Joey spouted it all with familiar conviction, but he couldn’t have failed to note the murmurings of disbelief among his audience. To every reporter listening to his fairy-tale rhetoric, it was pure farce. Yet Goebbels remained unashamed, steadfast in his own propaganda.
Rod held up his hand during a brief pause in the diatribe. ‘Can you tell us where the arrested men have been taken and what they will be charged with?’ He pitched it so reasonably, and without vehemence, that Joey could not easily ignore him. Georgie glanced at Herr Bauer standing to the side and saw his eye twitch uncontrollably. Goebbels squinted and peered into the assembly, targeting his wrath. His face was thunder. The men were being held, he hissed, for their own protection, and would be questioned accordingly, in a variety of settings.
For their own protection. Georgie had heard the same phrase before – Sara had repeated as much in her worries over Elias. Why protection? And from what?
The mood at La Taverne later that evening was unusually subdued; no one had caught up fully on sleep, and each was anticipating the Reich reaction to their own publication – press timings meant the headlines wouldn’t hit until the next morning. Instead they agreed to convene at the Adlon the next day as the first foreign editions came off the train.
29
The World Wakes Up?
11th November 1938
‘Way to go, Rod.’ Bill slapped his friend on the back and held the New York Times aloft, its front-page headline pulling no punches. Despite some of the US papers previously holding a conservative stance on Hitler – that perhaps he wasn’t such a bad fellow at heart – almost all had reacted seriously to the night’s atrocities; ‘smashed’, ‘wrecked’, ‘pillaged’ and ‘plundered’ peppered the front pages from both sides of the Atlantic.
Georgie’s own News Chronicle headlined with: Pogrom Rages Through Germany: Hitler Turns Down Mercy Call, and she felt relieved Henry hadn’t toned down her description of ‘Nazi hooligans’. There was a general feeling that reporters and photographers had laid out what Germany was currently about, warts and all, in its coverage of the newly christened Kristallnacht – the night of broken glass. Now, it was up to the public and the politicians to react, to tell Herr Hitler this was not acceptable.
Yet the mood amongst them was anything but celebratory – more of a wake for a life gone by. Even if the world hadn’t experienced their eyes smarting at the acrid burning or caught the distress in their nostrils, every press member had; Georgie felt a deep sense that something had changed. The honeymoon in Berlin was over.
It was only the next morning, after a good, full night’s sleep, that she remembered missing her appointment at the Haas Institute. She rang the number from a phone booth, took a deep breath and affected a flighty voice, twittering about all the ‘awful events making it slip her mind’ and could she rearrange? They were suddenly very busy, the receptionist said, but they could fit her in the next week. With the continuing aftermath, Georgie was relieved to have the breathing space.
Rubin appeared for work, looking already thinner, and she signed his work sheet and sent him away to be with Sara. There was no news of Elias, he said, and little gossip of where the men had been taken. Their best hope being that the Gestapo headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse simply couldn’t accommodate such large numbers.
The entire press pack spent the next few days sweeping up the debris in print; there were embassy and ministry briefings, although Georgie used any spare time knocking tentatively on the hastily mended doors of Jewish shops and businesses, looking for a dim light inside and talking to those now contemplating leaving their life and country behind. There were no names and most of what she wrote down would never be printed, she knew, but it was important for her to hear it, as if it was slowly knitting her fabric as a reporter.
She was constantly amazed at the resilience of each family – they were wary, frightened even, of a future in Germany, and yet saddened to leave a country in which they retained some hope, while everything around them urged leaving for any kind of safety.
Despite the initial condemnation from abroad, it took four days for foreign politicians to make a real stand. President Roosevelt recalled his US ambassador from Berlin, and the American reporters disappeared for days in their coverage. Max, too, was run off his feet. Georgie felt slightly at a loss, guilty in doing so little for the Amsels except listening to Sara’s fretting and sharing endless pots of tea. It was inevitable a postcard needed to be dispatched.
