The Hands of War

by Marione Ingram

  It was early afternoon when the all-clear finally sounded and our Aryan neighbors emerged blinking, coughing, and cursing from their bunkers. A huge pillar of black smoke was blowing inland from the harbor obscuring the sun and stinging our eyes. A swelling chorus of rescue vehicles seemed to be trying to reassure those in need that help was on the way. Above their din I could hear the low moan of ship foghorns. I wondered if the ships were calling for help or fleeing the city and wished that we could be on one heading for the open sea. I could see from Mother’s expression that she was worried about Rena but the chaos in the streets must have convinced her that we wouldn’t get far if we tried to go to Brandsende.

  A sunken ship, one of 2,900 destroyed, impedes traffic in Hamburg harbor after the bombing. (Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

  Mosquito Bombers made sure that no one slept in Hamburg that night. Exhausted firefighters, slave laborers, soldiers, and volunteers were still battling conflagrations and pulling people out of hot rubble shortly before midnight when the alarms started wailing for the third time that day. Soon, repetitive blasts herded bleating Gentiles back into the shelters where they had spent most of their bloody Sabbath. Mother and I laid on the bed and read by flashlight until the all-clear sounded. Soon after we removed the blackout drapes and heard our neighbors sheepishly returning to their apartments.

  The desire to be on a boat leaving Hamburg took over my imagination again. I listened for the deep, strong voices of ships telling other boats that they were moving on despite the darkness. We needed to find a boat that would take us some place safe from the Gestapo. Maybe Father could arrange it, I thought, if he reached us in time.

  In the morning, smoke still rose in thick columns in several areas, but the flames that had been so dramatic in the night appeared to have diminished substantially. Emergency crews were still working furiously to save people and portions of the city when Mother and I set out to check on conditions at Brandsende and to find out if Inge had been able to get in touch with Father. Although it was against the law, Mother wore a light shawl to hide her Mogen David. We didn’t get very far before we began to encounter buildings that had been hit by bombs. To our great relief, Brandsende appeared to be untouched. But Inge’s block was so filled with police and soldiers that we didn’t attempt to enter. Instead, we turned and walked down Rosenstrasse, the street on which Mother had lived as a child, and then turned again into Paul Strasse, where Aunt Emma had lived before she was deported. Glad that neither of these short streets had been severely damaged, we started home.

  We didn’t get far, however, before we were forced to detour through Hammerbrook, a residential area closer to the Elbe River. Although shipyards and housing developments a bit farther downstream had been devastated, the only visible sign of suffering here was the smoke that hung about these streets keeping most of the residents indoors. When air-raid sirens started wailing again, most people must have thought it was still too early in the morning to be anything but another false alarm. Except for us no one began to run for shelter. But only ten minutes later American Flying Fortresses arrived in force and this time they seemed to be starting with the Hammerbrook harbor area. In the general pandemonium that developed we tried to wedge our way inside a medieval looking brick tower that served as an air-raid shelter. But a warden stopped us. He didn’t object that we were Jewish but that we didn’t have passes to use that shelter. Perhaps ironically, he pointed us toward a church steeple in the distance and told us to take shelter there. As scores of explosions in rapid succession devastated the streets we had just walked through, we reached the fortress-like walls of the church and found an open door.

  The ceiling inside was high and arched and supported by huge stone pillars in rows a few yards from walls with large stained-glass windows. In gloom slashed by beams of light, a clump of about a dozen people knelt before a large gleaming cross with the tortured figure of the crucified Christ looking down on them. A rack holding rows of flickering candles stood off to one side. On the wall above the rack was a plaster figure of a woman holding a baby. She had yellow hair topped by a gold crown and the baby had a gold disk behind his head. Although this was the first time I had been in such a grand church, I didn’t have to be told that the woman was Mary, holding her baby, Jesus. I had seen pictures of them many times before in our illustrated bible at home, but I was slightly puzzled by the crown and yellow hair, until I remembered that my middle sister, Helga, had even lighter hair.

