The Emperor of Lies, page 21
And the old ladies laughed, their hands held self-consciously in front of their mouths:
Oh Chaim, you cannot expect us to believe that –
Chaim, tylko nie wystaw mnie do wiatru.
Yet they still closed their eyes and allowed themselves to dream a little. With the great Chairman, nothing seemed impossible.
Only one thing was lacking to make the lie complete, but although he hoped and prayed, Regina did not get pregnant. Biebow informed the Chairman at this time that the authorities would not be satisfied from now on with the removal from the ghetto merely of the elderly and infirm. Soon all who could not work – even the youngest – would be forced to leave.
Perhaps he should have heeded the warning in those words.
But the Chairman still dwelt in his Lie, and in it there was a Child, just one, that would be strong enough to survive all the misfortunes the Lord chose to visit upon them, and he would be able to confide in this, his only Child, all the things he had hitherto not dared to say to anyone.
But if his wife remained infertile, despite her youthful years, how could this child come into the world? How, and from where, could it be acquired?
He tried to save the rest of the children of the ghetto in a more tangible way.
It was quite a simple equation, after all: the more he could get into work, the more the authorities would spare.
As early as March 1942, he had begun setting up special apprentice workshops for boys and girls aged between ten and seventeen. This was where the older children from the Green House and the other orphanages in Marysin had gone.
In May of that year, after the collectives of German Jews had been moved out, he had the old elementary school building in Franciszkańska Street converted into a vocational school with twelve separate classes and fifty children to each class. There were classes in cutting out, in hand-and machine-sewing, in materials. Even simple bookkeeping was taught.
After a few weeks’ training, those showing the most aptitude were given shifts in manufacturing at the Central Tailors, where they worked under the supervision of inspectors who went round and picked them up on any mistakes, or for wasting time. The children’s task was to make special camouflage caps
for the German army, with an outer layer of white fabric for winter field warfare, and a grey top inside for fighting in normal terrain. The Chairman went from bench to bench, saw the material run in broad lengths through the children’s nimble fingers, saw the teachers bending down to help hands hold pieces of fabric straight as the sewing-machine needle tacked along them, panel after panel, and he was overcome by a feeling of pride in spite of everything: that despite the chaos and starvation all around, it was still possible to maintain such order and discipline.
From July 1942 he was able to get permanent sewing jobs for some 700 of the children in the ghetto over ten years old. If he only had time, he would without doubt be able to create jobs for – and thus save – at least as many again.
But while he was fortifying the walls of his worker city in this way, the disintegration proceeded unabated:
Back in April, news had started filtering through of the massacres in Lublin.
Then (in June): Pabianice and Biała Podlaska.
Forty railway carriages full of women and children had left Biała Podlaska and disappeared without trace.
Sometimes as he sat behind the closed doors of the Secretariat, he felt there was a landslide happening outside. As if something holding together the seams of reality itself had burst apart.
Dawid Gertler came to his office and told him straight out what he had lately heard of the mass deportations about to be carried out in Warsaw. There were three hundred thousand Jews being held in Warsaw. According to Gertler, the authorities there intended to spare only a tenth of them; barely thirty thousand would be kept on to work in the factories of the Warsaw ghetto.
At the same time, the English were intensifying their air raids on strategic cities in the Reich – Cologne, Stuttgart, Mannheim. On 26 June, British radio broadcast news of the massacres of Poland’s Jewish population for the first time. The BBC bulletins named towns such as Slonim, Vilna, Lwów.
But also Chełmno – the city of Kulmhof in the district of Warthbrücken:
Thousands of Jews from the industrial city of Łódź and surrounding towns and villages are believed to have met their fate in this otherwise insignificant place.
This news from the other side of the wire reached the ghetto via the hundreds of illegal radio receivers, swiftly turning what had hitherto been a macabre suspicion into certain knowledge.
Outwardly, of course, nothing happened. The starving men and women of the ghetto continued to drag their gaunt bodies from one distribution point to the next; already bent backs became still more bent, if that was possible. But there was a certainty where there had been none before. And that certainty changed everything.
The morning after the BBC’s news of the massacres in Chełmno, the Praeses carried out an inspection of the Department of Statistics in Plac Kościelny. Together with Neftalin the lawyer he went through all correspondence that had been kept and made sure to burn all documents which might make it appear to posterity that he had been too ready to comply with, or had indeed acknowledged, the true significance of, the authorities’ orders. This applied, for example, to the question of dealing with the excess baggage that had been taken from the Jews as they were deported from the ghetto, for which Biebow refused to pay the additional freight costs. Rumkowski asked Neftalin to replace all record of this with a special archive entry showing not only who had been deported but also who had been granted exceptional leave to stay, that is, all individuals he had personally intervened to save or had otherwise vouched for.
