Deliberately, she looked away. He set the box on the floor and nudged it toward her with the side of his boot. She waited for him to leave before she rose unsteadily, went to the box, and peered inside. There was food, bread and cheese and hard sausage and an apple. There was a letter from Arvid’s mother. And there was a note from Falk, hastily written from the look of it. “Dear Mildred,” he had scrawled in pencil on a scrap of paper, “I was just with our beloved Arvid. We both send you heartfelt greetings and kisses. Your loyal brother-in-law, Falk.”
A tear trickled down her cheek, and she absently wiped it away with the back of her hand. She was not forgotten. Her beloved Arvid was still alive. Surely Arvid’s family was doing all they could to get them released.
But as swiftly as her hopes had risen, they plummeted. She and Greta had observed Nazi mass trials with Clara Leiser, and she knew the verdicts were often predetermined. What chance did they have of an acquittal? Whatever the specific charges against them were, the best outcome they could hope for was life imprisonment.
In the days that followed, she reread Mutti Clara’s letter and Falk’s note so often that the paper became as soft as cloth, but their kindness was not enough to alleviate her suffering. Illness, hunger, isolation, and brutal treatment at the hands of the Gestapo had worn her down to a thin shadow. One night, just as she was drifting off to sleep, a man passed outside her door and hoarsely whispered that John Sieg had hanged himself in his cell rather than betray any of his friends. Once Mildred would have recoiled from the thought of taking her own life, but after more than two months of unendurable horror, she felt death beckoning her. Her strength was faltering, and she knew from the rattle in her chest that she was unlikely to survive a lengthy incarceration. She had withstood interrogation thus far, but if the Gestapo subjected her to the same torture Arvid and Adam had suffered in the Stalin Room, how long could she hold on?
Perhaps it would be wiser and braver to take her own life before she could be forced to reveal the names of her friends.
One morning in late November, or so she believed, having lost track, she woke coughing up blood. The guard took her to the infirmary, which smelled of bleach and iron and seemed too brightly lit for her feeble eyes. She caught a glimpse of herself reflected in a stainless-steel basin and was shocked to see a haggard old woman staring bleakly back at her.
She cringed as moans of anguish came from an adjacent room where the doctor was examining another patient. She caught sight of a tray on the counter beside the sink, upon which several objects were arranged—wooden tongue depressors, a stethoscope, a container of sewing pins. She stared at the latter, perplexed by the apparent incongruity, focusing on that in an attempt to block out the distressing sounds from the other room. What purpose would sewing pins serve here? she wondered, and suddenly she realized what purpose they could serve.
Summoning her strength, she bolted from her chair, reached the counter in two strides, snatched up the pins, and shoved a handful into her throat. She heard the guard shout as she closed her eyes and tried to swallow, but then a hand closed tightly around her shoulder and another seized her throat, and then they were prying her jaw open. Frantic, she thrashed and tried to wrench herself free. Her elbow connected with something that gave way with a strange, sickening crunch followed by a howl of pain, then two men had her on the floor, on her side, with hands squeezing her throat to prevent her from swallowing and two more holding open her mouth and slapping the back of her head until most of the pins tumbled out, fingers plunging into her mouth to sweep the last few free. A boot connected with her rib cage, once, and again, and again.
She wept, overcome with pain and anger and frustration. She had come so close to eluding her tormentors without ever leaving their prison. They would never give her another chance.
Many nights Greta dreamed of playful, sunny romps through the Tiergarten with Ule, only to wake in the morning to the sound of her own weeping.
Would she ever see her precious son again? She was permitted a few letters a week, but no visitors—not that she would want her little boy to see her in that wretched place. Her mother assured her that Ule was healthy and content, but he missed her and Adam very much and asked about them often. His grandmother told him that his Mutti and Papa were traveling on important business and would be home soon. Despondent, Greta wondered how long he would believe it.
