by Paula Wynne
Mum, whose hearing seemed to be better than either of them had thought, spun around. ‘What?!’
Both boys stared at her.
Mum marched over with her hands on her hips. ‘Are you hanging around the airfield?’
‘Nope,’ Luke leaned over towards Allan’s camera and said, ‘Nice zoom. Cost a bomb, I bet.’
‘Don’t even try to change the subject, Luke.’ Mum waited for an answer.
To clear the air, Matt asked Allan, ‘So do you actually think there’s a hidden Nazi around here?’
‘Mmmmm!’ He sipped the last mouthful of tea and handed his cup to Mum. ‘I’ll take you up on that offer of another tea, please.’
She glared at the three of them. ‘Okay, I’ll get the tea,’ she wagged her finger at Luke, ‘but I want to know what’s going on.’ She hurried off.
Luke’s mouth twisted into a thank you smile.
Allan lowered his voice, ‘It’s okay as long as you guys show me around and let me in on anything you hear about this.’
‘About what?’
He leaned in, his voice taking a conspiratorial tone, ‘I don’t just believe in a hidden Nazi. I’ve got a name! And there’s even more to it than that. It’s what my piece is going to be about. Can I practise it on you?’
25
Matt was desperate to hear more and glanced at Luke. They both nodded their heads vigorously.
Delighted, Allan stood up. ‘Okay, imagine me on the screen, I’ll set up in front of something interesting, like, say, your protest camp, yeah?’
Matt and Luke nodded.
‘Here goes,’ Allan cleared his throat and puffed out his chest. Then, he started speaking in a professional tone. ‘During the Second World War, Hitler was obsessed with developing secret weapons, some of which were truly revolutionary in scientific terms.’
Matt straightened and focused on his cousin.
‘One of the Third Reich’s most innovative young scientists was a man named Wilhelm Sommer. He started his career working with computer pioneer Dr. Konrad Zuse, who built the first programmable electromechanical computer. The machine was a device that printed symbols on paper tape in a manner that emulated a person following a series of logical instructions.
‘It was a similar machine to the one the British developed later in the war to help code breakers read encrypted German messages.’
Luke had been fidgeting and looking even a little bored, but he suddenly took notice. ‘Gee, I didn’t know that!’
Allan looked pleased to be knowledgeable on the subject. He slapped his forehead as if an idea had just popped into his head. ‘Hey, you guys can really help me out here and get me into some cool places to film, right?’
Luke whispered, ‘I’ll ask Bomber if you can shoot at the Air Fest.’
‘Thanks!’ Allan grinned. ‘Anyway, I really want to create a conspiracy. This is how I’ll do it.’ He tilted forward and pulled a sombre face. With his eyes fixed ahead, his documentary voice took on a conspiratorial tone, ‘These are the devices we know about, and they formed the earliest steps towards our modern day computers…but what about secret computer research projects? This highly intelligent man, Wilhelm Sommer, was a German civil engineer and SS Nazi commander. Although he was known to be working on a project with Hans Kammler, one of the Nazis’ key players who oversaw construction projects and towards the end of the war was put in charge of the missile and jet programmes, there are no records detailing the work they did together.’
Matt was completely hooked.
Allan’s voice deepened, ‘Were Kammler and Sommer working on a device, in Prague, that in some way went beyond what even our modern computers are capable of? My investigations into this Nazi war criminal show that for the duration of the war, Sommer remained entombed in Kammler’s secret scientist security hideout, working on their invention, which disappeared when the war ended. Along with Sommer.’
‘Really?’ Luke interrupted.
Matt jabbed him in the ribs, ‘Shh!’
Allan didn’t bat an eyelid as he continued, ‘Soon after the war ended, Nazi hunters created a list of the most wanted war criminals. They added Sommer to that list.’ He dropped his voice a notch. ‘Not because he had directly participated in the mass killings of Jews, but because of his association to technology that enabled and made worse the Holocaust.’
Allan’s expression was serious, and as his cousin made the link between daring scientific exploits and mass murder, Matt found his own mouth forming a hard line.
