All God's Children

by Anna Schmidt

  There was still time.

  But just as she reached the main floor, a shower of white papers rained down around her and the other students. She caught one and glanced up in time to see Hans and Sophie shaking the last of the latest White Rose leaflets from the suitcase. Immediately the custodian that she’d seen sweeping when she arrived raced up the stairway toward them, shouting for them to stay where they were. At the same time, uniformed students automatically took up positions blocking the exits. There was nothing she could do for Hans and Sophie, so she ran for the one exit that was still unguarded.

  As other students crowded into the hallways on all floors, straining to see what the commotion might be about, Beth glanced back once at Sophie and Hans. Amazingly they had made no attempt to flee but rather stood patiently waiting for the custodian to reach them. When Beth looked back, the exit was blocked.

  An eerie silence punctuated only by the shrill whine of arriving police and Gestapo vehicles settled over the crowd. No one spoke except in whispers as everyone watched the brother and sister being marched into a nearby office. Police began pouring into the building, followed by a phalanx of storm troopers. Near her, Beth saw some students pick up a copy of the leaflet and then drop it instantly as if it might scald them. A few others took the leaflet, scanned it, and then quickly hid it inside a book or pocket before heading for the exit. Next to her the policeman stationed at the exit pushed forward to collar one such student, and Beth saw her chance to slip away from the building. But before she could, a storm trooper stepped in front of the door.

  Outside the whine of arriving Gestapo and more police vehicles drowned out any attempt at conversation. Those students and faculty who had been intent on getting away as quickly as possible could now only wait and watch as Gestapo agents strode into the building followed by an entourage of SS officers. In the hushed silence that followed the agents’ entrance, somewhere outside a clock chimed the half hour.

  Beth scanned the crowd. She had to believe that Josef had not attended the lecture, for surely he would have left earlier with his friends. On the other hand he could still be here. Above her she saw Professor Huber. She moved slowly through the crowd but saw no sign of Josef. Where are you? Why weren’t you with Willi and Traute?

  Careful not to draw attention to herself, she worked her way back up the stairs to the top floor, deserted except for a lone police officer who did not see her. He moved from room to room—trying doors that were locked, opening those that were not, and rounding up any students inside. Still no sign of Josef.

  She hid behind a column until the policeman passed and then edged her way back to the main floor so that she could disappear into the crowd. She had just spotted another member of the White Rose— Gisela Schertling, Hans’s current girlfriend—when the tenor of the whispered conversations around her shifted into silence.

  Beth edged around a gathering of students and saw Hans and Sophie being led away. As they passed, Hans called out to Gisela, “Tell him I won’t be coming this evening.”

  Beth recalled that this was the day Hans was supposed to meet with Falk Harnack to discuss the two resistance groups joining forces. As Hans and Sophie were led away, several students made a show of taunting them while others cheered the arrests. Beth could not help thinking how foolish they had all been to think that these students—some of them no doubt the very ones who had protested against the government only weeks earlier—would stand with them now.

  And still they were held captive inside the building. Beth realized it could be hours before they were allowed to leave. She saw her former neighbor Werner guarding a side door and edged her way toward him. She gave him a weak smile and then sat down on the floor nearby, holding her head as if in pain.

  “Fräulein?”

  “I’m all right,” she assured him, then grimaced. “I have these headaches, and unfortunately noise and crowds only make them worse.

  Werner glanced around. “Go,” he said, opening the side door barely a few inches.

  She got the last seat on a crowded streetcar that she knew would take her to the railway station. If there were no delays, she would reach it in time to say good-bye to her uncle, aunt, and Liesl and assure them that she and Josef would follow.

  But the car was filled with students all whispering about the events some of them had observed and others were eager to learn more about. The car stopped often, and by the time it reached the station, Beth was only in time to see the train pull away from the platform. She waved in case Uncle Franz or Aunt Ilse or even Liesl might be watching, and then she collapsed onto a wooden bench.

  It was all too much for her. What was she to do now? The way her uncle’s office had been searched was evidence enough that it would not be safe for her to return to the apartment. She did not know where Josef might be, and because she had spent most of her time caring for Liesl and in the company of friends of her uncle’s—fellow Quakers, university faculty, and students who had long ago left Munich—she really had nowhere to turn.

  A train chugged into the station. Up and down the way, the doors to each car slammed open, releasing a stream of passengers. Half a- dozen Gestapo agents prowled the platform and the main station. A young priest emerged carrying a small suitcase and looking around as if trying to get his bearings.

  Beth studied every face—looking for what? A potential ally? A familiar face perhaps from the White Rose? Josef?

  She was becoming as bad as Aunt Ilse at seeing things that were not there. She forced herself to move away from the station, along familiar boulevards and streets, past places she knew as well as she had once known her small village back in America. She walked for hours, aware but not comprehending the passing of the hours. Exhausted, she wandered into the small park where she had first encountered Anja and the children.

  She sat down on the concrete bench, planted her feet firmly on the frozen, snow-covered ground, and closed her eyes as she prayed for guidance.

