Jumping Over Shadows

by Annette Gendler

  “They’ll send him to the front no matter what.”

  “Yes, but as a quarter Jew he’d be almost Aryan and he’d have a better chance. He wouldn’t be cannon fodder. Half Jews are cannon fodder, you know that!”

  “Resi, you know this whole scheme is a fantastic lie, and they will smell it. They look at papers all the time. They will find something amiss. And anyone who signs an affidavit for you testifying that Guido did not look Jewish, and that he was the bastard child of a Czech maid, will put his life on the line for a lie. Guido was who he was, and the children are who they are, and we have to make the best of it.”

  “That is exactly what I am trying to do!”

  “I won’t have it, Resi. I won’t.”

  He pushed past her. The sun had gone down now. Ordinarily, he would have walked her home, but he couldn’t. He stood stone-faced in the entryway and held out her hat and gloves.

  Resi almost tore the hat from him and pressed it on her head. Her movements were fast now, choppy. She tugged on the crocheted gloves, pulling them up her hands.

  “Don’t say anything to Hanne about what I told you,” she said. For a second it seemed to him as if he were a little boy and as if she were bent over him, sinking some terrible fear into his boyish heart.

  Instead he watched his sister, in her high-collared, short-sleeved navy dress, walking fast, erect, and resolute, down the sidewalk of Grillparzer Straße. The distance between them widened, and her figure disappeared as the street dipped toward the museum.

  He hoped that she had used him only as a test case, to see how others would react to this fabrication. The fact that she had asked him not to tell Hanne proved to him what he knew in his heart: that it was a lie. For some reason, Resi regarded Hanne as a greater moral authority than him.

  A few weeks later, Fritz Jaksch told him that Resi had approached him about an affidavit confirming Guido’s non-Jewish appearance and that he had refused. As a leader of the farmers in his village, he took the truth seriously.

  UNWANTED RELATIONS

  ON SEPTEMBER 23, 1943, MY GRANDPARENTS WENT over to Resi’s apartment to wish her happy birthday. They stood about in the Stube, crammed with the mahogany furniture Guido had loved. Resi asked them to have a seat but did not offer any refreshments or dessert. She stuck their flowers in a vase without water.

  “I see you’ve had company,” Karl remarked.

  “Oh, no, no, just the family,” Resi replied, and she tucked a loose strand of hair into the bun at the nape of her neck.

  Through the open kitchen door, he could see that the pantry was piled high with dishes, traces of food still visible. The maid was in the kitchen, clattering silverware; water was running in the sink. But no—no guests had been there. Just a family dinner.

  Herta was sitting on the couch, plump and pretty, smiling to herself. It dawned on Karl: her gentleman caller had just been there. The Nazi guy, her classmate from the Academy of Commerce, whose father was a blacksmith in the neighboring town of Weißkirchen and who during the war had risen to Ortsleiter, as the Nazis called their town leaders. Karl had heard about that flirtation from Hanne’s cousin the principal, who had expressed his consternation. He had told Resi that it wasn’t a good idea for her daughter to date a Nazi.

  Herta in the mid-1940s

  “Oh, just let her be. It might be a good thing,” Resi had said.

  He wasn’t sure when Resi and Herta had renewed that acquaintance, or whether it even needed any renewal. Maybe that classroom flirt had simply bounced on.

  Herta was obviously in love, or, if not in love, at least intrigued. And Resi supported this relationship by having him over for dinner.

  Resi was nervous now, embarrassed that she and Herta had been “caught,” or almost, anyway. She wasn’t ready, at least not yet, for a showdown with her brother.

  Hanne kept exchanging pleasantries with Resi until Karl couldn’t stand the tension anymore, the feeling of being unwelcome and powerless in the face of another abomination. He tapped Hanne on the shoulder.

  “Come,” he said. “We still have some work to do.”

