Danzig Passage

by Bodie Thoene

  “Two . . . hundred . . . Marks? Each carpet? That is four hundred.” Lucy gazed at the rolled treasures in astonishment. She had not guessed! Could not have imagined! “But . . . won’t the Reich steal them back again?”

  He smiled briefly. “No,” he said flatly, the simple word fraught with meaning. “My friend is out of the country on business. But I am authorized to pay the sum, and he will reimburse me. Therefore, you are in agreement with the reward?”

  Lucy bit her lip, then frowned. Perhaps she had chosen the most valuable thing in the apartment to steal. “Well, I . . . ”

  “You will think of something to tell him. A bright Fräulein like you.” He was already counting out the money, and the matter was settled.

  ***

  Without questioning Otto, Karin Wallich had sewn their passport photos into the lining of his heavy, double-breasted camel’s-hair coat. It was a fine overcoat. Worth a lot of money.

  Otto did not wear it as he entered the Dorotheum; it was wrapped in paper suitable for storage. This was a wise procedure if a man wanted to pawn his best coat. Otto had also tossed in a handful of mothballs for good measure.

  He entered the Dorotheum at the same moment as the tall, beautiful blond woman and her porter. He held the door open for them both and smiled at her obvious attempt to pretend that the rugs over the fellow’s shoulders were not hers.

  Otto knew this woman—or at least he knew of her. She was the mistress of Wolfgang von Fritschauer, now comfortably housed in the former flat of Elisa Lindheim—all thanks to Otto. It paid for Wolf to keep on Otto’s good side.

  His eyes lingered on her shapely legs as she ascended the steps. The rug bearer was also noticing the striking beauty of his employer. Heads turned everywhere in the Dorotheum. No doubt it was difficult for a woman like that to do anything without being noticed.

  Otto had heard Wolf boasting about those Persian carpets. They were his best bargain in Vienna, Wolf said. So what was Wolf’s mistress doing hocking the carpets? Maybe she just needed the money. Then Otto smiled at his own curiosity. After all, someone might look at him and wonder why he was pawning his overcoat.

  ***

  At first the news of a home in England for refugee children sounded like an answer to the prayer of every Jewish mother in the Reich.

  Peter watched his mother’s face as she listened to the distant BBC broadcast. At first her eyes reflected joy; then the slow realization of separation from her children etched pain deeply into her expression.

  “Those who may apply for the child transports must meet the following conditions. Applicants must produce a certificate of health demonstrating that the child has no physical or mental impairments—”

  “That leaves Marlene out,” Peter joked, but his mother did not smile. Marlene shot him a black look, although she could not fully understand the English words.

  “Applicants between the ages of infancy and sixteen years of age will be considered. Passage through Poland to the Free Port of Danzig must be secured, and all economic conditions imposed by the government of the Third Reich must be complied with.”

  Those conditions included the payment of all fines and taxes owed by the parents of the children to the Nazi government. Papers must be current. Children of criminals against the Reich would not be allowed to immigrate.

  At least twenty other conditions had to be met, but Peter did not hear them. Peter’s father, Michael Wallich, was considered a criminal by the authorities. This one issue alone shattered any hope that they would be allowed to leave Vienna. They were hiding out precisely because they had no money to pay the additional fines that had been levied on them. Without cash to pay off the Gestapo, no papers would be issued. Beyond all that was the question of purchasing train passage to faraway Danzig.

  Peter patted his mother on the back. “Well, Mother, you see? You can’t sell us, and you can’t even give us away! If you had any money you could pay someone to take us to England but—” He shrugged. “It looks like you are stuck with us, yes?”

  The pain did not leave Karin Wallich’s eyes, even though she managed a smile for Peter.

  ***

  All the sardine cans were empty.

  “I’m sorry,” Alfie told the mother cat, Joseph. “I don’t have anything left but one can of peaches. I know you don’t like peaches.”

