In October my first letter arrived from home. Mutti asked very little about me but talked much about Dieter, telling me all about what he’d written regarding his training. I knew she feared for him and worried tremendously, and in her angst she told me what he had told her, that his life was going well. He’d made it sound like a boys’ camp: “Please send me my swim trunks. And I hope you’ll be able to take some of my laundry home to wash the next time you come to visit.” The next letter said he was now in full regalia. He had new riding trousers and high knee boots and was being sent to Brest-Litovsk, in Russia.18 I think talking about him in this way helped her to accept the fact that he was a soldier now, and gone. Mutti finished her letter to me with “Please phone soon.”
Two days later another letter from her arrived, and her request for a phone call sounded much more urgent. It wasn’t easy to phone, for Hanna didn’t have much money and phone calls were expensive. But I promised myself I would call on the weekend coming.
But when the weekend came, I was busy and I didn’t call. I really didn’t think of home much. I was living the student’s life in Jena, and my friends were more important to me now.
III.
One bright autumn morning I was restless, excited about my future—and I wanted more than anything to play hooky. My first lecture would be with the professor my friend Heidi and I had nicknamed Herr Langweiliger, or Mr. Boring. We made a plan: We would show up at the lecture hall, stay long enough to be counted in the roll call, and then sneak out the door as soon as the professor turned his back. I had made sandwiches with salted lard, and we decided we’d “study” on the riverbank. As planned, the two of us sat toward the back of the room, closed our books quietly, and stepped out of the room.
We walked to the Saale River and found a spot in the grass to lie down. There we looked at the clouds and talked and dreamed of a life in the future. We giggled about being married one day and having children and living in a little cottage far away from everything. “Keine Fesselballons. Keine Industrie,” we both agreed, and we had to add, “Kein Krieg.” No captive balloons.19 No industry. And, most important, no war. We never once opened our books, never once mentioned Physics, and in a dreamy mood, late in the day, we finally walked back to catch the S-Bahn home again and parted ways at the train station.
The ride on the train jolted me back to reality. One of those Partei women with all her badges and political armbands was standing at the front of the car with her stiff legs and stiff face. She watched me with intent as I boarded the train. I could tell immediately that she wanted to engage all of us passengers in a pro-Nazi discourse. As soon as the train lurched forward, she started in: “Der Führer …” and “Der Führer …” All I heard was “Der Führer …” Loud and distinct so no one could ignore her.
I leaned my head back. I didn’t want anything to do with her talk. I was sleepy, so I closed my eyes and I mumbled under my breath, “I’m so sick of this.”
“Was haben Sie denn da gesagt? Fräulein?” the bitch snapped at me. It’s not a word I would ever have used, but it’s so appropriate here. She was a bitch, and she decided to take it upon herself to make me her project. “What did you say? What did you say? What did you say?” Her voice rattled through my brain for days after that.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing,” and she continued her drivel.
Two SS men appeared at my door the next day wanting to speak with me. Hanna was terrified when she saw them. She ran to my room and rapped on the door. I was still in my nightclothes. “Come quickly,” she said, with a very worried look on her face. “And don’t say a thing! Quickly now. Quickly. Quickly.”
“Hallo, Fräulein,” they greeted me. Without any sort of further introduction, they came straight to the point. “Were you not on the train, headed north, traveling from the Saale station yesterday? At about 4:30? Were you not on that train when a lively discussion took place?” And, “Were you aware of what you did in participation?”
“Yes, yes,” I admitted. “I was there. I meant nothing, sirs. I merely meant I was tired. I’m a student, you know, and have had many late nights of study. And, of course, sirs, I’m very sorry.”
It was to be only a warning this time. They said they hoped I had learned my lesson, and that I might contribute in a more positive way in the future. “Because, you know,” they said on departing, “you could be needed to work, and of course there are consequences if you don’t comply …”
The fear I had not felt since leaving Berlin beat in my chest. I understood. Even breathing, even in Jena, was no longer free.
