Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin

by Harald Gilbers

  “There’s nothing like going out in style, right? You can’t be doing that badly. What actually happened?”

  When Oppenheimer told her about his nighttime excursion with the SD, her face lit up with excitement. Psychology was Hilde’s pet issue, in particular research into the criminal mind. Oppenheimer had already guessed that she would be interested in the case. But right now, she focused on a different issue.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Why on earth is the SS working on this murder case?”

  “It can only mean that this matter is very important to the party. But I have no idea what’s behind it. They didn’t tell me anything.”

  “What does a dead woman have to do with state security?”

  They sat thinking in silence for the next few minutes. When Oppenheimer inhaled the smoke of the second cigarette through the meerschaum mouthpiece, he noticed how greedily Hilde sucked in the blue haze.

  “Don’t you want to treat yourself to one?” he asked.

  “No, I’m all right. Too precious. Do you have any idea what sort of things you can arrange for a cigarette on the black market? It’s better than any cash. I prefer to abstain.”

  “You’re making me feel guilty.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry, I have enough reserves. But, Richard, I’m not sure if that’s clever.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This idea of you disappearing. I can of course understand Lisa, but it seems to me that the SS has already become aware of you. If you disappear now, they’ll notice straightaway. I’m sure they’ve already found out where you work.”

  The führer or the community of the German people or whatever other entity had decided that even a Jew like Richard Oppenheimer had to support the war effort. Which was why for the last few months he had been slaving away, polishing machines in a small factory.

  “Maybe they won’t come by anymore and will leave me alone,” Oppenheimer objected.

  “In that case, there would be no need for you to disappear.”

  “We’re going around in circles.” He groaned. “I’m guessing you still have your contacts?”

  “I’ll find somewhere for you if necessary. There are options. It’s not easy, but maybe we should give you a whole new identity. Because of all the bombings, a large number of new identity cards had to be made. The ministry hasn’t been able to check all the details for a while now. First of all, we have to get an attestation of a bombing from one of the district authorities. If you’re lucky, you might even get a substitute Aryan ration card for a month. If we manage to smuggle you in somewhere for registration, there’s even the possibility of you getting a fully valid citizenship under a fictitious name. As long as you don’t get caught with your pants down, they won’t notice anything.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  “Then all you can do is hide out privately somewhere and keep your mouth shut. And you’ll have to keep changing your lodgings. You’ll be on the run the whole time. I hope you realize this.”

  “I fear I have no choice,” Oppenheimer replied despondently.

  Hilde thought for a moment. “All right. This is what we’re going to do; you think about it while I get things moving. We can always call it off. In the meantime, you need to get ready.”

  “I’ve already packed the few things that I own.”

  “What about work?”

  “I can miss two days without a doctor’s note. Any longer and I need one from an independent medical examiner.”

  Hilde considered the options. “Hmm. Which colleague do you have a good relationship with?”

  “Well, there’s Arnold. I told you about him once, the Jew who polishes machines with me and who looks like the knight Sigurd in the flesh. And then there’s Ludovic. He always comes and chats with us, although he’s not really allowed to.”

  “A Frenchman?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, his German is just as bad as my French. He’s a young chap from Avignon, that much I’ve discovered. He was drafted from there for a voluntary labor stint.”

  “Ah, so they dragged him to Berlin. Ridiculous.” Hilde briefly shook her head. “Right. Then start playing them some symptoms tomorrow. Dizzy spells would be best, breathlessness, something like that. Come up with something, but don’t exaggerate. I know what a bad actor you are. Come and see me tomorrow. I should have managed to sort most of the other things by then.”

  “All right. I have quite a lot to do, then.”

  “And one more thing—if someone asks Lisa about your whereabouts, she should say that you’ve disappeared because you were having marital problems. Then she should be off the hook.”

  “I hope so,” Oppenheimer said gloomily.

