Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Goodness,” Sara’s mother exclaimed. “If you’re going to make threats, just come in and look around. While you’re in the study, please take note of the papers on the desk. You’ll see I’m telling the truth. The Wagners own this house now. Herr Weitz and his son are not here.”

  When Sara heard boots crossing the foyer floor, she inched back into the depths of the closet and held perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe. While the men strode through the house, her mother pleaded for them to be careful. “My mistress is very particular,” she said, begging the officers to mind this piece of furniture or that one, thus warning Sara where the men were.

  They must have found the paperwork on the desk, for they abruptly called off the search. With no apologies for disturbing the household, they ordered Sara’s mother to call the Gestapo immediately if the Weitzes should return. The front door slammed, the house fell silent, but Sara waited ten minutes more before she left the closet and crept downstairs.

  She found her mother sitting at the kitchen table clad in the housekeeper’s cap and apron, her head in her hands, her shoulders trembling as she wept without making a sound. Choking back sobs, Sara ran to her, knelt beside her chair, and embraced her.

  “I was terrified,” her mother confessed.

  “You were brave. So very brave.”

  “They thought I was the housekeeper.”

  “Yes, I know. You fooled them.”

  “I was the fool. How stupid of me. What if they had asked my name, or for proof of my identity? What if they had found my passport? It was in the top desk drawer, right below the papers I told them to examine. What if they had bothered to ask the neighbors who lives here?”

  “They didn’t. Your ruse worked. We’re safe.” Suddenly Sara felt hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her. “Next time I’ll be a housemaid and you be the cook.”

  “May there never be a next time,” said her mother fervently. “It was only their impatience that spared us. They’re cruel, but they aren’t stupid. If they come to search again, they’ll be more thorough.”

  Sara knew her family had to be long gone before then.

  When Sara’s father and Natan returned to Berlin after the violence subsided, they embraced Sara and her mother as if they had not expected to find them safe at home. Quickly Sara and her mother finished the little packing that remained while Natan loaded the borrowed truck. They left the house in such haste that Sara had no time for nostalgic farewells, for pausing in doorways and reminiscing about the happy moments she had spent in each room. By suppertime they were unloading their boxes and suitcases in the new flat in Friedenau.

  As she prepared for bed that night, Sara tried to shake off the uncomfortable sensation that she was an itinerant guest in a stranger’s home. To clear away the stale air in a room too long closed up, she opened the window and craned her neck to take in the view along the block. Cars passed on the street below. Several young men Sara’s age strolled by, teasing one of their group about a girl who had spurned him at a bar they had just left. Through the windows of a restaurant down the street, she glimpsed couples dining by candlelight. In the gutters and alleyways, a few traces of broken glass glistened in the lamplight.

  The mid-November night was too cold to leave the window open long, but before she closed it, Sara thought she detected the faint scent of char. She assumed it came from one of the two restaurants visible from her room, but the next morning Natan told her the source was probably the Synagogue Prinzregentenstrasse two blocks away, now a gutted ruin choked with ashes.

  As the Weitzes were unpacking and settling in, the Nazis issued a series of punitive decrees apparently designed to prevent Jews from living anything resembling a normal life. To the mass arrests, deportations, and enormous fines to pay for the destruction of Kristallnacht, the Reich added a new obligation for Jews to keep their businesses shuttered, but to pay their employees nonetheless and make repairs at their own expense. Beginning January 1, Jews would no longer be allowed to run retail, handicraft, or mail-order businesses, nor could they serve in any position in which they managed personnel. Jewish executives within corporations must be given six weeks’ notice and dismissed. And if the Jews wanted to forget their troubles for a while by enjoying some entertainment, they were on their own, for they were banned from theaters, cinemas, concert halls, museums, sports facilities, and similar public places.

