The White Rose Resists

by Amanda Barratt

  One of the women stumbled, tripping over something. Her skirt? The curb? The man with the flashlight noticed. He marched over.

  Fear is an odor, rank and ugly. It crouched here in the air, radiating from the young woman. Her breath clouded in short puffs. Surprisingly, she didn’t shrink back or cower as the man loomed in front of her. Just stood there, face pale in the white beam of light, regarding him. Resignedly? Defiantly?

  He leaned in, face pressed toward hers. “When I say schnell I mean it. You filthy Jew whore.”

  The elderly man behind her balled the hand loose at his side into a fist. But he uttered no protest. Only his eyes marked unspent anger.

  The SA man noticed. “What are you looking at?” But he didn’t hit the old man. I expected him to, could see it coming.

  Instead, he turned, raised a fist, and struck the girl in the midsection. She cried out, doubled over, and crumpled to the ground. The older woman pulled the little boy to her side. The SA man laughed. Much as Herr Koch had only an hour ago.

  Thinking back, their laughter blurs in my mind. Herr Koch, face beet red and chuckling; these men, their visages contorted in a display of hate; until they become one and the same. The laughter of November 10, 1938.

  The laughter of Kristallnacht.

  “Get up.” He kicked her huddled form with the toe of his boot. “Onto the truck.”

  The old man bent to help her. The Brownshirt pushed him away. The other SA watched, arms folded, gazes approving.

  “The whore can get up by herself.”

  Slowly, the woman rose, pressing her hands against the cobblestones and standing. A streak of dirt marked her pale cheek.

  They herded the three adults into the back of the van. The little boy stood behind them, clutching his toy, looking up at the grown-ups. He didn’t seem afraid, waiting as patiently as if standing in line for his turn on a carousel.

  What possessed me to stand there, shadows shrouding me, and do nothing? Was it the rhetoric inbred from my years in the Hitler Youth that the Jews had evil running through their veins like blood? Nein. If any emotion could be named, it was fear. Fear at the unfolding horror, at what would happen if the men unleashed their anger on me.

  Coward is too kind a word for what I was then. What I am still.

  The man climbed in with little help, as did the younger woman. But the other struggled, clambering in her long skirt. One of the SA pushed her hard in the rear. Not a helping hand, but a weighty shove that sent her floundering. A thud, as she landed in the van.

  Even cattle, on the way to the slaughterhouse, were given more courtesy.

  The tallest SA, the one who’d struck the young woman, reached down and picked up the little boy, hefting him into his arms like a sack of flour. The motion jarred the teddy bear from the child’s grip. It fell to the ground. The boy let out a wail, chubby arms and legs flailing.

  “Teddybär!” he screamed, hysterical. “Teeeddybär!”

  The man threw him into the back and slammed the doors. The others followed, climbing into the front, talking and laughing. The engine started and the van trundled down the street, turning the corner and disappearing from sight. Leaving the street barren, save me, the sole witness to one of hundreds of crimes that would take place that night in Munich and across Germany.

  Finally I could move, and I did, emerging from the shadows and crossing the street to stand in front of the shop. A home and a business, now empty, their occupants stolen away in the middle of the night like criminals. Criminals whose only crime was to have been born God’s chosen people. I stared at the building, fighting to breathe, hands clenched at my sides. Why? Why did these people deserve this while my own parents were allowed to sleep in their warm bed, undisturbed?

  Growing up, I’d witnessed mild injustices—stronger schoolmates pranking on the weaker, an angry man kicking a mangy dog. Compared to this, I’d been sheltered. This made my breath seize in my lungs as if frozen by shards of ice. This … changed me.

  There on the damp ground, surrounded by fractured glass, lay the toy bear, empty eyes staring up at me. I picked it up, holding it in both hands. Its fur was matted and worn, smelling of clean sheets and little-boy kisses.

  I never discovered the fate that befell its owner.

  That night, as I wandered further through Munich, I witnessed more horrors. Burning synagogues, bearded men forced to dance like schoolchildren while crowds pointed and laughed. The Star of David painted in ugly smears across buildings. Women screaming hysterically as their men were hauled away.

