Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Adam had some misgivings about attending. He was barely on speaking terms with the director—Heinrich George, a former Communist turned Nazi collaborator who worked on several Reich propaganda films—but he had several friends in the cast and he owed the stage manager a favor. At the last minute, Adam accepted the invitation and suggested he and Greta make a night on the town of it.

  Although Greta missed little Ule, she enjoyed the indulgence of an evening out with Adam alone, dressing up, savoring a leisurely meal at a fine restaurant rather than gobbling down something quick between feeding the baby and changing his diaper, conversing without interruption, seeing a play rather than collapsing on the sofa and taking turns trying to coax the baby to sleep.

  The performance was going quite well, Greta and Adam agreed as they strolled to the lobby during intermission. They both noted only a few stumbles near the end of the first act, nothing the cast could not correct before opening night. But as she sipped a cocktail, Greta realized that most of the conversation around them was not about the show at all but rumors out of Munich.

  That night marked the fifteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler’s failed coup attempt that had earned him a charge of high treason and eight months in jail. November 9 had become the Nazi equivalent of a Holy Day of Obligation, and National Socialist party leaders had gathered in Munich to commemorate the occasion. From what Greta and Adam overheard, other members of the audience had heard from friends in Munich that Goebbels had made a tempestuous speech accusing “World Jewry” of conspiracy in Grynszpan’s assassination of Rath. The minister of propaganda had announced to the assembly that the Führer had decided the party should not prepare or organize any protests, but if demonstrations erupted spontaneously, they should not be thwarted.

  “That’s a rather poorly disguised call for violence,” said Adam as blinking lights reminded the audience that the second act would begin shortly. As Greta and Adam returned to their seats, her heart sank as she recognized one Jewish friend sitting a few rows behind them, and another across the aisle. It was not a good night for Jews to be out and about in the city, not that any night was safe. She hoped they would not run into any storm troopers on their way home.

  She was too distracted to enjoy the second act, impatient for it to end so they could return home to Ule. In the lobby, when Adam helped her into her coat and asked her what she thought of the show, she murmured a few compliments for the lead actress and the ensemble, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

  They emerged from the theater onto Bismarckstrasse, still bustling despite the late hour. “Do you want to stop for a nightcap on the way home?” Adam asked, but his last words were drowned out by the wail of a siren.

  At that same moment, Greta smelled smoke.

  Quickly Adam seized her hand and strode off through the crowd, which only then Greta realized was mostly young men, jostling startled bystanders as they jogged along, shouting to one another. Her hand held fast in his, she hurried after Adam toward the Knie, the curve in the junction of five streets between Bismarckstrasse and Hardenburgstrasse. Suddenly just beside her a grinning young man flung a brick through a storefront window, shattering the glass.

  Instinctively she turned her head away and raised her free arm to protect her eyes, but Adam was pulling her along, urging her to hurry. The smell of smoke intensified; the air carried shouts of “Juda verrecke!” and strains of the “Horst Wessel Lied.” She glimpsed a yellow Star of David painted on a bookshop window, but as they hurried past, three young men bearing short clubs rushed forward and smashed it, sending a shower of crystal shards over them. Greta’s cheek stung; as Adam quickened their pace, she wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and brought away a smear of blood.

  Smoke billowed out of an alley just ahead. “This way,” Adam shouted, turning sharply. Glass shards ground underfoot as she stumbled to keep up with him. They were headed south, she realized, opposite to the direction of home, but before she could urge Adam to turn back, they rounded a corner and discovered a tall building engulfed in flames.

  Coughing, disoriented, Greta needed a moment to recognize the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue. Shock brought her to a sudden halt and her hand slipped from Adam’s grasp. On the street before the synagogue, a dozen firefighters stood idle, smoking and laughing with a crowd of onlookers as flames consumed the temple. Others unleashed their hoses full force upon adjoining buildings to keep the fire from spreading, but the synagogue was allowed to burn freely.

  The hateful laughter, the jubilant shouts, the roar of the flames, the wail of sirens filled Greta’s ears as she stood and watched, her eyes tearing up from the smoke and the heat of the blaze. She felt Adam’s arm around her shoulders. “We must get home before this gets any worse,” he spoke loudly into her ear.

  She nodded, her heart in her throat, a cold rush of fear coursing through her as she imagined the riot in their own neighborhood, fire threatening Ule. Taking Adam’s hand, she ran alongside him for the trolley, but they found it packed full and at a dead stop in the middle of an intersection as a flood of rioters swept around it. Turning again, they glimpsed a sign for the Untergrundbahn and hurried toward it, but the crowd thickened between them and the entrance, forcing them to change direction twice more and work their way against the crowd until they were in the clear. Out of breath, they slowed their pace and went three blocks more until they reached another station. Everywhere they passed broken storefront windows of Jewish shops and businesses. Everywhere shattered glass littered the streets and sidewalks, glittering in the lamplight.

