Café Berlin, page 28
Lohmann then reported to Gestapo headquarters as he had been instructed. He had dressed carefully for the occasion: dark overcoat, oversize veteran Nazi Party emblem on his lapel, bowler hat, and a copy of the Völkischer Beobachter negligently stuck in his coat pocket. He had his Party membership card dating back to the twenties in his wallet and probably would have walked out of this point of no return unharmed, even had luck not favored him once more.
While looking for the room to which he had been summoned, Lohmann was addressed by a man in his mid-fifties in civilian clothes with a short Hindenburg haircut. Lohmann recognized him as an attorney of no great note but, like himself, a veteran Party member. He had made a name for himself in the days of the Weimar Republic by defending Brown Shirt hoodlums arrested for drunkenness, brawling, smashing shop windows, and grievous assault. He told Lohmann he was now a Public Prosecutor—a function that conferred on the office holder the right to demand that defendants be decapitated; usually they were. This man was delighted to see Lohmann, and when informed by him what the nature of the visit was, he offered to accompany him to Room 212, the officials therein being well known to him.
The presence of the Public Prosecutor had a magical effect, and after pleasantries Lohmann was dismissed. Lohmann said he was not surprised. His credentials were too good, and no blame or complicity relating to his employer could be attached to him.
February 29, 1944
This has been the story of my life, which ground to a halt on December 16, 1941. I have skimmed through it. It is compounded of bombast and disgrace, but also of my not immodest pride at my perseverance, and my sense of accomplishment that I, spice merchant turned cabaret owner, should have struck an important blow against the Nazi war machine.
Above all I hope that my love and devotion to my family, whose hopes had been so high for me, have been dutifully recorded.
To the Lord God I say “hatanu”—we have sinned—and “patanu”—we have transgressed—when I think of Mario, of Chayim Spiegel, and of Samira.
To the reader, should these pages ever be found, I say, temper your judgment with mercy.
Through my little window I see the fine tracings of a new moon against the darkening sky. It seems fitting at this time to repeat the blessing I said at my father’s side upon the sighting of each new moon:
May it be a good sign and a good fortune
for us and for all of Israel, Amen.
And now I shall put these pages away. I will bring them out only at the hour of deliverance, if with God’s help (and Lohmann’s) there should be one.
April 22, 1945
My last entry was dated February 29, 1944. It has been over a year. I have survived, but at some cost. But this is not the time for a recital of aches and pains. Lohmann came this morning, greatly agitated. The Russians are at the outskirts of the city. To the citizens of Berlin it is now becoming evident that it will be the Russians, hell-bent for revenge, and not the more benign Anglo-Americans who are going to be marching into the capital. To aggravate matters, the Führer bunker, where Hitler, Goebbels, and his entire staff are ensconced, is still operative. The Berliners know it, and the Russians know it also. They will certainly make every attempt to capture this prize. Lohmann is clearly worried—he has memories of the First World War.
“If we can survive the first week after Ivan enters the city we shall be all right. The Russians will install a military government and there will be order. But during that first week, the troops will be turned loose, to do as they please—that’s what the French did in 1918. They unleashed their colonial infantry in the Rhineland. The Senegalese raped everything between eight and eighty.”
I don’t know if this story was true, but I have heard the Germans tell it many times.
Lohmann left me a meager ration and cautioned me to use it sparingly.
April 25, 1945
Lohmann finally came after an absence of two days. He came after dark, and we discussed the meaning of a new development. Since early this morning I had become aware of a new sound: a sound like huge bedsheets being ripped in the sky, or the roar of freight trains rumbling overhead. It is of course the sound of Russian artillery. Occasionally I hear a crump when the shells strike home.
Lohmann reports that the city is now completely surrounded. What we hear is a Russian artillery symphony, orchestrated to reduce Berlin to rubble.
“Lohmann,” I said. “Do you think it might be safer if I left the attic and took my chances in the streets? I cannot imagine that under these conditions the Gestapo is still looking for me.”
“Herr Saporta. You still don’t know your Germans. Half of Berlin is destroyed, but the mail is still being delivered. The police are still writing citations for littering. The judges of the People’s Courts are still in session, sentencing to death defeatists and traitors. ‘Ordnung muss sein’—There must be order—even in the midst of chaos.”
“I rely on you to get me out as soon as you think it’s safe. I must admit to you that I am more frightened now that the end is so near.”
“Don’t concern yourself, Herr Saporta. Lohmann will get you out. We’ll soon be opening the Kaukasus for the Russian brass, just wait and see.”
And he was gone.
April 28, 1945
The artillery barrages are not only gaining in intensity but the sound of the trajectory has changed, indicating that the fieldpieces have moved into the heart of the city. When I look out of my dormer window, I see great palls of gray dust. At night I can see fires everywhere.
