The Rembrandt Affair

20 AMSTERDAM

Lena Herzfeld lapsed into a prolonged, exhausted silence. Gabriel could see that in her mind a door had closed. On one side was an old woman living alone in Amsterdam; on the other, a child who had mistakenly betrayed her family. Gabriel suggested they stop for the night. And a part of him wondered whether to continue at all. For what purpose? For a painting that was probably lost forever? But much to his surprise, it was Lena who insisted on pressing forward, Lena who demanded to tell the rest of the story. Not for the sake of the Rembrandt, she assured him, but for herself. She needed to explain how severely she had been punished for those few stolen moments in the garden. And she needed to atone. And so, for the first time in her life, she described how her family had been dragged from the attic under the shamed gaze of the de Graaf children. And how they were taken by truck to, of all places, the Hollandsche Schouwburg, once the most glamorous theater in Amsterdam.

'The Germans had turned it into a detention center for captured Jews. It was nothing like I remembered, of course. The seats had been removed from the orchestra, the chandeliers had been ripped from the ceiling, and there were ropes hanging like nooses above what was left of the stage.'

Her memories were something from a nightmare. Memories of laughing Schalkhaarders swapping stories about the evening's hunt. Memories of a young boy who'd attempted to flee and was beaten senseless. Memories of a dozen elderly men and women who had been pulled from their beds at a home for the aged and were seated calmly in their frayed nightgowns as if waiting for the performance to begin. And memories, too, of a tall man dressed entirely in black striding godlike across the stage, a portrait by Rembrandt in one hand, a sack of diamonds in the other.

'The man was SS?'

'Yes.'

'Were you ever told his name?'

She hesitated. 'I learned it later, but I will not say it.'

Gabriel gave a placatory nod. Lena closed her eyes and continued. What she remembered most about him, she said, was the smell of leather rising from his freshly polished boots. His eyes were deep brown, the hair dark and richly oiled, the skin sallow and bloodless. His manner was aristocratic and shockingly courteous.

'This was no village bumpkin in a nice uniform. This was a man from a good family. A man from the upper reaches of German society. Initially, he spoke to my father in excellent Dutch. Then, after establishing that my father spoke German, he switched.'

'Did you speak German?'

'A little.'

'Were you able to understand what was happening?'

'Bits and pieces. The SS man scolded my father for having violated the decrees concerning Jewish financial assets and valuables such as jewelry and works of art. He then informed my father that both the diamonds and the Rembrandt would have to be confiscated before our deportation to the labor camps. But there was just one thing he required first. He wanted my father to sign a piece of paper.'

'A forfeiture document?'

She shook her head. 'A bill of sale, not for the diamonds, only for the Rembrandt. He wanted my father to sell him the painting. The price would be one hundred guilders—payable at a future date, of course. One hundred guilders...less than the Jew hunters earned on a good night of roundups.'

'You saw the actual contract?'

She hesitated, then nodded slowly. 'The Germans were precise in all things, and paperwork was very important to them. They recorded everything. The number of people murdered each day in the gas chambers. The number of shoes left behind. The weight of the gold wrenched from the dead before they were thrown into the crematoria.'

Again Lena's voice trailed off, and for a moment Gabriel feared she was lost to them. But she quickly composed herself and continued. Tonight, Lena Herzfeld had chosen Gabriel and Chiara to hear her testimony. Tonight there was no turning back.

'Only later did I understand why the SS man required my father's signature. Stealing a bag of diamonds was one thing. But stealing a painting, especially a Rembrandt, was quite another. Isn't it ironic? They killed six million people, but he wanted a bill of sale for my father's Rembrandt—a piece of paper so he could claim he had acquired it legally.'

'What did your father do?'

'He refused. Even now, I cannot imagine where he found the courage. He told the SS man that he had no illusions about the fate that awaited us and that under no circumstances would he sign anything. The SS man seemed quite startled. I don't think a Jew had dared to speak to him like that in a very long time.'

'Did he threaten your father?'

'Actually, quite the opposite. For a moment, he seemed stumped. Then he looked down at Rachel and me and smiled. He said the labor camps were no place for children. He said he had a solution. A trade. Two lives for one painting. If my father signed the bill of sale, Rachel and I would be allowed to go free. At first, my father resisted, but my mother convinced him there was no choice. At least they will have each other, she said. Eventually, my father capitulated, and signed the papers. There were two copies, one for him, one for the SS man.'

Lena's eyes shone suddenly with tears, and her hands began to tremble, not with sadness but with anger.

'But once the monster had what he wanted, he changed his mind. He said he had misspoken. He said he could not take two children, only one. Then he pointed at me and said, 'That one. The one with the blond hair and blue eyes.' It was my sentence.'

The SS man instructed the Herzfeld family to say its last good-byes. And be quick about it, he added, his voice full of false cordiality. Lena's mother and sister wept as they embraced a final time, but her father managed to maintain an outward composure. Holding Lena close, he whispered that he would love her forever and that someday soon they would all be together again. Then Lena felt her father place something in her coat pocket. A few seconds later, the monster was leading her out of the theater. Just keep walking, Miss Herzfeld, he was saying. And whatever you do, don't look back. If you look back, even once, I'll put you on the train, too.

'And what do you think I did?' she asked.

'You kept walking.'

'That's correct. Miss Herzfeld kept walking. And she never looked back. Not once. And she never saw her family again. Within three weeks, they were dead. But not Miss Herzfeld. She was alive because she had blond hair. And her sister had been turned to ashes because hers was dark.'

21 AMSTERDAM

Lena Herzfeld went into hiding a second time. Her odyssey began in the building directly across the street from the theater, at Plantage Middenlaan 31. A former day-care center for working-class families, it had been turned by the Nazis into a second detention center reserved for infants and toddlers. But during the period of the deportations, several hundred small children were smuggled out in crates and potato sacks and turned over to the Dutch Resistance.

'The SS man personally walked me into the nursery and handed me over to the staff. I'm amazed he kept his word at all, but he had his painting. The war was full of such inexplicable contradictions. One moment, a