Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Nevertheless, her entire academic future seemed imperiled, and she felt helpless outrage for her fellow students and friends who had been expelled. She wanted to resist, to fight back, but how? What could one undergraduate do against such crushing opposition?

  Her parents urged caution, warning her not to jeopardize her own precarious position. “This is not the same as ignoring a boycott,” her father said over dinner two days after the law was announced.

  “It’s very much the same,” Sara countered. “What if they come for bankers next? What if you lose your job?”

  “Mr. Panofsky would never comply with orders to fire his fellow Jews.”

  “And if the Nazis close down the bank entirely?”

  “I doubt anyone will harm Mr. Panofsky or his interests,” her father replied. “He has a plan to protect himself and his family from the Nazis. It will require the unwitting cooperation of the American ambassador, but if it succeeds, when it succeeds, not even the most zealous SA man will harass him. And if Mr. Panofsky is protected, he will protect his employees.”

  Sara’s mother shook her head, puzzled. “The ambassador left Germany last month after their new president was inaugurated.”

  “I meant his successor, whoever he may be. Mr. Roosevelt will surely appoint a new ambassador soon.”

  “Let’s hope nothing happens to Mr. Panofsky in the meantime,” said Sara’s mother.

  Despite her father’s certainty that his job was secure, Sara could not shake off pervasive anxiety about her future. One evening, as she and Dieter strolled hand in hand through the Tiergarten after seeing 42nd Street at the cinema, her worries about potential new restrictions upon Jewish students spilled from her, until he twice had to plead with her to lower her voice, as she was attracting curious stares.

  “I’m sorry I’m so upset,” she said, swallowing hard, blinking back tears, “but the thought that I might be expelled from the university all because of my religion terrifies me.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” Dieter said. “Your father is a veteran. You’re exempt from the quotas. The law says so.”

  “What if the law changes? We Jews face more restrictions every day. Although I’m exempt now, that may change tomorrow. And what about all the other Jews whose fathers didn’t serve? How can I sit in the lecture hall, smug and satisfied, when my friends have been shut out?”

  “Sara, listen.” Halting on the footpath, he took both of her hands in his. “I don’t think the University of Berlin is foolish enough to let a bright student like you slip away—”

  She choked out a laugh. “They let Herr Professor Einstein get away. He’s at Princeton now. If they don’t bend the rules to keep him—”

  “That was their mistake, and surely they’ve learned from it. If you do have to leave the university, it doesn’t have to be the end of your education. You can study on your own, as I did.”

  “If they don’t ban Jews from libraries next.”

  “If they do, I’ll buy you every book you need.” Dieter raised her hands to his lips and kissed them. “Darling, I promise to love you and protect you every day for the rest of my life.”

  A new warmth in his voice gave her pause. “Thank you, Dieter,” she said, uncertain. She thought it would be rude to explain that she wanted to be able to stand on her own, in need of no one’s protection.

  “I thought this would be a happier evening,” he said wryly, “but I can’t delay on that account, not when I might put some of your fears to rest.” Still clasping her hands, he knelt upon one knee. “Sara, darling, when I said I promise to love and protect you, I meant that I want to do so as your husband. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  Sara gazed down at him, speechless. She was angry, she was upset, she was frustrated—not at him, of course, but all the same—and he wanted her to think about love and promises and forever. The sudden, wrenching shift rendered her dizzy. “I’m sorry,” she managed to say. “What?”

  He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small box. “Sara, my love, will you marry me?”

  He opened the box to reveal a beautiful ring, a sparking diamond in a cluster of small emeralds.

  She inhaled deeply, silently berating herself for not feeling the overwhelming joy that a young woman ought to feel at such a significant moment, but wishing instead that he had waited for a happier, more romantic occasion. “Have you spoken to my parents?” she said in a small voice.

  “You’re a modern young woman. I wanted to ask you first. If you accept me, then I’ll go to your parents.”

  She liked that; she smiled, her anger and worries receding. “I accept,” she said, tears springing into her eyes. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  He rose, slipped the ring on her finger, and kissed her, and in that moment she did feel safe and protected. The love they shared was precious and powerful. All the Nazis knew how to do was rage and destroy, but together she and Dieter would build something stronger than all of them.

  For all his hatred, for all his misused authority, Hitler could not diminish their love or legislate it away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  April–May 1933

  Mildred

  Hitler’s new Aryan Laws provoked outrage and indignation not only from Jews but from all Germans who could not abide the oppression of their fellow citizens. With increasing dismay, Mildred encouraged her Jewish students to persevere and bade sad farewells to colleagues who had decided to leave Germany rather than lived in dread of dismissal or arrest.

  Not everyone who wanted to emigrate could. One day in late April, Samson Knoll, a student Mildred had known at the University of Berlin, appealed to her on behalf of Alfred Futran, a Jewish bookseller and journalist whose father had been shot by right-wing extremists in 1920 during an attempted coup. “Futran has to leave the country,” said Samson. “You have contacts at the American embassy. Would you help my friend get to America?”

  “The U.S. has immigration quotas,” Mildred cautioned, though her heart went out to him. “Your friend might have to wait years until his case comes to the top of the list.”

