Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  By midafternoon, Bill was ready to take the wheel again, so the younger set parted company with Martha’s parents at their hotel and set out for Nuremberg. Quentin moved to the front seat, Martha had plenty of room to stretch out in the back, and they chatted about writing as they drove along, except when they paused to admire a particularly lovely scene outside the window. Bill drove swiftly through the countryside but slowed to a more sedate pace whenever the road passed through a village, not only to ease the jolting of the wheels over the cobblestones but to let them better admire the architecture and the occasional villager clad in colorful regional attire, lederhosen and dirndl. In nearly every town they encountered an SA parade, men of all ages and sizes clad in brown uniforms, marching, singing, chanting slogans, holding aloft red banners bearing the white circle and black Hakenkreuz. Whenever Bill slowed the car to a crawl to avoid the crowds and to better navigate the winding, narrow medieval streets, SA members, SS officers, and ordinary citizens would snap out the Hitlergruss and shout “Heil Hitler!” at them.

  “Heil Hitler!” Martha cried out the window, saluting them back.

  “Would you stop doing that?” Bill asked irritably. “You’re an American. You don’t have to.”

  “I might not have to, but when in Rome—” She offered another salute to several boys clad in short-pant versions of the men’s brown uniforms. “Why do the people keep saluting us, anyway? They aren’t shouting at other cars.”

  “It’s the license plate,” said Quentin. “More important individuals are given lower numbers, and by custom the American ambassador is assigned number thirteen. They probably assume we’re some hotshot Nazi official’s family.”

  “Great,” said Bill sarcastically.

  Quentin grinned. “I’m not flattered by the mistake any more than you are.”

  “Stop being such spoilsports,” said Martha, offering the salute and a smile to a pair of Brownshirts idling on a street corner. “I don’t know why you can’t appreciate the excitement and vigor of the new Germany. I find it marvelous. We could use some of this optimism back in the States.”

  “I’ll take Roosevelt’s New Deal over Hitler’s Aryan Laws any day,” said Quentin.

  “Hear, hear,” said Bill.

  Martha let out a long, exaggerated sigh, so comical that Quentin guffawed and even Bill cracked a smile.

  They encountered fewer marches as the afternoon wore on, and by the time twilight descended, the villages had turned peaceful and quaint again, looking as they might have one hundred years before except for the Nazi banners unfurled before government buildings.

  “Most of Nuremberg will be tucked in bed fast asleep when we arrive,” Quentin warned when they reached the outskirts of the city. “Fingers crossed we can still find a decent pub where we can get a hot meal.”

  “And a drink,” said Bill.

  It was nearly midnight by the time they reached their hotel, but the town was still very much awake, the sidewalks full of lively, smiling people, the atmosphere festive.

  “Are you sure you’ve been here before?” Martha teased Quentin as they unloaded their luggage. “Your description of the nightlife is a bit off the mark.”

  He shrugged. “Must be a local holiday or something.”

  When they went inside to check in, Quentin asked the registration clerk, in fairly decent German, if a festival was going on. The clerk laughed so vigorously that the tips of his curved mustache trembled. “Not a festival,” he replied in English. “A sort of parade. Someone needs to learn a lesson.”

  “A lesson?” echoed Martha, but the clerk merely smiled and shrugged.

  After arranging for their luggage to be sent up to their rooms, Martha, Bill, and Quentin ventured out in search of supper. The streets were even more crowded than before, and everywhere Martha looked she saw people milling about the square, laughing and talking in the friendliest manner. As the people began lining up on either side of the street, Martha heard distant music and the swelling roar of laughter and cheers. She wove through the crowd and claimed a spot right on the curb, the better to see the parade. She recognized the familiar red glow of torchlight, and her heartbeat quickened as she realized this was likely no festival but yet another Nazi demonstration—and sometimes those turned violent.

