Unwavering: Love and Resistance in WW2 Germany

by Marion Kummerow

  I have a bad conscience about making you so many rules; I hope you don’t think it’s too much. May I ask you or Julia to please write me soon, letting me know in great detail how you all are? I’d like to know how Volker behaves, if he’s healthy, if he is nice, what he does every day and how you spent Christmas, everything. I want to know everything.

  Julia is such a good writer, please tell her to do this favor for her older sister.

  Wishing you and my little sweetie a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year. I’m sending greetings to everyone.

  Your always thankful Hilde

  She squeezed in some extra words on the last sheet of paper she had been given.

  My beloved little Volker,

  Your mother had to write a letter because she couldn’t come herself and this is why she’s very sad.

  But you spent Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa – this is fun, isn’t it?

  I hope you’ll always be a good boy and do what Grandmama tells you. Maybe then there will be something nice under the Christmas tree, that lovely tree with so many lights.

  Hilde stopped and drew a Christmas tree with candles and ornaments onto the paper.

  I have painted a Christmas tree for you, can you do the same? Try it and then send it to your mother with a letter. Please don’t forget your little brother, Peter, who is with your other grandmama for Christmas.

  But soon we will be all together again in our apartment in Nikolassee. Do you remember it? And then you can play again with your kindergarten friends.

  Now, be always a good boy and please think once in a while about your mother who loves you more than anything in the world.

  Hilde stared at the letter as tears rolled down her face once more. She folded the sheets of paper over, addressed the envelope, but didn’t seal it. The censors would do that for her.

  When the guard came for the letter, she was out of tears,; despair had crawled into every crevice of her being. Desperation was becoming her constant companion, and her ability to stay strong was slipping away with each passing hour.

  Later in the morning, they came to transfer her to the women’s prison. As soon as she left the Gestapo cellars behind, her spirits rose.

  The new cell was about six by ten feet. It featured a bunk bed, a table, and a chair. Most importantly, there was a window where sunlight streamed inside.

  Pure luxury.

  Chapter 12

  Christmas had passed, and the year 1943 had arrived when Q’s wounds finally started to heal, and the constant mind-fog cleared. Two weeks tied to his bed in solitary confinement had made him hungry for any kind of human interaction.

  As this wouldn’t happen, he talked to himself aloud to break the monotony of his existence. He held vivid discussions with himself and was surprised when, one day, a different voice filled the room.

  He hadn’t seen the young nurse before, or perhaps he just hadn’t paid attention to her. She was little more than twenty years old, with a round face, straight blonde hair, and vivid blue eyes.

  “Are you feeling better, Herr Quedlin?” she asked him.

  No, he definitely hadn’t seen her before because nobody had ever addressed him by his name in this hospital. Usually, the nurses and doctors only barked orders at him. “Hinsetzen. Essen. Aufstehen.” Sit up. Eat. Stand.

  “Well, yes,” he managed to answer.

  When she untied him and took off his mittens, he wasn’t surprised. This had been the usual routine after the first few days. The nurses would untie him, give him his food, then sit in the corner, watching him while they read or wrote something.

  Not this one. She helped him sit up, handed him the tray, and moved the chair to sit beside him.

  “I’m Schwester Anna,” she said.

  Seen up close, she was much too thin. Like everyone in this country. While there wasn’t a famine like during the Great War, the rations didn’t allow anyone to put on fat.

  “Thank you, I’m Wilhelm Quedlin,” he said, out of training as to how to hold a conversation with another person besides himself.

  She giggled. “I know that.”

  When he’d finished eating the piece of bread and two potatoes, she smiled at him and apologized. “I’m sorry, but I have to tie you up again.”

  Then she was gone. Q longed to see her again, but with her blonde hair and fair skin, she looked like an angel, and he came to the conclusion that she had been a trick of his isolated mind. A friendly Krankenschwester who actually talked to him? No way.

  The next day she came back and started a conversation.

  “You do know I’ve been sentenced to death, Schwester Anna?” he asked her.

  “Yes. We were told.”

  “Doesn’t it strike you as ironic that you’re nursing me back to health then?” Q rotated his wrists in all directions.

  “It does, but that’s my job.” She paused for a while and lowered her voice. “You’re luckier than your friends. Harro Schulze-Boysen, his wife, and another dozen members of the Red Orchestra were executed on December twenty-second.”

  “I knew he was arrested, but not that they’d already executed him,” Q said. Apparently, Schwester Anna believed him to be part of Schulze-Boysen’s network.

  Another irony of fate. He and Schulze-Boysen had agreed not to work together, and yet he had been found out because they used the same contacts in Russia. According to what Q had heard in his trial and then put two and two together, the entire resistance network had been discovered when the Gestapo captured a female Russian parachutist last summer. She possessed a list of more than two hundred contacts, which the Gestapo had been able to decipher.

  “The poor man, he’d been in Gestapo custody since last September. But he never wavered in his convictions,” the nurse said.

  Q’s eyes widened in shock. Since September? Why hadn’t he known until his trial about Schulze-Boysen’s arrest? Would he have been more careful? Stopped meeting Gerald? Would he still be free, together with his wife and sons?

