All God's Children

by Anna Schmidt

  “Yes, but there’s no time for you to change. You must go now before—”

  “Beth, my uniform is a way for me to move through the city without being stopped and questioned. If you want me to find them, then…”

  “Yes, of course you’re right.”

  To his surprise she touched his cheek with her fingers. “Hurry, please. They must be terrified and so very cold. She did not take the clothes I left for her, although she did leave those horrid stars behind. I burned them in the kitchen stove.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, but he knew that she would not let them fall. To do so would show fear and weakness, and she would permit neither. “Just let me get changed,” he said as he hurried up to the attic.

  He didn’t bother with more than his military jacket, cap, and boots. They would do, and time was of the essence. No telling where Anja had decided to run.

  Sure enough, he was barely outside the front entrance when he was confronted by a trio of soldiers coming out of the bakery. They started toward him.

  “Doktor,” he announced, pointing to his medical insignia.

  The ploy worked. The soldiers stepped aside without further question as he hurried past them and on down the boulevard. Along the way he scanned his surroundings for possible signs of the woman and her children. Where would she go with two small children? Where could she hide now that it was daylight? At least the boy had eaten something. But the truth was they could be anywhere. Munich was a large city, and he could hardly cover every street.

  “Anja,” he whispered whenever he spotted a potential hiding place. It was foolhardy to call for her even in a whisper, but perhaps she would be so startled to hear her given name that she would reveal herself.

  The snow had started up again. She might be easier to track in fresh snow—her own small footprints and next to them the boy’s.

  He thought about the stories he’d heard from Willi Graf and his friends after they returned from the Russian front. On their way there, they had been in Warsaw for a brief layover. Willi had told him of German soldiers beating Jewish men working outside the ghetto, of the malnutrition they had seen among the few Jewish Poles allowed outside the walls. And he spoke of news from others who had seen the mass executions, who knew of thousands lined up and murdered, discarded in open graves.

  As the war had progressed, few Germans could doubt the fate of those people that the authorities found objectionable—political adversaries, the mentally ill, Poles, and Jews, the most hated of all. Josef could no longer pretend that he—and anyone who really considered the situation—didn’t know the fate that awaited Anja and her children. If caught she would be either killed on the spot or taken to one of the network of concentration camps that had been established across Eastern Europe. Rumors claimed that several of those camps were meant for more than incarceration. Some of them had been specifically designed to be facilities for extermination—death camps.

  Josef quickened his pace to a run, desperate to find the woman. Not just to save her but to show her—and her children—that not all Germans agreed with the tactics of the current government. “We are not all monsters,” he had told Beth the night before. But he had to wonder if Anja would ever believe that.

  He paused to allow a convoy of military trucks pass. Each truck was loaded with people—people whose pleas for mercy and protests of innocence lingered in the air like exhaust fumes once the trucks had passed. If Anja had been picked up—if she and the children were now on one of those trucks—he could do little for them. But he ran toward the train station anyway. He had no doubt that this was where the trucks were headed, and if Anja was on one of them…

  These days the cattle cars were loaded in plain view of anyone who cared to watch. Josef had noticed that most people either turned away, busying themselves with something else so as not to see, or they stood by and watched. To his shame and utter disbelief he had even heard that some people taunted the prisoners and applauded their captors.

  It was still fairly early, and the station was not yet as busy as it would be later in the day. By the time Josef arrived, the trucks had come to a halt, and all the passengers were being ordered to proceed to the freight train that sat waiting on the track closest to the platform, its engine huffing and wheezing.

  “Schnell!”

  Up and down the long platform, the order was repeated again and again. Sometimes it came with a blow of a rifle butt or the snapping and growling of a barely restrained dog.

  Josef walked quickly along the length of the train, peering into cars that had already started to fill, and then moving on even as behind him he heard the slam of the sliding doors and the wails of the people inside.

  And then he saw her.

