want, which flat is Lewin’s? Asks not for the answer, they know where Lewin is, but as a warning to anyone who might help a Jew.
Upstairs Martin and Renate stand close and frozen. They’ve planned numerous escape routes, but when the boots are on the stairs, all plans are useless.Alice is alert and watching, they reach her together, but with one of them needing to confront the thugs, it is Renate who lifts the child and holds her tight.
The boots start again. They’re on the stairs. They’re on the landing. They’re outside the door. Three crisp knocks. Martin slips the bolt. The door whips open. Three men burst in. Martin is hurled to the floor. They lift him up, they slam him to the table. Crash goes his head against the mahogany. Crash go their fists into his sweet earnest face.
‘What do you want?’ Renate is shouting.‘We’ll give you what you want.’
They laugh at her, they’ll take what they want. They’ve been working for hours, they know exactly what they want. Alice is softly crying. Renate covers the child’s eyes while cupboards are emptied, crockery is hurled against walls, jewellery pocketed, books torn apart, chairs thrown through windows, quilts and pillows slit open. And now the men turn, they turn on Renate, they advance towards her with their filthy taunts. She shoves her daughter behind the sofa, shouts at her to stay still. The men approach, they’re peeling off their gloves, such white hands, such slender fingers, reaching towards Renate, about to grab.
And suddenly through the storm of feathers is the stony presence of Amalie Friedman. She’s strong this Jew and as German as their mothers, she glides into the room glacial and ghostly. She stands and stares, the thugs stop and watch. No one is moving, no one is speaking. She mounts a chair then steps on the table. She looms over them, large and marmoreal. Quilt feathers puff in piles about her bare feet. The men stare up at her, her face is blue, she raises her arms, she holds the world, she’s huge, she clasps her chest, she’s falling, slowly falling, a shadowy spectre in her white robe. She strikes the table, the noise is explosive, the table cracks, a little moan, a little splutter, and then an unearthly silence.
One man is on his knees, he doesn’t understand what is happening. His leader pulls him to his feet.
‘We’ll leave these ones,’ he says to his men. And to Martin he adds,‘For now.’
Martin can be repaired. A doctor attends him, not their usual Dr Rosenbaum, the Nazis took him away, but the Fischers’ doctor – called by them and paid by them too. He works silently, washing, stitching and dressing the wounds, and when he leaves he tells them he’ll not be back, nor can they, he nods in the direction of the Fischer flat, do anything more for you.
Amalie Friedman is dead, one of the hundreds of Kristallnacht casualties. She cannot be buried until late the following day as there is no one available to perform the ceremony, and when finally the burial does occur, it is in a small wooded area outside Krefeld and not in the plot next to her husband in Düsseldorf cemetery as Amalie always intended. The service, attended by Renate and Martin and two strangers to dig the grave, is conducted by a cantor not a rabbi, who worries he won’t make it back to Düsseldorf before sunset and the start of the sabbath. Martin can hardly walk, but insists on being with Renate. She is distraught. Her adored mother is dead, her mother who thrived on love and generosity and music, killed by brutes who wouldn’t know goodness if they were choking on it.
Martin tries to reassure her it is better, safer, to bury Amalie here in this secluded wood. Cemeteries were a favourite target on Kristallnacht , headstones reduced to rubble, fragments of Hebrew littering the ground, as if desecration of the dead, of the past, of memory, strikes a firmer blow at the souls of the living. And who knows what has happened to Jewish graves in
Upstairs Martin and Renate stand close and frozen. They’ve planned numerous escape routes, but when the boots are on the stairs, all plans are useless.Alice is alert and watching, they reach her together, but with one of them needing to confront the thugs, it is Renate who lifts the child and holds her tight.
The boots start again. They’re on the stairs. They’re on the landing. They’re outside the door. Three crisp knocks. Martin slips the bolt. The door whips open. Three men burst in. Martin is hurled to the floor. They lift him up, they slam him to the table. Crash goes his head against the mahogany. Crash go their fists into his sweet earnest face.
‘What do you want?’ Renate is shouting.‘We’ll give you what you want.’
They laugh at her, they’ll take what they want. They’ve been working for hours, they know exactly what they want. Alice is softly crying. Renate covers the child’s eyes while cupboards are emptied, crockery is hurled against walls, jewellery pocketed, books torn apart, chairs thrown through windows, quilts and pillows slit open. And now the men turn, they turn on Renate, they advance towards her with their filthy taunts. She shoves her daughter behind the sofa, shouts at her to stay still. The men approach, they’re peeling off their gloves, such white hands, such slender fingers, reaching towards Renate, about to grab.
And suddenly through the storm of feathers is the stony presence of Amalie Friedman. She’s strong this Jew and as German as their mothers, she glides into the room glacial and ghostly. She stands and stares, the thugs stop and watch. No one is moving, no one is speaking. She mounts a chair then steps on the table. She looms over them, large and marmoreal. Quilt feathers puff in piles about her bare feet. The men stare up at her, her face is blue, she raises her arms, she holds the world, she’s huge, she clasps her chest, she’s falling, slowly falling, a shadowy spectre in her white robe. She strikes the table, the noise is explosive, the table cracks, a little moan, a little splutter, and then an unearthly silence.
One man is on his knees, he doesn’t understand what is happening. His leader pulls him to his feet.
‘We’ll leave these ones,’ he says to his men. And to Martin he adds,‘For now.’
Martin can be repaired. A doctor attends him, not their usual Dr Rosenbaum, the Nazis took him away, but the Fischers’ doctor – called by them and paid by them too. He works silently, washing, stitching and dressing the wounds, and when he leaves he tells them he’ll not be back, nor can they, he nods in the direction of the Fischer flat, do anything more for you.
Amalie Friedman is dead, one of the hundreds of Kristallnacht casualties. She cannot be buried until late the following day as there is no one available to perform the ceremony, and when finally the burial does occur, it is in a small wooded area outside Krefeld and not in the plot next to her husband in Düsseldorf cemetery as Amalie always intended. The service, attended by Renate and Martin and two strangers to dig the grave, is conducted by a cantor not a rabbi, who worries he won’t make it back to Düsseldorf before sunset and the start of the sabbath. Martin can hardly walk, but insists on being with Renate. She is distraught. Her adored mother is dead, her mother who thrived on love and generosity and music, killed by brutes who wouldn’t know goodness if they were choking on it.
Martin tries to reassure her it is better, safer, to bury Amalie here in this secluded wood. Cemeteries were a favourite target on Kristallnacht , headstones reduced to rubble, fragments of Hebrew littering the ground, as if desecration of the dead, of the past, of memory, strikes a firmer blow at the souls of the living. And who knows what has happened to Jewish graves in
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