“Ah, then ... you did not receive the word. Dr. Koenig and I made a deal. You are in for a hundred thousand dollars ... you see ...”
“Shut up. You didn’t really think we would let you out of Poland with what you know?”
“My lips are sealed. I swear it.”
“You don’t have to swear it. We are going to seal them for you.”
Six powerful hands gripped him. He dropped to his knees. They began to drag him.
“Wait!” the Austrian said. “Let him crawl.”
“Excellency. There is more money. I didn’t tell Koenig. You ... me ... a private deal ...”
The lead pipe caught Kleperman behind the ear. He pitched face down on the dirt and crawled to Stutze and threw his arms around his knees. “Mercy! Mercy! Mercy for Max Kleperman!”
The pipe came down and down, again, again, again, until Max’s face was squashed like an overripe watermelon. Stutze broke into a sweat. He kicked with his gimpy leg and screamed and ranted until he had exhausted himself on the blood orgy and had to be held upright by his SS troopers.
Max Kleperman’s lifeless body was dragged down the long path lined with desecrated grave markers to the west wall and unceremoniously flung into a ditch twenty feet long and twelve feet deep.
Along the edge of the ditch the partners and fifty members of the Big Seven were lined up. They cried, begged, bartered. Below them, Kleperman lay in a bed of lime.
Some fell to their knees and cried for God and for mother. Whoremasters, thieves, informers.
“Mercy!”
“Fire!”
The sound of rifle fire was a cliché within these walls. The Jewish gravediggers watched impassively as the bodies plunged to the bottom of the ditch and stared up at them from grotesque positions. The firing squad advanced to the edge of the ditch and poured gunfire into the twitching bodies until they were still. Shovels of lime were spread. Another batch of Big Seven people was hauled in.
PROCLAMATION!
IT HAS BEEN DISCOVERED THAT THE BIO SEVEN COMPANY HAS BEEN GUILTY OF INNUMERABLE CRIMES AND WERE THE MAIN PERPETRATORS OF MUCH OF THE JEWISH SUFFERING. IN THE NAME OF COMMON JUSTICE THE GERMAN AUTHORITIES HAVE DISPOSED OF THESE CRIMINALS AFTER INVESTIGATIONS AND TRIALS.
AS OF THIS DATE ALL FURTHER DEPORTATIONS ARE CANCELED. SPECIAL SCHOOLS MAY REOPEN AND AUTHORIZED PUBLIC MEETINGS WITHIN THE GHETTO ARE PERMITTED. THE CURFEW IS AGAIN EXTENDED TO 7 P.M.
BY ORDER
RUDOLPH SCHREIKER
KOMMISSAR, DISTRICT OF WARSAW
Chapter Eleven
RACHAEL THUMBED THROUGH A stack of sheet music, selected several numbers, and slipped on her Star of David armband. Deborah, dressed in a gown and robe, entered the room, yawning and stretching.
“Are you certain it is safe to give a recital today? I feel uneasy about it.”
“Momma, there haven’t been any deportations for four days. Ervin is arranging programs all over the ghetto to get people’s minds off the past three weeks. Besides, I’ll be playing at your orphanage on Niska and nothing will happen there.”
“Well, I suppose it is all right.”
“I may see Wolf today. It’s been ten days.”
Deborah fussed with her daughter’s hair. “I wish you wouldn’t go to Andrei’s.”
“We can’t any more, Momma. It’s being watched all the time.”
“You can come here. Your father won’t be home till late.”
As Rachael turned and faced her mother, Deborah realized for the first time that her child was as tall and mature as she. “Thanks, Momma, but Wolf is terribly proud about that. Besides, it’s not the most important thing any more. Just being able to see each other for a few minutes and talking is all we really want”
Deborah patted her cheek.
Stephan burst into the apartment “Hey, come on. Aren’t you ready yet?”
“Be careful, children. Keep your Civil Authority Kennkarten handy and forgive me for not coming. I’m dog-tired. I have to get a few hours’ sleep before going back to the orphanage. Tell Susan I’ll take the night shift.”
Stephan and Rachael pecked kisses on Deborah’s cheek.
Rachael opened the door and stopped. “Strange,” she said. “Being able to walk in the streets again.”
“Be careful,” Deborah repeated.
The assembly hall in the Niska Street orphanage was capable of holding most of the four hundred children. It was one of the twenty-eight institutions under Alexander Brandel’s Orphans and Self-Help Society which somehow managed to feed and secretly educate over twenty thousand parentless youngsters. Unlike the rest of the ghetto, these homes had no hiding rooms, for it would have been impossible to construct them secretly. After all, Brandel concluded, these were children, and he had to believe in the final mercy of the enemy to leave them alone.
Rachael Bronski was the very favorite of the children. They crammed together, filling all the benches, sitting in the aisles and on the floor before her piano on the platform at the end of the hall. The nurses, teachers, and social workers stood along the back wall.
Rachael looked continually to the back door through which Wolf might appear. A long time ago when he returned from the Bathyran farm at Wework, he had come to her during a recital in this very place. Perhaps he would come again today.
Rachael held up her hands for attention and told the children what her first number would be. It was a new one in which she narrated the life of Chopin behind a sampling of waltzes, nocturnes, and etudes, ending with the patriotic crescendo of a polonaise.
The next number was a medley of Yiddish songs. She watched the faces of the children searching their memory for a faint voice in the past which had sung to them.
“Should I be a rabbi?
I don’t know my Torah,
Should I be a merchant?
I have nothing to sell.
“And I have no hay,
And I have no oats,
And I’d like a drink of vodka,
But my wife will curse me,
So I’ll find a big rock,
And I’ll sit me down and cry.
“Should I be a
schochet?
I cannot use a
chalef,
Should I be a
melamed?
I don’t know an
alef.
“Should I be a cobbler?
I don’t have any last.
Should I be a teamster?
I have no cart or horse.
“Should I be a blacksmith?
I won’t have any anvil,
Should I run a tavern?
No, my wife would get too drunk.”
“What would you like to hear next?”
“Palestine!”
“Rachael! Sing to us about Palestine!”
“Palestine!”
“Palestine!”
“The roses bloom in Galilee,
And the land rejoices.
Round the day and through the night,
We lift our thankful voice.
“We love you, our Galilee,
Your land makes our hearts sing.
We guard it dear with soul and gun
And fear not what fate brings ...”
Susan Geller entered at the rear of the hall. She looked round quickly, then whispered to her second nurse. The woman looked startled for an instant, then nodded and whispered to another nurse.
“All together now, children!”
“The roses bloom in Galilee,
And the land rejoices ...”
Susan Geller looked around once more and spotted Stephan. She wove through the pack of children, took his hand, and led him to a side door. “Make no outcry, Stephan. The building is surrounded by Militia. Get upstairs. There are twenty-five or thirty children in an attic classroom. Do you know where it is?”
Stephan nodded.