Albert Siegel had a day off, a miserable Monday, and risked going out for a walk in the park not yet off limits. Even as he walked the paths, he noticed the very few other walkers hurried along, heads bent to the weather, paying no attention to him. What a blessing.
Another blessing came when he found the empty bench. There were many others along the park’s paths. All were as empty as this one. But this bench was very special. And if all the others were filled on an otherwise sunny day, this bench would likely remain empty.
Siegel was the rare bird. Perched alone on that wooden bench in a dreary section of a dreary park in the middle of a dreary day, he was content, which is not to say happy. He’d found the only bench he was permitted to sit on, in the only park in that city, perhaps the entire country, that wasn’t verboten to birds of his feather. That it was a rainy day was a good thing, too, indeed a very good thing. With such rain on this miserable day, it was unlikely anyone else would bother him, taunt him. Misery loves company and Albert needed no more company.
Adding to his blessings was the rumpled newspaper tucked under his arm. It could serve many purposes; an ersatz umbrella now that his real one had been taken, protection against a wet seat, and something to remind him of the times lest he slip into some sense of security.
On the bench was a sign, “Nur für Juden.” Only for Jews. Albert snickered to himself. Only for this Jew. What nudnicks would show up on a day like this?
Albert thought it odd that the bench was freshly painted in proper field gray, the same color as the uniforms made where he worked. It must be the fashion, he thought. The painting itself was of one of the government’s work-project programs, getting people sprucing up parks, roads, athletic centers, keeping the population outdoors and healthy. Well, almost all the population. The “Nur für Juden” sign wasn’t crudely stenciled on like before. No, this was more a plaque, as if a celebration of the bench’s purpose. “Rather a step up,” thought Albert. But only for a moment. It occurred to him that the plaque could readily be chiseled off, and likely would be, to keep Jewish tuchuses off the bench so they could be replaced with Aryan asses. “Might as well enjoy it when I can,” he thought.
Being out in the middle of the day was another blessing; the short-pantsed flowers of youth would be in school studying such topics as the Inquisition or racial pollutants, providing more grist for their grinding mill. Albert and his sort were the grist, the undesirable chaff that had to be separated from the purest Aryan wheat.
Or the youths might be off playing soldier in some para-military camp, giving each other bloody noses and black eyes in their vicious chicken fights, and, quite naturally, toying with guns. The city authorities approved of such play — as if they had a choice — but didn’t allow shooting within city limits. Not yet at least.
He was bold was Albert. Even if was he technically permitted to be out, it was still risky, even if outside the oppressive curfew hours, especially when alone. He was no spring chicken, hardly able to defend himself against a single brown-shirted adolescent, let alone a group.
In the lapel of his once fashionable suit, he wore the ribbon marking a veteran’s Iron Cross, Second Class. Same as Hitler’s. That and a mustache were about the only other thing they had in common. But Albert’s mustache was wider and blacker, like his full head of hair. How it hadn’t turn gray in the current atmosphere was a mystery.
He was told he looked like Groucho Marx. To such observations he would counter that perhaps Groucho looked more like him. That used to get laughs. When he last said that to a man wearing hobnail boots, he was slapped across his face, the man then grabbing part of Albert’s mustache, ripping flesh until he noticed the ribbon and Albert’s empty sleeve. Hobnails stopped, handed Albert a soiled handkerchief – the brown matching his SA shirt — then concluded the torment by sneering simply, “A funny man, eh? Now go back where you came from.”
Albert came from a Berlin neighborhood known as Wilmersdorf — a nice area and quite Jewish. So unfortunately, Albert had no other place to go, and no one, no other country, was keen on taking him in. He’d considered it, leaving, but like a lot of Germans, Jewish and otherwise, he figured the nonsense would pass, that his Iron Cross Second Class had to be worth something, and, anyway, he only knew German and German accounting rules. What would he do if he left? Peel potatoes in some grimy alley? And with the one arm he hadn’t left at the Somme?
There was a time before being fired from his accounting job on the city council, that people would have given up space on a park’s bench for a wounded veteran. Once. When things changed, when he lost his job, Albert was forcefully encouraged to keep a record of Jewish property by the new breed of officials. It was a job he disdained; what business of it was theirs to compile lists, lists of everything from financial assets to household goods, down to—he had to be very specific—Steiff teddy bears? Teddy bears for God’s sake!