  Glass. Thousands of shards strewn across the cobblestones, diamonds of desecration.

  That night, I went into my parents’ room, and wept great, wracking sobs, begging their forgiveness for my blindness. I’d been caught up in the banners and marching and songs of the Nazi Party, eyes closed to the brewing evil. All along, they’d known the truth, and tried to make me see it. It had taken Kristallnacht to rip the scales from my eyes and force me into the light of day.

  A week later, before leaving for the Wehrmacht, I bowed my heart and surrendered my life to a God greater than Adolf Hitler.

  The years passed. Kristallnacht was only the beginning. The war began in 1939, our triumphant army trampling Poland in a month. After completing basic training, I’d joined the Wehrmacht as a medic in the hope it would enable me to mend, instead of destroy. In 1940, during the invasion of France, I witnessed Germany’s suppression of a rich and beautiful country while tending to hundreds of our wounded. In France, I met Hans Scholl. In the following years, my request to study at university was granted, and I was assigned to Ludwig Maximilian University’s Second Student Medical Company.

  But what did I do? Was it a coincidence I was there that November night?

  I stare at my blank paper, the faces of those lost receding. At university, I’d made friends, reunited with Hans Scholl, and been introduced to Alexander Schmorell and Christl Probst. Young officers and medical students like myself. They grappled with the same questions, all of us unwilling to remain part and parcel with criminals by our complicity. So far, all we’d done was talk at cafés or late-night conferences in Hans’s apartment and the Schmorells’ villa.

  Christl is right. Only action offers any hope of absolution.

  But I hadn’t acted. I’d witnessed the horrors of November 10 and done nothing as a result of what I’d seen.

  No longer. I won’t spend another day going through the motions of life while others journey through hell itself. I will rise up and fight, not for, but against Hitler’s regime.

  I will, I must act.

  God help us, we will resist.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Annalise

  May 12, 1942

  I AM FREE.

  But I am also alone. A little island in the great sea that is Munich. It’s a strange sensation, this aloneness, when in reality I’m surrounded by people. Each day, I walk from the rooms I rent from a perpetually scowling landlady to Ludwig Maximilian University. During these early morning walks, I take in the city, its lofty architecture smothered by swastikas and signs directing one to the nearest air-raid shelter. I study the faces, men with heads bowed low and newspapers under their arms, weary-faced women trekking to stand in long market lines in the hopes of getting something for their ration coupons.

  And the students, heading to classes as I am. I say little to them, this morning no different than the others. I’ve always been shy, or perhaps simply unaccustomed to the camaraderie of friends my own age. In my early teens, the girls in the Bund Deutscher Mädel—League of German Girls—never singled me out or welcomed me in, nor did I rise to leadership among their ranks. I’ve kept to myself, and my exchanges with fellow classmates, both then and now, are short and awkward.

  I lift my hand in a wave to the girl who sits behind me in mathematics. She smiles, nods, as if expecting more from me. But I can’t bring my mouth to open, my tongue to form words of introduction or greeting. She disappears, joining a group of
other students, leaving me standing on the sidewalk. Watching them and cursing myself for my stupidity. My inability to reach out and connect.

  I’m cold. Like Vater. I know it and I hate myself for it.

  I force the ugly thoughts aside as I cross the bustling cobblestoned Ludwigstraße on the way to an art class. One can’t be overwhelmed with anger and expect to create a work of beauty. That is my dream. To create something beautiful. Even now, my fingers ache for the feel of a brush in my hand, a blank canvas. To lose myself in color and texture.

  Maybe even to find myself, my true self, in those very things.

  A foursome hurries down the street, going the opposite way. Sunlight turns the sky a milky shade of cloudless blue, the warm light framing the majestic pale stone university buildings. What colors would I employ to capture the scene? I mentally envision my palette.

  And find my gaze caught instead by a man with eyes the deepest shade of amber, so intense they snatch my breath.

