Schreiber's Secret (5 page)

“Eat!” barked Schreiber irritably, at the same time wiping his sweaty palms with a handkerchief.

Oskar Springer opened his mouth slowly, and with the first mouthful of the pures
t
treyf
e
passed from the real world, awful though it was, into the hinterland of the psychotic.

Soferman stood rooted, a single tear etching its way down a face old before its time.

“The Jew seems to be enjoying it,” laughed Schreiber. “That’s it. Lap it up. Lap it up.”

Springer showed no emotion as he swallowed the excrement. It was only after the third mouthful that Schreiber relented and ordered the wretched man to return to the line. The psychotic trance had prevented the prisoner from throwing up and the Nazi was visibly annoyed.

Roll call took a further few minutes, after which the prisoners in the first two lines were ordered to march to a muddy inundation canal near the morgue. With each step, the dilemma tormenting Herschel Soferman burned fiercely within him. On the one hand, he planned to kill Schreiber and face the inevitable consequences. On the other, he reasoned that he must survive at all costs in order to bear witness to the atrocities of the Small Fortress. Oskar Springer, he knew, was no longer part of the equation. Oskar was already a member of the living dead. The black inkspots of his eyes were deep wells of total incomprehension. In its own way, a kind of freedom.

The ditch was about one hundred metres long, and the twenty men were separated into two equal groups. Soferman and Springer stood in the group at the near end. The Berliner peered into the trench. About half a metre down was murky water.

“All right,” said one of the guards, “get in the ditch and start digging.”

Soferman picked up one of the spades that were lying nearby and dropped down into the trench. The water, foul-smelling through rotting vegetation, was cold, and he gasped as it reached his thigh. He glanced at Springer. The little man had sunk to his waist. Digging would be virtually impossible for him.

“Try to pretend you’re working, Oskar,” he whispered with little conviction. The two Nazi guards sitting on a grassy bank overlooking them appeared to be dozing in the warmth of the sun’s rays. Soferman knew that, by midday, the heat would be intense and he would be grateful for the cool of the ditchwater. He toiled as diligently as he could under the circumstances and, wrapped in his own thoughts, gave scant attention to those around him.

The sheer exertion created a barrier between him and reality. Herschel Soferman, the “farmer”, was digging a drainage ditch around his wheat field with the single-minded purpose of a man possessed.

No one in or out of the trench seemed to notice the pathetic figure of Oskar Springer sink beneath the surface of the ditchwater. To the other prisoners, death was a release that they might envy. Anyone who attempted suicide was to be applauded, not saved, for compassion was no longer in their lexicon. The prisoner, dehumanized, had become the willing accomplice of his captor. Moral right was no longer an issue.  It was the voice of one of the guards which first alerted Herschel Soferman to the demise of his friend.

“Hey, you. Big guy,” the voice, in thick Bavarian brogue, called out.

“Lift that stuck Jew-pig out of the ditch.”

The Berliner, trapped within his own fantasies, carried on digging.

“I mean you, you arsehole!” shrieked the guard.

The prisoner to his right dug Soferman in the ribs, breaking the spell. The tall man looked up at the guard sitting on the bank.

“Yes, you. Get that carcass out of there.”

Soferman’s blond head swivelled slowly to the left. For a few moments, he stared in disbelief at the
body hunched face down beside him.

“Don’t just stand there, you great oaf. Lift him out of there.”

“Oskar,” gasped Soferman. “Oskar.”

The body bobbed as the Berliner waded the couple of metres between them. He turned it over and lifted, cradling the slight form in his arms. The eyes were open. The ink spots that once used to sparkle in defiance of adversity were now opaque, impervious to the perfidy of man.

Soferman, showing no emotion, lifted the lifeless form onto the bank. He would not sa
y
Kaddis
h
for his friend, for now he believed that God was dead.

“Leave him there,” the guard called out, “and get on with your work. Schreiber will be here in a few minutes and you lot will wish you were also corpses.”

Soferman returned to his digging, but not before he had closed Springer’s eyes. Even in death, he did not want them to bear testimony to whatever new horror Schreiber was planning. The little man-boy lay like a discarded rag doll. Iniquity’s jetsam.

Schreiber was soon on the scene, accompanied by a bevy of guards and two wheelbarrows filled with sharpened sticks and pitchforks.

“Time for some sport, Jew-pigs,” he cried out from high on the mound. “I see that one of you has already succumbed.” The Nazi chuckled. “He’s the lucky one.”

Schreiber’s entourage burst into laughter. They knew what was coming and eagerly took up their positions. Soferman counted up to a dozen guards perched on the parapet of the bridge overlooking the trench.

“You and you,” Schreiber called out, pointing to the two smaller men alongside Soferman. “Each take a pitchfork and stick. The winner will get extra rations tonight ... the loser’s.”

Again there was hearty laughter from the gallery.

The two men, both in their thirties and both of about the same build, climbed out of the trench and reluctantly took their weapons from the wheelbarrows. They stood about a metre apart and for a few moments stared at each other in desperation and fear.

“Well,” Schreiber called out ominously, “we’re waiting.”

“They’re brothers,” a voice cried out from the end of the line of prisoners. “For God’s sake have mercy.”

Schreiber laughed satanically. “Even better. Let’s keep it in the family.”

The gallery once more applauded. The Obersturmführer could always be guaranteed to put on an excellent show.

One of the brothers suddenly dropped to his knees and bowed his head. It was obvious that neither man was prepared to bear arms against the other.

Schreiber, incensed by the delay in the performance, raced down the mound. Hurling abuse at the two men, he picked up a shovel and hoisted it high before bringing it down with all his might on the head of the kneeling man. There was a sickening crunch, blood and brain spurting in all directions. Schreiber himself was hit by the human debris and this incensed him even further.

