by Yehuda Avner
Dan filled himself with the single-mindedness he had so often observed in Ben-Gurion in the two years since he had completed his studies at Harvard and returned to Palestine to work with the Old Man. The longer he held on to this hand, the less likely it would be to strike out his people. He folded his fingers around Brückner’s tentative grip. His ears filled with noise, the hammering of his heart. He pressed the handshake. Was that the man’s erratic pulse under his fingers? So Nazis were afraid of him. Perhaps I am the Devil, after all.
The doors opened and the SS guards stamped their jackboots.
Hauptmann Brückner let go of Dan’s hand. “It’s time for the official photo.”
They made the long walk to the steps of the Chancellery accompanied by the ominous drum-roll of the SS honor guard. “I’ll hand you over here,” Brückner said.
Three burly men in long leather coats stepped forward. Their leader looked out from under the brim of his fedora with piercing, insolent eyes. Dan recognized the former intelligence advisor to the British police, the man who had kept watch over the Germans of Jerusalem for its colonial rulers.
“Draxler?” Dan said.
“This is your protection detail,” Brückner said. “From the Gestapo. Apparently Kriminalinspektor Draxler speaks Hebrew.”
“Move it.” Draxler spat at Dan’s feet. “Herr Ambassador.”
Chapter 10
Berlin, November 1938
The lines for visas at the Israeli Embassy on Monbijoustrasse were, as Brückner had predicted, overwhelming. The skeleton staff Ben-Gurion allowed Dan to bring with him barely coped, particularly as most of the supposed diplomats weren’t there to be diplomats at all. They worked in the basement, under the authority of Shmulik, who headed operations for the Mossad, Israel’s new intelligence service. Shmulik’s wife, Devorah, passed her days down there poring over code books. Yossi Richter, nominally a consul in the visa department, was Shmulik’s right-hand man. And Aryeh Yardeni, Dan’s driver, was usually out on some errand for the Mossad station chief. The only diplomat fully available to Dan was Wili Gottfried, who had agreed to serve as first secretary.
It was the communications network in the basement that brought news of an assassination attempt. A Jewish teenager, a refugee who had fled Germany, appeared at the German mission in Paris. Demanding to see a consul, he was shown into the office of a young Nazi diplomat, whom he proceeded to shoot.
“Dead?” Dan asked, when Shmulik entered his office.
“He’s been arrested.”
“Not the Jew. I mean the German who was shot, Shmulik. I’m worried about the repercussions.”
Shmulik grinned darkly. “He’ll be dead soon enough. Even if this Grynzspan fellow’s shot only grazed him, the German diplomat will die. Goebbels will see to it. It’s too good an opportunity for the Nazis to miss.”
Two days later, at eight in the evening, the mortally wounded German died. By midnight, the Israeli Embassy in Berlin was crowded with fearful Jews. The Brownshirts were out on the streets with sledgehammers and axes, smashing Jewish stores, ransacking homes and burning synagogues. Dan took call after call from Jewish communities around Germany, reporting terrifying stories of beatings and murders.
Torches held by a crowd of Brownshirts on the sidewalk lit the windows of the embassy. Dan watched them, waiting for them to enter. How much respect would the Nazi regime show for diplomatic protocol when the streets were noisy with lynch mobs and the night sky was bright with the fire of burning synagogues?
Shmulik came to his side.
“Will they come in?” Dan asked.
The Mossad man didn’t answer. He pressed a pistol into Dan’s fist and closed his hand around it. “How many dead?”
“Ninety-one. At least. And that’s only the official reports so far.”
“Devorah is coming up with a more accurate figure by going through the calls we’ve made all around Germany.”
Dan shook his head. “Ninety-one Jews.”
“Ninety-one future Israelis. And thousands more are being rounded up. They’re taking them to the concentration camps.” Shmulik stared out the window at the mob of Brownshirts. “I’m not burning the code books yet. But be ready.”
Across the street, the rococo pediments of the Monbijou Palace flickered in the glow cast by flames from Oranienburger Strasse. The Jewish center of Berlin was burning. A Mercedes pulled up outside the palace railings and a man in a fedora stepped out. It was Draxler.
