“Thank you, my angel!” I picked the boy up, noticing that he was growing bigger day by day and I already couldn’t hold him on one arm only.
I kissed his pretty face all over, making him giggle and hug me by the neck, and went to the kitchen, where Heinrich was feeding our twins. They both turned their heads to me and started stretching their hands to their mommy, completely forgetting about the food. Heinrich had to put the spoon away, wiped the children’s mouths with a napkin and greeted me with a kiss.
“Happy Birthday, beautiful.”
“Thank you, sweetie,” I wiped the lipstick I left on his lips with my thumb and nodded to the hallway. “Could you bring the bags with pastry, please? And I’ll finish feeding Heini and Gertie. This little monkey won’t let me go anyway.”
“Of course, honey. Did you buy everything you wanted?”
“Yes, I did. I went to the Italian pastry shop, the one that just opened, remember? So today we’ll be feasting like Italians.” I playfully tapped Ernie’s nose and sat him next to his brother and sister. “Maybe I shouldn’t feed you though, you’re growing way too fast.”
“No!” Hearing about the possibility of not getting sweets he loved so much, Ernie started loudly protesting. “I want cake too!”
“You know what happens to those who eat too much cake?” Heinrich asked the boy, taking the boxed pastry out of the paper bags. “They start looking like Uncle Goering.”
I burst out laughing, remembering the enormous waist line of the former Reichsmarschall, which was a subject of continuous jokes both from his colleagues and subordinates.
“Who’s Uncle Goering?” asked confused Ernie.
Except for his father, we never mentioned anybody from the former Reich and restrained ourselves from bringing up that part of our history. First of all, we didn’t like remembering it all, and second, Ernie was still too small to know how to keep a secret, and since next year we were planning for him to start a kindergarten, he could easily blurt out the information that was supposed to be a secret. All of our neighbors we’d gotten to know were persuaded that we were Jewish refugees, and the sympathetic looks were much better than the hateful ones they’d start throwing if they found out that we were former Nazis. My religion at this point wouldn’t matter to them, only my former membership in the loathed SS would.
“Remember the Humpty Dumpty tale?” Heinrich winked at his son. “That’s Uncle Goering.”
I laughed again and put another spoon of the apple puree to baby Heini’s little mouth. He smiled and cooed at me. “That’s not nice to make fun of dead people, you know.”
“I’m not making fun of him, I’m only stating the fact. He was fat.”
“Yes, he certainly was. But Ernie will never be like that no matter how much cake he eats. He runs around a lot, I’ve never seen so much energy in one child.”
“I know,” Heinrich finished with the pastry and moved the chair to join us at the table, at the same time sneaking a little cannoli under the table into Ernie’s hand. “All the food goes into his height, not the waist. He’ll grow big, this kid. He’s already taller than all his friends at the playground. And he bosses them around using his authority of being the tallest one.”
“He bosses them around?” I asked, a little surprised.
“Oh yes. He’s very sneaky, this one, just like his father was.” My husband playfully squinted his eyes at Ernie, who made the most innocent doe eyes back at him. “He’s playing such an angel when he’s with you, but you should see him when I take him for a walk alone. Then he shows his character big time.”
“Do you really, Ernie?” I looked at my ‘little angel’ in disbelief. “Are you being mean to the other boys on the playground?”
“No, mommy.” To persuade me, he even shook his head so his long bangs fell onto his eye. Heinrich lovingly brushed it off, while Ernie took another bite of his cannoli.
“Oh, yes, you are. Who hit the boy on the head with a shovel?”
“He hit somebody?” I turned to my husband, this time genuinely concerned. I tried to raise Ernie in the most unhostile environment possible; Heinrich and I never had a fight, we never punished the boy physically, even the tales we were reading to him were all non-violent, so this announcement really astonished me.
“He started first!” Ernie frowned, just like his father did. “He ruined the fort I built!”
“And you hit him on the head for that?”
“Yes!”