  The restrictions kept coming, onerous and unrelenting. The Judenbann was extended to include restaurants that were not run by Jews. In the first week of December, Jews were prohibited to enter government buildings or even to live nearby. In the same decree, they were forbidden to own or operate automobiles or motorcycles. All German Jews were ordered to turn in their driving permits and automobile registration papers by the last day of the year.

  “How will we escape to Schloss Federle if we can’t drive?” Sara asked Natan.

  “Our plans haven’t changed,” said Natan. “If the police pull us over while we’re fleeing for our lives, being caught without a driving permit will be the least of our problems.”

  “But we’re not even allowed to own a car anymore,” said Sara, struggling to contain her rising panic. “Jews have to turn in their registrations. What reason could there be for the Nazis to collect all that paperwork except to let them know where to confiscate the cars?”

  Natan thought for a moment. “I have a friend, an auto mechanic. I’ll ask him to keep our car at his garage. If the Nazis come looking for it, we’ll explain that we sold it.”

  But even as he was making arrangements, a worse blow fell.

  Effective immediately, Jews would be excluded from most of the west side of Berlin, including the Tiergarten and important thoroughfares such as Unter den Linden, Wilhelmstrasse, Leipzigerstrasse, Kurfürstendamm, and Friedrichstrasse. They would need a police permit to travel through the area, and therefore Jews with homes in the area were encouraged to trade residences with Aryan Germans living elsewhere. The ban would not cover neighborhoods in central and northern Berlin, poorer blocks already heavily populated by Jews, creating a ghetto roughly defined by Linienstrasse and Grenadierstrasse.

  The Weitzes found little comfort in knowing that their flat in Friedenau fell just outside the Judenfrei zone. A ban, once created, could easily be expanded.

  On the last day of the year, the Weitzes relinquished their driving permits, but they entrusted the car registration and ownership papers to Natan’s mechanic friend. There were no more drives through the countryside to admire the snowy landscape, no impromptu trips to Schloss Federle to restore themselves in a remote haven free of swastikas and black-clad SS. The city Sara had always cherished as her modern, sophisticated, intellectual hometown had become steadily more oppressive as her movements were restricted, constraining her tighter and tighter until she felt as if it were a struggle just to breathe. The new apartment felt cramped compared to the comfortable, elegant home they had left behind, but she was so grateful that her family was together and safe that she never complained. The hiding place at Schloss Federle would be smaller yet, and she knew the day might come when she longed for the relative spaciousness of Friedenau.

  In January, after Mildred warned her that Arvid had heard rumors that additional housing restrictions for Jews might be issued as early as spring, Sara broke the news to her family with a heavy heart. “Perhaps we should begin looking for an apartment in the ghetto,” her mother suggested, dividing the last of the evening’s supper between her husband’s plate and Natan’s. “This way we can choose for ourselves before the best places are taken, and before the Nazis choose for us.”

  Since traversing the city while avoiding areas from which Jews were banned had become an arduous ordeal, Sara and Natan urged their parents to stay home while they looked into a few places Natan’s friends in the area had recommended. Their parents gratefully accepted, relieved to avoid a chance encounter with storm troopers who might demand to see their identity cards and, upon seeing the red Js,
publicly humiliate them, or worse.

  It took Sara and Natan nearly two hours to navigate the new topography of Berlin between Friedenau in the southwest suburbs and the ghetto in the northeastern part of the city, but to Sara, the destination was worse than the journey. She struggled to hide her dismay as they toured one vacant apartment after another, unable to imagine their family living in any one of them. Wordlessly she noted peeling paint, rusty pipes, water-stained ceilings, lingering odors of cabbage and onions and sometimes urine, stairwells littered with debris, drafty rooms so cold she assumed a window had been left open until a closer look told her otherwise.

  Sara was both disappointed and relieved when they left the last apartment on Natan’s list. “You know,” he remarked as they stopped at a small Jewish café to warm themselves with coffee and a piece of Kuchen to share, “many people have lived in this neighborhood happily for years, and they didn’t need the Nazis to force them here.”

