The Street Sweeper

  Some three days later the Kapo Jakub received the electrician from Ciechanow, Noah Lewental. It was night and he came to the entrance of Block 11 with two bottles under his arm.

  ‘Who’s this?’ asked the sleepy SS guard on duty.

  ‘This is my cousin and this is for you,’ Jakub said, placing the bottles in front of the SS man.

  ‘What is it? Give it here. Egg liqueur!’ the SS man laughed.

  ‘Two bottles … for you,’ repeated Jakub.

  ‘Ach, you Jews! Even here, even now, you can get anything.’

  Noah said nothing and watched to see what he would do. The guard opened one of the bottles and took a swig.

  ‘Jakub, they love you around here. Even the dead send you their tributes. Well, you can have a drink too.’

  The SS man gave the bottle to Jakub who pretended to drink from it and then handed it back. Before long the guard had finished the first bottle and quickly moved on to the second.

  ‘From Kanada, yeah?’ said the SS man, now affected by the liqueur.

  ‘Wherever it’s from, sir, it’s yours now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah … it’s mine now. That’s exactly right, Jakub. Mine now, isn’t it?’

  With a small amount still left in the second bottle, the SS man had fallen asleep and Jakub led Noah Lewental towards Rosa’s cell. He walked so silently behind Jakub that the prisoners on the other side of their cell doors, assuming Jakub was alone, cried out as the two of them passed by.

  ‘Help me, Kapo Jakub. Please help me.’

  When they arrived at Rosa’s cell Jakub unlocked the door quickly.

  ‘Don’t be long. I don’t know how long the guard will sleep. It could be half the night or he could be already waking now,’ he whispered. Pushing Noah inside, he closed the door on them and left, a chorus of prisoners’ cries trailing away after him.

  Noah Lewental looked down at the naked body at his feet. It was unrecognisable. Noah wondered if the giant Kapo had led him to the wrong place when a voice arose from the badly torn naked body with open wounds that lay without even a blanket or covering of any kind on the grey concrete floor.

  ‘Noah, is that you?’

  ‘Rosa?’

  ‘How did you get here? Are you really here or am I delirious?’

  Noah bent down. The voice was hers. This was the woman he had, since childhood, planned to marry, the woman he had lost through an act of adolescent impatience, the woman he’d hurt so much. And now this. What had they done to her?

  ‘I’m here, of course I’m here,’ he whispered. ‘You sent for me, didn’t you? Is this water?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t think Jakub would find you. I didn’t think you’d even get the message before they –’

  ‘Shhh! Save your strength.’ He cradled her head in his lap and gave her some water. That was when he saw that most of her teeth had been smashed.

  ‘There’s nothing to save it for,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t talk like that. We’ll do everything we can to … help you.’

  ‘Noah, I’m not delirious and time is short. We mustn’t lie to one another. They’re going to kill me. We both know that but I had to tell you –’

  ‘Shhh! Don’t be so –’

  ‘Noah, darling, don’t talk down to me. Is it true that your brother died in the uprising?’

  ‘Zalman? Yes, that’s what I was told.’

  ‘I heard that too. That’s the only one I gave them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s the only name I gave them when they interrogated me. I heard he was killed so I told them he was my contact, the only one I had.’ Noah Lewental gently stroked the hair on the top of her head and felt it matted with dried blood.

  ‘Tell them, Noah, tell them, the others in the resistance, tell them Zalman is the only name I gave them and the only one I’m going to give them. Tell them it stops with him. Anyone still alive is safe.’

  ‘My Rosa! I don’t know if anyone here is safe, not even Jakub.’

  ‘But tell them, Noah, no one will be killed because of anything I say. Tell me what you know.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Are the Russians coming?’

  ‘That’s what we hear. That’s what we always hear … but they never come.’

  ‘And the uprising, did anyone escape?’

  ‘As far as I know anyone who escaped was caught and killed. But they destroyed one of the crematoria.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes and they killed some SS men before it was all over.’

  ‘Noah, you have to survive this.’

  ‘So do you!’

  ‘But I’m not going to. You might. You have to survive and make sure the rest of the world knows what happened here.’

  ‘Who will believe it?’

  ‘Yes, but you have to keep telling people till everyone knows. Promise me you’ll survive and –’

  ‘Rosa, you want me to promise something that’s out of my hands.’

  ‘Yes. Okay, but promise me that if you survive you will tell people what went on here. You have to tell –’

  ‘Yes, of course. Shhh! Of course I will. What about the others? Do they have any of the other girls?’

  ‘Yes, they have Estusia and Ala from the Pulverraum and Regina too, their foreman. But no one needs to worry about anything they might say. Estusia cares only for her sister and, anyway, I’m the only one they were in contact with outside the Union Metallwerke factory whose name they know.’

  ‘Do you have a message for the sister?’

  ‘For Estusia’s sister, Hannah?’

  ‘Yes, maybe I could –’

  ‘No. Jakub is going to try to smuggle out a letter from Estusia,’ Rosa whispered.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Noah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why would you need to get a message to her sister?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought you said we’re going to be all right?’