“Yes, he did,” Heinrich chuckled, trying to look scornful, but then just messed his son’s hair instead of reprimanding him. “Our little Ernie banged him on the head with a shovel, pushed him to the ground and said, ‘Don’t you ever touch my things again or else!’ Can you imagine the boy’s mother’s face when she ran up to see what happened and saw that it was a two and a half year old putting her four year old in his place!”
“Heinrich, you’re not supposed to encourage it!” I whispered to my grinning husband.
“I’m not encouraging it. As a matter of fact, Ernst Ferdinand here had to spend half an hour in the corner thinking about his behavior when we came back home. But I have to give him that, he can stand for himself.” Heinrich suddenly laughed. “I’m lucky I dragged him away from that kid before he started screaming that his father is the General of the German army and will shoot them all!”
Remembering how a month ago Ernie did start screaming that, when some older kids started teasing our little dog Sugar calling her ‘a nice cat,’ I involuntarily sneered at the priceless expressions of their parents’ faces. Yes, my husband was certainly right, Ernie could stand for himself.
I wiped the faces of my twins, who were sleepy after their meal, picked Gertie up while Heinrich took Heini, and we headed to the nursery to put them down for a nap so they wouldn’t be cranky when the guests arrived.
“Thank you for another bouquet.” I kissed my husband on a cheek, noticing flowers standing in the middle of the table in the living room. “But really, one was enough.”
“It’s not from me.”
“Oh, really? Who is it from?”
“I don’t know. The delivery man brought it while you were shopping. I asked who was it from, but he said that he didn’t know. The sender didn’t even leave a note in it.”
“That’s strange.” I frowned and inspected the flowers closer. The flowers – orchids – were very expensive, but Heinrich was right: there was no card inside. “Maybe they mixed up the address? Maybe they aren’t for me?”
“No, I’m quite sure they are for you. When the delivery man came, he asked me if it was the Rosenberg’s residence and if Mrs. Emma Rosenberg lived here.”
“Well… who would send them and wouldn’t even leave a card?” I asked, even more confused.
“I don’t know. I have already started thinking that you were having an affair behind my back.” Heinrich kept a serious face while I was staring at him with my mouth open, not really knowing how to react to the accusation, and then he burst into laughter. “I’m just teasing you! I’m almost positive that the flowers are from the OSS office. And they didn’t sign the card for an obvious reason.”
“Oh,” I laughed too. “That certainly explains everything.”
I looked at the flowers a little longer and found myself wondering why the OSS would spend so much of their budget money on such an expensive bouquet.
Chapter 17
May, 1950
I was busy making the after school, or after kindergarten, meal for all my three children, when I noticed that there were only the twins sitting at the table and looking at me expectantly.
“Where’s Ernie?” I asked them, but hearing a noise coming from the children’s bedroom, didn’t need a reply anymore.
“Ernie!” I called to my oldest son loudly, but he, obviously busy playing something very entertaining, didn’t even pay attention to me.
I sighed, told the twins to wait by the table and went to fetch their brother. Even through the living room I
heard him screaming something in German for some reason, but as soon as I stopped at the doors, I couldn’t help but shake my head with a smile. My son, whose fifth birthday we were celebrating today, was standing with his back to me, swinging his toy sword at the toy soldiers army spread on the carpet in front of him, obviously imagining himself no less than General Rommel himself.
“Ernie, hand the commandment to your best officer, and let’s go eat, alright?”
Immersed into his imaginary world, he seemed spooked by me touching his shoulder and quickly turned around, clasping his hand around something on his neck.
“What do you have there?” I reached out to touch whatever he was hiding in his fist, but he hastily stepped away from me, smiling.
“Nothing.”
“Ernie, show me.”
“No.”
The boy mischievously shook his head and got under the bed so fast that I didn’t have time to catch him. He was definitely hiding something from me, and I was going to get to the bottom of this.
“Get out of there right now, mister!”
“No!” Giggling from under the bed, under which he knew I couldn’t climb because it was too narrow, made me realize that I needed to use an alternative way to get him out.
