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

Fourteen

F o u r t e e n IWAS NOW MAKING BROOCHES EVERYDAY. Perhaps it was during the fourth week that Kommandant Frank appeared in the doorway, followed by Boden and a man in civilian clothes, someone from the Gestapo to judge by his raincoat and slouch hat. “An inspection from Brussels,” one of the workers whispered. Everyone stiffened, suddenly and wholly absorbed in work — I too was bent low, gluing pins to the backs of leather brooches. “How many attaché cases a week can you produce?” the visitor asked both Mr.Karwasser and Mr.Wagschal in an ordinary,businesslike manner, as he passed behind the rows of tables to better examine the work. I knew this voice,I had heard it before,hollow and without timbre .Casting a sidelong glance, I recognized Erdmann, the Gestapo officer who had asked me all those questions in the Gestapo cave of the Avenue Louise. The same one who then had given orders to keep me shut up in a janitor’s closet until I would tell him where my father was. I never understood why, after a few hours of confinement, I had been loaded on the truck to Mechelen with all the others. No interrogation ,no torture. That I arrived at the camp uninjured and in one piece had seemed like some kind of an oversight. But oversight or guardian angel, if that man recognized me I was lost. Miracles do not happen twice in one month and even though I was wearing a gray smock and turned my back to him, I was not invisible. Paralyzed by fear, I remained bent over my work, feeling like a mouse that found itself beside a cobra. “If I had wanted to, I could have found out where your father is,” said the hollow voice directly behind me. And though my heart was racing I had to turn and look up. Suddenly all became clear to me. It was as if scales had fallen from my eyes. It was he, this stranger with the sallow face under the slouch hat, the Angel of Death from the Avenue Louise and Chief of Security of the Gestapo for all of Belgium, who had saved me from the transport to Poland. Without another word, Erdmann passed on. I shuddered, yet I felt relief. When I summoned enough energy to continue gluing my pins, the three men closed the door behind them. “If I had wanted to, I could have found where your father is.” For the remainder of the day and most of the night Erdmann’s words were ringing in my mind. Maybe he was right, maybe he could have gotten it out of me. “I will not tell you,” I had answered in the Gestapo cellar when he asked me for my father’s address. Though not intended that way my words must have sounded like a provocation. They had simply slipped off my tongue. What I had really meant was, “How can I betray my own father?” So that Papa would disappear without a trace like Uncle David? At this point Erdmann should have delivered me into the hands of his specialists. If a good beating was not enough to make me speak, then they had other means. Would I still have refused to give that address? I will never know. Instead Erdmann, Himmler’s zealous lackey, whose job as Chief of the Jewish section of the Gestapo was to “clean” Belgium of all its Jews, had treated me like a rebellious child, shutting me into a broom closet only to let me go a while later. Letting me go meant imprisonment in Mechelen but protection from deportation. Where was the key to this puzzling cat and mouse game? Probably in my sketchbook. Leafing through it, coming upon the drawing of my left hand, Erdmann had suddenly stopped to question me about my father. “Did you do that? Let’s see, show me your hand. Where are you from? Where did you study?” Harmless questions I could answer in a straightforward manner. Did the linear shading of my drawing remind him of old German masters? Did he wonder if Dürer had been resur222 I r e n e Aw r e t rected in a girl, let alone one of the despised Jewish race? Or did he think that only great and irrepressible talent could have driven someone in my...