In the Claws of the Eagle (18 page)

Half an hour later, Izaac and Julius met up in a dormitory for new arrivals and compared the shaking of their hands. After the inspection they had been given a bowl of revolting soup, which they used to soften the single slice of black bread that appeared to be their ration. As nothing else seemed to be required of them, they lay down to get some sleep on the thin, straw-filled mattresses that bore the stains of many previous occupants. Exhaustion overcame squalor and sleep came quickly, almost as quickly in fact as the bed bugs that climbed out of the cracks in the bunks for their nightly feast.

‘Psst…I’m Pafko!’ It was early morning. Izaac opened his eyes to find a boy’s face within inches of his own. ‘You’re Izaac Abrahams?’ Izaac blinked and nodded. The boy glanced right and left. ‘I’m not supposed to be in here, so I’ll make this quick. I’ve been told to make sure you don’t get put on a
transport
, or sent to work in the factory; else we might never see you again. Where’s Herr Kohn?’

‘That’s him in the bunk above, but who sent you?’

‘The Administration for Free Time Activities. I’m a musician. I sing in a choir,’ the boy added grandly. Izaac smiled, but the boy was in a hurry. ‘Listen, sir. First thing this morning, you’ll get your number, a tattoo on your arm.’ He pulled up his
sleeve to display a not very clean arm with a blue number on it. Then the SS will hand you over to the Jewish Administration for your ration card and to be assigned to a work squad. You
must
get work in the town, not in the factory. The factory workers are the ones in the striped suits because they go outside to work. Go to Ondrej. He has a long drooping
moustache
, and he loves music; tell him you hope to work for the AFTA and he will give you a squad in the town.’ There was a sound of someone blowing into a microphone, testing the loudspeaker. The boy stiffened. ‘Got to go. That’ll be the morning call. Tell Herr Kohn about Ondrej. Look for me
outside
.’

‘
Raus! Raus! Schnell raus
!
’ but the boy had gone, in a patter of bare feet.

Izaac’s ordeal was over. The freshly tattooed number on his arm felt no worse than the bed-bug bites that seemed to cover him all over. He stood scratching, guarding Julius’s case with its precious dismantled cello, as his friend manoeuvred himself into the queue where the moustachioed Ondrej held court. When Julius came over, Izaac took up both cases, feeling that the sooner he got out of this building the better. They stopped at the bottom of the steps where Julius looked at the piece of paper Ondrej had given him.

‘I wonder what this means?’ he asked. ‘
EIII/6/10/107
?
’

‘Let me see.’ Izaac looked down and there was the boy, Pafko, grinning up at him. The boy put down a bucket he was holding and held out his hands for their slips of paper.

Izaac laughed. ‘I’d better introduce you. Julius, this is Pafko, messenger and go-between supreme. You were asleep when he came and told me about Ondrej.’

Pafko was busy examining their papers.

‘Good old Ondrej, you’re together. Block 3/ building 6/ room 10/ bunks 107 & 108. The good thing is that this block is just full of AFTA players. Come on, let’s go.’

‘Who sent to you look after us?’ Izaac asked.

‘Anna, who you met at the door yesterday, gave your
numbers
to Maria Thron who will be the head of AFTA when the Nazis agree. She sent me to find you to make sure you weren’t sent off to make engines in the factory. I’m her
personal messenger
;’ he took off his floppy cap and bowed. ‘You see, the camp is segregated: men and boys on one side, women and kids under twelve on the other. Though I look older, I’m still eleven, so I can go both sides if I’m careful. The thing is to look busy.’

‘How do you manage that?’ Izaac asked.

‘I carry a bucket,’ Pafko grinned. ‘Sometimes I put a brick in it. People think I must be doing some chore and so don’t bother me.’ They crossed a square outined with bare and tired trees. ‘We call that building where you’ve just been the “Sluice”– open it and they pour in. More people come every day; Mrs Thron says the town was built for six thousand
soldiers
, guess how many people are here now? Fifty eight
thousand
!’ The flow of camp information continued: ‘That there’s the boy’s barracks, I’ll be in there when I turn twelve. I’m with my mum and sisters on the women’s side now.’

‘Where do the musicians play?’ Izaac asked.

‘Anywhere for folk songs and things and solo instruments, then there is a hall in the Sudeten barracks; real concerts there, violins, flute, accordion, but no cello,’ he winked at Julius. Did the boy know everything, Izaac wondered. ‘ … and no piano. AFTA are desperate for a piano. We have just one piano
accordion
for recitals, choir practice … everything! I found them a piano but it has no legs and it’s in the part of the town where the Germans and their families live. The wimps won’t go and get it.’

