Danzig Passage

by Bodie Thoene

“What can we do about it?”

  “We get them on our side. Every man has his price. Money, prestige, position. Torture. A quiet word to the wise. These methods will work with nearly every man on this page. Pressure applied wisely will have them speaking out in public and proclaiming the greatness of the Third Reich. They will extol my rule and loudly denounce the West.” He frowned. “Every one of them but this fellow, I think.”

  “Shall we simply kill him, mein Führer?”

  “And make him an eternal martyr? No,” Hitler laughed. “I know something about making martyrs. I would rather have Karl Ibsen on our side. One hundred percent.”

  “But you said yourself—”

  Hitler raised a chin to silence Goebbels. “We will try all these other methods first with Pastor Ibsen. It will be best if we break him for reasons less noble than his love for his family. Save that threat as a last resort. If such a man succumbs for the sake of freedom, or perhaps good food, or a bribe, his own hypocrisy will forever make him say to himself that he really had not understood the justice of the Nazi cause. His self-hatred will make him ours entirely.”

  Goebbels nodded. It was better to use methods that appealed to a man’s own selfish nature. The question was, of course, whether Karl Ibsen had such a nature. “And if such things fail to get results?”

  “Keep his family on hand. We will use them as our weapon. If we must. A man like Karl Ibsen will say or do anything if his loved ones are threatened. We will own his soul one way or another. First, make it a goal to reeducate him. Eventually, I promise you, Minister Goebbels, we will have Pastor Karl Ibsen on the Reich state radio to broadcast the justice of the Aryan cause right back into the teeth of Churchill. Our own ‘Big Broadcast of 1938.’”

  ***

  A blast of cold air hit Jacob’s face as he opened the door leading up to the bell tower. He pulled his stocking cap down over his ears and ascended the stone spiral steps to the top.

  The wind below strong from the north. Flags on top of ministry buildings stood out stiff on their poles. Jacob ducked low and remained out of sight. He did not care if he could not see the traffic rolling by as long as he could glimpse the sky for a few minutes.

  He sat on the floor of the round tower and watched a gray pigeon hop along the ledge above him. The great green bells were covered with pigeon droppings; the birds of Berlin had already lost their fear of the thundering bells of New Church. Like the voice of Pastor Ibsen and Jacob’s father, the bells were silent now—no reminder to the consciences of the Berliners who had so easily resumed their daily life.

  Jacob closed his eyes and tried to pray. In the end he could only tell God that he was afraid, that he was not ready to assume the responsibilities of manhood. How could he properly take care of Lori? He thought of her too much; he felt things for her that made being near her painful. He must steel himself, be brother and father to her, distance himself from those feelings. If he really was her brother, maybe he could fight with her and be angry with her the way he always seemed to be angry with Mark. She seemed so sad and alone. Jacob wanted only to comfort her, but to do so would be disastrous. It was difficult enough to sleep without the thought of reaching out to touch her.

  He inhaled deeply, then let his breath out slowly. Cold air and the bell tower seemed to help him breathe easier.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the hum of traffic on the street; the cooing of the pigeons and the hooting of horns . . . Then suddenly he heard the sound of voices in the yard below—people in the churchyard! Two men!

  “I check it every night. No need to worry. Nobody will break in!” It was the old watchman.

  “I just want to have a look around,” said a pleasant-sounding voice. “Perhaps there is some clue about the girl’s whereabouts. We have checked as many of the former church members as possible. No sign of her. No hint as to where she is.”

  Jacob’s breath grew shallow with fear. He slid down the stairs, praying that Lori and Mark would be close enough to hide! Through the door and into the corridor he could hear the rattle of chains and locks stirring on the entrance door of New Church. They were coming in!

  He wanted to yell for Mark and Lori, but of course they would be caught if he made a sound. His shoes sounded like gun blasts to his ears as he attempted to move silently. He pulled them off and ran in his stocking feet. The chains still rattled behind him! He dashed up to the choir loft and met Lori pale and trembling at the top of the steps. Mark held open the door to the bellows room. His eyes blinked with his heartbeat.

