by Ben Elton
‘Please, forget it,’ Wolfgang interrupted, ‘you gave them each a hundred marks at the time, they couldn’t believe their luck.’
‘It’s quite possible that they saved Dagmar’s life that day,’ Herr Fischer went on, ‘or at least saved her from the most terrible sort of attack. I can never repay them for that.’
‘Dagmar’s their friend,’ Frieda interjected. ‘You really mustn’t—’
‘All I’m saying is I won’t forget,’ Herr Fischer said. ‘Dagmar, Frau Fischer and I will be Americans soon and I have friends who have friends in Congress. I beg you to write to me … if things become … well, if they … if you ever feel you are in need.’
Wolfgang looked Herr Fischer in the eye.
‘Thanks very much,’ he said. ‘I hope you mean it, Herr Fischer, because I think there’s a very good chance we’ll be taking you up on that offer.’
‘I mean it most sincerely,’ Herr Fischer replied, squeezing and shaking Wolfgang’s hand. ‘You and Frau Doktor Stengel are fine, fine people and those are two very precious boys you have there. My wife and I will never forget them.’
Auf Wiedersehen
Berlin, 1933
DAGMAR NEVER GOT the chance to be the American girl she dreamed of becoming because she and her family never left Berlin.
Later, looking at the photographs of the arrest in the newspaper, it was pretty obvious to Frieda and Wolfgang that the Gestapo had held back deliberately. They could have taken Herr Fischer into custody as he had left his house, but by catching the famous store owner with his feet on the very steps of a first-class carriage, they made him look all the more like a sneaky, pampered fugitive attempting to make his getaway. The caption underneath it in the Völkischer Beobachter read: Not so fast, Jew! The German people want a word with you!
The expression of surprise on Isaac Fischer’s face, captured forever by the photographer (whom the police had conveniently alerted to the arrest), showed that he had no inkling of what was coming. It was a cruel and terrible blow.
The Fischers had driven to the station from Charlottenburg in their gleaming Mercedes, confident in the knowledge that soon they would once more be living in a country where they were safe from robbery and assault.
It is true that the journey had been made somewhat unpleasant by an article in the morning paper, reporting on the party that had been held at Kempinski’s on the previous night. The article was not in the social pages as it would have been had it been published just a year before, a gushing description by a female fashion correspondent of the gorgeous gowns and wealthy elite dancing till dawn. This report was in the news section and it was a damning and violent attack headlined Food for two hundred gorged by scarcely forty Jews. The article went to great length to describe dish by dish how a handful of rich, spoiled Jews had arranged for themselves quantities of food which they could not possibly consume while true Berliners tightened their belts against the hard economic times and stern tasks the nation faced.
Fischer had bitten his lip with anger at the outrageous twisting of the truth, screwed the paper up and thrown it on the floor of the car. Nothing, however, could dampen Dagmar’s rising spirits. In fact in a way the vicious article (which had named her specifically as a disgusting and spoiled Jewish princess) served only to strengthen her resolve and steel her soul to emigration.
‘They will have to lie about someone else now, Papa!’ she said, squeezing her father’s hand. ‘We are sailing away from all this! Thank you, Papa. Thank you so much for making sure that we would be safe after all.’
At the station the Fischers dismissed their car and hired a porter. The Mercedes was to be sold along with everything else the Fischers owned in Germany, Herr Fischer having left it in the hands of his bank to liquefy his assets. He was aware of course that the state would claim a large part of his fortune but at this early stage of the Nazi administration he was confident of getting something out. Besides, he had substantial assets overseas, and the main thing was they would be free from further persecution.
Herr Fischer bought a button-hole carnation at the station flower stall, a lilac corsage for his wife and a posy of primroses for Dagmar. Dagmar herself bought a bag of sugar-coated pretzels.
‘If they don’t have these in New York, Papa,’ she said, ‘we should set up a bakery and sell them.’
‘Darling,’ Frau Fischer remarked, ‘they have everything in New York.’
‘They will have once they’ve got me!’ Dagmar replied and she even skipped for a few steps until she recalled that she was a grown-up now. She was after all wearing actual proper stockings instead of her usual ankle socks. And young ladies in stockings did not skip.
They made an elegant-looking threesome on their way to the boat-train platform, dressed in their fashionable travel clothes, the ladies in splendid hats and with their beautiful matching luggage trundling behind them on a cart.
They were certainly not difficult for the Stengel twins to spot as they emerged from the U-Bahn entrance.
‘Dagmar! Dagmar!’ came the shout as Paulus and Otto rushed across the station to intercept them just as the Fischers arrived at the ticket barrier.
‘Boys!’ Herr Fischer said with stern surprise. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’
‘Oh, it’s one of their festival days, sir, no lessons,’ Paulus explained.
‘We bunked off, sir!’ Otto said at exactly the same time.
Dagmar laughed as Paulus punched Otto. Same old twins.
Herr Fischer pretended to frown. ‘One useful lesson in life, boys,’ he said, ‘is to always get your stories straight,’ at which Paulus cast a further angry glance at Otto. ‘Anyway, it’s very nice to see you.’
