It's You

by Jane Porter

  August 8, 1944

  The radio and newspaper are filled with the news that eight Germans, including Peter, have been tried before the People’s Court and found guilty of high treason. All eight have been hanged already.

  Peter’s gone. My thoughts are with Marion. I pray she’s safe.

  I’m beyond heartsick. I feel physically ill. Can’t write more. This is a nightmare I’ll never wake from.

  August 9, 1944

  The Allied radio is giving names of others rumored to have participated in the July 20th attempt, including those not yet arrested or charged.

  Don’t the Americans and British understand what they’re doing? They’re naming people who could be innocent. They’re signing the death warrants with every name they mention. It is too much.

  August 11, 1944

  Still not well. Terrible cramping. Worried. Wish I could reach Franz. Need Franz. He should have never sent me here, away from him.

  August 12, 1944

  The Allies have captured France.

  And I am bleeding.

  August 16, 1944

  Have returned to the hotel after five days at the hospital. There was nothing they could do. I have instructions to rest and stay in bed. I’m to be calm and not get excited. I am not calm, but I cannot imagine getting excited. I have lost the baby and there is still no word from Franz.

  August 19, 1944

  I go down to the hotel’s front desk and they help me phone Claudia. Claudia has not seen Franz in weeks . . . maybe longer. The last time she spoke to him was the day after he’d driven me to the train station. He’d stopped in at their apartment and stayed for dinner. It had been quite a nice evening. He’d told her he was hoping to join me in Rome for his medical leave sometime in August. She’d thought that perhaps he was already with me . . . ?

  He’s not here, I tell her.

  She is silent. There is nothing she can say.

  August 20, 1944

  Lay awake all night, wondering, worrying, talking to Franz. I told him about the baby. I told him I was scared. But most of all, I told him I loved him and would always love him.

  August 21, 1944

  The German news continues to contradict itself. The dates of the trials and executions are not consistent. It makes one hope. I’m afraid to hope.

  August 22, 1944

  Adam’s Clarita arrested now. She didn’t have a chance to see Adam, either, before her arrest.

  August 23, 1944

  The German news today published a detailed account of Adam’s trial and execution. He was executed yesterday without being allowed to speak to Clarita. Too heartsick to write more.

  August 24, 1944

  The news reports claim that the Allied forces have entered Paris. They say Paris will be liberated. I should be glad for Paris and yet I grieve for my friends in Berlin.

  August 25, 1944

  Missie called today, no message. I don’t know where to phone her. Afraid to phone her. Afraid to hear what she might say.

  August 26, 1944

  Rumors swirling that all those arrested are being tortured. I’m not surprised. Just sickened. Can’t bear this. I can’t. I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind.

  August 27, 1944

  The nice young woman from hotel reception came to see me today. Her name is Fabiola and she told me that the staff at the hotel is worried about me as they haven’t seen me for a few days and they say in the kitchen that I do not order food. She asks if I am eating. I say I cannot eat. She asks if I’m unwell. I tell her that I am fine.

  She leaves.

  But I am not fine.

  August 30, 1944

  Maria phoned. She left a brief message with the hotel’s front desk: Franz trial next week.

  I immediately start packing. I must go. I must get to him.

  There is no way to get to him.

  August 31, 1944

  No one who has gone to the People’s Court has been pardoned. No one goes to the People’s Court and lives.

  But if Franz is executed, I don’t want to live.

  Without him, there is nothing for me anymore.

  September 2, 1944

  Every day I wait for word from Berlin.

  Every minute of every day I think about Franz. I pray for him. I pray for him to have strength. I won’t let myself think about what they have done to him. How they must have tortured him. I pray that he has been strong. That he has God.

  September 3, 1944

  I am ready to die. Ready to escape this madness.

  September 4, 1944

  Maria called late. She phoned from the Adlon. Trial postponed while they gather more evidence, but a dozen have been executed this week alone.

  “That means there’s hope,” I say. “If they can’t build a case . . . if they need more evidence.”

  “I wish that’s what it means. But usually a trial is postponed so they can conduct further interrogations.”

  “Torture,” I say.

  “I’m sorry.”

  September 8, 1944

  I pray now for Franz’s death.

  I can’t bear to think of them torturing him. Knowing that he is probably suffering—

  Hell.

  This is hell.

  September 15, 1944

  They killed him yesterday.

  They executed him along with Josef Wirmer, the lawyer; the lovely Chaplain Wehrle. Colonel von Üxküll-Gyllenband, and District President Michael Graf von Matuschhka. There were others, too. I just can’t remember their names.

  Fabiola said I screamed when I got the news.

  I don’t remember screaming. I don’t remember anything but Fabiola’s grandmother and mother putting me to bed and the grandmother and mother staying with me through the night, with the grandmother praying her rosary, praying to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

  September 16, 1944

  The staff knows Franz is gone. Murdered. They don’t ask why. There is no need. It is war. A war that doesn’t end.

  September 23, 1944

  Fabiola brought me some vegetable soup and some bread and sat with me while I ate it. I didn’t want to eat in front of her. I didn’t want to eat it at all but she’s afraid I’ll die in the hotel and that might make people ask questions. So I ate even though my stomach protested and we chatted and after she left I felt better.

