The Enemy Within (23 page)

‘What should we do, meneer?’ said Isidore Terveen.

‘They’re taking hostages,’ Lard said. ‘Men only.’

‘What should we do?’ Isidore Terveen said, again.

Lard looked at him. Isidore Terveen was in his fifties, way over the age they wanted.

‘Both of you go down,’ he said. ‘Report the deaths of two Germans on the stairs. Say resistance criminals did it. Lay it on thick. They will let you go. When they do, go to another flat, in this building. Don’t come back here.’

Isidore Terveen nodded. The Terveens left without another word, accustomed to obeying instructions. Lard peered carefully out the window. After a few moments, he saw them in the street, pointing back toward the tenement, obviously reporting the deaths of two soldiers. As Lard had predicted, the Terveens were released.

As two more
Moffen
ran towards the entrance, Lard opened the window, pushed back the bolt on one of the rifles, leaned out and fired.

*

Many of the Christian workers from the Klattenburg Raincoat Factory believed there was nothing more they could do, up against armed
Mof
troops. Those who weren’t injured went back to the factory and, as they were on piece-work, they resumed work. The same applied to many of the communists alerted by the CPH, operating from a clandestine basement in east Amsterdam, but outside the Jewish Quarter.

But one quite sizeable group of workers, none of them Jews, stumbled on three
Orpos
down an alleyway near the Burg Wal. Before the
Moffen
had time to mobilise their weapons, the workers rushed them and beat them unconscious. Then they dispersed.

Just as Lard Zilverberg was leaning out of the window in Batavia Straat, Joel Cosman and Manny were knocking on Karel Polak’s door. When the NSB guards had fled Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein, the tyre seller had returned to his flat, overlooking the Oude Schans canal, to be with his wife and their new-born son. When Joel and Manny arrived, he had packed a bag and was saying goodbye.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said to Joel and Manny.

The two
knokploeg
boys were armed with staves, which looked incongruous in the neat, though threadbare, flat. Both of them were embarrassed by their intrusion.

‘We’re going to … fight back,’ Manny said.

‘Not here you’re not!’ Polak stroked his ginger moustache, bent his lean frame over Manny, and said ‘I’m giving myself up. I’ll do my stint of labour in the east, then I’ll come back. I’m gonna see my wife and son again. You’re not going to ruin that for me. Now fuck off!’

As Joel and Manny sheepishly turned to leave, Karel Polak picked up a cushion and threw it at them. It hit Joel in the back. ‘Putting my family at risk. Arrogant pricks!’

Outside, Manny put a hand on Joel’s arm. ‘Let’s stop this,’ he said miserably.

He felt foolish carrying the stave. He was ready to admit to himself, though not to Joel, that he wanted to give himself up – get it over with. The comparative safety of the Collection Point was developing a fiendish attraction.

He just wanted a rest. His battered, bruised body was screaming for peace. His forehead was bleeding. To his horror, he realised that in his exhaustion from the constant danger, he actually wanted the
Moffen
to tell him what to do next. He badly needed a crap, and was afraid he might shit his pants from fear, out there in the street, in front of Joel.

‘Do what you like,’ Joel said, airily. ‘I’m going to see Marinus.’

Manny nodded, trotting along behind him, afraid of being left alone. He thought of Tinie, like a talisman, like touching his love for luck. He was glad she was safe – well, what passed for safe in the nightmare the
Moffen
had made of the world.

Marinus Glim lived round the corner, on the Oude Wal, overlooking Eilandsgracht. The streets were deserted, they could hear only the
Moffen
, in a silence that was like the end of the world.

*

As soon as the deaths of two comrades was reported to him - shot in the back on the steps in a tenement in Batavia Straat - the
Orpo
commander on the ground radio’d Rauter. He asked if he could attack the building, in which he reported armed resistance. Rauter forbade that, instantly and firmly. He ordered the building surrounded, the area around it evacuated. The bodies of the two dead soldiers were to be recovered, if at all possible. Then wait.

Rauter then radio’d the two
SS
-
Totenkopf
battalions standing by their vehicles. He ordered them to the Jewish Quarter. They set off from Zandvoort and Amersfoort, with full battle equipment.

The Obergruppenführer hardly dared think how this would look to Himmler. He seized the radio again and ordered an SS tank into action, in support of the troops heading for the Jewish Quarter. Five minutes later he radio’d again. He ordered the synagogue destroyed.

*

Ben Bril had chosen this alleyway very carefully. It led from Valkenburger Straat, where he was born, to the Uilenburgergracht. He had played in this alley as a boy, gone there when he wanted to be alone, especially when he was hurt. He was hurt now, because the Nazis had just killed his mother - beaten her to death.

Two of Gerrit’s Catholic boys had flanked him, while he carried her home in his arms. They had then knelt, crossed themselves, and prayed for the old lady’s soul. It had consoled Ben more than he would have believed possible.

Ben Bril peered down into the turgid waters of the canal. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He walked slowly the short distance to the intersection with Valkenburger Straat, walking with the floating, almost dancing, walk of a boxer, weight on the outside of his feet.

There was a spot at the end of the alley where you could peer down Valkenburger Straat without being seen. The street had been sealed off at one end. It was swarming with troops. But none of them were passing the high walled alleyway. Not yet, anyway.

He carefully took a bandage and some ketchup from a canvas bag he had brought from home. He bandaged his right thigh, using the ketchup to create a bloody-looking wound. Then he waited. As soon as two
Orpos
approached the alleyway, he lay on the ground, moaned and cried for help, in Dutch, then in German. The two
Orpos
peered cautiously down the alleyway.

‘I’ve been shot,’ Ben Bril called out in German.

They advanced, holding their rifles out ahead of them, as he hoped they would.