  She had caught him out and when she managed to lift her hand up to his face she found he was crying. They sat in close to perfect darkness in Block 11 knowing that at any moment Jakub could come back and that Noah would have to leave immediately. He might even be caught on the way out. He didn’t care. He would give his life for her. She knew that now. But they both knew that the SS wouldn’t take his life in exchange for hers. They would simply take both.

  He cradled her head as they whispered about their childhood, about Ciechanow, their parents and their siblings. She said her father had seen this coming but then agreed that nobody could have imagined the enormity of what did come. Even when it is over, nobody will quite understand just how bad it was, the scale of it, the relentlessness of it. No, she had to agree, whatever it was her father had predicted, it hadn’t been this. She had a daughter, Noah remembered. The little girl, her name was Elise. Her father had taken her away. Before the war she had tried all that was within her power to find her but could find not a trace of her or of her husband.

  ‘Maybe she’s alive. Do you think she is?’ Rosa whispered, suddenly like a little girl.

  ‘Perhaps she is,’ Noah Lewental answered.

  ‘It was so long ago –’

  ‘Yes, but don’t you see that helps. It was so long ago that by now she could be anywhere. She might be safe in Russia or England … even America.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes, there was time for –’

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door. They had been speaking non-stop for four hours. Now it was 2 am and the Kapo Jakub had crept back too quietly for the prisoners’ pleadings to announce him. He knocked once and then opened the door to Rosa’s cell.

  ‘He’s awake. Come on, you have to go.’ It had come too suddenly for Noah to know what he should say to her. This would be the last time they saw each other and they both knew it. What should he say?

  ‘Come on!’ Jakub whispered insistently.

  ‘Rosa, I love yo
u. I’ve always loved you.’

  ‘Noah, promise me you’ll tell everyone –’

  ‘Come on!’ Jakub insisted.

  ‘Tell everyone what happened here.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘Come on!’ said Jakub.

  ‘I promise you I’ll tell –’

  ‘Tell everyone,’ she whispered, ‘everyone.’

  Noah had placed her head back down on the ground.

  ‘What if they find me with her?’ he asked Jakub suddenly with his heart beating furiously. ‘Let them take us together. I can’t leave her … I can’t … I don’t care what they do to me.’

  ‘Maybe you don’t but they’ll kill me too. We had a deal. Come on!’ Jakub said, dragging him from the cell.

  ‘Tell everyone!’ Rosa Rabinowicz insisted.

  ‘I will, I promise.’

  ‘Everybody!’ she called out, no longer in a whisper but with whatever strength she had. ‘Tell everybody what happened here!’

  Jakub had closed the door and now he and Noah were back in the corridor.

  ‘Tell everybody what happened here,’ Rosa called out. She was hysterical now and had given up any pretence at whispering.

  ‘Tell everybody what happened here,’ she called out and hearing her say this, her neighbour in the next cell woke and instead of the usual call to Jakub to save them the neighbour repeated Rosa’s cry as though it had never occurred to him.

  ‘Yes, tell everyone what happened here.’ And the neighbour was heard by the prisoner in the next cell along who in turn repeated the plea.

  In the middle of the night, some time just after 2 am, prisoners in the basement of the prison block were woken by the call as it progressed from prisoner to prisoner. One by one and then more and more of them together they were calling out to anyone who might hear them, ‘Tell everyone what happened here,’ and as Noah and Jakub made their way along the dark stone basement corridor the call followed them. At every cell they passed, each prisoner repeated the same incantation. No one there could hope to be saved but this made sense to call for; this made sense to pray for. That was how it came to pass that late one night in the cold of early winter, 1944, the prisoners in the basement of the prison block in Auschwitz cried out together to whoever might survive, ‘Tell everyone what happened here.’ ‘Tell everyone what happened here.’ ‘Tell everyone what happened here.’

  *

  Over a number of sleepless nights Adam permitted his mind to run riot with the possibility that he might uncover something really solid about the role of the men of the 761st Tank Battalion, a black battalion, with respect to their role in the liberation of the most westerly of all the Nazi concentration camps, Natzweiler-Struthof. But when reason intruded into his nocturnal speculations he realised, just on the basis of numbers alone, that it was really very unlikely that of all the troops in the Allied 6th Army Group, it was members of the 761st that were in the probing parties. And he soon learned that, in any event, scouting parties were under orders to engage with the enemy only in self-defence. To compound the improbability of the scouting troops encountering a satellite camp of Natzweiler-Struthof, Adam found that the closest one was ten to twenty kilometres to the east of the Rhine.

  Nor did the 761st cross the Rhine near any of the Natzweiler-Struthof satellite camps in the assault by the entire 6th Army Group that General Devers had planned because, by order of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies in the West, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and to the dismay of Devers, the assault did not proceed. This was despite the weak German defences on the other side of the Rhine and the opportunity that presented for Devers’ Army Group to cross the river and attack the German 1st Army, which was at the time engaging Patton’s 3rd Army, from behind. The very same advance would also cut off the German 19th Army.

