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  SCHREIBER’S SECRET

  Roger Radford

  Parados Books

  Copyright © Roger Radford 2015

  The right of Roger Radford to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious add a resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Parados Books 72 Redbridge Lane East,

  Ilford, Essex IG4 5EZ, United Kingdom

  www.rogerradford.com

  Front cover photograph © Pedro Cambra

  Used by permission

  Cover Design Concept

  by Antony Hepworth of Freshly Squeezed Design

  Cover Design Layout and Typography

  by Suzanne Fyhrie Parrott

  About the Author

  Roger Radford is also the author of The Winds of Kedem (international bestseller), Cry of the Needle and High Heels & 18 Wheels: Confessions of a Lady Trucker (with Bobbie Cecchini). A former war correspondent in the Middle East, he now lives with his wife in London.

  ‘War criminals deserve the fullest retribution for their crimes...they should be shot on sight without trial...’

  WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, 1943

  ‘There must be an end to retribution. We must turn our backs upon the horrors of the past, and we must look to the future.’

  WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, 1946

  Critics' praise for Roger Radford

  ...flamboyant action, as unimaginable horror from the past resurfaces in modern London.

  SHAUN USHER, Daily Mail

  The hunt for war criminals entered a new dimensional after Britain announced that she would be seeking evidence about citizens living in this country for crimes committed during the war. And Roger Radford, in this, his second novel, has skilfully taken this as the plot for an absorbing book, Schreiber's Secret, which follows the initial success of his first novel, The Winds of Kedem. The story takes us through the horrors of the Nazi transit camp at Theresienstadt, and how the lives of one of the inmates, Herschel Soferman, and the notorious camp commandant, Hans Schreiber, become inextricably entwined.

  Fifty years later, brutal murders in Redbridge stun the world. Two journalists become involved. But all is not as it seems and the journalists, crime reporter Mark Edwards and colleague Danielle Green, wade deep in red herrings and a twisting and turning plot, including a brilliant description of the Old Bailey court trial of the alleged war criminal. If there was such a word as 'unputdownable' I would use it to describe Schreiber's Secret. Radford has the gift of leaving you wanting more.

  MANNY ROBINSON, London Evening Standard and Essex Jewish News

  CHAPTER 1

  Theresienstadt, 1943

  “Welcome to Paradise.”

  Herschel Soferman, hungry and exhausted after his long and arduous journey from Berlin, dropped his worldly possessions on the dirt-caked floor. The bundle of old clothes stared at him mournfully as his tired eyes lifted towards the source of the greeting. He did not possess the strength even to smile at the outrageousness of it.

  “Where are you from?” came the scratchy voice again, penetrating the half-light of dusk struggling to filter through the grimy windows of the barracks.

  “I’m a Berliner and I’m hungry.”

  “Let me see,” the voice continued, “what day is it today? Friday. You’re unlucky, I’m afraid. Friday is soup. Mondays are best. That’s when we get a small loaf of mouldy bread. The rest of the week it’s soup. If you find a piece of potato in it, you’re a rich man. Otherwise it tastes like dishwater. In fact, we’re all pretty sure it is dishwater.”

  The voice took shape and form as its owner stepped forward. “I’m Oskar Springer. I’m from Frankfurt.”

  Soferman, unprepared for such verbosity, shook the man’s outstretched hand weakly. It had the consistency of a chicken’s foot. In fact, the Frankfurter appeared to him to resemble a scrawny cockerel. The head, seemingly too large to be supported safely by the emaciated structure upon which it bobbed, was framed by large, fleshy, almost succulent ears. For a fleeting moment Soferman imagined slicing them off and consuming them in cannibalistic fervour. A dry cackle forced its way from his throat.

  “I’m Herschel Soferman,” he rasped almost apologetically. “I’m twenty-two. How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-one, Herschel,” Springer sighed, the deep-set eyes belying their age. “I know I look much older,” he added quickly. “Tell me a Jew who doesn’t age nowadays. Especially here. Come, let me show you our room upstairs. It’s paradise compared to the filth here.” The elfin-faced man giggled. “There I go using that word again.”

  Soferman smiled weakly. He had been ordered to report to room 189 of Block 4 of the “Hanover” barracks, and now he was about to find out how luxurious his new accommodation would be. He picked up his rucksack and followed his diminutive host up two flights of stone steps to the first floor and then turned left into a corridor. Springer scampered through the first door on the right. There were twelve bunks arranged closely and in orderly fashion around the room. Upon each was a mattress and one folded blanket. The residents must all be fellow countrymen, thought the new arrival. The room was so tidy that only a bunch of German Jews could have been responsible.

  “You can have the bed next to mine if you like,” said Springer. “We lost Pavel yesterday. TB. It’s a wonder I haven’t caught it yet. Anyway, the one good thing about our barracks being so overcrowded is that we manage to keep warm in winter, although we put on as many clothes as we can.”

