Uneasy, Sara did as her brother asked.
The next morning, Natan shook her awake before dawn. They quickly washed and dressed, gathered the bags holding their own papers and valuables, and silently slipped from the apartment. They spent the day walking the city, observing from a distance as Gestapo agents escorted Jews from their homes into waiting trucks, their suitcases properly labeled. Sara was unsettled by how very calmly and efficiently the events unfolded—except at one house on Linienstrasse, where a woman with streaks of gray in her dark hair wept and moaned as two Gestapo agents carried her from her apartment still clinging tightly to the chair from which she had refused to rise when they had come for her.
Late in the afternoon, Natan and Sara risked a stroll past the Levetzowstrasse synagogue and watched from a distance as military trucks, one after another, parked at the curb and unloaded Jews—men, women, and children, the young and the old, healthy and infirm. Obediently, suitcases in hand, they filed into the building where many of them had worshipped not so long before, their prayers overflowing with peace and love. Sara dreaded to imagine what they found within those walls now.
When Sara and Natan returned home, the Hirsches were gone, with only a few abandoned possessions scattered about to prove that they had ever been there.
On the morning of October 18, Natan again woke Sara early. They set out in the pouring rain to witness as one thousand Jews were marched, carrying their luggage, from the Levetzowstrasse synagogue to the Grunewald train station six kilometers away. The very young and the infirm were allowed to ride in open trucks—a small comfort, although they were no less drenched from the storm. At the station the deportees were loaded onto passenger cars, and once everyone was seated, Sara and Natan watched through the windows as each was served a steaming hot drink and given a small cardboard box, which they surmised contained lunch or other supplies.
“Perhaps Anna is right,” said Sara as the train chugged out of the station. “Perhaps this won’t be so bad.”
“Don’t fool yourself. They’re going into hell.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but it’s the logical conclusion.” He turned and strode off through the rain, hands thrust into his pockets. “This kibbutz in Poland is a fairy tale.”
“Then where do you think they’re going?” she asked, hurrying to catch up to him. “Another ghetto? A work camp, like those horrible places they have for the foreign workers here in Berlin?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. If they’re lucky.”
“Lucky?” Aghast, Sara seized his arm, bringing him to a halt. “You think that’s the best we can hope for?”
His expression softened. “Not you and I, little sister. We can still hope for our visas to Switzerland. Wilhelm and Papa are doing all they can.”
But less than a week later, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issued a decree forbidding Jews to emigrate from the Greater German Reich. The visas to Switzerland Sara and Natan had desperately sought for so long would never come now.
“If the Nazis want us out of Germany,” Sara lamented, heartbroken, “why not let us emigrate as we wish?”
“They want us out of Germany,” said Natan, “but they’ll decide where we go and what happens to us when we get there.”
The Berlin Jewish Organization sent out more letters to Jews selected for deportation. Another transport was arranged for October 24, but again Sara and Natan were omitted from the lists. They had no idea why, whether it was by chance or by some system the Jewish elders had worked out with the Nazis.
When the second train departed for the east, Natan went alone to observe it. Afterward he told Sara that everything had gone as efficiently as before, but this time, although the passengers received the small boxes, no hot beverages had been served. Four days later when another thousand Jews were deported, Sara asked to go with him, hoping to see for herself that all was well. The deportees boarded the trains as calmly and cooperatively as on that first morning, but all the amenities distributed to the first group were absent—no hot drinks, no small boxes.
“At this rate, by February they’ll have gotten rid of every last comfort, including the seats,” said Natan acidly.
The first transports had gone so smoothly that the Nazis agreed to allow the Jewish community to provide their own Ordner, the auxiliaries who collected the deportees from their homes and saw them to the transit camp and aboard the train. It was better for a sympathetic fellow Jew to knock upon one’s door and tell them it was time to go, the reasoning went, than a grim, unsmiling, impatient Nazi.
With every trainload of Jews that departed the city, Sara knew the likelihood that she and Natan would appear on the next list sharply increased. She wished she knew how best to prepare for resettlement, for the Berlin Jewish Organization’s packing list had provided frustratingly few clues. She received one letter from Anna saying that they had arrived safely in Litzmannstadt, which Sara later learned was the Reich’s new name for the Polish town of Łódż. Sara promptly wrote back, full of questions, but several weeks passed and no reply came. She supposed that Anna was too busy to write, or the censors had not cleared her letter.
“I wish we knew what to expect in Litzmannstadt when our turn comes,” she fretted one crisp, beautiful day in early November. “A kibbutz? A work camp? It would be less frightening if—”
“Our turn is never coming,” Natan interrupted fiercely, taking her by the shoulders. “Listen to me carefully. If our deportation letter comes, we’re going to ignore it. Whatever else happens, we are not getting on one of those trains.”
Chapter Fifty-four
October–December 1941
Greta
Rain pattered on the windows one evening in late autumn as Greta returned to the living room after putting Ule to bed. She spread out papers and books for a new translation project on the table and settled down to work, all the while glancing at the clock and listening for Adam’s key in the door. He had gone out after supper to meet with Arvid, but she had expected him home thirty minutes ago.
