by Jana Petken
Laura, regretting her earlier outburst, said, “I just don’t understand why you try to ingratiate yourself with his ministers and officers in your own home. We English say our home is our castle and our sanctuary? Why can’t we keep ours private, instead of opening it up to Party members? And why do you insist on accepting paintings from SS officers when you know full well they’ve been stolen from Jewish homes? For once, Dieter, can’t you keep out if it like everyone else is trying to do?”
“I am not everyone else!”
“Dieter, please don’t...”
“Sorry. Forgive me. You’re the last person I want to fight with, but I could scream at you sometimes. You don’t seem to understand that I deal with the Ministry of the Interior every day, and believe this, were I not a member of the Nazi Party and fawning over its doctors and ministers, I wouldn’t get any new contracts. Laura, dear, we must play the game and be clever and conniving. I have my part to play and you have yours. That’s just the way things are, and we’re both going to have to make the best of it.”
At last, Laura half-heartedly agreed. “We’ve been through worse, I suppose ...”
“Yes, we have. Those four years we spent apart during the Great War were the longest and darkest of my life, but we survived them. This time, we’re living in the same country, and together we can face whatever is to come.”
“All right. I’ll stop nagging if you promise not to lie or keep secrets from me. There’s enough of those in Nazi speeches.”
Dieter glanced at the grandfather clock on the wall beside the door. Then he leant in, kissed his wife and stood up. “Smile darling. Our guests will be arriving any minute.”
Chapter Two
Paul Vogel
Paul Vogel cursed his clumsy fingers but refused to be beaten by his lopsided bow-tie. Why he had to wear evening dress to a house party with family was beyond him. He took a deep breath allowing it to linger inside him for a few seconds before slowly exhaling. Then he tried again to make a perfectly aligned bow, failed and ripped the silk tie from his collar.
He stepped closer to the full-length, gold-framed bedroom mirror, standing straight on at first and then turning sideways to examine the way his jacket lay over his stomach. He wondered if his appearance had changed as much as everyone said it had. He looked older.
He supposed that five years of studying had aged him, both in body and mind. He flicked his hair back from his forehead. It was fair, like his father’s, but darker than it had been before his university years. He kept it short at the back and sides but left it longer on the top and front. “My Paul’s hair is like a wiry mop and grows as thick and fast as the weeds at the bottom of my garden,” his mother used to tell her friends whenever they ruffled said mop.
He looked in the mirror, concentrating not on his bowtie, but on his turquoise eyes. A man, disenchanted with the world stared back at him. His pupils, which had once gazed with curiosity, had been drained of innocence and refilled with disillusion and the awareness of bigotry and hatred. His brief and somewhat gullible belief in Hitler’s Nazi Party had ended years earlier, and since secretly rebelling against the Regime, he’d had to censor every political word that left his mouth. His appearance had changed, but so had his personality and principles.
He left his bowtie undone to draw his fingers down each side of his face. He looked callous, like a hardened criminal, with prominent cheekbones and an angular jawline that had once been concealed by boyish fat. He rubbed his fingers over his stubble, a permanent fixture nowadays. It would always be an inadequate beard, but he liked the look and refused to give up on it, much to his father’s disapproval.
“You’ve beaten me, damn you,” he said, meaning his bowtie. “I’ll be late to my own celebration.”
He knocked on his sister’s bedroom door, the tie now draped over his hand. When there was no answer, he peered over the upstairs balustrade to see if he could spot her downstairs in the hall. It was not difficult to pick Hannah out in a crowd. She was like a stick insect endowed with just a hint of feminine curves in the right places, taller than the average woman and crowned with thick, corn-coloured hair curling naturally to the centre of her back. She was usually surrounded by male admirers, much to the annoyance of her English fiancé, Frank, who was spending a week in Dresden with them.
