Ashes

by Kathryn Lasky

  Within that first month after Hitler became chancellor there were several changes at the Gymnasium Kaiser Frederick Wilhelm. Some were immediately noticeable. Soon after Hitler’s appointment, a truck with SA men had driven up and unloaded several large boxes. By the next morning a photograph of Adolf Hitler had been hung in every classroom as well as the assembly hall and the library. The portraits were always flanked by a German flag on one side and on the other side a Nazi flag. Under the new rules of the Third Reich, we were to face the flag during our morning Heil Hitlers, which were required at the beginning of every school day.

  The days following Rosa’s and my refusal were awful. Although Fräulein Hofstadt was not our only teacher, she had emerged since Hitler’s triumph as clearly one with the most authority in the school. Because of this our lives were made miserable in subtle ways. Fräulein Hofstadt basically ignored us in class. She rarely called on us to recite and when we raised our hands to answer a question, she would call on us only when no other hands were raised. Once, rather than call on me, she simply grimaced and gave the answer herself.

  I felt it was as if we, Rosa and I and Fräulein Hofstadt, were circling one another like wary animals. We were not the only girls whose parents did not want them to join the BDM. She did not treat them any better.

  But Fräulein Hofstadt had been right. There were others only too happy to take our place in the BDM.

  Girls started vying for Fräulein Hofstadt’s attention. They began showing off, waving their hands madly in class, doing work for extra credit, wearing swastika barrettes. Even other teachers seemed to be trying to impress Fräulein Hofstadt. She had created her own small solar system within our school, with herself as a dazzling sun that was the center of everyone’s orbit, save for a very few.

  Fräulein Hofstadt’s behavior toward the Jewish girls was not so subtle. On the first day after Hitler became chancellor, desks were rearranged so that the Jewish girls sat apart. She never called on them or looked at them. If there was a shortage of books or handout sheets, they simply didn’t get any, but were still expected to do the homework. And although her conduct toward the Jewish students now seemed pronounced, I realized that Fräulein Hofstadt had never really been particularly warm or welcoming to them. Miri Goldfein, who was probably the smartest girl in our class, never got high marks from Fräulein Hofstadt, and she did more extra credit work than any other student. Because of her only middling grade in Fräulein Hofstadt’s class Miri missed being the top student in our grade .

  On some level I must have realized this, but why had I never thought about it before? Why had I so conveniently ignored it in my enthrallment with Fräulein Hofstadt? Had I been mesmerized, transfixed, bedazzled by this glittering goddess? Rosa and I were bewildered by the change in Fräulein Hofstadt and by our own blindness. Why had we not seen through the gloss to the tarnished darkness?

  One day after school I sprinted across the one hundred meters to the neighborhood library looking for a book of commentary on Virgil’s orations for Latin class, I caught the familiar scent of roses and narcissus, then I heard Fräulein Hofstadt’s voice. She was at the desk, addressing Frau Grumbach, the librarian. Over Frau Grumbach’s desk just under the newly hung Hitler portrait there was a poster of the girl from the BDM booklet, the one with the braids and the iron eagle. Posters like this one, along with the flags and portraits of the Führer, now proliferated throughout public spaces.

  “Frau Grumbach, I received your note. I am afraid this is unacceptable. You are aware that just two and a half weeks ago the Decree for the Protection of the German People was passed. A Ministry of Public Propaganda and Enlightenment is now forming, and it will be producing a list of all books which are to be banned from the library. We need a list of the students and other people of the community who use this library and who have checked out the kind of books that will be banned.”

  I was in the shadow of two rows of shelves. I pulled out a fat book of Latin commentaries, which gave me a perfect slot to view this conversation yet not be seen. Fräulein Hofstadt, in her elegantly tailored suit with its generous shoulder padding, towered over the tiny librarian, who stood on the opposite side of the checkout desk.

  “First of all, Fräulein, the decree you cite is only a temporary emergency decree as declared by the Reichstag,” said Frau Grumbach. “It does not call for the confiscation of literature, and it has not as yet created a list of banned books. It would be impossible for me to know which books you are referring to as being dangerous.”

  “Well, I have a preliminary list right here with me.”

  “‘Preliminary’?” Frau Grumbach shook her head wearily. “It is not official, Fräulein. If it is not official, I cannot accept it. And I have no idea how you would come to have such a list.”

  “Are you questioning my authority?”

  “Well,” Frau Grumbach said, and with a slight twist of her mouth, she flashed a sardonic smile, “I suppose I am. But it doesn’t matter, because I don’t have time for your supposed list, or time for making up a list of our library patrons for your perusal. If you think it is so important, you do it.”

  “Me? I’m not a librarian. You’re the librarian.”

  “Precisely, Fräulein Hofstadt.” She adjusted the dark rimmed pince-nez spectacles that she always wore. “It is not the job of a librarian to spy on readers and their selections. I am a civic employee and you are an employee of the Frederick Wilhelm Gymnasium. You are seriously overstepping boundaries. I do not come into your school and tell you how to do your job, and you should not tell me how to do mine.”