  He tucked her arm into his, and they marched home through the city streets, which were dark, shutters drawn and lanterns snuffed out to guard against possible air attacks. As they hurried along, he calculated how far away they were at any given point from where he knew the closest bomb shelter to be. He always did this now when he was out walking. The Soviet Union had finally beaten back the Nazis at Stalingrad, and while Reichenberg was still only a stage post for supply transports to the eastern front, it also lay in a busy flight corridor, and howling sirens, warning of air attacks, were a constant feature.

  “You know Herta’s suitor was there just before we came,” he said.

  “That was obvious.”

  “Resi’s audacity is beyond me. She’s using that kid only because of his connections. It’s not about whether those two are in love or not. It’s about being in good standing with the family of an Ortsleiter.”

  “I know. It’s a shame.”

  “I can’t stand it. Guido’s daughter dating a Nazi. Guido must be rotating in his grave.”

  “You mustn’t allow it, Karlo. Whatever you can do, you must do something.”

  “Yes, I know, but what? I won’t give my blessing. But you know once Resi’s made up her mind, there’s no stopping her.”

  Over the next few months, Resi was more open about the relationship with the Ortsleiter’s family. Every Sunday when she visited my grandparents, she snuck into the hallway to use their telephone to call Weißkirchen, or to wait for their call if Herta was visiting there, as she still didn’t have a phone at her place.

  One evening a few months later, Resi showed up in Grillparzer Straße with the Ortsleiter’s son and Herta in tow. Karl was in the bedroom, changing clothes and packing, getting ready for a week away. As a member of the Red Cross, he was assigned to air defense duty, and as a medic, he had to sleep away from home for a week once a month.

  From the window he had seen Resi and whom she had brought with her. He was in no mood to deal with this now, if ever.

  Hanne stuck her head in the door. “Resi is here, you know with whom. They want to talk to you.”

  “Tell them I’m about to leave for air defense. I can’t see them now.”

  Instead, Resi came in as he was fastening the Red Cross band to his upper arm.

  “Karlo, I want to introduce you to Mr. F___. He’s sure to ask for Herta’s hand in marriage, and I want you to take notice. You’re her guardian—you need to meet him.”

  “No, I don’t. And I don’t have time now. I have to leave.”

  “You can’t just leave now! Just come for a few minutes to meet him.”

  “No, I don’t want to meet him. I want no part of this. You know damn well Guido would never have allowed this.”

  “Guido is not around anymore. And I have to do what’s best for my family. Those two are in love, and it’s a good family to be associated with.”

  “Are you kidding? It can never be good to be associated with Nazis.”

  She watched as he bustled with his bag, pretending to check his medical supplies, although he could not concentrate on bandages and bottles of iodine.

  “Just come out for a minute.”

  “No.”

  “Ah! How would that look, then? The son of an Ortsleiter comes to your house to pay you a visit, and you don’t even receive him? Surely that’s going to get back to his father. That can’t be good, can it?”

  He slammed down his bag, buried his hands in his pockets, and followed her into the Stube. Introductions were made, but he did not extend his hand, just nodded to acknowledge the young man who had risen to greet him. Karl remained standing. They were all staring at him. He must remain calm, must be polite, but at the same time he must make it clear, without a doubt, that he was opposed, that he would never give his blessing.

  He said, “I am sorry, young man, that you went to the trouble to come
here. I cannot condone any relationship between you and my niece. It has nothing to do with you as a person but with who we are as a family.”

  His voice remained steady, but he felt as if everyone must hear his heart thumping.

  Resi and Herta sat on the couch with frozen smiles.

  “Ach, what’s that supposed to mean?” Resi said, patting the knee of the young man, who had sat back down. “We as a family? We’re like any other family, aren’t we, Herta?”

  “Well, of course,” Herta answered on cue. She was almost twittering, nestling her fuzzy blond head against the young man’s shoulder.

  Karl stood in front of this scene on the couch, the scene of the ordinary family, hands in his pockets, hesitating, rocking on his feet. Guido was on his mind and in his heart. Guido, who had hated Nazism as much as he did. And now he was supposed to accept the son of an Ortsleiter as the eventual husband of Guido’s daughter, his niece? He felt the fume of his fury rising to his head. It was going to come out of his ears; he would blow his top. He had to get out. He could not take this scene any longer; he would lose his composure, would say something that could cost him his head. He turned on his heel and left the room without even saying good-bye.