His eyes went to the front door where his father and brother, Wilmot, were welcoming guests. Paul had a bird’s eye view, and from his perch saw men in uniform standing outside on the porch smoking. His father, choosing business and profits over the family as usual, had deliberately brought the Nazi Party into their home despite promising his wife that he wouldn’t. Mother would be furious.
A waiter standing close to the centre staircase held a tray of champagne-filled crystal flutes. He offered the beverage to an arriving Gestapo Sturmbannführer and the bright-eyed young woman clinging onto his arm as if she were afraid he’d leave her for someone else. The officer then loitered in the spacious square entrance hall gazing up at the magnificent Goya on the wall.
Two more guests arrived, both Leibstandarte SS officers. They looked awkward in the setting, their rigid bodies moving with measured steps towards the reception room after accepting a glass of champagne.
Wilmot, Paul’s nineteen-year-old brother, joined the officers. Paul sneered. Wilmot was wearing his Waffen-SS-Schütze uniform as though it were a comfortable old dressing gown he’d lived and breathed in for years instead of only three weeks. He was a rifleman, the lowest of the low in the SS ranks, but he smiled, tilted his head back and laughed, oozing confidence and clearly at ease in the company of officers who fomented fear with a look, a word, and with their very presence in the room. Had Wilmot not been the son of Dieter Vogel, the two men would have kicked him to the kerb.
As he watched Wilmot and the two SS officers disappear into the formal reception room, Paul recalled the tumultuous period in his life that had shaped his political views into what they were today. It was hard to reconcile his present feelings of disgust with those he’d harboured years earlier, but in his defence, in 1933 he’d been like many others grappling with the confusing and fast-moving political turmoil.
He’d been naïve, impressionable and desperate to fit into any group that would welcome him, having just left home for the first time. When he looked back on those days, he recognised a young man swept along by the fervour and camaraderie of Germany’s new idealism. He supposed he’d been just as excited as everyone else to be there at the birth of Hitler’s vision.
If he closed his eyes right now, he could relive the night he’d unequivocally rejected his father’s and Wilmot’s ideology. It had taken only a single day and one event to make him turn his back on his future, one that had been mapped out for years.
In the spring of 1933, he’d visited Berlin’s University with his father. Paul had already been accepted into the business school with the view of one day taking over the family’s medical equipment manufacturing company. Unbeknown to his parents, however, he’d also applied to Munich’s renowned Faculty of Medicine at the University Hospital; its board of professors had approved his application.
After a long day half-heartedly touring Berlin’s Faculties, Paul and his father had followed a massive crowd to Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Platz. All day, people had been talking about a political rally scheduled to take place that evening with the Students Association’s guest speaker being the Nazis’ Head of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Even now, Paul could hear the noise of the crowds, see the engrossed faces of the young and the old, the terrified expressions of the disenfranchised, and the elation of Hitler’s followers.
At least 20,000 books from the University of Berlin’s Institute of Sexual Research had been piled high in the square in front of Berlin’s State Opera. Goebbels, standing beside a swastika-flag-draped podium in front of numerous microphones, had given an inflammatory speech full of hatred directed at those whom he called degenerate authors, the Jews, and those known to oppose the Nazi Party. It wa
s blatantly obvious to Paul that the speech’s purpose was not only to intimidate but also to give a clear picture of the bigotry to come.
Ernst Röhm’s brown-shirted Storm Troopers had marched to the front of the crowd carrying flags that flew atop long poles. The Nazi Students’ League stood beside the Jewish professors from the university; those very same professors were thrown out of the university months later. Goebbels had pointed to the learned men, highlighting their depravities to the crowd, and when he’d finished his tirade against them, soldiers had sung a popular song of the Reich.
Finally, invited dignitaries had set the books alight, making an enormous bonfire of written treasures from world-renowned authors such as Heinrich Mann, Erich Maria, Remar, Karl Marx and Albert Einstein. On that night, witnessing the Nazis petty disregard for literature and his father’s enthusiastic acceptance of the burning, Paul had renounced Hitler in his heart and mind, and decided there and then to switch careers and go to Munich’s medical faculty instead of the University of Berlin.