  Joseph did not seem to mind. She flicked her tail and fed her kittens, then ran up the steps and disappeared. When she came back, she cleaned her whiskers as if she had just eaten a sardine, and then she fed her kittens again.

  Alfie would have like it if he could eat, too. He saved the last can of peaches for two more days and did not open it until his stomach felt as if it were chewing itself.

  Now there was nothing left at all, and Alfie’s stomach hurt again. He sat still because his head was spinning. The kittens were fat and round. Joseph had lots of milk for them and did not ask Alfie for sardines. This made Alfie think that maybe Joseph knew where to find food on the outside.

  Joseph licked her babies clean while Alfie stacked his empty cans. He put his tin soldiers on top of one another but felt too weak to play with them.

  “I am hungry, Joseph,” he said. “Do you know where food is?”

  The cat smiled a wide cat smile and licked her lips. She got up from her blanket and shook her babies loose. Then she walked toward the steps. Yes, she seemed to say, I know where there is food.

  Alfie stooped and scooted all the kittens back into one wiggling heap on the blanket. He put a diamond ring in his pocket in case he might need to trade it for food.

  Joseph waited patiently for him at the top of the steps and then dashed out from the gate while he fumbled with the lock.

  It was daylight, clear and not too cold. They sky shone blue behind the jumble of bare branches, and Alfie looked up at the sky and laughed. It had been a long time since he had been out of the dead-Halder house. It felt very good to have sunlight on his face again.

  He followed Joseph, who strolled toward the stone wall surrounding the churchyard. The wall was taller than Alfie’s head, but the cat jumped over it easily. Alfie went back to the secret opening through the fence and crawled through. He took a deep breath and then looked around to see where Joseph had gone. She sat on a stone bench beneath a tree. She waited for Alfie, then bounced across the grass and then along the sidewalk in front of New Church.

  Even though Alfie was hungry and light-headed, he smiled and waved at passing cars. It had been so long, and today was a better day than the day the men had put up the boards and signs all over New Church. Things looked almost normal except for the black heap where the Jewish church had been.

  There were city sounds and clanging trolley bells and people walking into shops up the street. Joseph looked over her shoulder at Alfie, her fur shiny in the sunlight. She walked straight toward the ruins of the Jewish synagogue, and Alfie saw a line of people waiting to go into a building just behind where the church had burned.

  Alfie breathed a deep breath. He smelled food. Joseph smiled at him. He picked her up and held her as he crossed the street.

  He took a place at the end of the line. The faces of the people did not look very happy. There were not very many men—mostly women, and a lot of children, and some old men. All of them looked at him strangely; they knew he was different. Alfie was sure that they could see he was a Dummkopf.

  “Is there food here?” he asked a pretty woman in a brown tweed coat and a black scarf. Her eyes were sad. She reached over and stroked Joseph’s head.

  “The soup kitchen is open,” said the woman. “You have a pretty cat.”

  “Can I get food here?” Alfie’s stomach growled. “I don’t have any more sardines.”

  The woman looked down at two little girls who clung to her skirts. “This is the line for the children’s transport.”

  “Where can I get food?” Alfie said. “I am hungry, and my cat said I could eat here.”

  She smiled slightly and stroked Josep
h’s head again. “You have a smart cat,” she said. “Stay with me. I will make sure you get something.”

  “My name is Alfie. My cat is Joseph. She has kittens.”

  The lady smiled a little more, but Alfie could see that her eyes were still sad. “Where do you live, Alfie?”

  He thought for a moment and decided it would not be good to tell her too much. “I live with my mother.”

  An old woman standing in front of the nice lady leaned in and whispered, “I didn’t know there were any of them left on the streets.”

  Alfie knew what she meant, but he pretended not to notice the way the grandmother looked at him.

  “Poor thing,” said the young woman. Her children stared up at Alfie and the cat. They knew that he was a Dummkopf, but he smiled back at them in a friendly way.

  “Would you like to pet my cat?” he offered. “Her name is Joseph.”

  “Are you going to England on the transport ship?” one of the little girls asked.