  CHAPTER 6

  Anj a was lifting her son into the waiting arms of a man already on one of the cattle cars. The man was clutching the baby close to his chest. He held out his hand to Anja as she tried to avoid the crush of others who were determined to get aboard ahead of her. Common sense would dictate the importance of finding space close to the door in order to have fresh air. If you had to go—and no one here had a choice—you might as well fight for the best position. Even freezing fresh air was preferable to what the stench inside that crowded car would be within a few hours.

  “Halt!” Josef shouted. The guard charged with loading the car Anja had just climbed into looked up. “That woman,” he shouted. “Stop her.”

  Roughly the guard grabbed Anja’s arm and pulled her back from the car. She fought him because the rest of her family was already aboard. The guard struck her hard across her face with the back of his hand, and she crumpled to the ground.

  “The boy and the man,” Josef said as he reached the guard and forced himself not to even glance at Anja. “Alle! This family is not to go until they are questioned by order of the Gestapo,” he added, having learned the magic of those words. “Get them out of there. Now.” He saw the boy huddled next to the door, his eyes riveted on his mother, who remained lying on the ground.

  “You there,” he ordered. The boy recognized him but showed no relief at Josef’s presence. His eyes were wide with pure terror. “Come down from there at once. And you,” he added, pointing to the father, who was trying to calm the wailing baby.

  Josef grimaced as the guard roughly grabbed the boy’s thin arm and swung him to the ground next to Anja as if he were no more than a sack of potatoes. “Stand back,” Josef ordered and was relieved to see the guard obey. “Get up,” he ordered Anja. “Schnell.” He made a motion as if to strike her, and she scrambled unsteadily to her feet. The boy immediately clutched at her coat as the man climbed down from the cattle car and stood helplessly by.

  “Kommen Sie! ” Josef barked out the command. Fortunately the chaotic scene around them—dogs barking, children wailing, people begging for mercy, and guards shouting out orders—gave Josef the cover he needed to get Anja and her family safely away, but when Anja and her husband hesitated to follow his order, the guard raised his rifle.

  “Nein!” Josef shouted as he stepped between the guard and them.

  Anja started to cough, and Josef wondered if her hacking was the result of being too long in the cold or a ploy to help him rescue them. But when she looked up at him, he saw only fear in her eyes. She did not trust him even though he had moved to protect her from the soldier’s bullet. She thought of him as no different from the others. Her cough was real.

  “Gehen Sie, los,” he ordered and pointed toward the other end of the train—the long line of cattle cars with doors slamming shut like the prison cells that they were.

  With her shoulders hunched as if to ward off any further blows, Anja took her son’s hand as her husband sheltered his daughter with his arms and upper body. She gave Josef a sideways glance as they started to trudge back down the platform toward the station. Everything in their posture told Josef that at any moment they expected to be shot or perhaps simply thrown with their children beneath the train that was now moving slowly
away.

  He locked his hands behind his back in the manner that he had seen his father do on numerous occasions and moved closer so that he was not quite walking with her but was near enough for her to hear him. “Just keep walking,” he said quietly. “If anyone approaches, say nothing. Let me handle it.”

  Anja’s head bobbed once, and she glanced at her husband and nodded again. Josef hoped that was her sign that she had heard him and wasn’t about to do something foolish. He wouldn’t be able to stop the guards along the platform from shooting the entire family if they tried to run. “Do not try to escape,” he added loudly for the benefit of the guard and also as a special warning to the husband, who refused to look at him.

  Anja placed her free hand in her husband’s and held onto him. The train moved past them, the cries of its cargo echoing down the track as it gathered speed.

  Then there was silence. The soldiers hurried back to their trucks and left, taking their dogs with them. Momentarily the platform was deserted.

  They walked past two soldiers armed with rifles who apparently were assigned to patrol the area. Farther on, two burly men waiting at the entrance to the station were watching them. The men wore the garb common to the Gestapo, their hands jammed into the pockets of their trench coats. Their felt fedoras pulled low over their foreheads. Their shoulders hunched against the bitter wind.