  The bombs were still fairly close but the noise was not as great inside the thick walls, and I felt more solidly protected than during any other air raid. In contrast to the flames outside, the flickering candles were reassuring, almost mesmerizing, in their calm assertion that no amount of destruction could diminish the beauty of their tiny gifts of light. But while I was marveling at the magnificence of our sanctuary, inhaling the musty odors of stone and burnt incense, some among those praying were looking our way and whispering to one another. Very soon one of the women got up and began to whisper in the ear of a rather large man dressed in black kneeling in front of them. Slowly, perhaps reluctantly, the man rose up and came over to confront us.

  He told us that we would have to leave immediately, since it was forbidden to give shelter to Jews.

  I looked and saw that Mother had lost her scarf, so that the Mogen David with the inscription “JUDE” was visible even in the dim light.

  Mother pleaded with the man to let us stay longer, promising to leave as soon as the bombing stopped. She told him that no one would know we had been there.

  In reply, the man nodded toward the people who had stopped praying to stare at us. Two or three rose and approached us, looking first surprised and then reproachful.

  “What about her?” I asked, aiming a finger at the figure of the Virgin Mary. I wanted the others to see me, and for once Mother didn’t grab my finger to stop me from pointing.

  The priest looked puzzled.

  “Isn’t she a Jew?” I demanded, speaking loud enough for the others to hear.

  The prelate sputtered, trying at first to answer my question but quickly giving up and insisting that we leave immediately.

  I continued to point at the statue as he raised his arms and herded us back down the long hall to the main door of the church. Outside, the bombing seemed to have stopped and we started walking toward home, feeling that we had managed to use the church after all to get through the raid. But then the alarm sounded again and we started running, madly trying to get as close to home as we could before the next wing of Flying Fortresses arrived overhead. In front of us a flight of fighter planes snarled and hissed like enraged cats clawing the air to get at the Americans.

  A few Mosquito Bombers tormented Hamburgers again that night, sending them repeatedly to shelters that must have smelled of the sweat of fear. Mother was terribly unhappy that we had not seen Rena or found out whether Inge had been able to reach Father. We didn’t talk about the deportation order but knew it was a ticking bomb that would soon explode. Lying in bed later that night I thought about our experience in the church. The medieval atmosphere, unreal smell and evocation of people and events from very long ago had stirred my imagination. Remembering that Father’s Bible was on our bookshelf, I quickly fetched it and held up a colored illustration close to our shawl-covered lamp. It showed Mary, a young Jewish mother wearing a plain shawl and clutching a baby to her chest, hurrying away from the walled gate of a city. Behind her, Joseph, a rather gnarled carpenter, was looking back fearfully at soldiers brandishing bloody weapons on the ramparts of the wall. One of the soldiers held up the severed head of a child. A lock of raven hair streamed from under Mary’s shawl and her large, dark eyes looked fiercely protective as she strode toward the light. Although the infant had a halo, the picture affirmed my feeling that the gold crown, blond hair and languid expression of the Mary in the church were not authentic.

  Having been kept awake until almost two o’clock by the Mosqui
toes, Mother and I slept late on Tuesday morning. When we were ready to go to Inge’s, the air-raid sirens began to wail once more. Although the Americans didn’t show up, the warnings were repeated throughout the day. Around noon, there was a loud knocking on our door and I raced to open it, thinking Father or Inge had arrived. Instead it was a policeman accompanied by Herr Wiederman, the Nazi block captain and housemaster for our apartment building, as well as the father of my former friend, Monika. They were checking to make sure that we would report as scheduled to the park on Moorweide Strasse, the place all Hamburg had come to know as the staging area for the final expulsion of Jews. The policeman said that Mother should bring her three children with her, which touched off a fierce argument between them.