  A finger to his lips, Jacob pulled Lori into their hideout. They crammed into the bellows just as the laughter of the two men echoed into the foyer and permeated the walls of the entire church building.

  “They went over this place with a microscope, Agent Hess,” said the watchman.

  “There may be things they missed that I would see,” the second man replied without arrogance. He was not vaunting his ability; he was simply stating a fact. “Certain leaders feel it is important that this girl be found. I have specialized in rooting out difficult cases.”

  Enclosed in the leather cocoon of the organ bellows, the words sounded distant and muffled, but the threat seemed more terrible than even the first day. They had come back! Gestapo! They had not simply forgotten about Lori Ibsen!

  Lori wrapped her arms around Jacob’s middle. He held her close against him, and suddenly felt the obligation of father and brother to protect her. Mark squatted down in a little ball. Footsteps ascended into the choir loft. Only one set of footsteps, Jacob thought. The agent was alone.

  He smelled the bitter odor of cigarette tobacco. The agent stopped at the door of the dusty room and peered in. Lori, Jacob and Mark held their breaths. They could hear the man mumbling as he stared in. Jacob prayed his lungs would not explode. He eased his breath out slowly as the man turned away and shouted down from the choir loft to the watchman below.

  “Keep a sharp eye out for any light or movement, will you? If the girl comes back, no doubt she will look here for her family first. You will get a reward if we find them here, provided you are in on it.”

  The garbled reply of the old man was lost beneath the pounding of Jacob’s heart. He prayed that Gestapo Agent Hess would find no sign. After all, they had been so careful; everything was left exactly as it had been the first time the Gestapo ransacked the church. The floor was littered with torn hymnals. Paper was strewn everywhere. The cross, which had been ripped down from above the baptistery, lay where it had fallen across the altar. The pinwheel of a Nazi swastika was painted on the pulpit. Jacob had prevented Lori from cleaning it off.

  It seemed a very long time before the voices moved toward the door. Chains clanged against the heavy wood doors, sealing the church again. Only then did the trio relax a bit. Even so, Jacob insisted that they remain in the bellows until long after the sun went down.

  ***

  Many of the prisoners arrested with Pastor Karl Ibsen and Richard Kalner were shipped by train or truck to the overcrowded prison camp of Dachau. The younger, stronger men like Karl and Richard were sent to a new place several hours to the east of Berlin.

  Vast and still uncompleted, the nameless compound was being hewn from the forest that bordered Poland.

  From behind the layers of barbed-wire fence, Pastor Karl could clearly see the Polish guards who patrolled their side of the fences in search of any desperate refugees who might have attempted escape from Germany.

  Since Kristal Nacht, many such people cut through the wire in the night and carried children across the open field, only to be sniffed out by dogs or trapped in the long serpentine ditch just at the top of the rise. Most were caught and promptly returned to the German side of the line and handed over to the authorities. Men, women, and children were then brought by truck through the fortified gates of Nameless camp. Surrounded by gun towers and smirking guards, they were put to work building their own prison.

  Only a dozen prison barracks had been completed on th
e day Karl and Richard stepped stiffly onto the frozen ground. Those dozen were crammed to bursting with thousands of prisoners judged fit enough to construct the remainder of the facility.

  Heat and blankets were promised after the job was done. In the meantime, men in ragged street clothes, torn nightshirts, and sagging trousers worked urgently beneath the watchful eyes of gray-uniformed men in heavy winter coats and boots. Gloved fingers curled around the triggers of machine guns and pointed at the bare-handed prisoners who strung the barbed wire that surrounded them.

  The whack of hammers echoed in the dark green forest from early morning until it was too dark to see the head of a nail. When the first snow fell, silent and beautiful against the evergreens, one hundred men died of exposure in a single day. A grave-digging detail was appointed the task of carting off frozen bodies and digging shallow graves for them in the frozen earth.