Soon after her arrest, an SS officer had informed her that Adam had been captured in Prague a few hours after she had been brought to Alexanderplatz. With every heartbreaking letter, Adam’s mother asked if Greta had any news of him, for he had not written to her. She had gone to Gestapo headquarters begging to see him, only to be turned away. Greta had received no word from him either, although from time to time her interrogators would taunt her with horrifying descriptions of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8. She knew that Adam, Arvid, and the others held captive there had been beaten and tortured, and that after several days of torment, Adam had finally confessed. She was devastated to learn that he had given up John Sieg and Adolf Grimme, but she knew he had held out as long as he could in hopes that a delay would give his friends time to escape. Unfortunately, as the Gestapo men told her with mock sorrow, he had not held out long enough. John Sieg was dead, Adolf Grimme was in the Hausgefängnis along with Mildred and Libertas, and their wives languished in the Alexanderplatz prison the same as Greta, the same as most of the resistance women, except those few who had eluded capture.
Greta did not understand why her two dear friends were confined to the Hausgefängnis with the men instead of at Alexanderplatz or the women’s prison in Charlottenburg. Was it because Libertas was the granddaughter of a prince and Mildred was an American? That defied logic. Shouldn’t their status merit preferential treatment, not confinement to hell on earth? There was something else at work, something Greta had not yet worked out, keeping Mildred and Libertas apart from the other resistance women.
Alexanderplatz was not comfortable by any means, but from the ominous details Greta had gathered, it was humane compared to the Hausgefängnis. Originally built as a men’s military prison, it had been converted when the Reich’s mass arrests had created serious overcrowding problems at other facilities. The women had the entire fifth floor to themselves, and they were treated less harshly than the men confined to the lower levels. They were allowed to receive letters and packages of food and other necessities. They were permitted small gatherings and were allowed to sing and converse. The prisoners often stayed up late into the night talking, fending off loneliness and despair with quiet companionship. Those fortunate enough to receive sewing kits or knitting baskets from friends on the outside were allowed to occupy themselves with knitting warm scarves or darning socks, both for themselves and other prisoners, even for men they knew held elsewhere in the compound.
Throughout that grim autumn of pursuits and arrests, Greta met many of her comrades for the first time. For security, most members of the resistance had known only the five or six people within their immediate circle, although those like Greta who participated in overlapping circles knew more. It was disconcerting to pass acquaintances in the prison halls and discover that they had unknowingly been members of the same resistance network all along.
As the long, lonely, agonizing weeks passed, Greta became particularly close to Elizabeth Schumacher, whom she had known fairly well for years, and Marta Wolser Husemann, a young Communist actress whom she had only just met. They often talked late into the night, wondering aloud about their husbands and families, and discussing their impending trials, which they assumed were imminent although they had been told almost nothing. They reminisced about life before the Reich, which appeared to them in the warm, rosy glow of the unattainable past, a time they had not realized while they were living it would prove to be the best of their lives. They sustained one another’s hopes even when hope was futile. Together they dared to imagine a future when they would be able to reunite with their loved ones far from the cold, forbiddin
g walls of the prison.
Perhaps that would never come to pass, but if wishful thinking got them through the days, Greta would willingly surrender herself to it.
As the days grew shorter and the nights colder, the fifth floor of the prison became increasingly uncomfortable. Greta, Elizabeth, and Sophie Sieg were called out for interrogations more frequently than the others, but when they compared notes afterward, they could discern no pattern to the investigation other than the Gestapo was convinced of their guilt, and that Hitler seemed furious that so many members of their resistance group belonged to the political and intellectual elite. Treachery from Jews and Communists he could understand and expect, but betrayal by people like the Harnacks and Schulze-Boysens, who stood to benefit significantly from the triumph of the Reich, utterly infuriated him. That was a personal affront, unfathomable, unforgivable.
One afternoon in late November, Greta was brought in for yet more questioning. She calmly and plainly responded to the same questions she had heard hundreds of times before, careful to keep her facts straight, to tell the same stories precisely as she had throughout the previous two months. But this time, the Gestapo officer regarded her with a new avidity, nodding smugly after each response.
“You should be more forthcoming, Frau Kuckhoff,” he admonished her.