The encouragement to make those types of lists had come from a former colleague who now always wore a black suit designed by no less a character than Hugo Boss. In his lapel was a tasteful display, a red, white, and black pin. They’d once been friends almost. “Siegel,” he said, “if you don’t do this, someone else will. What the hell else are you going to do anyway? And think of it this way, you get to see what they have, maybe sneak a little into your pocket, eh? Or, better, mine.” He laughed so much at his joke that he coughed up the smoke from the cigarette he’d taken from some absconded gold case.
Albert did as he was told to do. The frightened people who’d, too, had lost their jobs, their park benches, and could barely find work in the ever-poorer Jewish community, were almost grateful. Albert could arrange the exchange of household goods for such luxuries as rationed food (no meat or alcohol), shelter (in dank basements or blistering attics), and the very short list of permitted medicines. The process didn’t last long because, after a while, there was no need to trade—either there was nothing left, or goods were simply taken when families were forced to leave their flats for lesser accommodations. If they were lucky, they could leave Germany altogether. That latter happenstance was especially pleasing to the powers that be as everything, absolutely everything, from dishes to any remaining silverware, to carpets and furniture, to the rare cash that had been stashed away, to toy train sets and, of course, those Steiff bears, would remain behind.
Other than a solitary bench, there was little left for Albert. To make ends meet, his old colleague, the smoker, was kind enough to get him a job in a workers’ cafeteria, peeling potatoes in a grimy alley.
He supposed he was one of the lucky ones. His job allowed him to keep a bicycle, a rare privilege, so he could get to work outside of curfew hours. He could also avoid the cost of the ticket he could ill afford, to say nothing of the likely torment he’d receive on the S-Bahn, Straßenbahn. He had to hand it to them; the trams did run on time and there were more of them. Albert could see as much as he cycled these days, rain or shine, on side streets, eying the wide and crowded avenues in between blocks. The side streets were less crowded, a good thing for a spindly man on a spindly bicycle. He maintained that privilege even after bicycles were confiscated from Jews who didn’t have work, or have a vague friend who’d say his kitchen job was vital to the war effort.
There was no war, not yet, but the workers eating his skinned potatoes were building things of a military nature, mostly uniforms, the au courant field gray uniforms, of a coarse grade not meant for parade grounds. Helmets, too, variations of the coal scuttle type he’d worn with pride in the last conflict. There might not be a war coming. But there was a buildup, and Germans were too efficient to let things go to waste. He was keenly aware of that nature from his accounting background and his own sense of production rights and wrongs. If you build it, you should use it.
Despite the laws that forbade this and that for Germany’s beleaguered Jews, there were inevitable leaks in such a vast system. There was still a Jewish newspaper. Though not quite legal, the authorities let it go since it reported new laws—new anti-Jewish laws—and instructed on ways to sell goods, jewelry, anything, via Aryan outlets. It was said that Goebbels himself approved of the newspaper. “The Jews will sell things better than we can,” he was rumored to have joked.
An addition to the classifieds were personal columns. So and so was arrested, does anyone have information on someone, or Jewish medical staff needed at the Jewish clinic as cases of injury mount. The source of the injuries was left open, of course. That information came from other sources like foreign newspapers somehow smuggled in or secreted away from consulates by a frightened population seeking visas. Or from sub rosa publications produced by groups like the Communist underground.
Those sources reported what was happening, mostly accurate, though their readers in those damp basement apartments or cold and leaky attics had already heard the news. At another time, perhaps, the hopeful sympathy portrayed for the plight of these Jews would have been welcome.
Some of the older folks, the alte kakers, recalled how the Dreyfus affair appalled the then-modern spirits, especially in Germany, and led to a period of tolerance for European Jews. They even beguiled themselves into believing that at long last they’d been accepted into, at least, the merchant classes. The aristocracy was always verboten. When the Great War came, German and Austrian Jews enlisted in droves. One hundred thousand and Albert was one of them. They were proud of that figure—one hundred thousand—considering there were barely more than half a million Jews in all the Fatherland. Jews were so overrepresented relative to their numbers that a census at the time repressed that specific piece of data lest it upset the bulk of the population.
