The Berlin Boxing Club

by Robert Sharenow

  We heard the maids flip on the radio in the living room and talk casually with each other as if they were alone.

  “What’ll we do?” Hildy whispered to me.

  I tried to think. I couldn’t let them find us. Max had instructed us not to be seen. And our presence would seem even more suspicious since we hadn’t answered when they called out. We couldn’t risk trying to sneak out of the apartment, because we would have to walk right past them. And we didn’t really have anywhere to go.

  “Come,” I whispered back.

  I grabbed Hildy’s hand and went to the door of our room, peering down the hall to make sure the coast was clear. Then I pulled her down toward the master bedroom, farther away from the front of the apartment, where the maids were cleaning. I quickly scanned the bedroom for a place to hide. Behind the curtains? Under the bed? Surely they would clean those areas. Max and Anny had a huge walk-in closet. I opened the door, and inside I discovered rows of hanging clothes, racks of fancy men’s and women’s shoes, a tall armoire, and an enormous steamer trunk covered with travel stickers from around the world.

  I opened the trunk, which was empty and just big enough to hold Hildy.

  “Get in,” I said.

  “How will I breathe?” she said.

  “I’ll leave it open a crack so air can get in.”

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out. Just get in and keep quiet. And whatever happens, don’t come out unless I tell you it’s okay.”

  I pushed her inside and gently closed the trunk, leaving it open just a crack. I scanned the closet, looking for other ideas. Should I try to create a wall of Max’s suits and hide myself inside? That would never work. I opened the doors to the armoire, which was filled with shelves from top to bottom, leaving no room for me to hide.

  I heard the maids’ voices approaching. I quickly used the shelves of the armoire like steps on a ladder and climbed up and hid myself on the top of the outside, which was hidden by a decorative piece. I reached over the top and closed the armoire doors, and I curled myself up in a tight ball, hoping that my entire body was hidden from view from below. Then I waited. The top of the armoire was dusty, and I could feel my nose start to itch and twitch.

  It seemed as if hours had passed until finally the maids entered the master bedroom and started to clean. I heard small snippets of their conversation over the din of the vacuum cleaner.

  “. . . my bus passed through some of the Jewish neighborhoods on the way over here this morning.”

  “Ja, mine did too.”

  “What a mess, huh?

  “They deserve it.”

  “I used to work with a Jewess. She wasn’t so bad.”

  “A Jew maid. That’s something you don’t see very often.”

  My entire body started to perspire, and I could feel the moisture building up on my face and dripping down my nose, mingling with the dust. I felt a sneeze coming on and did everything in my power to hold it in.

  One of the maids opened the door to the walk-in closet and stepped inside to vacuum and dust. I closed my eyes and held my breath. I heard the whirring of the machine moving back and forth over the floor. Then she opened the door of the armoire and refolded some of the clothes inside. My body was drenched in sweat. I felt droplets of moisture drip off my nose and onto the top of the armoire. I thought for sure a drop would fall on her and give me away.

  Finally she closed the armoire door and walked out of the closet. I stayed absolutely still for another half hour as they finished cleaning. When I felt confident they had gone, I climbed back down and opened the trunk. Hildy fell out onto the floor, gasping for breath.

  Max returned an hour later with no news about our parents. I told him what had happened, and he cursed himself for forgetting to cancel the maid service.

  Healthy Instincts

  MAX CONTINUED HIS SEARCH BY TELEPHONE WITH NO luck.

  All night there were more scattered riots and attacks on Jews all over Germany. Hildy and I shared a guest bedroom in the apartment, but neither of us slept. I heard her tossing and turning in the bed next to mine. Neither of us spoke, for fear that letting our anxieties out into the open air would somehow make them more real. My mind was filled with horrible nightmares about what might have happened to our parents. And every time I heard a noise from within the hotel, I saw images of Nazi thugs stuffed into the elevator and winding their way up the Excelsior stairs to come get us.