From that day forward, I became aware of a professor who always seemed to be around—peering out his window at me when I walked the hall. Staring at me, with his Nazi nose up in the air, as I sat on the stone bench where I pretended to study, as I left the lecture hall, as I walked down the street. Always there, this man with the upturned nose and nothing better to do than to frighten me. Those SS men must have told him something like “Watch that girl. She’s a loose one. Just keep an eye on her.” He made me terribly nervous, and I found another hallway that led to my classroom so I could avoid his foul office.
Then a call came from Berlin. It was November, early in the morning. I was preparing for exams when Hanna came to my door to tell me it was my Mutti. I ran to the parlor to answer the phone, feeling guilty for not having called her first.
“Grete!” Her voice sounded tense. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, Mutti. Yes, I am. And you?” Was that fear in her voice?
“We were bombed again last night, Grete. It was terrible. All of Charlottenburg was on fire …”
Suddenly I realized that all those requests for me to telephone had been her calls for help. She had been living with the inconsolable dread of the nightly bombings, something I had let slip far to the back of my memory. I only thought she had been worried about me and needed reassurance that I was all right. Oh, how selfish I felt, that I never thought of her!
“But tell me! Are you all right, Mutti? How did you survive?” I thought of our Wohnung and the days we sat together in the bunker. I thought of the monster in the bathtub and the night of the burning sky. Then, I asked the question you never wanted to hear the answer to: “Is anyone we know dead?”
“Grete. It was terrifying. But, by the Lord’s hands, everyone in our house is still alive. Our building is still standing, but all the floors down to ours are gone. The Schulzes lost their home. The Ahlbecks lost theirs. Frau Schulz’s kitty is dead. No one lives above us anymore, Grete. Above us is only sky.”
I couldn’t speak. I could only try to make myself imagine what Mutti was saying. Our house had been hit?
“Most of our block went up in flames. Most of it is now gone. The butcher shop is gone.” And she gave a whimper. “I’m so lost, Grete. Papa keeps saying not to worry. The war will soon be over. But I fear he is only trying to make it all feel not quite so bad. And he’s gone all day, off at work …”
“Mutti, come here. Come to Jena. Please do!”
There was a brief silence, and then she sighed. She said she felt somewhat relieved, and then said no. “If most of the neighborhood is already gone,” she reasoned, “why would a bomber drop another one here? Why would he waste a bomb on our little Windscheidstrasse?”
Our telephone conversation lasted for a long, long time. It was so good to be speaking with her. She said Papa was fine, that Berlin was trying to pick up its pieces, and the radio was giving positive reports from the fronts.
Neither of us brought up Dieter. I knew what she was thinking: Was he still all right? As far as we were both concerned, we should keep him in our minds as enjoying his “boys’ camp,” in exactly the same way he kept describing it in his letters, hoping to be home soon.
A week or so later, I heard over the radio that Berlin was bombed again, by the British, and that more than seven hundred bombers had passed over the city. Seven hundred bombers!
Mutti called once more to reas
sure me she was all right and that the Windscheidstrasse was still as it had been left from the last bombing. “Don’t be shocked when you come home, though, Grete. You’ll not recognize it. It’s a hell here, I’ll not deny that, but we are managing. Concentrate on your studies.”
And that’s exactly what I tried to do.
Even in Jena we heard bomb sirens and the shrill voice of loudspeakers announcing, “The enemy has been sighted and is advancing from a northerly direction.” But, for now, the planes just passed over us.
It was assumed that the British would want to bomb the Zeisswerk if they could only target it, so the city of Jena was surrounded by a circle of ghastly-looking Fesselballons that would release gray hazy “thick air” when enemy planes arrived. So far, this seemed to work, but it never let us forget we were at war.
11
THE PROFESSOR WITH THE GRAY BOOTS
I.