Everyone who came into contact with the Chairman at this time could testify to a change in the smell of his body. He seemed to secrete a sharp but sweetish odour that clung about his clothes like stale tobacco smoke and followed in his wake wherever he went. But most who saw him in those days also said he carried himself with great determination and dignity. As if it were only now, with all this practical management of large groups of people, in assembly camps or columns of statistics, that he could set a course worthy of the enormous task he had imposed on himself.
*
On 24 July, the news comes through of Czerniaków’s suicide in Warsaw:
The cowardly man would thus rather die than be involved in the evacuation of the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto. And yet, as far as I understand it, thousands of Jews are still leaving Warsaw every day. So if that is the operation Czerniaków wanted to stop, his suicide has altered nothing. It is just a vain and meaningless gesture.
So reads his summary of the situation that has arisen for the other members of the Council of Elders.
Nothing like what is now happening in Warsaw will be allowed to happen here, he assures them. This is not a ghetto, after all – it is a city of workers, he says, unintentionally using the same phrase as he did the day he received Himmler outside his barrack-hut offices at Bałuty Square:
This is a city of workers, Herr Reichsführer, not a ghetto.
*
He admits to his private physician, Dr Eliasberg, that his heart has been giving him trouble again, and asks if he could possibly get him some more of the old nitroglycerine. Eliasberg not only procures more nitroglycerine, he also brings other medicine for the heart: little capsules, white and shiny like the saccharine pills that little children used to sell on street corners.
For someone who is starving, even a tiny amount of sugar like that on their tongue can mean the difference between life and death. The thought arouses him strangely. He keeps the little cyanide tablets in a metal case in his jacket, and is always putting his hand in his pocket to check they are still there.
He never thinks about what it would be like to take the tablets himself. Instead, he sees himself stirring two of them into Regina’s tea. She’ll pull a face at the bitter taste, but that’s all she’ll have time to do. Death is instantaneous. Dr Eliasberg has assured him of that.
How could he even be contemplating such a move, he who loved her so dearly? The answer was that it was precisely because he did love her so dearly. He could never endure the shame of standing before her destitute and humiliated. Like Czerniaków, chairman of the Jewish Council of Elders in Warsaw, who had not understood what obeying orders meant.
‘Czerniaków was weaker then me,’ said the Chairman. ‘That’s why he’s dead now.’
That was as he lay there, letting Dr Eliasberg listen to the rhythm of his heart.
‘He took his own life rather than send his brothers and sisters east.’
Dr Eliasberg said nothing.
‘That will never happen here,’ said the Chairman.
(My children are making camouflage caps for winter field warfare. It can’t possibly happen here.)
Dr Eliasberg said nothing.
‘But if it did happen here, I want your assurance, Dr Eliasberg …’
‘You know I can’t give any assurances, Sir.’
‘But if I were to die … ?’
‘You will never die, Praeses.’
*
On the big area of worn grass behind the Green House, the children from the Marysin orphanages gather and play games.
Their laughter echoes beneath the hard, black sky.
The children form two rows, holding hands, then raise their hands high above their shoulders and walk towards each other. The two lines join to form a circle and they start to move round, circling first one way and then the other.
He sits in his carriage, following them with his eyes. He does not want to reveal his presence immediately and spoil their game.
The younger children stumble and fall; the older ones laugh. Samstag, the German boy he noticed last time he was here, is leaning against a rusty old car chassis without wheels. He is wearing shorts that would have fitted a child ten years younger and a short, ribbed pullover that reaches to just below his navel. He smiles all the time, but without any visible sign of pleasure: as if his mouth were detachable and flopping about at the bottom of his big face. All over Marysin, the grass grows high and lush. In back yards, behind wooden sheds and latrines. The children eat the grass. That is why they are all black and sticky round the mouth.
He must remember to have a word with Miss Smoleńska about it. There could be poison in the grass.
He waits. They still have not noticed him. The clouds gather in the sky above and merge into thin veils of Scotch mist, slowly thickening. There is a distant rumble. Thunder is on its way. Soon the first raindrops will start to fall.
The children look up –
He puts his hand in his jacket pocket, prises the case of cyanide tablets open with his thumbnail and stirs them with his fingers.
The frequency of the drops is increasing now. There is dull grumbling from the wall of thunder as he asks Kuper to drive closer. The children stand with their fingers in their mouths, staring at the horse and carriage, and at the old man with his hand in his jacket pocket, like a vision from another age.
He sees that they see, and is clearly embarrassed.
Well carry on playing then, he cries, off you go, he says, and laughs – and when the children, at a nod from Miss Smoleńska, rather unwillingly start to move again, he pulls the tablets out of his pocket and throws them all up in the air –
Heave ho, here we go –
A child detaches itself from the throng. He is maybe ten years old; stocky, with solid thighs and broad shoulders, but quick. He whirls like a tornado across the ground and brings the palm of his hand down wherever a white tablet has landed.