Lohmann did not come on the twenty-sixth. He did not come on the twenty-seventh. There have been longer absences in the past, but the situation is more dangerous now, and I am not very stable myself; my nerves are frazzled to a dangerous degree.
I am also out of food, save for an impossibly hard roll, but I will soften it with my saliva.
I slept away the afternoon. I had my recurring dream of Damascus: safe in the bosom of my family, in the never-never-land of my father’s balcony. But with awakening, reality descended on me. My father, alav ha shalom, was dead. My mother, sisters, and brother dispersed. There was no balcony to which to return. Not anywhere.
My concern for Lohmann grows by the hour. Has he been arrested? Has he been killed by a Russian shell? Is he lying wounded under a mound of rubble?
I strain my ears for the comforting sound of his footsteps, but all I hear is the whoosh of incoming artillery shells.
April 29, 1945
No Lohmann since the twenty-fifth. Also without food since then. It is clear to me that something must have happened to him. Even if I ran into the streets, where would I find him? At his aunt’s in Zehlendorf? Absurd. I know he would be here if it were physically possible. The conclusions are obvious. He’s dead, badly wounded, or has been arrested. Arrest these days usually means execution.
I now realize, more than ever, how much Lohmann’s friendship means to me in this alien land. The food with which he sustains me is not part of it. It is the strength and common sense he exudes that give me peace and an anchor to my existence.
Here is my plan, then. I will stay in my attic until the shooting stops. The firing now is so intense and the explosions so close by, that the end can only be days off. Provided I am not killed by shell fire first, I will take my chances in the streets. Should crazed rearguard Nazis shoot me or vengeful Russians kill me, ma’alesh, it cannot be helped.
I am not afraid to join my father Ezra. I long to kiss his hand, to sit next to him, with the smell of mimosa and jasmine enveloping us. I would lay the ledger of my accomplishments and failures before him.
Would he see my cruelty toward Chayim Spiegel as a sacrifice in the name of a greater task? Or would he see it through his gentle eyes as the betrayal of one Jew by another? How would he judge my dealings with Samira? Samira with whom I could have stood under the wedding chupah; Samira who would have given him the grandchildren for which he yearned. What verdict, O Father?
And the Bosnian country boys, plunging to their deaths off the railroad trestle, drowning in the icy waters of a lake. Would my father see me as a soldier, fighting for a noble cause, or as an unseen assassin playing a shadowy part in a dirty game? An agent of the night, causing the deaths of a thousand apple-cheeked boys? What verdict, O Father?
These are all ramblings of a disordered mind. I am faint with hunger, empty-headed. When I lie on my couch I drift from sleep to daydreams, outlandish fantasies of my childhood and the later years. I visit my Aunt Regine with my mother; there are other guests, we drink tea, eat pastries; older boys tease me, I am nervous, I wet my pants, I can feel the dark hot stain spreading across my lap. Then I am with Cousin Eli; we are visiting the sharmutas, but I am not sure with whom I am coupling, Frau Landau, Hilde, Latifa, Samira?
Samira. There are recurring dreams of Samira. They are always the same. We appear side by side in a brown monotone. She is standing, she wears a summer dress with white stockings, there is a garland of flowers in her hair. Her look is demure, her right hand rests on my shoulder. I am seated on a straightback chair; I wear a striped suit; I can see the high-topped shoes. The tarboosh is on my head, in my right hand is a ring of amber worry beads. I ask myself, why does that which never happened seem so normal, so completely a part of my life? Suddenly it comes to me. It is the wedding picture of my parents, hanging in its gold frame in our living room, only it is Samira and I who are united for all eternity.
I stop for today. I am intensely agitated; I can feel that a chapter in my life, perhaps the last, is coming to an end.
April 30, 1945
Early this morning I heard small hesitant steps on the wooden attic floor. Then a soft knocking and the voice.
“Herr Saporta. Herr Salazar! Help me get in. It is Hilde.”
I pushed against the heavy cupboard, and Hilde stepped through the crevice between the cupboard and the wooden slats of the attic partitions. Even in her head scarf and stained mackintosh I would have recognized her at once. She chose to ignore my bearded, pallid, malodorous condition. Before giving me an explanation of her presence she insisted that I eat the two slices of bread with ersatz jam and drink the liter bottle of thin coffee and milk that she brought out of her coat pocket.
She told me how she had come to me. The janitor of the former eating club in the Kantstrasse had come to her employer’s house to fetch her. They had immediately gone to the Kantstrasse. Lohmann had sought refuge there. He had been shot, once in the arm, once in the side; he was bleeding profusely. She had attempted to staunch the flow of blood, but she feared that his arm had been shattered, that he would go into shock. It is clear that Lohmann needs medical care desperately.
