All God's Children

by Anna Schmidt

  “It just seems to be rather sudden. I don’t ever recall—”

  Again his mother interrupted him, but this time she was laughing. “Oh, Josef, as if you have been around enough to know when your father has business he must attend. We barely see you.”

  “I do have duties of my own,” Josef reminded her. “Shifts at the hospital, not to mention my classes and research.”

  “And of course there is Beth,” his mother said, her voice softening. “Do you make time for her?”

  “We live in the same place. I share meals with the family. I—”

  “There is no cause for defensiveness, Josef. I am simply attempting to make conversation and find out what is going on in your life.”

  “I have asked Beth to marry me.”

  As he expected, his mother hid her shock well, but not so thoroughly that she could fully disguise her disapproval at such a notion. “Do you think that wise, Josef? I mean in times like these to make such a decision…”

  “I love her,” he replied.

  “Romeo loved Juliet, and look how that turned out.” His mother pulled a cigarette from a case in her purse and handed him the lighter.

  “That was fiction. This is real.” He lit her cigarette and handed her back the lighter.

  “Precisely,” she said as she blew out the first puff of smoke. “You are in love with your enemy.”

  “Beth and her family are Quakers—they have no enemies.”

  His mother’s laugh was brittle, and he saw the driver cast them a glance in the rearview mirror. “If they believe that—if you believe that— then you are all fools.” She turned away from him and stared out the window, and he realized that her eyes had filled with tears.

  He took hold of her gloved hand, but she waved him off and took a long drag on the cigarette. Josef did not recall a time when he had seen his mother look so miserable.

  “Beth, come see,” Liesl shouted.

  Beth and Aunt Ilse both hurried into the front room, where Liesl was perched on the window seat that overlooked the street. Outside sat a large black car—a Mercedes like those used by the Gestapo. Beth heard Aunt Ilse suck in her breath.

  “It’s just Josef and his mother,” she assured her aunt as she watched Josef get out of the car on one side while the driver hurried to open the passenger side rear door for Frau Buch. “I’m sure that Herr Buch had his driver bring them.”

  “But the neighbors…they will think….”

  It was true, of course. The arrival of such a vehicle on any street at any time of day or night was an ominous sign. “The neighbors know Josef. They will see him and think no more of it.”

  Beth hoped she was right, but across the way she saw curtains move in several neighboring apartments and knew that people were watching and speculating. She was momentarily pleased that Josef’s father had not come, for surely the sight of him in his black trench coat would have stirred up even more gossip. “Look how lovely Frau Buch looks,” Beth said, hoping to turn her aunt’s attention to something more pleasant.

  “She has a fur coat,” Liesl said, her eyes widening in wonder.

  “Well, there is certainly fur on the collar and cuffs,” Beth agreed. She turned to find Aunt Ilse pulling off the apron she had worn all morning.

  “I should change,” she muttered. “This dress…” She fled down the hall, and the next thing Beth heard was the slam of the bedroom door.

  “What’s happened now?” Uncle Franz asked, coming out of his study at the sound.

  “Josef and his mother are on their way up.”

  “Mama went to change her dress,” Liesl added. “That’s her very best dress though, so…”

  “I’ll go check on her,” Uncle Franz said, already halfway down the hall as the buzzer sounded, announcing their guests had arrived.

  “Liesl and I will take care of this,” Beth assured him, turning to welcome Josef’s mother. “Wilkommen,” she said as she opened the door and stood aside to allow Josef and Frau Buch to enter the foyer.

  “Oh my, what is that delicious smell?” Frau Buch asked, focusing her attention on Liesl.

  “It’s a pork roast,” Liesl replied. “I’m so glad you came. It’s been so long since we had anything so grand as a pork roast. Is that real fur?”

  “Shot that bear all by myself just this morning,” Josef joked, and Beth saw that his mother blushed.

  “It is, Liesl.” She offered the girl a chance to caress the cuff of her coat. “The coat was a Christmas gift. Did you get any special gifts?”

