Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  By the time Herr Stoltz got home, Anna was pacing, and then she blurted out the story. Her version had Elder Mecham standing toe-to-toe with the agent, daring him to take another swing.

  “It wasn’t quite so bad,” Elder Thomas kept saying. “We told Kellerman we were sorry.”

  “He knows better,” Herr Stoltz said, and Elder Thomas heard the anger. “I can’t believe you would do this. And I can’t believe you would come here. I asked you not to come again.”

  “Heinrich, what are you saying?” Frau Stoltz said. “They turned to us for help.”

  Herr Stoltz spoke calmly. “Don’t you understand what has happened? You have attacked the pride of a Gestapo agent. He’s watching you, waiting for a chance to get revenge.”

  “He got it. It’s over now,” Elder Mecham said.

  “No. He wanted you to fight back. He needs provocation. Nazi leaders want no trouble with America, and he knows that.”

  “But we won’t fight him. It’s all over,” Elder Thomas said.

  “Not at all. I know these people. He won’t be happy until he has knocked the pride out of you.” Herr Stoltz took a breath and then said, stoically, “He won’t hesitate to come after me—or my family. He’ll use us to get at you if he knows you are here. And I have no doubt he knows.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elder Mecham said. “We’ll go. I can walk.”

  “We can make it to our apartment,” Elder Thomas said.

  “No. You should leave the city,” Anna said.

  Elder Thomas felt a little unnerved by all the concern, but he had a hard time believing that Kellerman would continue to pursue them.

  “It’s your decision,” Herr Stoltz said. “But I have told you what I think. You should go back to your own country.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elder Mecham said again. “We didn’t know we would cause problems for you.”

  “I know that. I’m also sorry.”

  Elder Mecham got to his feet, slowly, breathing hard.

  Frau Stoltz was saying, “Oh, Heinrich, how can we turn them out into the street like this?”

  Elder Thomas was looking at Anna. “Don’t go back to your apartment,” she said. She followed the elders to the landing. “Good-bye,” she said, in English. Then she whispered, in German, “Please write to me—or somehow let me know that you are all right.”

  “I will,” Elder Thomas said. And he took a last look at her. He saw tears welling up in her eyes.

  Elder Mecham walked slowly but steadily down the stairs. Once he reached the front doors to the building, however, he stopped and took some short, quick breaths.

  “Can you make it?” Elder Thomas asked.

  “Sure. The stairs are the worst. Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know, Mit. Herr Stoltz might be right. Maybe we should head for the mission home.”

  “I can’t wander all over Frankfurt. I just can’t.”

  Elder Thomas nodded. “Okay. We’ll leave our bikes and take the streetcar. We’ll go back to the apartment. And then I’ll get in touch with President Wood. Are you ready to go?”

  “Sure. But could you give me a blessing? I’m feeling a little weak.”

  “We’d better go to a hospital.”

  “No. Just bless me. And then let’s get going.”

  And so the elders stood in the entrance to the old building, and Elder Thomas reached up high to place his hands on his companion’s head. He didn’t have consecrated oil with him, but he called on God to heal his companion, and to help them home. And then the two set out.

  Chapter 5

  Elder Thomas liked his companion—Elder Roland Sawyer from Los Angeles—but he missed Elder Mecham. On the day Kellerman had beaten up on Elder Mecham, the two elders had gone back to their apartment and found no one from the Gestapo waiting. Elder Thomas, however, had hurried to the post office and called President Wood and told him the story—or at least most of it. He played down Kellerman’s warnings.

  President Wood transferred Elder Mecham to Stuttgart after he had him stay a couple of weeks in the mission home. But he kept Elder Thomas in Frankfurt, alone at first. “I need you to keep the branch going in Maintal,” he told Elder Thomas. “But don’t leave your apartment any more than you have to. Don’t tract. And don’t take any chances.”

  For three weeks Elder Thomas led a monastic life, alone and always waiting. But he saw no one watching from the street, and he heard nothing from Kellerman. Then Elder Sawyer arrived. He was older than most new missionaries, even older than Elder Thomas, but he was a quiet, studious man who had a good background in German grammar—although he grew tense when he had to speak. He was pleasant, and less a worry than Elder Mecham, but not nearly so colorful.