  Hilde leaned forward. As usual, she was able to read his mind. “I will keep an eye on Lisa. It’s going to be over soon anyway. This is the last gasp of Hitler’s mob.”

  “I’ve been hearing that for the past eighteen months, and still nothing has happened.”

  “No, really. It’s all over town that there’s going to be an invasion soon. The British radio has been calling on their resistance fighters in the west not to strike until the order is given. Our Nazis will soon be fighting a war on two fronts. Then things will come to an end quickly.”

  “I’m not convinced.”

  Hilde nodded toward the record player. “Time for Johann Sebastian?”

  “Definitely. How is my gramophone?”

  “It hasn’t complained yet. But you know that I don’t have any use for it.”

  When Oppenheimer, like all Jews, was ordered to turn in all his valuables, he had hidden the apparatus at Hilde’s. It would have been pointless to try to pretend that Oppenheimer’s gramophone and record collection belonged to Lisa. There was no other alternative, and Hilde’s Ark for forbidden literature seemed the suitable place for his gramophone. With the countless Brahms, Bach, and Beethoven records, she would have been well equipped for the time after the brown deluge, if only she had any understanding of music. He had tried to educate her on this several times, always without success. And so it sometimes happened that on his Sunday visits he did nothing but listen to music for hours on end, while Hilde was busy with other things.

  While Oppenheimer let his gaze roam over his records in order to choose one, Hilde said, “It’s a bit chilly out, isn’t it? You’d hardly believe it’s already May. Wait, I managed to get hold of a nice specimen this week.”

  She returned to the kitchen with a book. “Here,” she said, proudly handing over the volume.

  Oppenheimer flipped through the pages. “A wedding gift?” he asked.

  “Of course. But look, leather cover, with a personal dedication from the führer.”

  He gazed at Hitler’s scrawl, but the name of the recipient meant nothing to him. He must be a bigwig. Despite himself, Oppenheimer began to smile. Although almost everything was rationed nowadays, there was no lack of copies of Mein Kampf. If you really wanted to, you could probably get hold of dozens of copies of Hitler’s tractate. And Hilde was an expert in this area.

  “To celebrate the occasion,” said Hilde and picked the book up again. Then she opened the door of the black stove in the corner of the room, stood in front of it, and proclaimed, “For Stefan Zweig.” Then she threw the luxury edition of Hitler’s Mein Kampf onto the coals and lit it with a match.

  “Joy, bright spark of divinity!” the choir belted from the gramophone as the book went up in flames. Hilde turned in surprise.

  “Not very original,” she commented on Oppenheimer’s choice of music.

  “But appropriate,” he retaliated.

  “Ah, that’s better.” Hilde stretched her hands out toward the warmth that began spreading throughout the room. When she saw that Oppenheimer was sitting in front of the gramophone, his eyes half-shut, listening to the music, making no move to speak, she said, “Will you excuse me? I have a few things to do.”

  Slowly, Oppenheimer grew tired. There was nothing more for him to do. Everything ha
d been discussed and arranged. He could only ponder how much of a difference one day could make.

  Hilde was working noisily in the treatment room. Oppenheimer was aware of this without paying any heed. He was just happy that she made it possible for him not to have to pretend or be careful. She demanded nothing in return for her friendship. It almost seemed as if his presence was reward enough for her.

  After a while, Hilde returned and sat down next to him. “Here,” she said and gave him a cardigan. “I noticed that you’re running around in darned clothes again.”

  Hesitantly, Oppenheimer took the gift. He was a bit embarrassed by Hilde giving him such generous presents all the time. But a warm cardigan would come in very useful in these times of strict rationing.

  “And you really don’t need it?”

  Hilde shook her head. “It’s not my size, and beige doesn’t suit me. Better I give it to you than let the Nazis get their hands on it next time they collect material for spinning.”