  She would have backed away, but the crowd pressed in closer, blocking her retreat. Fortunately, Bill and Quentin were right behind her, and Martha knew they would not let her be shoved into the street. She went up on tiptoe, craning her neck as the first rows of marching Brownshirts appeared, banners and torches held aloft. The crowd roared approval as they passed, and here and there people frantically waved small Nazi flags.

  The music of the brass band grew louder, but it was nearly drowned out by jeers and coarse laughter. Bewildered, Martha looked past the columns of marchers and saw that following immediately afterward were two very large storm troopers, half carrying, half dragging a small, barefoot human figure between them.

  Martha stared, transfixed with disbelief that swiftly gave way to horror. The figure was a woman, her blouse and skirt disheveled, her head shaved and lolling on her shoulder, her face and scalp covered with a white powder. All around, the crowd erupted in an earsplitting barrage of taunts, insults, and epithets.

  Then Martha spied the placard hanging around the woman’s neck. “What does it say?” she asked Quentin.

  “‘I have offered myself to a Jew,’” he read aloud.

  “We have to help her,” said Bill, pushing forward.

  Quentin seized his arm and yanked him back. “What can we do? Look at this crowd. We’d be torn to pieces.”

  Martha’s vision blurred with tears of outrage as the gruesome parade passed and the crowd surged into the street to follow after. She, Bill, and Quentin managed to avoid being swept along as the shouting, cheering throng continued down the street, immobilizing the few vehicles whose drivers had unwittingly turned into their path. Passengers on the top level of a double-decker bus whistled and shouted, pointing at the girl from above. The two large storm troopers lifted up the semiconscious woman so they could have a better look, so high that her feet dangled lifelessly above the ground.

  The parade fell apart into one seething mass of hatred and vengeful glee. As Martha was jostled back and forth by fiercely grinning revelers, she seized Bill’s arm. “Let’s go back to our rooms,” she implored. He nodded, but to their dismay, the large storm troopers propelled the woman into the lobby of their own hotel. The band reassembled on the sidewalk outside and struck up a raucous tune, and as they reached the last refrain, the storm troopers emerged and hauled their victim to the hotel next door. At that moment the band struck up the “Horst Wessel Lied,” the Nazi Party anthem. Immediately the people around them halted in place, thrust their arms into the air in the Hitlergruss, and began singing along loudly and ardently.

  “I need a drink,” said Bill, his voice low and thick with disgust. Staying close together, they wove their way through the crowd back to their hotel, where they withdrew to the bar and sank wearily down at a table in the corner. Blood pounded in Martha’s ears, and when she closed her eyes she saw the small woman, her head slumping to one side, her arms pale and slender in the storm troopers’ grip, her unshod feet dangling helplessly.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you,” said Quentin, “but I intend to get extremely drunk.”

  He pushed himself away from the table and went to the bar, where he placed an order and engaged the bartender in a quick, whispered conversation. Martha and Bill sat in silence until he returned with a tray of three foaming beers, a thick loaf of dark bread, sliced cold sausages, and cheese. Though Martha had been ravenous before the parade, at the sight of food bile rose in her throat and she had to look away.

  “Her name is Anna Rath,” Quentin said. “She’s a local girl, Aryan, and she apparently intends to marry her Jewish fiancé.”

  “What’s the problem?” asked Martha. “Is she already married?”

 
; Bill grabbed one of the steins and drank deeply. “Didn’t you know? The Nazis disapprove of marriages between Aryans and Jews.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “It’s a fact.”

  Quentin leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. “The press has been reporting Nazi atrocities for months, secondhand tales cobbled together from observers’ accounts. This time I’m an eyewitness.”

  “You can’t mean you’re going to write about this,” protested Martha. “That’s not fair. It’s an isolated incident—terrible, of course, but it doesn’t represent the real Germany.”

  “You’ve been in the country a month,” said Quentin. “I’ve been here for years. Believe me, this is no isolated incident.”

