by Liz Tolsma
“In a little while, when everyone is awake, I will get you some bread.”
“I’m awake.” Mitch raised and lowered his shoulders several times. Her stomach fluttered at the sight of the crinkles around his eyes. “What would you like for breakfast, princess?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither.” Renate had awakened.
“Let me see.” Mitch tapped his pointer finger on his chin. “What about stollen?”
“Ja, ja. That would be good.” Annelies clapped her hands together and her sister followed suit.
Gisela sighed. “And where do you propose to get these pastries?”
“How about bacon and eggs?”
“Ja, I would eat that.”
“Quit teasing the girls. They will only be disappointed.”
Audra’s stomach rumbled. “You are making me hungry.” The girls giggled.
Katya fluffed her hair with her fingers. “Sister, did you hear that? Eggs and bacon and pastry. What a fine meal. With some coffee to wash it down.”
Bettina smacked her lips. “We can sit at a table on the Champs-Élysées and watch the couples stroll past.”
“Now, Sister, do tell the truth. Is Paris not the most romantic place in the entire world?”
“I beg to differ, Sister. The beaches of Majorca are even better.”
Gisela shook her head. “We’re getting close.”
Audra nodded. “Does anything look familiar?”
“Ja.” A lump rose in her throat. “We are approaching Biesenthal. See the church steeple?” A dark roof and cross topped the white stone building that towered over the rest of the red-roofed town.
Audra touched her shoulder.
Gisela could say no more. Greta Cohen, her best friend in school when her family first came to Germany in 1936, moved to Biesenthal two years later. They were the “Two Gs” and Gisela often took the train here to visit Greta. In 1941, her friend disappeared. Gisela had no idea whether or not she was still alive.
And she had done nothing to help. She had known life was getting dangerous for the Jews, yet she never thought anything would happen to Greta. Then it was too late.
The stations rolled past. Even with the cracks in the windows distorting the view, they revealed brick buildings, trees against stark skies, tired people rushing through the streets. She sat a little straighter with each one that went by. Familiar landmarks stirred a wave of homesickness she didn’t think she possessed. Had Berlin become a home to her?
Yet the destruction appalled her. In some neighborhoods, no more than one in twenty houses stood. Entire blocks had been reduced to piles of rubble. The barren trees, burned black, would never leaf. The Nazi regime was crumbling.
And what had become of their home? She hadn’t been in contact with her family since before she fled Heiligenbeil. Would she find Mutti amid this destruction?
The train slowed and she recognized the buildings around the Berlin-Stettiner Bahnhof. The brakes squealed and the platform came into view. Two years ago, she had stood in this very place while Mutti wrapped the daisy scarf around her neck, then Gisela waved good-bye to her parents. She bit back a sob and squared her shoulders.
The crowd flowed down the aisle and poured out the doors.
Bettina pressed her nose against the cold windowpane. “I didn’t think Paris would look like this.”
“It’s the war you know, Sister. Those French would burn down their entire city to spite us.”
Gisela believed it would break their hearts to know the truth about their glorious fatherland.
The group waited to disembark until the last for the children’s sake, though Gisela’s feet itched. At the same time, her heart hitched. She didn’t want to think about what she might find at her old address.
At last they walked down the aisle, her right fingers entwined with Annelies’s, her left dragging across the crushed-velvet seats. She was glad to leave this stinky, filthy carriage.
They exited the building with its soaring, arching roof and began the next leg of their journey.
Gisela gasped the moment they left the station and walked out on the strasse. Rubble littered the city. In some buildings, windows were blown out and the buildings’ facades damaged.
It wasn’t the city she had once known.
Without familiar landmarks, she couldn’t remember which direction to turn. It had been so long and the place had changed so much. She swallowed and tried to catch her breath.
Mitch’s hip bump startled her. “I said, which way do we go?”
Panic strangled her. “I don’t remember.”
“Not again. Lord, not again.” He tugged on his coat.
She took a deep breath, trying to recall. “Left. I think we go left.” She glanced in both directions as people went about their lives among the rubble.
“But you aren’t sure.”
Was Mitch trying to confuse her? “Turn left. I’ll know soon if that is correct or not.”
“Be sure.”
“There is nothing sure now.”
He huffed as she struck out. “Bettina, Katya, are you coming?”
“I thought Paris would be cleaner than this. Sister, we should have stayed home. These people need to learn to be neater.” Katya tsk-tsked but drew even with Gisela. “Dearie, I do believe the Eiffel Tower is to the right, not to the left. It may have been years and years since I was here, but I remember that much.”
Gisela handed Annelies to Kurt and took the woman’s suitcase from her. “I thought you told me you have never been to Paris.”
“But I have been. In ’26, Sister and I spent a glorious summer here. I fell in love with a painter and my parents rushed here to prevent my marriage to the man. They wanted better for me. He was better for me.”
Gisela’s gaze wandered to the handsome man beside her, his dark eyes framed by his wavy hair. His beard had thickened during the trek.
“Who are we going to tell Mutti you are? My husband?”