  I’m struck by him. He’s handsome. It’s not a phrase I use often—for goodness’ sake, everyone calls the Führer the most handsome man in Germany—and I scarcely dare think it now, but the young man is indisputably so. His face is strong, but not like Vater’s. Vater’s strength is fueled by anger and discipline. This young man’s strength, as if it flows from something deep within. His hair is the color of spilled molasses, parted in the middle and curling ever so slightly over his forehead. Tall of stature, strong of chin, broad of shoulders. He wears a beige suit, a satchel in one hand, a book beneath his other arm. His steps slow. Mine do too.

  Seconds pass as we regard each other, gazes locked in a stare that whittles the meters between us down to centimeters. A smile curves his lips, an expression that sends warmth pooling through me, down to my toes.

  I return his smile with a hesitant one of my own. His deepens as he nods, his figure framed by sunlight and the university building in the background. My fingers burn for a sketchbook and my pencils, though I scarcely trust myself to capture such an image and do it justice. It would be worth trying though, to render his features on paper to set before my eyes at will.

  One of his friends calls for him to keep up. He turns, our contact broken.

  My eyes fall closed as aching loneliness swells through me, sharper than before.

  I do not know the man Vater will choose for me in a year’s time. I know what my duty will be with him, and loathing fills me at the realization that duty is all it will be. Vater could never be so human as to select someone who could actually feel the emotion of love.

  Powerfully, my heart goes out to him-with-the-amber-eyes-and-magical-smile. I walk in the direction of class, giving myself a mental shake.

  I’m here for art, not idle daydreams. The course of my life has already been set.

  And the hands that put it in motion brook no room for alteration.

  Kirk

  May 13, 1942

  We’re supposed to be studying. Instead, we linger in Manfred Eickemeyer’s studio, gripped by the man and his words.

  The studio isn’t much to look at—a dingy basement cluttered with sculptures and sketches, smelling of old plaster and cheap cigarettes, low ceilinged and shadowed. Nor is Eickemeyer. He’s awkwardly tall, balding, and too thin, rumpled suit hanging on his scarecrow frame.

  But his voice fills the room with desperation’s echo. It is that we listen to and understand.

  “I spent several months in occupied Poland. Kraków, mostly. Apparently my architectural gifts are useful to the Fatherland.” He gives a slight ironic smile. “Though of late, our Führer seems to enjoy the act of destruction more than anything else.”

  Beside me, Alex’s lips twist wryly. He’s smoking; pipe an extension of his fingers, curling gray tendrils of smoke filling the air with pungent vanilla. Hans sits nearest to Eickemeyer, leaning slightly forward, elbows on his knees. It’s on Hans’s invitation that Alex and I are here—“we must hear his experiences.” I recall Hans’s whispered words as we walked to Eickemeyer’s. “He’s seen things.”

  “I also did a good deal of traveling in the occupied territories. Have any of you heard of the SS-Einsatzgruppen?” He looks to each of us in turn. I shake my head. Something curls within me, like a worm unfurling in my stomach.

  “Nein?” Eickemeyer shakes his head. “I didn’t think so. The Nazis don’t like to air things like that out in the open, even if the crimes are against Jews. Muddies the morale.”

  “We never had any morale to be muddied, Herr Eickemeyer,” Hans says.

  “All the better for you.” Eickemeyer clears his throat. “I’d been sent to a village in Poland to meet with a Sturmbannführer Braunn. When I arrived, the sturmbannführer wasn’t in his quarters. So I decided to take a walk.” Eickemeyer stands and paces, leaving a trail of footprints in the plaster dust. “Get some fresh air for a few hours, stretch my legs. The village was quiet. Strangely so, I thought. It was March and the ground was muddy. I still remember how my boots squelched in the mud. They were new boots, and I was annoyed with myself for getting them dirty.”

  Alex taps away pipe ash and sighs, as if suppressing his irritation at Eickemeyer’s tangent. Hans’s brow creases. I shift in my seat. Not from impatience, but from a sick sense of dread.

  “I walked, wind in my face, the tall grasses scratching against my trousers. I crested a hill and stopped to catch my breath.” He draws a jagged inhale. “This … this is difficult for me to remember. When I remember, I am there again.”

  Hans gives a nod of understanding. “Please, Herr Eickemeyer,” he says quietly. “Continue whenever you’re ready.”