Any optimism drained in the years that followed the war.
Albert relished whatever news he could get hold of. His hope, everyone’s hope, was that the world would see what was going on and perhaps force some liberalization. If not that, then at least lower the drawbridges and open the castle gates to those needing sanctuary. Albert had tried but his commute and peeling hours coincided with the open times at the various consulates that were mostly refusing visas anyway. Besides, he managed to get by better than most. Between the potato scraps, left-overs, and the indifferent attitude of the workers around the canteen, former socialists and communists, he got by. There was no love for Jews— working Volk tended to buy into the view that Jews had too much money and too soft hands—but there was no particular hate, especially to a one-armed veteran who’d earned an Iron Cross.
When one person read a newspaper account of what was going on, they would furtively pass it on, slipping it under a door, leaving it where it could be found, crumpling a newspaper, with just enough headline exposed. The news would have been boring in its repetition: Jews arrested, Jews beaten, Jews trying to get out, Jewish property ‘taxed’ out of their hands. Albert with some gallows humor would whisper that if you taxed something at 120%, there was a great incentive to simply turn the goods over. “Need I do the math?” asked the former accountant.
Of course, the press accounts, the news, the reality wore on him and the other Jews. Boring in repetition, torment in reality.
A rubbish bin next to the Jewish bench revealed no evident signs of racial exclusion. He took out a day-old newspaper to sit on. It was the Völkischer Beobachter, the daily paper of no less an entity than the Nazi Party. It was quite a success story. The circulation was a mere 7,000 when Adolf Hitler bought it. The government then shut it down a few times due to its antisemitic articles and attacks on government policies and officials—though not in that order. Nowadays, it boasted a circulation of way over 1,000,000, the most of any paper printed in Germany, which was a low bar as independent papers had largely been shuttered leaving mostly broken shutters, broken windows, and broken printing presses, behind. The Völkischer Beobachter was a fitting cushion for Albert’s rear end.
He had never read the Beobachter, even with toilet tissue in high demand, but could easily imagine its contents. Jews this, Jews that, Bolsheviks eat children, Americans breed with Negroes, blah blah. Who needed that? Until his radio was confiscated, he’d heard that nonsense day and night and things hadn’t gotten better. This edition and its headline, however, intrigued him. “Jews Hoard Gold, German Wealth.” If only, he thought.
The fresh paint allowed the rain to bead up, making it easy to swipe it away for a clean seat, and a dry Beobachter which was anything but dry. This issue focused on “The Life of The Jew.” Albert didn’t know the Jew in question. This Jew was rich. This Jew ate better food than the Germans. This Jew owned stores…and buildings. This Jew had homes on the Riviera. Yachts. This Jew lived like royalty. This Jew controlled…fill in the blank…Hollywood, banks, industry. This Jew commanded pornography, went after German girls. In fact, this Jew had his pick of beautiful women, who craved his money and power.
Albert had to grin. “Who is this guy?” he asked himself. He liked him already.
His heart, however, skipped a beat when he heard the gruff voice say, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
It was Max Waldman. Max was a doctor who’d also lost an arm lost somewhere and whose client base had shrunk to the shreds of Berlin’s Jewish community where he struggled, despite the fact he was both a veteran and a doctor. Max, you see, was a veterinarian but medical knowledge could be applied across breeds so why not species?
“Herr Siegel,” he said. “You’re reading the Völkischer Beobachter for God’s sake! What if someone should see?”
“Dear Doctor, have you ever read this? The stuff we’ve been reading is all about how horrible are things; they take away our jobs, our rights, our money, our homes, our very dignity! We’re beaten at will. We’re not allowed to ride the trains, go to the cinema. They even take away our pet dogs.”
The Doctor interrupted. “You don’t have a dog, do you? You’re allergic. I told you…”
“That’s beside the point. The point is this paper says we Jews have it all—money, power, mansions on the Riviera. Women! Women, Herr Doctor, beautiful women!”
“But it’s Nazi nonsense. Propaganda! Surely you know that.”
Albert sat back on the bench and looked up into the sun breaking through the storm clouds. “Ah, yes, of course. But frankly, I like their version better than ours.”
Albert Siegel went back to reading his paper.