  “Mama, you have blood,” the boy said, pointing up at Anja.

  Sure enough, as they neared the station entrance Josef saw that Anja was bleeding around her mouth where the guard had struck her. “Cough,” he hissed. “Cough into this like you are sick.” He thrust a handkerchief into her hand.

  Anja followed his orders to the letter, going so far as to double over and gasp for air between hacking coughs.

  “Doktor?” One of the secret agents stepped forward and looked at the insignia on Josef’s uniform.

  “I have orders to take this woman and the rest of the family. I need to examine them, and unless there is a need to quarantine them owing to the woman’s coughing up blood, they are to be questioned—a matter involving her husband.” He jerked his head in the man’s direction.

  The mention of quarantine had the desired effect of making the agent step back, opening the way for Josef to hustle the family into the station. “Keep your mouth covered, I told you,” he ordered harshly as Anja started to cough again. The blood stains on the white cloth were obvious, but the agents had followed them inside and were now conferring. It was clear that one of them had his doubts.

  “Stay back,” Josef barked at the stationmaster and waiting passengers. They were attracting far too much attention, but he didn’t know how else to get away from the agents. He shoved Anja and her husband, who still carried their daughter, through the door that led to the street, then roughly pushed the boy after them and closed the door behind him.

  To his relief a streetcar headed in the direction that led to the hospital was just pulling to a stop across the street. “Hurry,” he urged the family. “If they come after us, we will get off at the hospital. You’ll be safe there.”

  It was a lie intended to get them moving when upon seeing the agents following them from the station, the husband froze.

  Anja herded her son onto the car, soothing him as he finally gave into the stress of the last several minutes and began to shake with fear. Josef shoved the father, and the man handed Anja the baby as he found a seat and wrapped his arms around his son. Josef stood in the aisle, blocking them from the view of other passengers and hoping the agents would take his position as one of authority over them. His mind raced as he tried to come up with his next move. This was insanity. Why was he risking everything for these strangers?

  Anja continued to cough, and Josef knew that she was no longer faking to fool those around her. A few of the passengers sitting nearby began to edge away from them and kept their eyes averted. One man cast a furtive and worried look toward Anja and murmured to Josef, “She sounds sick.”

  Josef ignored him. They were nearing the next stop, so Josef leaned over and touched Anja’s arm. “We’ll get off here,” he said. They were just across the street from the hospital.

  Once the streetcar had continued on its way, Josef checked to be sure no one was paying any attention to them. As usual people were going in and out of the hospital, but no one seemed especially interested in them.

  “I have rounds,” Josef explained. “Can you find your way back to the apartment?”

  Anja nodded.

  “I will get you some medicine for the cough, but—”

  “We understand,” Anja’s husband said. “Thank you for your kindness to my family.”

  Josef shook hands with the man, then turned his attention back to Anja. “Beth is waiting for you. Walk three blocks in that direction, and you’ll come to the alley that leads to the rear courtyard. Wait there until you see that it’s safe to go inside.”

  Josef could only hope that Beth would be watching for any sign of him, knowing that he would come back through the building’s rear entrance. If the family could make it to the professor’s apartment, they would be safe—at least for now.

  Beth looked up from the silent prayer she’d engaged in from the moment Josef left to find Anja and the children. Oh, how she wished there was someone else praying with her. Even one person would help. This was not the way she had been raised. Quakers placed enormous importance on taking the time necessary to come to a consensus. But no one had ever prepared her for something like this—when there was simply no time for gathering and contemplating and waiting.

  A sound from the corridor startled her. Was that a knock or simply her imagination? She edged toward the door.

  There it was again. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  “Who’s there?”