In the Schwarzer Bär one night, I was sitting at the end of a long wooden table with Franz, a fellow student from my Physics class. He was a handsome boy, blond, with strong hands. I remember his long tanned fingers wrapped around his glass. He leaned across the table toward me and lifted his beer while looking me straight in the eye. I raised my glass too and tried to make a small toast, “To another boring lecture with Herr Langweiliger!” Franz laughed, and we started a conversation. I liked his smile, his teeth. He was a personable man.
After another beer, our talk began to touch on politics. We were feeling each other out, without giving too much away. We had to be careful. I had certainly learned this from the experience with Anneliese back on the farm! And yet, Franz seemed different, kinder and more easygoing. I felt I could trust him.
I began to tell him about a conversation I’d overheard, and I checked his eyes to see if he was with me. He was. It was about a teacher, a woman who was told she would be let go from the university because she had a French boyfriend.
“I overheard this discussion, just the other day. I was passing her classroom when I heard her shrill voice. I could tell she was upset. I slowed down and looked to see who it was that she was yelling at. It was our director!”
Franz looked as if he might have his own stories to tell about our director, and so I continued.
“‘You should be fired,’ the director said to her. ‘Don’t you know people will talk? Don’t you know enemy boyfriends are illegal?’
“She shot back at him, ‘You have no business telling me what to do!’
“‘Yes, I do. It’s my duty to fire you. You should be quite happy you’re not being sent away to a prison camp on top of it all! I have the power to do that, you know!’ He seemed to be overly heated. I was surprised, because I always took him to be such a reasonable man.
“Then the woman replied, ‘But there’ll be an afterwar time, and a time when people won’t talk anymore, and all this won’t matter one squat bit!’
“I have no idea what came of that conversation. I don’t even know the teacher. She’s not one of mine.”
I stopped there. There was more I wanted to say, but I was nervous.
To my surprise, instead of the usual pinched mouth and change of subject, Franz put his face close to mine and whispered, “Do you know, there’s a camp not far from here?”
“What?!” No, I didn’t know, and it wasn’t something I wanted to think about.
“Shhh. Don’t tell a soul. I believe it’s a prison camp where they’re busy building war machinery. And it’s being done by prisoners! But shhh!”20
His bluntness stunned me and frightened me. I quickly looked away. There were so many questions I wanted to ask. Who is there? How do you know all this? But, of course, this would have been illegal, and so I stopped myself and bit my teeth together. I changed the subject and talked about my day at the river with Heidi. I left the tavern that night with a terrible stomachache.
II.
I stayed late the next day at the chemistry lab. I was working on the dissection of a dog, and the project fascinated me. But, to be truthful, I was so bothered by what Franz and I had talked about that I didn’t want to go home to Hanna’s just yet and be alone with my thoughts. Better to be busy.
Suddenly the sirens blew. “Thick air” or not, it seemed the British had finally found us. The bombers were not passing over us this time. We were their target. I sucked in my breath, threw down my instruments, and did the only thing I knew to do. I ran. I left my books; I left everything and ran as fast as I could to get to the bunker that was just outside the main entrance.
I yanked open the hatch and quickly made my way down the steps. There I found, already seated, a number of professors and students I had not yet met. Everyone looked bewildered, scared, and no one said a word. Briefly, we all nodded a Guten Tag to one another, and then I took a seat on a bench and I squeezed my thumbs—a wish for luck.
As I became accustomed to the light, I saw I was sitting next to the Nazi professor, the man who loved to glare at me. Would he take this opportunity to scold me? To teach us all the virtues of the Partei? I hoped not. What we needed now were prayers. I did not get up to change my seat. Instead, I put my face into my lap, my arms over my head, and prayed, “God, carry me.”
Boom! Boom! All around, louder than I’d ever experienced. Boom! The walls of our bunker began to rattle. More noise, glass breaking. I thought, They must have hit the Zeisswerk!