  “I did. Come on, I’ll show you.” She took Frau Buch’s hand and led her down the hall to her bedroom.

  “Is everything all right?” Josef asked as soon as they were gone.

  “Not really.” Beth explained about Aunt Ilse seeing the car and then the coat. “My uncle is with her. I’d best tend to dinner.”

  “Let me help.”

  Lying awake the night before, Beth had forced herself to face reality. Josef was a good and decent man intent on protecting her and her German family. When he proposed on the train, that had been his motivation, nothing more. He might be fond of her—even in love with her—but Josef was a practical man. The very idea that they might marry given all their differences was ludicrous.

  “Will your father be coming later?” Beth asked as together they finished preparing the side dishes for the meal.

  Josef shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried to get some information on the drive over, but all I truly understand is that my mother is worried.”

  “About what?”

  Again the shrug. “Things are changing, Beth. Not just for you and me and your family.”

  “Surely your parents are—”

  From the hallway they heard voices. Uncle Franz greeted Josef’s mother while Liesl kept up a running conversation about Frau Buch’s beautiful coat and how their special guest had said that the color of Liesl’s new dress was a perfect match for the girl’s eyes. “Frau Buch is going to give me a scarf that she doesn’t wear anymore. She’s going to send it with Josef the very next time he visits her,” she announced as the three of them entered the kitchen.

  There was still no sign of Aunt Ilse. When Beth raised her eyebrows, questioning her aunt’s continued absence, Uncle Franz simply shook his head and indicated a chair at one end of the table.

  “Shall we enjoy this wonderful meal?” he asked. “I’m afraid my wife has taken ill and won’t be joining us today. Beth, will you serve?”

  “Of course.” She set the roast in front of her uncle, along with a carving knife, then placed each side dish on the table before taking her place next to Liesl and across from Josef.

  “We say grace in silence,” Franz told Josef’s mother once everyone was seated. “Will you join us?”

  Frau Buch folded her hands in her lap and bowed her head. And when Beth noticed the small circular stain on the front of the woman’s burgundy dress, she realized that Josef’s mother was crying. Her uncle must have noticed as well, for he prolonged the silent prayer until Liesl became restless.

  “Forgive me,” Josef’s mother said as Uncle Franz stood and began carving the pork roast. “I don’t know what’s come over me.” She dabbed at her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief that she pulled from her long fitted sleeve.

  “It’s an emotional time,” Uncle Franz said, continuing to carve thin slices of the precious meat and place them on each plate as it was passed to him.

  “My mother sheds tears for the smallest things,” Josef said, taking hold of Frau Buch’s hand and grinning. “I had this puppy once, and…”

  By the time Josef had finished his tale and Beth had told of the family of kittens that she and her brothers had rescued from the pound and tried unsuccessfully to keep secret from their mother, everyone was laughing. Just then Aunt Ilse entered the room. It was evident that she had been crying for some time, for her skin was blotched and reddened and her eyelids swollen.

  Uncle Franz was on his feet at once. “Ah, F
rau Buch, may I present my wife, Ilse?”

  “I apologize for—”

  “No, my dear Frau Schneider, it is I who must apologize for my tardiness and the absence of my husband. You have gone to so much trouble.”

  Uncle Franz guided Aunt Ilse to her place at the table next to Josef. “You’re feeling better?” he murmured.

  She nodded, but Beth saw that her hands were shaking as she accepted the plate of food Beth handed her.

  “Tante, tell Frau Buch about the china,” she said, seeking any possible topic of conversation that might lift the sudden shift in mood that had occurred with Aunt Ilse’s sudden appearance.

  It worked. Ilse told how her great-grandmother had saved for the china until she had a full set and then how it had passed from one generation to the next.

  “And one day when I marry, it will be mine,” Liesl said, and then she gave her mother a worried frown. “You won’t give it to Beth, will you?”