  Sara’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t mean to be a snob,” she said in an undertone, “but can you imagine Mutti being content in any of the places we saw today?”

  “My old place wasn’t much better.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Okay, maybe not. But you saw how nicely Mutti fixed up our retreat in the country. She’d do the same with one of these apartments.” Before Sara could argue that the hiding place in Schloss Federle had started out in much better structural condition than the apartments, Natan added, “I’m more worried about Papa. He’ll be crushed to see how far we’ve fallen.”

  “It’s not his fault.”

  “Of course not, but he’s always provided so well for his family. It’s a blow to a man’s pride when he no longer can. You and I would get along fine here, but our parents?” He shook his head.

  They agreed that they could not return home with nothing to show for their search, so they chose the best of the vacant apartments and planned how they would describe it to their parents—honestly, but with optimism, promising that it would be easy to refurbish it themselves. Later, over supper, their parents listened with interest, but Sara doubted they were fooled.

  Natan returned to the ghetto a few times throughout January and February as he received tips about new vacancies, but otherwise the Weitzes settled into the Friedenau flat as if they intended to stay. Restrained by the curfew, Sara spent most of her evenings in her room with her books or listening to the radio with her parents, but occasionally she went to Greta’s flat for Kaffee und Kuchen, or to mind the baby while Greta ran errands for her freelance work or the resistance.

  Travel restrictions imposed on Jews meant that Sara saw Mildred even less frequently than she saw Greta. She could no longer accompany her friends and one-year-old Ule on walks through the Tiergarten, nor could she join her former classmates for friendly debates at any of the cafés near campus. Increasingly isolated, she lingered at Mildred’s flat after a study group meeting even though she risked being caught on the streets after curfew, just so she could pour out her heart to her sympathetic teacher and friend.

  “Is emigration any more likely?” asked Mildred.

  “We could leave Germany tomorrow if we had anyplace to go,” Sara said, fighting back tears. “We haven’t been able to get entry visas.”

  Mildred nodded and drank the last of her coffee. Then she fixed her calm blue-eyed gaze on Sara and said, “How would your family feel about Norway?”

  Sara’s heart leapt as she recalled how Mildred had helped the Jewish editor Max Tau escape to Norway in the weeks after Kristallnacht. Mildred had divulged few details, and she probably would have said nothing at all except to ease Natan’s worries. The two men were friends, and in the aftermath of Kristallnacht when Max Tau had disappeared, Natan had searched in vain for him, fearing he had perished in a concentration camp.

  “I’ve always wanted to see Norway. I’ve heard it’s beautiful. But—” Sara hesitated. “Switzerland would be better.”

  Mildred smiled. “Of course. Let me see what I can do.”

  “What can you do? Ambassador Dodd is gone. The American embassy is nearly empty.”

  “But not entirely so.” Mildred glanced at the clock. “You should be on your way, unless you’d like to spend the night?”

  Sara thanked her but refused, knowing her parents would worry. Impulsively she hugged Mildred and darted out the door, and as she hurried home through a flurry of icy snow quickly turning into slush beneath her boots, she decided not to mention anything rather than give her family false hope.

  She sustained her own hopes, alone, as the winter passed without any word from Mildred’s contacts. In March the winds softened and the days lengthened, and she imagined the first buds of spring appearing on the trees and in flower beds in the Tiergarten. She longed to stroll there one last time, but doubted she ever would.

  Then, at the end of March, Mildred surprised her by turning up at her family’s apartment, eyes shining. When Mildred invited her for a walk, Sara quickly threw on a sweater and accompanied her outside.

  Sara was banned from the nearby parks, so they kept to the sidewalks, saying little until they came to a small Platz and sat down upon an empty bench where they would see anyone approaching. “I have entrance visas for Switzerland,” Mildred told her.

  “Really?” Sara gasped. “Oh, Mildred, how will I ever thank you?”

  “Sara—” Mildred hesitated. “I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I could only get two.”

