Wilhelm looked over to Torben. A tear trickled down his dirt-covered face. He knew too. He knew he would never get to marry Francesca on the shores of the Mediterranean. He would never eat his mother’s cooking again. All the trips he and Wilhelm had planned would never happen.
Wilhelm had always doubted if he would make it home. He had tried to remain optimistic he would see Hannah again. But now, he fully realized he would never be allowed to leave. He would never return to Germany. He would never return to Hannah.
New York
Hannah had fallen in love with the city of New York. It was easy to blend in with a city of millions of people from different countries, races, and creed. There was a place for everyone in New York and in America, Hannah included, and she had no problem finding work.
She found a job at a manufacturing plant in New Jersey. Agent Dunn had acquired a small apartment in Midtown for her. It was three blocks from Times Square. Even though she was in a city of millions, her apartment was considerably lonely. To counter that, she would walk around Times Square. When she had traveled all of lower Manhattan, she went further until she had traveled all five boroughs.
As the months of summer of 1944 drifted away and autumn swept through the streets of New York, Hannah enjoyed walking through Central Park. It slightly reminded her of the Tiergarten in Germany and the walks she and Wilhelm took. The resemblance was never stronger than during autumn when the crimson and gold leaves fell, covering the walking paths.
When news broke the Americans had defeated the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge on 25 January 1945, she allowed herself to get excited over the possibility of the war ending. As the winter ended and the flowers bloomed in spring, reports came in that Germany, although standing, was poised for a knockout blow. When she found out Hitler had died on 30 April, she didn’t feel the peace she had hoped. He had cheated the true justice he had coming to him. She wanted him to face the wrath of the Allies and see him hanged. She was not raised to desire such a thing, and it was not a Jewish belief nor of any civilized religion. God would unleash his own judgment against him and the other Nazi High Command. Yet, a part of her found it hard to believe he had taken his own life. He had preached of a thousand-year Reich and, though it was impossible for him to see it to the end of that reign, she could not imagine him giving it up so easily.
It was Tuesday, 8 May, when news broke that the war in Europe was over. When Hannah crossed the Hudson River, excited New Yorkers shouted it from block to block. As she made her way toward Times Square, it appeared all of New York City was packed into it. People screamed in jubilation, drank in celebration or gave thanks in prayer. The ships in the surrounding harbors let their sirens wail, and the streets were covered in a snowfall of paper flakes. Hannah had never seen so many people in the same high spirits as that day, nor had she seen such a collection of different people all get along. Bottles of alcohol were passed around. People kissed, and Hannah herself was kissed on the cheek, forehead, and lips by at least a dozen soldiers. She could only laugh and smile.
The party that ensued went on well past dawn, and Hannah did not make it back to her apartment until 5:20 that morning. It was not something she liked to do, as it required her to sleep most of the day away to recover. It was also the first time she had gotten drunk since before Wilhelm had left, though there had been many close calls at Josephine’s kitchen table. The alcohol seemed so much worse and so much more potent than it had six years earlier. She had always awoken with a slight pounding headache from nights of drinking with what she considered slight waves in her stomach. But what greeted her when she woke up at half past noon was a sledgehammer banging against her skull. Her stomach sent waves high enough to capsize ships, and her dizziness made her second-guess if her eyesight had suddenly gone horribly awry. The hangover did not go away that day. It was an annoying houseguest that invited itself in and sat on the couch.
Hannah checked in with Agent Dunn a few weeks later and disclosed she wanted to go to school for nursing. He took it upon himself to make a few phone calls, and a week later, Hannah found out she had been accepted to New York University. She had experience in treating combat soldiers, and those who had made it home and required further medical attention were transferred to one of New York’s many hospitals. Most had been from the European theatre of war, and Hannah volunteered to help. The experience of D-Day was worth more than four years of classes. You could not read in a book the horrors sight, scent, sounds, and touch could bring. After proving her worth, she quit her factory job and accepted a part-time position for the month of June.
Hannah asked Agent Dunn when it would be safe to travel back to Berlin, but he warned her the city was in ruins, and it would take months for it to be cleaned up. The war in Japan neared its end, and America contemplated any means necessary to end it.
On 6 August, Hannah was checking the morphine drips when the new American president Harry S. Truman’s voice came through the radio.
“Sixteen hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T,” Truman said.
The room was almost always quiet, but at that moment, it was as quiet as space with only the faint drip of the morphine somehow amplified in the silence.
“We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above the ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake, we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war,” Truman continued.
“It’s the atomic bomb,” a soldier said.
Hannah was at the foot of his bed, checking his chart.
“What is that?” she asked.
“The end of the world,” the soldier said and then turned his head from her.
When Hannah read the New York Times the next morning, the soldier’s words proved true. She shuddered after finding out the Nazis had been after that very technology. Though she preferred the Americans winning the race, it was a technology not worthy of any man or group of men. It was a power only God should have. 60,000-80,000 people were estimated to have been killed instantly while thousands more had died of wounds and, later, radiation. Yet, for some unknown reason, Japan refused to surrender. Truman’s warning was not an idle threat.