‘Hands up!’ one of them called nervously, as they approached.

Ben struggled to his feet and held his hands up. ‘I want to surrender.’

They were near enough now. One of the
Moffen
made to take him by the arm. Ben swung a right hook into his nose, smashing him to the ground. Spinning round he left jabbed the second
Mof
in the solar plexus, doubling him up, before getting him with a haymaker in the face, with another right.

Both
Moffen
were now unconscious on the ground, in the dirt of the alleyway. Ben stood over them, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. Their bayonets were in holsters around their belts, not clipped to their rifles. Ben took a bayonet from one of the
Moffen
, just as the man started to regain consciousness. He slit his throat with it, the way Robert Roet had shown him; the way the SOE had shown Robert. Then he turned to the other one and slit his throat, too – side to side.

He threw the bayonet in the canal, then threw his makeshift bandage after it. Making sure nobody saw him leave the alleyway, he turned into Valkenburger Straat with his hands in the air.

‘I surrender,’ he called out in German. ‘I’ll go to the Collection Point.’

As two
Moffen
took him at rifle point to Jonas Daniel Mayer Plein, Ben Bril husbanded his strength, the way he had been taught to do, during a bout. He gathered every scrap of will in his being. He was going to survive this war. However long it took, whatever happened to the people he knew, to the world itself; he, Ben Bril, was going to be alive at the end of it.

*

Manny and Joel Cosman went to see Marinus Glim, at his ground-floor room in Jodenbree Straat. Glim’s cousin, Hollander, was with him. They had both packed suitcases. They were sitting, washed up, on Glim’s bed, prepared to leave, but putting off the moment. Outside, an
Orpo
megaphone announcement from the roadblock at the end of Jodenbree Straat was telling all young males to pack one suitcase and report to Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein.

‘We were thinking of giving them a bloody nose,’ Joel said, laconically. ‘Manny and me.’ Manny still had his stave, which he waved in ironic greeting. Joel had abandoned his – preferring to use his fists. The dried blood on his face gave him a piratical look.

Marinus Glim stood up, appearing to swell in the tiny room. He was only slightly shorter than Lard Zilverberg, and if anything, even heavier. ‘That’s the best news I’ve had all day,’ he said.

‘A new cure for toothache,’ Manny murmured, referring to the cousins’ stall, selling toothache cure.

Nobody laughed.

They could hear the
Moffen
in the next building. Manny looked out the window. He watched them herding young Jewish men into groups, hands behind their heads, then leading them off, under the control of one armed guard, toward the Collection Point. One young Jew, in a long tweed jacket and a peaked cap, made a break for it. A dog handler released one of the Alsatians, which had been straining at the leash. It caught him in seconds and brought him down. He was brought back to the main group.

The
Moffen
were coming into their building – they could hear them. There was a rap on the door. Marinus opened. There were two of them. Marinus and Joel leaped forward and dragged them into the room. Manny swung his stave and caught one on the knee. Hollander shoved the other one against the wall, where Marinus laid into him, beating him bloody. Joel smashed the other one, again and again, face-body-face.

Manny
had never seen Joel like this. Joel deserved it, Manny thought. So did the
Mof
.

There were shouts and cries from outside.

‘Come on,’ Marinus called. ‘Out the back way.’

They got out through a landing window, dropping down to an alleyway, hoping to make their way through to Waterloo Plein.

‘Walk,’ Joel hissed at the others. ‘Don’t run. Manny, drop the stave.’

Manny dropped it. He and Joel went left at the end of the alley, across a patch of scrub. Joel motioned Hollander and Glim to go right. Manny lost sight of them. As they walked toward Waterloo Plein, they nearly walked into three helmeted
Moffen
with fixed bayonets.

The guns turned toward them. Manny and Joel put their hands up.

*

Lard Zilverberg could just see the
overvalwagens
and the
Orpos
who had blocked off the top end of Batavia Straat, as he leaned out the window. He fired again, hitting the
overvalwagen
. He had the satisfaction of seeing a scared looking Dutch police driver trying to start the vehicle, to pull it back, and failing.

Lard was surprised they hadn’t tried to storm him. He guessed they wanted to avoid any more casualties – it would look bad. They had sent up a sniper to the top floor of the tenement opposite him. The sniper had fired one round into the Terveen flat from the fire escape, then ducked into the flat opposite and fired single shots from there, whenever Lard leaned out of the window. His shots made a high-pitched pinging sound, very different from the dull cough of the rifles Lard had taken from the dead
Mof
.

There was a flash of light from the tenement opposite, and a bullet pinged into the wall above his head. Lard glanced at the pearly sky, then fired back. A
Mof
in
Wehrmacht
field-grey slumped out of the window, the weight of his body pinning his rifle to the sill. Lard glanced up at the sky again. ‘Thank you, God,’ he said.

*

Over two-hundred infantry troops from the SS 4th Regiment rolled in from Zandvoort and Amersfoort in the early evening. They mustered in Rembrandt Plein, just outside the Jewish Quarter, until their tank had been brought up. This vehicle, a six ton Panzer I, rolled at walking pace over the Blaauw Brug into Waterloo Plein, followed by black-uniformed SS infantry on foot, with fixed bayonets.

The tank headed for the centre aisle of the Jewish Market, then steered slightly right, flattening every stall in its path. The troops behind pulled down any stalls that remained, smashing them with rifle butts, occasionally stopping to steal watches, jewellery or any other portables that took their fancy. Nothing of the market was left standing.

About half-way along, the tank opened fire with one of its two machine guns, spraying the tenements around the square indiscriminately with bullets. One of the houses hit had once been the home of Baruch Spinoza. It was now occupied by a dry-goods merchant by the name of Isaak Kramer, who had come to Holland from Germany, in 1938.