White Lies

by Rudolph Bader

  “You’ll have to leave now. Frau Kleinschmidt needs a rest. You can come back tomorrow.”

  We left the retirement home in silence and took the tram back to the town centre. When we parted in Weimarer Strasse Trudy sighed, “I hope it hasn’t been a disappointment for you.”

  * * *

  The next day, I went back to visit Anna at the retirement home in Gera-Lusan. And after that I spent at least three hours with her every day for two weeks. During this time, we became very close. I can even say, we became very good friends, and I learnt to love her very much. On the first three days, Trudy came with me, but then it became too much for her, so I went alone. This made it possible for us to grow so intimate.

  What I learnt about my father and about Anna during these two weeks was so dense and at first so unbelievable, that I simply didn’t have the energy to write down my new findings in my diary every day when I was back at my hotel. So, now, after two weeks, at last I have at long last found the energy and the courage to write down what I know today.

  The greatest shock for me was that it was not my Uncle Thomas who became a staunch Nazi; it was my own father, Manfred Weidmann.

  * * *

  If I start chronologically, I have to begin with my grandfather’s family, the Weidmanns. They lived in Ypernstrasse on the Galgenberg. The street was re-named after the war and is now called Niemöllerstrasse, named after Martin Niemöller, the famous anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor who died about ten years ago. My grandparents’ house is still there, and it’s only a five minutes’ walk from my hotel.

  My grandfather was Thomas Weidmann, the successful delicatessen retailer of Gera between the wars and during the Second World War. His wife Elfriede, my grandmother, was a very frail woman who died early after giving him two sons, Thomas and Manfred. Thomas senior had been a member of the NSDAP for a short period before 1933, but he left before Hitler came to power. Anna remembers him calling the Nazis a dirty Lumpenpack. He was set against the growing dictatorship, first because he simply thought the Nazis’ ideas stupid and dangerous, later because he lost many Jewish friends who disappeared overnight. He wanted his sons to have a good education, which he strongly believed to be the best safeguard against Nazi propaganda.

  Manfred was an excellent student. He went to the same school as Anna, and they became good friends. Anna carefully told me of their growing love. Of course, she didn’t give me any details, but from certain parts of her report I gathered that they must have been very much in love. They used to discuss the political situation and they agreed on many things. One night that Anna can never forget was the night in November 1938, when Jewish homes and businesses were raided. She told me how she and Manfred had witnessed the burning of the local synagogue.

  “And the worst of it all for us personally was the fact that we happened to seal our love forever on that same night,” she said with tears in her eyes.

  Manfred and Anna must have planned a future together. But then, very suddenly, he was accepted by a special school near Dresden, something every young fellow in those days would have been proud of. It promised him a brilliant career for the future, it was commonly assumed.

  More or less at the same time as Manfred’s career at Pirna, the Second World War began.

  At first, they often wrote letters to each other, but gradually these letters became less frequent and then stopped altogether. Anna was heartbroken. During the war, it was generally accepted that the young men had to be away from home for long periods, but Manfred’s absence seemed much longer than usual.

  There was a terrible thing that happened to Anna only about three weeks after Manfred had left for Pirna. Something so terrible that she couldn’t find the words to tell him in a letter, she had to wait until his return to tell him personally. She felt so ashamed. Even now, after all those years, she found it hard to tell me.

  “Please, don’t judge me as a bad woman, dear Nora,” she begged. “What happened after Manfred left destroyed my whole life, and I knew that he would stop loving me when I told him. That’s why I didn’t want to tell him in a letter, but in person.”

  “Are you sure you want to tell me now?” I asked, holding her hand.

  “Yes. You have a right to know the truth.”

  She stood up from her armchair and walked over to her bureau, where she searched among her papers in a drawer and eventually found a piece of paper, which she carried back to her armchair. She drew a long sigh before she spoke again, obviously collecting the courage needed to tell me what she had to tell.

  “Has your father ever mentioned a man called Wolfgang Löffel?”

  “Yes,” I answered but decided to keep back what I’d heard about that character from my father.

  “Wolfgang was one year above us at school, and he was an awful bully. I soon realized - in fact I knew from childhood - that he fancied me. I never told Manfred, but I found Wolfgang spying on me several times. I was only about ten when I found him spying on me in the changing rooms at the local swimming baths, and later he often ambushed me on my way back from school. He became a real pain for me. When Manfred and I eventually fell in love and it became general knowledge in town, Wolfgang retreated, and I was ever so relieved. It was a true liberation. I assumed that he’d understood that Manfred was the boy of my heart and he stood no chance. That was how things stood through ’38 and most of ’39.”

  I cannot write down the continuation of what Anna told me in her own words. Her report was too broken, often interrupted by emotional cries. I have to give the facts in my own words.