  September 27, 1944

  Fabiola comes every day to sit with me to make sure I eat. She thinks I should walk in the garden with her, just a little bit as it is cooler outside in the courtyard, in the shade. My room is hot. It’s sweltering. I don’t want to walk but when I go outside with her, it is nicer. The stone walls of the courtyard have holes in them, exposing a garden on the other side of the wall. There is a headless statue in the neighbor garden. The head of the statue lies at its feet, the blank eyes of the goddess staring this way.

  I can’t look at her. I wish someone would move her head. Do something for her.

  September 30, 1944

  Fabiola is actually the daughter of the hotel owner, who died a year ago. She has been helping her mother run the hotel since her father was killed. She was supposed to be married by now but her fiancé went to war and never came home. There are no young men left, she tells me. Just little boys and old men who wish they were dead.

  October 1, 1944

  Fabiola invites me to dinner with her and her mother. The mother compliments my Italian. She said it is very good, and that I have almost no accent. I tell her that I have an ear for languages and worked for a while as a translator in Berlin. This seems to be the opportunity signora has been waiting for as she asks about my family in Germany, and why I am here, and not there.

  I tell her I have no one in Germany. I tell her that my husband is German but I am actually an American and met him when I worked as a translator at the US embassy in Berlin.

  “But the US is at war with Germany,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “And the Americans have invaded Italy. Maybe
they can help you.”

  “But I have given up my citizenship. I am now the enemy. If they capture me, I’d go to jail. A prisoner of war.”

  “Maybe that’s not so bad if they sent you to jail in America, yes?”

  We are still at the table but I start crying and can’t stop. Fabiola is upset with her mother for upsetting me, but that’s not why I’m crying. I’m crying because I gave up everything for Franz and Franz gave up everything—including me—for a coup that never had a chance.

  But Fabiola doesn’t know why I cry, and even though she is my age, maybe younger, she hugs me and rocks me, crooning comfort as if I’m a baby.

  It’s not until later I remember our conversation and her mother is right.

  I need to find the Americans before the Nazis find me.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I can’t sleep.

  I am exhausted and overwhelmed and I wish I hadn’t read the entire diary sitting at the restaurant, reading by candlelight. The words, the warm night, the flickering flame, the dull glow of light on the page combined to make it intensely emotional.

  Even after returning to the hotel and climbing into bed I feel overwhelmed. Claustrophobic.

  It’s horrific, how Franz died.

  It’s horrific how Hitler had them hanged so that it was an excruciatingly slow death. Such an evil, evil man. I’m disgusted and angry, and lying in my room, which is too warm for me on this hot night, I feel disgust towards everyone and everything in Germany.

  Why didn’t more people do something? Why didn’t more people rise up and act?

  I understand that many were broken and afraid. I’ve read how there can be a diffusion of responsibility, part of something called the bystander effect, where people in groups are significantly slower to take action. They all figure someone else will do it. Or should do it.

  Is that what happened in Germany?

  Did Hitler seem good and helpful early on, and then later something of an egomaniac but for the most part, benign?

  Did no one understand that Germans and Germany were in trouble before it was too late?

  Surely there were people early on saying—hey, we’ve got a situation here.

  Hey, this isn’t right, isn’t fair.

  I cover my face with my forearm to stop the tears. It doesn’t work. I fall asleep crying.

  • • •

  I oversleep in the morning. I’ve missed the breakfast buffet but I can get a coffee and some muesli and yogurt. It’s hard to eat. My heart’s heavy.

  If I weren’t going home tomorrow, I wouldn’t go to the memorials today. I’d skip everything to do with the Holocaust and Third Reich and would make today a fun day. I’d go on a Spree River cruise, then visit the Bode Museum, and afterwards sit in one of the beer gardens that flank the river and listen to music and people watch.

  I’d lift my face to the sun and breathe deeply and be glad for my health, and my family, and my life.

  It’s too easy to take good things for granted. Too easy to be lazy and spoiled and self-indulgent.

  I don’t want to be that woman who can’t ever be happy, or be oblivious to her blessings—stability, security, peace.

  I lost Andrew—and my Mom—but I’m young. Whole. Alive.

  I have the present and the future. I can choose my thoughts. I can choose to hope. I can choose to love, and to give—like my Mom—and to believe.

  Even if one is confronted by evil, one can still choose differently.

  We have free will. And a voice.

  But I do leave Berlin tomorrow and I’ve promised Edie I would visit the Memorial to the German Resistance. I’ve promised to take photos for her and show her how they are finally honoring those who did try to do something—even if it took Germany twenty-eight years to recognize them.

  Because I’m getting a later start than I planned, I swap the morning and afternoon itineraries and go to the German Resistance Memorial first, then Plötzensee Prison, break for a quick lunch, followed by an afternoon at Brandenburg Gate, Pariser Platz, and the Holocaust Memorial.