  Josef had spent the night at the hospital and stayed on through the day working a double shift as much because he simply needed a place to be as because he wanted the extra work. Just before his second shift ended, he heard other medical students just arriving to begin their shift talking about the arrests and knew that it was only a matter of time until names would be revealed and more arrests would be made.

  Beth.

  She was already of interest to the authorities. Only his father’s power had kept her safe until now. But if it came to light that she knew Hans and Sophie and the others…

  He was running by the time he reached the hospital’s exit. He went first to the apartment and stood across the street from the bakery under the tattered awning of the abandoned bookstore, watching as men went in and out of the entrance to the apartments. When they finally got into their car and drove away, Josef went around to the rear courtyard and entered the building. The door to the Schneiders’ apartment stood open, and he could see that the place had been searched.

  For once he did not remove his shoes as he entered the hallway and noticed the doors to every room standing open. Ridiculous as it was, his first thought was how upsetting that would be to Ilse.

  There were no coats hanging on the hooks in the foyer. No neatly aligned pairs of shoes showing that the professor or Ilse or Beth or Liesl were home—only their slippers kicked aside in the foyer. He walked quickly down the hall to the bedrooms. The double mahogany doors to the wardrobe in the professor’s room stood open, revealing only a cluster of empty hangers and a single forgotten woman’s shoe.

  In the room that Liesl shared with Beth, Liesl’s clothes were gone but not Beth’s. Hers were stacked on one of the two single beds next to an open suitcase. He fingered a blouse that he recognized as the one she’d been wearing the night he had proposed to her, then grasped it to his face, inhaling the scent of her.

  He heard a step outside the doorway and turned. The baker’s wife stood holding out an envelope to him. “They left this for you and this one for
their niece,” she told him. “But…”

  “I will see that she gets it,” he promised, stuffing the one addressed to Beth in his jacket pocket and buttoning the flap to secure it. “Thank you.”

  Without another word, the woman retraced her steps down the hall and shut the front door to the apartment quietly behind her as she left.

  He sat on the edge of Liesl’s bed as he tore open the envelope addressed to him. Scanning the contents and reading between the lines, he understood that Beth had gone to the university—to the professor’s office—and that she had called them from there to warn them. They were on their way to catch the train to Lenggries.

  Lenggries? What about Eglofs and Marta?

  Spurred to action, Josef placed some of Beth’s clothing in the suitcase and then ran up to the attic to retrieve some of his clothes as well. He barely paid attention to the fact that his room had also been searched but not nearly as thoroughly as the professor’s study. Downstairs he finished packing and snapped the latches of the suitcase closed.

  This time he left by the front entrance, stopping at the bakery to buy some rolls and casually mentioning that he was going to visit friends. The baker’s wife nodded and refused to let him pay.

  Now he had to find Beth. The professor obviously knew nothing of the arrests, but Josef was certain that Beth had heard the news even if she had managed to be away from the university when they occurred. She would know better than to return to the apartment, but where would she go?

  Unconcerned by the understanding that he could be in as much danger of being arrested as she was, Josef roamed the neighborhoods that he knew she frequented. He went to Liesl’s school and half expected to see Beth waiting with others for a child. But she was not there—and of course, assuming that the professor had gotten on that train, neither was Liesl. He went to the restaurant in the marketplace where they had spent hours together, talking and laughing and worrying about the future.

  He walked and walked until he felt as if he could not take another step and as if the suitcase held bricks instead of clothes. Finally he sat down on the steps of the church where they had taken Anja and Benjamin that night. He closed his eyes at first in weariness, and then he realized that he was silently praying for God to lead him to her. Help me find her.

  In a perfect world, he would have opened his eyes and seen her crossing the street, but Munich in February 1943 was far from perfect. When he opened his eyes, it was growing darker and colder, and there was no sign of Beth.

  Please.

  He stood and picked up the suitcase again but left the rolls behind. The bread would be stale by the time he found her—if he found her. For reasons he couldn’t understand, he found that he was thinking more about Anja and Benjamin as he walked than he was about Beth. That irritated him, and he tried to force his thoughts back on Beth.

  Instead he wondered where they were now. He thought about the boy—so bright and perceptive. He thought about the night that he and Beth had introduced Anja and Benjamin to her aunt and uncle as his friends while the children hid in the rear courtyard.

  Suddenly he knew where Beth would be.

  Beth was so cold she was shivering. In her haste to leave the apartment and retrieve her uncle’s incriminating papers, she had grabbed only a heavy sweater from the hook in the front hall. It was a sunny day, and the weather had been mild for February all week. But with dusk coming on and no sun to warm her as she huddled inside her hiding place, she could feel the damp chill down to her bones.

  She was well aware that some of her shivering came not from the cold but from fear—the abject terror she had felt when she’d come back to the apartment building and seen two black sedans parked outside. If they happened to look out the window, they would see her. She had to hide.

  Where? Acting on sheer instinct she had made her way to the rear courtyard, seeking a place she could hide until the agents left. She had glanced around at the piles of snow and bare spots where some of the snow had melted. She had first considered hiding in the cellar, but the door opened at ground level and had to be pulled closed by a pulley system that would surely attract someone’s attention. Besides, it was heavy and awkward to operate, and what if she didn’t have the strength?