  Whether Eisenhower’s order had been influenced in any way by the rumoured troubled personal relationship between him and Devers or whether it was entirely strategically based was a question that occupied Adam’s mind only for a short time. It appeared that Eisenhower treated Devers with far less regard than other generals of Devers’ rank. Nor was Devers overly respectful of Eisenhower, but the matter was not of real interest to Adam.

  A related question, however, did keep coming back to him. Had Devers’ 6th Army Group crossed the Rhine in November 1944, might that have stopped the Germans launching their offensive in the Ardennes further north just weeks later and might that have led to the war ending months sooner? And if it had, how many lives might have been saved?

  In the event, the Germans did launch their Ardennes counter-offensive some weeks later and the Allied 6th Army Group was ordered to take part in the ensuing Battle of the Bulge. It was to cross the Rhine only in March 1945.

  Ultimately, what killed Adam’s Natzweiler-Struthof hypothesis stone dead was his discovery from US Army records that the 761st was attached to the 79th Division of the US 7th Army for only a week or two and this was between late February 1945 and early March 1945. In the time relevant to Devers’ probe across the Rhine in late November 1944, the 761st was attached to the 87th Division of the US 3rd Army and was nowhere near Natzweiler-Struthof or any of its satellite camps. So far as the role of black troops in the liberation of concentration camps was concerned, Adam was back to where he had started.

  *

  They were to meet for a drink at the Film Center Café on Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, not far from where she now lived. The arrangement was made via a series of voice messages on their mobile phones. Adam replayed Diana’s messages many times trying to gauge her state of mind from the tone of her voice and her choice of words.

  ‘How do you think I sound?’ he heard her ask him in the ongoing mental conversation he had with her.

  ‘I would say you sound … defensive.’

  ‘How about cautious?

  ‘Okay then, cautious.’

  ‘Do you think I have a right to be cautious?’ he heard Diana ask.

  ‘I think you have a right to be defensive.’

  ‘Look how magnanimous you’ve become!’

  ‘Yes, look. Please … look. I’m feeling better about things now, about work, about myself and … Shit, that’s you!’

  Adam had arrived early so, although Diana came after him, she wasn’t late. He saw her come inside and walk towards him. They smiled at each other, different smiles, but there wasn’t time to analyse the aetiology of each smile. Her hair was longer. She wore clothes he didn’t recognise. They hugged. She smelled the same as she always had in spite of the unfamiliar clothes. His mouth was dry. She sat opposite him in the booth he’d secured by coming early. He was terrified.

  ‘You look great,’ Adam said.

  ‘So do you.’

  ‘No, not really, I don’t, but it’s nice of you … Well, how are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, I’m well. How are you?’

  ‘Well, right now … Right now, frankly, I’m a bit nervous but I’ve been … I think I’m doing okay now. Work is –’

  ‘You’re nervous?’

  ‘Sure. It’s weird, don’t you think? This …’

  ‘Yeah, I guess it is a bit but you don’t have anything to be … I mean … don’t be nervous.’

  ‘All right then, I won’t be. You’re not …’

  ‘Nervous? No … I don’t think I’m … I’m not nervous. Why, should I be nervous?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m pleased to see you,’ she said.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, that’s great ‘cause I’m so pleased to see you. I really am.’

  ‘Have you been seeing much of Michelle and Charles?’

  ‘A little bit, not much really. Probably see more of Sonia.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s taken to dropping in on me.’

  ‘She’s looking after you. That’s sweet!’

  ‘Yeah, she doesn’t always tell me she’s comin
g but, yeah, it is sweet.’

  ‘She doesn’t tell you she’s coming?’

  ‘No, not all the time.’

  ‘So, what, she just drops in unannounced?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s announced, sometimes it’s sort of … impromptu.’

  ‘That could be awkward.’

  ‘Awkward?’

  ‘Yeah, I mean –’

  ‘It’s never awkward.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s not always … It’s not always convenient but it’s never awkward.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The waitress came up to them and took their order. Adam ordered a double Scotch and soda. Diana ordered still water and Adam had to work on himself not to construe her order as meaning anything other than that she wanted some water.

  ‘She misses you. Sonia misses you,’ Adam offered.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘How would you know that?’

  ‘She’s told me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’ve been a little worried about her … about all three of them actually,’ he confided.

  ‘Really, why?’

  ‘I don’t know but I think they may be having … trouble.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I know you’ve seen Michelle. I have too. But have you seen them both?’

  ‘You mean marital trouble?’

  ‘He works too hard.’

  ‘He always did.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that might be the problem.’

  ‘What, that he’s too focused on his career for the health of the relationship?’

  They looked each other in the eye. There was nothing he could say to that.

  ‘William misses you too,’ Adam started.

  ‘Oh really? I miss him. Please send him my love. How is he?’

  ‘Well, for the most part I think he’s well. I mean I think he’s in good health.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Well, he gets upset. Things in the news upset him.’

  ‘Him and everyone else.’

  ‘Yeah, but he used to be active, professionally, socially, politically active … you know, working for change. Now he reads the news and it increases his sense of powerlessness and I think –’