She stares. Opens her mouth, but her voice has deserted her. All she can manage is a weak gasp for air. The east. It is well known among the U-boats what this means. Regardless of the promises of propaganda, regardless of the lies told about resettlement of Jewish war labor, by now the truth is known. The east is death.
“Unless”—the Herr Kommandant repeats himself—“you decide to confess to your crime.”
“It’s true.” Angelika’s eyes go damp with tears. “It’s true, Herr Kommandant. The documents were forged. It’s true.”
“It’s true, you say. And yet according to the report from Untersturmführer Dr. Kraus of the Stapoleitstelle Burgstrasse, you have refused to divulge the name of the criminal who supplied you with these forged documents. The forger himself.”
Tears burn her eyes. “I cannot, Herr Kommandant,” she says. “I cannot divulge what I do not know.”
“So you purchased forged documents from a man with no name?”
“I have no idea, Herr Kommandant. About any name. I never saw the man.”
“Is that so? Very strange,” he says. “For according to the confession of the Jew…” He must consult his paperwork for the name. “The Jew Ernst Israel Rosen.” He raises his face to her. “That is your father, is it not?” he asks but does not wait for a reply. “According to his confession, it was you—his daughter—who organized illegal transactions.”
Angelika is stunned. Devastated. “My father?” She cannot. She cannot believe this. “My father said this?”
“Are you telling me he lied?” Dirkweiler wonders.
But Angelika is too shocked to utter another word in response.
“Must I repeat my question? Are you telling me that your father has lied?”
Angelika stares. Her eyes are bright with tears. Her brain is steaming. She is trying to work out the puzzle. There is a strong answer and a weak answer, but which is which? Whom does she incriminate? Her tatte who just betrayed her? Or herself? And then she thinks of the blond Jew’s instruction. Nützlich! Make yourself useful to them. “No, Herr Kommandant,” she answers. “My father does not lie.”
“No? Then you will confess to your crime, please, and give me the name of the damned forger!”
“Yes, Herr Kommandant,” she answers. Her tears are like acid. “I do confess. And I will give you the name. But first, I beg you. Allow me to see my parents.”
Again the smirk. “You are a very attractive specimen,” the Herr Kommandant decides, but she senses no physical desire behind his words. Only a statement of fact. Then he is up from the chair. “The name of the forger in one hour,” he demands, his voice dull now, devoid of interest. “Either provide it for me, or you and your parents will be on the train tomorrow.”
It’s true what the Herr Kommandant told her about the room abovestairs. In the Grosse Hamburger Strasse Lager, the most unfortunate of the Jewish prisoners are housed on the top floor. The so-called Ost Zimmer. The East Room. Women, men, children, some U-boats, some with the Judenstern still sewn to their clothing, all packed together on dirty straw mattresses. Some cry in the Ost Zimmer. Some pray. Some sing to their children. All fear desperately. Angelika is crouched in front of her tatte and mamme. Her bruises still sting. Her rage is an oven. But she contains it all. No screaming. No hysterics. All the pain, all the anger is distilled into the cold of her eyes.
Tatte is beseeching her. “Please, Angele. Forgive me. I had no idea. I thought, with a female, they would be lenient.”
“Look at my face, Tatte. Does it look as if they were lenient?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Tearfully he reaches out to cradle his daughter’s face. “My child,” he says, as if perhaps a father’s touch alone can heal the bruises. She winces but does not draw herself away.
“Do you know why we are here, Tatte? Here. Up on the top floor? It’s because…” she starts to say but stops. Removes her father’s hand and gives a quick glance around them. Her voice drops. “It’s because tomorrow, everyone here will be loaded onto the train.”
Mamme is confused, which only amplifies her fear. “The train? What train? Train to where?”
“Mamme, keep your voice down,” Angelika orders and then turns to her father to answer the question. “The train to the east.”
A fearful whisper from Mamme. “The east? Tatte, what does that mean, the east?”
“Shoosh, Mamme. Quiet,” is all her husband has to say to her. He has not broken eye contact with his Angelika. “Is there something?” he says very carefully. “Something you can do, Daughter? Perhaps if one of these officials… If they notice you.”
His daughter stares back at him.
The door opens at the opposite end of the room, causing a rustle of panicky voices. A pair of men from the Jewish orderly squad appear. They wear the yellow star, but they have adopted a bully’s swagger in their dung-gray coveralls. Of the two, the stocky ordner with the facial scar seems to be the man in charge, since he carries the list, while the other carries the placards.
“Everyone listen clearly!” the stocky one shouts. “If your name is called, you will raise your hand and keep it raised until you have received a placard. You are to wear the placard at all times hung from around your neck until tomorrow when you are boarded onto the train. If you have infants or children under the age of six, they will travel with you but do not require a placard. Is this understood?” He does not wait for the answer that is not forthcoming anyway but goes straight into his list. “Grünberg, Moses. Grünberg, Silva. Hirsch, Otto. Hirsch, Shira. Hirsch, Eva!” And so it goes. As the ordner continues to shout out names—“Blume, Alfred. Blume, Gottfried!”—the prisoners dutifully raise their hands, even the children, and the second ordner distributes small placards on strings bearing the letter T.
T for Transport.
“Rosen, Karlotte. Rosen, Ernst. Rosen, Angelika!”
“Must we raise our hands, Tatte?” Mamme wants to know.
He replies with his eyes still locked into Angelika’s stare. “Yes, Mamme. We must raise our hands.” And so he does. Mamme anxiously follows. But Angelika’s hand remains unraised, and her face is coolly decisive.
“Give me the name,” Angelika says.
“The name?” her father repeats.
“The name of the forger,” she tells him.
He swallows. “Angelika. That’s a death sentence for the man.”
“You want me to do something, Tatte?” she asks him. “Then I must give something. Speak.”
Angelika is seated again at the battered table but with the T placard around her neck. The same Waffen-SS man stands by when the door creaks again sharply, and in comes Kommandant Dirkweiler, now in a necktie and his shirtsleeves. He is no sooner in the room when Angelika blurts it out.
“Heinz Zollinger!”
The man stops dead.
“You asked for a name, Herr Kommandant. I have given you a name,” she says. “Heinz Zollinger. He is a printer’s apprentice in the Warschauer Strasse, Horst-Wessel-Stadt. He is your forger.”
The Herr Kommandant slumps slightly at the shoulders. He looks satisfied, perhaps even slightly entertained. “Well. That wasn’t so difficult, was it? To be a little useful after all to the Reich?” he asks. “To me?”
Angelika raises her eyes level with his, those eyes that can cut a man to shreds. “No, Herr Kommandant. Not so difficult. All I ask is for a small amount of mercy. For me,” she says, touching the placard. “For my parents.”