  Eventually they made it back to their neighborhood, breathless, their clothes in disarray, their hair smelling of smoke. They found Erika waiting up for them, anxious and alarmed, little Ule slumbering peacefully in the cradle beside her daughter. “Greta, you’re bleeding,” Erika gasped, hurrying off to fetch a damp washcloth. Inspecting Greta’s face, Adam called after Erika to bring a pair of tweezers too, and as he picked small fragments of glass from the narrow cut across her cheekbone, they told their horrified friend what they had witnessed.

  When Greta’s wound was cleaned and bandaged, they gathered up Ule and went home. Safe inside their own apartment, Greta laid the baby in his crib and returned to the living room to find Adam at the open window, gazing out into the night. The smell of smoke had grown fainter, but the sirens and shouting persisted—louder, perhaps, unless that was an illusion sparked by exhaustion and fear.

  They cleaned themselves up, checked on Ule once more, and went off to bed, where they both lay awake listening to the fading sounds of the riot. Greta’s thoughts churned with questions—whether they were safe in their apartment, if they should take Ule and flee, where they might go, what tomorrow would bring. Eventually she drifted off to sleep.

  The next day Greta stayed home minding Ule and listening pensively to the radio. Adam ventured out, but he returned home early in the middle of the afternoon, outraged and shaken. Tens of thousands of Jews had been arrested, he told her, dragged from their homes, paraded through the streets, and eventually forced into trucks and hauled off to concentration camps. Jewish businesses were forbidden to reopen unless they were managed by an Aryan. Curfews had been imposed upon Jews, restricting them to their homes from nine o’clock in the evening until five in the morning. Almost every synagogue in Berlin had been desecrated and severely damaged, or destroyed utterly, after their archives had been stolen and turned over to the Sicherheitsdienst. What the Security Service intended to do with the records, one could only imagine.

  “The official story is that these were spontaneous demonstrations, rising up from the Volk,” said Adam as he dropped wearily into a chair. “Observe, the Nazis say, how almost no one in the mobs wore uniforms.”

  “I would argue that the absence of uniformed Nazis makes it even more suspicious,” said Greta.

  Adam nodded grim agreement, “The truth as far as my comrades understand it is that the regional Nazi Party leaders organized the riots in respon
se to Goebbels’s speech. They ordered the SA and the Hitler Youth not to wear their uniforms to create the illusion of a popular uprising.”

  A fuller picture of the nightmare came out in the days that followed. Nearly one hundred Jews had been killed and hundreds more injured. Throughout Germany, more than a thousand synagogues had been burned, and seventy-five hundred Jewish businesses had been destroyed. Jewish cemeteries and schools had been vandalized. And more than thirty thousand Jews had been arrested and sent to concentration camps, convicted of no crime, accused of nothing more than simply being Jewish.

  On November 13, Mildred unexpectedly appeared at Greta’s door. The Harnacks did not have a phone because Arvid was wary of wiretaps, so when Greta missed their usual weekly walk in the Tiergarten—in all the turmoil, she had completely forgotten the day—Mildred decided to check in to make sure they were all right.

  When Mildred coaxed her to bring Ule out for a walk, Greta reluctantly agreed. She was surprised to find that most of the shattered glass had been swept up from the streets and pavements, although many broken storefront windows had yet to be repaired. Some had been boarded over, but many more stood gaping open, accusing mouths with sharp glass teeth silently demanding justice. Greta could hardly bear to look at them as she pushed Ule steadily along in his pram, Mildred beside her, neither of them speaking

  “Walther Funk is calling it Kristallnacht,” Mildred suddenly said. “Derisively, as one might expect, to make light of the Jews’ suffering.”

  “Walther Funk?”

  “The Reich minister of economics. Yesterday Hermann Göring held a meeting of top Nazi officials—himself, Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Funk—”

  “Arvid?”

  Mildred allowed a small smile. “Not Arvid. He only heard about it later. The purpose of the meeting was to assess the damage and determine who was responsible for it.”

  “Responsible?” said Greta sharply. “Is there any doubt? Obviously Goebbels deserves the blame, although perhaps he would say he earned the credit.”

  “They’re sticking with the story that this was a spontaneous protest, and therefore the Jews are to blame.” Mildred sighed. “The real problem, as Göring sees it, is that Aryan insurance companies are now obliged to pay Jews for the damage done to their shops and businesses.”

  “That’s some small measure of justice, at least.”

  “I’m afraid not. They’ve ruled to fine the Jews one billion marks to cover the cost of repairs. The six million marks the insurance companies have already paid for the broken windows must be turned over to the Reich.”

  “That’s madness,” said Greta, her voice low and flat. “How can they blame the Jews for the crimes committed against them? How do they expect to collect this outrageous fine?”

  “I have no idea. Arvid is trying to find out.” Mildred hesitated. “Something else came out at the meeting, though, and it’s been troubling me ever since Arvid mentioned it.”

  Steeling herself, Greta adjusted Ule’s blanket, tucking it more snugly around him. “And that is?”

  “At the meeting, Göring announced that he had just received a letter written at Hitler’s command, requesting that ‘the Jewish question be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another.’”

  “The Jewish question?” echoed Greta. “What’s that supposed to mean? Coordinated and solved how?”

  “That,” said Mildred, “is what keeps me up at night.”

  Greta inhaled deeply and let out a long, shaky breath. Whatever it was, it meant suffering and death, she was sure of it.

