While the Music Played

by Nathaniel Lande

  “It’s always censorship. They cut out anything that doesn’t promote the Nazi message. The Last Cyclist pokes fun at how the Jews are blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong in Germany. I’d like to write an editorial for the next edition defending creative expression. But I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would be censored.”

  David said with a wry smile. “But, remember, even if we can’t write, we can still observe, and we can tell one another what we witness and what we think. They can stop us publishing, but they can’t stop us thinking. At least they haven’t figured that one out yet.”

  THE SHOW MUST GO ON

  As the year passed, I still had Brundibár on my mind. Of course, the Nazis wouldn’t want a production if they thought the Führer was defeated at the end. But they might love it if they found another meaning to it. The Germans could see Brundibár as a scheming Jew who is run out of town by a cast of villagers—villagers who cling to the virtues of the German nation. I remembered what the rabbi said about different points of view. Hans was brilliant at crafting messages. And our production would go ahead with its double meaning. This is what it was meant to do all along. For the villagers, victory over traits that pollute the German nation. But for the Germans, a triumph over a crafty Jew.

  “I know someone who can play Annika. Sophie!”

  “Do you know her range?” Hans asked.

  “She can sing and I know she can play the part. She’s an amazing musician.”

  “Then bring her for an audition.”

  I spoke to Sophie. This was an opportunity for us to be together more than ever. I knew that her performing would cheer her mother as well.

  “It’s good of you to come to sing for me,” Hans told Sophie when she arrived the next day.

  “I’d be delighted to do just that, Maestro.”

  Sophie handed over a piece of sheet music. “Key of C, please.”

  Hans nodded and Sophie turned to sing to me. I felt as if I was the only other person in the world.

  “Ihr Blumen, was seid ihr vom Tau so schwer?

  Mir scheint,

  das sind gar Träne.”

  By the time she repeated the chorus about flowers and tears, Hans was applauding. Her voice was perfect, commanding every note and phrase.

  “Sophie, how did you come by ‘Das klagende Lied’?”

  “I’m a Mahler,” Sophie said, smiling. “It’s a sad song, but I’ve always felt it’s quite beautiful.”

  “Yes.” Turning to me, Hans said, “You’re a talent scout, just like your father. Sophie, you have the part.”

  Sophie beamed.

  One by one, we were beginning to assemble a cast, and when we were ready, we would need a larger stage. Hans said that if you believed in something, it might come true. It sounded a little corny but, well, at least it helped.

  THE TRACKS

  OF PROGRESS

  Over the loudspeakers came an announcement from Commandant Freidle.

  “A new arrival platform has been built for Terezín. Two miles of tracks made with AG Hoesch-Krupp steel were constructed by our workers. We admire their accomplishment. The extension will make it easier for our guests, who will no longer have to walk two miles from Bohušovice Station to Terezín.”

  Guests?

  “Medical personnel selected the strongest in the camp,” David told me. “I’d love to print this, but I’ll have to make do with telling you. It was backbreaking work to build the tracks. They were at it in shifts around the clock. Freidle made sure to keep the workers healthy with better conditions and better food, so they would be fit and in the best condition to accomplish this plan. Look at what it says there above the gates. Arbeit Macht Frei. Work might not set you free, but it will keep you fed for a while.”

  He paused a moment or two to let the words sink in. “It took a former Olympic star to build that station. The special project detail was headed by Fredy Hirsh. He won a gold medal in Berlin before the war. He was a national hero. Now look at him: he’s just a Jewish laborer.”

  David looked into the distance as he spoke: “You know, even the SS respects him. Fredy immigrated to Prague after life became intolerable for him in Germany. Like so many Jews, his deepest wish was to someday live in Palestine. Maybe next year for him and all of us, Max? He has always been a leader, a Jewish pioneer. He’s attractive, charismatic, a super athlete. Kids look up to him, because he’s devoted to them. They’re part of his life, they love him.”