‘Now we have to switch our attention to two different Nazi officers. In a recent gruesome discovery at an airfield near Bremen in north Germany, a skeleton was found. It was the body of a man, and the cause of death was a bullet hole in his skull. A local farmer was able to recount a hitherto unknown story about an SS officer called Friedrich Wollner, known as the Wolf of Terezín, coming to Bremen in 1945 to find a man named Sommer. He succeeded in doing so, at the airfield, but no one knows what happened to them after they met.’
‘So he came here?’ Luke asked.
Matt huffed. ‘Stop interrupting!’
Allan gave Matt a grateful glance but answered Luke. ‘Remember that at the end of the war, the Nazis were putting very young men into high-profile positions, including being in charge of concentration camps. It was simply because they were running out of manpower. Some of the most wanted Nazis were young, in their early twenties, so they’d only be just into their sixties now.’
Luke scoffed, ‘No one is gonna put them on trial at that age.’
‘Oh, yes, they are! I heard about that on the radio,’ Matt replied.
‘Matt’s right,’ Allan agreed. ‘Some are on trial at that age and a lot older. They have to account for their crimes against humanity.’
Not to be outdone, Luke persisted. ‘How do you know about this Nazi, anyway? You have spies working for you?’
Allan laughed. ‘No. Well…sort of. My boss wouldn’t pay for a spy, but luckily I have a source who leaked some information to me.’
Matt asked, ‘Who?’
Allan shook his head. ‘A journalist never reveals his sources. But I can tell you, confidentially, that I will be secretly recording the interviews with them. You know, in case something happens.’
‘Like what?’ A chill spun down Matt’s spine.
‘Dunno. They seem a bit clandestine, so I’ll see what they come up with.’ Allan popped the bun he’d said he was too full to eat into his mouth and licked his sugary fingers. ‘Okay, back to my piece. I tried to tie these two men together and found they were related, by marriage, not birth. Wollner was married to Steffan Sommer’s cousin.’
Matt frowned. ‘Wait, you said Wilhelm Sommer earlier. Who’s Steffan? His brother?’
‘No,’ Allan’s expression became a little smug. ‘They were cousins. Wait for this.’ He wiped his fingers again, still trying to get the sugar from Mum’s bun off them.
Beckoning Matt and Luke to lean in, he murmured, ‘The farmer I spoke to in Bremen said he found out that right after Wollner and Sommer met, an English plane landed and then took off again almost immediately.’
Luke frowned. ‘How could you speak to a farmer if you haven’t been there?’
‘Haven’t you heard of a telephone?’ Matt kicked Luke’s ankle.
Luke rounded on him. ‘Stop that!’
‘Well, you’re making yourself look like a prat.’
‘It’s okay, guys,’ Allan held up his hands to stop them arguing. ‘Just listen. The farmer said the plane was only a two-seater. You see, like many young lads of the time, he was obsessed with planes, knew everything about all the models there were. Thing is, even though he told this story to the allied soldiers who came later, his reports were ignored because he was just a kid. He still remembers this clearly and he swears that what landed was a two-seater English plane.’
Matt thought of all the old biplanes down at the airfield, and how he had also been a plane-obsessed kid. It was true: he had
all four different Top Trumps aeroplanes packs, and he’d known by heart every number on every card. Not many adults could say that.
Allan’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘So which man escaped? And could he have been flown into a small village airfield in the UK? Sommer had distant English relatives from that area, and even now, forty years later, they’ve refused to be interviewed or named.’
‘Who?’ Luke burst out.
Allan looked at Luke, and then Matt, his eyes sparkling, and one eyebrow raised in question.
Matt gasped, ‘The Balmaines?’
The question hung in the air, unanswered.
After a long pause, Allan continued as if Matt had never spoken. ‘It would be great to get over to Germany to film there, but my boss is a penny pincher. I’d like to go to Terezín Concentration Camp.’
Luke muttered something under his breath.
