“Can I not at least take my make-up kit?” She reached for the night table where the loaded gun was inches away from her hand. She had heard what Nazis did to women, and at this moment her life was not particularly worth anything. She was dazed, in shock. Her only desire was to kill that ugly face staring at her. Her brain was numb, drugged with hatred, as if the Nazi’s poison had already entered her soul. The SS man grabbed her by the arm and pushed her through her bedroom door and outside into the black sedan. Jonas was sitting in the front seat, waiting, too petrified to say a word. Lucia was directed into the back seat of the car between two of the uniformed men. She sat motionless, as if she were already dead. She no longer gave a thought to any human being – not her son, not her husband. Her fear insulated her from the rest of the world. She felt nothing, not even the rough hands under her dress, groping, kneading her body. She did not resist, which made the two SS thugs breathe harder and continue with even more enthusiasm.
“She likes it, the Jewish slut. Here, take this,” one of them said.
The man in the front seat yelled in disgust. “I order you to stop, you filthy pigs!” He was the ranking officer.
They stopped, ever obedient, even with their flies undone.
Chapter Fourteen
THE PRINCE RUSHED INTO the house, and when he saw the nightgown on the floor, he gasped in despair. Astor barked from behind the bathroom door. Once freed, he ran through the house looking for Jonas and Lucia.
“Poor Astor, I’m sorry. I came too late.” The dog peered through the darkness at the entrance of the house.
Rudolf Hess was at home with his wife and child, still awake at four in the morning. He was known in the inner circles of his friends to be a peculiar sort of person, paranoid and cruel, and yet, sometimes even kind. As a young man, Hess had come to prominence by penning an award-winning essay entitled, “How Must the Man Be Constructed Who Will Lead Germany Back to her Old Heights.” In it he had opined that bloodshed and the shedding of old friendships might be required to reach that noble goal. Oddly, his long affection for the Prince had stopped the Nazi lieutenant from adding Brandenberg to his lengthy list of ill-fated associates.
The Prince called him on his private number, as Hess sat in his chair smoking a cigarette, working on plans and logistics.
“I thought you would be awake,” the Prince said, knowing the man was a notorious night owl.
“Did they get you?” Hess asked, “Because I warned you to watch your step. I can’t protect you much longer because they will come after me.”
“No, it is not for me, Rudi. My friends – you know them, the Krugers – were arrested in Sopot. I have never asked you for a favor; you owe me a few. We must help them, and I will not ask you for anything more.”
“I will see what I can do but this one time only, understand?”
“I do.”
“All right, but I need to know. What did he do?”
“He killed an SS man, but he had to defend himself. The man was drunk, was beating him, threatening him with a gun.”
“You don’t make life easy, do you? Don’t do anything stupid. Leave it to me.”
The black Mercedes, carrying Lucia and Jonas to Nazi headquarters in Danzig, drove down the long street, past the Marienkirche. The dark streets were deserted and shiny from the rain. They stopped on the Toppengasse, across the street from the Central Synagogue. Hitler had ordered that this synagogue, now occupied by the Gestapo, be preserved as a sadistic monument to the former Jewish population of the city. Jonas climbed the familiar entrance stairs of the old building, his mother grasping his hand. They came to the large entrance hall and were escorted upstairs, in silence. The room was small, with just a bench, some chairs, and a dreary lamp on a small wooden table. On the wall was a large school clock with a picture of Hitler.
Jonas sat next to his mother, watching the movement of the pendulum. He got up and tried the handle of the door, which turned with ease. Standing outside was a soldier with a rifle. The soldier slammed the door when he saw Jonas inching it open.
Every week for three years, the Fräulein had brought him to this very place, which might now become his tomb. Never before had he realized how he had betrayed his father and mother. A prisoner of the same persons who almost converted him to something he was not! He had never told his parents, but now he would have to! Perhaps one of his guards would recognize him. He decided he must also plan an escape to save his mother. Surely if he could just get to them, his father or Uncle Herman would come to the rescue, perhaps Fräulein Marlow. She told him over and over again how much she loved him. Surely even if she was one of them, she would not let the family die.