  “Of course not. Why would she?” Beth asked.

  “Because when you and Josef get married, then—”

  “We are not getting married,” Beth said quietly, and she did not miss the look that passed between Josef and his mother.

  Frau Buch looked at her son. “But I thought—”

  “What about on the train when we had cake?” Liesl protested.

  “Josef lives here in Germany, and Beth will one day return to her home in America, Liesl,” Aunt Ilse said with a nervous laugh. “You know that.”

  “But—”

  “Eat your potato salad,” Aunt Ilse snapped, and once again the mood around the table disintegrated into an uncomfortable silence with the only interruption being the occasional clink of flatware on the fine china.

  CHAPTER 14

  A stretch of clear sunny days in February finally broke the oppressive damp and cold that had held the city prisoner since Christmas. Unfortunately the improvement in the weather did little to lift spirits or improve the situation of anyone involved in trying to bring the war to an end.

  After the surrender of the Sixth Army to the Russians on February 2, 1943, Hitler was so infuriated that he declared a national day of mourning. The declaration was not meant to honor and grieve for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed, maimed, starved, frozen, or captured over the long campaign in and around Stalingrad. Rather Hitler’s rage was directed at the shame he felt his generals had brought upon Germany.

  Shortly after this act, the dictator turned the full force of his wrath toward anyone who was suspected of opposing his government’s policies. The news that Mildred Fish Harnack, the American wife of Arvid Harnack who had himself been tortured and killed in prison, had received a six-year prison sentence for her part in her husband’s activities further enraged Hitler. He ordered her brought to trial again, and this time the sentence was death.

  Franz was horrified when he heard this news and vowed to sever all ties with the White Rose and to make sure that Beth and Josef also had nothing more to do with the group. If Hitler was taking such a personal interest in his enemies, what chance did any of them have of keeping Beth safe?

  For several weeks he had been deeply disturbed by the turn that matters had taken with the White Rose. His colleague and friend, Professor Kurt Huber, had finally agreed to join the group. Unfortunately Kurt and Hans Scholl were at polar odds about the direction they thought the group needed to take. Hans and others favored joining forces with Falk Harnack’s Berlin group. Kurt found their approach far too left-leaning and radical for his taste.

  A few nights earlier the situation had disintegrated to the point where Kurt had walked out. Then after the news of the Stalingrad defeat was made public, Hans, Alex, and Willi had decided to celebrate the fact that the tide was turning against Hitler. They painted anti Hitler slogans such as Down with Hitler and Hitler Mass Murderer on the sides of buildings along Ludwigstrasse—the main thoroughfare leading to the university. Sometimes they added a crossed out swastika and the word Freedom in bold letters.

  To Franz, such reckless disregard for the obvious dangers they put themselves and the rest of the group in was tantamount to giving the Gestapo a roadmap to find them. The young men staged these raids under the very noses of police and others patrolling the streets. The action was blatant and far more dangerous than anything the group had done to date.

  One morning in mid-February after the third such raid, Franz saw city workers covering the graffiti with butcher paper in an attempt to hide the defamatory words until the walls could be scrubbed and repainted. But the oil or tar used to mix the paint was deliberately chosen because it bled through the paper, making the words readable to anyone passing. That same morning Franz observed Hans and Alex passing one of the covered signs and then smiling as they continued on their way. They were becoming far too overconfident that the leaflets with their rally cries for the people to rise up were finally having some effect.

  Of course, Franz understood their confidence. On January 13—a day few associated with the university would ever forget—a high ranking Bavarian official had called a special assembly to address all university students.

  Not only did the man chide female students for wasting time and funds by insisting on getting an education, but he further insulted the women by lecturing them on their true duty—to provide sons for their beloved Vaterland. And if that weren’t enough to enrage the women in the audience, the official actually offered them the services of studs if they were not alluring enough to attract a husband. When many female students attempted to leave the hall in protest, the official had them arrested.