  I thought for a while and smiled. “I think I love him too.”

  Freidle was deeply pleased with the completion of the new track and platform. German soldiers in dress gray, and Czech guards in freshly pressed green uniforms, stood to attention. A regimental band was first to arrive in a carriage, playing the German national anthem and making it sound crisper and clearer than the tinny version usually heard from the loudspeakers.

  The soldiers cheered, and the band followed up with more military tunes.

  A few of the stronger children were cleaned up for the occasion. They stood at the platform presenting bouquets of flowers to the committee. It was a warm and clear day. Refreshments were served and for the first time that they could remember, there were sandwiches, cake, and apple juice. They were devoured by those who could get their hands on them.

  “Do you think things will be better now? People are slowly starving, but maybe there will be enough to eat and enough medicine in the infirmary. Will this place ever become what it was supposed to be, what we were all promised it was going to be?” I asked David a slew of questions, but I felt stupid even as I asked them. It was like I was a five-year-old asking for a bedtime story from Poppy, the latest adventure of Armand and White Dog, wanting to lose myself in a fantasy for a while.

  David didn’t hesitate before answering, “No, it’s all a show.”

  I snapped, “I want to speak to one of the guards then, tell him that we know this is phony. Ask him what he had for dinner last night, was it the same watered-down soup and stale bread that the camp gets? I’d tell him …”

  David interrupted my rant in full-flow: “Max, exactly how stupid are you? That might make you feel good for a second or two, but they would send you to the Little Fortress in a minute flat. And you won’t be reading it in Vedem anytime soon, but the Little Fortress is not somewhere you want to go, trust me. From what I see, the people who come back from there look a whole lot worse than they did before. And from what I hear, some people don’t come back at all. At the very least you’ll lose your privileges, and then what? What help can you be? We can work in other ways. We must be clever. We have to use our anger as energy to fuel us.”

  I spoke to Mrs. Branka when I got back to my room. “These kids at the ceremony are really undernourished! And I have to get food to David and Sophie. Yes, they get something better when they come to school, and we’re lucky to be here with you, Ava, but for Hans, and the kids, I have to do more for them, I must.”

  “I’ll see to it we get some fruit to the children, Max. I have a connection. I will help in some way.”

  “That would be great, Ava. Anything at all. And maybe some oranges for the infirmary.”

  A few days later, Sophie wondered where the boxes of food had come from. I think she knew. It was another small victory. It made things just a little bit better for a short time.

  THE FINAL SOLUTION

  Exactly three years earlier, in January 1939, speaking to the Reichstag about the fate of European Jewry, Hitler had delivered a menacing forecast of what would become the final solution:

  “Today I will once more be a prophet! If Jewish financiers within and outside of Europe again succeed in plunging the nations into a world war, the result will be the annihilation of all the Jews in Europe.” No one really listened, but he was deadly serious.

  The Führer did
not detail what he had in mind at the time, and the idea soon became the Reich’s policy. Hitler gave his generals broad authorization to carry out his wishes.

  Then the final solution was implemented. Reinhard Heydrich had been planning for years and issued an invitation to German government lawyers, generals, and officials for a special weekend gathering at Grossen Wannsee 56–58, a comfortable lakeside villa not far from Berlin. Fifteen men, many with doctorates from German universities, came to Wannsee to launch Aktion Reinhard. These bureaucrats, wrestling with a question of logistics, resolved the matter and oversaw the implementation of “a final settlement” of the Jewish Problem in places called Belzec, Treblinka, Auschwitz.

  Churchill was living in the Cabinet War Rooms under London’s Whitehall, the underground complex that housed the British government’s command center throughout the war. The facility’s Map Room was in constant use and was manned around the clock by officers of the Royal Navy receiving information that produced a daily intelligence summary for the prime minister. Churchill’s office-bedroom included BBC broadcasting equipment which he often used to address the nation.