She tried not to worry. Usually the men’s weeknight meetings began promptly and ended quickly, but sometimes an especially critical matter came up, requiring a lengthier discussion. But she could not discount more ominous possibilities. Navigating the city safely during the blackout was difficult in fair weather and nearly impossible in a cold, driving rain. Any envious acquaintance could become an informant, and no one realized they were being watched by the Gestapo until it was too late.
Shuddering from a sudden chill, Greta banished her anxious thoughts and forced herself to concentrate on her work. Even so, it took her an hour to plow through a fairly straightforward paragraph, and she was on the verge of quitting in frustration when at last Adam returned. Breathing a sigh of relief, she met him at the door, but to her surprise, he lingered in the hallway, rainwater dripping from his hat and coat.
“Will you come with me for a moment?” he asked.
“Where?” she asked, bewildered, glancing past him up and down the hallway to make sure he was alone.
“Up to the roof. I have to tell you something important.”
“But it’s raining. Why don’t you come in and tell me here?”
“Because we can’t risk being overheard.”
“But—” She glanced over her shoulder toward their son’s bedroom. “Ule’s asleep. I can’t leave him alone.”
“He’ll be fine. He won’t even know you’re gone.”
“It’s not safe. If there’s an air raid—”
“Greta, please.” His voice was strained. “Put on your coat and come with me.”
Mystified, she pulled on her coat and galoshes, grabbing an umbrella for good measure. “Can we make this quick?” she asked as she stepped into the hall and he locked the door behind them. He did not reply. Taking her hand, he led her upstairs, shoved open the rooftop door, and pulled her outside into the storm.
“What’s going on?” Greta asked, shivering as drops
of rain trickled down her collar and ran down her back before she could duck beneath the umbrella.
“You’re not going to like this, but Arvid insisted I tell you.” Adam pulled up the collar of his coat, stalling for time. “Moscow has been in touch with us through their intelligence outpost in Brussels.”
“Finally! Isn’t this good news?”
“Apparently our radio messages haven’t been getting through to Moscow.” He shifted his weight, tense and agitated. “They’ve asked Brussels to help them reestablish contact, so one of their men is driving to Berlin to meet with us. He was specifically told to seek out you and me.”
“Arvid was right to insist you tell me,” said Greta, exasperated. “What would I have done if some stranger showed up at our door claiming to be a friendly Soviet agent?”
“I would hope you’d shut the door in his face if he didn’t offer the proper code name. His is Kent.”
“Good to know.” The strain of keeping her teeth from chattering gave her voice an edge. “Now may we please get out of this rain?”
“Not yet. I don’t think you understand.”
Greta studied him, taking in his grim frown, his barely contained anger. “Maybe you should try again.”
“Kent was told to contact you and me, Adam Kuckhoff and his wife. The message included our address and telephone number. Moscow urged Kent to have me arrange a meeting with Arvid and Harro. If for some reason Kent is unable to reach me, he’s instructed to contact Libertas, the wife of Harro Schulze-Boysen, at the address and phone number provided. If that too fails, he should try Elizabeth Schumacher in Marquardt near Potsdam.”
“You’re telling me,” said Greta slowly, sickened, her voice nearly drowned out by the rainstorm, “that Moscow put our names, addresses, and phone numbers in a message that they radioed to Brussels, a message that could have been intercepted by any Reich station in Europe?”
Adam nodded.
“Dear God.” She pressed a hand to her chest, heart thudding. “That’s not possible. Are they insane or just incredibly stupid?”
“Greta, please. It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
“Really? I’m delighted to hear that, because it sounds like we’re finished!”
“We don’t know that the Germans intercepted the message,” he said in a soothing tone that did nothing to quell her fears. “If they didn’t, we have nothing to worry about. If they did, the message was in code. The Germans don’t know our key word and it would be next to impossible for them to guess it at random. They also don’t know what key book we’re using, and without that, they have almost no chance of deciphering the message.”
“Next to impossible,” Greta echoed bitterly. “Almost no chance.”
“Greta, darling, you’re right. I won’t deny it. It’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that the Germans could break the code, but the odds that they will are infinitesimal.”
She took a deep, steadying breath. Arvid and John Sieg had said as much months earlier when Erdberg had given them the radio and a copy of Der Kurier aus Spanien.
“One thing more,” said Adam. “They got our address wrong—Wilhelmstrasse 18 instead of Wilhelmshöherstrasse.”
Greta choked out a laugh, a wild, strangled sound. “Oh, in that case we’re perfectly safe. They’ll never find us with only our name and phone number.”
“It might buy us time.”
“Not enough to make any difference. There are a million ways the Gestapo can find us knowing only our surname. We’re in the phone directory, for God’s sake.” Another thought struck her. “Will Kent be clever enough to figure it out?”
“I’ve never met the man, but I would expect so.”
“After he discovers the error the hard way by knocking on the wrong front door.” Greta sighed and clasped a hand to her forehead. “At least they didn’t give Arvid’s last name.”
“Yes, that’s good,” said Adam, but when their eyes met, the depthless regret she glimpsed there told her what he could not bear to say aloud.