  Mother lied to the policeman, telling him that my middle sister, Helga, was not her daughter and hence not a Jew. She said that Helga had been reclaimed by her Aryan mother and was living far from Hamburg. When the policeman demanded to know where Helga was hidden, Mother insisted that the authorities knew where they lived but that she didn’t. Mother said she thought the real mother was Bavarian and persuaded Herr Wiederman to support her story, pointing out that he would have been remiss in not reporting Helga’s departure if she were a Jew.

  “She’s clearly an Aryan,” Wiederman said of Helga, emphasizing her blond hair and blue eyes and even comparing her to his own daughter.

  The policeman was not happy with the situation and was even angrier when Mother told him that Rena was with her Aryan grandmother in Friesland on the North Sea. The policeman insisted that Mother must bring Rena with us to the Moorweide. Mother demanded that he tell her how she could accomplish that, pointing out that we weren’t allowed to travel, not even by bicycle.

  The policeman continued to bully Mother until the wailing of air-raid sirens stopped him short. Before hurrying off, he demanded Grandmother’s address. Mother made up something and after the all-clear she told me she had changed her mind about going to see Inge. She said that the risk was too great that Rena would be linked to us.

  I could see from her grim expression that she was very distressed about what would happen when the time came to report to the Moorweide. Although the bombing had been worse than any that had been experienced before, it hadn’t dampened the Nazis determination to get rid of Jews. I tried in vain to think of something encouraging to say after she closed the door, but the prospect of deportation made our apartment feel like a jail cell for the condemned.

  A view of a shattered Hamburg neighborhood. (Credit: Oxfordian Kissuth)

  Chapter 5

  Gomorrah

  Tuesday night was hot, without a breeze to flush out the smoke that had continued to rise from the fires caused by Sunday’s and Monday’s raids. I was still awake when the sirens started again half an hour before midnight. Although the alarm was supposed to let us know bombers were thirty minutes away, almost immediately Christmastree flares made it clear that time had run out. Mother and I quickly dressed as the first detonations thundered in the near distance. We filled a couple of pots with drinking water. Then Mother soaked two wool blankets in the bathtub water and I stuffed my ears with cotton wads. As anti-aircraft cannons boomed at planes that seemed to be directly overhead, we got back into bed and despite the heat put pillows over our faces to protect them and help to muffle the horrendous noise.

  An explosion shook the building seconds later. Walls, ceiling and windows shattered and showered us with plaster and glass. Lamps and picture frames were hurled around the room. A second blast sent gale-force winds gusting through the apartment, crashing the front door onto the floor, stripping molding, sills and sashes, overturning bookcases and tables. Then a sheet of flame flashed outside our window as a third explosion seemed to detonate inside my skull. The shock wave sent our bed skittering across the room until it tipped and spilled us onto the floor.

  British heavy bombers on their way to or from Hamburg.

  I was stunned. I couldn’t catch my breath and desperately had to empty my bladder, but I was too worried about Mother to stay on the floor for long. The air was thick with plaster dust and the floor slippery with broken glass. As I urinated on a crumpled heap of rug, managing somehow to remain upright and keep my panties dry, I thought I could see Mother doing the same in another corner. I tried to call out to her but we were entirely surrounded by screaming bombs and explosions. Through a large hole that had been a window I watched as the balconies of the building next door were sprayed with shards of white phosphorous, some landing on table tops where they glowed and smoldered like strange food from outer space. Every geranium on every balcony was clearly visible in the glare of the flames. As I searched for my shoes, an incendiary bomb thudded through the roof of our building. I found one shoe and Mother the other. Unable to speak, we embraced and felt one another all over. Finding that nothing seemed to be broken or missing, we retrieved our dampened blankets and cautiously picked our way down the darkened, debris-cluttered stairway toward the courtyard at the bottom.

  Draping the blankets over our heads like huge shawls, we ran to the large metal door that led to the basement shelter. Mother took the nozzle of a fire extinguisher and banged on the door until it opened. A man’s head in a large steel helmet poked out. It was our block warden, Herr Wiederman. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  An earsplitting explosion answered and he slammed the door. Mother banged some more and Herr Wiederman’s head reappeared. We wedged our way inside.