  Alfie thought about it. “Yes, I will go.”

  “Mama, can he go?” asked the second girl.

  The old grandmother shook her head and put a finger to her lips. “Only healthy children,” she whispered.

  She thought Alfie did not hear, but he did. She did not mean children who were not sick. Alfie knew that she meant no Dummkopfs could go to England on this ship.

  “Maybe I won’t go,” Alfie said bravely, “because I do not want to leave my cat Joseph and her kittens. They would miss me. Maybe they would even starve if I was not here to feed them.” Saying this made him feel better.

  A short man in a torn sweater walked down the line. He handed out forms that everyone took and studied. Alfie took the white paper also and pretended he could read it. As the line moved closer to the door, people filled in the blanks and talked about what it said.

  “Only ten thousand children . . . ”

  “It is something, anyway.”

  “Do you suppose there will be room?”

  Alfie folded his paper and put it in his pocket. No room for Dummkopfs, he told himself. But it was all right. He was needed. Joseph needed him. God had brought him there to care for Joseph and to save little Werner’s life.

  Later, over a bowl of thin soup and a piece of bread, Alfie felt much better about things. He would come back here if they let him. These were Jews, he decided, and he was glad they shared their soup with him even though he was not smart.

  ***

  The present site of the German Railways Information Bureau was at number 6 Teinfaltstrasse in Vienna. It had been taken over, Lucy heard, from a Jewish-run banking firm after the Austrian Anschluss. It was of suitable grandeur for the lofty aspirations of those who wished to travel within the ever-expanding borders of the Great Reich. It provided an atmosphere of elegance and prosperity as well as customary German efficiency.

  Lucy stood outside and gazed longingly through the gold lettering. Reichsbahnzentrale. The eagle and the swastika were stenciled above. To the right, a large travel poster showed a photograph of a luxury hotel and spa in the newly acquired Sudetenland. On the left, an even larger photograph depicted a quaint row of old burgher houses with steep roofs and half timbers and a carved coat-of-arms on each door. The charming scene reminded Lucy of the lovely old houses in Munich. But this place was not in the Reich, in spite of the Teutonic appearance and the fluttering Nazi flag frozen in the corner of the poster.

  “Danzig.” Lucy repeated the name on the poster. “VISIT DANZIG.” It looked like a place she might want to visit, a place to hide. Everyone in Danzig spoke German. This made it more appealing as a destination than France, since Lucy spoke only German. She had wanted to run away to Paris, but it occurred to her as she listened to Wolf order dinner in a French restaurant that it would be impossible. Belgium and Holland were likewise ruled out. Wolf could speak half a dozen languages and never failed to seize every opportunity to do so in front of her. The effect was intended to make her feel small and stupid. In fact, it made her consider ways to get around her limitations.

  The travel poster advertised FREE CITY OF DANZIG—German to the core and yet not a part of Hitler’s Reich. It was, Wolf had explained sourly to her one night, the last of the old-time city-states. Like the Vatican in Rome, it had its own government. It had once been a part of Germany, a part of Wolf’s own Prussia. It had been vilely cut off from the Fatherland after the war, he said, to provide the one port to the Baltic Sea for Poland. The League of Nations administrated the 200 square-mile port, but the customs house was staffed by Poles. The police force and army were also Polish.

  Wolf spoke about Danzig with fire in his eyes. He still considered it to be German, just like Austria and the Sudetenland. One day, no doubt, it would be reincorporated into the Reich. But for now, Lucy only cared that the language in Danzig was plain German and the politics were not. The swath of Polish territory separating Danzig from Germany would also separate Lucy from Wolf.

  “Danzig!” She whispered the name hopefully and entered through the tall glass doors of the building. It still looked and smelled like a bank. Pillars of green-and-white-swirled marble supported the echoing ceiling. Clerks stood in cages behind the counters, and long lines of would-be travelers waited for the next available clerk. Oak racks along one poster-covered wall held timetables for steamship lines and railroads and attractive brochures depicting every possible destination within the Reich and without. Fresh new brochures had been printed immediately after the borders of Czechoslovakia had been eliminated. Under the heading Czechoslovakia few pamphlets remained. A forlorn row marked Prague had been picked clean. Lucy supposed that many German officers, like Wolf, knew that the next destination on the Reich map was Prague.

