Charles Lewinsky - Melnitz

(It was probably cowardice. I’m not a brave person.)

Of course it’s impossible for you to be exposed to such things for even a day longer.

I have thought all night, and would like to make you a suggestion, which I ask you not to interpret as charity. It would help me too. Really.

I do have a receptionist at my surgery, but my Fräulein Salvisberg is an elderly lady, who finds the work too much, and could use some relief. (At least one can put it that way without insulting the dear soul too much.)

Irma told me that you have worked as a geriatric nurse, and a step from there to the waiting room of a general practitioner is not a very great one. If it would be convenient — empty words. After everything I know about your situation, it will be more than convenient. So, to rephrase — If you will permit me, I will contact the immigration authorities here to see about the prospects of a work permit. It shouldn’t actually be all that difficult.

To this end it would be useful if you could assemble your personal details on a piece of paper for me, age, place of birth and all those things. The authorities are doubtless going to want all those things.

With warmest greetings

Your Arthur Meijer

PS: I wonder whether Irma hasn’t known the truth for ages, and only goes on talking about an accident because she thinks she owes you that. I would not put such consideration beyond her.

PERSONAL DETAILS

Name: Pollack, née Bernstein

First name: Rosa Recha (my father was a big fan of Lessing.)

Date of birth: 30 September 1900 (I would seem to have been conceived during the night of the turn of the century.)

Place of birth: Melsungen, District of Melsungen, Hessen (perhaps you have seen a picture of the beautiful half-timbered houses there? My father had a little weaving mill there.)

Professional training: primary school teacher (but I never practised the profession, because I met my husband while I was doing the course and married him straight after my exams. Pointlessly wasted fees.)

Current occupation: unemployed

Religion: (three guesses.)

(So, is that enough parenthetical observations for your liking?)

Kassel, 10.7.37

Dear Goliath!

The personal details that I enclose sound remarkably silly. Your letter has left me light-headed with hope.

Of course I can imagine nothing better than to help in your surgery. Or in any other way. Do you need a cook? My children say I bake the best cakes in the world. Oh, it would be so lovely if this really worked! The situation here gets more dreadful by the day.

The impression that you will have gained from your nephew’s letters is not incorrect. Most of the things being done to us are entirely legal. It is only the laws themselves that are criminal. As if highway robbers were to wear collars and ties and keep strictly to shop opening hours.

An example: they don’t simply take people’s houses away. They just pass a bill according to which each house-owner is obliged to become a member of a house-owner’s association. Sounds harmless enough, doesn’t it? But the association doesn’t accept Jews, so the houses sadly, sadly, have to be sold. At a price determined by the purchaser.

And that is happening everywhere.

I myself have worked in an old people’s home run by the B’nai B’rith. The association was compulsorily dissolved and its assets confiscated. So far so orderly. First you invent a clause, and then you enforce it.

Before they pulled all the bedclothes out of the cupboards and took them away, I had to produce an exact list of them, sheet for sheet, pillow case for pillow case. They even waited until the dirty laundry had been washed, ironed and sorted again. To make sure that nothing was missing. Only then did they come and take it all away. They paid me my wages for that one day. Minus social insurance contributions, as prescribed by the regulations. All according to the book.

When the old people had long since been thrown out of their rooms, a Party member sat in our director’s office for weeks going through the accounts. B’nai B’rith members who were behind with their contributions were sent a reminder and had to pay the difference. Your view of things is quite correct: we are an orderly country, where stealing is only ever done against receipt.

I will be so happy when I no longer have to live here.

By the way: I naturally assumed that you and your family are Swiss. If that is the case — what is your nephew doing in this accursed Germany?

A work permit for Switzerland would be wonderful. If it works out, I will only ever call you Goliath for as long as you live.

With warmest, warmest greetings

Your

Rosa Pollack

‘How do you imagine this?’

Herr Bisang pulled a face as if he had toothache. He had set his pocket watch down on the desk in front of him and now straightened the chain, aligning it so that it was precisely parallel with the dark brown cardboard portfolio containing Arthur’s application.

‘Really, Dr Meijer, how do you imagine this?’

The official had the pursed lips of a man who has an unpleasant taste in his mouth, but whom propriety forbids to spit.

‘Stomach problems,’ Arthur thought automatically.

‘Just as this Zionist Congress is being held in Zurich. With delegates from all over the world. I have talked to my colleagues in Basel, who have experience of such things. They all say we should brace ourselves. You have no idea how much work we have to do already.’ With a reproachfully exhausted gesture he pointed to a shelf full of lever-arch files. ‘Entry permits. Special authorisations. Applications, applications, applications.’

‘I don’t quite see the connection.’

‘But Doctor Meijer!’ Herr Bisang pressed both thumbs to his temples and pulled a face again. ‘You are an intelligent person. One can tell just by looking at you. No, no, don’t contradict me. I have an eye for these things. You have to be able to read people in a post such as mine. You understand what I mean.’

‘To be quite honest: no. I’m asking you for a work permit for a receptionist, and you…’

‘Stop there,’ said Herr Bisang and raised his hand like a traffic policeman. ‘Let’s not muddle things up. You have made an application; I have received an application to process. It has nothing at all to do with a personal request. If it were up to me…’

‘Yes?’

‘But it isn’t up to me,’ said Herr Bisang. ‘We have our instructions. Rules. Guidelines.’

‘Frau Pollack would really be the ideal receptionist for me.’

‘Ah, you see, Doctor Meijer…’ Herr Bisang seem to have reached a favourite topic of his. ‘What is ideal? It would be ideal if I could retire tomorrow on a full pension. But authorities are not there for the ideal, but for the doable. And this work permit is not doable.’

‘My I ask you the reason?’

Herr Bisang coughed and brought a hand to his throat as if to check that some new illness wasn’t on its way.

‘Application for entry with a view to accepting a workplace can only be authorised if in the professional sector in question it can be demonstrated that there is an inadequate supply of local applicants.’ The sentence sounded as if it had been learned by heart, as indeed it probably had been.

‘In this special case…’

‘There are only special cases.’ Herr Bisang laid his fingertips together as carefully as if it were a difficult trick. ‘Particularly among you Jews.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Please don’t misunderstand me, Dr Meijer. I have no prejudices. I do not know such things. For me there are only facts. Figures. Statistics. And it is an indisputable fact that the number of applications from German citizens of the Mosaic faith has risen very sharply over the past few years.’