  “You have to let us stay!” Mother shouted, “We’ve been bombed out! It’s certain death outside!”

  The door to our apartment building’s air-raid shelter, for Aryans only.

  Several of the people lying or sitting on bunks in the shelter got up and came over to the door. One, a rumpled, whiskered walrus of a man, held a lantern near Mother’s face.

  “It’s the Jews!” a woman shouted. “The Jews! The damned Jews!”

  The voice was neither young nor old and there was no quality of mercy in it. In fact it seemed that the woman had progressed from surprise to indignation to outrage as she repeated herself. Explosions smothered whatever else she said and I desperately hoped others would be more compassionate; the explosions, although horrific, were much less frightening inside the bunker. But the next voice to rise above the din was Frau Wiederman’s. She yelled at her husband, telling him he had to put us out because he was in charge and it was his duty to enforce the rules against sheltering Jews.

  “You’ll be held responsible!” she yelled. “Think of us! Think of your family!”

  “Think of us, Daddy!” It was Monika, my former playmate. She was holding her favorite doll tightly and turning slightly away as if she feared I might try to snatch it from her. And she was wrinkling her nose. “Think of us!”

  The man with the lantern spoke up, his voice and breath thick with schnapps. “Listen to your family! Put the Jews out!”

  “They’re going to be deported in two days,” Herr Wiederman said, “I’ve seen the order myself.”

  “All the more reason to boot them out,” the walrus man said.

  Herr Wiederman turned to tell us to leave, but Mother interrupted, pleading with him and with the others to allow me, at least, to stay, an idea that was very upsetting to me but seemed to find some support within. To my relief, louder voices shouted down the soft-hearted.

  “The Bolshevik Jews are behind this!” a hoarse voice growled. “They sold us out. They told the English where to bomb.”

  I found the idea exciting, but Mother said it was ridiculous.

  “My husband is in the Luftwaffe,” Mother shouted. “He’s on his way here now. You will have to answer to him if you put us out!”

  The response was angry insistence on our immediate expulsion. Frau Wiederman gave her husband a shove and he pushed open the door. Instead of going out, Mother stepped deeper inside the shelter.

  “You will answer!” she shouted, and the room became silent. She didn’t say anything more,
but stood for several seconds looking into their faces, her dark eyes glistening in the lantern light. She looked hurt and angry, but cleansed of fear, almost triumphant. Many of the faces in the gloom began to look fearfully at us, apparently sensing that they had damned themselves by refusing to share their private dungeon. When another explosion rocked the building, Mother bent down with a calm, protective look and adjusted my blanket so that it covered my head. Herr Wiederman grabbed her arm to force her toward the door, but she wrenched free. Then she picked me up and walked into the street as the door slammed behind us.

  A false dawn lit the southeastern sky, rouging Mother’s cheeks and painting the walls of the buildings on our side of the street a glowing, lurid red. Through the openings of blasted windows we could see orange and yellow flames dancing beside pianos, making bonfires of bookcases, curling around bedposts. A torrent of hot wind coursed down Hasselbrook Strasse, bending trees almost double, stripping off branches and leaves and tugging at our blankets. Although antiaircraft guns banged away and searchlights still probed the sky, the bombing seemed to have diminished. Along the street a geyser of water rose more than three feet above the pavement. Everything was unreal. We went back through the arched entrance to our courtyard and saw pink tulips of flame sprouting along the roofline not far from our apartment.

  There were firemen in the street, which was encouraging because they normally didn’t come out of their shelters while a raid was in progress. The firemen had unraveled a hose but it was flat. Although some water pressure had been restored after the raids Sunday and Monday, bunker-busting bombs had ruptured the mains during the first waves of this raid, creating geysers like the one we had just seen.