  Three weeks after Manfred had left for his new school at Pirna, suddenly Wolfgang accosted Anna in the street. He told her he had news from Manfred. He claimed he’d had a letter from him with a photograph enclosed, a photograph which showed Manfred in his new uniform, his arm round the shoulders of a fine girl. Anna couldn’t believe that, but Wolfgang insisted. He said he could show her the photo, he had it in his attic. She hesitated, fearing some sort of trap, but eventually her curiosity was too great and her anxiety about such news from Manfred too irresistible. She followed the awful fellow to his house, where he led the way up the dark stairs to his attic. In his room, he closed the door behind her and immediately caught her in his strong arms. She struggled for her life, but he was a lot stronger. He brutally ripped her clothes off her body, flung her on his bed, threw himself on top of her and raped her in the most horrible way, injuring her in body and soul. It was perhaps a blessing that she lost consciousness.

  After this crime, Anna took a long time to regain her consciousness. When she shakily returned to her senses, she found herself lying naked on Wolfgang’s bed, covered with her own clothes. The perpetrator was sitting in the swivel chair at his desk at the other end of the room, smoking a cigarette and smirking.

  “You liked what you got?” he asked.

  She was too stunned to answer and just began to cry. She felt herself shake with her whole body. She could no longer withhold her tears.

  “Oh, you cry-baby! Don’t be such a fool. You’ve had it coming for a long time, that’s for sure,” he chuckled.

  She managed to groan something like “you dirty pig”, but he only grinned.

  “I’m sure your milksop Manfred couldn’t give it to you like this,” he boasted.

  She preferred to remain silent. Eventually he allowed her to get dressed, which she did in great haste. She was eager to get out as quickly as possible.

  As she stumbled down the stairs he called after her, “Don’t think you can tell anyone. No-one would believe you. Besides, nothing really happened, you wanted to seduce me, but you were no good!”

  When Anna had finished telling me this part of her life, she had to stop for the day. She needed to rest and could only go on the next day.

  In the days following her rape, it was clear to her that she couldn’t tell anyb
ody. No-one would believe her, as Wolfgang had said. So she kept her pain and her humiliation to herself. She found her only consolation in the letters that still arrived from Pirna. She wrote back without telling Manfred because she was so deeply and utterly ashamed, and she was afraid of losing his love if she told him.

  Meanwhile, the War was claiming sacrifices from everyone, and Anna, although not interested in politics, began to doubt what she heard on the radio. If the things that the Führer was saying in his speeches were true and correct, then why did he have to yell and shout as he did? Her parents never discussed these things with her, but she found out that her father sometimes listened to the BBC from London. He did that at very low volume so that the neighbours wouldn’t hear, and when he realized that Anna had found out, he gave her very serious injunctions not to tell anybody, not even her best friends, not even Manfred in her letters. He warned her that sometimes teachers were instructed by the Party to ask their pupils what radio programmes their parents were listening to. One day, Anna’s class teacher, Herr Niederberger, whistled a tune while the class was busy with some written exercises. All the boys and girls were bent over their exercise-books and writing with their pens, from time to time dipping these in their inkwells. Anna at once recognized the tune of the BBC News. She just continued writing, keeping her head down. Gerhard Heckel, who was not the brightest boy, looked up and nodded to the tune, only for a few seconds.

  “A lovely tune, isn’t it?” Herr Niederberger asked, fixing his stare on Gerhard.

  “Ja, Herr Lehrer,” the boy promptly answered.

  “Do you know it?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  After class, Gerhard was taken to the staffroom for official interrogation. He didn’t return to class for three days. And when he did, he was very quiet. He kept his mouth shut and just looked around with a shy expression.

  Later, it was whispered that his parents had been arrested. To Anna, it was clear that the teacher’s whistling was a trap he was instructed to set his pupils. Like that, the authorities often found out when people were listening to enemy radio stations, something that was officially declared a serious crime, a form of treason, a premeditated Landesverrat. People went to prison for several years for such a crime. Anna admired her parents’ civil courage.

  Another consequence of the ongoing state of war was the gradual disappearance of young men. Suddenly, everybody seemed to be in uniform, only to disappear to some battle or other. In her school, Anna found new posters on the walls. They called upon people with special talents to come forward and offer their talents to the great cause. They all said something to the effect that Germany had to be made great again. At home, she asked her father why Germany had to be made great again. He hesitated before he answered.

  “Before we can discuss such things in times like these, dear girl, I have to be absolutely certain that nothing ever goes beyond these four walls. Is this clear?”

  Anna promised she would never discuss such things with anyone else. While she was giving her promise, she knew that she would most definitely discuss them with Manfred once he was back, but she was confident that things would have changed for the better by that time. Besides, Manfred would marry her, she was sure. So, her promise to her father today was a small lie, what some people call a white lie.

  Herr Kleinschmidt told his daughter how wrong it was to think one’s country was better or greater than any other country, or that it could ever be greater, or that it somehow had to regain some imaginary former greatness. The only true greatness for a nation lay in the happiness and political freedom of its people. Anna completely agreed to this.

  “So, you don’t think that what our fatherland is attempting in these times makes any sense?”

  “That’s an extremely dangerous question, my dear. And my answer would be even more dangerous if it could reach the ears of the Gestapo. We would both go to prison for it.”