‘We wanted to say goodbye to Dagmar,’ Paulus said.
‘Well,’ Frau Fischer said, ‘that’s very sweet. Dagmar, it is time to say goodbye again.’
‘And I’m afraid we must hurry along a bit,’ Herr Fischer added. ‘We depart in twenty minutes and I like to be settled before the train begins to move.’
Dagmar looked from one twin to another.
‘I’m so glad you came, boys,’ she said. Then she gave them each a kiss and a hug.
‘We’re glad too!’ Paulus said.
‘Yeah!’ added Otto.
Dagmar pushed her bag of sugar-coated pretzels into Otto’s hands.
‘To share,’ she said, and turned away.
‘We’ll be waiting right here at the ticket barrier till you’re gone!’ Paulus shouted after her.
‘In fact, we may just stay here till one day you come back!’ Otto called out.
‘Be sure to lean out of the window,’ Paulus added.
They watched wistfully as Dagmar’s elegant figure made its way along the platform, hoping she would turn once more and wave, which of course she did, every few steps. They saw Herr Fischer consulting with a guard and being shown towards the carriage with their reserved seats.
They watched as Dagmar boarded the train.
In later years Dagmar often thought back to that cosy carriage. She was only in it for a minute at most but she felt she could remember every detail of its deep plush upholstery. The little lamps on the tables. The face of the smiling attendant who showed her to her seat. The feeling of security and comfort as she contemplated the happy journey to Bremerhaven. The coffee. The magazines. Lunch in the first-class dining car.
She had not quite sat down when she heard her father’s voice raised in anger.
‘What is the meaning of this!’ Herr Fischer was demanding of someone on the platform. ‘I have committed no crime.’
But he had. He had defamed the German state. He had libelled the SA. He had invented the most dreadful lies about the Berlin police force, saying that they were indifferent to the law.
He had told the truth to the New York Times but neglected to ensure that it was only published after he had left Germany. In fact, quite the opposite, he’d intended the story as a parting shot.
They had so nearly made
it too.
It had been nine a.m. in Berlin when the telegraphed transcripts of the first edition of the New York Times had landed on various desks in the offices on the Wilhelmstrasse.
Nine a.m. in Berlin. Three a.m. on the east coast of the US.
Somebody had been up either very early or very late at the German embassy. And bad news always travels fast.
If the German attaché had slept later, or if the Fischers had been on an earlier train, they would have been out of Berlin by the time the Minister of Propaganda caught sight of what Herr Fischer had done. But then they would probably just have been stopped at the docks or even intercepted at sea. They were after all travelling on a German ship.
But then at least Dagmar would have got her coffee and her lunch. An hour or two of extra happiness before the darkness closed in.
Josef Goebbels liked to boast that he read all of the foreign press but that morning he must have stopped short at the New York Times. With its front page article about the famous Jewish store owner beaten up at the entrance to his own shop. His wife and young daughter terrorized and abused. About how one of Germany’s foremost families was being forced to leave what had become a ‘gangster’ nation for safety in the USA.
Such a slur could not go unanswered. This after all was exactly what the Leader had accused the Jews of doing. Slandering the Fatherland abroad.
In no way did the fact that the minister and his staff knew perfectly well that the article was true diminish their genuine righteous indignation. Theirs was a world in which it was always possible to have things both ways. To be both bully and victim.
And so the Gestapo were despatched and an arrest staged.
Later, Isaac Fischer was to ask himself the bitter question whether his catastrophic lapse of judgement had been a genuine mistake or suicidal vanity.
Was it pride that had led him to speak out before he had reached safety? He had known in his heart that it was a risk. Why had he taken it?
Lying on the bare floor of his cell, his legs and arms broken, blood seeping from his face, he tried to take comfort in his anguish from the thought that his intemperate interview had simply given them a convenient excuse.
That they would have stopped him anyway.
But in the darkness that engulfed him Fischer knew that it wasn’t true. That had he not insisted on speaking out on what he had believed was to be his last day in Germany, he would almost certainly have got away.
Other rich and prominent Jews had got out. Plenty of them. But they had had the sense to leave quietly.
He had condemned himself. He had condemned his family. He had deliberately provoked them. Like a fool he had wanted the last word. How could he have ignored what the world knew? That the Nazis were nothing if not vengeful. That spite and wicked pride motivated their every action. That they never forgave.
Watching from the ticket barrier, Paulus and Otto saw it all.
They watched in horror as the men in black coats and Homburg hats appeared as if from nowhere and laid a hand on Herr Fischer’s shoulder.
They looked on as Frau Fischer tried to grab on to her husband and pull him towards the carriage door.
They saw Herr Fischer pointing at the train, gesticulating furiously for his wife to board it. Ordering Dagmar who was leaning out of the window to stay where she was.
They watched as Frau Fischer shook her head and beckoned Dagmar to get off.
They saw Dagmar emerge from the first-class carriage once more and step back down on to the platform, her face white with shock and fear, her brief American dream turned back into a German nightmare.
The Gestapo frogmarched Herr Fischer back down the platform and out through the barrier. As he passed them Herr Fischer saw the boys and Otto thought he briefly tried to mask the terror on his face for their benefit.