  Fräulein Hofstadt took out the little book she always carried and wrote something in it . “You will see whose job it is then!” she snapped, and walked out of the library, her immense shoulders twitching in what now seemed to me to be a ridiculous show of indignation.

  The following morning at break I went to the library to get another book I needed. There was a woman I did not know sitting at the checkout desk.

  “Excuse me, where is Frau Grumbach?”

  “She’s left.”

  “Left?”

  “Yes, she will no longer be working here.”

  “Where has she gone? To another library?”

  “I have no idea. But can I help you find something?”

  “No, thank you.” I shook my head. “I can find it.”

  “Oh, good. I am just getting used to the system, learning it, you know. So you might do better than I would.” She smiled, but I was confused. I didn’t think each library had a different classification system.

  “Did the library you worked in before use a different system?”

  “Oh dear, I was never a librarian. I’m a stenographer.”

  And then I understood. Frau Grumbach had been driven out of her job at the library because of her refusal to comply with Fräulein Hofstadt’s list. She was an “undesirable,” and this was just the beginning of the removal of “undesirables.” Usually this meant Jewish teachers. Jewish students were also starting to leave our school. Miri Goldfein had slipped me a message that she could not work on our biology project because she was “going away for a while.”

  chapter 27

  It was a close place. I took it up [the letter I’d written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

  “All right then, I’ll go to hell”- and tore it up.

  It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.

  -Mark Twain,

  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

  There were many things that I decided simply not to tell my parents about. Nor was I tempted to confide in Ulla, who seemed increasingly distant these days. I actually was fearful that if my parents began to complain too much, our family might be singled out in some way. The librarian, Frau Grumba
ch, had simply disappeared when she had refused to comply with Fräulein Hofstadt’s orders. There were stories of other people, friends of friends, who were fired from their jobs or simply disappeared without any explanations.

  One of the things I decided not to tell them about was the swastika assignment. During the first month of Hitler’s chancellorship, all the students at my school were given an excerpt from the book Mein Kampf, in which Hitler wrote about the swastika and how he worked on its design as the symbol of the Nazi Party. We were to study this and to research the history of the symbol of the broken cross. We would be given a test on all of this material. For extra credit we could describe a product or accessory in which the swastika could be incorporated. There would then be a vote on the best design scheme. How democratic!

  The BDM members had started wearing their uniforms to school. This engendered much excitement. Passing through the corridors one could hear arguments about the proper way to wear the neckerchief with the leather slide.

  “You know,” Helga was saying, fingering the brown leather slide through which her neckerchief tails were threaded, “the Mädelschaftsführerinnen get to wear the special lanyards.” Hannah and Helga and the two other girls who had been picked in Rosa’s and my place were training to become Mädelschaftsführerinnen, the girl leaders of the BDM.

  “My cousin is a Mädelschaftsführerin. That’s even higher, it means you’re the leader of at least four groups. And she gets to wear a green lanyard,” Nadia, a plump girl with bright red hair, said.

  “Fräulein Hofstadt says . . .” another girl interrupted Nadia.

  That was the name that one heard most often in the classroom. She was now the object of worship for almost every girl in the entire school, even those who did not take her literature course. Indeed her renown had spread to the youngest gymnasium students. If they were outside when Fräulein Hofstadt was on schoolyard duty, they would surround her until the older students came out for our break. Then they would sit on the sidelines and watch in envy, dreaming of when they could become Jungmädel, young maidens in the BDM. Despite the portraits of Hitler in every room, the Nazi Party flags hanging from every available flagpole or stand, the constant talk of the BDM hierarchy and the colors of lanyards, it was in the schoolyard just after school broke up that the changes were perhaps the most insidious.

  It was now February twenty-seventh, a few days after the confrontation between Fräulein Hofstadt and Frau Grumbach in the library. School had just ended and I was standing with Rosa by the linden tree where we so often met. I couldn’t help but notice how different the schoolyard appeared now that Hitler was chancellor. In December, one would have seen girls milling about, talking, perhaps a few with jump ropes. But now there was no milling, no randomness to the configuration of students. The activity in the yard itself had redistributed students in a manner I had never seen before. Scattered around the edges were perhaps half a dozen girls either alone or talking with a friend. Rosa, these six or seven other mostly Jewish girls, and I were the only non-members of the BDM. In the center of the yard were four phalanxes of ten or more girls marching about, singing what was known as “The Banner Song.”

  Unsere Fahne flattert uns voran.

  Unsere Fahne ist die neue Zeit.

  Und die Fahne führt uns in die Ewigkeit!

  Ja, die Fahne ist mehr als der Tod.

  Our banner flutters before us.

  Our banner represents the new era.

  And our banner leads us to eternity!

  Yes, our banner means more to us than death.

  On some sort of stick they were flying Fräulein Hofstadt’s new red silk scarf with a black swastika on a disc of white. It was cold, and sharp, stinging bits of snow swirled through the air. Rosa and I shivered on the sidelines with perhaps four or five other girls. We all would have been warmer had we been marching. Perhaps even talking would have made us warmer, but we didn’t. We had most likely all been given the same advice by our parents: “Be quiet, don’t make a fuss, be respectful.’” There were always the implied quotation marks when my parents mentioned the word “respectful” in reference to the Third Reich. The quotation marks were the necessary veneer that covered in truth their contempt.