  Clandestine discussions like that happened from time to time between Anna and her father. With her father’s opinions on her mind, she managed to construct her double-life. She was a good student, a good Jungmädel in the BDM, and she never criticized any official statements. But inside she was convinced it was all wrong, and it would be over in a few months. Hopefully.

  In mid-October, she missed her period. She kept it to herself, but when, towards the end of November, her mother found her being violently sick on a Sunday morning, she could no longer ignore the truth.

  Anna found herself pregnant.

  Twenty

  Trudy called one morning and wanted to know how I was getting on with her cousin Anna. Had I found out any interesting things about my ancestors? I told her yes, but things had been so complicated during the War that we needed more time to sort them out properly.

  When I went to see Anna again after her terrible revelation the previous afternoon, I had a strange feeling in my stomach. I wondered if it wasn’t prying into her most private affairs if I continued to question her about the past. I asked her straight out when we were sitting over our tea again.

  “Not in the least,” she exclaimed. “I’m so relieved that I can tell someone at last, and who else but my dear Manfred’s daughter should be entitled to be the recipient of such difficult and personal news?”

  “I thank you for your confidence in me,” I said and regretted it immediately. It sounded so cheesy after I had first asked her about her past. But I decided to let it stand.

  Her pregnancy was without any medical complications. However, there were considerable social complications. She was expelled from her school, and her parents had to fight hard to convince the authorities to let her keep the baby once it was born. The argument which did the trick involved Manfred. They told the authorities that the child’s father was preparing to fight for the fatherland. The Kleinschmidts thought they might not get away with such a lie, but when the identity of the alleged father was established, and it became clear that he was a student at Pirna, suddenly all questioning ceased, and the family were told to look well after the child of a German officer.

  Anna wrote to Manfred and told him of her pregnancy. Of course, everyone was convinced that he was the father of the expected child. Anna was sure, and so were her parents. Only in her worst dreams did she admit to herself that the child might just as well be Wolfgang’s.

  The Kleinschmidts took Anna to see Thomas Weidmann in Ypernstrasse and told him about Manfred and Anna. Herr Weidmann congratulated Anna on her pregnancy but refused to have anything to do with the affair. He told them it was up to his son Manfred to acknowledge the child once it was born, but they couldn’t expect to get any money out of him. He would speak to Anna again when the baby was born and when she showed him a letter from Manfred in which he officially acknowledged his parenthood.

  He added a quiet remark: “The silly boy! Destroying his career like that!”

  The Kleinschmidts pretended they hadn’t heard the remark and took their leave. As Anna was a bit disappointed, her father explained to her that he was not surprised at all. It was what he had expected from that snob, Thomas Weidmann.

  So Anna gave birth to a healthy boy. She named him Manfred. One of their neighbours who called in to congratulate the young mother asked if she didn’t want to give the boy a middle name to honour one of the country’s great leaders.

  “You know how it is,” she explained, “these days it can only help a young lad in his career if he has an Adolf, a Hermann or a Joseph in his name.”

  “We shall think about it. You may be right,” they lied.

  And what about Wolfgang?

  Ever since the horrible crime, Anna had never seen him again. It was possible he was just taken to some battlefield, as many young men of the town were, but she didn’t trust the simplicity of this interpretation. As she was walking along the pavement around town, pushing her pram with healthy little Manfred gur
gling in it, she constantly looked behind her, afraid that her rapist might jump out of nowhere and rape her again.

  And Manfred?

  He got the message of her pregnancy, after which he wrote back several times, but with decreasing frequency until, about two months before her confinement, his letters stopped altogether. He never acknowledged to be the father of her child.

  Apart from his apparent withdrawal from their relationship, there was another problem which worried her a great deal. It was the reference made by the authorities. They referred to Manfred Weidmann as a future officer. Also, in his letters he no longer mentioned anything about politics. That might be because of the general fear of the Nazi régime among the people who could see more clearly what was going on in the country, but Anna had a bad feeling about his withdrawal. She feared they might make a Nazi sympathizer out of him at that school. After all, everybody referred to it as an elitist school where only the most gifted students were accepted. She knew that Manfred was brilliant in every subject at school, but the suspicion began to creep into her brain that qualities like “gifted” or “brilliant” these days might only refer to complete subjection to Nazi ideology. There were rumours about Pirna to the effect that proper Nazi hardliners were bred there. If they thought a young man was pliable and gullible enough and showed academic talent at the same time, he was the right material for their brainwash. From Manfred’s earliest letters, Anna had gathered that the school was led like a military camp. There was a lot of drill and indoctrination. But gradually he stopped telling her about such things as time went on.

  Herr Kleinschmidt had some good connections, although he was set against the Nazi system. “You can learn a lot more about your political opponents if you pretend to be one of them,” he used to say. Anna and her mother warned him to be careful. They had heard of too many people who disappeared. But he was a very clever man. He would go to the Stammtisch of the Nazis in Untermhaus and listen to what they had to discuss. Like that, Anna got some information about Manfred’s progress and his activities over the war years.