  “Well, here I am, Anna, directing the war,” Churchill said as she entered his quarters a few months after Aktion Reinhard’s announcement. She noticed an encrypted red telephone in an adjacent area near Churchill’s office-

  bedroom enabling him to speak securely with President Roosevelt in Washington.

  “Very nice to see you again, Mr. Prime Minster.”

  “I read your accounts religiously, Anna! You’re a fine journalist. But you don’t need an old man telling you that. Madeline, by the way, has been a great addition to the war effort.”

  “Nana?”

  “Yes, your grandmother. You’re quite aware she believes in astrology, excessively so perhaps. And she will help defeat Hitler. She’s my astrology advisor, if you can imagine such a thing.”

  “Madeline Kingsley? Really?” Anna was not actually that amazed. She knew the full intention of her grandmother’s personality.

  Churchill smiled warmly. “It’s not so foolish. Astrology guides Hitler more than his generals do. He doesn’t plan a battle without a reading. He’s been obsessed ever since an astrologer in Vienna advised him that a great leader who has his same birth date will emerge. Hitler charts; I plot. I would hazard that he pays rather careful attention to the stars, but what harm can it do? So long as I keep my focus on, shall we say, rather more concrete matters of war.”

  She was cheered remembering that Nana was first to suggest that celestial positioning might influence her relationship with Hans, who had been relocated to Terezín. What must it be like for him there?

  “I’m glad she is helpful to you, Mr. Prime Minister, but like you, I am thinking of more earthly things, and I’m deeply concerned about the Nuremberg laws and the concentration camps. What we know is unspeakable. And I fear that what we don’t yet know is very much worse still.”

  “I know full well. The architect is Heydrich, Anna, and we have a ‘solution’ to remove him. We are counting on Anthropoid.”

  “What?”

  “Anthropoid, Anna, is a mission.”

  “What can you tell me about it?”

  “Anna, it’s absolutely off the bloody record. It’s part of the Political Warfare Executive, up at Electra House.”

  Anna had a direct line to PWE, where Viktor Mueller’s dispatches were received and evaluated.

  “Five Czech Resistance fighters have been training to parachute into Czechoslovakia to kill Heydrich. The operation has taken months of planning. Pink Tulip is not aware of the details, Anna, and we must keep it that way. Your man, Mueller, must not know specifics. It’s essential for the mission, for his own survival, for his continuing usefulness to the cause. He’s been tested already. It would have been a fortuitous opportunity to blow up the bastards during his visit to Eagle’s Nest, but that wasn’t to be. But he took some damn good pictures. It helped us frame a place that up to then I could only imagine. And we all loved the uniform caper. You can’t overstate the value of making the top brass look ridiculous.”

  Anna had to admit she had been amused. “But why shouldn’t Viktor know?”

  “Because he’s the only man to lead us to Heydrich, and he can open the door without even knowing that’s what he’s doing. That’s invaluable and there’s no need to take any chances for any leaks. It’s a top-secret assignment, Anna. There is a trove of paintings requisitioned by the SS for Göring in an estate outside of Prague, near Lidice, and the field marshal wants the collection to be shipped to Berlin. Mueller is planning for their transfer. We have provided him with the details, and with Heydrich arranging the acquisitions, indeed a perfect deception.”

  “Prime Minister, I can’t afford to lose him.” She cleared her throat. “We can’t.”

  “Well, there may be ways. Only Heydrich himself will be targeted of course.”

  She understood that these decisions had to be made, but she felt sick at the thought that she had just watched Churchill roll the dice in a game with so much at stake, not least Viktor Mueller’s life.

  OPERATION ANTHROPOID

  When Viktor arrived, he was impressed by Heydrich’s home in its storied setting. The general had always wanted to live on the lake, and he had found his perfect summer retreat.

  “The air, Viktor, ah, the air so clean and pure! It does one good.”

