by Yehuda Avner
The Ambassador
A novel
A captivating piece of historical fiction, a story of leadership in times of crisis, and a painful remainder of the need for Jews to take their fate into their own hands.
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman
No one knew the worlds of ambassadors and the Jewish people better than Yehuda Aver. In The Ambassador, Avner and Matt Rees imagine a world in which history had played out very differently, providing us with not only a great and evocative story, but also an urgent reminder that decisive actions by courageous people can, in fact, make a profound difference in our world.
Rabbi Dr. Daniel Gordis
A thrilling tour of what might have been.
Rabbi David Wolpe
If ever one wanted an alternative history it is for the years that consumed European Jewry! More than a novel, The Ambassador invites us to consider how the presence of Israel even a decade earlier might have mitigated the outcome of events it could not prevent. I found this valuable to read and important to contemplate.
Professor Ruth Wisse
An informed, intelligent look at a world that never was but might easily have been.
Harry Turtledove
THE
AMBASSADOR
YEHUDA AVNER
AND MATT REES
The Toby Press
The Ambassador
The Toby Press LLC
POB 8531, New Milford, CT 06776–8531, USA
& POB 2455, London W1A 5WY, England
www.tobypress.com
© Yehuda Avner 2015
Cover image credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 137-005514/CC-BY-SA
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
ISBN 978-1-59264-388-2
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Printed and bound in the United States
“Where the slain are, there he is.”
(Job 39:30)*
* Quoted by Israeli Attorney-General Gideon Hausner in his opening statement at the trial of SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, Jerusalem, 1961
Author’s Note I
“Had partition [under the Peel Commission plan of 1937] been carried out, the history of our people would have been different and six million Jews in Europe would not have been killed—most of them would be in Israel.”
David Ben-Gurion, in a letter to Ben-Zion Katz,
September 1957
I fought in the war that established Israel. I worked for decades in the highest circles of the Israeli government, with every prime minister up to Rabin’s second term, and as Israel’s ambassador to Britain and then to Australia. I was proud of my achievements on behalf of Israel, proud to have played my part in ensuring that never again would Jews be victims without a refuge. But one day, in the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem, it came to me that there was something more I could do.
I sat among the crowd, there to observe Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, as then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres addressed us. More precisely, he addressed them. The ones taken by Hitler. Apologizing. “We were ten years too late,” he said.
And I thought, “What if we hadn’t been…?”
This novel is based on the premise that the 1937 British Royal Commission plan to partition Palestine had been put into practice—as it so nearly was. Israel would have come into existence before the Holocaust.
Apart from that one change, this novel hews as closely to historical fact as possible. It is a fictional reminder of how the world failed back then. A reminder of what Israel changes for Jews around the world. And a reminder of something that simply must never be forgotten.
I dedicate this book to my Mimi, forever and always.
Yehuda Avner
Jerusalem, February 12, 2015
Author’s Note II
On the morning Yehuda and I decided to write The Ambassador, he received the news that he didn’t have long to live. I wondered how it would work out. How might the advance of the cancer affect his concentration and his ability to think? I asked him. With the slight Manchester accent that, to any Briton, signifies a person not to be trifled with, he said: “I tell you, Matt, this book is my legacy.” He hammered his fist softly on the desk and his features quivered with determination. No, I didn’t have to worry about Yehuda’s state of mind.
Yehuda Avner’s legacy is, of course, so much more than this one book. But I know what he meant. As we plotted and discussed and argued (very gently) and wrote and sang (mostly him) and edited, we found something perhaps unexpected behind our narrative of Nazism, of deportation and death camps, of terror and murder. We found we had constructed a novel filled with life.
After Yehuda was laid to rest yesterday, I stood at his graveside and watched the sun set. Under that sun, men sometimes do terrible things, and that mustn’t be forgotten. But they also love. A man may elect which memories and experiences dominate his being—the horrors or the loves. When mortal illness compelled my friend Yehuda to confront this choice, he wrote this book. I think you’ll find it clear that he took the path of love to the very end.
Matt Rees
Jerusalem, March 25, 2015
Characters
Dan Lavi, Israeli ambassador to Berlin
Anna Lavi, Dan’s wife, a pediatrician
David Ben-Gurion, pre-state Zionist leader, Israeli prime minister
Peter Boustead, British intelligence officer in Palestine and Berlin
Countess Hannah von Bredow, granddaughter of Chancellor Bismarck
Hauptmann Hasso Brückner, von Bredow’s nephew, Hitler’s Wehrmacht adjutant
Sepp Draxler, Gestapo officer, raised in Jerusalem’s German community
Adolf Eichmann, head of SS Central Office for Jewish Emigration
Wilhelm Gottfried, Israeli embassy official, noted violinist
Reinhard Heydrich, SS head of Nazi security services
Rudolf Höss, SS commandant of Auschwitz
Friedrich Kritzinger, deputy chief of Reich’s Chancellery
Arvid Polkes, Berlin Jew, former stage manager of city orchestra
Bertha Polkes, Arvid’s wife
Yoni Richter, Mossad agent
Oberleutnant Ansgar Schulze, anti-Nazi Luftwaffe officer
Shmulik Shoham, Mossad station chief in Berlin
Devorah Shoham, Shmulik’s wife, Mossad code and signals operator
Aryeh Yardeni, Ambassador Dan Lavi’s driver, also a Mossad agent
Prologue
Berlin, 1934
One last concert, then he would leave for Palestine. He passed the main facade of the hall on Bernburger Strasse and entered the Philharmonie by the stage door. “Herr Gottfried,” the commissionaire said. It was all he ever said. Not “Guten Abend” or “Heil Hitler.” But perhaps this time he spoke with a questioning tone.