  For a couple of months after Elder Sawyer joined him, Elder Thomas stayed away from Brother Goldfarb. But his conscience bothered him. He felt as though he and the Church were forsaking a man who now had no contact with his family nor with the branch members who were his brothers and sisters. It was March now, and Elder Thomas had never once seen Herr Kellerman. President Wood had told him not to take chances, but the danger seemed to have blown over by now.

  So Elder Thomas made a decision. He wouldn’t sneak through back streets. He and Elder Sawyer would ride down the Judengasse, and they would visit the tailor shop. One of Elder Thomas’s pairs of trousers was wearing out. He needed to see whether they could be repaired. So this was a business matter, and Herr Kellerman should have no complaint about that.

  All the same, as Elder Thomas wheeled into the ghetto, he did feel uneasy. He saw the boarded windows and the closed shops. He saw the hateful epithets painted on walls and doors, the bits of glass imbedded between the cobblestones. But what he watched most carefully were the alleys, the nooks and

  corners.

  As the elders walked into the tailor shop, a bell on the door jingled, and a few seconds later Brother Goldfarb came out from behind a little curtain. His eyes were down, and it took him a moment to realize who was standing before him.

  “Oh my goodness,” he said. “How nice to see you. But it’s not wise.”

  Elder Thomas was surprised to see how much Brother Goldfarb had changed. He had never been a substantial man, but now his face was gaunt, his skin only a thin layer over the bones. Elder Thomas even had the impression that Brother Goldfarb had lost some hair, his yellowish scalp showing through on top.

  “How are you, Bruder Goldfarb?” Elder Thomas asked.

  The question was innocent enough, even perfunctory, but the reaction was a surprise. Brother Goldfarb’s eyes filled with tears. “Es geht,” he tried to say, but his voice choked.

  “Have you spoken at all with your wife?”

  “No. I’ve heard nothing from her.”

  “I’ll visit her. I’ll bring you word.”

  “No, no. I don’t expect that of you.”

  But it was not the command Elder Thomas had expected. He knew it was something Brother Goldfarb wanted. “I have tailoring work for you to do. When I come back for it, I’ll let you know how your wife and daughter are doing. That can’t hurt anything.”

  Brother Goldfarb didn’t argue. So Elder Thomas finally introduced his companion, and then he showed him the trousers.

  “These will not do,” Brother Goldfarb told him. “I will sew you a new suit. It will be my gift.” He was standing behind a counter that was almost as high as his chest. He looked up at Elder Thomas and tried to smile. “That would bring me pleasure.”

  “No. You can’t do that. I’ll send for extra money from home. I’ll pay you as soon as I can.”

  “I won’t hear of it. You have done so much for me, Bruder Thomas. And I have fabric. That’s all I have. I can’t really say that I have a business any longer.”

  “Don’t the Nazis give you business?”

  “Not business. They make me sew for them. They pay me almost nothing. And they don’t let others come here. I’ve done a little repair work for my neighbors, but most of them are with
out income now.” He stopped and took a breath. “But these are not prudent things to talk about.”

  “What will you do?”

  Brother Goldfarb’s eyes squinted against the light behind the elders. Elder Thomas could see a kind of filminess over his pupils. “It doesn’t matter very much, I suppose. I have some small savings. I get by. Those of us left here look out for each other as best we can.”

  “This will end in time, Bruder Goldfarb. The people won’t put up with it much longer.”

  “Please. Don’t say those things. They can get you into trouble. Let’s measure you now, and then you can go.”

  Brother Goldfarb came out from behind the counter. He glanced outside. The front window was covered with boards, but he could see through the window in the door. From outside, anyone could see that this tailor was serving a customer. But Elder Thomas felt Brother Goldfarb’s nervousness, felt his own, and he noticed that Elder Sawyer kept glancing outside as well.

  All the same, before the missionaries left, Elder Thomas said, “Could we have a prayer with you before we go?”