If any member of their resistance network was discovered, they would all be compromised.
As dangerous as it was to be in radio contact with Moscow, Greta understood that severing ties would cost the resistance their most important remaining contact with the outside world—and the situation in Germany had become so desperate that they needed all the help they could get. Every day Arvid and Harro discovered official reports of shocking abuse and mass murders of Jews and Communists in the conquered territories of the Soviet Union, but they suspected this was only a glimpse of even greater horrors not yet disclosed. German Jews were being resettled in the east by the thousands, and the few letters from deportees Greta had received indicated that they had been crowded into ghettos and concentration camps. Although the letters were vague and sparsely detailed to pass the censors, the writers described hardships and hunger, and begged for food and warm clothing. She’d immediately sent several parcels, but she never heard if they had been received.
Greta feared that the deported German Jews, wherever they were, suffered conditions as appalling as those of the foreign conscripted workers in Berlin. The laborers toiling upon Albert Speer’s Germania construction projects, and the thousands more who had been brought in from defeated territories to work in other industries, suffered increasingly worse hardships as the autumn days grew colder and winter approached. A few blocks away from John Sieg’s Neukölln apartment, the National Cash Register compound at 181–189 Sonnenallee had been converted to a munitions plant, with a factory at one end and rough barracks at the other. The crude structures housed slave laborers from France, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, including numerous Jews and many women. Whenever Sieg passed the site, he witnessed prisoners clad in rags, freezing, starving, enduring beatings. When the guards were not watching, some compassionate residents of Neukölln found gaps in the fences and passed the prisoners potatoes and bread, warm gloves and soap. Sieg gave them flyers with encouraging messages translated into Polish by his wife, Sophie. But although Greta admired them for offering what comfort they could, their efforts seemed hopelessly inadequate to the enormous need.
To do anything on a larger scale, the resistance needed outside help. That meant continuing to provide information to the Soviets, despite the risks.
Soon thereafter, when “Kent” arrived in Berlin, Greta heard about it only after the fact. Ignoring his instructions, Kent had phoned the Schulze-Boysen residence first and asked to meet with Harro. Libertas had met him at an Untergrundbahn station, and after confirming his identity, had brought him home to meet her husband. For more than four hours, Harro had provided him with detailed military information, including the location of Wolfsschanze, Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia; the Wehrmacht’s plans to invade the Caucasus in order to access Soviet oil reserves; Germany’s preparations for chemical warfare; and information about aircraft productions and battlefield casualties. He also had revealed that the German military faced severe fuel shortages and their supply lines were stretched dangerously thin. Afterward, Kent had returned to Brussels to transmit Harro’s information to Moscow.
“I have a confession,” Greta said after Libertas finished her report. They were sitting side by side in the old wooden chairs on the roof of the Kuckhoffs’ apartment building, wrapped in blankets to fend off the cool air of late autumn. “I’m relieved Kent contacted you and Harro instead of me and Adam.”
“He must have heard we have excellent cognac,” Libertas said lightly, but her teasing smile soon faded. “I hope our work makes a difference. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Harro’s descriptions of the atrocities were bad enough, but the films I see at work, the photos—”
“What films?” In early November, Libertas had taken a new job as a scriptwriter and press agent in the Deutsche Kulturfilm-Zentrale, the better to acquire information for the resistance. Kulturfilm had been founded after the Great War to produce educational German documentaries, but in 1940 it had been placed u
nder Goebbels’s direct control and now mostly churned out Nazi propaganda. “What photos?”
“Images of atrocities. Some taken by Kulturfilm staff, others by soldiers on leave. If the world could see what I’ve seen, every civilized nation on earth would declare war on Germany and put this horror to an end.”
“What have you seen?”
Libertas shot her a challenging look. “Are you sure you want to know?”
Greta felt a denial form on her lips, but she forced herself to nod.
“Come by my office tomorrow and I’ll show you. Don’t bring Ule, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The next morning, Greta dressed in her best dark blue suit, left Ule with Erika, and went to the Kulturfilm office, wondering how Libertas would explain her visit to her superiors and justify showing her films and photos that Greta presumed were strictly confidential. She dreaded the sights that awaited her there, and yet she felt a compelling responsibility to pay witness to them, to share Libertas’s burden. She knew how exhausting it was to carry a painful secret alone.
When she arrived, she gave her name to the receptionist in the lobby, and soon Libertas appeared, dressed in a smart rust-colored suit, smiling and cheerfully greeting colleagues in passing. She welcomed Greta with a kiss on the cheek, linked her arm through hers, and led her off to the elevator, chatting animatedly as if they were off on a shopping trip.
Libertas’s façade fell as soon as they were alone in her office. She closed and locked the door, drew the blinds, and retrieved a file from a tall cabinet near the window. “These aren’t official records,” she said. “No one else at Kulturfilm or within the Reich hierarchy even knows this file exists. If they did, they would order it destroyed, and I’d probably be shot if I couldn’t talk my way out of it. Soldiers were strictly forbidden to take photos of these events, but—” She shrugged and added sardonically, “Many did anyway. They’re proud of their service to the Reich and want to preserve it for posterity.”
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