Three days later, on 9 August 1945, the second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, and on 15 August, Japan made it known their intention to surrender. On 2 September, aboard the USS Missouri, the namesake ship of President Truman’s home state, the Japanese signed their surrender in Tokyo Bay. The greatest event in the history of mankind was over.
Hannah called Agent Dunn every week, asking when she could return to Germany, and every week, his answer was the same. He had transferred her to Agent Clarkson within the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency). Hannah had never met Agent Clarkson. He was stationed in Washington, but he had voiced his concern about a strong worry that the Nazi Party was not extinct but dormant. They believed they had a large trove of chemical weapons that could be unleashed in the city. Though he did say the choice was Hannah’s, he strongly suggested she stay in New York until the situation improved. Hannah’s heart told her to go. There were so many people she wanted to see again—Wilhelm most of all. But she needed to be smart. She had not seen Wilhelm in nearly six years. The two could wait a little while longer. But so often, throughout the war, her optimism had been poorly founded. What if they couldn’t wait a little longer?
The horrors of the Holocaust had been printed on the front page of the newspapers in advance of the Nuremberg Trials, a prosecution of prominent members of the Nazi Party that extended to not only military leaders but political and economic leaders as well in November of 1945. The country of Germany was no longer a singular unified nation but divided into four sectors as well as the city of Berlin. The northwest was under British rule, the southwest under Fr
ench, the southeast under American, and the northeast under Soviet. The Germany Hannah had grown up in had changed drastically when she was a young girl, and it had now transformed again. The Allies, the Soviets most of all, had punished the German people for the crimes of such a small few. She could only hope the true people responsible, those who had not committed suicide, were brought to justice.
She looked through each morning’s paper for updates on the lengthy trial. But like her return to Germany, it took much longer than she had wanted. Finally, in 1946, the trial ended with the death sentencing executions of ten prominent members, which was carried out on 16 October 1946. Herman Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe and member of Hitler’s inner circle, had been sentenced, but he committed suicide in his prison cell. Most had requested death by a firing squad, a military execution, but the motion had been denied. Instead, they were hanged. Their crimes were not military but crimes against humanity itself. Hangings took from fourteen minutes to twenty-eight minutes before death finally came—something that only reiterated her belief in God. She called both Agent Dunn and Agent Clarkson to the point of annoyance. She asked if there was anything either of them could do to track down Wilhelm. When both said it was beyond what they could do, Hannah let her heart win and, on 23 November 1947, boarded a plane to fly back across the Atlantic to Germany.
As the plane descended, the ruined heap Berlin had become took shape. Though the city had been under the rule of monsters and demons, it was her home. There were so many places she had gone and seen that were now heaps of rubble. Her first stop was the apartment she and Wilhelm had shared. But the building had been destroyed. She had a small hope that she would walk up the steps, knock on the door, and be greeted by Wilhelm. But if he was not going to be there, she would prefer the apartment to be rubble than walk into an empty apartment or an apartment occupied by someone else. It would either be an eerie graveyard covered in a foggy mist or it would have felt like their apartment was cheating on her by allowing new people to live in it and Hannah walking in during the act.
The next place she would go to would cause absolute devastation. She remembered the way perfectly. No amount of time could take that away from her. She came to her parents’ shop and her home above. The windows had been boarded up. The walk to it had been like the receding waters before a tsunami. Instead of turning away and heading for safety, Hannah followed the receding water and, now, the tsunami of emotion and pain washed over her. She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it and, like a conductor, it sent an electrical shock of memories through her.
The door swung open, and Hannah was met with the stench of mildew. Cobwebs covered every corner, and the floor was covered in dust and debris. The once vibrant gold paint had now lost its luster. The shop was nothing like she had remembered or wanted to remember. Every tux her father had sold, every coat her mother had sewn had been in that room. The black dividing curtain still hung, and Hannah pushed it aside and ascended the steps. Each step she took caused her heart to beat faster. It knew the pain it would be forced to feel and did everything it could to stop her. As she reached the top, every last thing her family had owned was gone—the couches and beds, the nightstands and kitchen table, the photographs on the wall, and the dishes in the cupboards—all of it was gone. All the zest and love the home once had was gone too. Even the smell of her home was gone. But she could feel her parents there more than she had over the last few years. Even still, she wished she had never come. Visual memories were the most dominant memories a person had and, in some way, she had destroyed them. If her home had been a person, she would now see flashes of their corpse and not their life.
“I miss you. I love you more than I can put into words. I think of you all the time.” Her voice choked with emotion.
Somehow, saying it aloud helped, yet made it so much more poignant. Her vision blurred from the thick, salty tears, and her chest heaved. She had to hold onto the banister to stop herself from falling down the steps. She wanted to sprint but, instead, could only lumber through the deep snow and blowing winds. But, with each step, her heart steadied its beating.
The Americans had set up a center to help German families discover what had happened to their beloved sons, brothers, and husbands. Though it was seldom they were able to help and, most times, they could only offer encouragement, Hannah persevered and stood in line for over an hour.
“Name you’re looking for?” the American soldier asked in German.
