by Anna Schmidt
CHAPTER 18
Shortl y before Josef was to appear before the judge, his father took them to his office and introduced an older man. “Josef, you remember your grandfather’s attorney, Dr. Karl Bretholz?”
Josef stood at once. “How are you, sir?”
“I am still here,” the man replied with a wry smile.
Josef turned to Beth. “May I present my fiancée, Elizabeth Bridgewater?”
“So you are our little American troublemaker,” Herr Bretholz said, taking Beth’s hand and continuing to hold it as he looked around the room. “I suppose this will have to do, Detlef.”
“Time is of the essence,” Josef’s father replied.
“I don’t understand,” Beth said.
“Dr. Bretholz was a judge of the court under the Weimar Republic. With the change in leadership, he decided to retire. He has been advising me on various projects since then.”
“I still have the authority to perform marriages,” Bretholz said. “Now then Elizabeth, suppose you tell me a bit of how this would go were you being married in the traditions of your faith—Quaker, is it?”
“Yes sir. Simply put, we believe that the success or rightness of a marriage depends on the two people involved rather than on any external service or words. The ceremony is performed in the presence of family and friends by the couple.”
Josef saw his mother frown. “Surely there is some…process?”
“In normal times, Josef and I would have written to the clerk of my Meeting—my congregation—either here in Munich or back in Wisconsin. The clerk would read the letter in a meeting for business, and a clearness committee would then be appointed. Those Friends would consider whether or not there were external obstacles to the union—especially because Josef is not a Quaker.”
She smiled at him.
“Well then, who do we contact for you here?” his mother asked.
Josef saw Beth hesitate. “I’m afraid, Frau Buch, there is no one left of the Meeting here in Munich. Everyone—except for me—is gone.”
“Oh, this is a disaster. I am calling for Father Schwandt.”
“Now now,” the judge said, “let’s not be so hasty. Elizabeth has said that in the end the decision is between the man and the woman. You are both of legal age?”
“We are,” Josef replied.
“Then Quaker or Catholic is not the point. I perform civil ceremonies and as long as both parties are of age and there are no impediments—you aren’t hiding a wife somewhere, are you Josef?”
For the first time in days, Josef actually laughed. “No, sir.”
“Then there you have it. Shall we all gather nearer the fire?”
Josef took Beth’s hand. They stood facing the judge, the fire’s embers glowing behind him. Josef’s parents stood to his right. But there was no one to stand with Beth. “Mother?” He gestured, and his mother shifted positions so that she was standing next to Beth. “Ready when you are, sir.”
The judge smiled and from memory delivered the words of the civil ceremony. When the time came for giving Beth the ring, Josef realized that he had nothing to give her.
“It’s all right,” she murmured. “It is not our custom to have external symbols such as rings and flowers and such.”
Behind her, Josef’s mother slid a thin silver band from her finger and passed it to Josef. “It was your grandmother’s ring,” she told him. “She would be pleased.”
“I really—” Beth started to protest.
His mother laid her hand on Beth’s cheek. “Please indulge me, Beth. It is our custom to pass a special ring from one generation to the next.”
Beth nodded, and the judge continued with the ceremony. When it was evident that he was about to pronounce them man and wife, Beth interrupted. “I would like to say something to Josef.”
“By all means.”
Josef thought he had never seen Beth quite so serene as she spoke in a strong, clear voice. “In the presence of God and your parents and of friends and family absent but present in spirit, I, Elizabeth Alice Bridgewater, take thee, Josef…” She hesitated, and they both realized she did not know his full name.
“Klaus Otto,” his mother prompted.
“Josef Klaus Otto Buch, to be my husband. I promise with divine assistance to be unto thee a loving and faithful wife so long as we both shall…” Again she hesitated, and tears filled her incredible blue eyes. “Shall live.”
Outside the door they heard footsteps approach and a murmur of voices, then a knock at the door before it opened. The guard looked in and announced. “It is time.”
The judge completed the ceremony with the prescribed closing words. “You may kiss your wife, son.”
Josef cupped his hands around Beth’s face. “And I promise you, Liebchen, that when this war is ended we will have a proper Quaker ceremony with everyone we know in attendance.”
Her tears ran freely down her cheeks, and as he kissed them away, his father took hold of his arm. “We must go now.” Reluctantly Josef followed his father and the former judge who would defend him from the room.
Grateful that Josef’s father had somehow managed to keep her from being arrested in spite of all she had revealed to him, Beth watched the trial with Josef’s mother from the galley. Shortly before entering the courtroom, the news had reached Josef’s father that Hans, Sophie, and Christoph had been given the death sentence. That sentence— death by beheading—was to be carried out later that same afternoon.
The news nearly drove Frau Buch to hysterics, but Josef took hold of her shoulders and pulled her into his embrace. “I love you, Mother, with all my heart. You and Father have made me the man I am today—a man proudly standing up for the country he cherishes. Take care of Beth.”
His mother emerged dry-eyed from his arms and linked her arm with Beth’s. “Be strong, my son.”