“I’ve told you everything I know,” she replied, careful to show the proper deference.
“Not everything.” His voice rang with triumph. “Your husband, Harro Schulze-Boysen, and Arvid Harnack have already confessed to collusion with agents of the Soviet Union, so those simple, condemning facts are no longer in dispute. You are aware that military espionage is classified as high treason?”
Stricken, Greta nodded.
“And you understand that the penalty for high treason is death?”
She tried to speak but could not. She nodded again.
“That much is settled,” the officer said. “Your husband will be tried, he will be found guilty, and he will die. The only question is whether you will die with him.”
Chapter Fifty-nine
December 1942–January 1943
Mildred
In early December, Mildred was informed that she was being transferred to the women’s prison at Kantstrasse 79 in Charlottenburg. Desperate for one last glimpse of Arvid, she looked frantically down corridors and through open doorways as the guards escorted her from the Hausgefängnis upstairs to the exit, but although she saw Adam from a distance, Arvid was nowhere to be found. Fighting back despair, blinking from the sudden brightness as she was led outside, she turned her face to the winter sky and inhaled deeply, shivering in her coarse prison garb, drawing in as much of the thin sunshine and fresh air as she could before the guards opened the back of a green police van and thrust her inside.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she made out a small blond woman sitting on one of the benches, her shoulders slumped in profound dejection, her hair tousled and matted, her head buried in her hands. “Libertas?” Mildred asked hesitantly.
The woman immediately straightened. “Mildred?” she exclaimed. “Oh my God, Mildred! You’re alive!”
As the van started up, they embraced unsteadily, tumbling down upon the bench and clinging to each other as if they were drowning. Tearfully Libertas asked Mildred if she had seen Harro; Mildred shook her head and asked if Libertas had seen Arvid. She had, but only once, in mid-October, walking in the exercise yard, thinner but unbowed.
Quickly, talking over each other in their urgency, they shared their news. Mildred described how she and Arvid had been apprehended in Preila, and Libertas confirmed what Mildred had already guessed, that when Harro had disappeared from his office in late August, the courier mission had been a ruse to conceal his arrest. That same day, the mail carrier in the Schulze-Boysens’ apartment building had warned Libertas that the Gestapo had been monitoring their letters. Terrified, fearing the worst for her husband, Libertas had frantically destroyed evidence at her home and in her Kulturfilm office. She had hastily packed a suitcase and had spent the next few days first with one friend, and then another, afraid to return home. Finally, convinced that the Gestapo was watching her at every moment, she had boarded a southbound train for the Black Forest where Harro’s brother had a vacation home. She had intended to catch her breath and plan her escape to France or Switzerland, but the SS had captured her on the train.
Both women gasped as the van came to a sudden halt.
“I didn’t mean to betray anyone,” Libertas said desperately, clutching Mildred’s arm. “I was trying to help. She pretended to be my friend. I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know—”
“Who?” Mildred asked, bewildered. “What didn’t you know?”
The door swung open and guards reached in to haul them out. Instinctively the women clung to each other, but the guards wrestled them out of the van and onto the pavement, where they were quickly separated. Mildred was led away first, stumbling through the prisoners’ entrance while Libertas wept and shrieked her name, her voice abruptly silenced when the door slammed between them.
Mildred was taken to a cell, larger than the one in the Hausgefängnis, cleaner, above ground, but although it was fitted with two folding beds, she was alone. Later that afternoon, she was interviewed by the matron, given instructions, and warned about the penalties for disruptive behavior.
In the days that followed, Mildred learned that Oberin Anne Weider was strict, but not sadistic. Nor was she a Nazi, but a former Social Democrat and social worker who had been forced to accept the position by the Reich Ministry of Justice. She granted Mildred permission to write to her mother-in-law, and when Mutti Clara and Falk replied with a package containing letters, food, and vitamins, Mildred was allowed to keep them.
In mid-December, Oberin Weider summoned her to her office and gravely informed her that the trail of the Rote Kapelle would begin in two days.
“Rote Kapelle?” Mildred echoed, bewildered.