  Her answer was a baby’s full-throated cry, and she flung the door open and stepped back as Anja stumbled into the foyer with Daniel, the baby, and a man dressed in tattered clothing. Blood covered Anja’s face around her mouth and chin. “This is my husband, Benjamin,” she managed.

  “The doctor?” Beth asked, peering out the half-open door.

  Anja shook her head, and Beth’s heart actually skipped a beat. “Arrested?” she asked, even as she could not bring herself to ask the question uppermost in her mind—the question of whether or not Josef was dead.

  “No. No,” Anja assured her. “He is well. He is—” A harsh cough drowned out the rest.

  “He is at hospital,” Benjamin explained.

  “Come,” Beth said as she ushered the family into the kitchen. She helped Daniel out of his coat and lifted him onto a bench so that she could remove his shoes and socks. “A glass of warm milk would be good, no?” she asked, and he nodded. “And then you can all spend the day here, all right?”

  The boy glanced at his parents, both of whom seemed to have lost the energy to protest anything that Beth might propose.

  “There’s water in the kettle,” Beth told Benjamin as she lifted Anja’s daughter from her mother’s arms and carried her up the stairs. Daniel followed her.

  “Mama?” He paused on the stairway.

  “Coming,” she replied, her voice as weak as her smile. Benjamin turned on the gas under the kettle and then sat on the edge of the kitchen chair that Beth had been sitting in, his large hands dangling between his knees. “Go on,” he murmured to his wife.

  When they reached the attic and the children collapsed onto Josef’s narrow bed, Beth realized that dried blood wasn’t the only thing marring Anja’s beautiful face. Tears ran down her cheeks, and when she looked at Beth it was a portrait of failure such as Beth had never seen before.

  “We can do this,” Beth assured her as she wet a cloth in the basin of water she’d brought to them the night before. “For today we can do this, and then tomorrow…” She had no idea how to finish that sentence.

  Anja drew in a deep shuddering breath as she wiped away her tears with the backs of her hands and bent to help Daniel get undressed. “Tomorr
ow,” she said firmly, “we will begin again.”

  At the end of his shift, Josef practically ran all the way back to the apartment from the hospital. There was no sound coming from inside, but still he knocked at the front door. After several long minutes and a second knock, he heard someone coming.

  No light went on, but he saw the shadow of a woman.

  “Beth?” He heard the latch turn, and she opened the door a crack. “Are they here?”

  “Ja.”

  “We can get them out now that it is dark.”

  “They are sleeping. They are exhausted, Josef.”

  It was the first time she had used his given name without her uncle—or him—reminding her to do so. He permitted himself only a moment to savor the breakthrough, and then he pressed closer to the door. “Beth, they cannot stay here.”

  “I know, but tomorrow will be soon enough. They will be safe until then.”

  “And what will you do tomorrow?”

  “I will think of something. Good night.” She closed the door and clicked the latch.

  Josef stood in the dim corridor, staring at the closed door. He recalled how during his years in Boston he had been constantly taken aback at the certainty with which Americans approached life. They simply assumed that somehow they would find answers to whatever challenge they faced. Beth’s comment that she would come up with a plan showed that she had no idea of the lengths the authorities would go to in hunting for Anja and her family once they realized they were not on that train. He had no doubt that the guards knew precisely how many prisoners had boarded the train, and at the end of their journey, each one of them would be counted. Of more immediate concern was that he had no way of knowing if the guard or the agents in the station had reported Josef’s actions to their superiors.

  He raised his hand, prepared to knock again and try and reason with Beth. But knowing she was unlikely to change her mind and too tired to argue, Josef trudged down the stairs to the street and waited for the last streetcar to come. He had taken a terrible risk in rescuing Anja and her family. What if someone had recognized him? What if his father had been at the station? He could have been. These days it was not unusual for high-ranking Gestapo agents to take a personal interest in the kind of round-up that had occurred earlier that day. Eduard Geith, one of his father’s more vicious colleagues, actually enjoyed bragging about his brutality during raids.