‘If,’ Allan emphasised the word, ‘I can get there, I’ll start with me studying the old stone buildings. Then I’ll enter the arched gate, turn to face the camera and say… It’s said that the Wolf had once worked with Josef Mengele, a German Schutzstaffel officer and a doctor in Auschwitz concentration camp. He was notorious for performing deadly human experiments on prisoners. After the war, Mengele fled to South America, where he evaded capture for the rest of his life. But did the Wolf do the same, and flee to the Hampshire-Berkshire borders? Or was it Steffan Sommer?’
Matt’s frown had grown deeper. ‘Look Allan, sorry if I’m being stupid here…’ Luke guffawed and Matt tried to kick him again, although Luke moved his leg out of the way too quickly. ‘But I thought we were talking about AWRE hiding a Nazi scientist, Wilhelm Sommer, here so he could work on nuclear missiles. That would make some kind of sense I guess, but why would AWRE hide Steffan Sommer or Friedrich Wollner? I mean those guys weren’t scientists, they were just war criminals. I don’t get the logic of it.’
‘Oh. Um, yeah!’ agreed Luke.
Matt rolled his eyes at Luke.
Allan was nodding. ‘You’ve grown up smart, little cousin! You’re right, of course. And this is where it gets cynical, and why I think there’s such a good story here.
Matt leaned in to listen carefully.
‘You see, at the end of the war the Nazis were fleeing and taking anything of value they could carry, to try and buy themselves new lives. Some took money, some took gold, but maybe the best currency of all was information. So that farmer near Bremen told me one more thing: when he heard the plane coming, he snuck up near the airstrip to watch it land. He wasn’t close enough to hear what the men waiting inside were saying. Except for one bit where they started shouting: they were arguing about a great Nazi treasure.’
Matt’s mouth was hanging open, riveted.
‘In this case, I reckon either Steffan Sommer or Wollner could have bought themselves a cosy retirement in rural England with one single piece of information, one great treasure: the location of Wilhelm Sommer, Steffan’s cousin and Friedrich’s brother-in-law, and his head full of secret research.’
Matt stared at Allan as an abrupt understanding started dawning in him.
‘This is why I’m here,’ Allan murmured and glanced over his shoulder at Mum bending over the oven. ‘I’m going to stroll along the street out there,’ he pointed towards the village shops. ‘Just outside the door, I’ll stop and look directly into the camera. This will be my final piece to camera…Sommer and Wollner disappeared when the war ended, and have never been heard of again. Some of the Nazis being hunted went undercover and remained in lucrative employment until their deaths. Speculation is that in exchange for a new life in England, Wilhelm Sommer was recruited to work for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.’
The dawn rising inside Matt suddenly sparked and lit his awareness. He stood dead still, stunned to hear names he’d been studying brought so close to home by this connection. His history project had been all about Mengele. And he had studied Kammler.
But mostly he was shocked to think that, for just a single piece of information, the British government would have let a war criminal spend forty years right here in their village.
Luke was rubbing his chin, a frown creasing his brow. ‘I’m confused, who is who in your documentary again?’
Matt sighed.
Allan held up three fingers. ‘This story has three Nazis.’ He tapped one finger. ‘Wilhelm Sommer is the one who worked on a secret computer device. His cousin is also named Sommer, but I don’t have much on him. The third one is Friedrich Wollner, married to Wilhelm’s sister. He was a commander of a concentration camp who was accused of terrible atrocities. Got it?’
Luke mumbled, ‘Yup, but I think you should rewrite your speech to make that clearer.’
‘Fair point, I’ll work on that. Now, guys, this is my crowning moment: The camera will zoom in on me with a sign of the village right behind my head and I will say in a dramatic tone…Although none of these men were found, their lives were entwined, and to this day, a mystery remains here.’
‘Wait!’ Luke interrupted, ‘you see, that’s how you make it confusing. None of who? Name them.’
Allan ran a hand through his hair. ‘Indeed. Let me go again.’ He took a deep breath and said, ‘Although neither of the Sommer cousins nor Wollner were found, their lives were entwined and remain full of mysteries.’ Allan eyed Luke warily. ‘Better?’
‘Yup.’
Matt watched his cousin with intrigue and a new, sudden interest.