  “Oh, yes. Please. You say it for me.”

  And so Elder Thomas bowed his head and prayed. “Bless this dear, good man,” he said. “Protect him and keep him safe. And let his wife and daughter, somehow, sometime, return to him.”

  Brother Goldfarb broke down at these words, and when the prayer had ended, he embraced Elder Thomas and clung to him for a time. “Oh, thank you,” he said. “May it be so.”

  Elder Thomas was satisfied he had done the right thing in coming, but outside he spotted a man walking slowly, gazing about, not in any hurry. Elder Thomas got on his bike, and he tried to act unhurried himself. Then he went out of his way to say “Guten Tag” and to lift his hat as he rode by on his bike. He wanted the man to see that he wasn’t skulking about. But from down the street he looked back, and he saw that the man had turned and was still watching.

  Elder Thomas told his companion, “If he’s some kind of informant we may hear about this. But remember, we came here strictly because my suit was worn out.”

  Elder Sawyer was riding alongside Elder Thomas in the nearly empty street. Usually something in his downcast eyes made him seem reticent, even uninterested. But now he sounded curious. “I don’t understand. Why does anyone care whether we come over here? What harm could we do?”

  Elder Thomas smiled. It was Elder Mecham all over again. How could someone fresh from America understand the way Hitler had managed to spread fear, to cause a whole people to live with the assumption that anything they did might be misread and dealt with brutally? The unreasonableness of such behavior was the point of it. Justice, for the Nazis, existed only on a grand, historical scale. Individual justice was unimportant. It was also dangerous; it gave people reason to assert themselves.

  “I don’t know how to explain it to you,” Elder Thomas said. “But Elder Mecham refused to understand, and you know what happened to him. If someone should stop us, we can’t talk back. We just explain why we were here—and hope for the best.” But the elders rode their bikes out of the ghetto, and no one said a word to them.

  That night they visited Sister Goldfarb. They found she was not doing much better than her husband. She was working at a large cannery, and she had enough to eat. But she was suspect because of her marriage, and Helene, her daughter, was no longer allowed to go to school. “It’s just as well,” Sister Goldfarb told the elders. “I teach Helene, and she learns fast. She’s a good reader. At school, even though she used my maiden name—Grossen—the children knew. They called her ‘Jew girl,’ or they said, ‘Don’t touch her. She’s dirty.’”

  “Is she all right now?”

  “No. Of course not. When we were in the Judengasse, she had many friends. That was a happy time for her. Now she has no one but me.”

  “What do you tell her?”

  “What can I say? She’s only ten.” Sister Goldfarb began to cry. “How can she understand this? She wants to play outside, but the children won’t leave her alone. I wish I could tell her to be angry, to speak back to them. But that would be dangerous for both of us.”

  “I don’t understand,” Elder Sawyer said. He asked Elder Thomas in English, “Do all Germans feel that way about Jews?”

  Sister Goldfarb understood the English, but she answered in German. “Some people have always been hateful. But now, Hitler tells such lies. He has most everyone thinking this way.”

  Elder Thomas didn’t know what to say. Everyone sat quietly for a time. Finally he told her, “Sister, our mission president tells us to trust in the Lord. There’s no way to fight the Nazis, but we can survive them. God will help us do that.”

  Sister Goldfarb, a little woman like her husband but Germanic as Hitler’s super race—blue eyed and strongly built—looked at Elder Thomas doubtfully. “I don’t believe in God anymore,” she said. “I try. But I see no evidence that God cares about me and my little daughter.”

  “He does, Sister. Don’t stop believing that.”

  The three of them were sitting in Sister Goldfarb’s kitchen at a wooden table protected with an oilcloth cover. The room smelled of cabbage and something else, maybe boiled potatoes. But dinner was over now, and Helene was in bed. It was a cool night, and a steady rain had begun to fall.

  Sister Goldfarb was twisting a dishtowel in her hands, tightening her grip until her knuckles turned white. “God, it would appear, loves Hitler,” she said. “All the Nazis. These are the ones he is blessing now.”

