Against the horror of the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust is the miracle of those who survived. This is the memoir of one, now an octogenarian graphic designer living in Switzerland. Born in Berlin in 1922, Sch?nhaus was spared deportation to a concentration camp in 1942 because he was a skilled worker in armaments. He continued to help to make the barrels for German machineguns, and to mis-make them, although it was as much for his Jewishness as for this sabotage that, in the end, he had to flee.
A fugitive in Berlin, he honed another talent: forgery. His accomplished, but false, identity papers saved hundreds of Jews from death. That in turn was discovered by the Nazis. When Sch?nhaus found his face on the Gestapo’s “wanted” posters, he decided to seek refuge in Switzerland. How to get there? He chose his means carefully: a bicycle. And so a second saga began.
It is a remarkable story, simply told with neither self-pity nor self-praise. As heartening as any of its aspects is the help Sch?nhaus acknowledges, both as a forger in Berlin and while on his way to Switzerland, from anti-Nazi Germans. The many asides are another rich reward and ample reason of themselves to read this book. For example: “Instead of attacking the Russians from Siberia, the Japanese attacked the Americans. Fortunately. Otherwise Hitler might yet have won the war.” Sch?nhaus’s courage and lack of bitterness, above all, show our species at its best.
The Forger, by Cioma Sch?nhaus, translation by Alan Bance
Granta, £7.99