Josef’s attorney called a string of witnesses—people whom Beth had never seen before or heard Josef mention. All testified to his character— his devotion to family and country. None mentioned his involvement with the White Rose unless the prosecutor brought that up, which he rarely did. It was almost as if both the prosecution and the sitting judge had already determined the outcome.
Beth felt as if her heart would surely explode, so frightened was she for Josef. When the judge seemed about to pronounce sentence, Beth interrupted him by standing in the galley. Her hands planted on the railing, she called out to him in flawless German. “Your honor, if it please the court…” She really hoped the language she had picked up from watching movies was appropriate.
A guard moved toward her, but the presiding judge held up his hand. “Who are you?”
“I am the wife of the accused.”
“American?”
“I am.”
The judge signaled the guard to bring Beth from the galley to the courtroom floor. Despite her fear she walked to the elaborate desk where the judge sat high above her and raised her face so that she was meeting his gaze directly.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Herr Doktor Buch has served his country with great devotion and honor—”
“He is a traitor,” the prosecutor shouted.
The judge silenced him with a look. “Continue.”
She continued to use only German to state her case—her second language rolling easily off her tongue as she listed each point. Josef was a man of medicine. Surely there was a need for his services somewhere perhaps on the front or in one of the work camps the Reich had built in Poland. She was not a trained nurse but had years of experience caring for others. “Could we not better serve the Reich by caring for the wounded and the infirm?”
“You are offering to be sentenced with your husband?”
The sly gleam that sparkled in the man’s eyes only added to her terror. “I am,” she replied. “Because whatever his crime may be in the court’s eyes, surely I am as guilty.”
“Sergeant Buch has admitted to distributing literature and taking part i
n other activities of the group known as the White Rose. Are you saying that you also participated in such activities?”
“Beth, no,” she heard Josef say.
“That is precisely what I am telling you, sir.”
“You are an American spy?”
“I am no spy. I am a Quaker—a believer in no man’s war. I do what I do to try and bring peace to those around me.”
Again the smile. “Sit down, please.”
Beth started back toward the steps that led up to the galley, praying with every step that she had not made matters worse for Josef.
“Not to the galley, Fräulein. Sit there,” the judge ordered, pointing to a chair at the defendant’s table next to Josef. “I will deliver sentence in one hour.”
An hour passed, then two and then three. A guard brought water for Beth and Josef. As the clock over the exit ticked off the minutes and the courtroom emptied, a clerk closed the blackout shades and turned on lamps on the judge’s podium and the prosecutor’s and defendant’s tables. The room filled with shadows, but Beth barely noticed as she clung to Josef’s hand.
“I only wanted to help,” she said. “I am so very sorry for…”
“Shhh. My brave girl. Whatever happens, we have each done our best.”
Beth turned to Josef’s parents—his father pacing back and forth, his mother having taken a seat just behind her son.
“Frau Buch? I believe that both Josef and I will be sentenced, and in that event, I would like for you to keep this.” She removed the ring and handed it back to her mother-in-law. “It is likely to get misplaced where we are going.”
Frau Buch accepted the ring. “I will keep it safe until you return to us.”
Josef squeezed and released Beth’s hand and then stood up and faced his father.
“I want you to know, sir, that I have always looked up to you— respected your honesty and integrity and belief in what you were doing. I only hope that in time you might come to see my side of things.”
For a moment it looked as if Herr Buch might simply turn on his heel and walk away. Beth’s heart broke for Josef. Then the elder Buch did something so unexpected that even his wife gasped in surprise.
With tears running down his cheeks, he embraced Josef, and Beth heard him murmur, “I am so very proud to call you my son, Josef Buch. Your courage and, yes, your patriotism put me to shame.”
The two men stepped apart as the presiding judge’s clerk entered the courtroom and called for court to resume. Herr Buch returned to his place next to his wife as the lawyer sitting with them indicated that Beth and Josef should stand and face the judge.
“Josef Buch, I hereby sentence you to be stripped of your rank and citizenship and all privileges attendant to that and to spend the rest of your natural life imprisoned at SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor.”
Behind them Beth heard Frau Buch break down in sobs—whether relief that her son’s life had been saved or despair that he would spend the rest of his days in prison, Beth could not have said.
“Frau Elizabeth Buch,” the judge said in a singsong teasing way that made her blood run cold. “You may or may not know that a countrywoman of yours was convicted as a spy recently and hanged.” He deliberately paused to take a long drink of water. “Still your plea that you should share in your husband’s fate has moved me. Therefore, I sentence you to spend your life in SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor as well.”
“Thank you,” Beth blurted and immediately realized how foolish that must sound.
The judge looked down at her, and a hint of sadness colored his gaze. “Oh, do not thank me. In time you may both well wish that I had given you the easier way out—that I had sentenced you to die.”
PART 3
SOBIBOR, POLAND
FEBRUARY—DECEMBER 1943
CHAPTER 19
The trip from Munich across much of Poland seemed endless and still was over far too soon. The judge had ordered them transported by truck rather than train because the trip would take less time. Beth had heard Josef’s father say that the judge was having second thoughts about his unorthodox decision and wanted to get them to their assigned prison as soon as possible. Trains routinely were sidetracked for hours or even days while troop trains took precedence.