The Gestapo agent hustled across the street, shoving through the crowd of Brownshirts. Something in his movements suggested extreme agitation. Dan knew he wouldn’t be opposed to the night’s anti-Semitic depredations. So what was it that disturbed him? He went to the door of the embassy as Draxler hammered on it. The refugees in the hallway whimpered. Dan held the pistol behind his back and nodded for Richter to draw back the bolt.
“Where is your wife?” Draxler demanded.
The hidden pistol trembled in Dan’s grip. “What do you want with her?”
Draxler frowned at the quivering wretches around the staircase as though it had barely occurred to him that a massive pogrom was underway. He drew closer to Dan, but didn’t cross the threshold of the embassy. “My daughter is sick. She can’t breathe. Fever very high.”
“So you came to us?”
“Our usual doctor can’t come.”
“Why not?”
“He’s a Jew. By the time I got to his house it was burning. I don’t know where he is. I remembered your wife had a reputation as a very good pediatrician back in Jerusalem.”
“You perpetrate this evil, but you won’t live with the consequences? Your Jewish doctor is, perhaps, dead. So your daughter suffers. Draw your own conclusions, Kriminalinspektor.”
Draxler wasn’t accustomed to asking twice. For a moment, the struggle against the urge to beg wrote itself across his face. Then he made himself calculating. “Let’s talk about consequences, shall we? Those boys in the brown shirts outside—they’re my boys, and they’re eager to have their fun. Your embassy is filled with Yids. I’m in charge of protecting you, but I only have a small Gestapo detail. I don’t know that they could hold back a determined gang.” He leered. “On the other hand, if you do as I ask, I’m sure I can get the Brownshirts to protect you from the things that are going on everywhere else in Berlin tonight.”
Dan could still hear the frantic voices of the Jewish leaders who had phoned him from around Germany to catalog the depredations being carried out against their people that night, and his disgust burst out of him with a shout. “Get out of here. Do you hear me? This instant.”
Draxler squared his shoulders and opened his mouth to respond. Anna pushed through the refugees to him.
“Stop this argument.” She wore her coat and carried her medical bag.
Dan stepped toward her.
She saw the gun behind his back and gave him a harsh look. “Dan, don’t say anything,” she said. “I have a duty to any sick person.”
“But Anna—”
“Let’s go, Herr Draxler.”
“At least let me go with you, Anna.”
His wife put her hand on his neck and spoke softly. “You have work to do here, darling. These people need your help. Get them out of this country. That’s your job. Now, let me do mine.”
The Gestapo man glared at Dan, then turned and led Anna through the crowd of Brownshirts to his car.
As the Mercedes pulled away, Dan shivered. His wife was riding in a car that so often took people where they didn’t want to go.
Chapter 11
The days after the pogrom that became known as Kristallnacht were chaotic for the embassy staff. The Gestapo had picked up more than thirty thousand Jews and sent them to concentration camps. It seemed as though the rest of the country’s half a million Jews were at the consular entrance on the side of the Israeli Embassy, clamoring for help in emigrating.
After a long day processing visa applications, Dan slouched over his desk i
n the dim light of evening and read the reports from Jerusalem. The War of Independence had been won and, as Ben-Gurion had predicted, the new state’s borders extended beyond the boundaries the Peel Commission had recommended. By pushing back the invading Egyptian army, Israeli troops had added the Negev Desert to the plains around Tel Aviv and the hills near Haifa. In the north, where it sent the Syrians and the Iraqis running, the entire Galilee was under Israel’s control. Most astonishing of all was the victory against the Transjordanian Arab Legion. Israeli troops beat them back enough to secure a corridor of land to Jerusalem and to retain about half of the holy city, although the ancient quarters were lost. But war had a price, and not only in lives. Ben-Gurion struggled to control food and resources. There were bread riots spreading across the new country, and the prime minister’s opponents, who had pulled behind him through the exigencies of war, now sniped about rising prices, unemployment, and the lack of housing for new immigrants. For his dealings with Nazi Germany, they gave him hell.