“I am looking for Schreiber, Wilhelm, please,” Hannah said in English.
She hoped English would give her words more meaning and make the American soldier understand Wilhelm was not just a name but so much more.
“One second, please,” the soldier said, disappearing into a group of a dozen other soldiers looking through names in the files.
The place was set up under a large, army green canopy, and most of the files had been taken off German dog tags from soldiers killed during battles with America. They had taken the dog tag information and created an alphabetical list of names.
The soldier returned less than three minutes later and shook his head. “I am sorry, Ma’am. We have nothing on him. Do you know where he was fighting?”
Hannah could only shake her head. She knew nothing he had been through or had done since he left that fateful Christmas day eight years earlier.
“Could you look up two other names for me, please?” Hannah asked.
The soldier looked at the long line but nodded.
“Heinrich Hess and Erich Brinkerhoff,” Hannah said.
The soldier went back and looked through the massive stacks of paper. Each name on that list would cause heartbreak for whoever asked for it. The soldier returned with a clipboard in his hand.
“Heinrich Hess was taken as a prisoner in 1944 in Normandy, France. He was sent to the States and held there,” the soldier said.
Heinrich had been on the same beaches hours before Hannah had been. He had seen the horrors of the beachheads. But her good friend was alive.
“And Erich Brinkerhoff?” she asked.
“Unteroffizier Brinkerhoff was killed during the Battle of the Bulge. Sometime late 1944 or early 1945,” the soldier informed.
From the way the soldier had said it, it was clear he did not care. Erich was a member of the SS, and they were unanimously hated by the Allies. But Erich had sought the position as a way to gain favor with Lena’s father. He was a good man with a kind heart and an intoxicating laugh—intoxicating. That’s exactly what had happened to him. He had been poisoned with ideals.
Hannah thanked the soldier and stepped aside to allow the next person in line to step forward.
Hannah had not spoken to Lena since she had saved her life, but the friendship the two had shared was something Hannah wanted to revive. Perhaps, Lena now saw the error in her opinions. But more importantly, Lena had lost the love of her life, and Hannah wanted to be there for her. So, she hailed a cab and spent the entire car ride to the Hauser residence wondering how Lena would react to seeing her. But as they drew closer, a question came to her that caused her stomach to flip. What if Jakob Hauser was alive? No sooner had the worry set in, the guilt for hoping Lena’s father had died in the war had taken over. But she certainly did not want to walk inside and be the last Jew to die by Nazi hands.
The taxi pulled alongside the house. It was barely recognizable. The Nazi flag that had once waved proudly in front of it was gone, as was the flagpole itself. The house was unkempt, and the large lawn that once was covered in thick, luscious green grass was now dirt with craters from small explosions. Ida Hauser would never have allowed the house, or the landscape, to fall from such grace. She suspected that if Jakob Hauser had survived the war, he would have been imprisoned for his crimes, but the fear was still there. Hannah knocked three times and waited. When the door opened, Hannah was brought back to all the times Ida Hauser, wearing a white apron, had greeted her and Wilhelm. But it was not Ida Hauser, nor was it Lena, who greete
d her.
“Can I help you?” a man asked.
“I am looking for the Hausers. Do they not live here anymore?” Hannah asked.
“Who are you?” the man asked, only opening the door wide enough for his head to poke through.
He looked to be in his fifties—unshaven, hair disheveled, and without a shower for days. Hannah was uncertain if she had ever seen him before. So much time had passed and the man was so unkempt that it was hard to tell what he would have looked like with a shower, clean shave, and a fresh haircut.
“My name is Hannah. I am a friend of Lena. I was hoping to see her.”
“Come inside,” the man said, opening the door wider.
But the man was a stranger in a house she once knew and, in some ways, he was even more of a threat to Hannah than if Jakob Hauser had answered the door. The devil you knew was better than the devil you did not.
“Who are you?” Hannah asked.
“I am Herman Janke. Ida’s brother,” the man said.
The man could have been lying, but Hannah stepped in and stayed close to the door. She was able to see into the living room where she, Wilhelm, Erich, Lena, Heinrich, and one of his many dates had sat in front of roaring fires during the cold winter months. It was hard to believe it had been almost a decade since she had stepped foot inside. Herman Janke had kept up the interior of the house as well as he had himself. Ida had always worked tirelessly to make sure the house was the cause of envy for all of Jakob’s friends and those who were simply invited to exploit a potential gain. But the wooden floor that had always looked polished and mirror-like in its reflectiveness was now covered in a layer of dust, and the chimney would have embarrassed Ida. The inside was nothing but black soot, some of which had blown onto the floor when Herman had left the front door open too long on gusty days.
The Hauser house had always smelt like a pie was in the oven because, often, there was. The living room had smelt like smoke from the fireplace, not subtle but not overwhelming either. Some of the rooms smelt of lemon and citrus and the card room, like cigarettes. But now, the house had lost its smell. No pies had been baked, and the chimney smoke was overpowering. But she did not have to go into the card room to know the thick fog of smoke was still there.
Forever Fleeting Page 49