  The mere mention of the season caused Soferman to shudder. It was freezing. He stepped over to the room’s solitary window and peered out at the courtyard below. Hundreds of people were milling to and fro, cowed not only by the inclement weather. They were Untermenschen, the lowest of the low, and they knew it. Soferman stood mesmerised by them. A procession of pregnant snowflakes began to fall. Everything would be white by the evening.

  “I take it you’ve already been to the low barrack to get your identity card stamped,” said Springer, breaking the spell.

  Soferman fumbled in the right pocket of his overcoat. He and his travelling companions had been herded from the railway station to the collection centre. There, tired and hungry, they had been searched for forbidden goods and had had their identity cards stamped with the date of arrival and the inscription “ghettoised”.

  “You don’t have to show me that, my friend,” said Springer kindly.

  Soferman felt foolish as he held up the card. It had been an automatic reaction.

  “Come, I’ll show you the washroom. The water’s freezing, but then you don’t exactly smell like a bed of roses.”

  As Herschel Soferman followed the smaller man out of the barracks, little did he realise how much he would come to rely on Oskar Springer for his very survival, and how much he would grow to love him for his selflessness and ingenuity.

  Furthest from the Berliner’s mind was the notion that he could be forced to act out a drama equal to the most brutal excesses of ancient Rome.

  The two young men learned quickly that they had many interests in common. Both had a passion for the works of Schiller, Goethe and Kant. This was all the more remarkable in Soferman’s case since he had worked in Berlin as a humble presser and was largely self-taught. Springer h
ad enjoyed the benefit of a university education. They differed also in that the Berliner had spent most of his formative years in an orphanage, while Springer was the second son of a family of eight. The Frankfurter had lost contact with them when the Nazis had decided finally to solve the problem of their own Jews. Every transport was “to the East” and fear of the unknown was not helped by the occasional rumour of mass slaughter, although most people had developed a finely tuned mechanism for denial.

  For the first few weeks following his arrival, Herschel Soferman played the willing pupil to Springer’s tutoring. He learned that Theresienstadt was a transit ghetto set up in the old fortified Czech town of Terezin and that thousands of Jews from Bohemia and Moravia had already passed through on their way to “resettlement” further east. Now it was the turn of Jews from Germany and Austria to flood the ghetto.

  “Never volunteer for anything,” Springer told his young ward. “Always keep a low profile and learn to survive by your wits. The longer we stay in the ghetto, the better. And whatever you do, don’t make yourself a candidate for resettlement. The Nazis are word jugglers. They’ve even produced a film. One of the Germans who comes to the cookhouse told me they called it ‘Beautiful Theresienstadt.’. It was made by Kurt Gerron. You know, the famous actor and director. Poor bastard. He must’ve done a wonderful job. They sent him on a transport to Auschwitz and…”

  “Auschwitz?” Soferman cut in.

  “Oh, I forgot. You’re fresh meat. You probably haven’t heard of it yet. They say it’s a death camp where they gas and murder Jews. Nobody wants to go there to find out if the rumours are true. Most people think it’s a big ghetto with self-administration like here. I actually once got a postcard from my uncle Mordechai. It was a put up job, of course. The first few lines extolled the virtues of the place. But then he wrote that he had met Yaacov Weiss, his closest friend.”

  “Well, that seems quite positive.”

  “Not quite. His friend Weiss was killed years ago. On Kristallnacht. But you can’t tell anyone here that everything’s a sham. They just want to believe it.”

  Soferman shivered in the chill air.

  “Anyway,” Springer went on, “one day not so long ago I saw the director crouching on his knees, pleading with the SS that he had made a magnificent film for them. ‘That’s the trouble, Jew-swine,’ the SS officer shrieked, ‘it was so good that no one must ever know how you got the shits to act so well.’ He then smashed Gerron over the head with a stick and threw him on the transport.”

  With that, Springer danced a sort of macabre jig.

  “An actor. Who cares?” he said as he bobbed up and down. “A painter, a scientist, a candlestick maker. They all end up the same way. Most of them are German Jews like us. You know, those who were more German than German, who’d lost all their Yiddishkeit.

  The jig continued.

  “Look at this,” he enthused, pulling a wad of banknotes from the pocket of his grubby and torn trousers. “Nice, aren’t they? They’ve all got a portrait of Moses on them. Everyone has a bankbook and receives a monthly salary from our very own bank. There are bills in all dominations. Ten kronen, fifty, a hundred. Whoever comes here for a day or even a few hours is really impressed with the lot of the Jews. But you can’t buy anything with this money. It’s worthless. The whole thing’s a farce.”

  Soferman soon learned the significance of Springer’s first words to him when he arrived at Theresienstadt. In a frenzy of activity, signs were being erected outside various buildings. The banner at the entrance to the ghetto read “Welcome to Theresienbad” as if the place were indeed a spa. In other locations were other placards, some proclaiming “Ghetto Paradise”, “Buy Your Own Homes”, “District for Jewish Settlement and Jewish Self-Administration”.

  “What’s happening, Oskar?” asked Soferman, his small brown eyes bright with curiosity.

  “We’re about to have another visit, my friend,” Springer chuckled hoarsely. “Let’s see if we can wangle a bit-part in the farce. At least we might get some decent food in our bellies.”

