by Alexis Clark
She excelled in her nursing studies and relished the independent life in New York City. Not all of her adventures were positive, but even the more questionable ones further developed her confidence in her ability to take care of herself. Once she found herself on a date with a smooth-talking man dressed in a zoot suit. It was her first time out with a New York City guy, and the student nurse from the Boston suburbs was excited to be wooed by a grown man. He drove his shiny car deep into the Bronx, parts of which were still quite rural at the time, stopped the car, and whipped out his penis. Elinor, in a fit of tears, managed to talk her way out of the shocking encounter, but it left a deep impression.27 She couldn’t have been further away from the world of Girl Scouts and the careful watch of her mother in Milton. She was on her own in New York City.
When Elinor graduated in 1943 she was one of the top ten students in her class. She’d also developed into a striking woman with a statuesque, curvaceous shape and beautiful smile. She favored her father in looks: both had high cheekbones, a dark chocolate complexion, and alluring eyes. She confidently posed for photos wearing her white nurse’s uniform: a white dress and apron with white stockings and white leather nurse shoes. She must have been pondering her future. With a nursing degree in hand, she did have choices, but she was a single African American woman and it was 1943, so there were many factors that needed to be considered.
Everything changed that year: Lawrence Powell died at the age of fifty-six from complications of hypertension. Medications for high cholesterol and high blood pressure weren’t as advanced or readily available as they are nowadays, and succumbing to such illnesses wasn’t uncommon, particularly for black people who had limited health care options. To lose this tender, kind, and soft-spoken parent was an unimaginable blow to the family. Gladys was now a widow at the age of forty-seven. Her eldest daughter was working for the Red Cross in Arizona. Elinor, just twenty-two, was in New York. And her youngest daughter was a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Gladys was now alone, something she had dreaded ever since leaving her large family in Kentucky.
With a nursing degree in hand, Elinor had decisions to make about her future. She could work at a hospital in Boston and live at home with her mother. A single woman didn’t live by herself if she had family close by, let alone if her mother was a widow. But moving back home after spending three years living independently in New York City wasn’t an attractive proposition. For one, the thought of living in the family home without her father and under her mother’s very close watch seemed oppressive.
She also didn’t relish the idea of working at an underfunded and overcrowded city hospital. Elinor knew that despite her comfortable upbringing and good education, there was a strong chance that if she stayed in Boston, she’d be relegated to a low-paying nursing job with limited advancement and lower wages.
She would very likely run into the same problems in New York. In the early 1940s, Elinor could find work in a New York City hospital that accepted black medical staff, but she would be paid significantly less than whites who held the same positions. She would also most likely be forced to live in racially segregated neighborhoods in Manhattan or the other boroughs, or a bit farther north in the black areas of Westchester County.
Joining the military had first crossed her mind when she heard about black nurses being accepted into the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor. But when the United States entered World War II the idea of enlisting became more personal. She’d always been very proud of her father’s service, and following in his footsteps may have become more important to her after his death. There were only a handful of black women in the Nurse Corps, just 160 by 1943, unlike the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, which accepted thousands of blacks, although in segregated units. But Elinor wasn’t easily discouraged by the low numbers, and having been raised almost exclusively among white people, she wasn’t uncomfortable with the prospect of being a minority in any given situation.
Not completely ready to make a decision, she remained in Harlem for one more year, working as a nurse. But in 1944, the time came to make a move. Elinor Elizabeth Powell enlisted in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps to carry on her father’s legacy of service. Her acceptance letter, dated July 21, “by command of Major General Terry,” instructed her to report to Fort Huachuca to complete her basic training.
Nothing, however, prepared her for what awaited her in the Arizona desert.
2.
Frederick
HE LIKED LEAVING THE BARRACKS WHEN IT WAS still pitch black outside. The desert heat was bearable and he could focus on his own thoughts instead of acting as the default translator for his comrades who couldn’t understand their American captors. Frederick Albert was in his own world as he made his way silently along the path to the mess hall every morning at four to prepare breakfast. If Florence, Arizona, had one redeeming quality, it was the peace that came from being in the middle of nowhere. Which is exactly where Frederick was: in an American camp for German prisoners of war in 1944, thousands of miles from home.
Although he had fond memories of watching his mother prepare brötchen, or bread rolls, it wasn’t so much the pleasure he derived from working in the kitchen that made his assigned job satisfying. Frederick relished the solitude and independence. He also loved the technical aspects of baking. Everything had to be precise and perfect, forcing him to concentrate. Time in the kitchen also meant he got to listen to U.S. Armed Forces Radio and something he had been denied by Hitler since the war started—jazz. He always hoped Louis Armstrong’s rendition of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” would play. It put him in a good mood, like he had something to look forward to when he actually didn’t. He was happy to be alive after being captured, but that’s where the joy ended. As the black sky turned navy blue, Frederick would put on his white apron and cook’s hat, turn up the volume on the radio, and take the bowl of yeast out of the refrigerator to start the bread.