“You’ve ruined my uniform, you swine,” he screamed at the corpse. “How dare you.”

The Nazi brushed off the human offal with manic fervour, failing to notice the pitchfork being raised by the brother of the dead man. Soferman watched in morbid fascination as the two prongs came level with Schreiber’s shoulders. Even though it meant his own death, Soferman willed the prisoner to strike home hard and true.

But the man, unused to the mechanics of murder, wavered for the split second that separated good from evil. A shot rang out and the prisoner crumpled, driving the pitchfork into the ground and sliding slowly down its handle.

Schreiber, visibly shaken, wheeled around to face his would-be assassin. The prisoner groaned, the red stain on his prison garb broadening. He lay on the ground face up, his left arm attempting to shield his eyes from the sun. The Nazi kicked the arm away and rolled the wounded man over with his jackboot. He then withdrew his service pistol, a 9mm Luger Parabellum, and placed the barrel against the nape of the prisoner’s neck, angling it slightly upwards. Without hesitation, he fired.

Soferman flinched. In the splitting of a second one life had been saved and another taken.
But the wrong ones. He watched with heavy heart as Schreiber knelt by the remains of the dead man’s face and withdrew a dagger from a black scabbard at his side. The Jew could make out the SS motto “Loyalty is my Honour” inscribed in large Gothic script along almost the whole length of the blade. At right angles to the slogan and close to the hilt were the initials HS. The Nazi began carving a swastika on the prisoner’s forehead. Satisfied with its artistic merit, he passed to the other brother and repeated the procedure. Replacing his pistol, Schreiber acknowledged the guard on the bridge who had saved his life and then turned once again to the prisoners in the ditch.

“Woe betide any of you who try this sort of thing again,” he cautioned breathlessly. “Otherwise there will be another couple of losers.” With this, he climbed further up the mound and turned to face the prisoners from a safe distance. “Now, SOFERman, you and that pig at the end of the line take up your weapons. I’m counting on you, SOFERman.”

Soferman felt his heart plummet. The man he was expected to fight was smaller than himself but looked about ten kilos heavier. The pug face and squashed nose suggested experience as a prizefighter.

The man wore the yellow star but did not look Jewish. Nevertheless, he thought, it was indeed two Jews who were being ordered to fight the ultimate fight, one man having to die in order for the other to live for perhaps one more minute, one more hour, one more day.

As Soferman picked up the sharpened cudgel in his right hand and the rusting pitchfork in the other, he was reminded of the arenas of ancient Rome. The gallery was baying for blood and the supreme arbitrator, the black patrician of the Small Fortress, sat on his haunches, arms crossed and resting on his knees, watching impassively. Schreiber was not satisfied with simply killing Jews. He demanded the ultimate indignity: that Jew should kill Jew for sport.

The Berliner turned to face his opponent. He felt Schreiber’s beady eyes boring into his neck. He was the patrician’s favourite. He was expected to uphold the honour of the dark empire. He was expected to satisfy his master’s whim with the blood of an innocent.

“Wait!” ordered Schreiber. “Oberscharführer, where’s my camera?” It was his favourite pastime. He focused the Leica and then smiled the most evil of smiles. “Okay, fight!”

“I shall live to testify, Schreiber, you bastard,” Soferman muttered under his breath, at the same time raising the cudgel. “I shall never rest until you are brought to justice.”

London, June 16 1989

To: The Rt Hon Douglas Hurd, CBE, MP,
Secretary of State for the Home Office.

On 15 February 1988, you appointed us to undertake an inquiry into war crimes with the following terms of reference:

“(1) To obtain and examine relevant material, including material held by Government departments and documents which have been or may be submitted by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and others, relating to allegations that persons who are now British citizens or resident in the United Kingdom committed war crimes* during the Second World War;

(2) To interview persons who appear to possess relevant information relating to such allegations
;

(3) To consider, in the light of the likely probative value in court proceedings in the UK of the relevant documentary material and of evidence of potential witnesses, whether the law of the United Kingdom should be amended in order to make it possible to prosecute for war crimes persons who are now British citizens or resident in the United Kingdom;

(4) And to advise Her Majesty’s Government accordingly.

(*For the purposes of this inquiry, the term “war crimes” extends only to crimes of murder, manslaughter or genocide committed in Germany and in territories occupied by German forces during the Second World War.)”

We have now completed our inquiry and have the honour to submit our report.

Sir Thomas Hetherington

William Chalmers

Jewish Chronicle, London, May 3 1991

There was barely enough room to nod off in the Lords on Tuesday as peers, including a feisty nonagenarian, fought to prevent the War Crimes Bill from becoming law.

It was a doomed battle against the Government, and many succeeded only in humiliating themselves and insulting the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

The enemies of the War Crimes Bill did not suffer from self-doubt. Never, in the estimation of Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, the former Labour Home Secretary, had there been assembled against a Bill such “a combination of intellectual weight, legal distinction, and practical experience of Government ... in the highest offices of the land.”

But even the best brains in the land were not going to bring victory closer, pledged former Home Secretary Lord Waddington, a mere stripling at 61. In a strong, clear voice, he said acts of appalling brutality had been committed not in the heat of the moment but as the “cold
-blooded mass murder of defenceless victims ... The evidence is there and we can’t close our eyes to it.”

Ninety-two-year-old Lord Houghton of Sowerby thought otherwise. Opposing the Bill, he suggested to peers, meant retaining their honour. The alternative was to yield to the Commons.

He remembered as if it were yesterday how, aged 13, he had observed the progress of the Parliament Act of 1911. His memory had served him well, casting doubt over one of the main arguments against war crimes trials, that the memory of elderly witnesses would be uncertain.