  The small white villa had a skylight over an indoor garden. It belonged to Max Liebermann, who had collected French works and himself become a noted artist. It meant nothing to Heydrich that Liebermann’s family had been sent packing to Terezín.

  The studio had been stripped of the former occupant’s belongings, and all that remained were rays from the sun warming the solarium. In many ways, however odd, this thought struck him: There was something within Heydrich that Viktor liked. He had found a side of him that was kind and empathic, but he could never reconcile his view of the general which made him notoriously ruthless, cold, brutal.

  “It’s a lovely place, don’t you think, Viktor?”

  Viktor Mueller admired the artist. “Imagine, a German Impressionist as good as the French.” He knew that the irony of what he was about to say would be lost on Heydrich, or overlooked—or did his friend accept Viktor’s idiosyncrasies? “And if he weren’t a Jew, he would be a genius!”

  “How true, Viktor! How true!” The general slung an arm around Viktor. They enjoyed a laugh together. “So now, Viktor, you have discovered a treasure trove of art stored in a town near Prague, from the Louvre? How did you come by this information?”

  “I have sources.”

  “You are clever, Viktor!”

  Viktor Mueller danced around the story, making it plausible. His information had in fact come from London, that there were paintings stored in the cellar of a home he knew just fifty kilometers from Prague.

  “Hermann will be delighted. He loves art,” Heydrich remarked. “Come, would you like to ride with me, Viktor? It’s a nice day, plenty of fresh air.”

  “I thought I might take a small truck, and then take the paintings directly to Berlin. I think we should keep the operation under wraps.”

  “Very well, Viktor.”

  “We’ll have two motorcycles escort us. Just to be safe.” Viktor handed over directions and a small map.

  The motorcycles, Viktor’s assigned truck with a closed canopy, and Heydrich’s open-air Mercedes sped through Germany into the small roads along the winding Bohemian countryside. Viktor Mueller found the day agreeable and refreshing. He was relaxed, a soldier but also a consummate performer who was managing to keep two opposing sides happy at once. It was a good day’s work. It would just take a few hours to reach their destination. He wondered again why intelligence was turning over these paintings to Göring. It was a bit peculiar, he thought, but then again it surely made sense for Berlin t
o take advantage of the vanquished, the spoils of war—self-serving greed. And it made sense for him to be furnishing them with this treasure, to become ever more valued, more trusted.

  Then he heard an explosion and, looking in his rearview mirror, saw that Heydrich’s car was a smoking wreck of metal.

  The driver of the truck slammed on his brakes, and Viktor ran to Heydrich, found him wounded, and held him, trying to stop the blood gushing from his mouth. There was smoke pouring from the automobile. He yelled for one of the enlisted men to help him get Heydrich into the truck and get to a hospital. The escort screamed through the countryside. Then Heydrich whispered, with red blood spilling from his lips, “What happened, Viktor?”

  “You’re going to be all right, my friend. Just hold on.”

  Why hadn’t he been told? Why …? Anna! And then he recalled the final message that had arrived, unsigned, saying that the works were of paramount importance, were priceless objects, and that he must ensure that no harm came to them in transit, that he must travel in the truck, and as he sat and watched the life slip away from Heydrich, a man he had once admired, who had been his friend—someone in disguise, someone who had deceived him, someone who had brought unimaginable heartbreak and cruelty beyond measure in the name of Germany. How could a patron of art and a lover of music march to a different tune?

  Then he thought of someone much different—Anna!

  A broken man, exhausted and practically unconscious, was in my bed at the Brankas’. What was going on? Who was this man and how had he come to be here? Studying him closely, I saw that he was a Czech soldier who could easily have passed for a boy not much older than me. He looked at me with a wild gaze.

  At last he spoke, his voice hoarse, “I’ve taken your bed.”

  “I don’t mind,” I could barely get the words out.

  “Kind of you,” he said in his throaty whisper. “I’m Andrej.”