Lucia sat motionless, then she looked at Jonas and started to weep.
“Don’t worry, Mother, Father will save us.” He placed his arms around his tormented mother. This was the first time Jonas had ever seen his mother cry so bitterly and look so disheveled and old – like one of the women at the fish market, wearing black rubber aprons, yelling, “Mackerels and flounders, fresh today.”
His mother was always neatly coiffed, a joy to the eye. He looked at the black lines under her eyes, and the hair in strands, as if it had never known a comb. Her face was streaked with tears, lined with tension, her gentle features now squeezed like an accordion. There were no windows in this death room. No possibility of escaping from the prison. What would the Katzenjammer Kids and Captain Kowalsky do now, he asked himself. They would have a plan, so he must have one too.
The door suddenly opened and an SS man marched into the room and pulled Jonas by his shirt collar.
“You come with me,” he said roughly.
“No, take me,” Lucia pleaded. “I will do anything you want. Leave my son.” She fell on her knees embracing the black boots, pleading, unashamed. “I can give you anything you want. We have lots of money, and I can make you very happy.”
He pushed her away with his foot and dragged the terrified boy into another room where two Gestapo officers were sitting, their black boots resting on the table, their arms folded, grinning widely.
“Now, you little Jew, what is your name?”
“Jonas, sir,” he answered with a strong voice, and clicked his heels like a young prince, just as his governess taught him so long ago.
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen next month,” he lied.
“You look older than that.” Jonas stood erect and proud. Stung by their laughter, he exploded at them, almost crying in his anger.
“Why are you keeping us here? I was one of the Brownshirts; just ask the group leader, Becker. Every week I came to this building. Let me go free and I will show you. Ask Fräulein Marlow, and she will tell you what a good German I am. I have my uniform at home, and my medals. You are making a big mistake. My father is a good friend of the Führer, and the Prince. You’d better let us go before they find out and they put you in jail. Let me run home and I will come back with my uniform.” If they let him go, he thought, he’d get his father’s gun and free his mother.
“Did you know, Jew bastard, that your father killed a German officer and that he will die, and that you will die with him, as will your mother? How do you feel now?”
“Sick. I want to urinate.”
“Go and do that right here, in your pants, you little pig,” and they all laughed like hyenas.
“Get undressed, everything off, pig. We want to be sure you are not hiding anything from us.”
“Go easy on him; the Führer may hear of it,” one of the Gestapo man warned.
“If the Führer heard that his father had killed one of his SS, he would cut the boy’s balls off and feed them to his dogs.”
Lucia was, meanwhile, lying on the bare wooden floor, screaming, begging God to take her, striking the floor with her head. “Kill me, kill me, not my Jonas!”
A huge woman came into the room, her blond hair cut short, her nose flat, the nostrils flaring like a hippopotamus’. She looked like a male wrestler.
“Undress quickly, on the floor, and spread your legs.” She smacked her lips when she saw the naked body beneath Lucia’s dress in front of her.
“Lie down, quickly!” Lucia held her breath, as she smelled sweat from that disgusting woman bending over her, touching her breasts and groaning like a bear in heat. Lucia screamed in pain as the filthy woman pushed her hand into Lucia’s vagina and then into her rectum.
When the guard finished the search, she left Lucia lying on the floor, weeping from the pain and humiliation.
This is my punishment from God because I was a bad mother. I deserve this suffering. But Jonas should not be punished for my sins. He is a good boy. What does he know of life, she thought, her despair palpable and complete. She had never in her life felt so utterly powerless.
Then Brand was escorted into the little room – their tomb – by two SS men, his face bruised. At first he did not see Lucia as his eyes were fixed on the closing door. He shouted, “You have no right to treat me like this! I demand to see Chief Richter. You don’t know who I am!” He turned his body away from the door and gasped in surprise when he saw his wife lying in the corner on the floor, half-naked. He picked her up in his arms and quickly covered her body with her dress. “My God, what did they do to you?” he yelled. He wanted to scream and beat them senseless, but he knew that if he fell apart now all would be lost forever.