Friedrich Karl Josef Albert couldn’t have been born at a more fragile time in modern German history. He arrived on August 20, 1925, with wispy blond hair and gray eyes—a perfect baby, in his mother’s opinion. He was the second child born to his parents, Karl and Margarete, who lived with their five-year-old daughter, Charlotte, in Oppeln, an eastern German city that had shuffled between German, Slavic, and Polish rule since the eighth century. Bordering the Oder River, Oppeln had strategic importance as a port and rail junction, but it was also known as a manufacturing center for cement, metals, and machinery—industries that would eventually make Karl Albert a very wealthy man.1
Frederick, as he would later be called, and his family lived comfortably in a large apartment that took up the entire floor of a building. By outward appearances, they were seemingly sheltered from the devastating effects of the Great War, which crippled most of Germany. Margarete, an elegant and aristocratic woman, decorated the home with dark wood furniture, paintings of European landscapes, and a prominent deep strawberry-colored velvet sofa. “My mother was a woman of taste, and she furnished the apartment according to the style which was then in fashion, of course,” said Charlotte Tutsek, Frederick’s sister. There was even a pond that Karl created to embellish the apartment building’s exterior.
Margarete knew she was a stunning woman, and she took great pains to maintain her beauty. She was formal and followed strict rules of dress: never wearing pants except for a pair of ski trousers and never leaving the house without stockings and gloves. Karl provided well for his family, but he was emotionally detached and took no interest in his wife or two children. He didn’t even bother to hide his affairs. Margarete responded by focusing on herself and her appearance. While Karl was away working or spending the weekend with his mistress, Margarete carried on like a woman who had many interests and was unaffected by a betrayal happening right under her nose. She liked to read a lot, mostly novels and detective stories, and enjoyed baking, cooking, and gardening. And she loved to travel, mostly in Germany, visiting friends a
nd relatives. But spending quality time with her children rarely fit in with her plans.
Karl Albert, born around 1896 in the East German town of Magdeburg, had two interests: business and women. He was tall, handsome, charming, and a man’s man. He had been a lieutenant in World War I and was a strong, no-nonsense doer. As a young engineer he worked in a factory on the outskirts of Oppeln where he developed materials used to create cement. Margarete was born in the late 1890s to an upper-class family in Siegen, in western Germany. Her father was a forest ranger and successful hunter and her mother’s family owned a furniture company. Karl and Margarete thrived in Oppeln and were lucky to maintain and grow their wealth during a time when most Germans were barely getting by.
The aftermath of World War I laid the groundwork for Germany’s collision course with mass poverty and political extremism. When Germany was defeated by the Allied forces in 1918 and saw its monarchy dissolved and replaced by the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary government, life as everyone had known it was over. The strict terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the peace agreement that Britain, France, and the other Allied powers set forth as Germany’s punishment for waging war, was signed in 1919 and obliterated the German economy. Specifically, the treaty’s Article 231, commonly referred to as the “war guilt clause,” stipulated, “The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.” Germany was obliged to pay approximately $31.5 billion in reparations for the economic damages it caused during the war and make significant territorial concessions.2 Consequently, Germany lost all of its colonies, 13 percent of its territory in Europe, and almost all of its military equipment, and its army was restricted to 100,000 men.3 The draconian provisions of the peace agreement incensed many Germans, including Adolf Hitler, who resented that Germany surrendered in the first place.
Not only did the Treaty of Versailles break Germany’s economy, it also destroyed the morale of the German people, who could no longer make ends meet. Inflation skyrocketed until the United States provided another way for Germany to pay back its war debts. In 1924, at the request of the Allied Reparations Committee, the prominent Chicago banker Charles Dawes investigated the terms of Germany’s agreement and recommended an increase in foreign loans to Germany and a reorganization of the German state bank. Adolf Hitler, a veteran of the Great War and an emerging voice in the Nazi Party, opposed the Dawes Plan because he claimed it gave foreigners control over Germany’s economy and didn’t reduce the amount of outstanding reparations. However, the plan managed to get inflation under control and strengthen the German economy. By 1928, the unemployment rate in Germany had dropped significantly.4
Growing up in the Albert family came with a great deal of isolation despite the abundance of material comforts most Germans could only dream of having at the time, including a spacious apartment, household staff, and vacations on the North Sea. But Karl and Margarete were distant and removed in their own ways, and both parents were also strict disciplinarians, particularly Margarete, who spanked her children with a cane, according to Charlotte. Nurturing didn’t come easily for Margarete, and Charlotte didn’t snuggle with her mom, play dress-up in her beautiful clothes, come home crying to her if a schoolmate was cruel, or share much about her crushes, goals, or dreams. If anyone ever received affection, it was Frederick, whom his family affectionately called “Frika.”