  When morning finally came, I wanted to go out and look for my parents on foot, but Max thought it was too dangerous, so he offered to drive around with me to search for them with his driver in his car. Despite her protests, he insisted that Hildy stay behind in the hotel and gave her strict instructions not to answer the door or telephone. The front desk would collect any messages that came.

  Even though I had lived through the worst of it, the scenes of devastation were more startling in the harsh light of day. Rows of shops had been vandalized, synagogues burned; scraps of ripped-apart books, broken furniture, and glass littered Jewish neighborhoods like a fresh layer of snow. I scanned the streets, looking for my parents or any familiar faces, but it was hard to get a glimpse of anyone. The Jews who braved being out in public were cleaning or repairing their shops with their heads bent low as they attempted to sweep up the mess or put plywood up to cover broken windows. There were some uniformed Nazis about, watching with satisfied expressions on their faces. But most of the ordinary Germans I saw would just walk by the destruction with their eyes averted as if trying to pretend it wasn’t there. It seemed as if much of the city of Berlin were purposefully avoiding eye contact.

  We finally arrived in front of the gallery. From the car it seemed deserted, but I couldn’t see much of the dark interior through the broken glass. Max and I got out and carefully stepped through the smashed door into the front room. I tried to flip on the light switch, but the bulbs in the main room had been broken in the melee. In the half-light I saw our possessions scattered all over the room and the small puddle of blood where we had been attacked. Max knelt down beside the blood to examine it.

  “Your father?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  I moved toward the back room, stepping over piles of clothes and books. Our makeshift office and kitchen had also been pulled apart. Then I heard the sound. It was a faint wheezing noise, coming from the bathroom.

  “Hallo?” I called. But there was no response.

  I moved to the bathroom door. There was no light on inside. I pushed the door open, and the noise got louder. I saw a figure in the shadows of the room.

  “Who is that?” I called.

  Max hurried back to join me just as I flicked on the light, which by some miracle still worked.

  There was my mother, fully dressed and sitting in the bathtub with no water, clutching her knees, and breathing heavily. Her red-rimmed eyes were frozen open with fear, staring into a blank spot in space.

  “Mama.”

  She did not immediately turn to look at us.

  “Mama!” I said, approaching and shaking her shoulder.

  She turned and finally seemed to see us.

  “Karl?”

  “Yes. It’s me, Mama.”

  “Karl . . . is Hildy . . . ?”

  “She’s okay,” I said. “She’s at Max’s hotel.”

  She looked at Max and seemed to acknowledge him for the first time.

  “Come out of there, Mama.”

  We hoisted her out of the tub, but she seemed dazed and disoriented.

  “Where is Sig?” Max asked.

  “They took him,” she said.

  “Who took him?”

  “The Gestapo.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “No,” she said. “I—I—”

  She started crying.

  “Come,” Max said. “Let’s get you back to my apartment. We’ll track him down from there.”

  “No,” she wailed. “I should be here. I sh
ould wait. . . .”

  She was bawling hysterically. I tried to lead her away by the arm, but she pulled away from me.

  “I can’t leave,” she said.

  “Mama, please,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “No,” she cried.

  “Yes,” I said, grabbing her by the shoulders and staring into her eyes. “We’re not safe here anymore. We’ve got to go. We’ve got to go now. Hildy needs you. I need you. Now come.”

  My words seemed to sink in, and her sobbing subsided. I fetched a glass of water, which she drank in one long gulp. And her breathing relaxed to a normal pattern.

  “We really must be going,” Max said, glancing toward the front window.

  “We must gather some of our things,” she said, picking through the piles of objects. She picked up a few tattered old books, an atlas, a large book of photographs of European landmarks, an anthology of prints by Dutch masters, random things.

  “Mama, there’s nothing here worth taking.”

  “Do as I say, Karl!” she snapped. I was surprised by the ferocity and clarity of her reaction. She handed me the books and started to gather more things.