  The guests left shortly after that. Hanne took care of the pleasantries, apologized for her husband’s rudeness. As they were about to leave, Resi said to her, “I can’t believe Karlo is so nervous.” She did not expect an answer, and Hanne didn’t give one.

  Herta’s romance with the Ortsleiter’s son trickled on, with long breaks during the months when he was on the front, and she hung out in her mother’s store to fulfill her mandatory wartime work service. There was something tragically romantic about the love between a half-Jewish girl and a Nazi boy, a love supported by her mother for the political connections it entailed and condemned by her guardian, my grandfather, for those very connections. Nobody was concerned with the young people themselves, who they were and what all this meant to them. The Ortsleiter’s son probably was Herta’s one true love. She never talked about it later, but her two subsequent, brief marriages did not bring any long-lasting attachments.

  At Resi's for New Year's (left to right): Karl, Helmut, Hanne, Hanne's mother, Herta, Resi, Ludwig, early 1940s

  Hanne’s mother had invited Resi and Herta for New Year’s Day 1945; this had long been a family tradition. Ludwig, sadly, was absent, having been drafted as a forced laborer to build fortifications for the Nazis in France. Right after Resi blew in, the cold of the staircase billowing behind her, she asked whether it was all right that she had invited the Ortsleiter’s son. He arrived before anyone could absorb the affront. Long faces sat around the table that afternoon, passing sugar and cream, while Resi chattered on, catering to the guest, intent on filling the unwelcoming atmosphere with her cheeriness. Herta’s marriage seemed inevitable, no matter how much my grandparents turned up their noses.

  In those early days of 1945, the thunder of the cannons near Görlitz, across the border on Reich territory, could be heard in Reichenberg. The windowpanes on Grillparzer Straße trembled from the vibration of the detonations. Soviet troops were rolling up the eastern front; American tanks were advancing from the west.

  “It can’t be long now,” Hanne would say whenever the cannons thundered.

  “Yes,” Karl would answer. “The question is, who will come first: the Russians or the Americans?”

  “What if it’s the Russians?”

  “God help us.”

  During the last days of the war, Resi harbored the belongings of the Ortsleiter’s family in her apartment, and the son spent the night there. And then, on May 8, 1945, the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany came.

  My grandfather never related what happened to the Ortsleiter’s son after the end of the war and the fall of the Nazis. Obviously, my grandfather was not concerned with his fate. Resi must have forced Herta to drop him and severed relations with that family as soon as she realized that any Nazi connections were the most disadvantageous association one could have, as Russian tanks rolled into Reichenberg and the Czechs took over under the Soviet occupation.

  THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

  ALMOST A YEAR LATER, ON FEBRUARY 3, 1946, KARL was standing inside a railcar on the first transport of Germans out of Reichenberg, bound for the US-occupied zone of the former German Reich. Rain pounded the railcar’s roof. He felt as if he were inside a drum—a stuffy drum, smelling of wet wool and unwashed bodies. He could not see outside, as he was standing in the back, too far from the window. It was dark outside anyway. In early February, night settled in by five. His pocket watch had been stolen, so he had no idea of the exact time.

  As wagon commander, he had to be close to the door. It was his job to confer with the authorities whenever the train stopped somewhere, to monitor those who were allowed to step out, to commandeer his fellow travelers into queues when food was dispensed at a train station.

  One woman, her long gray hair stringy and plastered to her head, clutched a basket with her few possessions and insisted on standing by the door, ready to jump out whenever the train slowed or came to a halt. “My son! My son! I have to get to my son!” she muttered on and off. Karl found out from a neighbor of hers, who traveled in one of the other railcars, that her son had been killed months ago on the eastern front.