  Even so, those who had come from other prisons before said that this was a virtual resort compared to Dachau. There was food here, at least—if a man could choke down rancid bacon and rotting potatoes. Most managed to eat. Those who did not were the next to die.

  Although it was forbidden to call out another man’s name during work hours, Richard managed to let every prisoner nearby know that Karl Ibsen was pastor of an evangelical church in Berlin—a man with a good position who really did not have to be here if he had only followed the Nazi doctrine against his Jewish parishioners. These facts caused others in the camp to look at Karl with an attitude of respect, even admiration.

  Most were here because they had no choice. They were Jewish; they were anti-Nazi; they had said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Few at Nameless camp would not have gladly forsaken everything to get out of this place. They would have kissed the boot of a Storm Trooper and called Adolf Hitler blessed if only the gate of Nameless would swing open for them, and the border guards in Poland would look the other way. And then they would have run hard and fast and never look back at those they were leaving behind.

  This was sensible thinking, logical for any man who loved life and longed to live past tomorrow. But this Pastor Karl Ibsen—now here was an unusual man, arrested while trying to convince Richard Kalner to come along and be hidden away from the Nazis!

  Some said that Pastor Karl was a fool. A few encouraged him to claim that a mistake had been made; that he had only gone to the Kalners’ apartment to collect on a debt when along came the Gestapo.

  But Pastor Karl would not deny what he had done. It was a small thing. Small and pitiful and much too late.

  “They will ask him to make a confession of his error,” said a fellow who had been behind the wire for months. “And he will say he was a fool for helping lousy Jews, and then they will let him go back to Berlin. Maybe even back to his church if he is a good boy and promises to proclaim the wisdom of Mein Kampf from the pulpit.”

  “Pastor Karl will not deny us,” Richard defended. “You will see. He is one with us.”

  ***

  Jacob strode from the charity room holding cans of tuna high in the air. He had found a treasure of foodstuffs in there, he declared—everything that had been collected since the beginning of the food drive in October.

  “Tuna and canned meat. Flour in barrels! Salt and beans!”

  There was even more than that, as it turned out—everything three people would need to survive for a long time. They could live here for months like three castaways on a desert island. The Nazis had sealed them in, but if they were careful, they could survive, and no one would ever know.

  Mark looked less gleeful than his brother, Lori noticed. Maybe he was homesick and heartsick, as she was. At least Jacob and Mark had each other. Family!

  She could not make herself care about the food. The prospect of being shut up inside New Church without Mama or Papa or Jamie seemed like prison. Jacob had already begun making rules:

  Thou shalt not listen to the radio until the watchman is gone.

  Thou shalt not take baths in the baptistery lest someone hear the noisy water pipes and sound the alarm.

  Thou shalt sleep in the organ bellows room for quick escape.

  The list went on and on.

  “Well, what do you think?” Jacob balanced the canned tuna on his head and turned slowly as if he were modeling a hat.

  She did not smile. Not that he was not funny—at least he had always been able to make her laugh before. But not now. She shook her head and tried to tell him she was not in the mood for games.

  “We’re rich!” Mark crowed, producing a bag of hard candy. “I thought they looked everywhere, took everything not nailed down.”

  “You think these thugs will look in a room marked Charity when they just looted every fancy shop in Berlin?” Jacob still smiled, but not so broadly. He let the cans slip off his head into his hands. “Practically a miracle, eh, Lori?” He was trying to cheer her up, but it was no use.

  She bit her lip and tried to keep from telling them both that none of this mattered, that she wished she had been arrested and taken away with Mama and Jamie. “It’s just food,” she said. “It doesn’t matter unless Mama and Papa come back here. What’s the use of any of it?” With that she fled the room, leaving them staring after her and wondering what more she could ask for in such conditions.

  Down the darkened hall she heard Mark’s voice: “Girls! I wish the Nazis had taken her instead of Jamie! We might have had a better time of it then.”

  Lori muttered through her tears, “I wish so too, you little brat!” But she was too far away for him to hear.