Behind them lay a situation they knew and could possibly navigate. There were people—like Josef’s parents—who might be able to keep them safe even if they spent the rest of the war serving a prison term. There was always the possibility that the war would end sooner rather than later, that the Allies would come marching into Munich and they would be free.
Just a month earlier, Hans Scholl had assured Beth that the Americans would take Munich by the end of February 1943, and now Beth wished his optimism were warranted. She comforted herself on the trip by closing her eyes and imagining American soldiers stopping the transport truck in which she and Josef were riding and declaring them free to go wherever they pleased.
What lay ahead was a complete mystery—one where the clues were nothing more than gossip overheard through the years about a series of forced labor camps built by the Nazis in Poland for the purpose of using prisoners to produce whatever supplies might be needed for the war effort.
“Sobibor?” The guard escorting them had raised his eyebrows and exchanged a look with his companion. He had studied first her and then Josef closely. “You don’t look Jewish.”
“That’s because I am German,” Josef had snapped irritably and earned for himself a slap from the guard.
But Beth had thought about the guard’s comment long after they had climbed into the rear of the transport with half-a-dozen other prisoners and Josef had fallen asleep next to her. The way the man had said those words: You don’t look Jewish.
It was widely known that the Jews were being rounded up along with others—clergy and professors who dared to speak out, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses. But it was the Jews who seemed to bear the brunt of Hitler’s anger toward any group he deemed to be “subhuman.” It was also widely rumored—though Beth had no actual proof—that Jews and others were being sent to special extermination camps in eastern Poland. The label assigned to such facilities told the story of their fate.
The sun was high as they approached the camp. The day was unusually warm for late February. Through a slit in the canvas that covered the truck, Beth saw that they were in a rural area, and she could hear a train approaching across the fields. She closed her eyes and called to mind a summer’s day when she had gone to the foothills of the Alps for a day in the country with her aunt and uncle and Liesl. They had picnicked in the meadows and hiked the trails, singing Bavarian folk songs as they climbed. They had gathered wildflowers, and Aunt Ilse had made flower crowns for Liesl and Beth. But that had been years earlier when Liesl was still a toddler and Uncle Franz carried her easily on his back or shoulders as they climbed.
Where were Aunt Ilse and Uncle Franz and Liesl now? Beth couldn’t help but wonder. She prayed that they were safe. Perhaps they had managed to cross those mountains into Switzerland. Perhaps they were even now sitting at a café, enjoying a cup of real coffee with Marta and her family. Please hold them in Your light, she prayed silently as the truck rocked from side to side, throwing her against Josef on her right and an older man on her left.
Throughout the entire journey, Josef had said nothing. Instead he either slept or sat with his arm around her shoulders, his feet planted resolutely on the littered floor of the truck, his eyes closed.
Finally the truck rumbled to a stop. A man wearing the uniform of the SS stepped forward and spoke to the driver. Behind him near a railway siding that ran directly into the camp stood several more soldiers with guns, some of them also restraining snarling dogs. Nearest to the track stood men in dark blue coveralls wearing caps with the “BK” insignia for the railroad station detachment or Bahnhofkommando. In the distance the train whistle sounded.
“They leave nothing to chance,” Josef murmured as they waited their turn to leap from the truc
k to the ground. “Keep your eyes lowered,” he added as they inched forward toward the opening. “If you look ahead, you will be looking into the sun, and if you raise an arm to shield your eyes the dogs might attack.”
He was right, and Beth could not help but wonder how he knew. As she leapt from the truck, she heard a man cry out as a dog charged him and was barely held in check by its master. Slowly her eyes became accustomed to the light, and she cautiously took stock of her surroundings. They were just inside what she assumed were the main gates to the compound surrounded by a barbed-wire fence at least nine or ten feet tall. A very tall watchtower stood opposite a building marked ADMINISTRATION. Shorter watchtowers were arranged around the perimeter of the camp, and in each of them stood guards with guns, including machine guns.
Beth and Josef were standing in the midst of a cluster of buildings— most of them arranged in a square in one corner of the compound. She was able to identify some of the buildings as barracks, a garage, a barbershop, and a kitchen. There was one villa amongst those buildings that bore the sign Schwalbenest—Swallow’s Nest. Closer to where she and Josef and the others waited was a two-story villa—a simple country home down to the early spring flowers some prisoners were tending in the front yard. Over the front door hung a sign—HAPPY FLEA.
Strange.
Her eyes fully used to the bright sunlight, she realized that there was not just one barbed-wire fence but three of them—one within the other. Between the one nearest her and the middle one, guards patrolled the perimeter. The outermost fence was entwined with evergreen branches. But if their wardens thought this touch would make the place seem less intimidating, they were wrong as far as Beth was concerned.
Through her work with the White Rose, Beth was well aware that as early as 1940, the Nazis began establishing forced-labor camps in the Lublin district of Poland. Most were set up in existing structures such as schools or factories, but not the Sobibor extermination camp. Beth had overheard the two guards driving the transport talking and learned that this camp had been built by Jews taken from ghettos in the area. The guard had also told his partner that rumor had it that as soon as construction was completed, the laborers were shot.