A rigid, honest, humourless German, that judge… Yes, yes, let each bear the stigma… But in fact, it seemed that was the way things were headed. Europe was in the midst of the age of distinguishing marks, of insignia and armbands. In Germany, swastika armbands; in Italy armbands with the fasces; armbands for youths inscribed with ‘Youth’; armbands for women inscribed ‘Women’… Before long, there would even be a demand for armbands that simply said ‘Human’ – how many people would wear such an armband?
2
All of a sudden, on their way home from synagogue or after a stroll around town, the thirty men with yellow stars on their chests and backs had found themselves in the lobby of the Palace of Culture, prisoners of the SS soldiers. What did they want from them? Why had they rounded them up? Where were they going to take them? This was what they were asking themselves in their minds.
‘How can I get out of this trap?’ wondered Ernst, looking around him. At every door and window in the lobby was stationed a soldier in grey, holding carbines at the ready. So, there he was, a prisoner of the SS, all of a sudden, without having done anything.
The shouts of ‘Halt! Herein!’ had ceased outside. The young officer in the black uniform entered the lobby and looked over that strange troop, that assembly of individuals tall and short, young and old, fat and thin, wearing elegant German suits or comical Ost-Europeische caftans. He paced up and down the line two or three times, visibly amused, with an ironic smile on his lips. He then came to a stop in front of the line, with his hands on his hips and his sharp elbows jutting outwards, and said in a voice unusually gentle, almost honeyed:
‘Meine Herrschaften! Gentlemen! I have invited you here on important business for our empire, our German Reich. The quicker and the better you finish the task, the quicker you will be free. For, work alone makes man free… ’
He gave a signal, two guards holding rifles stationed themselves in front of them, and the officer left.
The men in the line began to wait. What important task would they have to perform? And for the German Reich no less… And how long would it take? They asked themselves fearfully. Then, they began to calm down. In the end, the officer had not spoken rudely. On the contrary, he might even be said to have spoken politely to them. ‘Meine Herrschaften,’ he had said. My gentlemen! Very höflich, very polite… And he had said they would be free.
They waited there, each in the same place, each standing on one of the thirty-by-thirty-centimetre, square, grey and white flagstones that covered the hall like a huge chessboard, they waited an hour, they waited two hours, three hours, the guards were changed a number of times in the meantime, men in uniform went up and down the stairs, nobody told them anything.
Ernst lost his cool:
‘Why are you keeping us here pointlessly like this?’ he asked one of the soldiers, addressing him in perfect German with a slight Viennese accent.
The soldier said nothing.
‘What is the task we have to perform? Why doesn’t anybody tell us anything?’ he asked the other soldier.
He might as well have been talking to the wall.
The soldiers on guard, wearing grey-green uniforms, were changed every hour, while the men stood and waited in the same place, in a perfect line, shifting their weight from one leg to another or to both legs. The soles of their feet ached. Their bodies had become heavy, unbearably heavy. They were burning with the desire to flex their joints, to stretch out on the cold hard flagstones of the palace lobby. Their faces, which had been pale and frightened at first, had turned red with impotent fury, and then yellow, puffy from pointless waiting.
In the afternoon, at around four, they suddenly heard the rumble of large engines. Heavily laden trucks came to a stop in front of the gates of the Palace of Culture. In that instant the SS officer in the black uniform also appeared, screaming as if out of his mind:
‘Los! Los! Move! Unload the trucks!’
There was not a trace of meine Herrschaften or Höfligkeit4 in his screams! His reedy, strident voice was like a whip cracking over the backs of beasts of burden. The thirty, in their best clothes, exhausted from waiting, set about unloading iron bedsteads and straw mattresses from the trucks and then carried them up the stairs to the first floor. A billet for Waffen-SS soldiers in transit through the town was being readied there. A long line of heavy trucks, hundreds of iron bedsteads, and as many straw mattresses…
‘Quickly! Quickly! Schneller! Verflucht noch einmal! Get a move on! The sooner you finish, the sooner you will be free!’ yelled the officer.
And the men ran down the stairs, and then laboured back up, hauling the iron bedsteads and straw mattresses.
Up, down! Up, down! Their legs were breaking, their shoulders were aching, their clothes were tearing. They no longer felt how heavy were the iron bedsteads, they no longer felt how light and baggy were the straw mattresses, they felt only exhaustion and humiliation.
‘Quickly! Quickly!’
They did not even notice when it grew dark. The lights came on. The large windows of the Palace of Culture were lit as if for a celebration, like when the town hall or a sports club or a benevolent society held a festive concert or a tea dance or a masked ball. Now, however, a strange ball indeed was being held in that fussy provincial palace, the windows were lit up festively, in stark contrast to the surrounding streets, which were plunged in darkness, and behind whose fences and dark windows waited pale folk with tearful eyes.
The news had quickly spread through the town. The streets around the building were empty. Nobody dared to set foot there. But in the nearby lanes and streets, behind the windows and fences from which it was possible to see the palace, people had gathered to wait. The parents, wives, children of those ambushed stood and waited. They watched anxiously: perhaps some familiar outline might appear at a window, perhaps somebody might manage to give a sign, perhaps some news as to what was happening within might arrive.
That day, many people in town did not eat their Sabbath lunch, nor their third, shaleshudes5 meal, nor the supper to bid Queen Sabbath farewell. Imperceptibly, the Sabbath, when fasting is strictly forbidden, unless it coincides with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, became a long, silent, sad,