For Hitler, the assassination of a German official by a Jew offered an opportunity to solidify German hatred of the Jews and to advance his Final Solution. It didn’t matter that Von Rath was under suspicion and surveillance by the Gestapo. Any martyred Aryan would serve the Führer’s purpose.
Storm troopers were instructed to ‘spontaneously’ attack Jewish-owned shops, synagogues, and homes in the early morning hours. And as many Jews as possible were to be rounded up and sent to concentration camps. This hadn’t mattered to Heinz when he thought he didn’t know or care about any Jews. But everything had changed with Bertha’s announcement. ‘Damn her! he said as he stormed around his apartment. ‘Let her rot in hell!’
Heinz, who normally slept well, couldn’t sleep at all that night. He thought of how Frau Schimmel had lied to him, betrayed him. It was just like a Jew to do such a thing, wasn’t it? To lie and cheat and manipulate. She had taken advantage of him, used him for her own purposes.
Except, when he tried to think of ways she had taken advantage of him, all he could come up with was that he had hauled her groceries up the stairs in exchange for her wonderful strudel and her sound advice. When he tried to remember what her selfish and devious purposes might have been, the only ones he could come up with were friendship and survival. To make matters worse, when he tried to conjure sinister images in his mind of Bertha Schimmel as a devious old Jew, instead he saw her kindly face next to that of Tante Jolesch, his beloved neighbor from long ago.
At around two o’clock on the morning of November 10, 1938, a half dozen storm troopers banged on the front door of Tullemannstraße 54. When they saw Heinz come out of his apartment wearing his uniform, they yelled, ‘Open up, Kamerad!’ and ‘Juden heraus!’ Out with the Jews!
Heinz unlocked the door. He recognized a couple of them, including Jürgen from the Three Crowns. They smelled of alcohol. Heinz had stopped going to the Three Crowns, so he rarely saw Jürgen any more.
They swarmed up the stairs to Frau Schimmel’s door and started pounding and yelling. Heinz ran to unlock the door before they broke it down. They rushed shouting into the apartment. But Frau Schimmel was gone.
‘Where is she, Schleiffer?’ said Jürgen.
‘Damn! I don’t know,’ said Heinz. ‘The old Jew bitch was here yesterday.’
They ran around in the apartment, bumping into each other and cursing. Some of them pocketed knickknacks or whatever else took their fancy. There was no money or jewelry. One of them, finding nothing he wanted, turned over the dresser and broke some pictures instead.
Hearing the sound of other men yelling out on the street, Jürgen said, ‘Let’s go, men. We’ve got more work to do.’ They rushed down the stairs and out the door to rejoin the mob sweeping from building to building.
Heinz followed them downstairs. He locked the front door. He watched through the front window. But all he could see in the darkness was the flickering light from flames somewhere down the street. Heinz set the brass umbrella stand upright again.
He went back up to Frau Schimmel’s apartment. It was a mess. He lifted the dresser up, replaced the drawers, and maneuvered it back into place. He put the clock back on the dresser. Its face was broken but it was still ticking. A lamp had been knocked over and broken, so he stood that back up and swept up the glass shards. He swept up the glass from the broken picture frames too, and hung the pictures back up as best he could. The light from a fire in the street danced on the ceiling. He closed the curtains so he wouldn’t have to look at it.
When he was finished, he went back down to his apartment. The curtains were closed and only a small night light was burning, so he couldn’t tell whether Bertha was awake or not. He tiptoed to his bed where she lay. ‘How was it, Heinz?’ she said.
‘They made a mess, Bertha. I’m sorry. They broke some things and they stole some things.’
‘And you?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Heinz, ‘I’m all right.’ But he wasn’t. He didn’t think he would ever be all right again.
Bertha Schimmel – this was not her real name – stayed with Heinz Schleiffer for a week to be sure the pogrom was over. Then he moved her back upstairs. She lived for another month, growing weaker all the time, but also somehow more radiant. Her skin was pale and paper like, her eyes were huge and dark. And her hair was thin. He brushed it for her, which frightened him the first time he did it.
When he found her the morning after she died, her eyes were closed. She looked just like she was sleeping. She had gotten her wish, to die a natural death in her own bed. Heinz knew who her doctor was and tried to contact him. But the doctor was gone, arrested along with thousands of others all over Germany and Austria.
Heinz reported to the authorities that Bertha Schimmel, age 84, had died. She had no next of kin that he knew of. Of course, he didn’t even know her real name. So it was up to him to deal with her remains. She had wanted to be cremated and had given him money to pay for it when the time came.
Heinz took the little urn of ashes and went with Tomas, who was home on leave, to the banks of the Isar. They stood and watched as the little cloud of ashes, changing patterns and slowly sinking, drifted downstream. A pair of mallards came in for a landing just behind the dispersing ashes and drifted along with them. ‘The funeral cortege,’ said Tomas. He looked over at his