Mitch scratched his chin. “We have to keep up the charade as long as Kurt and Audra are with us. You will have to introduce me as your husband. Perhaps you will get a moment alone when you can tell her the truth.”
She had lied easily enough throughout the trek, but never to Mutti. That is one person to whom she never told a falsehood.
“Careful.”
Mitch’s command brought her to an abrupt stop. A pile of rubble loomed in front of her. Best to keep her eyes on the road and not on the distracting man beside her. Between what had been two bricks, a little doll’s face peeked out.
In the midst of the hustle and bustle that was the city of Berlin, air-raid sirens blared. Mitch’s heart jumped as weakness surged into his arms and legs. Where were they supposed to go? He clasped Renate’s tiny hand in his and squeezed it.
“Dearies, dearies, what is happening?” Bettina’s words whistled out between her teeth.
“Why, Sister, the place is on fire.”
Gisela’s spine stiffened as she continued forward. “Nein, not on fire. It’s an air-raid warning. We need to get to the shelter. Everyone to the luftschutzbunker.” She pointed to a building with a white arrow painted on the side with a sign. Zum Öffentlichen Luftschutzraum. He assumed it showed the way to the public air-raid shelter.
Berliners of all shapes and sizes followed the arrow as if they were headed to work or church. Of course they would be prepared for this. They had been dealing with Allied bombings since the very beginning. And Gisela would have experienced many of these terrifying raids.
The shaking in his legs subsided and he followed her down the street. Her momentary lack of confidence had fled and she marched forward with a sure step.
The huge crowd filed toward the shelter in a remarkably orderly fashion. A few, perhaps as newly arrived as he was, glanced around, terror in their eyes. Most Berliners continued with their conversations, unfazed by the howling of the sirens.
Off in the distance came the unmistakable humming of many,
many bombers. Mitch craned his neck toward the sky. “My countrymen.” How he wished he could be on the other side of this war. He needed to be on the other side of this war.
Gisela shook her head. “The Americans bomb during the day, the British at night.”
He had missed so much while in East Prussia. “I know next to nothing.”
She gave him a tiny smile, one that soothed him. “You know all you need to know for the moment. Each Allied bomb brings Germany one step closer to destruction.”
“And one step closer to liberation.”
She nodded.
The Germans bombed British civilians early in the war. Was this their retaliation? Did that make them any better than the enemy? He pushed away the reviling thought.
Renate tugged on his sleeve and he stopped and lifted the child. She covered her ears with her hands and snuggled her face into his neck. The two old biddies cackled beside him, Audra and Kurt next to them.
Antiaircraft guns began their steady rat-a-tat-tat as they approached the entrance to the concrete bunker. The crowd pressed inside, creating a bottleneck at the doorway. Many either going about their business in the area or those who had no shelter in their homes crammed into the bunker with them.
They found seats on the wooden benches built into the concrete walls. The cement rose above them in an arch and large oxygen tanks squatted in the corners.
The noise of the planes above them became a constant roar. The stream of those seeking refuge continued unabated. As many as could manage it packed the bunker to overflowing.
Audra turned as white as a summer cloud. “I can’t breathe.” She rose from the bench. “Bitte, let me go outside. We will be crushed to death in here.”
Mitch took her by the shoulders and pressed her into her seat. “You will be blown to bits if you leave.”
“I would rather have that happen to me than to have every bone in my body broken by the crowd and have all the air sucked out of my lungs.”
Kurt held her hands. “You have to stay here. Don’t let the enemy take you.”
She nodded, but her face remained devoid of color.
The air-raid warden closed the heavy metal door with a great clang.
A short while later, above them came the whistling of bombs. The building shook but stood. In the event of a direct hit, the tons of concrete above them, meant to protect them, would surely collapse. They would be crushed.
He forced himself to take deep, steady breaths. Not normally claustrophobic, he understood Audra’s fear.
And shared a measure of it.
Gisela rubbed Audra’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about the bombs you can hear. They may break windows or loosen bricks, but the building will stand. The ones you don’t hear are the ones that are dangerous.”
If you couldn’t hear them, by the time you realized what was happening, you would be dead.
What kind of place had they come to?
NINETEEN
Despite his brave front, Gisela read the fear in Mitch’s eyes even in the dimly lit interior of the luftschutzbunker. Air raids were terrifying. The ones early in the war had knocked the heart out of her. Then several quiet years passed before the bombings returned in earnest.
The ground beneath them rocked as another bomb exploded in the area. Annelies stiffened in her arms. Gisela had been fifteen when the first raids came in 1940. She couldn’t imagine enduring this at the tender age of five.
Audra was more nervous than the kinder, playing with the hem of her faded purple sweater. A muscle jumped in Kurt’s jaw but his eyes revealed nothing.
Mitch leaned toward her and spoke English in her ear. “Is it always like this?” He stiffened as another bomb hit its mark not far from them.
“They seem more intense now than two years ago. Like the Allies are dropping all they have in hopes of ending the war soon.”
He leaned back against the concrete wall. “How long do they last?”
“Some raids go on longer than others. They all last too long.”
