The Enemy Within (24 page)

Kramer had reported to Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein, but had been sent back – he was too old. He was having a brandy to celebrate what he regarded as divine deliverance, when he and his wife were killed instantly by the machine gun bullets.

As the tank headed deeper into the Jewish Quarter, the SS troops behind it fanned out.

About
one in three of them carried light machine guns. Their officers spoke to the
Orpo
at each block the Green Police had set up, then raked each street indiscriminately with a burst of machine gun fire. They then called for the surrender of all male Jews between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, or the street would be destroyed. Each street gave up its remaining young Jewish males.

At the roadblock at the end of Jodenbree Straat, the tank commander asked for directions to Batavia Straat. At the top end of the street, an
Orpo
lieutenant gave a crisp salute and indicated to the tank commander the house where Lard Zilverberg was holed up. The
overvalwagens
were manhandled out the way, to let the tank through.

The tank rolled slowly opposite the tenement where Lard Zilverberg waited, supported by troops on foot. Lard saw it. He feared capture, but not death. His mind was clear. He pictured his father, the person he loved most in the world, then closed the picture down. He leaned out of the window and fired. He was aiming for the tank, but winged one of the SS soldiers.

The driver stopped the tank and manned one machine gun, while the commander took the other. A solid sheet of bullets zipped upwards into the flat where Lard had offered his defiance. SS soldiers ran up the stairs and fired machine guns through the door, into the flat.

Two of them brought Lard’s body out and dragged it to one of the
overvalwagens
.

By the time the SS had completed their sweep of the Jewish Quarter, and the tank and the troops returned to Jonas Daniel Meyer Plein, it was getting dark. The square was jammed solid with captives – even to the naked eye it was clear that there were over four hundred.

Their guards had been making them do gymnastics – an element of humiliation being an essential of any Nazi dealings with the Jews. Rauter had specifically ordered that the Jews were to be kept in the square, to witness the destruction of their synagogue.

SS troops duly entered the three-hundred year old synagogue, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. Standing with his hands behind his head, alongside Joel, Manny watched them, defiantly dry-eyed. He remembered that the scrolls of the law are always hand-written, on parchment with a quill pen. According to Jewish custom, if a single mistake is made, in the writing, the whole work must be destroyed, and started again from the beginning. Because the word of God must be perfect.

Inside the synagogue, SS soldiers set about desecrating what the Jews regarded as the word of their God. Bayonets ripped into the velvet of the covers, the silver pointers and bells were trampled, or looted, for their monetary value. The scrolls were submitted to filthy indignities – because they, too, had to be humiliated. When the desecration was complete, the lovely place was set on fire.

It was still burning when the
Promi
propaganda unit went into action to create lies, and fix them in the mind of mankind so firmly they would blot out the truth, as surely as the palls of black smoke coming from the synagogue blotted out the sky.

The
Promis
were in civilian clothes. They selected a few unwounded Jews and collected clothes from other Jews around them with some care. The Jews to be photographed were kitted out in wide-brimmed trilby hats and belted mackintoshes. The
Promi
unit had brought props with them. These, to the watching Manny’s amazement, included sten-guns – presumably not loaded. The Jews were made to hold these guns, in their wide-lapelled macks and their sinister hats, while they were pictured.

Finally, the Nazis had got the weapons of resistance they had insisted the Jews hand in.

*

None of the
knokploeg
ever found out who betrayed Tinie, and their hideout, but no grudges would have been borne, even if they had known. The standard first interrogation the Nazis used, the Long Interrogation of forty hours – usually accompanied by beating and sleep deprivation, sometimes by torture – would break most people

Tinie knew the Jewish Quarter had been overrun, but she had nowhere else to go – or she felt she hadn’t. To go to her parents would put them in danger. She did not trust Hirschfeld. And, anyway, because Manny hated him so, going to him would have felt like betraying Manny.

So she burned her nurse’s uniform, hid her bicycle, and waited in the hideout. Old meneer Zilverberg told her that his son had been killed, and that as far as he knew all the others had been captured. They cried together.

Meneer Zilverberg had been with her when the
Moffen
came. He held her hand – for as long as they let him. Then they were both taken away.

15

Just as Else was beginning to recover, to a degree, from her imprisonment at Rauter’s hands, rumours reached her that Robert Roet was dead. Somebody at the synagogue told her. Else said nothing, but went into a silent decline.

She had already stopped cooking for Hirschfeld; now she no longer cleaned their home. She abandoned her Hebrew studies, then took them up again, with ferocious intensity, then abandoned them again.

She became obsessively observant, insisting on Jewish laws and rules Hirschfeld had never heard of: He found his clothes re-organised – and some of them destroyed - so wool was not mixed with linen. She insisted that
mezuzim
were fixed over every inner doorway and cupboard. Crockery and cutlery they had had for years was buried in the garden, to purify it. He feared that the strange ululations he heard from her bedroom were accompanied by flagellation.

She spent hours in her room, crying. Hirschfeld could hardly get her to speak to him. She seemed to blame him for Robert’s fate – whatever it was. At eight o’ clock, every night, heavy curtains were drawn, so she could listen to
Radio
Oranje
without being seen from the street. She listened for Robert’s codeword with desperate intensity, willing it to disprove the rumour of his death. It never came.