  On the first leg of the transport, they had been in a Czech freight car with the door left ajar to let in fresh cold air. Karl watched the woman’s eyes dart back and forth, back and forth over the passing landscape. He studied her and felt his own grief stir, felt its pull, knew he had to be grateful for whatever it was in his psyche, and in his wife’s, that had saved them from succumbing. Two years earlier, their younger son, Klaus, had died from diphtheria, seven years old. Within a week, he had been gone. How does one live with the death of a child? And how does one, with that ache already pulling, look ahead at a future that is nothing but fog, a life without any of the parameters one has known?

  He watched the woman, watched her eyes, and knew how she had gotten lost. And while at every stop he restrained her with the help of another man to keep her from running off, he wondered if he was doing the right thing.

  Hanne was close by. Most of the time he felt her staring at him, her eyes beady in the half-dark. She stood, slumped, her arms around their twelve-year-old son, Helmut. The boy had dozed off, leaning into her, Herta’s flowery scarf tied around his neck. The tah-tong, tah-tong of the train had lulled him to sleep.

  Herta and Resi had come to the train station to see them off, hugging them across the fence, which was only hip high. Resi had handed Hanne a roasted rabbit wrapped tightly in cloth.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Resi said, her voice choked up. She pressed Hanne’s hand with both her hands. “When I heard they wouldn’t let you out anymore, I slaughtered one of our rabbits. It’s only half-marinated—I only had one night—but at least you’ll have something.”

  “You will have something for the journey,” she said again as she hugged him over the fence. “Promise you’ll be back.”

  “I will try everything,” he said.

  She let go of him and patted Helmut on the cheek.

  Herta reached across the fence, pulled Helmut close, slipped the scarf from her head, and tied it around the boy’s neck. An icy wind had borne down on Jeschken Mountain, whipping at them in the bleary morning light. The crowd was pushing at them; everybody was trying to get a moment at the fence to say good-bye.

  Cousins: My father Helmut (left), his brother Klaus (front) and Ludwig and Herta in the back, 1937

  “You will be back!” Resi yelled after them as they had to step back from the fence.

  “Write to me!” she added, and he yelled back, “I’ll write as soon as I can!”

  And then they had been loaded into the train. He would write, and he would be back. When all papers were in order.

  Standing in the dusk of the rattling railcar, he looked back on his life as if he were marveling at an illumi
nated snow globe, turning it in his hand: the figurine of a man in a housecoat, sitting up late at night in his library, his slippered feet up on the desk, dictating a short story to his wife, who perched on the sofa, her dark, bobbed head intent on the notepad on her knees.

  Like Guido before him, he had not seriously entertained the thought of fleeing, of packing up for some other place, for he could not see another place, could not imagine that it would be any better in a Europe flattened by war. How does one give up the house with the newly installed copper pipes, the rebuilt sun-porch, the emerald and amber–colored glass in the entryway? The dormer window from which Helmut had strung his toy cable car? The library he had amassed over the years, the textbooks he had coauthored, the archives of the newspaper he had edited, the files of manuscripts of the plays he had written for Prague’s German radio station? How does one give up the tree-lined streets, the way to work past the turreted museum, the memories of summers spent by Talsperre Lake? The favorite table among the gilded columns at the Café Post, the waiter who brings the mélange without asking? The Sunday afternoons spent with his sister’s family? The graves of his parents, his boy?

  The train rattled on, hurtling them farther into the unknown. That was what terrified him the most: the unknown. As a German in Bohemia, he had weathered several momentous political shifts. Why should he not have weathered this one? Why should he not remain who he was, a German in Reichenberg? Not a Reich-German—no, never! Even though the border to the Reich had been so close, his affiliation had always been with Prague, with Vienna, not with Berlin. He was at heart a German of Old Austria.

  He weathered the Nazi reign, when, due to his stature as a former city councilman for the Social Democratic Party and his Jewish family connections, he had not been on the right side of the fence. He endured SS interrogations due to accusations that he had used “Jewish money” to finance his house on Grillparzer Straße. He bore the demotion from principal of the girls’ middle school to plain subject teacher. He only avoided the Volkssturm, Hitler’s last effort to halt the Allied advance, to which men and boys of all ages were conscripted, because he was already doing air defense duty for the Red Cross.