Postcard from a broken Berlin,
15th November 1938
Dear England, in its green and pleasant land,
It is cold here in Germany’s capital and with more than just the weather to blame; after the intense heat and fires of Kristallnacht, a chill of mistrust has descended upon Berlin – German to Jew, Jew to German. What warmth there is I found in the house of one Jewish family, formerly owners of a thriving but now ruined tailor’s shop. They struggled even to boil a kettle but still brewed me tea, had little food but offered hospitality. Their four-year-old child eagerly showed me her beloved doll, pulled from the wreckage of their home in the tense hours after that endless ‘crystal night’. As I admired the battered toy, I pulled a sliver of hidden glass from its stiff and singed hair, while a piece of her burnt dress disintegrated under my fingers. And yet the girl’s face lit up as I returned her doll, something so precious in her life, and very possibly the only possession she will carry when her family is forced to leave this city, and the rest of their lives behind.
A muted greeting from your correspondent, in Herr Hitler’s great city of the future
Georgie pictured the effect on Herr Bauer’s twitch if he were to read it – if the Chronicle ever saw fit to publish it. She stopped short of imagining Goebbels’s death stare if he laid eyes on the print – or her. But now, more than ever, it needed saying. She had to come out from her awning of safety and make a stand in her reporting, like Rod, Bill and the others. Even Paul, if she and Max were right about their suspicions. She just hoped she would last as long as the stalwarts.
Leaving herself no time to regret filing the postcard piece, Georgie took herself to a public call box in the nearest station and rang through the copy to London – it wasn’t something for Gestapo ears. If they were to scoop her up, it wouldn’t be yet.
She stopped for a coffee on the way back at Kranzler’s, but there was no sign of Karl, and she hoped nothing had befallen him in the turbulence of previous days. The phone was ringing as she climbed the office stairs and she was breathless as she lunged for the receiver.
‘Fraulein Young?’ The voice was brusque and impatient.
‘Yes?’
‘You were enquiring after a missing person, your colleague Paul Adamson?’
‘Yes, I was. Have you found him?’ At last, there might be something to salvage from a week of chaos.
‘We might have.’
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Georgie sighed, her mind flipping immediately to Margot, less to his wife, whom she had never met.
The voice paused. She could hear muttering, someone’s hand across the mouthpiece. He came back, voice a little less sharp. ‘It’s not such good news, I’m afraid. We recovered a body from the canal, and we think it might be Herr Adamson.’
30
The Crystal Ball
15th November 1938
Rod came with her to the morgue, as the one who had known Paul the longest. The police officer on the phone had hinted that identifying the body might not be straightforward.
‘It looks as if he’s been in there for a good few days,’ he said apologetically.
Georgie had been to such places before – the juniors were sent regularly from the Chronicle offices to pick up the day’s list of possible suicides and murders from the London morgues, what Henry gaily called ‘fish fodder’ for the inside pages. And strangely, it had never fazed her. But in Berlin, the smell was different, disinfectant mingling with a thin film of smoke residue. It seemed busy, people h
urrying to and fro, men in white clothing pushing gurneys with sheets over bodies. Rod gave her a hard stare, and she remembered then the morgue’s numbers were swelled by Kristallnacht; the early figures suggested it could be as many as a hundred dead across Germany.
In the end, there was no doubt. It was Paul. They pulled back the sheet only as far as his face, bloated and out of shape, his skin a waxen jade green. It seemed to be clear of any obvious markings or cuts to his flesh, no evidence of a beating that they could see. Despite the distension, it was certainly Paul’s hair and his slightly sagging jowls, albeit puffy from the canal water. Rod nodded in unison. Georgie’s heart cranked then for Paul’s wife back home and his new baby, who would now never know his father. For Margot, too – she had loved him, searched for him, despite the dubious morality of their affair.
The police officer was waiting outside when they emerged.