  “Righteous people have to stand up for what is true, Sister Goldfarb. Then, a better time will come. You see it in the Book of Mormon. Bad times come, and good people humble themselves, and then blessings follow.”

  Elder Thomas saw a little softening, the muscles around her eyes relaxing. But she only said, “I hope you are right. I will let you believe for me. But I can stand up to no one. For that, I would be taken away, and then what happens to Helene?”

  “I didn’t mean that you have to . . . do anything. I know you can’t fight those people.”

  “If I can’t, who can?”

  Elder Thomas didn’t know what to say. “We can believe, and pray, even if we can’t fight right now,” he told her. But after, when the elders were on their bicycles heading home, with rain driving in their faces, Elder Thomas asked his companion, “What could I have said to her? What would have helped?”

  Elder Sawyer said, “You did the best you could. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  Elder Thomas thought of Elder Mecham. He had taken his defiant stance and had gotten his head split open. Even worse, he hadn’t accomplished anything. But if that was true, if no one ever organized and fought back, what would happen to Germany?

  A week later, the elders returned to visit Brother Goldfarb. Elder Thomas was relieved to see he was all right. No one, he said, had questioned him about the elders’ previous visit. Elder Thomas tried to sound optimistic. “Your wife is doing fine,” he told Brother Goldfarb. “She and Helene have plenty to eat, a good apartment. And Helene is a good learner.”

  Brother Goldfarb nodded and looked pleased, but he asked, “What did my wife say?”

  “She’s not very happy, of course,” Elder Thomas told him. “How can she be—separated this way? But she’s holding up. And she sent her love. Helene prays for you every night.” But he didn’t mention Sister Goldfarb’s doubts about God.

  “Thank you,” Brother Goldfarb said. “It’s good at least to hear this. But Hitler has vowed to get rid of us, and he will. I no longer doubt that. To him, my little daughter is also a Jew. I hate to think what the Nazis will do to her.”

  “Don’t think that way,” Elder Thomas said. “The Nazis rule by fear, but I doubt they have the courage to go beyond that.” He saw the uncertainty in Brother Goldfarb’s eyes. “Don’t give up. She’ll be all right. I’m sure of it.”

  “It’s good for you to say this. But you don’t know it. No one does.”

  Elder Thomas wanted t
o deny that, but he knew better.

  “Try on the suit,” Brother Goldfarb said. “Be certain it fits. And then you must go.”

  Elder Thomas did as he was told. Then Brother Goldfarb folded the suit and wrapped it in a bundle, and he walked to the door with the elders. “If you see my wife and daughter, tell them I think of them every day, every hour. I think of almost nothing else.”

  “I’ll tell them.”

  “But tell my wife, if she can take Helene and leave the country, she should do that. Tell her to get out soon, perhaps to Holland. She might be safe there.”

  “It’s difficult to leave now, Brother Goldfarb. Most Jews want to leave, but only so many are accepted in other countries.”

  “I know. But tell her to try. They should not stay in Frankfurt because of me. It means much more to me that they are safe somewhere.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “I doubt I will see them again, Bruder Thomas.” But he didn’t cry. He seemed beyond that now.

  On the following morning the elders got up early, as always. Each took a “spit bath” at the sink in their room. It was such an unsatisfying way to keep clean—only taking a real bath at a bathhouse once a week—but something that Elder Thomas had learned to accept. He knew, however, that it was Elder Sawyer’s greatest displeasure.

  Elder Sawyer’s family seemed quite well-off. Elder Thomas had seen pictures of their rambling California home, and Elder Sawyer had admitted, rather reluctantly, that there were two bathrooms in the house. He and his three brothers had had one of them to themselves. But he never complained about the conditions in the elders’ apartment: having to walk down the hall to a toilet, and cooking on a hot plate. He made the best of things.

  After studying for an hour, the elders cooked Haferflocken—oatmeal mush—and they ate it with milk that they had kept outside on their window sill overnight. Then they settled in to study for another hour before tracting time. Elder Thomas was trying to read the Old Testament in German, and he was struggling with that, but he had his mind well-focused on the chore when a rap came on the door.