  As I watched the other girls marching I was wondering: if I could hardly endure the next day of school, how in the world could I possibly endure the next thousand years of this Third Reich? Not that I would live a thousand years. But a year? Even that seemed impossible.

  Rosa nudged me.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pulling me from the dismal reveries that swarmed in my brain.

  “What’s what?” I turned my head in the direction she was looking.

  Two SA men were escorting a thin figure across the schoolyard toward us.

  “Mein Gott, it’s Herr Doktor Berg!” I whispered.

  The two SA men raised their arms. “Heil Hitler!” Rosa and I immediately raised our arms and responded “Heil Hitler.”

  “Which one of you is Fräulein Gabriella Schramm?”

  My throat constricted. “Me. I am.”

  “The Jew teacher wishes to speak with you.”

  “We have allowed this,” the other said brightly, as if he had just granted some sort of extreme indulgence.

  Herr Doktor Berg stepped forward. He had a package in his hands. “Fräulein Gabriella, I think these belong to you.” My books!The two books he had confiscated from me more than a year before—Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life and Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.I knew it before I even felt their weight as he handed them to me.

  “Are you going someplace?” I stammered.

  “Yes, I am no longer to teach here.”

  “So you’re going to another school?”

  The two SA men snickered and barked, “Auf geht’s!”Get going.

  They spun Doktor Berg around, shoving him ahead. But he turned back and shouted over his shoulder.

  “Buck! Buck! I loved that dog! What a dog!”

  I was still standing there, clutching the books to my chest and looking in the direction the SA had taken Doktor Berg when the sweet scent of flowers enveloped me on this biting cold day. A voice behind me said, “I’ll take that!”

  “What?” I turned around. “What are you talking about?” Fräulein Hofstadt was facing me, her eyes glittering like blue glaciers, her head wrapped in a fashionable blue velvet toque.

  “I am talking about that package that Herr Berg just gave you. Those officers should not have let a man they are taking away give a package to a student. It must be examined. That was very lax on their part. Now, hand me that package.”

  Somewhere from inside me, inside my soul perhaps, a flame began to flicker.

  “No, Fräulein Hofstadt. These are mine.” I clutched the books tighter to my chest.

  “I am the teacher, Gabriella. This is a command.”

  “I do not take commands from you, Fräulein Hofstadt.”

  “Gabriella, this constitutes extraordinary disobedience.”

  “And you are a very ordinary person, Fräulein Hofstadt. Coarse, common, ordinary. And you wear entirely too much perfume. You reek!”

  chapter 28

  Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Instead, he pointed towards the wall of darkness that pressed about them from every side. There was no suggestion of form in the utter blackness; only could be seen a pair of eyes gleaming like live coals. Henry indicated with his head a second pair, and a third. A circle of the gleaming eyes had drawn about their camp. Now and again a pair of eyes moved, or disappeared . . .

  -Jack London, White Fang

  Rosa stood there gaping at me as I turned and ran out of the schoolyard. I vowed I would never return to the Kaiser Frederick Wilhelm School. I ran around the block and stood in the shadow of a chestnut street on the corner, where I watched the SA men push Herr Doktor Berg into the back end of a van as I pressed the package to my chest. I knew neither Mama nor Papa would be home at this hour. This wa
s Mama’s day to go to the conservatory for a meeting with other pianists. They swapped music scores. I couldn’t go home. I didn’t want to be alone, and I didn’t want to face Mr. Hell and be interrogated as to what had happened in school. I needed to talk to someone, some normal adult. I needed to explain all I had been feeling, and the terrible thing that had just happened in the schoolyard. Baba would most likely be at home writing her column. She had connections through the newspaper world, being a reporter. She heard things that others didn’t hear. Hadn’t Frau von Schleicher called her up that evening at our house during dinner to say that Hitler and Hindenburg’s son were on their way to the Ribbentrops’? Maybe Baba would even know where they were taking Herr Doktor Berg. Or where Frau Grumbach had gone. And Miri Goldfein!

  “What sort of a license plate has only two numbers?” Those were my first words when Baba opened the door.

  “Gaby, what are you doing here?”

  I started again to ask my question about the license plate, it was the plate I had seen on the back of the limousine Fräulein Hofstadt had been riding in, but I burst into tears.

  “Come! Come! Let’s get you some tea.” She folded me into her soft arms. “Now, now, dear, nothing can be that bad.”

  “Oh, but it is!” I said, pulling my face away from her shoulder. My tears and runny nose had stained her silk blouse. “I’m never—never ever going back to school! I don’t care what Mama and Papa say.”

  She led me into the sitting room. The same room, the same sofa where I had sprawled in July reading The Sun Also Rises. The schoolyard story tore from me in jagged, sharp-edged chunks that seemed to leave gouges inside me from the very telling. When I had finished, Baba looked at me and did not say anything right away. When she did speak, what she said surprised me.