‘Have you any idea how it happened?’ Georgie asked, all innocence. ‘Did he simply fall in the canal and drown?’ She harboured strong suspicions that he hadn’t, but watched for the Kripo man’s initial reaction.
He shook his head, seemed genuine. ‘We’re waiting for the post-mortem, but I’m not hopeful it will show anything other than an accident or death by his own hand. I understand he had family problems.’
Georgie nodded. The Kripo were worlds away from the Gestapo and may have been equally in the dark.
‘Sad,’ the officer went on, ‘but there’s a lot of it about nowadays.’
‘A lot of what?’
‘Suicide,’ he said, almost matter-of-factly. ‘We live in very strange times.’ He glanced back and forth down the corridor, conscious that what he’d uttered might count as dissent. ‘We’ll be in touch about releasing the body, Fraulein Young.’
Georgie turned down Rod’s offer of a stiff drink in favour of coffee, and they both indulged in strudel, the copious sugar equal to brandy in their book.
‘Spit it out,’ Rod said, after his last mouthful.
‘Pardon?’
‘What are you not telling me?’
Lord, will I be gifted with the same crystal ball if I’m here as many years as Rod?
‘You don’t seem very surprised, that’s all,’ he went on. ‘That it was Paul.’
There was no point lying to Rod, Georgie thought, and she didn’t really want to. Had it not been for the distraction of Kristallnacht, she would have told him long before.
‘Max and I found something of Paul’s – well, we were pointed towards it. Some papers, perhaps a story that he was working on. Something the Nazis might not have liked.’ She felt relieved in spilling it, and then a slight sense of betrayal towards Max, although she didn’t know why – it wasn’t as if he wanted to claim the story.
Rod flicked his gaze left and right, leaned forward and lowered his naturally deep voice. ‘Was it about a clinic?’
‘How do you know?’ Georgie’s eyes were beyond her control.
‘Paul and I were chatting one night at La Taverne – just the two of us. He’d had a bit too much to drink, got to telling me about his home life, and his mistress. All of a sudden he was in full-on confessional.’
The door to the café opened and a group of SS officers walked in, laughing loudly.
‘Let’s take this conversation elsewhere,’ Rod said.
It was chilly but they blended in well with others walking arm in arm in the Tiergarten and Georgie wrapped her inadequate coat tightly across her body. Rod was still at a virtual whisper on the concrete paths, steering clear of hedges and bushes where eager ears might loiter.
‘So?’ Rod began.
Georgie told him the little they knew so far.
‘And you’re thinking of going there?’ There was a tinge of the father in his voice. ‘I would advise against it.’
Georgie’s head snapped around. ‘Why? What did Paul tell you?’
‘He had a suspicion that the clinic might have something to do with a new programme – it was vague and so was he – but something to do with euthanasia. The Nazis conveniently getting rid of those who don’t contribute to the Reich.’
‘And did you believe it might be feasible?’ She’d gone over the handwritten notes Paul had left with a dictionary – littered with words such as ‘productivity’ and ‘wastage’ though never the word ‘death’. Alarmingly, it all fitted.
Rod’s face was heavy with concern. ‘Let’s say I’m never shocked at the imagination or the reach of these people, but it is the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘And do you think Paul could have been killed because of his suspicions?’
‘Very possibly – nothing about the Nazis would surprise me anymore. Not after the other night. Please, Georgie, promise me you’ll be very, very careful.’
‘I will. I promise.’
In the end, there was no post-mortem on Paul’s body due to ‘overwork in the morgue’, the police said, and any appeal seemed futile; if the Nazis had their hand in this fetid soup, no amount of badgering would change the outcome. Instead, Georgie had to plough through the red tape of getting his body flown back home. Still, she didn’t relay her suspicions to Henry, wary that he might recall her back to England. A tiny part of her would have welcomed it, but a larger portion was certain she couldn’t leave Berlin – or the story – behind.
