by Anna Patrick
The speech began, in a thoughtful tone, as Hitler remembered his days as a soldier fighting for Germany. He involved the audience as he spoke of the sacrifices they had made, men, women and children, for Germany; how shocked he had been by the country’s capitulation in 1918 and the realisation, his voice now rising to fever pitch, that their civilian leaders had stabbed them all in the back. Hitler interweaved economic, social and political conditions in Germany with the conspiracy of Marxists and Jews and he swept from the Treaty of Versailles to the present day. A spellbinding performance, it trapped Bauer in a storm of emotions until he lost all measure of time and place.
When the meeting ended, he made his way to a local hostelry and sat drinking, still in a state of shock. A filling meal of noodles and ham and he was ready for his bed.
The next day, a haversack on his back, he took the early bus to Wallgau and set off for Krottenkopf. In the coolness of the morning air he walked with a steady pace and soon warmed up. As always in the mountains, he sensed his mind clearing; yet something still nagged at the edges of his brain. He didn’t try to analyse it; walking often produced unexpected thoughts or solutions to problems that had been troubling him. Perhaps a new avenue of enquiry would suggest itself to him or a decision would become so obvious he would wonder why he had ever delayed making it.
He passed the occasional hiker and exchanged friendly greetings, but soon he reached the higher slopes and found himself alone. Resting for a moment he watched two buzzards soaring in the distance, catching the thermals until they became almost invisible. He had always experienced spiritual joy in the mountains; they were his cathedrals and left him calm and authenticated.
This time it was different and he couldn’t understand why. He took a path leading round the side of the mountain and his feet picked up a marching rhythm until the thud of his boots and the sound of the Nazi victory salute “Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil” rang in his ears. He slowed to a hesitant walk remembering the tumultuous ending of yesterday’s meeting and the effect it had on him. Slowly it dawned on him that what he felt right now was cheated: in an atmosphere of evangelical fervour, he had been offered salvation through faith in Hitler, only to wake up to find the world unchanged and its men and women, so to speak, merely sinners.
The tirade he witnessed had been nothing more than hypnotic propaganda; the reactions of the audience nothing more than mass hysteria.
How on earth did he fall for that? He had been ready to pledge allegiance to the Party then and there. Only the Kripo’s rule of political neutrality and the thought of a thirst quenching beer propelled him out the door. How had Hitler done it?
Bauer had nodded in agreement with him several times: on the sacrifices ordinary people had made during and after the war; on the bravery of German soldiers; on the humiliation meted out by the Treaty of Versailles; on the lack of political direction; on the need for a better deal for war veterans; on the terrible waste of unemployment. Perhaps that was it: Hitler took a small truth that bound the audience to him and then expanded on it until he had something so wide ranging and impossible to disprove that everyone accepted it willingly? After all, what did even reasonably well-educated people understand about Jewish conspirators and the links of international finance to Bolshevism?
After his beer hall experience he remained wary of Hitler and bemused to learn of his arrest for treason following a failed coup. That would be the last they heard of him. How wrong he had been. And here he loomed responsible, indirectly, for their first marital discord.
‘Oh Henni, I’m sorry.’
Bauer glanced at his wife, but her eyes remained closed and a purring sound filled the car. Hours passed until he turned into a roadside restaurant and filling station. Henni stirred in her seat.
‘Are we home already?’
‘No, my love, we’ll be on the road for hours yet, but this is a good place for lunch.’
‘Oh, that is a good idea and I can go to the toilet which I suddenly need very badly.’
Although she seemed to have forgotten about their row Bauer wanted to clear the air properly.
After they ordered their meal, he took hold of her hands and apologised.
‘I’m sorry we argued, Henni, and sorry for my brusque tone.’
‘Thank you, Heinz, and I am sorry too.’
‘Shall we agree on something once and for all time?’
‘That depends on what it is’ she replied, leaning towards him, a smile playing on her lips.
‘Can we please make our home a place where we never discuss politics or religion or anything else that is likely to cause arguments between us?’
‘Oh yes, let’s do that.’ She squeezed his hands.
‘It might mean we have to ban Albrecht from our apartment.’
He grinned, back on the same wavelength as his wife.
‘I would never ban someone who means so much to you.’
A lunch of ham and eggs consolidated their good humour, and they set off for home chatting about baby names and colour schemes for the nursery and all the usual preoccupations of parents-to-be.
Bauer dismissed Hitler as a charismatic politician who, with rather more ranting and raving than normal, would get on with running the country and leave people like him to get on with their lives. He was at a loss to describe when or how, but suddenly, and with exponential speed, everything became political: the Party encroached on every single area of their lives; it issued rules and regulations with monotonous regularity; every day startled them with rumours and whispers, denunciations and disappearances, marches and declamations. They feared their neighbours and said nothing and did nothing the Party might interpret as a lack of enthusiasm for Hitler and his glorious Third Reich.
One evening, not long after their return to Berlin, Henni asked her husband to accompany her on an evening walk.
