LUBLIN

MARCH 1941

The square was filled with people, wagons and suitcases. The pigeons had disappeared. It was late, and Thomas was hurrying to the railway station. The last snow had melted, and rain annoyed the city day and night. From alleys, courtyards and small streets emerged men and women loaded down with belongings, teenage boys dragging wagons with ropes, mules bearing burdens, girls lugging suitcases, boys pushing cloth sacks containing silverware that rang on the street like masses of cymbals. A wagon carried a Louis Quinze chair with a high back, paintings, a rococo cupboard, a dusty chandelier, a desk decorated with silvered ornaments.

The Jews had been ordered to leave Lublin. Posters with the order of the district governor had been pasted all over the city: by 15 April the ghetto would be established inside the Jewish quarter, and no more than twenty thousand Jews would be allowed to live there. The others had to find a new place to live within the boundaries of the district—there were enough towns and villages. The Jews’ abandoned houses would be given to Poles, ‘who might not love us,’ Frenzel had laughed the day before, ‘but they know how to appreciate us for getting the Jews out of their faces. They’ve been dreaming about that for hundreds of years.’

Frenzel was as happy as a little kid: his project was working out in perfect order, and it had already earned ‘words of esteem and respect’ from the commander of the SS and the police, Globocnik. Yesterday evening he had invited Thomas to the Deutsches Haus and shared with him ‘a bottle of the most excellent wine in the Lublin district… as you expected. The Judenrat has given us vital assistance, especially the vice-chairman, Dr Alten. Your advice to strengthen cooperation with them and to give them a feeling of partnership proved brilliant. “Unity of aim” was a slightly exaggerated formulation, which I found hard to sell them.’

‘Because you didn’t leave the salesmanship to me,’ Thomas reproached him.

Frenzel, choosing to be magnanimous, nodded. ‘The joint work definitely oiled the wheels. The members of the Judenrat were efficient and obedient, and didn’t annoy us with all their Eastern European moodiness. What’s more, the Judenrat is paying the travel expenses of those leaving and making sure the Jews who remain in the city report for work…You know when I understood that it was a flash of brilliance? The day that the Jewish women raised a commotion when their husbands didn’t come back from Belzec. The Judenrat and the Jewish police restored order immediately. We didn’t have to lift a finger. That’s when I understood their potential. Even the campaign that they announced to clean up their quarter was a success. Evidently the Judenrat kept the people of means in Lublin, those who can pay taxes and finance the Jews here, and that’s their business. As for the Jews who voluntarily leave the city, we treat them with respect—I emphasised this order everywhere, as you recommended—and allow them to clear out with property, without a weight limit, and even to travel by train. Within the framework of the Voluntary Transfer we got rid of thousands of Jews in the first two days. I estimate that we’ll get to twelve thousand, and without trouble. In a year, at most two, Lublin will be cleansed of Judenrein.’

Thomas crossed the street, making calculations. The previous evening Frenzel was so preoccupied with the matter of the Jews that Thomas didn’t have a chance to tell him that a bottle of wine in the Deutsches Haus was an insufficient expression of gratitude. To demonstrate this to his secret adviser, Frenzel would have to throw himself behind the parade.

In the last few weeks the mass of ideas and tasks piling up on the subject of the parade had kept Thomas thinking until the small hours. Countless unresolved matters suggested themselves, sending him into a frenzy. He sometimes compared his thinking to a racing car (he liked the Mercedes-Benz models) that had lost its brakes and was careering through the institutions of the Reich, looking desperately for allies.

This afternoon he was supposed to meet with Rudolf Schumacher in Cracow for a ‘drink shared by two old friends’. He would confide in him, boast about his new connections and his distinguished mission, and tell the fat man that he’d decided to make him a trustee of the Germano-Soviet parade in the Ministry of Economics, to help him enlist supporters among the industrialists who influenced the Führer. Regrettably, though, the fate of the parade didn’t depend on Schumacher, but on the Foreign Office: didn’t that amateur Ribbentrop regard the treaty with the Soviet Union as his greatest achievement? So let him defend it!

