“Ernst is going to kill you when he finds out,” Heinrich whispered to me during the celebration we were having later at my parents’ apartment.
“He should have thought better before getting a Jewish girl pregnant,” I whispered back, making Heinrich chuckle.
It was interesting that despite being on the other side of the world, Ernst’s presence, even though not physical, was so strong with us. We always spoke of him, joked, suggesting what he would do or say in certain situations, shared memories of the old days in the RSHA and how Ernst was spending his day thinking of new ways to torture the Chief of SD-Ausland Schellenberg instead of fulfilling his direct duties… And every time something exciting would happen, Heinrich and I both would say in unison, “Too bad Ernst isn’t here.”
He had the most twisted way of getting into people’s lives, that arrogant, yet fascinating, Austrian, and would get everyone so infected with his almost charming sarcasm and captivating charisma, that soon it would become impossible to get rid of his invisible influence. Even my own husband, who was supposed to be hating his former boss with every fiber of his soul, was speaking of him almost with admiration, much to my parents’ surprise.
“He is not a bad man,” Heinrich would say, lowering his eyes, with a tender emotion in his voice. “He is a good man. It’s just he would let very few people see his true nature.”
Chapter 13
New York, August 1945
“I could never imagine it was so hot in New York!” I tried to wave some air into my face with my hand but it didn’t help a bit.
It was impossible staying inside the apartment in the hot August afternoon, and Heinrich and I decided to go for a little picnic in the park, where at least some air was circulating. I was pushing the baby carriage while my husband was carrying a basket with blankets and food, and holding dogs’ leashes in the other hand. Thanks to the continuous support of the OSS when we had just arrived at the United States and the very good salary that they were paying Heinrich, now he had started working full-time in their office, we could afford to lead quite a comfortable life.
From his first paycheck Heinrich surprised me with a beautiful set of pearl necklace and earrings, since of all my former jewelry I only had my old silver wedding band left, and for the obvious reasons I couldn’t even wear that one as it had SS symbols all over it.
“I promised you a new, happy life.” Smiling, he explained in answer to my question why he would waste money on such unnecessary things. “I’m just keeping my promise.”
Ernie, dressed in the thinnest one piece I could find, was still hot and kept making sounds, indicating that he wanted out of carriage. Afraid that he would start screaming, using his very mighty three months old voice, if I didn’t comply with his demands, I quickly turned to one of the shadowy meadows from our path.
“Let’s not go any further, this place is fine.” I pointed to Heinrich at the spot near the big rock, completely sheltered by a massive tree.
As he got busy with spreading the blanket, I took Ernie in my arms and tried to distract him with a new bright red toy his great-grandmother Hilda got for his three months birthday. She and my parents immediately fell under the spell of Ernie’s big brown eyes with long dark lashes as soon as they first saw him, and were constantly arguing over whose turn it was to hold him or what to give him for his next (monthly!) birthday. But when he started recognizing them and smiling at them, they tripled their efforts in spoiling my son rotten, together with my husband, who was absolutely obsessed with him.
I will never forget the day when Heinrich went to get Ernie while I was busy making dinner, and in less than a minute came running into the kitchen with the baby in his hands; I had never seen him so excited.
“He’s smiling at me! Annalise, look! He’s smiling!”
Ernie, who probably found his daddy’s reaction very entertaining, started smiling even wider and making little adorable yelps at our absolutely thrilled faces. We had to eat slightly burnt chicken that evening, but couldn’t be happier about it. Since then Heinrich wouldn’t stop making silly faces at the boy to make him laugh again and was spending all the time when Ernie wasn’t sleeping near him. I never told him that Ernie started smiling at me first; I felt that I owed Heinrich too much for accepting so easily the other man’s child, and wanted all those first baby moments to be his.
When we finally positioned ourselves comfortably on the blanket and I sat Ernie down on my lap to feed him from the bottle, which he recently started grabbing insistently with both hands as if trying to hold it himself, Heinrich took out a camera and took a picture of us. Smiling, I lifted my head to him.
“What are you doing?”
“You look so pretty today. And you’re always glowing when you hold Ernie. I just wanted to save this moment forever.”
Next week, when I picked up the pictures from the studio that printed them for us, I left the film for them and asked to make a copy of the one where I was feeding Ernie in the park. Later I handed it to agent Foster and asked if there was any chance he could give it to Ernst through somebody. He hesitated for a moment before taking it from me, and then promised that he’d give it to him personally, when he’d see him in the London prison the following month.
“Can I write him a letter too?” I begged, not believing such a chance.
“No, I’m sorry, but no. All his correspondence is thoroughly checked and if they see a letter from you, it’ll raise a lot of unnecessary questions: they will want to know who you are, how do you know him and maybe even want to interrogate you as well.”