According to Hilde, Lohmann had been stopped by a patrol of the Volkssturm. These were patrols consisting either of elderly men or of heavily armed teenagers, some as young as fourteen, brought to the colors to stop the Russian invader. The boys were usurping their authority by shooting suspected “defeatists” out of hand. One of them had stopped Lohmann and ordered him to open his briefcase. The briefcase was full of contraband food—most of it intended for me. Lohmann had fled into the hallway of a bombed-out building, but not before the boy had unslung his rifle and fired a volley of shots at him. Lohmann had taken refuge behind the charred doors of the entry, and when the boy entered the hallway in pursuit, Lohmann had smashed him in the face with a brick. Lohmann still had sufficient strength to drag the boy into the hallway with his good arm and pitch him down into the cellar.
He had applied a rough tourniquet and after nightfall had made it over to the Kantstrasse. This is where Hilde had joined him, thanks to the janitor. Once Lohmann and Hilde were alone, he had told her of me and voiced the fear that I was starving to death in the attic. She was to try and keep me alive until the hour of capitulation. Those were his instructions.
Hilde now added her concerns for Lohmann’s safety to mine. She did this by describing the situation in the streets of Berlin for me. Units of the Russian army were now less than a kilometer away from us. Refugees from other districts, already occupied by the Russians, brought fearful stories. Russian artillery pieces were firing point-blank, demolishing buildings one by one, reducing them to hillocks of rubble. Occasionally they spared a building where white sheets were draped over the balconies in sign of surrender. But once the tanks and the artillery were displaced forward, platoons of infantry combed the surviving apartments, dredged those cellars that had not caved in, and brought terrified groups of humanity into the open. Women and girls, regardless of even age, were repeatedly raped by the men, who queued up to take their pleasure. Men of military age or those wearing remnants of military uniforms were shot out of hand.
Hilde was terrified that if the Russians found Lohmann they would execute him in spite of his years, in the belief that his wounds stemmed from some Nazi rearguard action against them.
“You must take me to him, Hilde,” I said. “I speak Russian with enough authority to protect him.”
“That is impossible, the streets are crawling with Volkssturm patrols, and if you’ll excuse me, Herr Saporta, with your appearance, without proper identification, they’d hang you from the nearest lamppost.” She finally agreed that she would come for me at nightfall, the darkness increasing our chances of reaching Lohmann.
Hilde left me several hours ago. I have finally managed to lace my shoes on my swollen feet. I have put on the coat with which I came here over three years ago.
I see things very clearly now, and I am no longer afraid. This I must do:
Gain Lohmann’s side and see that he gets medical care and comes to no harm. Then I must go to Istanbul, seek out Minassian, and learn if he has word of Samira. Should he fail me I will go to Aleppo, to the Bahsita quarter, and go from door to door until I find Moshe Zechariah, the ritual butcher, and ask for the whereabouts of his daughter.
I pray to Him on high that He should hear my plea. Not for my gratification, nor to expunge my guilt. Only to restore Samira to the lifelong love and protection I have pledged to her.
These memoirs I will place into the drawer of this crude wooden table. May the reader read them with compassion or disdain; pass them on or throw them away. It has been written. It is out of my hands.
I hear Hilde’s footsteps. And now, “Con el pie derecho y el nombre del dio,” I go forth.
Daniel Saporta, son of Ezra
Berlin, April 30, 1945
From The Los Angeles Times of May 19, 1990:
Diary restored to la developer
Document Bridges Eras, Cultures
At a ceremony held in Beverly Hills, a diary was returned to Daniel Saporta, 79, prominent local developer, by Reinhard Dinkelmayer, director of the Goethe Institute. Saporta had left the diary in the Berlin attic where he had been in hiding from the notorious Gestapo from 1941 until the capture of the city by the Allies in 1945.
After the razing of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the city, a number of abandoned buildings in the eastern sector were condemned. A wrecking crew discovered the diaries and turned them over to police. As the contents were deemed to be of cultural value they were given to the Goethe Institute, a German foundation with branches throughout the world.
Saporta, who is a native of Damascus, Syria, attended with his wife, Samira, a former artist, and sons Alan and Barry, both developers.
In accepting the diary Saporta said he wanted to use the occasion to honor a former employee, Otto Lohmann, manager of the “Kaukasus,” a Berlin nightclub, which Saporta once operated. Lohmann not only kept him alive but probably gave his own life in attempting to protect him, Saporta said.
Saporta, until his retirement in 1982, was CEO of the Shop-Rite Discount Marts and a pioneer in the shopping mall concept. He is president of Congregation B’nai Sefarad and active in community and cultural affairs.
Harold Nebenzal, Café Berlin