  “Would you condemn all Americans for the violence committed by a few members of the KKK?”

  “Sorry, sis, but you really don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Bill. “You should spend less time at parties drinking champagne with aristocrats and more time walking around Berlin, talking to ordinary people and observing what’s really going on.”

  “Please don’t file this story,” Martha implored. “When people hear that Bill and I were involved, my father will be dragged into an ugly controversy just as he’s trying to establish his credibility with the German government.”

  Quentin ran a hand over his jaw. “Fine. I’ll tell my editor I have two unimpeachable witnesses, but I’ll leave your names out of it.”

  Martha knew better than to press her luck. Resigned, she took a drink, sat back in her chair, and said nothing more, wishing she could blot out the image of poor Anna Rath from her memory.

  Chapter Twenty

  September–October 1933

  Mildred

  Mildred was only a week into the fall term at the Berlin Abendgymnasium when Martha returned from her driving tour and attended the Harnacks’ literary salon. Mildred was pleased to see her new friend again, but as she led her around the flat making introductions, she detected tension around Martha’s eyes, a puzzling forced jollity in her voice. She knew Martha was eager to meet other writers, editors, and literati in Berlin, and her interest in their conversation seemed unfeigned, but something was clearly troubling her.

  Later, when Martha took Mildred aside and told her about the shocking events she had witnessed in Nuremberg, Mildred understood. As promised, Quentin Reynolds had not named Martha or her brother in his article, but after German foreign press chief Ernst Hanfstaengl accused him of fabricating the entire tale, he had been obliged to identify his fellow eyewitnesses. Their names were not made public, but afterward even Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels could not deny the truth. And yet when confronted by international reporters at a press conference, he dismissed it as an isolated incident and made excuses for the Brownshirts’ brutality even as he promised that the men involved would be punished.

  “Just yesterday, an official from the German Foreign Office privately apologized to me,” said Martha. “They regret that I was upset by what I saw. But where is the apology for Anna Rath? Where is her justice? When I asked Rudolf, he just gave me a cryptic smile and told me not to hold my breath.”

  “Rudolf?”

  “Rudolf Diels.” Martha’s mouth curved in a secretive smile. “We’ve become friends—intimate friends.”

  “Martha—” Mildred grasped for the proper words. “Be careful with that one. The things I’ve heard—”

  “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

  Mildred was not so sure.

  Later, Martha revealed that her father had finally presented his credentials to Hindenburg upon his return to Berlin, and also that he had declined Hitler’s invitation to attend the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. “Since it wasn’t an official state event, my father thought it would be inappropriate for him to attend,” Martha explained, “just as it would be wrong for the German ambassador to attend a Democratic or Republican national convention back home.”

  “Well done, Ambassador Dodd,” said Mildred, pleased.

  “He didn’t want Goebbels to portray his presence as an official endorsement of the Nazi regime. He secretly convinced the ambassadors of Great Britain, France, and Spain to decline their invitations too.”

  “Not very secretly, if you heard of it.”

  Mildred nudged her playfully, but her smile quickly faded. “My father has made several formal protests about all these attacks on Americans, but nothing’s improved. He says that the Germans are concerned about negative press back in the States. You’d think that would be enough to compel the government to keep the SA and SS in line.”

  “Maybe they’re confident their censors will keep negative stories from getting out.”

  “They didn’t stop Quentin.” Martha shook her head as if clearing it of distressing thoughts. “Speaking of journalism, I’ve been thinking you and I ought to write something together.”

  What she had in mind was something for English speakers living in Germany—a column for Berlin Topics, the lone English-language newspaper in Berlin. They both loved to write, Martha had experience in journalism, and Mildred had connections throughout the Berlin literary community. But what form should their column take? Martha had to steer clear of politics and controversial subjects due to her father’s position, and neither of them wanted to cover the usual territory women were relegated to, housekeeping and beauty tips. Eventually they struck upon the perfect idea for two devoted bibliophiles: a book review.

