, found it extremely hard to

meet the challenge of a life on the run, an existence one of them

described as ‘like living in a mousetrap’.60 As one young Jewish woman

noted in 1943, ‘We live . . . only from day to day, worrying about our

sheer survival doesn’t give a moment’s respite.’61 After a series of near

misses with the Gestapo, one
Taucher
confided to a friend: ‘I can’t go

on; I’m too tired’, before adding in grim resignation: ‘They’ll catch

me and kill me.’62 She disappeared soon after.

The authorities were certainly not tardy in tracking down fugitives.

against all odds

303

As well as encouraging denunciations from Aryan Berliners, the

Gestapo organised blitz raids in an effort to find
Taucher
. Most no -

toriously, they sought the assistance of Jewish
agents provocateurs
or

Greifer
(‘catchers’), who would betray fugitive Jews in return for

payment, or immunity from deportation.

The most infamous of these
Greifer
was Stella Kübler. Born Stella

Goldschlag in 1922 and raised in a middle-class, thoroughly assimilated

household in Berlin’s western suburbs, Stella was one of those Jews

who would benefit from the blond hair and blue eyes that the Nazis

considered to be typically ‘Aryan’. Initially, Stella’s existence mirrored

that of her fellow Jews; she wore the
Judenstern
and worked in an

armaments factory. Like others, too, she went underground after the

Fabrik-Aktion
in the spring of 1943. However, her capture by the Gestapo later that year, along with that of her parents, compelled her to take

a rather different path.

Betrayed by a Gestapo ‘catcher’, Stella was brutally tortured as her

interrogators sought – in vain – to beat out of her the identity of the

man who had supplied her with false documents. Psychologically

broken by the experience, she agreed to use her Aryan looks and inside

knowledge of the underground community to identify other Jewish

fugitives. In return, she was given Aryan papers and a room, and was

paid 200 Marks for each
Taucher
she turned in. Furthermore, she was

assured that in return for her cooperation her parents would be spared

deportation to Auschwitz.

Stella soon turned out to be a model ‘catcher’. Having already

impressed the Gestapo with her ingenuity, after two escape attempts,

she would not disappoint them once in their employ, using her memory

for names, dates and addresses and her naturally flirtatious nature to

devastating effect. The first Jew she denounced was her own husband.

Quickly earning herself the nickname ‘the blonde poison’, she was

feared in the Berlin underground, where a photograph of her was

circulated by way of a warning. One
Taucher
, Ernst Goldstein, recalled

seeing her sauntering into a café on the elegant Kurfürstendamm,

coolly surveying the clientele, looking for fugitive Jews. Fortunately

for Goldstein, he had the presence of mind to react swiftly. Whispering

to his wife that the ‘head-hunters’ had arrived, he quickly but incon-

spicuously paid his bill and left.63

Stella Goldschlag remained active as a ‘catcher’ right to the very

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berlin at war

end of the war. The total number of her victims is not known, but

is thought to range between many hundreds and a few thousand. In

one single weekend, she was said to have led her Gestapo handlers to

sixty-two fugitive Jews.64 She herself became a victim of sorts, when

the Gestapo reneged upon its agreement with her and sent her parents

to Auschwitz. Goldschlag escaped with her life, but little more.

Imprisoned after the war, she committed suicide in 1994, at the age

of seventy-two.

Bizarrely, it seems that, apart from going underground, the only other

chance Jewish Berliners had of avoiding the deportations was to

become seriously ill. Though every other Jewish institution across the

Reich was shut down by the Nazis, the Jewish Hospital in Berlin,

located on the Iranische Strasse in Wedding, was permitted to exist

right through to the end of the war.65 The precise logic applied by the

Gestapo in allowing the hospital to remain open is unclear, but it may

well have been similar to that which allowed the Jewish cemetery in

Weissensee to survive – the principle being that Jews should deal with

Jews. So, while there were Jews remaining in Germany, who were

forbidden to be treated in Aryan hospitals, it was necessary to have a

Jewish hospital to treat them.

Whatever the reasons, the decision did not go uncontested. In the

immediate aftermath of the
Fabrik-Aktion
, the hospital was almost shut

down and in the remaining years of the war would be exposed to the

full capricious and murderous fury of the Gestapo. Its medical and

nursing staff were routinely required to accompany each of the trans-

ports taking Berlin Jews to their fate ‘in the east’, a trip from which

none of them would return. In due course, the hospital was itself targeted

to make up the numbers in the deportations, with its director – Dr

Lustig – having to draw up a list of those employees that would be sent

to their deaths.

Consequently, experienced and qualified staff had to be replaced

by individuals much like those who had been held at the Rosenstrasse

– people of mixed race, those in mixed marriages, those Jews who

were ‘privileged’ and ‘tolerated’ by the Nazi regime. As a result, medical

care at the hospital became increasingly perfunctory, more and more

conspicuous by its absence.

In such circumstances, merely being ill was no guarantee of survival;

against all odds

305

one also had to be lucky. Countless patients at the hospital were

deported once they had recovered sufficiently to be moved. The

hospital also received those Jews who had attempted suicide upon