  She shuddered, glad she had not decided to travel to Prague. It would be swallowed up soon enough, and then what would she have done?

  Just below Czechoslovakia and to the right were a dozen different booklets showing the glorious sights of Danzig. Lucy picked up one and thumbed through it. She looked guiltily over her shoulder, wondering if anyone in the bustling office could read her thoughts. No SS maternity home for Lucy Strasburg! A tiny room and a job in Danzig! She would say her husband had gone to sea, and when she had enough money she would go away too. Maybe she would take French lessons and learn to speak so well she could move to Paris after all.

  She gathered up the pamphlets and shoved them furtively into her handbag. Then she walked to the rack marked RAILWAY TIMETABLES and then on to the one labeled SHIPPING LINES.

  Exhilarated, she hurried out of the office. No one stopped her. No one cared that she might want to take a little trip and never come back.

  She could hide her treasures from Wolf, and he would never know she was gone until it was too late. All his SS laws could not touch her in Danzig. Such matters were not addressed in travel guides, but Lucy knew that in the little port, she would be the mother of the baby she carried.

  ***

  The news of child refugee transports whispered over the barely audible radio in the study of New Church. The four children sat in a tight semicircle around the receiver. They pressed their heads together and tried to breathe softly as the details and conditions for immigration were spelled out.

  “Of course this changes everything,” Jacob said when the news was over.

  “It does not change anything,” Lori insisted. “You heard all the regulations to get on one of those boats.”

  Jacob was adamant. He switched off the radio and scooted back on the floor to lean against the bookshelf in the darkness. “The regulations are—”

  “No children of political prisoners,” Lori interrupted. “That means us, in case you have not figured that out. They mean to hold us hostage here, threaten our parents with some harm against us. I have known that all along.”

  “The conditions are only for getting out of Germany and to Danzig with the official Nazi seal of approval on our documents,” Jacob said.

  “Which we and other hostage
children like us will never get. Many are called, Jacob, but few will be going to England. The Nazis will never let us go.”

  “So what? They would not let us go to Prague, either, and we have been talking and planning all day. Listen! If we can get out of Germany at one border, why not another? And if we can get to Danzig, maybe the English will let us get on one of their boats, out of reach of marching armies. The German army will have to swim the Channel before they take England. I want to put as much distance as possible between me and them!”

  Lori sat silent considering the logic of his reasoning. Maybe he was right. And yet, Prague was a certain refuge. Maybe Mama would be in Prague. Certainly the people there knew Aunt Anna and could contact her in England, tell her that Lori and Jamie were safe.

  “Well?” Jacob demanded a response. “It’s closer to the Polish border from Berlin. It makes perfect sense . . . ”

  She gazed intently into the darkness, trying to decide what they should do, trying to see what Mama and Papa would want them to do. One choice seemed as dangerous as the other. The Czechs were turning back refugees at every crossing. The Poles actually drove truckloads of prisoners to the German side of the frontier and deposited them in prison camps.

  Lori had found an outdated map of Germany in her father’s study and presented it as her credentials for participation in the planning meeting in the choir-robing room. Jacob accepted her offering with a reluctant nod. He did not want her to think a map would entitle her to make any decisions, especially not with word of the refugee transports from Danzig.

  He spread the map on the floor and they knelt down to study it. Jacob, on the south, had the best perspective. Lori, to the north, read the names of cities and nations upside down. Jamie stared silently from the east and Mark glared in the west.

  Tiny dots, pinpoints on thin paper, linked by a grid of black lines. Ten thousand children would be passed from one dot to another.

  The four sat in thoughtful silence for more than a minute as they considered what lay between the dot of Berlin and the dot of Prague.