Mothers clutched their children . . . old couples leaned on each other for support. Gisela remembered the almost party-like atmosphere that had marked the first raids years ago. Those days had vanished.
“When we were on the street and I didn’t know where to go, you said something very strange.”
He looked at the ceiling.
“You said, ‘Not again.’ What did you mean by that?”
“I have a reputation for getting lost.” He flashed a very brief smile, but his words were underscored by a nervous laugh.
“We all get lost from time to time.”
“Not like me.”
“Does this have to do with France?”
He tented his fingers and sighed. “Do you always ask this many questions? Xavier would call you a nosy bird.”
“You don’t talk about it.”
“What’s to say.” He held his palms upward and shrugged. “My chums followed me around Belgium and France and I led them straight to a group of panzers. Are you happy now?”
“You got separated from the other troops?”
“Retreating. Most of them went one way. We went another. I thought it would be easy to find our way west into France. We’d have a jolly good time along the way. But it turns out I was daft.”
“Don’t blame yourself. Getting lost in a strange country is no sin.”
“But it is.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. We all . . .” Well, she wouldn’t want to talk about Goldap and her cousins. “Forgive me.”
He nodded, then closed his eyes. She wondered if he was praying or remembering.
With ever-maddening slowness, the American bombers wheeled around and headed west. An even longer time passed before the all-clear signal sounded and the heavy shelter doors were opened.
Audra pushed and shoved her way through the throng, ducking under arms, stepping on toes, and was among the first on the street. The rest of the their group joined her some time later and continued their journey toward home.
Home. Mutti. Gisela couldn’t wait.
Then they came to the Unter den Linden, a wide boulevard, the main street of Berlin.
She spotted the lampposts.
A terrific scream rose in her and ripped from her chest.
She couldn’t stop it. From each lamppost down the street, a man or woman or child swung from a noose, legs dangling in the wind, faces and bodies bloated. Her empty stomach protested violently. She covered Annelies’s eyes and closed hers. “Nein. Nein. What have they done? Oh nein.”
How could she ever erase these images from her memory?
Mitch pulled her close, Renate’s hand still clasped in his. Gisela leaned into him, wanting him to hold her and make this horror disappear. He said something to her, but she couldn’t hear him over her screams.
Mitch released her, then caught her upper arm and squeezed hard. “Stop. Stop. You are scaring the girls. No more shouting.”
She quieted at his command and became aware of the kinder crying. She looked down and opened her eyes so she wouldn’t see the horrible scene. “I am sorry, girls, so sorry. Please don’t cry. You are fine and safe. Nothing bad will happen to you.”
Annelies, free of Gisela’s hold, peered at her through long eyelashes and golden bangs. “Why are those men hanging there?”
Gisela squatted beside her and took Annelies’s face in her hands. “They are men who ran away from the army. They didn’t want to fight for their country.”
“They are bad men?”
“Nein, not bad men. Just men who didn’t do the bad things they were told to do. The bad men are the people who told them to do wrong. When they didn’t listen, this is what happened to them.”
Annelies’s gray eyes grew large and solemn. “Will it happen to me? Or to you? To Mutti or Vater?”
“Nein, never. Do you understand? You need not be afraid. God will take care of you.”
In her heart, Gisela believed this truth. But ho
w much did He care for them? When would this terror stop? The gruesomeness of war, the unimaginable need and uncertainty—how could this continue?
And then she stared at Mitch in his SS officer’s uniform.
He could be strung up as a deserter.
He played a dangerous game.
The sight before Mitch’s eyes—traitors and their families hung out like laundry to dry—drove home what he knew. The Germans were brutal beasts. No better than the Russians they were fleeing.
His stomach churned.
Traitors and deserters had to be punished. But not like this. Was every infraction worthy of the death penalty?
He pulled Annelies against his legs, shielding her from the grisly sight. No little girl should have to see this. No one should.
Gisela leaned against him, her entire body shaking. He wrapped one arm around Annelies and one around Gisela.
“You have to be careful.” Her brows knotted together.
“Why?”
“That could be you. You don’t have papers. They won’t believe your story and you’ll be the next one to swing from a lamppost.”
His knees went weak. Kurt was suspicious already. What would keep the German soldier from turning him in? “We need to get out of here.”
Gisela nodded.
Had God deserted them? Did he believe what Gisela told Annelies? Right now he didn’t see how any of them could survive.
Kurt held Renate who burrowed her head into his shoulder. Audra stood with her head bowed. The two elderly sisters huddled together.
“Do you see what I see, Sister?”
Katya spun around in a circle. “They have the oddest decorations here, don’t they? Hanging dummies from the lamps. Who thought up that idea?”
Oh, to be senile for a while. The pleasure to not understand the brutality of the human race. If the Lord had any compassion for them, He would return at this moment and take them all home.
Mitch stood silent for a full minute, waiting for the Second Coming. It didn’t happen. He spoke in English, softly, to Gisela. “Let’s go home.”
Gisela nodded. “Ja. Mutti will be there and you’ll see, everything will be fine.”
Was she trying to convince him or herself?