There, and there, and there! chuckles the Chairman delightedly.
But as with Samstag, only the Chairman’s mouth is smiling. In his eyes there is a piercing, lethal glint. Apart from the energetic boy hunting down the sugar pills, none of the children dare to come closer. They just stand timidly with their fingers in their mouths.
The boy’s name is Stanisław. He arrived at the start of May with a transport from Aleksandrów. His mother and father, sisters and brothers (there were at least seven of them) are all dead. But he probably does not know this. Or does he?
Hej ty tam, podejdź tutaj.
‘You there, come here!’
He says it in Polish, immediately indicating that he has identified Staszek as one of the new children.
And when the boy reluctantly approaches the barouche, he reaches down and cups the boy’s chin firmly in his gloved hand.
Powiedz mi, ile żeś podniósł?
Show me, what have you found?
Staszek opens his fist and shows a handful of white pills. It is impossible to tell which of them are cyanide tablets and which are ordinary sugar pills. Completely impossible: even he could not tell the difference. And the Chairman laughs his big laugh. He wants it to be seen from far and wide how impressed he is with the boy’s efforts.
At that moment, a violent clap of thunder shakes the landscape, and within a minute torrential rain is falling on them.
The operation began at five in the morning on 1 September 1942, on the anniversary of the German invasion of Poland.
Police chief Leon Rozenblat was given orders to mobilise his ghetto force just half an hour beforehand. By then, the army transport vehicles had already driven into Bałuty Square: heavy, open lorries like the ones that had carried shoes and sacks of bloody, dirty clothes to the ghetto on recent nights. And in addition, half a dozen tractors with two or three trailers attached.
In the pale dawn light, some of the wooden fences and barbed-wire barricades across the exits from the square into Zgierska and Lutomierska were taken down, new barriers erected and the standard Schupo guard supplemented by members of the security forces.
While all this was happening, the Chairman of the ghetto lay sleeping.
He slept, and dreamt he was a child.
Or to be more accurate: he dreamt he was himself and a child simultaneously.
The child and he were competing, aiming stones at bottle tops. The child threw his bottle top, and he himself followed suit with his stone. After a while, he noticed it was getting harder to see. The child threw the bottle top further and further in the full, blazing sunshine, and the stone he was about to throw grew as huge and heavy as a skull in his own hand, so big that in the end he could not grasp it, even if he used both hands.
A wave of anguish swept over him. The game was not a game any longer, but some grotesque test of strength between these two who were both himself.
At the very moment he tried to hurl the giant stone, someone grabbed his arm and said:
Who do you think you are? Aren’t you ashamed of your arrogance?
By then the roar of the lorries’ diesel engines could already be heard, along with the loud clanking of the metal chains that were pulled taut as the towing vehicles slowly moved off down the streets of the ghetto.
*
He said afterwards that what grieved him was not the purge per se; the authorities had in fact prepared him for it in advance. What grieved him was that an operation on that scale could begin and be in progress for hours without anyone thinking of ringing to inform him.
It was his ghetto, when all was said and done. It was their duty to keep him informed.
Miss Fuchs explained later that when the Secretariat received the order, everyone assumed that the Chairman had already agreed to it, and that the fact he had not come into the office was simply explained by his preferring to draw up his plans and guidelines in the security of his home.
But that was not the impression he got when he arrived at Bałuty Square and was met by a delegation of his own staff outside the row of office huts. On the contrary, their staring eyes gave him the feeling they were making a laughing stock of him, as if he had gone from being the highest authority in the ghetto to being pilloried, someone everybody could laugh at:
But Mr Chairman – DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT HAS HAPPENED?
The child throws the bottle top – but he can’t throw his stone that far.
The bottle top is white and shiny, vanishing through the air like a stroke of lightning. There was no stone in the world that would have enabled him to hit it.
He ought to feel angry that the stakes in this battle are so clearly weighted against him. Everything should really speak in his favour: the heaviness of the stone, his superior body strength; the fact that he is so much older and more experienced and wiser than he was as a child. He should be able to throw that far but it is still beyond him.
And what is left is shame. At the fact that he, having amassed so much power, can still achieve so infinitesimally little.
*
When he finally got to the hospital in Wesoła Street it was after eight in the morning and the frantic relatives who had gathered outside the cordon threw themselves at him as if he were their only salvation.
At last, cried the crowd, or that was what it seemed to be crying:
At last he is here, the man who will free us from this scourge … !
At the hospital’s main entrance, SS-Hauptscharführer Konrad Mühlhaus stands supervising the deportation of all the sick and confused patients Rozenblat’s men are now herding them, out of the building. SS-Hauptscharführer Mühlhaus is one of those men who feels he must be permanently in motion, so other people won’t notice how short he is.
He tramps round and round on the spot as he shouts orders like:
Rauf auf die Wagen! Schnell, schnell, nicht stehenbleiben!
