Accident of Fate: A Personal Account, 1938–1945

4. Prison

FI 56 4 PRISON While we walked down the two lights of steps, accompanied by the detectives, I wondered who might have denounced us. Perhaps one of the other tenants, who, despite our precautions, had noticed our preparations? Or perhaps it was the concierge, the usual—and most likely—suspect? Westeppedoutintothestreetandwereledtowardsawaitingpolicecar. It was bitingly cold, and I dug my hands deep into my coat pockets. With the tips of my ingers I felt the edges of some sheets of paper and realized to my horror that I was carrying the false travel documents for all three of us. Only later would I discover that if you were a Jew, material proof of any “wrongdoing” was entirely irrelevant. At that moment I thought it desperately important to somehow get rid of them. Approaching the police car, I noticed that the detective holding open the back door was not watching me. As I slowly got into the car, I extracted the papers from my pocket and slipped them into the rain gutter. Settling into the back seat as nonchalantly as I could, I secretly enjoyed an intense—if short-lived— feeling of triumph. The detectives drove us to the Ustashe police headquarters, in the large square only a few blocks away from our apartment. Thenameofthisimportantsquarehasalwaysrelectedthecurrent political regime. Under the Ustashe, it was called Independent State of Croatia Square; previously, under the monarchy, it had been King Peter Square. After the war, under the Communists, it was Square of the Revolution; today, in newly independent Croatia, it is Square of the Croatian Greats. 81118 001-226.pdf_out 6/17/114:15 PM K 56 7A 57 4 PRISON The three of us were led into an oice, where our personal information was taken down. We were searched and ingerprinted and our watches, belts, neckties, and shoelaces were coniscated. Then each of us was interrogated separately. The Ustashe who conducted my interrogation accused me of trying to leave Zagreb without permission. I denied this strenuously, but he seemed completely uninterested in my answers. His questioning was perfunctory; he ignored my replies and made no attempt at all to get me to confess. It began to dawn on me that because I was a Jew, the question of my guilt or innocence was simply not relevant: I was now in the hands of the Ustashe, and it made no diference to them whether I had or had not committed the crime of trying to save my life by escaping. My fate, whatever it was, was a foregone conclusion. I was led down a light of stairs into the basement and locked into a tiny cell, about one metre wide and two metres long. For the irst time in ▴ Ustashe police headquarters on Independent State of Croatia Square, where Uncle Oskar, Aunt Camilla, and I were imprisoned on 12 January 1942. This picture was taken in 1981, when the building was a dormitory for university students; by then, the building was named after Moša Pijade, the Jewish partisan leader who had been one of Tito’s closest associates. 81118 001-226.pdf_out 6/17/115:11 PM C M Y K 57 FI 58 4 PRISON my life, eleven days before my seventeenth birthday, I was under arrest. I surveyed my surroundings. The cell was completely bare except for a narrow cot against one wall and a naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. I could see a small window high up on the wall, but its glass pane was completely opaque, making it impossible for me to tell whether it was night or day. I sat down on the edge of the cot and stretched out my legs. The cell was so narrow that my feet easily touched the opposite wall. I soon lost any sense of time; I had nothing to do or read, and the light bulb burned continuously. Every few hours someone brought me food. Whenever I needed to go to the toilet, I banged on the cell door and an armed guard would accompany me to the latrine, wait for me, and then accompany me back. Thedoortomycellwasmadeofheavysteel,withiverowsofsmallholes drilledinateyelevel,eightholestoarow.Becausethewallsofmycellwere auniformpalegrey,theonlypatternsmyeyescouldfocusonandplaywith were those provided by the forty little holes. I spent hours lying on my cot, my gaze ixed on them, counting them over and over in every possible direction, arranging and rearranging them into innumerable shapes and patterns. When I could no longer bear the...