  The next time Greta and Mildred met was on the morning the news broke in the German papers that in protest to the pogroms, the United States had recalled its ambassador to Germany. Only a small staff, including Donald Heath, would remain behind to monitor American interests in Berlin. In response, Germany promptly withdrew its ambassador to the United States.

  For years the resistance had hoped the United States and the nations of Europe would shake off their isolationist lethargy and join the fight to defeat fascism in Germany. Now they could only watch in dismay as one by one, potential allies withdrew from their country, leaving the resistance to struggle on alone.

  Chapter Forty-three

  November 1938–April 1939

  Sara

  After Mildred told Sara that Jews might be forced from their homes to make room for Aryans displaced by Albert Speer’s construction projects, Sara and Natan urged their parents to put their home up for sale before it was taken from them. “Get every mark you can for this place while you have the chance,” said Natan. “You know if the Nazis seize it they’ll give you nothing in return.”

  “But this is our home,” their mother protested. “You children grew up here. We built our lives here.”

  “We’re planning to emigrate anyway,” Sara said. “If we move out now, we’ll be ready to leave the moment our visas come through.”

  “If they come through,” her mother countered, but eventually Sara and Natan convinced their parents to put their home on the market. Their father reminded them that moving the proceeds from the sale out of Germany would be a formidable challenge, but they would worry about that later.

  A few people toured the house soon after it went up for sale, but they were more curious than serious, and made no offers. Then, in the middle of October, a couple in their late thirties came for a showing, first just the two of them, and then again with their three young children. On a third visit, the Wagners made an offer—reasonable, yet far less than Sara’s parents would have considered were they not so eager to sell, especially since the purchase included most of the furniture.

  As if worried the low bid would insult them, the Wagners hastily, apologetically explained their circumstances. Although they had both lived in Germany for nearly twenty years, by birth he was Austrian and his wife was Polish. Their current home was in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood with many other Poles, but given the recent disagreement between their two countries, it seemed prudent, for the sake of their children, not to draw too much attention to their Polish heritage, and to move as soon as possible.

  “Earlier this year, my wife inherited a sizable trust from her late grandmother,” Herr Wagner said, reaching for his wife’s hand. “We could write you a cheque today for the entire amount, but the trust is held in a bank in Kraków, and we would be obliged to pay you in złoty.”

  “Usually most people turn us down at this point,” said Frau Wagner with an anxious, self-deprecating smile.

  Sara’s father mulled it over. “As long as your bank confirms that the funds are available, I see no reason why the location of your trust should be an issue.”

  In the week that followed, Sara’s parents and the Wagners haggled briefly over the price but soon reached an agreement. As Sara’s parents waited for the Kraków bank to confirm that Frau Wagner’s trust held sufficient funds, Wilhelm set up an account in his father-in-law’s name with a bank in Geneva. After the Wagners’ payment went through, Herr Wagner and Sara’s father signed the paperwork, shook hands, and congratulated one another on a good deal fairly struck. The sale was complete, the income safe in a Swiss bank a short drive from Amalie and Wilhelm’s chateau. Now all the Weitzes had to do was get to Geneva to claim it.

  “Actually, from Switzerland the money could be transferred to any bank in the world, wherever we decide to settle,” Sara remarked to her mother as they packed the belongings they planned to take along to the flat they had rented in Friedenau, a few blocks from the Kuckhoffs’ place. Valuable artworks and family heirlooms not included in the sale had already been carefully wrapped, crated, and loaded onto a truck Natan had borrowed from a friend. Earlier that day, Sara’s father and Natan had driven everything to Schloss Federle for safekeeping. They could have returned by nightfall, but they had decided to stay a few days to work on the hiding place and take inventory of their supplies.

  That was November 8.

  When the pogrom e
rupted, Sara’s father and Natan could not risk driving back to Berlin, even though they were frantic with worry when their phone calls home did not go through. On the morning of November 10, when the SA swept through the city arresting Jews and the inevitable pounding on their own front door came, Sara’s mother ordered her to run upstairs and hide.

  “What about you?” Sara asked as her mother began pulling open kitchen drawers and closing them, searching for something.

  “Go,” her mother ordered, snatching up an apron and cap their former housekeeper had left behind. Her voice was iron. Sara turned and fled.

  Crouching on the floor of the closet in Amalie’s old room, Sara heard her mother open the front door and calmly greet the officers. Even when they demanded to see Natan, her manner remained briskly efficient as she replied that he was not there.

  “He is a convicted criminal,” one officer said. “We have his release papers identifying this as his permanent residence. His parole has been revoked. Bring him to us at once.”

  “As I said, I cannot.”

  “This is the home of his father, the Jew banker Jakob Weitz,” said another officer, his voice hoarse as if he had been shouting for hours.

  “Officers, you are mistaken,” Sara’s mother replied, feigning puzzlement. “This is the home of the Austrian businessman, Herr Ernst Wagner. He bought this house from Herr Weitz last month.”

  “Jakob Weitz! Natan Weitz!” the hoarse man called into the far reaches of the house. “Present yourselves immediately or we cannot guarantee the safety of anyone in this house.”