Underground in Berlin (21 page)

So although Irmgard Heller had good reasons for her jealousy, she and her husband stayed together when it really mattered. Benno Heller’s marriage to an Aryan protected him from deportation. However, when he had the chance to emigrate and join his brother in the United States, he chose not to go because his wife’s heart trouble meant that he could not have taken her with him.

I had first come into contact with the fascinating world of the circus through Karola Schenk, and now I learned more about it from her sister-in-law when I went to stay with her in December 1942.

Camilla Fiochi was one of ten children in the Schenk family. They had all been born in a caravan, and their parents had given them exotic-sounding names, since they were destined for careers in the circus.

Camilla Fiochi had seldom attended school, but she had been very ambitious and successful as a circus artiste. She did so well that she could turn her back on the life of the travelling circus and get engagements at permanent venues, like the Friedrichstadt Palace theatre. After many years on the stage, she had fallen in love with Paolo Fiochi, an Italian who was also a performer and a little younger than she was. They became a couple, married, and Camilla used her savings to build a pretty villa in Zeuthen.
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She was planning to live happily there with Paolo and hoped, although it would be late in the day for her, to get pregnant. That wish was not to come true. One day Paolo travelled to his native Italy, where he met a very youthful dancer, fell head over heels in love with her, and soon the two of them had a baby.

Meanwhile Camilla was still living in her villa in Zeuthen, south-east of Berlin in the Brandenburg Mark, and she welcomed me to it. ‘My colleagues have always been properly put up here,’ she told me by way of a greeting. She took me into a charming room, suitable for a young girl, with white-painted furniture, where I was to stay. I was enchanted.

Then she asked me to guess her age. Her hair was bleached platinum blonde, and she had very well cared-for skin; her figure was delicate, and she had made herself up like a girl. Of course I wanted to compliment her. ‘I could say that I thought you were twenty-five,’ I said, ‘but that wouldn’t really be honest. Looking at you I’d put your age in the thirties, maybe even in the second half of your thirties.’ She crowed with laughter, chuckled happily, and was delighted with me. As I had seen the yellowish spots on the backs of her hands, and the fine white line in the iris of her eyes, I knew that she must really be somewhere between her early fifties and mid-fifties.

Karola Schenk had warned me in advance. ‘Camilla is crazy. You’ll have a tough time with her,’ she had said as we went by rail to Zeuthen. ‘She throws fits of rage if there are no cigarettes in the house, no cognac and no real coffee.’ All those things were available only at unaffordable black-market prices, and by this time Camilla was impoverished. Sometimes the gas was cut off because she couldn’t pay her bill, sometimes it was the electricity or the telephone. ‘It’s touching, really, that in spite of it she’s ready to give you shelter. For all her faults, she’s a warm-hearted person,’ Karola had added.

Since Paolo’s departure, the Trio Fiochi had been wound up, but Camilla had plans for a new troupe. However, she had only one trainee available, a girl of fifteen called Inge Hubbe. Secretly, both of them knew that Inge would never make a circus performer. She had certainly earned good marks for gymnastics at school, but that wasn’t enough. Frau Fiochi was very strict with her and sometimes even beat her. I was often present when she did ballet exercises with Inge Hubbe or tried to teach her the ‘bridge’ position: going from a handstand to arching over backwards like a bridge, and then slowly moving forward into a handstand again.

I was supposed to lead her through the moves, but it was no good. Inge couldn’t manage them, and let herself collapse on a chair, bathed in sweat, as soon as her teacher left the rehearsal room. Frau Fiochi generally remained within earshot.

As Inge sat there, I kept calling, ‘Come on, Inge, do the bridge! Do a better bridge!’ And finally, ‘Yes, now you’re coming on! That was a good arch!’ Hereupon Camilla Fiochi came back in, and surprisingly enough Inge really could do a successful bridge position at that point.

Postcard advertising ‘The Fiochi Sisters and Paolo’, around 1927. One of the artistes is demonstrating the bridge position at the top of the picture
. (photo credit 4.2)

Inge was going through all the problems of adolescence, and was bored to tears for most of the day. My own relationship with the girl was friendly, but on the cool and indifferent side. I had no idea at the time that her family would come to play an important part in my life.

All the Schenks had specialised in what were known as ‘Icarian’ performances: spectacles in which people were thrown through the air as if they could fly, emulating the attempts of the classical Icarus. For instance, three acrobats formed a tower: one stood on the shoulders of another, while the music first died away and then played a flourish. Each movement had to be worked out exactly to the millimetre so that the three people could keep their balance. The real show began when two such human towers faced one another and the two men at the top threw another performer, usually a delicately built young girl, back and forth between them.

The Trio Fiochi had simplified this turn long ago to one forming a tower three men high, but Camilla and Inge didn’t have a third person so that they could put it into rehearsal again.

I was well off with Camilla Fiochi, who was a passionate opponent of the Nazis. She had grown up among circus artistes, had a soft spot for travelling people, and couldn’t stand the police and the authorities; she felt deep sympathy for all nomadic peoples, who of course included gypsies and Jews. ‘You won’t find me denying anyone food,’ she said emphatically. ‘We artistes are special people who believe in sharing what we have.’ I contributed the food that Frau Koch gave me to the common housekeeping, and ate breakfast, lunch and supper with Camilla Fiochi and Inge Hubbe.