“I’ll do it! It’s even better! I’ll go to London if I have to, I’m his former secretary after all, I can testify to his defense, I can explain that he had nothing to do with all the things he’s being accused of—”
“It’s impossible,” agent Foster interrupted me with a stern look. “Don’t forget, your name is Emma Rosenberg, and you’re a former Jew in hiding. You never worked in the RSHA and never knew Dr. Kaltenbrunner. Annalise Friedmann did, but she died during the air raid, together with her husband. I can give him the picture and say to his interrogators that you’re his brother’s wife and that’s his nephew, I’ll think of something. But letter, I’m sorry, that I can’t do.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “I understand. Well, can you maybe just tell him in words that… that I will always love him very much, that I’m constantly thinking of him and that… I’m very sorry for everything.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Thank you.”
Agent Foster left, and I went to Ernie’s crib to watch my son sleep and to stare at his father’s picture, which I stole from the Organization and Personnel Department and hid it in between the pages of one of my father’s books prior to his departure to the States. With some sixth sense I knew that soon that picture could be the only thing I would have left from Ernst and took it without thinking. Surprisingly, Heinrich was much more supportive of framing that picture and putting it next to Ernie’s crib than my own family members, who didn’t want to hear anything connected to Ernst’s name and were very much against my son knowing who his real father was when he’d grow up.
“He’s a war criminal, for God’s sake!” My grandmother kept scorning me. “Why would you want your son to be associated with such a monster?!”
“You didn’t know him,” I kept repeating the same reply, time after time.
“We read the newspapers,” my father inserted.
“The newspapers write a lot of bullshit lately, pardon my French.”
“Heinrich is such a great father, why would you want to bring the one, who your son has never seen and probably will never see, into his life?”
“Because it’s his father, and he deserves to know him.”
They gave up fighting me eventually, realizing that they wouldn’t win this war, but kept throwing side looks at Ernst’s picture every time they stood by Ernie’s crib. It didn’t bother me the slightest.
_
______________
November, 1945
Despite the late night I was sitting glued to the radio and listening to the speech by Judge Robert. H. Jackson, which marked the official opening of the Nuremberg Trials. After six months of thorough research and collecting tons of evidence against the major defendants, the representatives of Great Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union were ready to begin the process.
They chose the city of Nuremberg on purpose: it was Nuremberg, where the major Nazi political rallies had been held, where the Führer used to address the nation, where the infamous Nuremberg laws differentiating Aryans from non-Aryans were presented – the political move which resulted in deaths of millions of innocent people, herded, starved and worked to death in tens of death factories now known to the appalled world as Nazi concentration camps.
The ugly truth and horrifying secrets long kept from general public by my former government were finally revealed, and the prosecution couldn’t wait to put the main perpetrators on trial. The reason why the anxiety made me nervously bite my lips and nails and furrow my brow more and more as Judge Jackson started going deeper and deeper into the account of measureless atrocities committed under the Nazi regime, was that among those 23 most important representatives of the former Nazi government was Ernst. My Erni. The father of my child and the man who I couldn’t imagine my life without.
I was desperately craving alcohol to at least numb myself down to the point where I wouldn’t be so scared for his life, but I was still breastfeeding baby Ernie and that was out of question. Besides I would be ashamed to drink anyway when Ernst over there had to go through all this absolutely sober. They don’t even allow him to smoke, a thought flashed through my mind, and he can’t live without his cigarettes. How is he coping there, all by himself in a tiny cell, when he loves the freedom of his Austrian meadows and mountains so much… How is he holding on?
“Not so well,” agent Foster sighed in answer to the same question I asked him after his return from London. “It’s a jail, you have to understand, and besides, I’ll be honest with you, the British don’t like him. After so many of their captured soldiers were executed because of ‘the Bullet Decree,’ the guards and interrogators are doing their best to make his confinement as miserable as possible.”
“‘The Bullet Decree’ was Himmler’s order! Ernst was always openly against executing prisoners of war and strongly opposed that Decree!”
“Himmler’s dead, Mrs. Rosenberg, and therefore nobody can confirm it now. Mr. Kaltenbrunner was the Chief of the RSHA, and all those orders bear his signature.”
“Facsimile.”
“It’s the same thing for the prosecution.”
I turned away trying to put myself together.
“I gave him your picture like I promised.” Sensing my vulnerability, agent Foster decided to change a subject.
“You did? Thank you.” I smiled at him gratefully. “Did he say anything?”
Agent foster shifted his eyes away from me and shrugged one shoulder uncomfortably.
“He started crying.”
I cried too, right after those words, and now, listening to Judge Jackson’s speech and realizing what a mistake I made by refusing to leave together with Ernst when he asked me to. Back then I thought that I was doing the right thing; now, sitting on the cold kitchen floor with my hand fixed on the radio controller and another one clenching a Star of David I started wearing recently, I was praying to God to give me another chance so I could fix everything. I just wanted him to survive.
_______________
December, 1945
Heinrich put a hat on top of his yarmulke as soon as we exited the synagogue. He waited for me to wipe Ernie’s mouth since our baby started teething a couple of weeks ago and was drooling on everything around, my coat being no exception. Ernie didn’t like the whole wiping routine and pushed my hand off just to stick the rubber toy that Ursula got for him back into his mouth. Now that he could sit, crawl around and even hold his cup all by himself, my son all of a sudden started thinking of himself as of an independent person and kept protesting against everyone, who tried to intervene with his newly obtained freedom.