Dan would’ve liked to send back good news to lighten his boss’s load, but the report he was preparing as the embassy shut its doors for the day was far from pleasant reading. Kristallnacht, the “night of shattered glass,” had witnessed the complete demolition of one hundred synagogues, while several hundred others were burned out. Eight thousand Jewish businesses had been destroyed. According to Shmulik’s informants, the thirty thousand Jews who had been taken to concentration camps were being tortured and starved. Now Göring, Hitler’s economic chief, had ordered the Jews to pay for the damage perpetrated against them. The Nazis fined the Jewish community one billion reichsmarks.
Dan wrote up the last details and slumped back. He was about to take his report down to Devorah in the coding room, for transmission, when Anna entered the room.
“You look like you could do with some cheering up.” She smiled and came around the desk.
His kiss was lackluster and distracted. He lifted the report. “I’m sorry. It’s just such awful news. Everywhere. Everything.”
“Things can only get better, then.”
“You’re so optimistic about the world. It’s hard to believe you’re Jewish.”
“It’s the part of me that’s American. Come on, let’s go.” She stood up.
He realized she had her coat folded across her arm. “Go? Where?”
“You forgot our neighbor’s soiree?”
Dan rubbed his face. “I can’t. Not tonight, so soon after such awful things have happened.”
“Ambassador Lavi, there are few enough Germans prepared to even acknowledge your existence. The least you can do is to be gracious to the one gentile Berliner who appears to be thrilled at your presence.” Anna spun Dan’s chair and lifted him up by the lapel of his jacket. “Besides, Wili is going to play.”
“Of course. Now I remember.” She was right that he ought to go. A major factor in the choice of Gottfried as first secretary at the new embassy had been his connections in Berlin society from the days before the Nazis, when he had been a popular guest in the salons of nobles, diplomats, and industrialists. “Well, I suppose we must make an appearance. Let me take this report downstairs first.” He hauled himself out of his chair and went to the steps.
Shmulik’s domain in the embassy basement was dark and shadowy and full of complicated machinery. His wife Devorah hunched over a set of code books by the embassy’s transmitter. Richter and Yardeni worked the phones, calling their contacts across Germany to arrange for transports out of the country. Dan ran his hand along the bare brick. On the other side of the wall was the Countess’s basement, a proximity that annoyed Shmulik, who considered it a security risk. Somehow, Dan found it comforting. He laid his report in front of Devorah.
“Sorry it’s so long. I’m afraid you’ll be working late to send that,” he said. “It really should go out tonight.”
“Never mind. It’s not like I have the prospect of a quiet night with my husband to look forward to.” She glanced at Dan’s careful script.
“Where is Shmulik?”
“Out.”
Dan gave her an amused, questioning look. “Out where?”
“Looking for communists and liberals who aren’t yet dead. He figures they might be able to help him.”
“Help him do what?”
She opened a new code book. “Do I look like the Mossad station chief to you? Ask him yourself.”
Dan went back upstairs. Anna waited in the hall. Wili Gottfried was beside her, wearing a tuxedo. He held his violin case across his chest protectively, just as he had done at the Mount Scopus concert for the British High Commissioner. His face was as white as his tie. Anna stroked his arm.
“Is my cultural attaché ready to bring some civilization to these Aryan heathens?” Dan slapped his hand down on Gottfried’s shoulder.
Gottfried opened his mouth to speak, but he only nodded and turned to the door.
Chapter 12
Wearing a simple black dress, Countess von Bredow spun through her salon from one friend to another. Excitement radiated from her sapphire blue eyes. She took the elbow of a straight-laced general whose pants bore the red side-stripe of the Wehrmacht High Command, and her touch seemed to shoot energy into him. He started to talk expansively of the weekend he had recently spent at the Führer’s Bavarian retreat near Berchtesgaden. “Everyone jockeys for the chance to be at Hitler’s side when he takes his walk,” he said, “and the rest stump along behind, feeling miserable and outmaneuvered.”