They had arrived at their destination. ‘Here’s your barracks, EIII/6.’ Pafko announced.

Izaac sat drinking acorn coffee with Jacob Edelstein, head of the Council of Elders. This was an honour. To begin with, Izaac had been jealous of the almost normal apartment with proper furnishings and rugs on the floor. Now he was realising that these luxuries had their price.

‘Izaac, when I agreed to run this ghetto for the Nazis, I just wanted to make it a refuge for our Czech Jews, to make life
tolerable
for them here in Bohemia until the war is over. We can wear our own clothes inside the ghetto, we largely police
ourselves
. Even when numbers rose to nearly sixty thousand, I thought, at least these people were safe in my care. Then last month I was ordered to select one thousand people for a
transport
out “further east”, that was all I was told.’

‘Why, what do they want them for?’ Izaac asked.

‘Dear knows. Labour in factories, perhaps. They talk about “re-settlement”… who knows the Nazi mind? But it was
I
who had to make the list, or to risk having to them do it for me.’ He sighed. ‘I kept the children where possible, I tried not to break up families, even so…’ His voice trailed away, lost in the
loneliness
of his position. ‘All I can do, Izaac, is make life tolerable for those that remain. There are two classes of essential workers here: workers who keep our bodies together, and workers who feed our minds and our souls. They are equally
important
. I can’t feed ten thousand properly on the food they give me, so I must feed the soul. This is where you and other ‘
essential
workers’ in the Administration of Spare Time Activities come in. Through your music you can liberate us, if only for an hour or two. We can leave this dreadful place in our
imaginations
, if not in reality. I need you for this work and will protect
you if I can, but if the Nazis say that ‘Herr Abrahams’ must go on the next transport, I can do nothing but put you on the list. So, bring our people a little joy, who knows about the future. Now, I must go back to requisitioning: potatoes, cabbages and rotten meat.’

Talking to Jacob Edelstein opened Izaac’s eyes to the way the camp was organised. Up until now he had been, like all
newcomers
, preoccupied with his own affairs: where to go for a meal ticket, which of the cooks was generous with what little meat there was in the inevitable soup, what toilets worked, where to get water to wash, and how to kill bedbugs. Now he started to look about him. His barrack was crowded, but at least they weren’t two or even three to a bed as they were in the dormitories of the less privileged.

Driven by curiousity, he had visited one and been revolted by the stench of sickness, dirty bodies and incontinence that hung over the barracks. He climbed into the loft and found people lying and dying in total darkness. These barracks provided the gruesome daily fodder for the dead cart. It took him several days to rid himself of the fleas and bugs he had picked up on that visit and it brought home to him how priviliged he and the other musicians were. And it was only luck in their choice of profession that stood between them and the
misfortunate
others, he thought guiltily.

The Jewish Administration did their best to cope but it became impossible when more and more transports of dazed and miserable people continued to arrive. Little wonder that it was almost a relief to the administration when the Germans demanded a thousand for immediate transport to one of their other camps, where, hopefully, the people would find a better life.

Some people even longed to be listed for transport. ‘Surely things will be better there,’ they said. Others were
apprehensive
; at least here the camp was run by their own, not by the Germans. Rumours were rife of camps where people were worked till they died, slaving for the German war machine. Izaac would watch the pyjama-clad Terezín residents leaving to work in local factories, digging trenches or any other hard labour the Germans wanted. Inside the camp, women sewed uniforms or split great crystals of mica into paper-thin sheets for electrical circuits.

Within the more comfortable surroundings of Izaac’s block, however, he found himself being greeted by a veritable who’s-who of distinguished musicians from all over Europe, but there was little time for pleasantries. Izaac soon realised that there was a fierce work ethic in the ghetto. These
musicians
were here, not just to entertain, but to promote the cause of music as well. He would find groups huddled over plans for recitals, concerts, and plays. There were laments over the fact that there was so little printed music, and no ruled sheets on which to make copies. Musicians were writing whole scores from memory directly onto hand-ruled sheets of brown paper.

The lack of a piano was another great lament. When Izaac mentioned that Pafko said he had found a piano in the German part of the town there was immediate interest. Clearly, the Jewish authorities had vetoed Pafko’s salvage plan as too
dangerous
; not so the musicians. Nobody ever revealed quite how it came to be there, but the miraculous appearance of an admittedly legless piano in the gymnasium of the boy’s
barracks
was to become a turning point in music in the ghetto.