  Eickemeyer picks up a half-filled glass of amber liquid resting on the table behind him. Flicks his wrist and tosses back the barest amount, just enough to wet his lips. Returns the glass to the paper-strewn tabletop with a faint clink. “Standing there at the top of the hill, I heard a tramping, like my own feet had made, only magnified a thousand times. Curious, I waited.” Somewhere outside, a car trundles past. Eickemeyer listens, silent until it is gone. “And then they came.

  “They came in lines that curved like snakes without end. Men. Women. Children. Working men, carrying sacks bulging with their families’ worldly goods. Men in suits, with cases of leather, their wives in furs and velvet. Children, clutching vaters’ hands, babes in the arms of their mutters. Humanity. Humanity herded by soldiers in pressed uniforms and shining insignias.” Eickemeyer’s voice shakes.

  The worm spreads in my middle. I cannot tear my gaze away from Eickemeyer’s face. Nor can I stop my ears from hearing his next words.

  “They were ordered to undress and leave their clothes in piles. Those that didn’t comply were instantly shot … right there, in front of their children. There was no decency, no separation of the sexes. It was then most realized what would happen to them. I watched the moment it came over their faces. For some, dull resignation. For others, silent tears. Few made any outward protest. It’s like they knew they were powerless. Those with children tried to calm them. One family started to quietly sing. Not a hymn, but a song about springtime and birds. I can still hear the high voices of those little ones, carried by the wind.” Eickemeyer’s hands tremble. He fumbles for a cigarette. A quiet click as he lights the narrow cylinder, the scent of sulfur.

  I glance at Alex. His face is gray, like dirty cotton. Hans sits motionless.

  “Their identity left with their garments. In their nakedness, they were no longer the businessman, the baker’s wife. They were bodies. And to the soldiers who ordered them to stand at the edge of the ditch, they were targets.

  “I wish I could tell you they died proudly, with some grand display to sear the hearts of their murderers.” Eickemeyer’s throat convulses. “How I wish I could tell you that. But they just … died. Mowed down by machine guns.” His voice is choked. “One on top of the other, on top of the other. Round upon round, falling into the pit. After the first volley, I vomited into the grass, while below the shots went
on.” He stares down at the ground. A sigh shudders his shoulders. “And then I left.”

  Silence falls over the room. The hanging lightbulb flickers above the table. I stare at my hands, remembering the little boy hugging his toy bear moments before the truck took him away. Did that family, that child, meet their end in such a ditch?

  Eickemeyer turns away from us, bracing both hands on the table. His shoulders stoop.

  There are no utterances to fill the void following words like Eickemeyer’s. Had it been a tale of human cruelty, perhaps some platitude could be conjured.

  But what Eickemeyer had witnessed hadn’t been human cruelty. There are not strong enough syllables in mortal vocabulary to answer what he described.

  “Herr Eickemeyer.” Hans breaks the silence, voice strong, but with a shaken edge. “Your studio?”

  Eickemeyer turns. Sweat clings to the meager strands of hair atop his shining head. He stares at Hans. “My studio?”

  “Can we use it?”

  Alex glances at me. We both understand. The three of us look to Eickemeyer, the man who has gone to hell and back to tell us what he witnessed. Not so we can listen and do nothing, but so we can act. The three of us have debated often about the various forms of resistance. We’ve rejected the idea of active opposition like making bombs and other types of sabotage, returning time and again to the idea of putting our thoughts down on paper and producing leaflets.

  Doers of the Word, and not hearers only. One of my vater’s favorite verses.

  There is not a tendril of flesh inside me that wants to remain a hearer only.

  “Of course.” Eickemeyer’s nod comes without hesitation. “It’s yours for whatever you need. I’ll see to it spare keys are made.”

  “Danke.” A faint smile creases Hans’s lips. He stands and rests a hand on Eickemeyer’s shoulder. “We’ll make good use of it.” He faces Alex and me. “Mark my words.”

  We say our farewells to Eickemeyer and leave the studio in silence. The street is ink. A few stars puncture the sky overhead. Though the air is balmy, a chill wraps around me.