Then he was gone.
Along the platform his wife and daughter stood there still as if frozen in shock and grief.
A whistle blew. The train compressed its steam.
Paulus cried out from behind the barrier.
‘Dagmar! Frau Fischer! Get on the train! Go!’
Heads turned. Some openly hostile. Others just surprised.
Otto was surprised too. In the selfishness of youth, a part of him had rejoiced to see the beloved girl remain. But even at thirteen, Paulus understood much more.
‘Otto, you know what happens. They always punish the family too! If Dags doesn’t get out now she’ll never get out.’
Otto wasn’t stupid, he knew his brother was right.
‘Get on the train, Dags!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Take it to the top of the Empire State building!’
A whack around the head interrupted him. The ticket collector had had enough.
‘Shut your face, kid. You don’t go shouting about and making a scene at my barrier! Particularly over a Jew.’
‘Fuck you!’ Otto said before shouting once again, ‘Dagmar! Get on the train!’
But the train was moving now and the two figures were still, standing motionless in the smoke and steam as their carriage pulled away from them. And then the next and then the next until they were alone on the empty platform.
Together they turned and walked slowly back to the barrier. There were sneers from onlookers as mother and daughter emerged back on to the station. The ticket man’s face wore a look of stern and pompous authority as if by dint of the fact that he wore a uniform he had somehow been a part of the police action.
‘Get along there, you two,’ he ordered pointlessly. ‘Your train’s gone, you’ve missed it. Move along.’
But for a moment at least Frau Fischer did not move along, she paused just outside the barrier seemingly at a loss, her eyes staring but seeing nothing. Dagmar looked up at her mother and gave way to tears.
Paulus took charge.
‘We should go to the taxi rank,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘You should go home, Frau Fischer.’
His voice helped her pull herself together. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Thank you, Paulus. You’re right. We should go home.’
Paulus led Frau Fischer towards the front of the station, leaving Otto to walk with Dagmar.
‘You look great, Dags,’ he said after a few steps. ‘I’ve never seen you in stockings before.’
Dagmar smiled momentarily through her tears.
‘You have to protect me now, Otto,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘You know that, don’t you? You and Paulus. You have to protect me.’
‘Well, obviously,’ Otto replied.
Isaac Fischer was tried the following month on charges of libelling the German State and its servants. There was only one witness for the defence, an American photographer who, it was gleefully reported in Goebbels’ press, had no actual photographs with which to back up his scurrilous claims. The man did, however, have a Jewish grandmother, a point which was raised in court as if it were evidence for the prosecution.
Two other potential defence witnesses did attempt to put themselves forward. The Stengel twins visited Frau Fischer in her big house in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and volunteered to go to court and describe what they had seen on the Kurfürstendamm on the day of the first Jewish boycott. Frau Fischer had been very grateful but declined the offer.
‘You’re such good boys,’ she said, sitting in her still splendid sitting room, the trappings of her previous life not yet having been stolen from her, ‘but I doubt that the word of two Jewish boys would make a lot of difference, and standing up like that would certainly get you and your parents into a lot of trouble.’
The prosecution was much better represented. Twenty members of the SA testified that Fischer had merely been cautioned having refused to clear up an unauthorized and offensive banner which the authorities had caused to be removed from Fischer’s store front. A Gestapo officer and member of the Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda who had arrived later on the scene also testified that there had been no assault and the accusations were thus exposed as disgusting Jew lies whi
ch a Jewish-dominated American press had peddled as fact. As a result of the trial, the American ambassador was called to the Wilhelmstrasse to receive an official complaint from the Foreign Minister.
Herr Fischer himself received ten years’ hard labour, to be served at the new SA concentration camp at Dachau. He was, however, dead in three months. According to the official story he was shot while trying to escape, but Frau Fischer was not allowed to see the body.
Further Briefings
London, 1956
ONCE MORE STONE was sitting at the table with the teacups and the 1930s telephone, staring at the short plump man sitting opposite him, while the thin, quiet one in the corner looked on. True to form the short one had already started on the biscuits.
‘We are here to brief you in elementary spy craft,’ Peter Lorre said. ‘Principally codes and communications protocol. They’re going to be watching you, of course. They watch everybody from the West, but as a member of the Foreign Office you’ll be of special interest to them. The moment you attempt to establish contact with Dagmar Stengel they’re going to know about it.’
‘They know already,’ Stone replied, quietly but emphatically. ‘I’m being set up. Dagmar’s dead. It wasn’t her that sent me the letter.’
‘Well,’ Bogart conceded, ‘of course that is possible.’
‘It’s more than possible. It’s probable. A damn sight more probable than Dagmar being an East German agent. You know as well as I do that the Stasi are even more anti-Semitic than the KGB. They don’t take Jews. Particularly Jews with no training or aptitude who have spent their whole adult life either hiding in a Berlin apartment or incarcerated in a gulag.’
‘So,’ Bogart replied, ‘you think that somebody in the Stasi has communicated with you in the name of your dead sister-in-law.’
‘Yes. I think that’s exactly what has happened.’