Allan’s voice dropped once again to his conspiratorial tone, ‘With the camera still focused on me, I will finish by saying: Could a war criminal still be living amongst you?’
26
Steffan Sommer
May 1942, Lake Toplitz
Diving under the murky green water for the tenth time, twenty-year-old Steffan Sommer peered through his goggles towards the bottom of the lake. A thick carpet of logs crusted the steep sides that shelved down to the distant bottom. He didn’t know how deep it went, nor could he attempt to find out. The underwater breathing equipment wouldn’t arrive for another day or two, but he hadn’t been able to wait that long to go down and take a look.
Trying not to take in any more of the disgusting taste, he kicked his feet and sculled his hands, heading to the green glow of the surface. Rays of light shone down on him through the murky depths, like torches from heaven, directing him and showing him the perfect hiding place.
Should he report this place or keep it to himself? No, the risk of that would be too great.
His head broke through the icy water. He gulped on the cold mountain air, taking it deep into his lungs. Steffan immediately noticed that the atmosphere had changed. Here between the mountains the sky was narrow and contained, shifting quickly. When he had last paid attention to it, before making his series of dives, it had been blue with just a few traces of grey cloud. Within those few minutes the sky had become surly, angry at him for deciding this was to be taken over by the Third Reich.
Continuing to spit to clear the taste of mouldering forest from his mouth, he swam the twenty strokes it took to get back to the shore and scrambled out. Shivering, he yanked off his shorts and tee-shirt and ran to his backpack. After towelling himself down and changing clothes, he ate the bread and cheese in his backpack before he prepared to leave.
While eating, he thought of Rita’s freshly baked loaves. She had learnt her baking skills from her mother. Her Jewish mother.
He cringed.
That thought had sneaked into his mind. It had been banned a long time ago. For longer even than Hitler’s segregation of the Jewish people.
It was the thing that confused him most about the Reich: the Führer’s hatred of Jews. He could not understand for what reason these people, for the most part good Germans, were not allowed a place in the empire that was being built. It was his most shameful secret, his private feelings about what had been done to Rita’s family in the name of the Führer. He hated it. They had fallen in love in school, a
nd he hated the thought of living without seeing her face each day. As a young man, he had decided to marry her to give her a new name, but even if she were called Sommer the Nazis would know she had once been Rivka Weissmann.
Steffan’s cousin, Sonnet, knew someone who could create new identification papers. German names were tracked and known, so they decided to give her the same surname her mother’s distant cousin had taken when she married a man in England.
Equally, changing Rivka to Rebecca sounded too much like the Hebrew name of Rebekah, so she became the English variant, Rita.
He’d had a similar situation in that his mother had wanted to call him Stefan and his father preferred Steffen, so they ended up with Steffan, an unusual variant of the popular German name for boys.
Yet, although Rita didn’t have that kind of choice, her new identity meant at least relative safety, and that she might have the chance to escape one day if things got worse, which of course they had. Apart from the two of them only Sonnet knew of this new identity. Whilst Steffan had no doubts about her, he could not say the same about her husband, a man he knew well from their time together in the Hitler Youth. So he had implored Sonnet to keep this secret from the man she had married, SS Kommandant Friedrich Wollner.
Of course, she had promised.
Just like his other cousin had promised to get him a special job that would keep him far from the work of the camps. Work which he could never risk anyone knowing he was utterly appalled by. Wilhelm Sommer was well connected, working with the great Hans Kammler in Prague, and he had agreed to help his cousin without having to know exactly why.
Theirs was a small family, but there were still gossips within it and they whispered that Wilhelm’s team were creating some sort of top secret device. Steffan knew that Wilhelm himself had no desire to kill people, but he also noticed that his cousin had no qualms about using his skills to create technology that was undoubtedly going to be used in the mass murder of the Jews and other undesirables.
Now, Steffan leant back against a tree trunk and pulled Rita’s sweet, round face into his mind. He saw her pulling her fine stockings over her toes. Washing her long dark hair. Baking bread and her favourite honey cake. Finally, he saw her slipping into their bed and making love to him. He could almost feel the softness of her skin. And the bump on her cheek where she had a little pink mole.