In the evening we played games: board games like draughts, or games I hadn’t known before like backgammon or the Chinese game of mah-jong. Camilla was so childish that she always wanted to win, but she didn’t play with any particular acumen. I had to make mistakes on purpose so that she could beat me. Then she would clap her hands with delight.

On the other hand, she worked me terribly hard. She took the opportunity of having me clean the whole house thoroughly. Crawling round on my knees, I had to leave every corner spotless. The trouble was that Camilla was unable to articulate clearly just what she wanted me to do. She spoke in a curiously affected way, and unfortunately her grammar wasn’t always correct. In addition, she kept mixing up the meaning of single words that sounded similar. When she was agitated her voice rose to a hysterical screech, and all I could understand was that I mustn’t do something ‘like this’ but ‘like this’. At the same time she went red in the face with fury, called me an idiot and pulled my hair. Half an hour later she would be apologising profusely, caressing me and saying, ‘I’m an idiot myself, I’m mentally sick, I’m crazy! I don’t have any money to buy bread, and here I go bringing another mouth to be fed into the house.’

Sometimes Lieschen Sabbarth came visiting. She had been trained by Camilla, very successfully too. Privately I thought of her as the three-wigs girl; Lieschen had such strong, springy tresses that she looked as if she had three heads of hair, one above the other. At the top was a kind of nest made of as much hair as would cover another woman’s entire head. Then there were very abundant locks of medium length, and under that ringlets peeping out. It was a wonderful colour, as well, a glossy chestnut brown. Lieschen Sabbarth often said, ‘I must be the only circus artiste in Germany who doesn’t have a perm or dyed hair.’ She had grown up in a housing development with gardens in the Nordend district, the daughter of an anarcho-syndicalist of long standing. He had succeeded in bringing up all his many children to be anti-fascists. So Lieschen was particularly nice to me; she would offer me cigarettes and give me sweets.

Karola Schenk came to see us at the weekend. We were all happy to be reunited. The performers practised the three-man tower together. ‘Oh, this is nice,’ Camilla told Karola as the latter climbed up on her shoulders. ‘You’re as light as a feather!’ Inge watched, but was as stolid as a block of wood, and did not react at all to the performance being rehearsed in front of her.

Not all the Schenks were with the circus. Camilla’s sister Amanda, for instance, had married a master tailor who was a fanatical Nazi. It was against him of all men that my father had once been involved in a trial. He was representing an impoverished Jew from the East, who did preliminary work for the tailor’s establishment and was never paid for it. By chance I had been present in my father’s chambers when both parties met: the tall, stout master tailor had threatened the thin, red-haired and destitute Jew in a way I had never before seen.

All that came back to me when Amanda visited Zeuthen, and told me her husband’s name. Fortunately she hadn’t brought him with her in person. I was introduced as Camilla’s Russian household help. I served coffee in silence, and later cleared away the china with an enigmatic smile.

Camilla had also told some kind of story about me to the couple living above us on the attic floor of the villa. Unfortunately she had immediately forgotten what it was. Was I a Russian to them too? Or was I a Polish worker?

I once had to take something up to that floor, and delivered it in silence. The young woman was busy at the time, with a dressmaker kneeling in front of her pinning up a hem. She was having a dress for a special occasion made, and looked enchanting in it.

Another time I had to clean out the coal cellar. In the process I found a tattered Reclam paperback copy of Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
, sat down on the heap of coal and began reading it. Suddenly I saw the young lady from the attic apartment standing in front of me. Like me, she got a terrible shock, and went bright red in the face.

‘Do you speak German?’ she whispered. It would have been pointless to deny it in view of my reading matter.

‘Wait a moment,’ she said, and went upstairs. Then she came back with several biscuits wrapped in silver paper, and gave them to me.

‘Thank you,’ I said simply. I never saw that neighbour again.

In part of the cellar that had been converted into a garage, I discovered a large, expensive car. It belonged to Herr Lehmann, Karola’s boss, who lived in Zeuthen with his family. Camilla and Karola knew that he was urgently looking for a household help; his wife was overworked, what with looking after their small children and organising the many large evening parties that he had to give as a prominent Nazi.

So the sisters-in-law had thought of suggesting me for the job. They thought that Lehmann could even get me the P sign worn by foreign Polish workers. No one would have suspected that a Jewish woman was hiding in his house. However, I was greatly relieved when I heard that Lehmann couldn’t make up his mind to go along with their idea. I wouldn’t have wanted to act the part of maidservant to a Nazi bigwig.

A stay of two weeks in Zeuthen had been agreed for me. When that time was up, Camilla Fiochi said goodbye to me in a distinctly cool tone. She wished me luck, and thanked me for my work. But something was wrong. I just didn’t know what it was.

I was back on uncertain ground. Another stay with Frau Janicke had been agreed for me, but not until the New Year. Benno Heller was the only person to whom I could turn now.

He gave me two addresses of women in Neukölln who were said to rent rooms, but they both turned me away. He did not mention the very last emergency solution to me until both these attempts had failed; then he sent me to see Felicitas in that gloomy bar in Wassertorstrasse. And she sold me to Karl Galecki, the ‘rubber director’, who lived in a hut in the back yard of the place where he worked.