It’s with a reasonably full stomach that I find myself standing on the corner of Oosten Straat in a throng of policemen later that evening, not far from the synagogue and only a couple of streets away from home. There are a lot of us, a great many. Fellow officers have been brought in from Deurne, Borgerhout and Hoboken. A few tell us they’re from Mortsel or Ekeren. We received the order to gather there on the day itself, or the day before, I can’t remember which. Nobody knows what we’re there for. The Germans come driving up with masses of equipment. Our inspectors have their mouths clamped shut. Some of us are in a foul mood at having been called in on a holiday. I’ve already told you that most of my colleagues only speak to me when strictly necessary because of what happened to poor Jean. Suddenly Lode pops up next to me and says he doesn’t like the look of it.
‘Things are coming to a head, Will.’ He’d already been called out earlier that evening to distribute Arbeitseinsatzbefehlen, good German for forced labour orders. They’d rounded up dozens of men and handed them over to the Germans. After an hour or two, they’d thought their job was done. Then instructions for them to proceed to Oosten Straat arrived.
They put up barriers on Plantin en Moretus Lei. Looking along the continuation of Oosten Straat towards the station, I see they’ve also closed off part of the Kievit district. A few Germans are setting up large spotlights on the corners. Field gendarmes and Sicherheitspolizei jump out of trucks. One requisitioned removals truck after the other comes driving up Van den Nest Lei. ‘Requisitioned’ is possibly a misleading term here; later I hear that the local removals companies were reimbursed for the use of their vehicles. I have no idea if that’s really true. The drivers lean on the bonnets and light cigarettes. We are split up into different groups and instructed to ‘accompany’ the operation. We cross Plantin en Moretus Lei, enter Provincie Straat and turn right into Bleekhof Straat. Doors are kicked in. Men from the SD drag a father and a mother out onto the street. Followed by crying children and an ancient couple who can hardly walk. The grandfather tears at his hair; his face is an icy mask. His wife is only wearing a nightie and a dressing gown. Her thick eyebrows show under a brightly coloured nightcap. Of course, all of Bleekhof Straat is in an uproar in no time. People yelling and sobbing. Children’s screams cutting through it all. Some of them are being dragged down the street by the hair. Meanwhile we’re all acting as if we’re still just cops. We close off the streets and guard the barriers as if it’s a sporting event. The effect is grotesque. I hear myself telling a weeping boy of about sixteen that he needs to calm down and proceed quietly to the vehicle. Other officers help women who have been kicked to the ground by SD men back up onto their feet. ‘If you could just come this way…’ ‘Hold on tight to the little one, ma’am.’ And so on, and so forth. Some of them let themselves be carted off like sleepwalkers, vacant and unresisting in their pyjamas, acting out their own nightmare. Nothing is fast enough; everything has to go ‘schneller’ and ‘schneller’. The street is now brightly lit; long shadows walk down the pavements. Someone vomits over his shirt front while being dragged along on his heels by two field gendarmes. A woman clasping an extra coat runs after a mother with two sobbing children. The Germans jeer at her and punch her twice in the face when she raises loud objections. When she still refuses to back off they drag her to a truck along with the Jews. Her glance in our direction says enough.
‘In whose name are we actually standing here?’ I whisper to Lode.
‘You’re still asking the question. Later you’ll hear this never happened.’
He’s right. The attorney general, or maybe the mayor, who is now snoring in his bed, will wake up tomorrow morning craving normality, like he does every morning. The late-night operation involved picking up work dodgers, that’s how they will probably describe it. But how do you write this down honestly in a police report? ‘This evening we provided assistance during an arrest for reasons unknown to us. The number of apprehended individuals, women and children amongst them, is also unknown to us.’ The unknown is factored into our pay, along with the feeling of being completely alone here, in this uniform, abandoned to our fate, but you can’t possibly entrust that to a police report. Some of us have gone pale or can’t bear to watch, but there are plenty who are unmoved. Our task is to make sure none of them escape and we carry out that task. No, you’re not allowed past, no matter how desperate you are. You have to get on that truck as the master race demands. But if every one of us is standing here all alone to do a job that doesn’t even need to be justified because it will be forgotten again tomorrow, who or what does that make us? It’s even more ridiculous because that ‘us’ no longer exists either. Who am I, surrounded by fellow officers who can no longer stand me? Less than no one, a ghost in a helmet? Mad Meg in that painting, striding through hell with her eyes wide and her sword pointing straight ahead? Has she
