by Yehuda Avner
Draxler and his two Gestapo henchmen watched Dan from a café on the edge of the concourse. They followed him everywhere these days, “for his protection.” Since Kristallnacht, Draxler had spoken to him no more than was absolutely necessary. Clearly, he hadn’t forgiven him for trying to stop Anna from treating his little girl’s illness.
Draxler sipped coffee from a small glass. The whipped cream on top adhered to his upper lip. He licked it away and stared insolently at the ambassador.
Most of the Jewish parents wandered away across the grand concourse of the station, hugging each other. Eventually Dan was alone with one last couple, their heads lowered, their clothes worn through. When the woman raised her face, he saw a resemblance immediately. The almond-shaped eyes, the olive skin, the low hairline. It was as though Anna stood before him—or, an Anna who had been forced to bear some suffering almost beyond her capacity. The woman opened her mouth to speak, but she could only sob.
The man spoke up. “My wife is a relative of the Frau Ambassador’s family.”
“I’m delighted to meet you. Herr…?”
“Polkes. Arvid Polkes.”
He was massive in the shoulders and chest. His clothes suggested they had been cut for an equally commodious belly. The fat was gone as surely as his children, no doubt thanks to the rationing of butter to one-fifth of a pound per week and the cutbacks in other fineries. He lifted a big hand toward the woman beside him. “Bertha’s mother is the first cousin of the Herr Ambassador’s father-in-law.”
Dan gestured toward the café. “Will you be my guests, please?”
They shambled at his side into the café, awkward and nervous. Cafés elsewhere in Berlin had tacked up signs that read Jews not wanted. In the stations, the signs weren’t displayed, for the sake of Germany’s reputation with international travelers. The fact that one table was occupied by Draxler and his thugs wasn’t considered detrimental to that reputation. Dan sat a few tables away from his bodyguards, and ordered coffee and strudel for himself and his guests. The waiter glanced at Draxler, as if checking that he might serve these Jews. Draxler shrugged and lit a cigarette. The waiter went to prepare the order.
“Why haven’t you been to visit us at the embassy?” Dan said. “Anna would love to meet you.”
The couple shared a glance of embarrassment. When Bertha spoke, her voice had the same low timbre as Anna. “We were ashamed, Herr Ambassador. Look at us.”
“Please, call me Dan. And when it comes to shame, it isn’t the Jews who should be experiencing it here in Berlin these days. Your children left on the train just now?”
“All four of them. Between six and ten years old. A boy and three girls.” The woman’s pride beamed through her pain. “They’ll be in Israel within a month. By the end of September.”
“Waiting for you.”
The bereft parents didn’t return Dan’s encouraging smile. If they hadn’t left yet, it wouldn’t get any easier.
The waiter brought the coffees and strudel. The Polkes pair ate quickly. They were hungry, but evidently too nervous to take pleasure in the food.
Arvid wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Herr Ambassador— Dan—may we ask for your assistance?”
“Of course.”
“You see, we moved to Palestine in 1934. Things were already uncomfortable for Jews in Germany.” Arvid squirmed in his chair. “It didn’t work out. We decided that Palestine was not—not a good place for our children.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. I’m not offended. The life there is a big change from Germany.”
“Also, my experience as a stage manager at the Berlin Philharmonie—well, it seemed I would have to take a job with a lower status if we moved there.”
The Philharmonie’s stage manager was required to heft scenery and instruments, to load trucks and even drive them. No doubt that helped explain Polkes’s powerful physique. Dan didn’t blame him for deciding against performing the same kind of physical labor on a kibbutz in Palestine. Germany was full of people who hadn’t imagined life would get so bad. “So now Israel is the only country that’ll take you, but you can’t go because the Nazis won’t allow Jews a visa to leave once they’ve gone and come back.”
“Exactly.”
“I will do what I can.”
“Thank you.” Polkes reached for his wife’s hand.
“Perhaps you’re acquainted with my first secretary at the embassy. He’s responsible for consular and cultural affairs. You may know him from his days as a soloist with the Philharmonic. Wilhelm Gottfried?”
Joy transported Polkes. His face lit up as though he had been suddenly illuminated by a spotlight on the concert stage. It wasn’t only status that kept him at the orchestra, Dan realized.
“He plays like no one else,” Polkes murmured.
A deep voice called out from the entrance to the station. The three turned to see a young man sprinting in panic across the concourse, a half dozen Brownshirts running after him.
The Polkes woman gasped. “That’s Haskel.” She started to her feet but her husband pulled her back down into her chair. She reached for Dan. “His father’s the cantor at our shul. You have to help him.”
The youth headed for the platforms. The ticket collectors braced to tackle him, so he dodged toward the café. The Brownshirts followed.
Dan got to his feet.
He felt a hand on his chest, shoving him into his seat. Draxler leered at him. “Eat your strudel, Herr Ambassador.”
