The Emperor of Lies (9 page)

The
Kripo
for their part had worked on the assumption that it was an attempt on his life, and had arrested fifty people who had witnessed the incident, taking eighteen of them to the interrogation suite in the Red House. Starting at seven o’clock the next morning, one of them would be executed every hour until the stone-thrower gave himself up.

‘If you intend to do anything about this, I suggest you start at once,’ Biebow told Rumkowski.

Rumkowski gave Dawid Gertler orders to search all the districts on the right-hand side of Zgierska Street. Gertler’s men decided to approach it scientifically. In order to hit the tram window at that angle, the stone must have been thrown from quite a height, and thus from the second or third floor of one of the blocks of flats along Zgierska Street. That ruled out all the blocks except three.

Gertler’s men swarmed up winding, ramshackle flights of stairs, broke down closed or barricaded apartment doors and forced their way in.

By about seven thirty, Gertler could personally report that they had the culprit surrounded. He was in a flat on the top floor of number 87. There were clearly also children in the flat. When the police broke down the door, children’s cries had been clearly heard from inside.

‘Shall we go in anyway?’ asked Gertler.

‘Don’t do anything,’ replied the Chairman. ‘I’m coming over there myself.’

87 Zgierska Street was one of the most dilapidated of the blocks of flats looking out on one of the side streets, Flisacka. The three rows of windows along its facade resembled as many cave mouths. Not a single window pane remained unbroken. Most of the apertures also lacked frames, and the only protection they had against the rain and cold was a basic sheet of cardboard or a bit of grubby sheeting.

The police had already ringed the building and as soon as he arrived the Chairman was escorted to a flat right up on the third floor. Two men were squatting by the stove on what appeared to be an upturned enamel washtub; a woman stood beside them, rubbing her hands on a dirty apron. Gertler led the way to what looked like the door to a cloakroom or store cupboard at the back of the room, and thumped his fist a number of times on the frame.

Go away, leave us alone
, came a muffled voice from inside.

(A rough, man’s voice.)

The Chairman approached the door and said in a commanding voice:

‘It is I. Rumkowski.’

There was silence on the other side. Someone thought he heard whispering, and the sound of bodies shuffling. There were apparently several people in the cloakroom.

Rumkowski:

We demand that the person guilty of this deed come out. Otherwise, eighteen innocent Jewish lives will be lost.

Again: silence. Then there was a voice. A very small voice –

Is it really Mr Praeses?

A child. Meaningful looks were exchanged among the men in Gertler’s unit. The Chairman cleared his throat and said in a voice that he tried to make sound as stern and authoritative as possible:

What is your name?

Moshe Kamersztajn.

Was it you who threw the stone, Moshe?

I didn’t mean it to hit anything the way it did.

Why did you throw the stone, Moshe?

I often throw stones at rats. But this one got away.

The rat or the stone?

Is it really you, Mr Praeses?

It is, Moshe, and I have a present for you.

What sort of present?

You’ll see when you come out. I’ve got the present in my trunk.

I daren’t come out, Mr Praeses. They’ll beat me.

No one here is going to beat you, you have my word on that.

What sort of present is it? When will I get it?

The rough, man’s voice from inside:

Stop that, he’s just trying to trick you –

Moshe, who’s in there with you?

(Silence.)

Don’t say anything!

Is it your dad?

Yes . . .

SHUT UP, YOU LITTLE DEVIL!

It went quiet. Then the Chairman spoke up again:

Moshe, tell your dad that if you show yourself, you’ll be able to come to me. There’s plenty of room for able boys in my police force.

(Silence.)

Are you a big boy now, Moshe? Tell me, are you a man?

Don’t answer!

(Silence.)

Tell me what you’re good at, Moshe.

I’m good at killing rats.

Then you can be my rat killer.

Will I be a policeman?

More than that. I’ll make you the head of a special rat commando. If you’ll just open the door and come out. It’s never too late to do something about your life, Moshe.

The door opened and a skinny boy of about thirteen stood blinking in the light. Behind him was a middle-aged man, pale and unshaven. The man looked uncomfortably around him. It was apparent that he did not like the scrutiny of all these people in the cramped room. The boy was as pale as his father, and had a lopsided look. The right side of his face hung out over the left, which looked slack, as if it had no feeling in it. The same was true of the rest of his body: as if someone had put a meat hook through one shoulder and the rest of him dangled from it, limp and lifeless. But the part of his face that did have life in it was beaming with anticipation.