Dieter Vogel’s throaty laughter echoed up the stairs. His father was unusually happy. The family business, Vogel Medical Equipment Manufacturing Company, regularly supplied the Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe with goods, but his father, already Dresden’s wealthiest man, was now in the position to accrue a substantial amount of new business from all branches of the military and Interior Ministry should the expected European war begin. Profits were on his father’s mind tonight, not his son’s achievements.
The sound of a woman’s tinkling laughter and contrasting boorish male voices became louder as more people entered the house and crossed the hall on their way to the formal reception room. From his concealed position behind the balustrade, Paul could see people arriving while not being spotted by those downstairs. He should be with his father, greeting people, shaking hands and complimenting women on their appearances, but he’d pay any amount of money to stay where he was all night.
“What are you doing, naughty boy? Who are you spying on?”
Paul jumped at the sound of Hannah’s voice. His sister, quietly mounting the carpeted stairs towards him, looked poised and mature at twenty-one years of age in her elegant, red silk, floor-length floral dress. Her hair, curled and partially pinned up with gold combs, was shimmering with lacquer designed to hold every strand in place.
Her twinkling blue eyes were full of excitement. Generous red-painted lips gave her a coquettish pout, perhaps in anticipation of spending an intimate night with her English fiancé. She had powdered her skin, hiding her summer freckles and giving her a pale, vulnerable appearance. She was prettier than many of the women he’d come across in Munich and Dresden, Paul acknowledged, but like most females nowadays she opted for the fashionable white, washed-out look that he was not at all fond of.
“I’m delaying the inevitable, but unlike me, you seem eager to mix with the Nazis downstairs,” said Paul.
Hannah glanced over the balustrade. “Ssh, Paul, you shouldn’t talk like that. The people downstairs have purchased Father’s equipment, and his profits have put you through medical school.”
“I put myself through university,” Paul pointed out.
Hannah’s pout became a stern line. “Paul, you’re not a doctor because you attended class and studied for five years. You graduated because Papa paid for your tuition and lodgings, and for your books, clothes and everything else you’ve needed to get by. I don’t think you appreciate how hard he works for all of us, or how difficult it was for him to get all these important people here tonight.”
“And why have people I’ve never met before been invited?” Paul retorted. “This is supposed to be my graduation party, not an opportunity for father to pluck more business from the Wehrmacht.”
“Stop it. You sound like Mother. She’s having fits in the kitchen because she thinks there’s not enough food to go around.”
Hannah’s lower lip trembled, so Paul softened his tone. “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll be good. You look nice, by the way.”
Upset forgotten, Hannah twirled and then gave Paul a mock curtsy. “Why, thank you, kind sir.”
Paul chuckled and held out his hand with the bowtie in his palm. “Will you tie this blasted thing for me?”
As she lifted Paul’s collar, she said, “I was sent up here with a message. Father wants you to wait five minutes more before you go downstairs, but even then, you’ve to stand on the halfway landing until everyone is congregated in the hall. He’s going to make a speech about how proud he is of you, blah, blah, blah.”
Hannah inspected her handiwork, swiped a length of thread off Paul’s black jacket and reminded him again to wait where he was for the next five minutes. “I’ll tell Mama and Papa you’re ready for your big entrance.”
Paul spotted an elderly man studying the paintings in the hall. Father liked to impress his visitors. He enjoyed displaying his wealth through ornaments, antiquities and art. “My possessions are the symbols of my success,” Dieter Vogel often reminded his four children when he’d acquired a new treasure. “When one achieves wealth, one should display it. People feel secure when dealing with a partner who is successful, reliable and who has never disappointed his customers. Never forget what I’ve taught you, children, money begets money because no one wants to do business with a failure.”
