‘Not you,’ I said. ‘Someone more important. I know something. Something that your superiors will want to know.’
He raised an eyebrow and laughed, as if I were just a child. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Before you get yourself into trouble.’
‘I know where the Jews are,’ I hissed, leaning forward so he could surely see the rage in my eyes. ‘They hide in the sewers like rats.’
‘Go home,’ he repeated.
‘If you don’t let me speak to the Untersturmführer,’ I said, ‘I will write a letter to your superiors and by then it will be too late for them to act. And you will be blamed. I will say that you sent me away.’
He took a long time to decide but, perhaps feeling the same fear of the SS officers that everyone else felt, he led me with little graciousness inside the building, my anger only increasing as I waited. Finally, I was summoned into a small, cold room, where a tired man in a grey uniform sat before me.
‘You want to report something?’ he asked, sounding completely uninterested.
‘Jews,’ I told him. ‘An entire Jewish family. Four of them. Living not far from here. In the centre of Berlin itself.’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘There are no Jews left here,’ he told me. ‘They’ve all been removed, you must know that. And certainly a family of four would have been apprehended by now.’
‘Everyone knows that there are people in hiding,’ I said. ‘The ones you don’t even realize are Jews, with their forged papers and counterfeit documents.’
He narrowed his eyes as he stared at me.
‘And if the SS don’t know who they are, then how do you?’ he asked.
‘Because she told me herself.’
‘Who did?’
‘The girl. The daughter.’
He laughed a little. ‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘A lover of yours? Did she jilt you for another boy and now you’re trying to avenge yourself on her by inventing some story? Or did she just turn down your advances, was that it?’
‘It’s nothing like that,’ I said, leaning forward and allowing my fury to escape me now. ‘You think I’d fuck a Jew? Maybe that’s what you enjoy, is it? Is that why you don’t seem keen on pursuing this matter? Perhaps I shouldn’t be talking to you at all, Untersturmführer. Perhaps I should be looking for your Obersturmführer instead?
‘Tell me more about this family,’ he said finally, opening his notebook and licking the top of his pencil before starting to write.
‘I told you, there are four of them. A man and his wife, their daughter and a young boy. He’s just a child of five or six, I think. They claim to be Mischlings, second degree, so they’ve been left alone until now. But it’s not true! They’re fully Jewish, all four grandparents were Jews, and they live here in contravention of the Race Laws. But they’re worried that they will be exposed. They have money and they have papers. They plan on travelling to France and crossing the English Channel. Then onward to America.’
‘We’ll visit them tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It won’t be difficult to find out the truth.’
‘Tomorrow will be too late,’ I told him. ‘They leave tonight.’
He looked up at me sharply. ‘You know this for a fact?’ he asked. ‘They’ve pulled the wool over your eyes,’ I said, hearing a certain hysteria creep into my tone now that I seemed to be convincing him. ‘They stayed here even as you deported the others. They’ve been laughing at you as they spread their filthy Jewry before the children of the Reich and within hours they will be on their way out of the Fatherland to use their money to build an army against us.’
‘Give me their names,’ he said. ‘And their address.’
I didn’t hesitate.
A moment later he left the room and I heard the sound of soldiers assembling in the courtyard outside and realized that he was not going to return to me. Running out of the building on to the street, I saw a group of six soldiers, led by the Untersturmführer himself, pile into a jeep and watched as they drove off in the direction of Alysse’s home, a short journey of only a few minutes. I felt a moment of terror then, a sickness inside at the thought of what I’d done, but still I believed that if Alysse and her family were only sent away, then Oskar would stay in Berlin and in time he would forget her and our friendship could continue as before. Perhaps he would even miss her so much that there would be no more talk of girls ever again. Instead, there would just be the two of us.
I ran through the streets in pursuit of the jeep and, when it approached Alysse’s front door, the driver pulled in as the Untersturmführer looked towards the upstairs windows, where the shades were drawn but a low light could be seen seeping through the thin fabric. Giving a signal to his Rottenführer, the young man used the butt of his rifle and his right foot to kick the door in and the SS soldiers poured inside, roaring at the top of their voices, an insult to the peaceful dignity of the night.
It took only a few moments before the family were dragged outside and lined up on the street. I could see their neighbours peeping anxiously through their curtains, no doubt fearing that the next door to be knocked down might be theirs. Two of the soldiers guarded Alysse’s parents with their rifles while the rest ransacked the house, looking for anything incriminating. The little boy remained brave and silent while Alysse appeared terrified, shaking visibly in the coldness of the night. From where I stood, half hidden in the shade of a sidestreet, it gave me great pleasure to see her undone.
The Untersturmführer came out after a few minutes, brandishing train tickets in his hand. He waved them in the face of Alysse’s father, who protested his innocence, but it was to no avail, as an SS lorry arrived and the back doors were pulled open, ready to transport the unfortunate group to a place from which there could be no return. I began to grow anxious now, desperate for the scene to end and for them to disappear into the night.
But before the last of the passengers – the little boy – could be loaded into the lorry, I heard the sound of someone running along the street behind me and turned to see Oskar, charging towards the German soldiers with a pistol in his hand as he threw his suitcase to the side of the street. He was quick with his gun, pulling the trigger as a first soldier fell, then pulling it again as another went down. Alysse’s mother screamed and the rest of the soldiers turned as one in his direction, opening fire, a hail of noise and bright lights in the darkness of the night, and it took only a moment for him to fall too. His body collapsed close to my feet, blood pouring from his mouth and spreading from a wound in his chest across his coat, and I stared down at him, paralysed with fear, before Alysse screamed his name and leaped from the lorry to run in his direction, her younger brother following her, calling her name, as their parents cried out for them both to come back. Oskar was still alive – just – but with little time left. His breathing was failing, and she reached him just before the soldiers shot again, falling across his body with a scream, and as I stepped closer to them, the child was lifted off his feet too and fell to the ground after his sister, the back of his head blown away, his brain spilling like mud across the cobbled street. Oskar and Alysse stared up at me without emotion, their bodies jolting in trauma, and within a minute their lives had drawn to a close.