Later, there would be much talk in the ghetto of how good the Chairman was with children. By provoking the authorities, this child had put the lives of hundreds of innocent Jews at risk. No one would have been surprised if the Chairman had proceeded to mete out one of his severest punishments, in the name of discipline. But he did not. Instead he crouched down and took both the boy’s hands in his.

‘If you had been my son, Moshe Kamersztajn, what do you think I would have done with you?’

The boy was so overwhelmed to find the Chairman there in the flesh that he could only stare down at the dirty floorboards; he shook his head.

‘I shall ask you to consider fully what you have done, and then take your punishment with dignity. If you can do that, then you will have earned my respect again.’

He took the boy’s hand and led him past the chain of policemen, down the stairs and out into the street. Then they walked together through the ghetto. The Chairman first, gesticulating eagerly (he was clearly busy telling one of his innumerable stories); the boy after him, rolling on his stiff hip.

When they were halfway to Kirchplatz, they came across Meir Klamm with his ‘hearse’. Mr Muzyk’s undertaking business would later have at its disposal a large conveyance with thirty-six recesses and drawer compartments, but at that time there was just the one cart, with space for one corpse, and it was pulled by an old mare who was always pressed into service if there was a shortage of draught animals in the ghetto: so gaunt that the ribs stood out along her flanks like the strips in a badly woven raffia basket. She was recognisable above all by her walk. She would walk on for one or two steps, then stop; after that she took a couple more exhausted steps forward, and there was nothing old Meir up in the driver’s seat could do to speed her up.

The Chairman now seized the reins and asked Meir if he was aware that the authorities had imposed a
curfew
and that he could be shot as a punishment for breaching it. Meir replied that he had been out with the cart since long before the curfew came into force, and what was he supposed to do about that?

Curfew or no curfew: people kept on dying.

While this exchange was going on, Moshe Kamersztajn would have had all the time in the world to slip away. The Chairman had even let go of his hand. But Moshe just stood there staring. And when the Chairman was done, Moshe’s hand found its way up into the Chairman’s again, and the two of them carried on chatting about whatever it was the Chairman had been in the middle of saying.

And so they went, all the way to the Red House, where the
Kripo
’s leading interrogators were awaiting their ‘perpetrator’.

*

Four days later, the Chairman called his Council of Elders, all the
resort-laiter
of the ghetto, and the rest of his administration to a meeting in the House of Culture. He opened it with a speech about his experiences in Warsaw:

I have been in Warsaw. Some hold that against me, in view of the high price that the authorities demand for these trips.

But I would still like to tell you what I saw.

In Warsaw there is no one considering what is in the best public interest. People think only of themselves. And those in power in Czerniaków’s Jewish Council have no choice but to watch money changing hands behind the backs of the doctors caring for the sick.

Treatment is only available to those who can pay for it.

Food and medicines are smuggled in. But only the rich can afford the prices being asked.

Let me tell you that criminality and smuggling in Warsaw have grown to such proportions that they are now the ghetto’s main industry. Unlike here in our ghetto, smuggling is the only industry that really works.

Not the labour of all for the common good. But everyone fighting it out with everyone else.

Is that the way we Jews should behave to each other?

Is that how you would like us to behave towards one another in my ghetto, too?

I do not believe you do, though I know there are some here who think that would be the solution to all our problems.

Not sharing our burdens equally, but letting everyone take responsibility for their own.

I shall tell you where that leads.

Not to short-term prosperity for anyone, but to public anarchy.

Right at the front of the stage stood a small table covered with a white cloth. On this cloth, the Chairman had placed his big trunk. Two police officers were guarding it, one on either side, to prevent any robbery. This despite the fact that the trunk – as the Chairman was careful to emphasise – did not contain any items of value, but only letters, greetings (scribbled on scraps of paper); photographs in faded frames; a lock of hair in a little box; a necklace; an amulet.

Even so, they stormed the table as soon as the lid was opened.

The duty police superintendent had to call for reinforcements. The door to the hall opened, and into the midst of all the tumult came the chief of police himself, Mr Leon Rozenblat, holding young Mr Kamersztajn firmly by the scruff of the neck.