  15

  Prophetic Voices

  The woman clerk at the Foreign Ministry office removed the envelope from a scuffed brown leather letter case and placed it on the desk in front of Anna and Theo Lindheim.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “This was returned from Germany by diplomatic courier. The attaché in Berlin attempted to contact your sister, Mrs. Lindheim, but apparently the family has . . . left town.”

  Left town. The very words carried the suggestion of doom.

  “But surely there is some explanation,” Theo began. “They have just left Berlin? Their home? Work? How can this be?”

  “Really, that is the only message I have for you.” The clerk directed her gaze to Anna. “We are not in the business of delivering personal messages, you see. And your sister is a German citizen.” She nudged the letter across to Anna. “There is really nothing more our embassy in Berlin or this ministry can do.”

  Anna took the letter and held it in her hands as though its return to her conveyed a message too ominous to contemplate. “Certainly there must be a way for me to contact my sister.”

  “Perhaps through the German Embassy?” The woman knew, of course, that this was impossible. How could the Lindheims approach the German Embassy and expect help?

  “You will not assist us, then?” Theo took the letter from Anna. “What about their children? Surely you understand the danger they could be in because of our own efforts to aid German refugees.”

  The woman shrugged and looked to other work. “They are not refugees, are they? They are full German citizens. Not Jews. Not involved in the pogrom, certainly. Mr. Lindheim, are you aware of the caseload we are dealing with? Requests for visas from truly desperate people. My heavens, our fellow in Berlin went beyond his duty in this instance. He is not a mail carrier.” She offered no sympathy. She was busy, and she let them know it as she thumbed through a stack of papers.

  “If there is any word of my sister’s whereabouts—” Anna tried again to find some spark of hope.

  “There will be nothing from this department,” said the clerk abruptly. “Perhaps you should put in a request with the Red Cross. And certainly you must have connections still in Germany that might assist you in locating your sister and her family.”

  Anna told herself that Helen and Karl and the children must be safe. Perhaps they had simply taken a holiday from the terror of Berlin. Maybe even now they were in some quiet refuge
in the Harz Mountains. A thousand times Anna had begged them to leave the new Germany. They had refused, citing their duty to remain and work even as the world seemed to crumble around them.

  Anna had not written them for fear of jeopardizing their safety through contact with her. She and Theo were labeled as criminals by the Nazi government. A phone call or a letter from her to her sister might have cast suspicion on them as well.

  Somehow Anna had continued to picture Helen shopping on Unter den Linden, or playing the organ at church. As Anna and Theo descended the broad staircase of the government office, Anna wondered if she would ever again play a duet with her sister. Suddenly nagging doubts transformed into full-blown fears—for Helen; for Karl; for the children. Anna knew well enough how caring Christian people had managed to fall through the cracks and then totally disappear from the face of the Third Reich.

  ***

  Within the refuge of King Faisal’s palace in Baghdad, Haj Amin maintained his own staff of bodyguards and servants as well as a late-model shortwave radio to keep in touch with his fighters in the British Mandate. Although reports from the majority of Jerusalem and the southern area of Palestine had been excellent, news from Galilee had been dismal. Holy Strugglers owned the roads after dark everywhere—except around Hanita. The pace of terrorist attacks against the English and the Jews was increasing everywhere—except near Hanita. German SS commandos were training Arab mercenaries; their success was undeniable throughout the Mandate—except near Hanita. And now its neighboring Jewish kibbutzim seemed to be gaining strength as well!

  At last Haj Amin held the explanation of that success in his hands. A dozen notes, all written in the same English scrawl in green crayon, were signed by one man: SAMUEL ORDE, CAPTAIN.

  Some notes were stained with the blood of those who had fallen in the fighting against this dangerous English officer. All of them served up the same message to the guerrilla fighters in northern Palestine. The resistance of the Jews in that area had suddenly become fierce and deadly! Where twenty thousand British troops had failed, this one English captain and his secret army succeeded.