Wili Gottfried raised his violin case in salute. The instrument was a gift from the Countess, in her family almost since Stradivari constructed it in Cremona in 1719, during his golden period. In Gottfried’s hands it was played as never before. He was the golden period of this violin’s long life. So far.
He found Furtwängler in his dressing room, sitting on a turquoise satin couch in the soft glow of a chandelier. Gottfried set down the violin case. “Guten Abend, Maestro.”
The great conductor’s high, receding forehead gleamed with sweat. The face he showed to Gottfried contorted with mortification. He lifted a sheet of paper and handed it over.
The Reic
h Music Chamber, a section of the Propaganda Ministry under which the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra operated, informed him that he was barred from further performances in Germany as violin soloist, a role he had filled many times over the previous decade. The order was signed by Minister Joseph Goebbels.
Gottfried’s scalp prickled under his pomaded hair. His deep eyes of coppery brown teared up. He was about to leave Germany anyway. But he didn’t want it to be this way.
“Pull yourself together, Gottfried,” the conductor barked. Furtwängler was narrow-shouldered and his chin was weak, but his resolve was superhuman. He lowered his voice to a whisper, as if exchanging confidences. “We live in astonishing times, do we not? I tried to save you. I said to Goebbels you are the best there is. There is a hemorrhage of Jewish musicians from Germany. I told him it has to stop.”
“He likes to see the blood flowing.”
The Maestro leaned his head against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. “He said a Jew is a Jew.”
Rage rumbled through Gottfried’s soul. “You are the world-acclaimed master of the German orchestral art, the greatest conductor of our age. You have but one choice. You must resign.”
“Are you mad?” Furtwängler’s face flushed with anger. “Do you forget who you are talking to?
“I am talking to the one conductor in Germany that Hitler himself would never dare cross. Or are you merely an entertainer hired by the Führer for his amusement?”
“No man talks to me like this.”
“It would appear that the Nazi superman does.”
“I tried to save you, Gottfried. I was sick to the stomach after my meeting with Goebbels. But my responsibilities are different than yours.”
“It’s the difference in our religions, not our responsibilities, that’s at issue here.”
“Gottfried, you can take your violin and a suitcase and play as soloist with the orchestras of London, of Paris, of Vienna. You could make your own orchestra in Palestine, for God’s sake. I must remain here in Berlin, to protect German music and musicians as best I can. You were simply too prominent to be passed over. I may be able to retain some of my other Jewish musicians, because they’re less well-known.”
“So the obscure Jews are safe in the second violin section? For how long?”
“You were going to Palestine after this evening anyway.”
“I will show those bastards,” Gottfried muttered, almost to himself. “Tonight I’ll give them a performance they’ll never forget.”
Furtwängler shook his head. “You still don’t understand, Gottfried. It’s over. This order applies immediately. Weber will stand in as soloist for tonight’s performance.”
“Weber? So much for protecting German music. That ham-fisted—” Gottfried halted. “Oh, I get it. He’s a Nazi. That’s why he’s taking over. Damn you, Furtwängler.”
He went to the door. In a funereal whisper, he spoke to the conductor, though he didn’t turn to face him. “You tried to save me, but you couldn’t, because Wilhelm Furtwängler is no longer a free man. He is in the power of Hitler’s goons. They can do whatever they like to you.”
Furtwängler caught him by the sleeve. “Promise me you will play here in Berlin again. One day. I need to know that you will come back. So that I can go on. In spite of all this—this horror.”
The conductor’s sudden desperation made Gottfried pause. Furtwängler was a good man, committed to art and the joy it carries. Once he was forced to bend his art to the demands of bad men, evil truly had taken over. “The horror is barely begun, Maestro.”
“Then it’s still more important for me to hear it from you. Say you will come back.”
Gottfried felt a power in himself that usually came only when he held his bow against the strings of his violin.
Furtwängler must have seen it on his face, because he recoiled slightly.
“I will return. I will make them listen to the soul inside me, and it will show them the emptiness of their pitiful, ugly world.”
The conductor released his arm. Gottfried walked slowly down the corridor. When he passed the silent commissionaire and exited onto the bustling street, he was no longer in Berlin. He emerged into the desert glare of midday in Palestine. The sidewalk, slippery with ice, seemed to crunch under his feet like the dry dirt of the Judean hills.