‘No need to comment. Albrecht has joined the SS.’
They tried to walk out most evenings, at first on their own, and later with a pram. They didn’t always have anything important to say but when they did the simple sentences took on the flavour of a secret code between them, initially prefaced with a ‘No need to comment’ and then simply spoken with just the squeeze of a hand registering the import of what they said and what they left unsaid.
In this way Heinz told her about joining the Party and later his transfer to the Gestapo. Henni kept him abreast of Albrecht’s career and told him local news such as when neighbours disappeared in the night. From time to time, they talked more freely as they visited parks away from nosy neighbours and listening devices but the feeling of being watched never left them.
Once back inside their apartment, they always talked of innocent things: schooldays and holidays, families and friends. They listened to music on their gramophone and they played card games. When the children arrived, they had a new focus in their lives and delighted in watching them grow up.
Thanks to his Party membership and transfer to the Gestapo, they moved to a much larger apartment in a tree-lined street in a better part of the city. On one of their last walks together before the move, Heinz warned his wife that colleagues had probably bugged the apartment, and they needed to be just as careful as ever. She nodded sadly in response.
Then, in 1943, when they had been married for ten years and little Tomas was four years old, Henni announced she was expecting once more.
The pregnancy did not progress well. Henni complained of exhaustion almost from the start and grew uneasy about staying in Berlin. Heinz welcomed her decision to take the children and stay with her parents.
His daughter Lisle came into the world on the 15th February 1944 and lived for less than 24 hours. Henni’s despair frightened him. Released from hospital she returned to her parents’ farm to convalesce and refused point blank to return to Berlin.
‘And so here we are, Henni, here we are.’
The kno
ck at the door sounded like the lightest tap.
‘Come in.’
‘I’m sorry, Sir, I thought you had somebody with you.’
‘No, no, just talking to myself again. People tell me I’m a great listener.’
Brigitta flushed and handed him some files.
‘Criminal Director Fuchs would like you to go through these cases and he’s booked you an appointment to see him at 4pm.’
‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure, Sir.’
14
Dear Diary,
I am so thrilled I found you! As soon as I spied you, tucked in among my childhood treasures, I knew you were the answer. I’ve been going mad without someone to talk to. Now I’ll be able to unburden myself to you.
I don’t dare talk to Mama and Papa or ask them what their views are. There’s a Nazi flag at the entrance to the farm but nothing inside the house except for a photo of Albrecht in his SS uniform. I’m guessing what that means, but it doesn’t do to make assumptions. Heinz taught me that.
The atmosphere is different here. I can breathe and I’ve noticed a change in Monika too. Away from school she’s not as obsessed with Hitler. Oh, how I wish I could keep her here forever.
So what are my views? They’ve changed for certain. With Mama and Papa looking after the children and insisting I do as little as possible, I’ve had plenty of time to examine my life. When I recall the early years of our marriage, it was like I was living two lives. One of them belonged to Heinz and my family. The other belonged to Hitler and the Party. Does that make any kind of sense?
I think perhaps if we hadn’t made a pledge to each other never to talk politics, if we’d always talked freely at home, I would have come to my senses a lot sooner, but then I knew exactly why we didn’t talk. It wasn’t just our promise to each other; it was the way you could never be sure who was listening, even inside your own home.
I wonder if things would have been different if we had been able to stay on the farm. I was happy to be with Heinz so I didn’t mind moving to Berlin but now I think maybe I missed the open countryside and the freedom of the mountains more than I realised at the time. I know one thing for certain – I didn’t like the way we had to conform, all of us, all of the time.
At the flat in Kurze Strasse, there was a block warden who got up my nose. A stupid, petty, vindictive little man, keen to flaunt his authority. Have you put out the flags Frau Bauer? Have you done this Frau Bauer? Have you done that? This is the new regulation for this. This is the new regulation for that. It drove me mad.
When we moved to Schulstrasse life improved, but by then news had spread about Heinz being in the Gestapo, so nobody dared to be unpleasant. Although I can’t pretend I didn’t enjoy the protection, it also alienated me from the others in the block.
As long as I stayed at home I felt quite happy. It was a different matter when I had to go out shopping. It worried me when I used to come across the brownshirts patrolling the streets. They were always polite to me, I can’t say they weren’t, but there was something menacing about them like a field full of bullocks. You were never quite sure what they were going to do with all that energy.
One day a group of them beat a man up in front of me. One came over and said: ‘Let me help you with your shopping.’
‘But what are you doing?’
‘Keeping Germany clean and safe for you and your children.’
I did wonder then if Albrecht was keeping Germany clean and safe in the same way. When I told Heinz that night, he went very quiet and then reassured me that I was quite safe.
‘But who were they beating like that?’
‘A Jew or maybe a communist. Both seem to be priority targets.’
I remember thinking he must have done something terrible.