“That’s quite a personality he develops, huh?” Heinrich chuckled at Ernie, as the latter struggled with my handkerchief, and slightly pecked the boy on a rosy cheek. “Let Mama clean you up, you little piggy!”
“I know what we’re giving him for Hanukkah though.” I kissed Ernie on a cheek. “Teething rings.”
Heinrich laughed and then went quiet as we started making our way back home on the fresh fluffy snow, which covered the streets only two days ago. The New Yorkers were absolutely ecstatic about this very common for us, Germans, event; snow for Christmas here seemed to be the biggest present. Heinrich and I certainly had a lot of things to get used to.
“Why are you so quiet today?” I slightly pushed my husband with my shoulder.
“I’m not.”
“Liar.”
“I was just thinking… never mind actually.”
“What?”
“Nothing, just forget about it.”
“I can’t, now that you got me so intrigued.”
“Alright.” He finally gave up. “I was just thinking that we’ll never have Christmas again. And I really wanted Ernie to have a Christmas tree. And presents under it. And Santa.”
“Ernie has never seen a Christmas tree and has no clue what that is anyway. I think it’s you who wants the tree and Santa.” I winked at my husband who was hiding an embarrassed smile.
“No, I want it for my son, that’s all.” Heinrich put his arm around me. “But it’s fine if we don’t celebrate Christmas anymore. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Of course it is! I remember when I was little my Grandmother Hilda was always bringing me presents for Hanukkah, not dreidels of course, regular dolls. And when she suddenly stopped when I was nine or ten, I was so devastated that I seriously started to think that she didn’t love me anymore. Later my mother explained to me that our neighbors thought that it was strange that she would bring me presents for seven days in a row which coincided precisely with Jewish holidays, so the poor woman had to stop. I don’t want you to feel the way I felt when I had that holiday taken away from me. We’ll still celebrate Christmas, darling. With the tree and Santa, just no Jesus. Deal?”
“Deal.” My husband was beaming with joy. “No Jesus, just Santa.”
He stopped to kiss me in gratitude, and had to kiss Ernie on his cheek too, because the spoiled little brat wouldn’t allow any kissing if it didn’t include him.
“Can I go to a Christmas mass?” Heinrich inquired shyly after another pause, looking at me with a side of his eye.
“Of course you can, just don’t go into any churches around us where our neighbors can recognize you. Go downtown.”
“Can you come with me?” His tone sounded even more like begging now, which made me laugh out loud.
“I used to go to church every Sunday with you. I don’t think that one more mass will do me any harm.”
Heinrich laughed too and pressed me closer to himself. “I love you so very much, Emma.”
Following the protocol we were calling each other by our fake names outside the house.
“I love you too, Hermann.”
I almost couldn’t sleep during the following few weeks. Since the early morning I had to start preparing food for the guests – Ursula, Max, their daughter Greta, my parents and Grandmother Hilda, first for Hanukkah, then for my birthday, then Christmas, then New Year, and couldn’t wait for the night to stay by the radio and drink mugs of coffee, trying to stay awake not to miss anything important from the trials.
Agent Foster scared me to death when he informed me that two weeks ago Ernst was taken to a hospital after he suffered a slight stroke. It seemed like the guards were doing everything possible and impossible in making Ernst’s imprisonment a living hell, and long hours of continuous interrogations, threats, hum
iliations, more threats, pictures of yet another executed member of the former government ‘generously’ put under his door finally broke him.
“It’s not that serious,” said agent Foster, trying to console me in my desperation. “Just a slight brain hemorrhage, that’s all. He’s a healthy young man, he’s not going to die from it.”
Luckily the OSS agent was right, and Ernst was well enough to take a stand in front of the prosecution to enter his plea.
“I do not believe I have made myself guilty in the sense of the indictment.”
I froze by the radio when I heard his voice, for the first time in eight months, so familiar, so dear to me, with that slight purring Austrian accent that annoyed everybody in the RSHA so much and which I loved to no end. I inhaled sharply and pressed my hand to my chest, in a useless effort to slow down my rapidly beating heart. He always did it to me, my Erni, ripped me out of the comfortable environment, out of my family again, away from everybody, just to remind me once again that he was the one who I truly belonged to; how on Earth could someone else make me start suffocating from endless love and guilty tears at the same time just with the sound of his voice, and think of the most daring plans of giving up my new ‘legend’ and going to Nuremberg to testify in his defense?
“Erni…” I breathed out soundlessly, pressing my lips to the rough net covering the radio dynamic. In my disturbed emotional state I smiled, thinking that he heard me.
_______________
March, 1946
“Are you eating at all?” Ursula looked me up and down before I had a chance to cover my thin frame with a coat.
“Of course I am,” I replied without looking at my best friend, who was almost physically dragging me out for a walk.
After observing the circles under my eyes getting bigger and darker, and my skin turning an unhealthy pale due to the lack of sleep and constant anxiety, Ursula let herself into my apartment and ordered me out.
The Girl from Berlin: War Criminal's Widow Page 19