They'll Have to Catch Me First: An Artist's Coming of Age in the Third Reich

Thirteen

T h i r t e e n THE NEXT DAY WAS AN ORDINARY WEEKDAY. Dago Meyer was no longer singing but roaring through the usual morning exercise . After the breakfast of so-called coffee, I became wholly absorbed in a drawing when the flour-loaded truck rolled into the yard. Like brushfire the news raced from one dormitory to the next. Though tense and apprehensive, I was fixed to the portrait I was working on in order to finish it. My model was one of the Bachmann brothers, an important member of our hierarchy. He managed the store with provisions , under supervision of course. All that was sent by the Judenrat and much of what was taken from the arriving prisoners passed through his hands. He wanted to surprise his fiancée, one of the two nurses at the infirmary, with my drawing. It’s easy for him to sit still, I was thinking as I shaded his nose — he won’t be going on a transport. When he later gave me a case with pen and pencil as a way of thanking me, and hinted that the pen was made of gold,I was at a loss for words. Gold is no more than a color,but this was metal, authentic, eighteen carats! Under the circumstances, gold and I seemed like a strange match. I had heard that a few weeks earlier a girl fished a gold watch out of her soup — who knows, perhaps she would have preferred a chunk of meat. Jews had to hide what was left of their valuables wherever they could — it could have been in a bag of semolina or inside a stick of margarine, a tube of toothpaste or a jar of jam. My elegant gift surely originated from a similar source. For Bachmann, coming across gold and gems might have been an everyday occurrence, so much so that it became humdrum. Nobody had ever given me anything so precious, and yet what was I to do with it when the porters were out in the yard unloading the notorious bags of flour? It meant that I would leave on a cattle train in a day or two, allowed to take with me only the clothes I was wearing. After the first shock of the finality of our situation, the dormitory had fallen silent. Scared by the dejected mood of the grownups even the children made no noise. My neighbors were crouching over farewell letters with a faraway look, hoping they would be able to throw these last messages from the train while still on Belgian soil. Those in need of solid shoes, warm underwear or overalls for their journey into the unknown went to Cerberus, a bitter Jew who watched over a room full of clothes that were too shabby to be forwarded to Germany. Each pair of long johns or woolen socks was dear to him,and only with a coupon made out by Boden personally could one wrest them from him. My problem was not too few but too much clothing, more than I could take with me. Inspecting the cardboard box with my belongings , all those things my sister sent, I had to decide what to wear and what to leave behind. Two sweaters,one on top of the other,would do fine, so what if my coat would not button up. My old ski pants from Bavaria and the ski boots Gerda put into one of her packages were just what was needed or so I thought. They would never wear out, and I could hide the case with the golden pen inside one trouser leg. If worse came to worse I would barter the pen for bread, for I well understood that it would not be needed to write picture postcards. What was left was a crêpe-de-Chine dress,reminding me of the days when I was still a young lady of a more or less good family. Who would it fit best, Dina, Minnie or Evi? No answer. I jumped to the next question, namely where should I hide my sketchbook, when Ferdekopf’s guttural bass battered my eardrums, then my consciousness . “Seven-hundred thirty-two, down into the yard!” he called. My number. There he stood in the door, waiting for me. No doubt about it, I was number seven hundred thirty-two, it said so on the piece of cardboard on my chest. Having been convinced of that fact,Ferdekopf...