  Q barely noticed when Schwester Anna tied him to his bed again and left; too many emotions flooded his system. Guilt. Regret. Fear. He’d insisted on doing things on his own when he should have kept up with the news better.

  After many hours of second-guessing himself, analyzing all the possibilities, weighing the pros and cons, he finally found some calm. There was nothing I could have done, and no way I could have known. I wouldn’t have done a thing differently.

  When Schwester Anna returned in the morning, he’d been waiting for her, anxious to pepper her with questions. “Where did they shoot him?”

  “He wasn’t shot. He was hanged,” she said while untying Q.

  “Hanged?” Q raised an eyebrow. Military people like Schulze-Boysen were normally executed in front of a firing squad. Civilians were usually beheaded with the guillotine. But hanging? When did the Nazis begin killing people by hanging them?

  Hanging was considered a discreditable and cruel method of execution. In a few rare situations, the drop broke the victim’s neck, but more often than not, the rope merely compressed the throat, making breathing impossible and giving the victim a painful few minutes of suffering as they were suffocated to death. Their faces swelled and turned purple as the blood stopped its circulation, then blessedly, they would convulse and pass from this life.

  “Yes. He made a statement before they dropped him.” She turned her head away and whispered…

  “Wenn wir auch sterben sollen,

  So wissen wir: Die Saat

  Geht auf. Wenn Köpfe rollen,

  Dann Zwingt doch der Geist den Staat.

  Glaubt mit mir an die gerechte Zeit, die alles reifen lässt!"

  Even if we should die,

  We know this: The seed

  Bears fruit. If heads roll, then

  The spirit nevertheless forces the state.

  Believe with me in the just time that lets everything ripen.

  Q didn’t know what to say. Just reciting Schulze-Boysen’s last
words could get the nurse arrested if someone overheard her.

  She turned to look at him with watery eyes. “So many brave men and women have been executed. Schulze-Boysen was so strong. He was brutally tortured, and yet he never said a word or betrayed anyone working with the Resistance. He didn’t even beg for his life.”

  “You shouldn’t voice these things here. People have been arrested for less,” Q warned her.

  A smile appeared on her face. “Would you turn me in?”

  “Of course not. But the walls have ears. You never know who’s listening, or whom to trust,” he said, tasting the bitterness of Gerald’s betrayal.

  In this moment, the door opened, and the head nurse peeked inside. She scowled at Anna. “Hurry up, you are needed. And have I heard chatter in here?”

  “Yes, Oberschwester, I just told the prisoner to finish his meal so I can leave. I’ll be with you in a minute,” Schwester Anna answered.

  The next day, another nurse attended him.

  When she left, it finally dawned on him, what his sentence actually meant. Death.

  Of course, he had known the meaning on an intellectual level, but now, he felt the weight of it in every cell. His body took on a life of its own and started shaking violently, and for once, he was thankful to be tied to his bed. After hours of howling, screaming, and fighting, he finally fell asleep.

  When he woke up the next morning, he consoled himself with the fact that at least Martin would continue their sabotage work at Loewe, even without Erhard and Q. In case of an upheaval within Germany, Martin would also be able to lead the company into a new era.

  Chapter 13

  The deafening sound of air raid alarms penetrated Hilde’s dreams on January sixteenth. The next moment she was wide awake. It was her first alarm in prison. She heard the guards rushing along the hallway and waited for someone to open her cell door. But nothing happened.

  Her cellmate, a resolute Polish woman in her fifties with little mastery of the German language, said, “Prisoners stay in cells.”

  Hilde looked at her in shock. That couldn’t be true. Their cell was on the third floor, and they were sitting ducks for the British bombers.

  “No, no,” Hilde protested. “We need to go to the shelter. Or at least to the basement of the building.”

  “Yes. Stay,” the woman said and stretched out on her cot, sliding a rosary through her fingers and murmuring a verse in Polish that Hilde assumed to be Hail Mary.

  Not sure whether the protection of the Virgin Mary would extend to a Protestant, Hilde wrapped a blanket around her slight form and cowered in the corner of the cell. The building shook as bomb after bomb detonated nearby. Dust and pieces of the plaster walls fell to the floor, and she coughed in the dusty air.

  The air raid continued for most of the night and finally stopped sometime after the sun came up. Covered with dust, Hilde climbed the ladder to her bunk bed, eyeing the peacefully sleeping Polish woman with envy before she fell into a fitful sleep.

  A few days after the bombing, the guard announced a visitor for Hilde. It would be the first person from outside she’d seen since her arrest almost two months ago.

  Hilde entered the visiting room to find a man she hadn’t seen before.

  “Frau Quedlin, my name is Müller, and I’m your lawyer.” He extended his hand to her.

  Hilde took it, baffled. “My lawyer? But–”

  “Frau Klein has retained me to defend you and your husband.”

  “My mother?” Hilde asked, confused by his words.

  “Yes, your mother, Annie Klein, has hired me to mount a defense against the Gestapo’s accusations.”

  Hilde couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t at all like her mother. The same person who hadn’t even written a letter had gone to all the trouble to hire a costly lawyer to defend her?