  Max and I helped her pack some of our possessions up into a cardboard box and an old suitcase, and finally we were able to coax her out of the gallery and out toward the waiting sedan. Two young women strolled down the sidewalk toward us as we emerged. They noticed Max, and one whispered and pointed to the other. Max kept his eyes locked on the car and helped usher my mother into the backseat. The two young women stopped to stare as Max and I slid inside the car and drove away.

  When we returned to the apartment, Hildy ran into my mother’s arms, and they held each other without speaking for several minutes. Max and I awkwardly stood by, not wanting to break their spell. My mother held one arm around Hildy’s waist and stroked her head with the other, while Hildy buried her face against my mother’s chest. This seemed to revive both of them, and my mother was finally able to sit and tell us what had happened.

  “Hartzel drove us to the Hessendorf Clinic, but there were groups of Nazis being treated there for minor cuts and bruises, so we had to move on. We finally got to the Jewish Hospital across town about a half hour later. By then your father had lost a lot of blood and was hallucinating. The ward was full of other Jews who had been attacked, ordinary-looking people, women, children with gashes on their heads and broken bones. They took him right away and removed the glass from his side and stitched him up. He was lucky that it hadn’t punctured any major organs or he would’ve surely been a goner. He was given a blood transfusion, and after a few hours he was feeling a little better.”

  “As soon as he was thinking clearly again, he wanted to go back and find you. But it was one thirty a.m., and the doctors convinced him that he needed to rest until morning. They gave him morphine for the pain, and he fell asleep. I was awake all night worrying, thinking about you. I tried to call, but the phone lines at the hospital were down.”

  “In the morning your father’s wound was still quite tender, but he insisted we go back to the gallery to make sure you were okay. Of course, when we got there, you were gone. And we both panicked because we had no idea where to look for you. We were trying to figure that out when a car pulled up with a group of Gestapo officers. They were dressed in ordinary suits, and at first I thought that they were a group of insurance agents coming to assess the damage. Isn’t that ridiculous? But that’s what they looked like at first glance, a bunch of harmless insurance agents. Then I noticed their expressions, dark and hungry. And one of them had on those black boots under his pants.

  “They started questioning us about our political beliefs and kept trying to get your father to confess that he was a Red agitator. Of course, your father laughed at that, which they did not appreciate. They searched the gallery, and when they found the old printing press in the basement, they put your father in handcuffs and arrested him. They said the press had been used to print forbidden political material and that he was a traitor to Germany. Then they put him in their car and drove off. There was nothing I could say to stop them and no one I could turn to, no police, no lawyer, no neighbors. I have no idea where they took him. But I was afraid to try to follow them. I needed to find you, but I had no idea where to look for you either. So I just waited. The minutes turned to hours, and my mind filled with the worst thoughts that weighed me down like stones until I couldn’t move.”

  She glanced down at the daily newspaper on the coffee table, which carried the headline government considering measure to make jews pay for riot damage. She picked up the paper and scanned the article and read a few excerpts aloud. “Reich Minister Goebbels commented that the demonstrations reflected the healthy instincts of the German people. He explained, ‘The German people are anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race.’”

  She put the paper aside and muttered to herself, “Healthy instincts . . .” Then she looked up at Max and said, “You’ve got to help us get out of here.”

  The Amerika

  SINCE HIS LOSS TO JOE LOUIS, MAX’S INFLUENCE IN government circles had completely evaporated. As a result, he made little headway when he attempted to find out my father’s whereabouts through official channels. In most cases Max was simply ignored, which would have been unthinkable when he was riding high just a few months earlier as the most celebrated man in Germany. I could hear the frustration in his voice as he worked the phones, trying to cut through the silence and bureaucracy.

  “Now you want me to write a letter to your supervisor? But I thought you were the supervisor? What kind of idiocy is this? Do you know who I am? [Pause.] Yes, sir. I’m sorry I raised my voice, but if you could just— [Pause.] Ja. I will write to your supervisor.”