Dan Lavi watched his hostess from the doorway. The sixty-year-old Countess seemed to have forsaken fashion entirely. She wore no jewelry, and her hair was cropped short and untended. She paid no attention to her posture, which was unstudied and loose, and she was so thin that her collar bone stood out like a coat hanger through a laundered shirt. When she had first stopped in at the embassy next door, Dan had thought she was another of the refugees recently discharged from the concentration camps seeking transport to Israel. The comparison no longer seemed apt. The desperation of the Jews who came to his embassy pushed them almost to madness. The people here were perhaps the only Germans left with a commitment to sanity.
A Luftwaffe officer broke into the Wehrmacht man’s reminiscences of Berchtesgaden. “You should visit Göring’s castle some time,” he said. “It’s even worse there. The fat oaf dresses like a medieval knight, in a leather doublet and leather boots halfway up his thighs. Then he roasts a pig on a spit right in front of you.”
“He eats the entire pig himself, I assume?” The Countess slapped her spare stomach.
The group laughed at her reference to Göring’s girth.
“Hitler’s oafish deputy pays for all his extravagances through theft. No doubt he’ll pocket the money he and his kind are forcing the Jews to pay after Kristallnacht.” The Luftwaffe officer was somber, staring into his champagne flute. The group grew silent. It appeared that the horrors of the previous days weighed on them.
“How much longer must we suffer these bastards?” the Wehrmacht general said. “After all, fifty-percent percent of Germans didn’t vote for them.”
The Luftwaffe man gave a harsh, cynical laugh. “How long? Until the next election, of course. About the time pigs learn to whistle.”
The Countess grabbed for the hand of a morose man with a high forehead and a spray of curly hair above each ear. “Maestro Furtwängler, you are a musical genius. Please teach the pigs how to whistle, so that we may be rid of the Nazis.”
Amid the laughter that brought relief to the others in the room, the famous conductor sneered. “The pigs are already singing the ‘Horst Wessel Song.’”
The General and the Luftwaffe officer sang the opening lines of the Nazi march, grunting like swine. “Hitler’s banners fly above the streets, the time of bondage will last but a little while now.”
“Amen to that.” Gottfried stepped forward and held out his arms.
The Countess noticed the Israelis in the doorway. She rushed over and embraced
Gottfried, then turned to Dan. He took her hand and kissed it. She laughed at his formality and turned her face up for a kiss. She hugged Anna, and then returned to Gottfried, bubbling with enthusiastic comments on their clothing and their looks and her happiness that they had come.
Anna nudged Dan, and whispered, “I think it was more than just Zionism that made our friend Gottfried so eager to secure a place on your staff.”
Dan watched the smile on Gottfried’s face as the Countess whispered to him. It showed the unfeigned joy of a deep emotional connection. He realized that he himself had felt very little happiness thus far in Berlin. He faced weighty responsibilities, but life should not be totally reduced to that. He reached out to smooth his wife’s hair, pulling her close and kissing the crown of her head.
Furtwängler walked over and reached out his hand to Gottfried. Dan noticed that it quivered. Gottfried gripped it immediately.
“It’s good to have you back.” Furtwängler spoke nervously. It was four years since he had allowed the Nazis to prevent Gottfried’s performance under his baton at the Berlin Philharmonic. No doubt he was unsure that all was forgiven.
Gottfried kept hold of the maestro’s hand, triumph glowed on his face. “It was you who asked me to return. Don’t you remember? The night before I left Germany. Now I represent a new country, but an old people. With every performance I give, I will remind the Germans that their prized culture is at its best when mixed with the genius of other races.”
He touched the conductor’s shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t be embarrassed, Maestro. If my own country were in the role of oppressor, I might also be tempted to make excuses for it.”
“Excuses?” The conductor bridled. “Do you know the sacrifices I have made—”
The Countess laid her hand on Furtwängler’s chest. “We are all friends here, with a common love for music, Maestro. Let’s not march to the same tune of hate as the whistling pigs.”