When finally the all-clear sounded, we simply sat for eternally long minutes. Nothing moved.
The silence was broken by a commotion outside the bunker door, then a loud rapping. “Open up, open up! We have a wounded man!”
Someone opened the hatch, and in the blinding flash of light from the outside I saw two men with another one between them. One was holding the man’s arms, the other his waist.
The man’s face was contorted with pain. He was moaning and rocking his head back and forth. His jacket and tie were splattered with blood, his trousers soaked. Then I saw something I’d never seen before: The man’s pants went only to his knees; what was left of them was in shreds. Bloody bits of skin hung like tassels, and there were no feet.
“There are medical students here, aren’t there?” one of the men shouted.
“Yes, yes! Of course!” I was terrified, but I mustered all the confidence I could manage and said, “Bring him down into the bunker. At least we can lay him down somewhere and keep him warm.”
We quickly made a bed with a few blankets and jackets on one of the benches and made him as comfortable as we could. I proceeded to do the very little I knew how. I checked his breathing and his pulse. Both were reasonably good. Some of the other students were tying tourniquets around what was left of his legs. Then my heart sank to my knees. I saw what one of the men had brought in with him when he ran into the bunker—a pair of gray bloodstained boots. I then looked into the man’s face and recognized him. It was Professor Schmitt. Next to him were his gray boots, the two things he would never ever need again.
III.
The bombers were gone, the air was still except for a few remaining sirens, and Professor Schmitt was lying on our makeshift bed. Surely an ambulance would soon arrive and take him to a hospital. I had done all I could, and I felt depleted. It was time to leave the bunker.
Slowly I emerged and looked about in the dust-filled light. Smoke was everywhere, and as my eyes adjusted to my surroundings, I realized that there was nothing left. Where there had been buildings only hours ago, there was now nothing. Burning craters with freestanding walls. This was something I had already seen in Berlin. But in Jena? And then my mind began to grasp what had happened, something I was not prepared for. My university was gone, and with it my future.
I wandered through the rubble, stepping over books and pieces of furniture, a pair of eyeglasses, and suddenly I thought of my friends Franz and Klaus, Heidi, Anne-Marie, and Helmut, and I became scared. Where had they hidden? Were they still alive? I picked my way to the city center, the square where our founder’s statue was, the
Hanfried, and where Schiller’s house was, and our tavern. The tavern. That was my destination. I thought, if anyone survived, he or she surely would go there.
I knew I would have to leave Jena now. There was no question. Studying was over; dear Professor Schmitt would forever have no legs, if he lived at all; and Jena would no longer have its university.
A few students began to appear from out of the smoke, and, one by one, we gathered in front of Hanfried. No one spoke, but we wept. We wept for the friends we knew we would never see again. We wept for the professor whose booted feet were missing. But mostly we wept because our dreams were dead. We would no longer be able to study, and we wept deeply for that.
A young man, a student I had noticed in my Anatomy class, stood opposite me, and I watched as he peered up into the eyes of Hanfried. From an inside pocket of his jacket he pulled out a flask and offered it around. And as the eight of us took our drink of schnapps, one after another, we gave our last toast to Hanfried. We said things like “Thank you” and “I’ll miss you. I’ll be back.” And “Until better times”—a phrase we had by now learned to use frequently. We hugged one another and promised never to forget each other and never to forget our studies. And we turned to go to wherever we would now call home.
For me it would be Berlin. I had not eaten all day, but with the food rationing, hunger had become such a familiar companion that food was not my first thought. Home was, and I made my way to the main train station near the Saale River. I took one more walk to the river’s edge, picked a few flowers, and threw them in, begging the river for its blessings “until better times.” I would never see or hear from my friends again. Heidi, Anne-Marie, Klaus, Helmut, Franz … I don’t know if they survived.
Letters From Berlin: A Story of War, Survival, and the Redeeming Power of Love and Friendship Page 11