  Yet in some ways Max’s new anonymity turned out to be a benefit. He had become far less conspicuous and was able to go about his business without a constant spotlight on him. In fact Reich Minister Goebbels had specifically told the sportswriters to keep Max out of the papers, so as not to remind the German people of his humiliating defeat.

  And Max was still a rich man. After a couple of days of fruitless inquiry, he paid a small bribe to a government official, who was able to find out that my father was being held by the Gestapo at Gerlach Haus prison and had been charged with some sort of political crime. He was not allowed visitors. Gerlach Haus was the center of Gestapo interrogations in Berlin and had a dark reputation. It was rumored that late at night screams of torture victims could be heard from the street outside. The official advised Max and my mother not to ask too many questions about him or run the risk of being judged guilty by association, even though my father wasn’t guilty of anything to begin with.

  We all stayed at the Excelsior for several days. Hildy and I tried our best to stay out of Max’s way. It was awkward for me to be around him without the common bond of boxing and with the heavy question of my father’s fate hanging over us all. We had been at Max’s apartment for a week when my mother called Hildy and me into her room and shut the door. We all sat close on the bed, and she gave us another update on her lack of progress. When she finished, I asked: “Well, what are we going to do next?”

  “Max is going to help me keep searching. He’s agreed to let me stay here for as long as I like.”

  “Don’t you mean us?” Hildy said.

  “No.” My mother shook her head. She took a breath and said, “You and your brother are going to America.”

  “America?” Hildy said. It was the first she had heard of the plan.

  “You’re going to live with your father’s cousins for a while.”

  A rush of adrenaline shot through me at the thought that my dream of going to America actually might be about to come true. But the feeling was blunted by the fear of leaving our parents behind to an uncertain fate. As much as I wanted to go, I couldn’t abandon my parents.

  “I’m not going to leave without you
and Papa,” I said.

  “Neither am I,” Hildy added.

  “All the arrangements have already been made.”

  “Then unmake them,” I said. “I have to stay and help find Papa. Hildy should go.”

  “What?” Hildy cried. “I don’t want to go alone.”

  “Listen, you both have to be reasonable.”

  “I’m a man now,” I said. “I can help.”

  “I know. That’s why I need you to go with your sister. I won’t have her making the crossing alone.”

  “But what about Papa?”

  “He would want you both to go. Of that I’m certain.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Karl. It took an incredible amount of effort to make these arrangements. And they can’t be changed. Hildy, you’ll live with your father’s cousin Hillel and his wife, Ida, in Newark, New Jersey. They have a son who is about your age. I think his name is Harry. Karl, you’ll be staying with Cousin Leo and his wife, Sarah, in Florida.”

  “Florida?”

  “Yes. A city called Tampa.”

  “Why can’t we be together?” Hildy asked.

  I wanted to ask the same thing. For as grown up as I thought I was, I also felt disappointed and apprehensive that Hildy and I would not be together in the New World.

  “Neither one of them could take both of you. And it won’t be forever. We’re extremely lucky they agreed to sponsor you at all.”

  “How long?” my sister asked.

  “I don’t know, Hildy.” Our mother sighed.

  “But what about you?” I asked.

  “I’ll join you as soon as we can free your father.”

  “I don’t want to live in America,” Hildy whined. “I want to stay with you.”

  “You don’t have a choice. The arrangements have been made.”

  “But how can we afford—” I started to say.

  “Max has been kind enough to lend us the money we need and arrange the transport.”

  Our passage was booked on a ship coincidentally named the Amerika, leaving from Hamburg the very next day. It all happened so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to return to the gallery to retrieve anything else or even say good-bye to anyone. The only people left in Berlin I cared about were Neblig and the Countess. I wrote them both letters and also sent Neblig my copy of the origin of the Mongrel. I figured I could make contact with them again once I was settled in Tampa.