“Ernst Ferdinand Rosenberg-Kaltenbrunner! What would your father say if he saw you hiding under the bed? Is that what German officers do, hide under beds?” I smiled at the silence, knowing that I was on the right path. “That’s certainly not the army behavior I know. You father would be very disappointed, young man. Very disappointed.”
Seconds later my oldest son got from under the bed with such a dramatic sigh that I almost dropped my stern mask.
“Now show me what you have there.”
“I can’t.” Ernie wasn’t looking at me, still holding something in his clenched fist. And then I saw the familiar colors of the ribbon around his neck and gasped. My fingers got cold right away at my guess, and this time I forced his fingers open without any hesitation despite plenty of protesting from his side.
“Ernst, where did you get it?” I asked him in a stern voice, holding a German Cross for War Merits with crossed swords on it, just like the one that Ernst had received from the Führer in 1944.
I was afraid to turn it to look at the back side, but then finally did. ‘Für Obergruppenführer Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner,’ engraved clearly in the metal left no doubts: the Cross was authentic and used to belong to my dead Ernst. I saw it so many times on him back then, and now my son was wearing it around his neck, making me seriously doubt my sanity or think that I was dreaming it all.
“Ernie?” I repeated and lifted the boy’s chin making him look me in the eye. “Answer me, where did you get it?!”
“I told you, I can’t,” he repeated stubbornly. “I swore not to. I can’t break my word. My honor is my loyalty.”
To my terror, with those words – the motto of the former Reich’s SS – he raised two fingers in the air, just like SS soldiers used to do pronouncing their oath of loyalty. I covered my mouth with my hand, involuntarily lowering myself on the floor before him.
“Ernie, who taught you this?”
“Nobody.”
“Don’t lie to me! Who taught you this?!” I never yelled at my children, but this time was more than extraordinary. “Answer me right now! Who gave you this?! Who?!”
I grabbed him by his shoulders and he, not used to seeing me so angry, finally said, “Papa did. For my fifth birthday.”
I sat on my behind with my mouth open, startled by such reply.
“Sweetie, Papa couldn’t give it to you.” At last I composed myself and tried to say as mildly as I could, “Papa is not with us, remember? He’s in the other world.”
“No, he’s not,” Ernie stated flatly.
“Yes, he is, darling.”
“No. He’s alive, mommy. But you can’t tell nobody, because it’s a secret.”
I was looking into my son’s eyes not knowing how to react to what he was telling me. Ernst was most definitely dead, he was executed in front of the representatives of three different countries and the press, I personally saw the picture of his body in the newspaper which I still kept in my papers, although I don’t even know why. But Ernie was too big to discount such statements on his childish fantasies, and the cross around his neck was definitely not an imaginary object. All that led me to one conclusion only: somebody, posing as Ernst, was visiting my son and pretending to be his father. But that brought up even more questions: Ernie knew his father from the picture and wouldn’t just take some stranger’s word for it unless he looked like Ernst. And who would want to pose as Ernie’s father and the main question is why?
“Ernie, where did you see Papa last time?” I decided to start my interrogation to get some clues to this mystery.
“Today, in the kindergarten. He came to wish me a Happy Birthday.”
“How did he look like, honey?”
“Like on the picture,” Ernie shrugged. “But instead of the uniform he was wearing a suit and a hat.”
“Did you see his face if he was wearing a hat?”
“Of course I did! We spoke through the gate, but I saw him as close as I see you now. He is very tall, he has brown eyes like I do, and he has scars here, and here, and here…”
My face dropped as Ernie was drawing on his face the exact position of his father’s marks from his student dueling years.
“It’s impossible,” I heard myself whispering my last thought.