  “Thanks.” Oppenheimer had to chuckle. “I wonder how the SS came to choose me of all people. There are enough inspectors trained in murder investigations out there. Surely they could have found a line-toeing crime officer. So why get me out of bed in the middle of the night and whip me over to where the body was found?”

  “I think it’s obvious what happened. They dug around in the files and discovered that you were involved in the investigation into Karl Großmann.”

  Oppenheimer flinched when he heard the name of that monster, after all these years. For a doctor like Hilde, who was interested in the psyche of a pathological murderer, Großmann was just what she’d been waiting for. And although many years had passed since then, the residents of Berlin still shuddered when they remembered this man’s inconceivable deeds. Oppenheimer had spoken to Hilde about murder cases on more than one occasion, but now he almost regretted having gone into so much detail. Recently, he thought of Großmann less and less often, but the memories of that man’s deeds slumbered in the recesses of his mind and were just waiting to be awakened. It had been the first case he’d been involved in as a young officer, and it had turned out to be the worst case he would work on in his entire career.

  “But that happened ages ago,” he protested. “And anyway, I was just an assistant. I was just a runner and wrote the occasional protocol of his interviews. That was all.”

  “Großmann is considered the classic sex killer. Maybe the SS think that they’re dealing with a similar type here.”

  “I can’t see a correlation,” Oppenheimer replied stubbornly. In actual fact, he’d had this thought a while ago, but part of his mind rebelled against the notion that he might once again be dealing with such a beast in human form.

  * * *

  When Oppenheimer left, Hilde remained standing in the doorway, watching him disappear. “God be with you,” she said in a toneless voice. Of course, he couldn’t hear her, but as nowadays every parting could be the last, she got sentimental quite easily.

  She went up the stairs into her bedroom and closed the door to the wardrobe from where she had taken the cardigan.

  Erich’s cardigan.

  Back in the deepest recesses of her cupboard, there were still a few items of her husband’s clothing. Hilde had met him during her medical training. She had admired his intellect, which was accompanied by a marked ruthlessness. For a few years, Hilde had really believed that she’d met her soul mate.

  Initially, the marriage had been quite harmonious. Hilde had accepted her fate of playing the housewife that Erich wanted, although she had always seen it as her destiny to run her own doctor’s surgery. But when her husband started to take a growing interest in genetics and eugenics, he had slipped away from her.

  Hilde had fought for her marriage, but when Erich finally joined the SS, where, as Hauptscharführer Hauser, he trained to become a military doctor, Hilde took the appropriate action and ended things.

  Since then, Erich had risen up in the Nazi hierarchy. Despite everything that had happened, Hilde still felt some sort of affection for him, a feeling she resented herself for. However, he protected her. Erich would do anything to prevent his reputation with the senior party members from being compromised. He had laid himself open to blackmail. And Hilde knew it. She could afford to take certain risks, knowing that if things went wrong, Erich would sort them.

  She longed to forget him. For this reason, she had started giving away Erich’s clothes. Hilde had set herself the goal of driving him from her mind completely as soon as all the clothes were gone. So now she was giving away her memories. Piece by piece. One more harsh winter and Hilde would have forgotten Erich. At least that was what she hoped.

  As Hilde closed the cupboard again, wondering if Oppenheimer also expected his wife to run the household, there was a knock on the surgery door. It was only now that she remembered she was expecting someone. The excitement about Richard had distracted her.

  Hilde opened the door.

  “Am I in the right place…?” The young woman with the freckled face broke off anxiously and looked at the piece of paper in her hand. Then she handed it to Hilde.

  A brief glance sufficed. “Yes, you’re in the right place. You’d better come in.”

  The young woman had taken off her coat and stood in the treatment room, clearly uncertain.

  “Don’t worry,” Hilde tried to calm her, “I am a doctor. Nothing is going to happen to you. How old are you?”

  “I am … I’ll be seventeen next month.”

  Hilde guessed that she was at least two years younger. She sighed at the thought.