He wrote letters to Karl Schnurre and Martin Luther, boasted about the progress achieved at the first parade committee meeting and predicted that the initiative to preserve the peace would be regarded in history as the greatest achievement of the ministry in the twentieth century.

Frenzel claimed that they didn’t believe in the parade at the Foreign Office either—but a week later Thomas showed him a personal letter signed by Martin Luther, in which he expressed enthusiasm about the ideas of his friend Thomas Heiselberg, ‘in acting tirelessly to promote the parade, which has gained favour among people around the Führer’.

Frenzel was impressed and suspected nothing.

But how was it possible to make progress without strong allies in the army? Thomas had to address high-ranking officers in the Wehrmacht who had learned from history and adamantly opposed a war on two fronts. And the SS? After reading Martin Luther’s letter, Frenzel offered his help there. Nevertheless it was possible that he was bothering the young officer in vain. Perhaps he had no access at all to those ranks. He also took steps regarding Göring, and wrote to Kresling about ‘a secret matter of great value’, stating that he had learned his lesson and that his punishment had been just. As yet he hadn’t received an answer.

Sometimes, if he relaxed even briefly, Thomas admitted that with each passing day the chances of holding the parade became slimmer. It was frustrating: an exalted historical event had been entrusted to him, he had been seduced by a project in which he could fulfil his vision undisturbed (except for little Weissberg), without the sacks of lead that people like Weller and Mailer always loaded on his shoulders, and now the bastards had abandoned him. No one in the Reich would respond to his appeals, and the second meeting had been postponed to April. But instead of giving in to despair, Thomas swore he would shake up the system, make a commotion, scatter bait everywhere, spread false rumours; maybe the time had come to take even more extreme measures.

A grey-haired Jewish woman puffed up with tattered sweaters spoke to him in Polish. ‘Where does one get a receipt for items deposited in the warehouses?’ He wagged his finger to show that he didn’t understand. She had caused his whole tower of ideas to collapse. He took a deep breath and looked at the sky. The roofs mingled with the clouds, birds crossed the black chimney smoke, people stood on wooden balconies and held on to rusty iron railings. Two policemen with a drowsy German shepherd lying between them called out to a girl who was supporting the old Jewish woman who had just accosted him.

The girl was tall and broad-shouldered. The policemen ordered her to turn around and come over to them, and her mother pushed her towards them, but she stopped, seated the old woman on the pavement and tightened the scarf around her neck. Everything was done lazily, as if she had all the time in the world. The policemen shouted again, and the dog got up and stretched its rear legs. Even Thomas was on edge: move already!

He passed her. She was well dressed, and wore a bright blue shawl. She walked with her back straight, and didn’t even deign to look at them.

One of the policemen shouted to her in Polish: ‘Take off your hat. Don’t you see a German?’

The young woman answered that, according to recent announcements, it was forbidden to remove one’s hat. Her voice had a touch of insolence. Thomas hoped the policemen hadn’t noticed.

A baby-faced Polish policeman took a puff on his cigarette and coughed while his two friends laughed, then he straightened up and shouted, ‘Rosa Heiler, you’re not in the library anymore. Get the hat off your head!’ He whispered something to his friends.

‘Librarian Rosa Heiler,’ shouted another policeman.

Thomas froze.

The young woman looked perplexed, blushed and mumbled in Polish, ‘What hat? There is no hat.’ She undid the knot in her kerchief. The wind dishevelled her black hair, which hid her face. Grey strands showed in it—she wasn’t young.

She raked her hair with her fingers. ‘Is this all right?’ she called out to the policemen, turning towards her mother and beginning to walk away.

‘Are you leaving already?’ they laughed. ‘We told you to report here, now!’

Unwilling, she turned around and walked towards them.