The factory where Karl worked was not conveniently located for a young family with kids. Although the Alberts’ apartment was close by and Karl had a short commute, the school that Frederick and Charlotte attended was quite a distance away. “There were no other kids around. And my mother never invited other children for birthday cake or something back then. We were alone,” said Charlotte. “And we always walked to school alone, back and forth, forty-five minutes each way, by foot, no bicycle.” For entertainment, Charlotte and Frederick would hang out around the factory and talk to the adults who worked there. Once they shut down the electricity by playing with the circuits and exposed cables. “They were repairing something and no one told us. Frederick could have been killed!” Their world consisted of school, playing in the factory, and painting, a hobby both siblings loved well into adulthood. In their structured and isolated world, they had a privileged though lonely childhood, while the rest of Germany struggled around them.
When Wall Street crashed in October 1929, so did Germany’s economy. The country relied heavily on U.S. investments, and when the United States began to recall its loans, Germany hit rock bottom immediately. Before the stock market crashed, 1.25 million Germans were unemployed. By 1930, nearly 4 million were out of work, about 15.3 percent of the population. Many people had to rely exclusively on part-time work, and those working full-time had to accept lower wages. By 1932, more than 30 percent of the German workforce couldn’t find jobs.5
Hitler, who had not been taken seriously by any German with influence before the crash, suddenly had a growing audience. As the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, he vowed to end unemployment in Germany. Having predicted economic disaster when the Dawes Plan was put into effect, he was listened to when he spoke to a broken nation desperate for a leader who could salvage the economy. What started as a right-wing discussion that scapegoated Jews and chastised the German government for its defeat in the Great War and agreement to the Treaty of Versailles catapulted into the country rallying around Hitler’s leadership.
The Alberts continued to go about their daily lives as if nothing about Germany’s new leader was out of the ordinary. The rhetoric, the new pledges to Germany and the Führer—Margarete and Karl didn’t say a word against any of it. But the climate had changed, and the treatment of the Jews in the small town of Oppeln had changed too. Oppeln had a small Jewish population, 607 people in 1930. By 1936 that number had dwindled to 453 as anti-Jewish hostilities increased along with Hitler’s rhetoric.6
The Alberts’ time in Oppeln lasted until Frederick was eight years old. Karl then temporarily uprooted the family to the southern town of Ulm for a short-term work opportunity. But the biggest and most significant move came around 1935, when the Alberts relocated to Vienna, Austria.
Vienna was just what a capital city should be: glamorous and culturally influential, with renowned artists, musicians, and a celebrated art academy, and with beautiful streets and squares that were architecturally and aesthetically superior to those in any other Austrian town.
The family moved into a huge apartment in an immaculate and impressive baroque-style building near the center of the city. Although they had always had housekeepers, in Vienna Karl and Margarete added a luxury car and a driver as well. Their chauffeur-driven dark blue BMW confirmed their social standing. The building had an elevator, and they hired more staff to maintain the apartment.
Just as in Oppeln, however, outside appearance didn’t reflect the unhappiness inside. Both Frederick and Charlotte were deprived of emotional support from their parents, particularly from Karl, who was never around. He always preferred to wine and dine a mistress than to sit at home with his family asking about his children’s school or his wife’s goings-on. The simple truth was that Karl’s family ranked low on his list of priorities, and it affected Frederick very deeply. Engineering and business weren’t of any interest to him, but a relationship with his father certainly was. “My father was an officer in the reserves, and a bit derisive,” said Charlotte. He was a believer in Germany’s superiority and had little time for alternative points of view. His family obeyed whatever rules and regulations the Third Reich commanded, period. There were no exceptions because the Führer knew best.
In 1935, Hitler instituted the Nuremberg Laws, a racist set of statutes that resulted in the loss of citizenship for Jews and ban of marriages between Jews and non-Jewish Germa
ns. But Karl and Margarete didn’t give any indication to Frederick and Charlotte that their lives were in danger or that anything about the direction of the country was warped. And there was absolutely no mention of Jews. “The Jewish question was never touched,” said Charlotte. It wasn’t as though Frederick and Charlotte were forbidden to have Jewish friends, or that Karl and Margarete spoke ill of Jews in front of their children. But they also didn’t defend them, voice any outrage over the deportations they knew were taking place, or, in fact, speak much of them at all.
Except once. On one particular morning, Karl joined his family for a meal, a rare occasion. He almost never ate with them, particularly on the weekends, because he was always with his girlfriends. Margarete usually slept late, leaving Charlotte and Frederick to eat alone. Having all four together for a morning meal made the occasion all the more memorable. Karl took his chair at the head of the table, with Frederick and Charlotte looking at each other and wondering why he was there. “I saw the Gluckmann girl at the train station,” he said, leaning in to whisper. He had seen Jews standing on the platform waiting to be deported. “I saw one of the daughters,” he said, referring to a schoolmate of Charlotte’s who was a few years older. Charlotte and Frederick knew why their father was whispering: a nosy housekeeper could have overheard the conversation and reported Karl to the police for talking about the Third Reich. No one in the family was to discuss the incident again.7 They just proceeded with breakfast: Margaret sipped her coffee and the children ate their food, a typical German breakfast of bread, rolls, butter, sausage, ham, jam, and boiled eggs. They carried on, like everyone else, as Jewish families were being rounded up and taken away.