  “I’ve got everything ready. If you don’t want to do it, then we don’t need to go ahead. One word from you and I’ll call it all off.”

  The young woman followed Hilde’s instructions, lay down on the treatment couch, and spread her legs.

  4

  MONDAY, MAY 8, 1944

  The night had passed without interruption. They had even been spared by the so-called Mosquitos, isolated planes that dropped their bombs at random. It was early morning when Oppenheimer trotted listlessly down the stairs and made his way to work.

  As soon as he stepped out onto the pavement, he spotted a man at the next street corner. This chap had to be Gestapo or SD. After just a few steps, he heard a voice close behind him.

  “Mr. Oppenheimer?”

  He turned around and stared into the stranger’s face.

  “Yes?” Oppenheimer asked.

  “Sicherheitsdienst. Please come with me.”

  “I have to get to work…”

  “Don’t worry about that,” was the laconic answer.

  * * *

  A metallic clinking reached Oppenheimer’s ear. Followed by shouts and further clinking. A few seconds later, the two white figures stood facing each other, motionless, appraising each other.

  “Sit down,” the SD officer commanded. Oppenheimer had no choice but to obey and watch the two fencers in the gigantic hall. At the end of the fight, the winner took off his mask. It was Vogler. This was the first time Oppenheimer saw him in daylight. He estimated him to be in his midtwenties. Ash-blond hair fell across his forehead. Oppenheimer’s sister-in-law, who worked as a hairdresser in Leipzig, liked to call this indefinable color dishwater blond. Vogler came toward them with a spring in his step and pulled off his gloves. Oppenheimer noticed the jet-black SS insignia on the white metal vest and frowned.

  “Come along, Oppenheimer,” the Hauptsturmführer said by way of a greeting. Oppenheimer got up and trotted along behind him. Once they’d reached the changing rooms, Vogler mustered him with interest. Then he began to get undressed. Oppenheimer felt a bit queasy, as he didn’t know what sort of game was being played here. The situation was similar to the fencing match just now. Both were waiting for the other to make the first move. Vogler took a towel and strutted around naked in front of Oppenheimer. This was probably his not unsubtle way of showing those around him that he had nothing to be ashamed of.

 
; Finally, Oppenheimer asked, “Why am I here?”

  In passing, Vogler said, “I’ll keep it short. We need your help in solving this murder case.”

  Silently, Oppenheimer followed him to the shower. Of course, he was tempted by the case, but he had no idea what he would get himself into if he worked for the SS. And there were other things to consider. After all, Oppenheimer had a job to report to every day. If he didn’t, he would get into serious trouble. He considered whether the other man might interpret these deliberations as refusal. Finally, he said, “I work as a machine polisher.”

  Vogler stood under the water jet and waved the objection aside. “Your employer has been informed. You will be on leave until the case is cleared up.”

  Oppenheimer didn’t know what to say. It seemed to be a done deal. “Why did you choose me, of all people?”

  “I think you’re just the sort of man we need. You are said to be one of the best crime investigators there are.”

  “I’m not in the service anymore. And anyway, there are enough colleagues who are just as good.”

  “Not for this case.”

  Vogler was interrupted by a sudden clatter. The SD man came rushing into the changing room. “Heavy, five!” he called.

  “Damn, it was forecast that they’d change course!” Vogler said angrily. “Quick, into the bunker. No time to lose.” Hastily, he dried himself and grabbed his clothes.

  Outside, the sirens were already howling as Oppenheimer and the others ran down the steps to the shelter. When the heavy iron door closed behind them with a dull thud, Oppenheimer realized that there was no one else there. He, Vogler, and the SD man were the only ones sharing the cellar vault.

  “As we’re likely to be spending quite a bit of time down here, we might as well have a look at your dossier,” Vogler said. He sat down on one of the wooden benches and had the SD man hand him a slim folder. As he looked through the pages, Vogler’s brow furrowed. Something had awakened his interest. “You were in Verdun?”