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 Exercises

A Physicist’s Life in a Turbulent World

 That morning Johan Van de Kieft came to see Lion and me. He was an important figure in the resistance movement, in contact with London. The purpose of his visit was to discuss a draft-bill under consideration by the Dutch government-in-exile, which dealt with the fate of Jewish children who had been hidden during the war but whose parents had been deported and would probably not return. The issue was: Who should be responsible for them after the war? Van de Kieft wished to discuss the issue with us because we had been assigned to represent the Zionist youth movement with the resistance.

    After Van de Kieft had left, Lion and I talked things over and decided that a memorandum should be prepared for use by the resistance. Lion said he would write it and started at once, while I went to my own room. Shortly afterward lunch was ready. As we sat down to our frugal meal, Lion put his unfinished writing in his jacket pocket － instead of storing it in the cache we had prepared for sensitive material.

    After lunch Bert Broer came to see me. That day we discussed a paper recently published by the great German physicist Werner Heisenberg on the theory of superconductivity. When the bell rang, I did not pay attention. Only the ladies were permitted to open the door. Moments later the door to my room opened. There stood a tall man in SS uniform, the skull and bones symbol on his cap, a drawn revolver in his hand.

    My first reaction was a quick look at the window. Could I jump out? Impossible.

    Not saying a word, the SS man moved his revolver to indicate that Bert and I should go into the hallway. The women and Lion were herded in there as well, rounded up by another German. My strongest recollection of the next moment is the total collapse of Lion. He was visibly in total panic, had lost his calm, and moved oddly, causing one of the Germans to hit him in the face, sending his glasses flying. I heard Jeanne pleading with one of the men, offering diamonds to let us go, an offer that enraged them. Next we were led down the stairs. Two cars were waiting. We three men were shoved in one, the women in the other. As we drove off, I experienced fears more intense than I have ever felt in my life. It was a degree of fear that caused physical pain. My body ached all over.

    As I heard later, the women were driven to the women's prison. We were taken to Gestapo headquarters, where the three of us were shoved into separate rooms. As I was waiting for what was to happen next, I remembered some advice given to me by resistance members on how to behave in such situations. First, and most important, try not to show any fear. Behave politely. Ask for an interpreter who could translate spoken German into Dutch, to gain time for replies.

    A man came in. I jumped to attention. As he paced slowly back and forth in the room, he began to interrogate me, speaking in conversational tones, never raising his voice. He first asked me if I was a Jew. I said no, I was not. Whereupon he ordered me to let down my pants. In Holland in those days circumcision was a procedure applied to Jews only. So I said, "All right, I am a Jew. But I am also a physicist, and all I did in that apartment was to pursue my research, as you can verify from the papers and books in my room." The questioning went on, the man keeping up his slow pacing. At one point, when he came quite close to where I was standing, he slapped me hard in the face, then continued his movements as if nothing had happened. It was a shattering moment. Its purpose was obvious: not so much to cause physical pain as to make me lose my mental balance. Even though the man had succeeded in doing so, it did not interrupt the interrogation, with the questions now turning to my possible dealings with the resistance. I denied any such involvement.

    The man left. I waited again. After a while I was ordered out of the room, whereupon I met Bert and Lion again, the latter looking ashen. Once again we were shoved into a car which brought us to a building that before the war used to be the city’s House of Detentions but had become a Gestapo prison. We three were pushed into a cell and the door was banged shut and locked. I had arrived at my next war residence, cell IB4.

    I fell into an exhausted sleep that night, to be awakened by banging on the cell door, which then was opened. Like the others, I continued to lie on my bed, awaiting developments. Moments later a prison guard came in and started yelling at us. Didn't we know that we had to get up quickly when the cell was opened, quickly get dressed, place the toilet things outside the door, then stand at attention to await cell inspection? No, we didn’t know, but of course we learned quickly.

    The days then took on a regular routine. Meals were miserably small. In the late mornings we were let out of our cell for airing and walked around for a short while with other prisoners in a small yard surrounded by high walls. It was beautiful spring weather. We could see a triangular piece of pure blue sky through our small barred window.

    Days in prison were mostly quiet, but nights were bad. We would hear heavy metal doors clanging, shouts, shrieks. We knew that some poor bastard was being taken away, but had only grim forebodings as to where.

    The monotony of the days was broken by periodic interrogations that took place inside the prison building. Sometimes Lion, sometimes I, was taken out of our cell. I was brought to a small room and remember one setting in particular. As I came in I saw a man sitting behind a desk, leaning back, relaxed, with hands clasped behind his neck. The room was otherwise bare, as was the desktop, except for a revolver lying in the middle. I stood in front of his desk, at attention as always. The man began to speak. "You will now tell me all you know about the resistance," he said calmly, "and you will speak the truth. If you do, it will help your situation considerably； if you don't, I shall shoot you right here in this room." I remember how the thought came to me: he is the animal in this circus, you are the tamer, look at him like the animal trainer stares steadily at his beast. I replied to his question as I had done before: "I had nothing to do with the resistance. It is true that I am a Jew. But I am just a young scientist absorbed in my work. I am just a weltfremd, unworldly, young man."

    Another day it was Lion's turn. When he came back that time, he did not walk but rather stumbled into our cell, quite pale and deeply shaken. "What happened?" I asked. His reply: "I've been condemned to death."

    My immediate very brief reaction was and still is astounding to me. It was as if, inside my head, a blinding light shone and a voice spoke: I SHALL LIVE. I had not been condemned.

    Lion had fallen on his cot. I picked him up and cradled him in my arms, as one does a young child. I spoke calming words to him； I do not recall what I said. He quieted down somewhat but remained deeply withdrawn and hard to reach those next few days, staring out of our little window, unseeing.

    Some days later － we were now well into April － I found upon returning to the cell that Lion was gone. I sat down on my cot, in despair. What else could I expect but the worst?

    In order to explain what happened to me next,I must relate what Tineke had been up to during this time. Right after my friends and I had been captured, Tineke had gone to the house on the Hobbemakade where we had been living. As she rang the bell, the door was opened by a Gestapo agent. She was arrested on the spot, then interrogated at length. They had found men’s socks and women’s underwear in the same room of the house, concluding that Lion had been sleeping with Jeanne, whose story that she was Aryan had meanwhile been believed by the Gestapo.So the tragic situation developed that the Germans considerered Lion, properly married to a Jewish woman, to be guilty of Rassenschande, racial disgrace. 

    It was Tineke who got me out. She had gotten hold of the name and address of a high Nazi official in Amsterdam and decided to call on him. She was indeed received in his office. On his desk stood a photo of Göring, with the dedication Fürmeinen Freund (to my friend). Tineke showed him her copy of Kramers's letter to Heisenberg and asked for his help. After reading the letter the man did not say a word to Tineke, but picked up the phone to call the prison. “Hast du einen Jude Pais dort?” ("Do you have a Jew, Pais, there?") Yes, they did. "Lass ihn gehen" ("Let him go").