‘The Jewish filth always acts as if she’s something special,’ shouted the young policeman. ‘Rosa Heiler, I want you to recommend a book!’

Thomas approached the old woman who was sitting on the kerb. Her face was wrinkled, ashen. As soon as she understood he wasn’t dangerous, she lost interest in him. There was a broken scream behind him. The old woman’s eyes widened and her face twisted in dread. With a great effort she pushed her body upwards but couldn’t rise. Thomas turned around. Rosa Heiler was lying in the street. The policemen’s batons rose and fell. The young one put his boot on her stomach. His hand groped behind him and gripped the iron bars of a window, and then he raised his foot and kicked her in the head. It happened in seconds.

Thomas was roused. He crossed the street and stormed the cluster of policemen, pushed them aside and shouted that he was a personal friend of Globocnik.

They pushed him. A club struck his arm. The pain made him laugh. A sharp smell of vomit filled his nose. The asphalt was blotted with black stains. Rain began to fall.

One of the policemen waved his baton at Thomas’s face.

‘Hit me, you Polish dog,’ shouted Thomas, ‘and by this evening you’re a dead man!’

People approached them from the direction of the Europa Hotel, headquarters of the Propaganda Ministry. One of them, in an SS uniform, gripped his arms.

‘Take your hands off me,’ Thomas shouted.

‘Calm down, calm down right away. Stop going wild!’

Thomas pulled his identification out of his pocket and almost stuck it on the officer’s face. ‘Ask Sturmbannführer August Frenzel from Globocnik’s office about me!’

‘What department are you in?

‘I’m not in any department. I’m dealing with matters that someone like you might hear about in another ten years.’

The officer pretended that his words didn’t impress him, and examined the identification paper.

‘Give the document back, you rogue!’ Thomas shouted.

Two policemen gripped Rosa Heiler’s mother and shoved her towards the crowd of Jews sitting in the square. A little boy approached her, and his father ran after him.

‘I’m the one who devised this plan for removing the Jews,’ Thomas shouted. His face was burning. Restraining his body demanded a supreme effort. ‘The order was to treat the evacuees with respect! I demand that all of those animals be put on trial!’

‘Clearly,’ said the officer, and his tone of voice softened. ‘You retain the right to submit a report.’

‘You’re a disgrace to your uniform!’ Thomas spat in his face.

The officer leaned forwards. His burst of rage stood in opposition to the strange delay in his movements. It was clear he was waiting for his friends to hold on to him.

One of the policemen grabbed the woman’s body by the hair and pulled it towards a wagon. Her head dangled back. The rain was rinsing the blood from her neck, revealing a gash.

The officer’s companions restrained him. He twisted as though trying to extricate himself.

‘You want to bet you don’t dare come close to me?’ Thomas muttered, trying to control the tremor that had seized his body.

Lying on the wagon, the woman’s body looked like meat hanging in a butcher shop. The wagon rolled away, the body rocked left and right, bumping against the sides. The policemen stood in a huddle with their friends against the wall of a green-steepled church.

The SS officer and Thomas exchanged names almost as an afterthought. The officer reminded Thomas he wasn’t connected to the incident and told him that the Polish policemen had heard that in eastern Poland, under Soviet rule, the Jews were cruelly persecuting the Poles, and so it was no wonder they were angry. Thomas said he didn’t intend to lodge a complaint. They parted without a word, and the officer disappeared into the square.

A voice burst from a loudspeaker, shouting to the Jews that soon they would be taken to the railway station in wagons, and any Jew who dared to approached the city of Lublin again would be shot.

The sky brightened. Locks were removed from the shutters of shops, lights were turned on in the display windows, a waitress in a white apron served a pot of tea to two young men. One of them lit a cigarette, his friend waved the smoke away and they both laughed. A woman queued outside the pharmacy. The rain fell harder and washed the sweat from his face. His trouser cuffs were muddied. He missed the train.