I was arrested the next day, betrayed by one of the Jews in the ghetto. It was someone I knew. He was an electrical fitter, Naum Bauch, and came several times to the police station to repair electrical wiring. He came to see Major Reinhold the morning after the escape and talked to him in his office for a long time. Reinhold did not invite me in. Up till then not a single conversation had taken place without my involvement and I realized I must be the topic of their conversation. I could have fled while they were talking, but where to? I could not go to the partisans because as far as they were concerned I was collaborating with the police.
After midday he finally ordered me to be summoned and said he suspected me of treachery. I made no reply. Then he asked, “Is it true that you revealed the date the ghetto was to be destroyed?”
“Yes, Herr Major, it is true.” It was the only reply I could give to his direct question.
He was astonished. “Why do you admit it? I would have been far more likely to believe you than this Jew. Why did you do it? I trusted you so completely!” That reproach hurt me. I replied that I did it out of compassion, because these people had done nothing bad. They were no Communists, just ordinary workers, artisans, and simple people. I could not do anything else.
Reinhold said, “You know I have not personally shot a single Jew, but somebody has to do it. An order is an order.” It was true. He had never taken part in the executions. He understood what an injustice was being perpetrated against defenseless people, but his human decency had a limit beyond which his duty as a soldier took over and could silence his conscience.
He then asked me about the weapons, and he himself listed the quantity and type of weapons transferred to the ghetto. I realized they had already checked the store. I admitted everything. Then he said he had no option but to arrest me. I was disarmed and imprisoned in the basement.
The next day he summoned me again. Major Reinhold told me that he had not slept all night and could not understand what secret motives were behind my behavior. “I imagine you have acted as a Polish nationalist, in order to take revenge for the extermination of the Polish intelligentsia,” he said.
At this I thought it would be easier for him if I told the truth. “Herr Major, I will tell you the truth on condition that you give me the opportunity of committing suicide. I am a Jew!”
He clutched his head. “So the police were right after all. Now I understand. What a tragedy!”
I repeat this word for word, because it is impossible to forget something of that kind. You see the kinds of situations Germans sometimes got themselves into. They did not know how they should behave or what they should do.
“Write me a detailed confession,” he ordered. No punch in the face, no harsh words. Our relations remained as they had been before, like between a father and son. There is no other way of describing it. I wrote the confession and said, “Herr Major, one time I looked death in the face and managed to escape. I ended up here through chance. I was brought here, could not refuse, and in my situation had no option. I think you understand me.”
He called the sergeant-major and said, “Make sure he doesn’t do anything foolish.” I asked him to give me an opportunity to shoot myself before the Gestapo started liquidating the other Jews. Now I could only wait and was completely calm.
During the day and evening everybody usually ate together and that day I still ate with the gendarmes. In the evening my chief again summoned me and I reminded him, “Herr Major, you promised that you would give me an opportunity to shoot myself.” He said, “Dieter, you are a levelheaded and brave young man. You managed to avoid death once before. Perhaps you will succeed on this occasion too.”
I had not been expecting that. It was the amazing reaction of an honest man in an impossible situation. I held out my hand to him and said, “Thank you, Herr Major.” He hesitated, but then shook my hand, turned, and left. I never saw him again. I was told much later he had been severely injured by partisans and died of his wounds. At that time he gave me courage and the will to live.
The gendarmes did not treat me like a criminal. Even after reading my confession and discovering that I was a Jew, they took me from the locked room where I was detained to the communal table. The way my escape was arranged was that I said I wanted to write a letter to my family, and they took me to my old workplace. I wrote a letter in the office and said I wanted to ask the boy who did the cleaning to take it to the post office. I knew he had already left. I went out unhindered into the corridor and ran from the building toward the fields. Three policemen were standing talking in the courtyard. They were from a different station, not from Emsk, but I knew them. They paid no attention to me.
When I had run quite a long way, I was pursued by some forty people on horseback and bicycles. I lay down in a freshly harvested field and hid among sheaves which had been piled up in a stack. Somebody ran past. They knew I was hiding somewhere and started combing the field in broad rows. As they were passing barely five meters away from me, the sheaves collapsed and the stack leaned over.
To this day I cannot imagine how they failed to notice me. I prayed fervently. Everything inside me was screaming. There have been two moments like that in my life, the first time in Vilnius when I hid in the cellar, and again now. They did not notice the movement of the sheaves and ran on. I heard one of them shouting, “It looks as if he’s got away!”
I lay there and waited for darkness to fall before coming out. I wandered to a shed, went in, and fell asleep. Later, at around five o’clock in the morning, I heard protracted shooting. It was Operation Iodine. They were shooting the people who had remained in the ghetto. It was the most dreadful night of my life. I wept. I was destroyed. Where was God? Where in all this was God? Why had he hidden me from my pursuers but not had mercy on those five hundred children, old people, and invalids? Where was divine justice? I wanted to get up and go back there to be with them, only I had not the strength.
24. 1967, Haifa
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ILDA’S DIARY
Today is my 25th birthday. How awful! It seems no time at all since I was 16, and wailing because I had won the girls’ skiing competition and Toni Leer told me it was unfair because I ought to be competing with the boys. He said I needed to be checked to see whether I was really a man or a woman. I beat him up. Musa came early this morning and brought me a present, a staggering gold bracelet in the form of a serpent with sapphire eyes.
I prefer silver, as Musa knows, but he said he couldn’t give me silver when I am gold myself. He wanted us to go to Netanya for a whole day but I was busy all morning. I had promised Kasia to take her to find a job and then to collect a parcel for Daniel from the post office and go to the library. Musa waited four hours for me and then we did go to Netanya.
Today he absolutely had to go back home and I was a bit hurt that he had to leave immediately when I so much wanted to stay with him a bit longer. We had only three hours at the hotel and I cried when we had to part. He tried to explain that he does not belong to himself as much as Western people do. He is dependent on his family. His uncle had arranged to meet him today and he could not refuse or postpone it. He was very upset, too. We have been meeting for almost three years but I never know the next time we will see each other. We meet very rarely, apart from in church. It’s dreadful. Musa told me I look more like a boy than a 25-year-old woman, and I remembered thumping Toni Leer for saying just the same thing. How funny.
25. May 1969, Haifa
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