  The man at the hotel reception desk suggests I either take the subway or a cab to the German Resistance Memorial Center at Bendlerblock, and then from there it would be another fifteen-minute car ride to the Prison’s Memorial, should I cab it, but he isn’t sure why I’d want to go. He thinks I might enjoy seeing all the award-winning new buildings at Potsdamer Platz—stunning, modern architecture—or visiting Berlin’s Botanical Gardens or one of the many famous museums, and having been an art major, he can suggest a few. I simply smile and step outside where the doorman flags down a cab for me.

  As my taxi travels past the Tiergarten and the soaring Victory Column, I feel a flutter of nerves. I’m not sure what I’ll find at the memorial and I rather dread visiting the prison, but I go home tomorrow. I have a six a.m. flight out of Berlin, everything is wrapping up very quickly now. This week has passed fast. Hard to believe I’ll be back to work at Dr. Morris’ office in just three days.

  At Bendlerblock on Stauffenbergstrasse—the government has renamed the street after Claus—I pay the cab driver, and approach the gray building that houses the memorial. The building is severe, and uninspiring, at least until I pass beneath an arch and enter a courtyard where I’m confronted by a statue of a naked man. I read the plaque, and its translation.

  YOU DID NOT BEAR THE SHAME

  YOU RESISTED

  It was here, on this spot, that Claus von Stauffenberg was executed.

  I spend a few minutes just standing in the courtyard. It’s quiet, too, despite the warm day. If I listen closely, I can hear cars and traffic in the distance, as well as warbling birds, but the high walls of the courtyard make it feel so very private here. Private and still.

  As I enter the museum and pick up brochures, I scan the leaflets and handouts, hoping to discover something about Franz. Nothing jumps out at me, but at least I have his real name now. Maybe armed with his full name, I’ll find a photo or mention. I really want to take pictures for Edie, so she can have something of him . . . a photo she can frame, a plaque she can read.

  For an hour I silently tour the museum, reading each sign and studying the displays memorializing the individuals and groups who opposed the Nazis.

  I’d read in one of the brochures that the memorial recognizes all who were part of the Resistance, that all who resisted—in whatever form—are given equal “respect,” but as you wander through the memorial it becomes painfully clear that there were not enough of them who opposed Hitler. There was not enough organization and cohesion among the Resistance to be effective.

  The memorial tries to put a brave face on the past, and the facts, but it strikes me that there are no heroes here.

  There was simply not enough done.

  Those who tried to do the right thing were smashed. The Germans with a conscience were ineffectual. Weak.

  After an hour of reading signs and studying displays, I speak to the director of the Resistance Memorial, summoned for me by the man at the front desk, hoping he might help me find something on Major Baron Torsten von Franz here.

  I start to tell him I’m friends with Major von Franz’s wife, Edie, and the director interrupts. “Major Baron von Franz was married, but his wife’s name was Elizabeth. She was born an American.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Edie was American and she met him when she worked at the American embassy.”

  “That’s correct, but if you check with the American embassy’s records, her legal name was Elizabeth Doherty.” He smiles at me. “Everyone at the embassy referred to her as Elizabeth. From what we’ve gathered through interviews, Torsten called her E.D.—short for Elizabeth Doherty. It was his private name for her. I don’t believe anyone else used it but him.”

  He gestures for me to follow him and he leads me to a wall with a number of black-and-white photographs. In the bottom corner, and smaller than the others, are a group of women with children on their knees and playing at their feet. “There she is,�
�� he says. “With some of the other wives of the Resistance. They were, by all accounts, quite good friends.”

  I read the caption beneath the photo.

  (LEFT TO RIGHT) Garden party, May 1943. Marion Yorck von Wartenburg, Clarita von Trott, Elizabeth von Franz, and Nina von Stauffenberg with four of the five von Stauffenberg children. The fifth, Konstanze, wasn’t born until after her father’s execution.

  I scan the photo, counting heads, since Elizabeth—Edie—is the third from the left, and I’ve always thought of her as fair, but in this photo she’s not blonde but brunette, her glossy dark hair rolled and pinned on the sides, the back caught in a loose, romantic chignon.

  She’s lovely and young and smiling. She had a regal profile even then—straight nose, firm lips, bright, clear eyes.

  No wonder Franz loved her. No wonder she became his E.D. Edie.

  My chest grows tight. My eyes sting. I smile at her. Lovely, fiery, independent Edie.

  “Every one of these women lost their husbands, didn’t they?” I say to the director.

  “They did,” he agrees. “And all of the wives in this photo, but Elizabeth, were imprisoned. Baroness von Franz was out of the country at the time of the coup and escaped prosecution.”

  “Not in the US,” I tell him. “I’ve been told that on her return to the US in 1944, she spent a number of months in Texas at one of the German internment camps, before finally being released and allowed to join her sister in California.”

  “I wish we had more on Baron von Franz. After the war, some families shared their experiences, but many didn’t, particularly those who lived in the Russian sector.”

  “From what Edie said, his family was on the East German side.”

  “This is the only photo we have of him.” He leads me across the room to another wall and another photograph, this time of young officers in uniform, including Claus von Stauffenberg, in the front. The caption dates the photo to 1938. “Torsten von Franz is in the back row, far right.”