“Your resistance cell. That is what you are called, the Red Orchestra.” Before Mildred could inquire about the origin of the name, the matron said that the case had been assigned to the Reich Court-Martial, the highest court of the Wehrmacht judicial system.
“Court-martial?” Mildred shook her head, confused. “I have never been in the military.”
“But other defendants you will be tried with are,” Oberin Weider replied. “Harro Schulze-Boysen. Horst Heilmann. Herbert Gollnow.”
Dismayed, Mildred nodded, certain this could not bode well for her case.
Early on the morning of Tuesday, December 15, she was taken from her cell and loaded into the back of a police van. Minutes later, Libertas was helped inside with surprising deference; she cried out at the sight of Mildred and flung herself into her arms. Soon thereafter another woman joined them: Erika von Brockdorff, who had assisted Hans Coppi with his radio operations.
“Have either of you met with a lawyer?” Erika asked as the van started up.
Mildred and Libertas shook their heads. “I don’t know if I even have a lawyer,” said Mildred.
“Oh, we’ll have lawyers, all right,” replied Erika. “Principled men who like to tilt at windmills. They won’t be allowed to read our complete files or tell us what charges we’re facing, but they’ll do the best they can.”
The van jolted along for a few minutes, but there were no windows, so Mildred had no idea where they were until the van halted, the door opened, and Elizabeth Schumacher was thrust inside. She was being held at the Alexanderplatz prison with Greta, Sophie Sieg, and several others Mildred knew, she told them after they embraced one another. “Has anyone seen Hilde Coppi?” she asked.
“I saw her at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8, but that was in late September,” said Mildred, clutching her seat as the van lurched into gear.
“She’s at Charlottenburg, or at least she was,” said Libertas, raising her voice to be heard over the rumble of the engine. “She gave birth to a son in late November.”
“How is she? How is the child?” Elizabeth asked, but Libertas did not know.
Soon the van stopped again, and this time eight men were roughly shoved into the back of the van—among them Harro, Hans Coppi, Kurt Schumacher, and Arvid, gaunt and pale, his eyes shadowed, his expression calm but haggard.
“Arvid,” Mildred cried. “I’m here!”
Their eyes met, and as the doors slammed shut and the van started up, he made his way to her side and they fell into each other’s arms, their hearts full of joy and remorse. To see Arvid again after so long a separation was wonderful, but to be reunited here, on their way to an uncertain fate—Mildred could barely endure it.
They spoke quickly, in hushed voices, not knowing how soon they would be parted again. They professed their love and bravely assured each other that they were fine despite all appearances to the contrary.
“My sister Inge persuaded Dr. Schwarz to represent us,” Arvid said, clasping her hands in his. “Falk has met with him, and he has a strategy. You must let me take the blame for everything.”
“Arvid, no.”
“Yes, Liebling.” He lifted one of her hands and laid it against his cheek. “It’s the only way one of us might survive. Do this for me.”
She murmured protests, but he only smiled, wistful and loving, and when the van halted moments later, he pressed a folded sheet of paper into her hands and urged her to conceal it. Quickly she tucked it down the front of her dress, hoping she would not be searched.
Mildred, Arvid, and the other prisoners exited the truck in a cobblestone courtyard and were escorted under armed guard into the Reichskriegsgericht building, a four-story courthouse spanning the entire length of the block. Outside the courtroom, Mildred glimpsed a sign in passing: “Secret Trial: Public Not Permitted.” Heart pounding, she stayed close to Arvid as they passed through the entrance between two soldiers standing at attention with fixed bayonets. Inside, more soldiers stood guard at the windows and doors, motionless but menacing. The spectators’ gallery was empty, as was the jury box. Mildred’s attention was drawn to a U-shaped table with seven tall chairs on a dais on the far side of the room. The two seats on either end were occupied, one by a stenographer, the other by a handsome dark-haired man in the uniform of a Luftwaffe colonel. Preternaturally calm as he arranged papers on the table before him, he glanced up and smiled faintly when the defendants entered.
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