“Suppose I let you have your agency, but on one condition?”
“And that condition, Herr Doktor?”
“Brandel does not run the agency.”
They had come to the impasse. Goldman had hoped he could push it through without this moment. Now he had to make his gamble. He reached inside his breast pocket and placed a small envelope on Koenig’s desk. “The full plans for the agency are in here, Herr Doktor,” he said. I beg you to study them carefully and give me your answer tomorrow.”
The old man left the city hall, not knowing whether he was about to spend his last day on earth.
When Koenig opened the envelope he took out five one-thousand-dollar bills.
It was quite clear to him. The Jews wanted to run this agency away from prying eyes. His first inclination was of anger. He snatched the envelope from the desk and started for Rudolph Schreiker’s office. Then he stopped. Schreiker would laugh at him and pocket the money.
The very idea that a good German official would accept a bribe! He walked back to his desk slowly. The last few weeks had plunged him from the dreamworld to Teutonic purity. At this moment Schreiker was organizing hoodlum gangs to begin looting Jewish-owned warehouses.
Why shouldn’t the Jews play the game also? But where did he fit in? Five thousand dollars! More in a snap of the finger than he had made in an entire year at the university.
While everyone was playing cutthroat, wouldn’t it be utterly ridiculous for him to stand alone as a paragon of virtue? And if he did, how long would he last with Schreiker? Schreiker had been playing him for a fool.
Think it over, Franz. Schreiker needs you. You can make yourself indispensable to him. And this game. It is a rough game. The war was rough. The business here is rough.
He paced the floor of his home taken from Bronski in the Zoliborz suburb. Everyone is scheming and conniving. But he, Koenig, was in a key position. This is only the beginning. He was in a position to amass fantastic wealth in the days ahead.
Play the game ... five thousand dollars ... play the game ... Bit by bit the moral foundations upon which Dr. Franz Koenig had built his life had been nibbled away. From the moment he had cast his lot with the ethnics before the war he began compromising and rephrasing the wisdoms and rethinking the thoughts and justifying.
The next day.
“Emanuel Goldman is here to see you, Herr Doktor.”
“Send him in.”
“I have spoken to the Kommissar. I was able to convince him that a separate agency for Jewish welfare cases would be the best solution for all concerned. Your Civil Authority is authorized to issue a license for its operation.”
Goldman nodded.
“I have taken under consideration the appointment of Alexander Brandel. I think he is an excellent choice. He will deal with me directly on matters of rations, personnel, and privileges.”
Goldman nodded again. Dr. Koenig was cutting himself in for a nice big slice, he thought Now he could not back down. Koenig had pocketed the first bribe. He could be had. The gamble was won. In the future the money would come harder to Koenig, for the five thousand dollars had not only bought his silence but had stuck his neck out. There will be some more for you, you rat, Goldman thought, but not so much as you think, or we may tell your friend Schreiker how you have been stealing from him.
Stage two: Formation of the Orphans and Self-Help Society. Alexander Brandel was made its director.
Stage three: American Relief turned over tens of thousands of dollars of emergency funds to Brandel. In the name of the Orphans and Self-Help Society he leased fifteen pieces of property in the northern section of the Jewish area of Warsaw, where it was less expensive.
The houses were set up as soup kitchens, ration stations, aid and medical stations, orphanages, and for whatever welfare work came under the society’s jurisdiction.
Although these places functioned legitimately, each one in fact served the secondary purpose as a screen for the continued activities of the Zionist groups, which the Germans had ordered disbanded.
The Zionists had successfully changed their name but in fact were still intact. Personnel for the Orphans and Self-Help Society were all key people from the Zionist groups. They were given special armbands and special immunities. Another thousand dollars to Dr. Koenig made certain the Orphans and Self-Help Society staff was not screened.
One of the master reasons for the Orphans and Self-Help Society was to get money from American Relief to its welfare objectives without first passing through the hands of the Jewish Civil Authority for disbursement. Goldman was certain that if the Authority touched the money it would become an object of graft.
Brandel now had bases of operations, the Zionists intact, money to pay personnel to run the farms, to increase the capacity of the former Bathyran Orphanage, and to get the hungry and homeless fed and clothed.
There was a final purpose. Only some of the houses were used for welfare work. Brandel was able to get choice jobs for his people, and many of them moved into the headquarters house and worked under the authority of the Orphans and Self-Help Society and donated their wages back into a communal pool. This, Tolek Alterman proclaimed, was “living Zionism.”
Journal Entry
The Orphans and Self-Help Society is a reality. All of our key people in Warsaw are working for us.
I took the five-story building at Mila 19 as our headquarters. Twenty of our Bathyran youngsters have left their homes and are living on the premises and donating all their earnings into a communal. This makes me terribly proud! Six of the buildings were handed over to Simon Eden’s Federated Zionists as “Orphan and Self-Help Agencies”. ... Simon chose Leszno 92 as his headquarters. He also reports communals in all six of his places. We are reserving the other places, for we are certain some of the reluctant divergent groups who did not want to unify will come over to us now.
Self-help has always been our one great source of unity in the past. It will bring us together now. Incidentally, at my last meeting I asked Goldman, Zemba, and Eden if they would mind jotting down notes on things they see and hear. So many things are happening these days I cannot keep track of them all. I want their impressions to set down in the journal. May I say that they are tolerant of this historian. They all promised to collect notes and turn them over to me at our weekly meetings.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Chapter Seven
Journal Entry
I HAD A LONG talk today with Ervin Rosenblum. I wanted his opinion about what the Germans were really up to and who was actually running Poland.
Ervin says Hans Frank, the Governor General of Krakow, is not the real boss. His background indicates he is a civil administrator mainly here to exploit Poland for the German economy.
Lublin, not Krakow, is the real capital. The German political police, concentration-camp administrators, criminal police, special-duty squads, and all of that personal Nazi contingent of Hitler’s, independent of the German army, have their organizations and duties so intermixed it is nearly impossible to determine where one ends and the other begins. We do know that there is one boss in Lublin of SD, SS, and Gestapo for the General Government Area. He is Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik. He is an Austrian (like Hitler) and has a background as a Jew baiter. As an SS major general, he has only to answer to three people over him—Hitler, Himmler, and the SD chief in Berlin, Reinhard Heydrich.
I think Ervin is right. It is a cinch he has more power than Hans Frank.
As for the true aim of the Germans? There is a Department 4B of the Gestapo in Berlin which handles “Jewish Affairs.” It is being run by a Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, who, I understand, has been to Palestine and speaks Hebrew. Ervin is sure the directives are all part of a master plan coming from Department 4B from blueprints drawn up by Reinhard Heydrich.