  “It would be enough to help him get out of Germany.” Samson grasped her hand in both of his. “Please. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t urgent.”

  Deeply affected, Mildred promised to speak to a friend at the embassy. That friend was U.S. consul George Messersmith, but although he sympathized, he could not expedite Futran’s immigration to the United States. “The best I can do is to get him to Paris,” he said.

  Mildred thanked him profusely, and in the days that followed, she made similar requests for other friends. Messersmith always did what he could.

  As an American in a country increasingly hostile to foreigners, she sometimes wondered if she too ought to leave Germany. At the end of March, three American men visiting Berlin on business had been confronted by a group of Brownshirts after they had failed to offer the Nazi salute to Hitler’s motorcade. Arrested by the SA, they had been taken to headquarters, stripped, and left to shiver in a cold cell overnight. In the morning they had been beaten into unconsciousness and dumped on the street. Soon thereafter, a United Press International correspondent had been arrested without charge, but after Messersmith made repeated inquiries, he had been released unharmed.

  Mildred believed that she did not stand out as a foreigner the way American businessmen and journalists did, but she visited the U.S. embassy frequently and was active in the American Women’s Club, so perhaps she was fooling herself. But even if she were, how could she contemplate leaving Germany, where she had built a life for herself among beloved family and friends? Arvid did not want to emigrate, and she could not bear to go without him. To a casual observer, she appeared German. Surely she would be safe as long as she did nothing to draw the attention of anti-American thugs.

  “We need a strong ambassador to deal with these Nazi outrages,” Messersmith confided to Mildred after the UPI correspondent’s release. “Let’s hope the new president s
ends one soon.”

  In the meantime, many of the ambassador’s duties fell to Messersmith and Counselor of Embassy George Gordon, including securing the release of Americans rounded up by the new state secret police, the Geheime Staatspolizei, Gestapo for short. The censored press reported almost nothing about attacks on Americans, but anxious rumors spread swiftly among the small expatriate community. Since it was well known that Mildred and Messersmith were friends, she was often asked to confirm shocking reports of arrests or assaults. Whenever the American Women’s Club met in its comfortable suite on the Bellevuestrasse near the consulate for lunches, lectures, games of bridge, or teas, she endured a barrage of questions for which, over time, it became increasingly difficult to find reassuring answers.

  For everyone who opposed the Nazis, discretion became paramount as the government imposed Gleichschaltung on the country, forcibly bringing all aspects of German society into alignment with Nazi ideology. Schools were an essential early target of this “synchronizing.” Throughout Germany, teachers and staff were investigated, and those considered non-Aryan or politically questionable were permanently suspended.

  Mildred was not surprised when the Berlin Abendgymnasium, a progressive institution founded by the Social Democrats, came under particular scrutiny. After the Easter recess, she returned to school only to discover that the break would be extended indefinitely while the Nazis conducted a thorough inspection. A secretary confided that the administration was resigned to making whatever distasteful concessions were required to keep the school open.

  “I don’t stand a chance,” said Mildred, pacing in their flat while Arvid studied in his favorite chair in the cupola. “I’m the only woman on the faculty and a foreigner. All they have to do is ask Herr Schönemann why he dismissed me from the University of Berlin and I’ll be fired for sure.”

  Arvid tried to keep her spirits up, but she was so certain her dismissal was imminent that when she received a letter announcing the date the school would reopen, she was unsure whether she would be expected to teach or to clean out her desk. The first day back would be for faculty only, an all-day meeting to address issues raised during the inspection. Perhaps they intended to fire her in person.

  The appointed day came, and upon her arrival, Mildred was shocked to learn that although she had somehow held on to her job, half of the faculty had been dismissed, including the principal and the four tenured professors who prepared and proctored graduation exams. Dr. Stecher, the student adviser, had been appointed the interim director. Mildred fought to keep her expression impassive during his opening remarks, wherein he denounced the school’s “outspoken liberal-democratic tradition” and “faded ideology,” and declared that the momentous historical events of 1933 had propelled the school into a great new age of “powerful becoming.” As soon as he concluded—to tepid, perfunctory applause—his assistants scrambled to reassign students to the twelve remaining instructors. Immediately thereafter, a chapter of the National Socialist German Students’ Association was established at the school in order to encourage students to conform to the ideals of the new state. Classes resumed, and by the time final exams began, every trace of the Berlin Abendgymnasium’s Social Democratic origin and philosophy had been expunged.

  The first day of May was traditionally a time when German trade unions celebrated their solidarity with parades and speeches, but that year the Nazis appropriated May Day for their own purposes, declaring it “National Labor Day” and making it a paid holiday in an effort to win over the workers. Enormous rallies and festivals were held throughout the country, but the largest was in Berlin, where even previously skeptical labor organizations joined in the spectacle. Tens of thousands of people marched past Mildred and Arvid’s windows overlooking Hasenheide, singing, shouting slogans, holding banners high en route to the Tempelhof airfield, where more than a million performers and enthusiastic onlookers packed the grounds. As swastika banners unfurled overhead, twelve large blocks of uniformed marchers went through their paces with crisp military precision, evoking ecstatic cheers from most of the crowd and sickening dread from others.