31
The Good Doctor Graf
21st November 1938
The rearranged appointment at the Haas Institute came soon enough. Georgie employed every technique in pushing it to the back of her brain, but on the morning itself her stomach roiled at the prospect of any breakfast.
‘Just ask the planned questions,’ Max coached in a nearby café. ‘It’s not so much what their answers are, but how it feels in there. Look out for anything unusual.’
‘I’ve got it.’ Her mouth was already dry.
‘I won’t be far away,’ he reiterated. ‘I promise.’
They parted at the café table, and Georgie checked her outfit – a careful combination of Frida’s and her own wardrobe, an amalgam of British and German styles. She even wore a hat, as befitted a wealthy young woman, which was a rarity for Georgie in past months. Still, the wide waistband on her skirt had no hope of containing the nerves running amok in her stomach as she stepped towards the imposing door of the clinic.
The reception wasn’t the sterile white of a hospital, but painted in pale shades of blue, the receptionist clad in a cream singlet dress, like a trained nurse but not quite – all aimed, Georgie thought, at reflecting a clinical, professional service. And it worked. Had she been genuine, Fraulein Seidel would be reassured her money purchased excellent care.
She was shown into a side room, with easy chairs and a low table of a modern German design, clean lines and fuss-free.
‘Good morning, Fraulein Seidel.’ A man in a neat blue suit stepped silently through the door and offered his hand. ‘I am Doctor Frederik Graf, director of the Haas Institute.’
He looked every inch a doctor even without a white coat, what with his neatly cut grey beard and round, wire-rimmed glasses. His suit and shoes looked expensive, and he had that self-assurance of the moneyed and educated classes, reminding Georgie a little of Max’s father. He offered coffee, which she declined, and they got down to business. Her aunt, Georgie explained, needed care round the clock. She had never been labelled or diagnosed in childhood, but had always been beyond schooling, and the family wealthy enough to be able to protect her. Advancing age, though, had now made her behaviour ‘more challenging’ for untrained servants. What could the clinic offer?
Doctor Graf went through the range of services, the twenty-four-hour care in one of their ‘comfortable’ homes, alluding loosely to ways of containment. Reading between the lines, he meant control. Restraint.
‘Am I to assume you can employ means to make my aunt at peace in her own mind?’ Georgie pitched. She could barely believe she’d just said it – interrogation but with a smile. Yet strangely, it was easier than she
thought, this role playing. She was almost beginning to inhabit Hanna Seidel fully – and enjoy it.
‘I think it’s fair to say we have the best interests of our patients at heart, particularly when they become anxious or distressed.’ He smiled too, showing a mutual understanding: yes, they would use drugs to mollify.
‘Well, I trust you know what you are doing,’ she said. Another odd surge of confidence washed over Fraulein Seidel. ‘Can I be frank, Doctor?’
He nodded, no hint of surprise.
‘My aunt is not getting any younger, and her health is increasingly fragile. Our family understands there is a limit to her strength, and we all agree we don’t want her to suffer unnecessarily. I’d simply like reassurance that she’ll be made comfortable if that is the case.’ Another weak smile, devoid of emotion and heavy with suggestion.
‘You have my personal reassurance, Fraulein Seidel. We pride ourselves on our end-of-life care here.’
That, and his expression, was everything Georgie needed. They had been dancing with words, but the Haas Institute had the means and the will for ending life; he had just said as much. But how much of his admission could she use in print? She and Max would need far more proof than a spoken allusion.
They parted in the reception, Doctor Graf pledging a tour of the clinic should she want to take up their services and handing her a price pamphlet. At the last minute, the confidence Georgie possessed drained from her like a plug being pulled, and a hot flush pricked under her jacket and she willed it not to creep as far as her neck. She walked away as calmly as her nerves would permit but was almost at a run towards the café several streets away.
‘Thank goodness!’ Max said. ‘I was just about to come in and find you.’
The Berlin Girl Page 18