  “But you said never to volunteer for anything,” the Berliner protested.

  “It’s okay, Herschel,” the elf replied excitedly. “I’ve acted in one of these tragic-comedies before. You’re about to become a film star.”

  And thus it was that Herschel Soferman from Berlin, by dint of his friend’s connections with the Judenaltester, the head of the Jewish self-governing body in the ghetto, discarded his ragged garments for a reasonably well-fitting grey flannel suit and a seat in Theresienstadt’s most luxuriously furnished “coffee house”.

  The coffee and cake had tasted real enough as the cameras whirred and members of the visiting delegation of the International Red Cross passed through the cafe on their way to the hurriedly decorated children’s homes and other sterile sections of the “model Jewish settlement”.

  Soferman and Springer had smiled at the guests as the Orchestra struck up a promenade concert. Food was the name of the game, and nobody cared what the Volk back home thought.

  The visiting foreign delegates were accompanied by their Nazi hosts, and Soferman realised with a shock that they were the first SS men he had seen since his arrival at the camp. Springer had informed him that, apart from the occasional German check-ups, the illusion of Jewish self-government was allowed to run its course.

  The little Frankfurter had proven to be a mine of information, thanks mainly to his contacts in the Jewish Council, though how these were made and maintained remained a closely guarded secret. Through Springer, Soferman learned of the various illusions the Germans employed to create an air of normality in the ghetto, the greatest of these being the apparent non-existence of SS men. Discipline and punitive punishment were meted out by the Jewish kapos, while the Czech gendarmes remained onlookers.

  “But there are more SS running this place than you can imagine,” the wiry man had told his friend. “That is why they carry out so many extensive registrations. They justify their existence by gathering detailed statistics, graphs, surveys and reports. It’s efficiency gone mad. And those pen-pushers eat and breathe efficiency only because they don’t want to get sent to the Russian front. It makes our life difficult but at least it keeps us alive. As long as we can avoid ending up on a transport to ‘the East’, we too have a better chance of survival.”

  And thus the two men became willing and silent accomplices as the fat cats from Sweden and Switzerland passed their table, laden as it was with the sort of food the prisoners could normally only dream about. Obeying orders, Soferman and Springer kept their eyes averted from the guests lest they betray the true nature of the farce. It was all part of the game, and none of the inmates selected for the show was about to trade good food for posthumous glory.

  “You certainly treat these people very well,” said one of the Swiss. Soferman imagined the Nazi host smiling in smug satisfaction.

  Later, Soferman and Springer themselves risked knowing smiles at the guests as the camp choir struck up a performance of Verdi’s Requiem Mass under the respected conductor Rafael Schachter. The Nazis felt so honoured that their Jews were performing a Catholic work. But Schachter was no fool. His choir sang Verdi’s words in their original Latin. The lyrics may have been lost on the hosts and their duped guests, but every Jew present knew the meaning of verses that broadcast an act of supreme defiance.

  Therefore when the Judge takes His seat,

  whatever is hidden will be revealed:

  nothing shall remain unavenged.

  The day of wrath, that day will

  dissolve the world in ashes,

  as David and the Sibyl prophesied.

  How great will be the terror,

  when the Judge comes

  who will smash everything completely!

  The delegation came and went and the actors returned to the vicissitudes of life in the barracks. Their room became so overcrowded that beds had to be shared. Good food became scarce, although Springer managed
occasionally to procure the odd delicacy, a complete loaf of bread here, a whole potato there. He had not hesitated to share the treasure with his new bunkmate.

  “How are you going to keep me warm in winter if you’re all skin and bone?” he would joke. There was never a hint of sexual ambivalence. It was just that there was nothing more vital to survival than true comradeship. Loners did not last long in the ghetto.

  By normal standards, Soferman and Springer starved. But by the parameters existing in Theresienstadt, the two men could count themselves among the privileged few. Springer was an expert in stealth and seemed to have contacts everywhere, especially in the kitchens and clothing stores.

  “It’s all done by what the Czechs call slojs,” Springer explained. “We call it schleuse. It’s the ghetto word for pilfering.”

  He reminded his friend that, upon arrival, each new transport had to pass through the outbuildings where searches for valuables were carried out.

  “The Nazis called it the schleuse,” Springer went on, “because it’s like a sluice-gate, a kind of dividing line between the place where the transport came in and the ghetto itself. Everybody passes through there and is robbed of most of his possessions. They rob. We pilfer.”

  Soferman learned that most of the pilfering was carried out by the children of the ghetto, their morals corrupted speedily by the need to fill their empty bellies and those of their families.

  “I have an aunt who works in the kitchens,” Springer beamed. “She’s checked every time she leaves her work. But she has a son and she always gives him four helpings instead of one. They never check the children. It keeps them, and us, alive. My friend, the children here see everything and know everything. Nothing in our lives remains secret from them. They will look into your eyes and know whether you are a cheat or a pervert or, God forbid, whether you steal from your comrade. Kameradschaftdiebstahl is the worst of our crimes here.”