  Chaos reigned as several male students, many of them in uniform, rushed forward to form a protective circle around the women until the arrest order was rescinded. The news spread quickly throughout the city, and it was understandable that such a student outcry along with news of the devastating defeat at Stalingrad gave reason for the core members of the White Rose to feel confident that at last the people were prepared to take a stand.

  But in the apartment above the bakery, the news of the riot at the assembly, the death of the American woman by Hitler’s direct order, and the crushing defeat on the Russian front had an opposite effect. Ilse walked through her days barely touching her meals, her eyes haunted and shadowed from lack of sleep. Although Franz tried to soothe his wife’s anxiety by pointing out that the war was winding down and would soon be over, she refused to be consoled.

  “And then what? We start again as we did after the last war? And the world turns against us, and we are cast into poverty, and…”

  These days she did not dissolve into tears. Instead she would simply break off her tirade in midsentence and sit staring at nothing as if in a trance. With the increase in air raids—or at least the warnings that sent them all scurrying to the cellar—Liesl had developed terrible nightmares and often awoke screaming, waking the entire household. And while Josef continued to make sojourns by train to distribute the leaflets of the White Rose in nearby towns and villages, Franz was relieved to see that Beth no longer accompanied him.

  Wearily Franz crossed the lobby and climbed the stairs of the building where he had spent years of his life lecturing and meeting with students and shepherding them along. He had a lecture to deliver in less than an hour. He liked to arrive before the students so that he could go over his notes one last time. He was a good teacher—and a popular one.

  When he entered the large, empty room that would soon be filled with the chatter of students, only a single lamp burned at the lectern. It took a moment before he noticed a man sitting on the aisle of the first row.

  “Guten Morgen, mein Herr,” Franz called out as he made his way past rows of empty desks. “Kann ich Ihnen helfen?” He felt his heart rate increase as he realized that this was a Gestapo agent.

  As if worn down by exhaustion, the agent rose and turned to face Franz. The man was Josef’s father—Detlef Buch.

  “Ah, Herr Buch,” Franz said with a heartiness tempered by uncertainty
. Josef’s father could be here because he wanted to talk with Franz about his son, or he could be here in a more official capacity. “Please sit. Sit. I have some time before the students arrive.” He indicated the chair that Herr Buch had vacated, but the man remained standing.

  “I will not keep you. Your family has been kind to my son and my wife, and I appreciate that a great deal.”

  “Josef is a gifted physician. He was one of my finest students.”

  Buch waved away the compliments impatiently. “You and your family—your niece especially—should consider leaving Munich. I believe your wife has a sister in Eglofs?”

  “She does, but I cannot leave my work here at the—”

  “Later today—if it has not already happened, Herr Schneider— your work at the university will be terminated. It is not my habit to share such information, but as I have said, you and your wife are people my son respects and holds in the highest esteem.”

  Franz found that he could no longer stand. He slumped into a chair, dropping his briefcase as he did. So many times he had imagined this moment, had dreaded opening the mail he received through the slit in his office door. He realized that he had been waiting for weeks— months—for the letter saying his services were no longer required. The moment was here, but in a way he had never imagined.

  “How do you…why would you…”

  “I was at a function last night, and I overheard a conversation between the head of your department and university chancellor Wust. Naturally when I heard your name mentioned, I paid attention.”

  “Did they say why?” It was a foolish question. No reason was needed—at least not one that showed cause.

  “They did not.” Detlef Buch put on his hat and pulled on his leather gloves, taking time to make sure each finger fit precisely into its designated space. “And I have said more than I should. Thank you and Frau Schneider for the care you have given my son. Auf Wiederschauen, Herr Professor.”

  He walked to the exit, his normally erect posture marred by the slump of his shoulders and the slowed pace of his step. Franz heard the click of the door closing. Almost immediately it opened again as the first of the students arrived and took their places. Franz pushed himself up from the chair and retrieved his lecture notes from his briefcase.