*

And then the Nazis attacked the Jewish Quarter. Hirschfeld had had no inkling that it was coming. He had started, that very day, drafting a report to Rauter on the sabotage attempt against the
Arminius
. He blamed Peter Lambooy, pointing out that security was part of his remit as Director of Production. He knew he had to do everything to get rid of Lambooy, before Lambooy got rid of him.

He left the report on his desk, unsigned and undated. He was still staring at it when the first news of the attack on the Jewish Quarter came through to him.

One of his senior clerks, a sycophant by the name of Pieter de Haas, came in and said he’d heard it on the news, on the wireless. Hirschfeld held his head in his hands. The razzia was the end of the precarious balance he had tried to maintain between the Dutch population, including the Jewish members of it, and the Occupying Authority.

That evening, at home, worse awaited him. Else was convinced that her son was among those taken or killed. Hirschfeld tried to re-assure her. Manny was a wanted man, he reminded his sister. Wherever he was hiding out, it was unlikely to have been in the Jewish Quarter.

Hirschfeld suspected, but did not say, that Manny was with Tinie. Tinie had disappeared. He did not believe her note, telling him she was visiting an old aunt in Vollendam. He had asked Simon Emmerik where she was, and got a look scorched with hatred.

At his desk at the ministry, Hirschfeld pondered who to contact to get a list of Jews killed or captured during the attack. He used his connection with Rauter sparingly, only when those further down the line could not provide him with what he needed. He settled on Major Pfeiffer, who was the
Orpo
liaison officer with
Sipo
/SD, and therefore more outward looking than some of them.

Hirschfeld telephoned him. He said he was checking that none of the Jews taken were in reserved occupations, necessary to the Reich. Pfeiffer was amenable - he had heard of the Hirschfeld List. He said a list of Jewish hostages from the razzia to be deported to Westerbork was being prepared as they spoke. He would send a copy over to Hirschfeld by courier, as soon as it was ready.

Hirschfeld got no more work done, that day. Else phoned him every thirty minutes, asking if there was news of Manny. Major Pfeiffer telephoned at six that evening. A motorcycle courier was on his way with the names.

Hirschfeld read them at his desk. Pages of them, in alphabetical order. He was stunned. Four hundred and twenty-five Jewish males taken prisoner. Five more dead, ten wounded and sent to hospital.

But Emmanuel Roet’s name was nowhere on the list.

*

Else was not satisfied. Pale and by now thin, she claimed inside information, claimed female intuition. About what? Hirschfeld was never clear. She screamed, shouted, nagged, pleaded and above all, wept. Sometimes she attacked Hirschfeld – beating his shoulders and chest with her fists. In reply to his increasingly desperate ‘Yes, but what do you actually want me to do?’ she said ‘Ask everybody you know.’

And he realised that was what he wanted to do, too. He wanted more information – and not only about Manny. Hirschfeld’s link with the Dutch government in exile was via a loose organisation called the OD –
Ordedienst
.

The OD was founded to organise paramilitary resistance from within the Netherlands.

Their
leaders were highly-placed civil servants – people of Hirschfeld’s own stamp. One of them, van Heerde, was in charge of the maintenance of public buildings in Amsterdam, another, ten Bosch, was a high official in the telephone company.

But Hirschfeld’s contact was through their leader, de Tourton Bruyns. Bruyns was a Land Inspector, who had had military training The two of them discussed policy, now and again. They exchanged information.

After Hirschfeld had sent data on factory production to Rost van Tonningen, to be used to trap RAF bombers, he had contacted Bruyns, told him everything, and asked him to warn London, as a matter of urgency. Bruyns had listened carefully. Hirschfeld had no idea of the result. Had Bruyns believed him? If so, had he acted on the information? Had his warning come in time? All he did know, was that he no longer slept at night.

The cafés where they usually met were no longer safe. They met on a bench in Vondel Park. Bruyns, a tall man with a prominent nose, crossed his long legs, puffed at his pipe and looked judicious.

‘We kept well clear of Robert Roet,’ he said. ‘He’s been going off the rails for a long time. The demon drink, you know. Anyway we keep clear of all SOE operations.’

‘Really?’.

Bruyns nodded, waiting until some passers-by had walked past the bench. ‘The B.I in London have stopped working with the SOE. They’ve linked up with the British MI6 instead, except for training. SOE training is the best in the world – but …’ Bruyns shrugged ‘after that … The B.I. are sending agents in on blind drops. The first one landed just recently. Only I know who he is and where he is.’

‘Do you know what happened to Robert Roet?’

Bruyns hesitated. ‘Yes, I’m afraid I do. He’s dead. Body fished up out of a canal.’

‘What happened?’

‘No idea. The SOE are recommending him for a medal.’

‘And Manny? Emmanuel Roet, his son?’

Bruyns stared out over the long grass of the park, watching children flying a kite in the distance. He took his time. ‘Bit difficult to say. We think he’s been captured. He, and certain others in that particular
knokploeg
, would have been using a false ID.’