  So she had rejected the idea of the cellar and resumed her visual search of her surroundings for any possible place she might hide—at least until dark. She edged along the garden wall toward the rear gate. Perhaps beyond that gate…

  Then she saw the perfect hiding place. It had certainly worked once before and surely would again. It was the temporary shelter that Josef had managed to cobble together to shelter Anja’s children while their parents were inside the apartment pretending to be people they weren’t on their way to a concert.

  She had crawled beneath the low lean-to made of a cast-off trellis covered with evergreen branches the gardener had trimmed and left to be stripped and cut up for kindling in the spring. The place smelled of damp earth and the faint remnants of cedar berries. Once she sat down with her arms wrapped around her knees, she filled the space entirely.

  At first she had listened intently, trying to identify every sound. She had heard the Gestapo agents leave the building, the slam of their car doors, the roar of their powerful car engines. She had heard neighbors enter the courtyard and share the news. “Did you hear? I told my husband that it was only a matter of time before they came for her—an American living right out in the open.”

  Sometimes she recognized the voice as someone her aunt considered a friend, someone to be trusted. Sometimes she did not recognize the voice at all and realized how isolated they had become, staying to themselves—especially her. She rested her forehead on her knees. How very lonely her life had become. For months her contact had been mostly limited to her uncle, aunt, and Liesl.

  And Josef, she reminded herself sternly. And the contacts she’d made in working with the White Rose—Traute and Sophie, Alex, and Willi, and the others. How she had looked forward to the meetings and the times spent cranking out leaflets and stuffing them into envelopes in the small rented rooms that Hans and Sophie shared. For the first time in months—no, years—she had felt as if she were living a normal existence among people her own age. And the work was thrilling, especially when news came of the student uprising after some official lectured the female university students about wasting time and money going to school when they should be finding husbands and having babies—preferably male babies. A faint smiled tugged at her lips as she recalled how incensed Sophie had been over that whole business.

  But Sophie had been arrested along with Hans and who knew what others. Everyone was well aware that the government had their ways of getting people to tell them what they wanted to know. In this case they would want the names of anyone remotely involved in the movement.

  What if they had arrested Uncle Franz? She had seen the train leave but had no idea if he and Aunt Ilse and Liesl were actually on it. And what about Josef? Would his father be able to warn him—protect him? She prayed for it to be so.

  Somewhere a clock chimed six. She would wait for the chime of seven before making her move. All the shops would be closed by then, and most people would be home behind their blackout curtains for the night. The streets would be deserted, especially in residential areas. Of course there would be patrols of police and storm troopers, but if she took care, she could avoid them.

  She closed her eyes. Now after hours in this position she felt as if she might never be able to stand up straight again. She was so very tired… so very cold…so very frightened.

  CHAPTER 16

  Josef found Beth exactly where he had thought she might be. She was sound asleep, her face covered with lank tendrils of her blond hair. He could smell the decayed leaves and garden refuse along with the dank wool of her sweater.

  “Beth,” he whispered. “Beth, it’s me—Josef.” He touched her shoulder, and she startled awake and shrank from him. “I’m here.” He knelt so that she could hear him mor
e clearly and perhaps make out his features in light from the half moon reflecting off the snow. “It’s all right.”

  Clumsily she crawled toward him and fell into his arms. “Josef,” she said, her voice a painful rasp. She touched his face, his hair, his shoulders as if trying to reassure herself that he was not some dream. “Oh, Josef, what are we to do?” She buried her face in the crook of his neck, muffling her sobs.

  “Come,” he urged, half lifting her with him as he got to his feet. “Let’s get you some dry clothes.”

  “No. The Gestapo…” she hissed when she realized where he was leading her.

  “They won’t come back—at least not tonight.”

  He understood that she did not have the strength to resist. She could barely walk, so cramped were her muscles from staying in one position for however many hours. He wrapped his coat around her shivering shoulders and helped her to the front of the building, then up to the door of her uncle’s apartment. Inside the moonlight came through the windows, for there had been no one to close the blackout curtains until now. “Sit,” he instructed as he shut the door and moved from room to room, closing the curtains.

  When he returned to the front room where he’d left Beth half reclining on the sofa, she was not there. His heart racing, he headed for the front door and then saw her standing in her uncle’s study holding the professor’s pipe in her hand. “Why wouldn’t he have taken this with him?” she asked. “He loved this pipe.”

  “He was in a hurry. We can take it to him.” He eased the pipe from her ice-cold fingers. “Come, I’ll make a fire. We’ll have some tea.”

  After he had built a fire in the wood stove and prepared tea and filled a plate with a stale pretzel, some mustard, and hard cheese and set it before her, Josef went to her room. He had abandoned the suitcase in the courtyard so he could help Beth. Now he sorted through the remaining clothing on her bed and found a pair of wool slacks, a long sleeved blouse, a sweater, and a pair of heavy socks. “Here are dry clothes,” he said, laying the clothing on the bench next to the kitchen table. “I’m going up to the attic to get an extra jacket.”