  The executive editor was thrilled to welcome a pair of writers with their credentials to the staff. Soon thereafter, when their first column, “Brief Reviews,” was published, Mildred enjoyed seeing her name in a byline again after such a long hiatus. She was also grateful for her share of their modest payment.

  Although neither was accustomed to writing with a partner, they quickly figured out an efficient method. Together they chose two books for each column, and Mildred would write the review for one and Martha the other. They met weekly at Martha’s home to revise and edit their reviews, working in the library on cool, rainy days and in the Wintergarten or on the terrace when the sun shone. They took turns typing up the final version from their marked-up pages and scrawled notes. After they submitted the finished column to their editor, they chose two books for the next column.

  One lovely Sunday afternoon, Mildred and Martha were drinking coffee on the Dodds’ terrace and debating whether to review the English translation of Hans Fallada’s latest novel when a happy shriek from the garden below interrupted them. Mildred craned her neck and spotted two children darting about on the footpaths, a dark-haired boy of about seven and a little girl a few years younger. Rising, Martha called down to the children in cheerful but halting German that if they went to the kitchen, they would find some “sehr leckere Kekse” that the cook had baked earlier that afternoon. As the children thanked her and darted back into the house, Martha returned to her seat, satisfied. “That should keep them quiet for a while.”

  Mildred regarded her, amused. “Care to explain why you’re offering cookies to two German children running around your garden?”

  “Actually, it’s their garden. That was Hans and Ruth Panofsky.”

  Mildred immediately recognized the surname of their resident landlord, the banker. “I thought only Herr Panofsky and his mother were still living here.”

  “That was the original arrangement.” Martha sighed and set down her pen. “About two weeks ago, Mr. Panofsky brought in a team of carpenters to remodel the attic. When my father asked him what all the distracting hammering and sawing and banging was about, Mr. Panofsky told him that his wife, children, and a few servants were returning from the countryside. They needed to adapt their living quarters to make everyone more comfortable.”

  “I didn’t think Mr. Panofsky’s wife and children meant to return to Berlin.”

  “Neither did we. Mr. Panofsky assured my parents that we wouldn’t be inconvenienced, but my father was not appeased. He told Mr.
Panofsky that while he was happy the family had reunited, he was concerned that the children would suffer, since they no longer had free run of their home. He also made it clear that if he had known Mr. Panofsky’s plans, he would have taken lodgings elsewhere.”

  “Are you going to break the lease?”

  “I don’t think so. This place is perfect for entertaining, and we can’t beat the price or the location. For now my father is willing to wait and see.” Martha shrugged. “My mother and I think Hans and Ruth are adorable, and the two Mrs. Panofskys are so discreet that you wouldn’t know they were here, but my father grumbles about the children’s noise, and he was much annoyed the other night when they burst in on a dinner he was hosting for some important diplomats.”

  Mildred wistfully thought that it would be wonderful to have a pair of happy, healthy children—or even one precious only child—at home to interrupt her work.

  “In my opinion,” Martha continued, “which sadly does not carry much weight around here, while my father is at the embassy, Hans and Ruth ought to go wherever they please. You can’t keep children shut up in an attic when there’s a perfectly wonderful garden outside. But my father—well, he thinks it was Mr. Panofsky’s plan all along to lure us here, and once we were comfortably settled—”

  “Lure you here, with a luxurious home, low rent, ideal location—”

  Martha laughed. “Exactly. What a cruel trap he set for us! And all because he knew that our presence would offer his family some protection against the Nazis.”

  Now the astonishingly low rent made perfect sense, for what Mr. Panofsky needed most was not extra income, but security. Surely the SS and SA would not risk an international incident by storming into the American ambassador’s residence in order to seize Jews living in the attic. It was a clever plan, but Mr. Panofsky could still be arrested at his bank or on the streets if the Nazis wanted him badly enough.