  Sara’s breath caught in her throat. “Oh. I see.”

  “I might be able to get two more in a few months.”

  “Two is better than none.” Sara clasped her hands together in her lap and squeezed her eyes shut, suddenly lightheaded. “My parents will insist that my brother and I take them. My brother will insist that my mother and I do.”

  “The choice is yours. I’m sorry to give you this burden. I wish—”

  “It’s not a burden. This is a gift, a great blessing. Two of us are going to get out.”

  And two would be left behind.

  As they walked back to Sara’s apartment, Mildred promised to keep trying to acquire more visas, and Sara promised not to lose hope.

  She needed only two days and one heated debate with her brother to confirm the choice, which in truth she had made moments after she and Mildred parted. She only wanted her brother’s blessing first.

  Her parents were overjoyed when Sara announced that within a month they would be in Geneva with Amalie and their grandchildren. Natan offered to book the train tickets to give them more time to tie up loose ends and bid old friends farewell.

  “How thankful I am that we won’t need our country retreat after all,” Sara’s mother said with a sigh on the eve of their departure, as they lingered over a late supper. Four suitcases and two trunks were already packed and waiting by the front door. Their precious family heirlooms would remain at Schloss Federle for safekeeping.

  The next day, April 20, dawned bright and sunny, bursting with the full, verdant beauty of spring. Sunshine from cloudless blue skies bathed the city in warmth and light. On the radio they were calling it Führerwetter, as if nature itself had joined in the national holiday celebrating Adolf Hitler’s fiftieth birthday. Every German household had been ordered to fly the swastika flag in honor of the occasion—Jews were prohibited from doing so—and more than fifty thousand troops would march in a grand parade before an anticipated two million spectators. It was expected to be the greatest event the Nazis had ever staged, an elaborate spectacle of historic significance, and the Weitzes were all too happy to miss it.

  They tried to hail a cab; several sped past without slowing down, discouraged either by their luggage or their suspect Jewish appearance. Eventually one halted and they piled in, and as they drove to the station, Sara’s mother inclined her head toward the ubiquitous swastika banners they passed. Leaning closer to Sara, she murmured, “I certainly won’t miss all this.”

  Sara pressed her lips together to hold
back a sob and forced a smile, turning quickly away so her mother would not see her tears.

  All too soon they were standing on the platform, awaiting the arrival of the train. Natan paced nearby, his hands thrust in his pockets, working off his agitation. A distant whistle caught his attention, and the announcement that their train was approaching brought him to a halt. He threw Sara a despondent look, and she knew it was time.

  “The tickets,” Sara’s mother exclaimed suddenly, clutching her pocketbook to her side. “Sara, do you have them?”

  “I have them,” said Natan, taking from his coat pocket a thick envelope, which he gave to his father. “The visas are here too. You should carry them the rest of the way.” He raised his eyebrows at Sara, urging her to speak, as they had planned, before time ran out.

  “Papa, Mutti—” Sara cleared her throat. “First, I love you both very, very much. Second, I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth any earlier than this. Third—”

  “She could only get two visas,” Natan broke in, impatient. To Sara he added, “They’ll miss the train if you drag this out any longer.”

  For a moment her parents stared at her, dumbfounded, until realization dawned. “So, this is goodbye,” her father said, with false heartiness. He came forward and embraced her. “That’s fine. We’ll be all right. Kiss your sister for me.”

  “No, Papa. The visas are for you and Mutti. You two are going. Natan and I are staying here.”

  Their parents protested, as Sara and Natan had known they would. As the conductor called all aboard, Sara quickly explained that she might be able to get two more visas soon, but not before the two they already had would expire. They must go in pairs. It was the only way. Then their father and mother pressed the visas and tickets upon their children, and Sara had to point out that they were in their parents’ names. No one else could use them. Even the suitcases belonging to Sara and Natan held their mother’s and father’s clothing. Sara had emptied and repacked them the night before while their parents slept.