The Brownshirts caught the fleeing youth and wrestled him to the ground. Commuters halted, offering encouragement to the Nazis as the kicking started. Draxler sauntered toward the Brownshirts and muttered some words. One of them glanced at Dan and sneered. The others lifted their victim to drag him away, but this man drew a truncheon from his pocket and, without taking his eyes off Dan, hammered it repeatedly into the back of the boy’s head. A shocked silence came over the concourse as with each blow, he drove more life from the prone youth.
“They’ll kill him,” Bertha gasped.
“They have killed him.” Her husband whispered, taking her hand.
Draxler snapped his fingers and the Brownshirts hauled the body away. A smear of blood marked the polished floor. The killer sauntered toward Dan and spat at the entrance to the café.
Bertha sobbed. Dan stared at the trail of blood. It seemed to him like the shoot of a tree that would split into hundreds, millions of branches, and whoever it touched would die with the same brutality as had this terrified Jewish boy. At first the commuters stepped around it, but within a matter of minutes, newcomers hurried right through it. By that contact they were all marked for death, Dan thought. All of them guilty, and doomed.
Draxler returned. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on Dan’s table and breathed smoke over the Polkes couple. “You two, show me your papers.”
“Why didn’t you let me help that boy?” Dan said.
“I’m your bodyguard, Herr Ambassador. Those Brownshirts would’ve thumped you to death, too. Even if you do carry an illegal weapon.”
Dan felt the weight of his Mauser inside his jacket. He hadn’t known that Draxler was aware of it. He also hadn’t thought of using it against the Brownshirts. It would’ve been suicide, yet still his passivity shamed him. “You could’ve let him get on the train and go. Why not let him just leave the country?”
The train the boy had tried to reach pulled out. Draxler squinted toward the platform and read the departure board. “That train’s going east. To Poland. That’s definitely the wrong way for a Yid to run.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Did you ever hear the joke about the man who sees a bunch of people running? They’re shouting that a lion has escaped from the zoo. ‘Which way did it go?’ the man asks. Someone shouts back, ‘You don’t think we’re chasing it, do you?’” He held his hand toward Arvid and Bertha Polkes. “I’m waiting. Come on, papers.”
“There’s no need for that. They’re my guests.�
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Draxler leaned over the table and brought his face close to Dan. “And you’re my guest. But my hospitality is wearing thin.”
“That’s not very Middle Eastern of you. For someone who grew up in Jerusalem.”
“I’m not a Bedouin and I’m not a Yid. I’m a German. No matter where I was born.” He took the papers from Arvid’s hand. He read them over. “Polkes. I’ll remember that.”
Draxler took the last scrap of strudel from Bertha’s plate. He ate it and licked his fingers, staring at the woman’s body. “Tasty,” he said. He turned to Dan. “She looks like your wife. Any relation?”
“None. My wife’s family is all in America. Safe from you.” Dan felt the cowardice of his lie. He avoided Bertha Polkes’s eyes.
“No one’s safe from me.” Draxler lit another smoke, his eyes still on Bertha. “Very tasty, yeah.”
Chapter 16
The bell of the embassy roused Dan from his bed a little after 5 a.m. He pulled on his dressing gown and padded to the lobby. Shmulik came up from the basement, fully clothed and half-awake. He held his Luger at his side and opened the door.
Draxler stood on the step like a man arriving at a party, full of energy and bonhomie. “Good morning, Herr Ambassador and Herr Shoham. What a wonderful morning it is.”
Dan found he couldn’t answer. Something in the Gestapo man’s vivacity was too exultant. It could only mean something dreadful had happened. He wondered where the Polkes couple was.
“What do you want?” Shmulik said.
“A half hour ago, responding to provocative actions on the border by Polish troops, German air forces bombed Poland. Our navy started a bombardment of Danzig. Our troops are crossing the border.” Draxler’s festive energy disappeared. “Now we shall set about killing you Jews in earnest.”
Shmulik laughed. Draxler stared at him, offended, deflated.
“No more Mister Nice Guy, huh?” Shmulik said. “Get lost, Draxler.”
“If you had any sense, it’d be you who would get lost.” Draxler went down the steps to the street. His underlings lounged against the hood of their Mercedes. “You don’t have long.”
Shmulik slammed the door. “There are three-and-a-half million Jews in Poland.”
“Our embassy in Warsaw will be busy,” Dan said.
Shmulik stared at him with pity, almost contempt. “What is wrong with you? You’re so determined to maintain your dealings with these Nazis, you can’t see that they’re not bureaucrats. They’re murderous bastards.”
There was a heavy rap on the door. Shmulik reached for his gun once more. Dan pulled back the bolts.
Countess von Bredow hurried into the lobby. She was wrapped in a man’s overcoat, holding it closed around her neck. Her feet were bare. “Where is he?”
Gottfried. It was his overcoat, too. “He’s upstairs, I expect. Asleep.”
The Countess ran for the stairs. She called breathlessly to Dan. “You have to get him out of here. It has started. Surely you see that?”
“What has started, Countess? The war?”
“The end. The end has started. The end of everything. In war, people stop seeing the enemy as human. They have to, so that they can do terrible things to them without going insane. Germans have already been trained to see Jews as inhuman. The war will only give that cruelty the perfect outlet.”