“He came to see me many times before. And he always comes on my birthday. This time he said that I’m big enough to have my first grown-up present, and he gave me this.” My son proudly touched the Cross for the War Merits on his neck. “He said it was his one time, but now he wants me to have it. I promised not to tell and not to show it to anybody, but I really wanted to play with it…”
The boy lowered his head, disappointed with himself for breaking his word. I slowly got up from the floor and went to my bedroom, pieces of puzzle coming together: Ernie’s second birthday and the mysterious bear he brought from the park; the picture he drew for Ernst for New Year, which he took with him to the kindergarten and ‘lost’ before we could go to the park to put it next to Beethoven’s monument, which we made into Ernst’s official last resting place; the threats to the other kids that his father, the General of the German army, would kill them all… Somebody was seeing my son this whole time! But by all means it couldn’t be his real father. Or could it?
Breathing heavily from the overwhelming anxiety I finally fished out the old New York Times from the very bottom of the shoe box I was hiding it in, more from myself than from everybody else. With cold, shivering fingers I was flipping pages until I got to that horrifying page I looked only once at. Now, frowning and pressing my lips firmly, I made myself look at the pictures of the war criminals, executed in Nuremberg, first at the others and then slowly shifting my eyes to Ernst’s photo.
All of the executed men lay on the wooden coffins they were later cremated in, according to the press, in the clothes they were executed in, with ropes on which they were executed next to their heads. Death changes people and they look differently from how they looked alive… but it was Ernst, I was quite sure of it. I stared a little longer at the image, not able to connect the dots. If Ernst was dead, how come the description of the man who visited my son matched his late father so closely? Unless…
The only other man who looked somewhat like Ernst, with almost the same height and build, with a scarred left cheek and a mane of dark hair, was his closest friend Otto. Several years ago the Austrian escaped from prison for POWs, casually walking out dressed as one of his former guards and leaving a bloody trail of the dead captors, who tried to cage the most dangerous diversionist in the former Reich.
While Ernst was still alive and Otto was still free, hiding somewhere from the allies, I was praying every single day for him to come to his best friend’s rescue, to daringly get him out of the Nuremberg pri
son just like he’d rescued the Italian dictator Mussolini once before. But then Otto was captured, and even that last tiny hope of mine disappeared. What if, blaming himself for his former SS brother’s death, loyal Otto didn’t find anything better to do than to get close to Ernst’s son, who looked just like him?
I quickly put away the paper back into my hiding place, told Ernie to watch the twins and almost ran out of the apartment. I was knocking on Ursula’s door so loudly that she opened it looking at me with her eyes wide open.
“What happened?”
“Somebody’s pretending to be Ernie’s father. I’ll explain everything later, could you please watch my children while I go to kindergarten and talk to Ernie’s teacher? I haven’t even fed them yet, but I really have to catch Ms. Stevens while she’s still there.”
“Of course I’ll watch them… What are you saying about Ernie’s father though?”
Ursula looked as confused as I was just ten minutes ago, but I just grabbed my bag from the table in the hallway and screamed, already running down the stairs, “I’ll explain everything later!”
_______________
“Ms. Stevens?” I called out to the young woman with curly auburn hair, who was Ernie’s teacher and the only grown-up who could throw some light on the situation.
She was closing the gates of the day care, but turned around seeing me rushing towards her from the other side of the street and waved. “Hello, Mrs. Rosenberg! Did Ernie forget something inside?”
“No, he didn’t,” I smiled, catching my breath after crossing the street and almost getting hit by a car. “I came to ask you something important: did anybody come to see my son today?”
“Oh yes!” The always vivacious redhead enthusiastically nodded right away. “His uncle did.”
“His uncle?”
“Yes! Mr. Rosenberg’s brother?” She tilted her pretty head slightly, seeing my confusion. “At first I got worried that Ernie was talking to some stranger, but then I saw his face and realized that they were related right away. You son looks just like him! Isn’t it funny how genetics works? A child takes after his uncle and not his father! I had the same thing in my family: my sister, out of all four siblings, doesn’t look anything like us, she is a picture of my late grandmother, with black hair and green eyes, can you imagine?”
The Girl from Berlin: War Criminal's Widow Page 25