“I am all right. They only searched me, but they took Jonas away.” And with that he started to become hysterical again. Brand swiftly rose from the floor and banged on the door.
“I demand to see Paul Richter, and to call Berlin at once. You must let me talk to Max Schiller and Speer. Where is my son?” He continued in this manner, naming all his friends and connections in Berlin.
The door swung opened and Jonas was brought in. Both parents swept him up and covered him with their arms, protecting him with their bodies. He tried to push his parents away as he was ashamed of his pants soaked with urine. “They made me pee in my pants,” he cried pitifully.
“They will never take you again, Jonas,” Brand said with tears in his eyes. He explained to Lucia the events of the past twelve hours and reassured her that they would soon be rescued. They sat huddled together in the corner of the room like gypsies, Lucia quietly crying, Jonas shivering, and Brand encircling them both in his arms. There was no possibility of escaping. All his threats and shouting were of no avail. They stripped him of everything including the Swiss Army knife he always carried with him. His body ached badly from the battering he had sustained, and he felt utterly drained. For the first time in his life he realized that he had no escape route, no plan.
At eight in the morning Paul Richter came to Gestapo headquarters. The Prince had already been waiting there for hours.
“They’ve got the Krugers.”
“I know, I heard,” the police chief said remorsefully.
“I have a telegram from Hess, ordering their release, and these idiots would not honor it until you arrived.”
“I am sorry, Major,” the officer of the day said to Richter, “but we had to follow orders.”
“Brand will have to stand trial,” Paul said to the Prince. “That was the agreement.”
Uncle Herman came into headquarters, greeting the secretary and officer in charge like old friends.
The door to the little room opened and a guard stepped out, ordering the Kruger family to follow him quickly. “The Chief wants to see you,” he said. Once inside Paul’s office, Brand cried, “Thank God, Paul, you are here!”
“Don’t say anything,” Paul said. “You have to stand trial for the shooting, but they have agreed to let you and your family go home with the police guard, under three thousand guldens bail, until the trial.”
Uncle Herman paid out the money, slipping an extra fifty to the guard.
“We are doing this for you, Herr Kruger,” Chief Richter said loudly, “because you have been a good friend of the Third Reich, and because Berlin regrets the accident which occurred, but we have to go through the courts to clear you. Read the telegram from Rudolf Hess. We want the world to see that in the new Germany, justice prevails.”
A sedan drove the Krugers back to Langfuhr, the guard and Uncle Herman in the front seat. The Prince was joking with the guard as Brand and Lucia sat silently, observing a master at work. “A surprise for you, my little Jonas. Astor is waiting for you. I had my valet run up to Sopot and fetch him.” Once in the house, Lucia ran upstairs, showered quickly and changed her clothing. Jonas was hugging his dog, and the Prince took the guard into the kitchen for some beer and cigarettes where he found Fräulein Marlow seated at the table.
“Ah, Fräulein,” the Prince said, “I want you to meet Sergeant Kessler. He will be staying with us here for a while, and we want to make the officer comfortable. He will be eating with us. Tonight he will sleep here.”
The pudgy SS guard understood immediately what the Prince had in mind. He licked his dry lips.
The Prince went on: “Now, Fräulein, Frau Kruger has asked if you would please be good enough to buy some food at the market, since we were not expected. Go and see my friend, Fritz Heller. He will give you sauerbraten, and fresh bread, a goose liver, salami, and whatever else our friend would like.” He whispered to the guard, “They are filthy rich.”
“Schnitzel and beer. I like a good schnitzel,” answered the guard.
“Here is five hundred guldens, Fräulein, and please keep the change for all your troubles.”
The governess sighed but did what she was told. She disliked the Prince intensely. He had always made her feel like an insignificant servant. He, too, was an Aryan living among Jews. But he had never once recognized their common bond. The minute she left, Brandenberg left the SS man with a bottle of brandy and a pack of American cigarettes.
“We have about thirty minutes before she returns,” he whispered to Brand.
Brand removed the money, visas, and tickets from behind the Gutenberg bible and handed the Prince fifty thousand American dollars. Lucia quickly sewed ten one-thousand-dollar bills into Jonas’ pants, into her dress, and into Brand’s clothing.