  “How beautiful it was,” Mildred wrote to her mother the next day, adopting a simple code she trusted her mother would understand, saying the exact opposite of what she meant. “Thousands upon thousands of people marched in order, singing and playing through the majestic streets which radiate from our home. I thought of the preparedness parades in our country at the beginning of the Great War. There is a great impulse in masses of people which can be roused—a very great and beautiful impulse. You know that I thought this impulse was directed rightly in the war and I think it is being directed rightly in the same way now. It is a very beautiful and serious thing—as serious as death.”

  Later, Mildred learned that even as she was putting pen to paper, the Nazis were executing a coordinated strike on Social Democrat trade unions throughout the country, breaking into their offices, shutting down their publications, seizing their funds. Union leaders were arrested and held in protective custody in concentration camps—except for those who were killed outright, allegedly for resisting arrest.

  “One day the Nazis celebrate the worker,” said Arvid, “and the next they destroy him.”

  “Surely the German people see the same pattern we do,” said Mildred. “They can’t be distracted by rallies and entertainments forever. Eventually it’s going to come down to right and wrong, common sense versus nonsense.”

  Arvid said nothing.

  “Don’t you think so?” Mildred prompted. “Things can’t keep going on this way. Eventually the people are going to say enough is enough.”

  “Which people?” said Arvid. “The Communists and labor organizers in prison camps? The German Jews being stripped of their civil rights day by day? The hungry students swept up in Hitler’s enthusiasm because they want easy answers and someone to blame?”

  “Rational people,” said Mildred. “People who act out of decency, compassion, and respect for the rule of law rather than hatred and fear. That is the real Germany, not—” Standing in the cupola, she made a sweeping gesture from the street below their window toward the Tempelhof airfield. “Not that frenzy of lies we saw yesterday.”

  “Are you sure there are more of us than there are of them?”

  “There must be.”

  “I once thought so. I’m not so sure anymore. But even if our numbers are small, I can’t jettison my most deeply held convictions just to go along with the majority.”

  “I can’t either.”

  “Then we won’t.” Arvid took her hands in his. “We’ll remain true to ourselves, but we must be careful.”

  Mildred knew this all too well. As Gleichschaltung inexorably took hold all around her, she had begun to feel too anxious to speak freely on political matters except in the private homes of friends and family. In the classroom, she guarded her words even among members of their progressive study group, in case an unsympathetic person lurked within earshot.

  The presence of the National Socialist German Students’ Association steadily transformed the character of the Berlin Abendgymnasium. Although Mildred fought to keep the group’s influence out of her classroom, she could not avoid the placards posted in the hallways listing their Twelve Theses for restoring the purity of German language and literature. Most were demands to purge German culture of “Jewish intellectualism” and get back to the “pure and unadulterated” expression of its folk traditions. “Our most dangerous enemy is the Jew and those who are his slaves,” the fourth thesis shrilled, and the fifth began, “A Jew can only think Jewish. If he writes in German, he is lying.”

  There was no logic to the Twelve Theses, only hatred and rage, and it sickened Mildred to see students reading the placards and discussing them earnestly as if they were truths meriting intellectual inquiry rather than so much garbage interlaced with invective. Her heart ached to see some of her own students eagerly preparing for the “Action Against the Un-German Spirit” called
for by the association’s Main Office for Press and Propaganda. Chapters were encouraged to compile blacklists of “degenerate” authors, write articles denouncing the Jewish influence on German literary culture, and submit the documents to their local press and radio. Their publicity campaign would culminate on May 10 in a vast, nationwide Säuberung—a literary cleansing by fire.

  As twilight descended that fateful night, Mildred stood at the cupola windows pensively watching lights come on in windows up and down Hasenheide. Arvid found her there and gently embraced her from behind. “We don’t have to go,” he said, gazing over her shoulder to the scene outside. “Imagining it is bad enough. You don’t have to watch it happen.”

  “No, I do.” Mildred inhaled deeply, turned in the circle of his arms, and kissed him. “I have to see with my own eyes just how desperate things have become, or I won’t believe it.”

  Pulling on a warm sweater to fend off the cool spring night, she followed Arvid downstairs and outside, where the sweet aromas of Kuchen and vanilla still wafted from the patisserie though it had closed hours before. She took Arvid’s arm as they walked quickly to the University of Berlin, where his cousin Dietrich Bonhoeffer waited for them outside his office building.

  “Students have been building the pyre for four days,” he said as they walked toward the Opernplatz, where thousands of students, citizens, and a few professors in robes and caps milled about, jittery with anticipation. “They started by emptying the entire library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, and since then countless other books have followed, works by Freud, Einstein, Mann—”

  Dietrich broke off at the sound of shouts and cheers and singing. As they turned to look down the street, Mildred’s heart sank at the sight of the familiar flickering red glare lighting up the elegant buildings along Unter der Linden.

  “Yet another parade,” muttered Arvid, taking Mildred’s hand, his gaze fixed on the approaching marchers. “More torches.”