Hirschfeld was annoyed with himself. ‘Yes, of course!’

‘If they’d caught him under his real name, we’d have heard about it. Wanted for the death of a
Mof
, and all that. No, we think they don’t realise they’ve got him. Same with Joel Cosman. They wouldn’t check ID. Why should they? Just ship them all off to Westerbork.’

‘Westerbork? That place up by the German border?’

‘Yes, in Drenthe. They’re using it for transit. Then off to one of these camps, either in Austria or somewhere in the east. Do you have any information on those, by the way?’

Hirschfeld shrugged, uneasy. ‘It’s not the sort of thing they would tell me about.’

‘Let me know if you hear anything. It doesn’t look good. We’re getting postcards like these, from a place called Mauthausen, in Austria.’ Bruyns reached in the inside pocket of his coat, took out his wallet, and took a postcard from between its flaps. He passed it to Hirschfeld, holding it gingerly between thumb and forefinger.

The postcard was stamped KZ Mauthausen, in purple ink. On the back, there was a handwritten message from one Jankel Koopmans. Hirschfeld read it, with growing dread.

Dear
Elizabeth
,

I
have
now
been
here
four
weeks
and
I
am
well
.
Work
is
not
particularly
heavy
.
We
begin
work
at
seven
every
morning
and
finish
at
four
in
the
afternoon
.
Food
is
good
.
At
noon
,
we
have
a
warm
meal
and
in
the
evening
we
get
bread
and
butter
,
sausages
,
cheese
or
marmalade
.

Your
husband
,
J
Koopmans
.

Hirschfeld handed the postcard back. ‘What does it mean?’

‘It means that Jankel Koopmans is dead. We have seen dozens of postcards like this one. They are all exactly the same.’

Hirschfeld shivered. There was silence for a minute. ‘Is it possible to visit Westerbork?’

‘Oh yes. If you can get yourself up to Drenthe. You can visit. You can bring food parcels. Cigarettes. A few wives of prisoners have even gone up there to live, with their husbands. It’s a holding camp, you see. The trouble starts when they’re transferred to the camps proper.’

Hirschfeld sighed. ‘Can we get people out of Westerbork?’

Bruys shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘Yes, if you pay. You know the
Moffen
.’ He paused. ‘I’d get on with it, though. They’re deporting hundreds by train, every Tuesday. Look, I’ll try and find out if Manny was sent there. I’ll let you know.’

‘Thank you. That’s good of you.’

‘Not at all. Oh yes, I nearly forgot. We know his girlfriend has just been sent to

Westerbork.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Tinie Emmerik. She’s pregnant.’

*

Hirschfeld threw himself into his work. There had been more sabotage - the furnaces had been damaged at the big steel works at Hoogovens. The production schedules would have to be re-worked. He rang for Annemarie, then remembered there was no Annemarie, any more. His secretary had walked out, when her husband had been sent to the Reich, to work.

He had promoted a girl from the typing-pool, as her replacement. She had been making eyes at him, but he had no desire any more. The new girl, perhaps sensing some weakness in him, took an unconscionable amount of time off. She was not there now.

When the door to his office swung open, he thought she had come back. It was Else, in her best black coat, the one she used to wear for synagogue. She had never set foot in his office before.

‘What on earth …?’

Else was flushed and hectic. She peered oddly into the corners of his huge office, as if looking for something she had lost there.

‘Max …Bruyns just telephoned. There’s news of Manny. Oh Max, he’s alive! And

Bruyns
says he’s well. He’s just arrived in Westerbork, under the name of Piet Maasland. Joel Cosman is with him. He’s got the name Willem Verduyn. And Ben Bril is there.’

Hirschfeld blinked, nervously – the tic was getting worse. ‘That’s good. I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Max, we must go there
now
. Oh, I should have made him some food. Never mind. Come on, there’s no time to lose.’

‘Else, you must leave it to me … It’s better … Let me see the lie of the land ...’

‘But I’ll make him some food.’

‘I have to see what’s allowed, you see.’

‘You’ll go now?’

‘Yes. At least, I’ll start to make plans. No, alright, I’ll go now.’

The telephone rang. It was Rauter.

*

Hirschfeld sat bolt upright at his desk. Rauter had never telephoned him before, not in person. The Obergruppenführer sounded tense, also not something Hirschfeld had experienced before.

‘Hirschfeld, I’ve just had Lambooy on the phone. I need you to get to the NSM shipyard, immediately. The specialists due to be sent to Germany have not turned up. Sort it out, there’s a good chap. They are expected …’ Rauter’s voice rose at the end of the sentence. He was almost pleading.

‘What specialists?’

‘Three-hundred engineers. The first of them were due to travel to Bremen today.’

‘I know nothing about that!’ Hirschfeld’s fist tightened on the telephone receiver. Lambooy! Lambooy had managed to work this complete destruction of his labour policy by going to Rauter behind his, Hirschfeld’s, back. No doubt he had turned the attempt to blow up the
Arminius
to his advantage. ‘I know nothing about it,’ Hirschfeld repeated. He let himself sound angry, to Rauter, for the first time.