  “Please tell her that I’m very grateful, but I can’t…”

  The lawyer waved her objection away and pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. “Let’s sit down and get over the paperwork first. Shall we?”

  Hilde took a seat and eyed the papers.

  Herr Müller explained about his duties and his fees, then slid the first document across to her and handed her a fountain pen. “This is a full power over your and your husband’s estate for your mother. According to the contract, she has to use it in good faith to cover all expenses related to your children and to pay my fees.”

  Hilde shook her head, her earlier surprise replaced by the bitter knowledge of her mother’s ulterior motives. Annie never did anything if there wasn’t an advantage to her.

  “I know this may seem like picking over bones, but it actually is the best solution. Your mother, Frau Klein, has the best intentions.”

  Yes, the best intentions for herself.

  After a long pause, Herr Müller tapped the paper. “Your trial is scheduled in less than a week.”

  “I will sign it, fine, but you need to get my husband’s signature as well,” Hilde said and reluctantly took the pen.

  “Of course I will, Frau Quedlin. As soon as I’m allowed to visit him.”

  The lawyer asked her about her side of the story, and she repeated everything she’d already told the Gestapo. He might be her lawyer, but she was sure someone was watching or listening, so she made sure that she didn’t confess to having done anything illegal. Nor would she ever mention Martin’s name. As far as she knew, he was still at liberty.

  “Very good. That should help.” Herr Müller finished scribbling notes and looked at her with a sad expression in his eyes. “You have been accused of high treason.”

  “High treason?” Hilde’s voice quivered.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “This is ridiculous. I’ve done nothing to justify…” Her voice broke, and she took a deep breath.

  “That is what we need to prove at trial.”

  “But…how can they…?” Hilde closed her eyes and willed her voice to work. “What are my chances?”

  “This I don’t know. I promise I’ll do my best, but I will be honest with you. Your trial is considered Geheime Kommandosache.”

  “What does that mean?” Hilde wanted to know.

  “It means the normal sharing of information is suppressed. I asked for copies of the evidence against you but have received nothing. We won’t see the evidence they intend to use until the day of the trial.”

  “But that’s unlawful!” Hilde was livid. She stood up and paced the small room. “How can they do this? There are laws in place for a reason.”

  “Laws they do not have to follow.”

  Desperation gripped her. “Is there nothing that can be done?”

  “I am going to do my best for you. Furthermore, I’ve started the paperwork to appeal Doctor Quedlin’s sentence. I won’t be able to overturn his conviction, but I’m hoping to get his sentence changed to lifelong imprisonment instead of execution.” With a glance at his watch, Herr Müller stuffed his papers back in his briefcase and stood up. “My time is up, but I will be back. Have a good day, Frau Quedlin.”

  A good day?

  Chapter 14

  Q was lying on his bed, trying to exercise his weakened and sore body within the little free-moving space he had when the door to his cell opened. Judging by the sun streaming in through the window, it was around noon. A very unusual time for anyone to enter his room.

  At the sight of the head nurse, his heart sank, but she greeted him with something similar to a smile.

  “Herr Quedlin, you have a visitor.” She released his hands and feet and helped him sit on the edge of the bed before ushering in a thin, well-dressed man a few moments later.

  “Doctor Quedlin, allow me to introduce myself. I am Rechtsanwalt Müller, and I am here to represent you,” the lawyer said and extended his hand.

  “Who sent you?” asked Q, suspicious of being allowed a visitor after all these weeks.

  “Your mother-in-law, Annie Klein, has retained me to represent you and your wife agains
t the charge presented and your conviction.”

  Q nodded, trying to grab hold of what the man was saying. “Have you seen my wife?”

  “Yes, I have. She sent me to tell you she’s fine and looking forward to her trial with hope, as she’s innocent.”

  Q smiled at the evidence that Hilde had stuck to their plan to lay all guilt on him and pretend to be an unknowing helper.

  “Do you know when her trial will be?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, in three days from now. But I’m here to talk about your case, not hers, if you understand.” Herr Müller glanced at his watch. “We have only twenty-five minutes left.”

  Q raised a bandaged hand. “Excuse me, but first, why now? Why is the Gestapo allowing this?”

  “Well, it is my understanding that Frau Klein is well connected. She personally asked Kriminalkommissar Becker for this favor, and it was granted to her.”

  A favor? Since when is being allowed a lawyer to defend yourself a favor? Q wanted to scream but refrained from doing so. It wouldn’t help. He’d be grateful for this favor that actually was a basic right – or had been before Hitler came to power.

  Herr Müller pulled some papers from his briefcase and handed them to Q with a pen. “These papers transfer all legal power over your estate to your mother-in-law so that she may continue to care for your children and pay my fees. I need you to sign on the line next to where your wife signed.”

  Q’s thankfulness disappeared. He wasn’t at all surprised that Annie had figured out a way to benefit from his and her daughter’s arrests. His first impulse was to refuse, but his children needed food and clothing and a place to live. All of this cost money. Yes, he had given his mother an envelope with money to stash away, but this money wouldn’t last for long if it was the only source of income for his children.