But he was not there yet.
He had paid for a reservation on the train from Berlin to Athens, and for a berth on a passenger-cargo ship to Haifa. His one remaining obstacle: the contents of the crate containing his belongings had to be approved by a dozen government departments, and he still lacked one stamp. The Gestapo’s form warned that “No items of particular value may be taken out of Germany. Failure to comply will be met with the severest penalties.” There followed a long list of the prohibited categories, one of which was “Musical instruments of antique quality, design, and value.”
Gottfried assumed that even the former travelling salesmen and beer-hall waiters who now staffed the state security police would have heard of Stradivarius. He could try to sell it. It was worth millions. But he wouldn’t be allowed to take the money with him even if he found someone who’d give him a good price. And who was he kidding? He’d rather have surrendered one of his kidneys than abandon the instrument.
He had put off a decision about the violin because he had thought there was one last concert to play. He passed the glowering, dark windows of the Gestapo building on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and felt the same energy that had gripped him in the final moments of his encounter with Furtwängler. In an instant he knew what he would do. He hustled home.
Gottfried rushed through his hall and down the kitchen steps into the garden with the Stradivarius in his arms. He hid it in a pile of junk in the shed. Then he climbed up to the attic and took down the violin he had used as a student at the music conservatory years before. He dusted it off, tuned it, and hurried with it to the study, laying it on his desk by the music stand where he always practiced.
The inspector from the Gestapo arrived with the packers the following day at lunchtime. Gottfried’s arm shook as he handed over the detailed list of the possessions he wanted to ship. It included his unexceptional violin.
“Show me the violin,” the Gestapo man demanded.
Gottfried led him to the study. The man took out a flashlight and inspected the violin’s interior. He noted the seal of manufacture on the slip of paper pasted inside the instrument. He wrote down the make and date on the form. “It can go,” he said.
The chief packer tied up the violin case with heavy string and wedged it into a tea chest with towels and linens. He marked the chest with red chalk, “Number 3.” By late afternoon, everything but the books in the study was packed. The Gestapo officer instructed the removers to cease their work. He checked the French windows that led from the study onto a small balcony to make sure they were locked, pocketed the key, and sealed the study door to ensure there would be no tampering with the items already stowed away. The rest could wait until the morning.
As soon as darkness came, Gottfried went to the garden shed and retrieved his Stradivarius. He brought it inside the house, opened the small window in the toilet, and wormed his way through it out onto the terrace. He found himself before the French windows of the study. Gottfried took a spare key from his pocket and entered.
The air was rank with the sweat of the packers and the metallic scent of the Gestapo man’s cigarettes. Gottfried laid the Stradivarius on the floor and took a pair of pliers from his pocket. Carefully he extracted the nails from the lid of tea chest number 3. His hands trembled as though he were an ill-worked puppet. He took out the towels and the linens, and removed the cheap violin, replacing it with the Stradivarius. He set to work trying to duplicate the knots tied around the violin case, cinching them over and cursing as they fell away, loose and clumsy. He worried that he simply wouldn’t get it done. He had to have the Stradivarius. It was all he could take with him of the Countess.
&nb
sp; Gottfried reached for the technique that brought him calm before his concerts. He hummed Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, and it was as though the bright, sweet adagio refrain with which the soloist enters went straight to his furthermost nerve endings. Within a few minutes the Stradivarius was bound just as the other violin had been. Gottfried repacked the remaining contents of the crate and hammered down the nails to the beat of the Mozart concerto.
He left as he had entered. He took his student violin to the basement and watched it burn in the furnace of the central heating system.
Next morning, the movers finished packing swiftly. The Gestapo man sealed the crates, and a horse cart rattled them away to the railway sheds.
That evening, Gottfried arrived at the Anhalter Station, Berlin’s gateway to the south. He stumbled through crowds that headed for trains to Dresden and Munich. He tried to soothe himself with the Mozart concerto again, but found he could no longer summon the tune to his lips. He knew the scores of hundreds of violin pieces— concertos and sonatas, waltzes and minuets—but all fell silent, subdued by the discordant babble of a metropolis that refused to bid him farewell.
At the sixth and final platform, the train for Athens awaited him. From the Greek capital, he would board a ferry to Haifa. To Palestine. He struggled along to his carriage, mouth dry, ticket fluttering in his hand.
He found his seat. It was occupied. He fought for the breath to speak, to correct the error of the man sitting there. Then he saw that it was the Gestapo officer.
“Guten Abend, Herr Gottfried.” The man stood and leered. “Come with me, please.”
They knew. Gottfried was sure of it. They had found the Stradivarius, had seen through his deception. He would never reach Palestine. It was the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse torture chambers for him, then Dachau.
He trailed the Gestapo man across the concourse into the freight annex. Three warehouse hands waited impatiently by Gottfried’s crates.