His paintings were the talk of the city, his love of all things splendid well known. Paul recalled a conversation his father had instigated at a family dinner the week before Christmas the previous year. He remembered it well because it had occurred on the same day a Jewish family had been thrown out of a nearby grocer’s shop and flat they owned and taken away to God only knew where.
“My dear, I have never seen as buoyant a market for exquisite goods,” his father had remarked to their mother. “It’s wonderful to see these many paintings resurfacing after being sequestered in Jewish houses for decades, and I for one intend to purchase as many as my purse strings will allow before they disappear forever.”
The current antiquities market was good for serious collectors, Paul believed, but he suspected that the Jews who’d owned the artwork that now hung on the walls downstairs, hadn’t voluntarily handed the paintings over to someone out of the goodness of their hearts. It was a safe bet to suppose that the Goya being admired by everyone walking into the house tonight had been acquired by the Gestapo or SS from a Jewish household after the unfortunate Jews had been removed. How much had his father paid for it? Paul wondered. What manner of backroom deals went on nowadays between people who fenced and bought stolen property? Was it a quid-pro-quo situation in his father’s case, using medical equipment as payment or did hard cash pass from hand to hand? It was troubling, for he was sure that all the valuables should go directly to the Reich.
Paul took a deep breath, counted to nine and then exhaled. The guests were moving en masse into the hall. As instructed, he walked down the first flight of stairs to the wide landing that separated the top and bottom halves of the staircase and posed with his hand on the balustrade. His mother, standing slightly behind his father, looked uncomfortable, as she often did these days in company. English born and bred, nights like these were becoming increasingly difficult for her, especially now that she had just returned from a holiday in Kent.
He’d enjoyed the holiday with his mother, but his large English family had badgered him with questions about Adolf Hitler, and he had responded numerous times that the Führer was only interested in expansionism in Eastern Europe and did not seek territory in Western or Northern Europe and Africa. Hitler certainly didn’t want a war with Britain, he’d told his uncles, aunts and cousins. Why should he? He had very influential English aristocrats as Nazi supporters, including the abdicated Edward VIII who’d visited Berlin in 1937. Paul didn’t believe his platitudes, and neither did anyone else. In fact, everyone had agreed that more meetings between Chamberlain and Hitler would only prove to be a waste of time and energy. Hitler wanted Poland, and if he went in there, Europe�
��s peace would be shattered.
Dieter Vogel tapped his champagne glass with his gold wedding band to silence the crowd at the bottom of the stairs, then he raised it in the air. “Here he is, the man of the moment. Let me introduce you all to my son, Doctor Paul Vogel.”
After a round of applause, Dieter continued, “I’ve always had high hopes for my boy, and don’t take this personally, Wilmot and Hannah, but he was always the brainiest out of all of you children, including his twin, Max.”
Wilmot shouted, “Not true!” and laughed.
“I’ll be honest with you. I was disappointed when my Paul decided against a career in business,” Dieter carried on. “He would have been a great asset to my company, as would have Max and Wilmot – it seems that none of my sons will carry it on.”
As though dragging himself out of his melancholy, Dieter rushed on, “Ach, don’t mind me. Who am I to complain, eh? Germany needs good doctors and surgeons, and Paul graduated top of his class and a year early. This is a night for celebration.”
“Do you have a speciality yet, Paul?” a man with a beak for a nose asked.
“Yes, sir, I have decided on psychiatry.” Paul heard his father gasp. He should have mentioned that earlier, he supposed.
“Wonderful!” The bird-nosed man shouted. “We’ll talk later. I’m just the person to give you advice.”
One could hear a pin drop. Paul dared to look at his father who threw him a stinker of a glare. Then, he flicked his eyes to his mother, who smiled. He’d told her about his choice of speciality when they’d been in England together, and she had accompanied him to London’s Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital for an interview regarding his internship.
“Well, this a surprise to me,” Dieter said, finally breaking the silence. “I admit I’m shocked. I spent all that money on you because I presumed you would choose a speciality that could actually save lives.”