Jonas watched her work with amazement, as Brand whispered to him. “Not a word! Don’t even play with or touch your pants. Our lives depend on it, Jonas. No monkey business, yes?”
“Your mother will take you to Sopot right now by train, and I will come separately by car with the Prince, and so will Uncle Herman.” Brand had just sent Bruno on an “errand” to collect suits he pretended he had ordered from his tailor downtown.
“What about the SS man, Father?” Jonas asked.
“It will be taken care of.”
“Are you going to kill him, too?” he asked.
“Keep quiet, Jonas. We will talk later.”
In a few minutes, they heard the Prince and the guard laughing uproariously. Then the door closed behind them. As soon as they heard the Prince’s engine roaring, Brand kissed Lucia and Jonas.
“Now run. I will see you at the pier in about one hour. Look happy.” He kissed his son. “Take care of your mother, Jonas. I am depending on you. We have to leave now. If we stay, they will kill us.” There were tears in Brand’s eyes.
“Can’t I take Astor with us? He can protect us. He is no trouble at all. I can take care of him,” Jonas pleaded.
“Hurry, Jonas. Get into the car.”
“Please, Father. I can’t leave Astor.” He was sobbing.
“No, Jonas. Astor has to stay, like everything else in this house. It has to look like we are returning in a few days.” Lucia began to cry, too.
“Look happy, for heaven’s sake. You can cry later.”
“How can you be so cold?” Lucia asked. “Everything you worked for – everything!”
“Stop it, Lucia! This is all worthless now. Take your jewelry. But only our lives matter. Please. We must control ourselves.”
Jonas scurried in panic to find something of his own to take with him. He ran into the lib
rary and grabbed the piece of coal on Brand’s desk and then to his bedroom for his diary, a photograph, and the small paperweight Ala had given him on his ninth birthday. Brand left a note for Fräulein Marlow: “We will be back a little later. We are at Gestapo headquarters for a hearing. Please feed Astor, as we did not get the chance.”
Then he sent a letter to Gestapo headquarters that the governess and Bruno had helped them to escape, and that fifty thousand guldens were hidden in the governess’ black shoes in her bedroom.
Astor lay down on his blanket in the hallway, and Jonas, with tears in his eyes said, “Be a good boy, Astor. I am sorry I have to leave you, but I will be back. In the meantime I am taking your picture with me.” He hoped that Cook, returning any day from her summer holiday, would keep the dog. Jonas kissed Astor, who seemed to understand and began to whine and roll on the blanket. As they climbed into the Prince’s car, Jonas, crying hysterically, looked back at the house, toward his room and balcony and the large chestnut tree in front.
He was waiting for Astor to come to the door or the window. Just one more look at his beloved dog. The street was deserted on this late summer day. Already a certain decay had set in. The lawns of these resplendent homes were unattended, the sidewalks unswept, and the balconies, the beautiful balconies of Danzig, were drab and funereal in appearance. This time of the year they were once bedecked with flowers; now they looked like grand tombstones: ornate, bathed in the shadow of the death that was soon to come.
“Take a good look, Jonas, a hard last look; we can never come back again,” Brand said. His voice choked up uncharacteristically. “This is the end of a life, a civilization that will never be again.”
“Father, please don’t talk like that. We will come back one day.”
The Guterbanhof railroad station ran trains to Sopot every hour on the hour on weekends during the summer. Vacationers with their beach paraphernalia, the Danzigers, were boarding the train joyfully, oblivious to what they left behind – a once-peaceful city that they had handed over to the Nazis, a takeover that they had even applauded. They had rid themselves of the Jews. These everyday folks – bakers, butchers, shoemakers, school teachers – proudly wore their swastika armbands and carried small flags, symbols of the new order, the new world. Brand kissed his son and wife and said, loud enough for everyone, “See you in a few days. Have a nice weekend.” Once in their first-class compartment, Jonas took a seat by the window, peering at all the people, at teenage boys his age boarding the train for the seashore. Once in a while, there was a dog being pulled by a child.
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