Moshe Kamersztajn’s split face was red and puffy on both sides; his cheek was swollen to double its normal size and appeared to hang right down to his collarbone. But the torturers of the Red House did not seem to have made any impact on his fundamental defect. The boy still limped as though he had a painful hook stuck in him, somewhere between his cheek and the back of his neck –

He says Mr Praeses promised him a present from Warsaw.

The Chairman generously swivelled the open trunk.

Step forward then, young Mr Kamersztajn;

Step forward and choose what you would like –

Three weeks later, as yet another
geshenk
from Rumkowski to the ghetto, a transport with a total of twelve doctors from Warsaw arrived. The Chairman had signed their contracts already, while he was there, and the bribes and transport costs had been prepaid to the Gestapo. The
Chronicle
lists all twelve doctors by name and specialism:

Michał Eliasberg
and
Arno Kleszczelski
– (surgeons);

Abram Mazur
– (throat specialist);

Salomon Rubinstein
– (radiographer);

Janina Hartglas
and
Benedykta Moszkowicz
– (obstetricians);

Józef Goldwasser, Alfred Lewi, Izak Ser, Mojzesz Nekrycz
;

(Miss)
Alicja Czarnożyłówna
and
Izrael Geist
– (general practitioners)

Then, in June 1941, the Germans launched their invasion of the Soviet Union: Operation Barbarossa.

All that summer, people queued for hours at Wiewiórka’s barber’s shop to hear the news read aloud from a copy of the
Litzmannstädter Zeitung
that one of the Schupo had been persuaded to leave behind. Herr Wiewiórka read the German himself, while one of his apprentices interpreted into Yiddish. ‘The conquest of White Russia’, translated the young barbershop apprentice in an increasingly shaky voice, ‘has proceeded by
leaps and bounds
; German troops are
already marching on Moscow
.’

What was going to happen next?

Earlier that summer, on 7 June 1941, SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler had paid a visit to the ghetto. Among the factories and textile workshops inspected by Himmler were the Central Tailors at 45 Łagiewnicka Street and the uniform-maker’s in Jakuba Street. After his visit to Warsaw, the Chairman had concluded that he could never again interrupt his supervision of the ghetto, and had on his own initiative imposed a curfew from eight o’clock on the evening before Himmler’s visit. The motorcade of SS guards and Himmler’s limousine passed through open, empty ghetto streets in which not a soul was to be seen.

In his diary, Szmul Rosenzstajn noted the following exchange between Rumkowski and Himmler:

Himmler
: So you are the renowned rich Jew of Litzmannstadt, Herr Rumkowski.

Rumkowski
: I am rich, Herr Reichsführer, because I have a whole people at my disposal.

Himmler
: And what are you doing with your people, Herr Rumkowski?

Rumkowski
: With my people I am building a city of workers, Herr Reichsführer.

Himmler
: But this is not a city of workers – it is a ghetto!

Rumkowski
: It is a city of workers, Herr Reichsführer; and we will carry on working for as long as you have demands to make of us.

The Chairman told the members of his Council of Elders afterwards that the German successes on the eastern front had taken some of the
pressure
off the ghetto. There was a sense of calm among the occupying powers that he intended to take advantage of. The time had come to request the expansion of the ghetto.

Overcrowding leads to social misery, and the wretched, insanitary conditions allow disease to take hold – diphtheria, above all, has proved an intractable problem. I have personally arranged for more doctors to join my ghetto, but that will not help unless I can put whole buildings, even whole districts, in quarantine.

In front of the authorities, Rumkowski always adopted a more moderate attitude. In front of them, he always stood the same way, with his hands at his sides and his white-haired head meekly bowed –

Ich bin Rumkowski. Melde mich gehorsamst zur Stelle.

It was two days since he had submitted his request for the ghetto to be extended for ‘sanitary reasons’. Now Mayor Werner Ventzki leant down from the high platform on which he sat with Amtsleiter Biebow and administrator Ribbe, and gave his solemn promise:

You shall have your wish, Rumkowski. The ghetto is to be expanded. It is to be expanded by twenty thousand Jews. Berlin has decided to send them from the annexed areas of the Reich, both the old and the new.

Twenty thousand more like you, Rumkowski.

You can scarcely let your ghetto get any bigger than that.