“We are diplomats. Wili has diplomatic protection.” Even as he spoke, Dan felt disdain for his weak reply. But how could he resolve this insane situation? It wasn’t that he was feeble. If he didn’t have a reasonable answer it was because events were being shaped by a man whose mind had no connection to reason.
The Countess hugged the coat tighter to her. “My grandfather, the Chancellor Bismarck, said, ‘Moral courage is a rare virtue in Germany. But it deserts a German completely the moment he puts on a uniform.’ Now there is war and everyone will put on a uniform.”
“You think they’ll come for Wili.”
“They will come for all of you Jews.” She ran up the stairs, the coat flapping against her thin, bare legs. “But Wili is the one I love.”
Chapter 17
It was called “Führer weather” when the sun shone with unexpected brightness on the days Germans had some new military adventure to celebrate. The Führer sent cloudless skies into Poland along with his troops, and in Berlin it seemed the blue expanse would stretch on all the way across Europe for the advancing Wehrmacht. But the exultation that had filled the streets when Hitler took Austria and Czechoslovakia was absent this time. Dan strode along Oranienburger Strasse, under the plane trees and the vivid red Swastika banners, and though he greatly feared what was to come, he was no more grim or silent than the Germans passing him. The British government seemed to have finally run out of patience with Hitler’s expansion, and French politicians, too, had found enough backbone to force a mobilization, though their military was more worried about domestic communists than foreign Nazis.
Dan turned onto Monbijoustrasse. He pushed his steps harder. He had to be home by a quarter past the hour for Chamberlain’s statement. Today was the deadline for Hitler to respond to the British prime minister’s ultimatum. Quit Poland, or face war with Britain.
Hitler thought Chamberlain was bluffing. “I saw my enemies at Munich,” he had said. He meant Chamberlain, and Daladier of France, trying to persuade him not to go to war and handing him a big tract of Czechoslovakia in return. “They were little worms.”
Worms eat corpses, Dan thought. They will be fat soon.
He jogged up the embassy steps. The staff gathered around the illegal long-range radio in his office. Shmulik glared like a resentful schoolboy. Richter and Yardeni, who understood no English, watched Anna’s reactions. They read the gravity of Chamberlain’s statement in her stricken face, the hands she clutched involuntarily at her throat.
“This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.”
Dan heard the sense of betrayal in Chamberlain’s voice. The prime minister had dealt with Hitler as though the man weren’t a maniac with a fetishistic delight in death and suicide and murder. Now he saw his mistake and understood that he and his people were being forced into direct combat with the Führer’s evil.
“I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany.”
Shmulik let out a breath of relief. Anna covered her eyes.
“You can imagine what a bitter blow this is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed.”
Dan took in the prime minister’s words, but his mind turned eastward, as if he were rumbling across Poland on one of the Wehrmacht’s horse carts, watching the battle unfold, Panzers crushing machines and men, the Poles fighting harder than anyone credited. The civilians running. Not fast enough. Now there would be no pretending by the Nazis, no concern for the world’s opinion. If Dan could not secure their emigration, Jews anywhere under Hitler’s control would be persecuted. To what extent, he shuddered to imagine.
“His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will,” Chamberlain said. “He can only be stopped by force.”
Shmulik turned off the radio and clapped his hands. “Thank God.”
It was Sunday lunchtime, but the embassy was open for business, as it had been almost around the clock since Friday, when the Germans invaded Poland. The applicants for emigration crowding the hall had hovered in the doorway of Dan’s office to listen to the broadcast. They babbled to each other about the meaning of the British entry into the war. Would it make life harder for Germany’s Jews? Was their emigration to go ahead?
“What now?” Dan asked.
“I expect Hitler’s saying the very same thing.” Shmulik gr
inned. “The bastard didn’t expect a war. He thought the British and French would cave again.”
“Will they invade Germany? Or go to fight in Poland?” Anna whispered.
“I wouldn’t count on them doing anything for a while. They haven’t been preparing for war the way Hitler has.” Shmulik slapped his hand on Richter’s shoulder. “Anyway, we’ll have plenty of work to do.”
“We all do.” Dan cut him off. He disliked Shmulik’s satisfaction at the onset of war. He knew what was behind it. Shmulik wanted someone to fight against the Germans as tiny Israel could never do. But Shmulik, for all his swagger and self-assurance, didn’t know what Dan knew. He hadn’t met Hitler. Once more Dan felt the souls who had crowded around him when he entered the Reich Chancellor’s office, the desperate, doomed spirits of Jews whose lives depended on the whims of an ugly man who understood only hatred and force.
“Our task has not changed,” he said. “Jews aren’t safe here. We need to get them to Israel. Let’s get at it.”
The staff sloped away, reluctant to leave the radio though it was silent, held there by history and perhaps by fear of the future. Dan settled behind his desk and beckoned to the family waiting at his door.
An hour later Richter came to call him to the entrance of the embassy. He found Draxler there.
“Apparently the Führer doesn’t have enough Jews to deal with.” Draxler lit a cigarette. “He wants you to bring him another one.”
“I’m pleased that he has seen the error of his ways.”