Weizman (8 yrs) all of 4/12 Judengasse, Stephansdom Quarter, Vienna, to be arrested immediately. Mauthausen Commandant, Obersturmbannfuhrer von Hei?en, will be coordinating search of Weizman’s apartment and surrounds and is to be given every assistance. Brigadefuhrer Heinrich Muller Kommandant Geheime Staatspolizei
Eichmann initialled the cable and signed an authorisation for von Hei?en to assume temporary command of a special detachment of SS Sonderkommandos.
‘Give this to Obersturmbannfuhrer von Hei?en,’ Eichmann ordered, handing over the authority. ‘You’ll find him downstairs in the ballroom.’
‘Jawohl, Obersturmfuhrer!’
15
VIENNA
T he banging on the front door was unrelenting.
‘Ofnen Sie, Jude!’
Ramona sat up with a start. ‘Levi! Have they come?’
Levi put a finger to his lips. ‘ Shhh. I’ll deal with them.’ He threw on his dressing gown, suddenly remembering the two bark maps he’d left beside the model of the Mayan pyramids in his study. He rescued them and went back to the bedroom. Rebekkah and Ariel, both wide-eyed and fearful, had run in to their mother. On an impulse that the Nazis might not suspect a child, Levi gave the maps to Ariel. ‘Look after these for Papa,’ he said. ‘It will be all right, I promise,’ he added reassuringly.
‘Open up, Jew, or we’ll break the door down!’
When Levi opened the door, the Sonderkommandos, supported by a group of young Brownshirts, knocked him to the carpet and stormed into the apartment. Levi struggled to his feet to find von Hei?en standing in the doorway, tapping his knee-high boots with a leather cane.
Von Hei?en shoved the point of his cane under Levi’s chin. ‘Going somewhere, are we, Jew?’ he asked, seeing the Weizmans’ suitcases in the corridor.
Levi knocked the cane away. ‘How dare you come barging in here like this!’
Von Hei?en whipped his cane across Levi’s face. ‘Where is the figurine?’
The pain was excruciating.
‘I have no idea… Somewhere in the jungles of Guatemala, I should imagine.’
Von Hei?en slashed Levi across the face again. ‘Where is it?’
Levi’s eyes watered and he gritted his teeth, but said nothing.
Von Hei?en fought to control his fury at the Jew’s defiance. ‘ Scharfuhrer! Sergeant! Arrest them, and then search this place. We’re looking for a jade figurine about thirty centimetres high.’
‘ Jawohl, Obersturmbannfuhrer. There’s a safe in the study, but it’s locked.’
‘Is there now?’ A look of satisfaction spread across von Hei?en’s face. ‘The Jew will open it,’ he said, again raising Levi’s chin with his cane.
Levi steadied his hand and inserted the key into the safe. He opened it and stepped back, silently praying for Ramona and the children.
Von Hei?en surveyed the contents of the large strongbox in which Levi and Ramona stored their most precious possessions. The strongbox contained over 4000 schillings, proceeds from Ramona’s boutique she had yet to convert to the new Reichsmark. ‘No figurine,’ von Hei?en observed angrily. The disappointment in his voice was palpable. He rifled through the rest of the contents: Ramona’s jewellery and three gold menorahs, the seven arms a symbol of the burning bush encountered by Moses on Mount Horeb. Von Hei?en picked up a solid gold cross. At its centre was an exquisite ruby surrounded by twelve large diamonds. Von Hei?en turned the cross over in his hand.
Levi struggled to remain calm. The pectoral cross had been discovered by his great-grandfather at an archaeological dig on the Mount of Olives, just outside of Jerusalem, and it had been in Levi’s family for four generations. Its lineage could be traced back to the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt.
‘Get this scum onto the trucks,’ von Hei?en ordered, closing the strongbox and pocketing the keys.
Levi wrenched his arm away from a Sonderkommando. ‘I need to get dressed!’
Von Hei?en’s laugh was evil. ‘Put him on the truck. He won’t need any clothes where he’s going.’
Von Hei?en moved to the front window and watched the young Brownshirts shove Levi over the tailboard of the truck parked below. It had snowed heavily during the night, and the icy cobblestones glinted in the winter dawn. Further down Judengasse, more Jews were being rounded up for transportation to Mauthausen, but von Hei?en still felt cheated. Behind him, the Sonderkommandos and Brownshirts were systematically ripping Levi’s apartment to pieces, but there was no sign of the missing jade. Perhaps, von Hei?en thought angrily, the figurine was in Guatemala after all. The Jew would still pay, he vowed. Von Hei?en turned on his heel and headed back into the apartment, passing within one metre of the two figurines lying hidden beneath the floorboard.
Levi put one arm around Ramona, and his other around Rebekkah and Ariel. Rebekkah was sobbing as she buried her blonde curls into her father’s chest. Ramona had managed to convince a sympathetic corporal to allow her and the children to dress, but Levi was still in his pyjamas, shivering in the cold.
‘Where are these men taking us, Papa?’ Rebekkah sobbed.
Levi kissed her curls and held his daughter more tightly. ‘We’ll see… it’ll be all right, Liebchen,’ Levi whispered, comforting his little girl as best he could.
They crossed the Danube at Emmersdorf, and Levi could tell they were now moving along the north bank, the trees heavy with snow. He rubbed his hands to get his circulation going, Rebekkah and Ariel asleep at his left shoulder. Ramona rested her head on his right. Nearly two hours later they slowed through the little town of Mauthausen, and a few kilometres further on the lorry wound its way up a small hill before coming to a halt at the massive wooden doors of the concentration camp. The guards checked the driver’s papers and made a cursory check of the human cargo in the back before opening the gates. The truck ground into the lower courtyard and lurched to stop.
An SS captain and a dozen SS guards were waiting in the compound.
‘Get them out of the truck and line them up against the wall,’ the Hauptsturmfuhrer barked.
Levi hugged his children and his wife. ‘God will protect us,’ he whispered.
Levi, Ramona and the children were in the middle of the lineup, and Levi looked around cautiously, shivering in his slippers and pyjamas. The camp was enclosed by high stone walls topped with barbed wire. At regular intervals along their length the walls were interrupted by massive granite watchtowers covered with slate roofs. Like some macabre university of death, the lower compound into which they’d been delivered was ringed by meticulously constructed stone cloisters. In the sentry box at the far end of the cloisters, Levi could see two guards silently sweeping the barrels of their machine guns across the group of prisoners. Levi detected a sudden apprehension amongst the guards as the big doors through which they’d just entered were opened again.
‘Achtung!’ A dozen guards doubled out from the main guardhouse and formed up, rifles at the ready.
‘Heil Hitler!’ The guard commander snapped to attention, his right arm thrust forward in salute, as von Hei? en’s black Mercedes swept into the courtyard. Von Hei?en alighted, acknowledged the salute from his adjutant and strolled over to the group of prisoners, habitually tapping his leather cane against his knee-high boots. He slowly wandered down the line, and then stopped in front of Ariel, who had one hand in his pocket.
‘What have you got in your pocket, boy?’
Ariel stared at the ground, not answering, his bottom lip quivering. Von Hei?en levered Ariel’s chin up with his cane. ‘Give it to me!’
Levi moved to protect his son, but von Hei?en lashed out with his cane and a guard slammed Levi back into the wall.
‘I said, give it to me, boy!’
Ariel, tears welling in his eyes, handed over one of the maps he’d concealed in his pocket, the one with the bearings superimposed over Lake Atitlan. ‘So, what do we have here?’ von Hei?en demanded, turning his attention
