Mila 18 - Leon Uris [98]
He spent the night tying up all the loose ends of his business and took them to his friends, David Zemba of American Relief and Alexander Brandel. He left them knowing he would probably not see them again.
In the morning he reported to Oberführer Alfred Funk. He sat opposite the German very calmly, a picture of self-assurance, with the old flamboyance still in his mannerisms. Funk knew the moment Goldman entered the room, but his icy blue eyes did not betray the thoughts whirling behind them.
“You have drafted the directives?”
The old man shook his head.
Funk registered neither surprise nor anger.
“I won’t put my name on a ghetto order,” Goldman said.
“Do you speak in behalf of the entire board?”
“I suggest you ask them,” he retorted.
“I am curious,” Funk said. “Why are you doing it?”
Goldman smiled. “I am more curious. Why are you doing it?”
It was Funk who broke off the staring contest.
Goldman arose, bowed slightly, sending his long white silken hair awry. “Good day,” he said, and left.
Alfred Funk thought for a moment about the various possibilities, then shrugged to himself and methodically lifted his desk phone. “Find Sturmbannführer Stutze. Have him report to me instantly.”
Journal Entry
Emanuel Goldman was murdered last night. It appears to be the personal handiwork of Sturmbannführer Sieghold Stutze. He was beaten to death with a pipe. His body was dumped on the streets before the Civil Authority building as a clear-cut message.
Boris Presser, whom none of us know, has been appointed Civil Authority chairman and Dr. Paul Bronski given wider powers.
I must now deal with Bronski on all matters concerning the Orphans and Self-Help Society. We cannot expect from Bronski anything near what Goldman did for us.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Chapter Seventeen
Journal Entry
IT IS SUMMER OF 1940 already. News from the outside world, our one great source of hope, lists one disaster after another. Norway and Denmark have fallen. The Low Countries and the debacle at Dunkirk. Italy has been dragged into the war. German power is still on the rise, unchecked. France has paid for a decade of appeasement.
Rudolph Schreiker has no more trouble with the Jewish Civil Authority with Boris Presser as chairman. Paul Bronski’s co-operation with the Orphans and Self-Help Society is rigidly guided by German directives.
The poor Jews have had their personal property stripped and carted away. They have no choice but to register for slave labor in one of the dozens of new German factories and enterprises springing up all over the Warsaw area. Dr. Franz Koenig owns three or four factories outright. When short of labor they merely pull people off the streets in roundups and they simply disappear.
The rich are able to do better. There is wild trade in gold and jewelry and false Aryan papers. Everyone in the upper classes scrambles for himself. As for our countrymen, we do get superficial help from certain classes, but the bulk of the Poles show us nothing but apathy.
Any questions about who runs Poland? They are answered. SS Gruppenführer Globocnik in Lublin. It is known that Governor General Hans Frank protested to Hitler about having Jews deported from all over Europe into Poland. He was overruled. They are pouring in by the tens of thousands to the sixteen Jewish “reservations” in that curious master plan in Berlin calling for “resettlement’ of all Jews in occupied countries.
Some of the German and Austrian Jews are pretty haughty. They have been able to rent themselves nice flats and look down upon us poor Polish Jews as inferior. However, the vast majority arrive destitute. Dr. Glazer, who heads the medical staff of the Orphans