When we moved to the larger flat, I still kept in touch with Frau Rose who had been so nice and welcoming when I first moved to Berlin. By then I had little Monika who was born on Tuesday, 8th February 1934.
You should have seen Heinz’s face when he held our little girl for the first time. I thought he would burst with pride and joy and it made me cry with love, love for him and Monika. I could not have been happier.
And she was such a good little girl. She hardly ever cried and before long she was smiling and laughing and bringing us joy every single day. She was a bright little girl too, picked up on things so quickly. She was reading at three which was amazing and I didn’t push her into it at all. I just used to read to her and she would sit on my lap and before we knew it she was pointing to words and saying them.
***
Dear Diary,
One day, not long after the storm troopers incident, Heinz brought home a poster of a horrid-looking person. Hairy like an ape, a huge pock marked nose, tiny pig-like eyes with an evil expression in them. A grotesque image which made me shiver.
Heinz said: ‘This is what a Jew looks like. If you come across one like this, you must inform me straightaway. Have you?’
He often asked me and I didn’t understand why. But even when I walked past Jewish shops and customers, I never met a Jew like the one on the poster. And slowly, slowly, I realised what he had been trying to tell me. Jews don’t look like that or like the other horrible posters you used to get around the city. And if they don’t look like that why believe anything else they say about them?
When Hitler told us about Jewish conspiracies, I believed him. I couldn’t explain it to you but I didn’t feel I needed to. It was enough that I trusted him to know how it worked and what he needed to do about it. Now I’m not so sure.
I continued to visit Frau Rose but one day, much later, I knocked on the door and another woman said she lived there now. Frau Weber told me she was Jewish, so the Party ordered her to leave and a local official and his family took her home. What a sour face she had when she told me, saying she wanted the building disinfected to get rid of any traces of vermin. That was the word she used, vermin. Like the rats on Papa’s farm.
Sometimes I wish Heinz had been a farmer, a son of the soil bringing home the harvest for the good of his family and all of Germany. I know he’s not as happy in the Gestapo as he used to be in the Kripo but that’s not surprising when you see how people react to him. They’re either scared witless or keen to give him information about somebody they know or more likely don’t like.
I’m not really sure what it is he does in the Gestapo. He told me their work was to protect the state against its enemies, but he wasn’t allowed to talk about it in any detail. I asked him once why he had transferred across. He told me he had been invited to join and that he didn’t feel it was wise to refuse. It was the same when he joined the Party. Then, no sooner had he joined both, we were being offered a much larger apartment in a very nice, respectable street. So I think he made the right decision.
On Sunday, 2nd August 1936, my labour pains started a month early. Little Carola seemed in such a hurry to come into the world and so disappointed once she got here. She was a tiny little mite, and all she seemed capable of doing was crying.
Heinz and I worried. The doctor said we needn’t, that some babies cry a lot, and that she would be fine, but a mother knows and I said to him ‘But she’s too busy crying to eat’ and he said ‘Oh babies don’t starve themselves.’ Well, she seemed to be the exception. After one awful night, when I paced up and down with her, something compelled me to visit Frau Rose.
She hugged me and sat me down. After my tale of woe, she asked if I would be prepared to see a Jewish paediatrician. I said I would be prepared to see the Devil himself if it would help Carola. She laughed and said some people say they are one and the same. Perhaps that’s when I should have guessed, but I didn’t.
Dr Kessler let me have an emergency appointment that same afternoon and he performed a miracle. He asked me various questions about the labour and told me about being a chiropracter. He h
eld Carola in front of him, head in one hand and the rest of her body in the other. She was still crying when he sort of twisted her head and pulled on her body and the screaming stopped.
Well, my mouth fell open. He explained the manipulation had sorted out the problems caused at birth and would no longer trouble her. In fact, she slept in the pram all the way home and didn’t stir when I put her in her cot. I didn’t wake her for her evening feed and she slept right through until dawn when she had a good feed and fell asleep again.
To this day, I don’t understand why I turned to Frau Rose, but I have never regretted doing so and Dr Kessler was right – Carola had no problems after that. In fact, she thrived.
I hope that Frau Rose and Dr Kessler are both safe and somewhere nice even if they are Jewish. They saved my baby’s life and I will not deny it or pretend otherwise.
***
Dear Diary,
The years flew past with two little ones. Carola grew into a placid child but took her time talking, and she didn’t pick up reading quickly either, but she was happy and healthy. How we used to love spending time with the girls, playing games, taking them to the local park. Life seemed idyllic, and I continued to ignore the world around us.
Then, on Sunday, the 18 September 1938, I gave birth to Tomas. Oh God, what a long birth. If Carola arrived in too much of a hurry, Tomas had all the time in the world. He would not rush for anybody. I was exhausted by the end, but so delighted to have given Heinz a son, even though he always said it didn’t matter.
Boys are so different. He was much bigger at birth than the girls and he didn’t talk until past his fourth birthday and never showed the slightest interest in reading a book. Instead, he raced round the flat on his bottom and poked his nose into everything.