Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  All the while, the Harnacks too were expanding their resistance network. Arvid’s family connections infiltrated nearly every university and government ministry, although for security reasons, Mildred and Arvid divulged very little regarding who was involved and what they were doing. Arvid also strengthened his ties with the Soviets and cautiously sought out allies within the Ministry of Economics. Mildred had her contacts within the American embassy and the expatriate community, and she recruited students from the Abendgymnasium and her study group. These members included Sara Weitz, who in turn brought in her brother. Greta knew that Natan Weitz was extending threads of the web to other antifascist journalists and editors, but like John Sieg, Natan did not disclose their identities. They were all safer if each of them knew no one beyond their own immediate circle, unless they themselves were the link to another group.

  One morning in the last week of August, Greta arrived at the Tiergarten to meet Mildred for their usual walk and conference, only to find that her friend was not alone. Studying the stranger at Mildred’s side, Greta fixed a benign expression in place to conceal a sudden pang of wariness. Something about the woman struck Greta as familiar—her straight, wheat-brown hair cut short beneath a small, fashionable hat, her slim figure and assured stance—

  “Clara,” she said, scarcely believing her eyes. “Clara Leiser.”

  Beaming, Clara laughed and embraced her. “Greta, it’s so good to see you,” she said in English, her midwestern vowels startlingly delightful, like a fresh breeze off Lake Mendota. “You look exactly as you did back in Madison.”

  “And you’re just as full of flattery,” said Greta, smiling back. She knew worry had chiseled her face too thin and had etched fine lines around her mouth and between her eyebrows. “How have you been all these years? What are you doing in Berlin?”

  Clara’s elation dimmed. “I’m working for the New York court system now. I’m here as an official observer of these mass trials the Nazis are so fond of.”

  “They know about them in America?” said Greta.

  “Oh, yes,” said Clara. “They’re a matter of grave concern.”

  Greta and Mildred exchanged a look, and Greta saw her own muted hope reflected in her friend’s eyes. “That’s encouraging,” said Mildred, as if she hardly dared believe it. “Sometimes it seems as if the United States is determined to ignore all the terrible things happening here, despite the warnings we send, despite the evidence they ought to see clearly even an ocean away.”

  “Most Americans remain firmly isolationist,” Clara admitted, “but there’s been enough public outcry in New York over reports of injustices that the authorities decided they must gather more information. Sometimes local governments can get involved when it would be impolitic for the federal government to do so.”

  “If you want to see injustice, you came to the right place,” said Greta.

  “I’ve been granted permission to witness two mass trials and to tour two prisons,” said Clara. “I’ll ask to see more, but it wasn’t easy to wring even that much out of the Nazis. They’ll probably turn me down.”

  “I know someone who was recently released from KZ Oranienburg,” said Mildred. “A Jewish journalist arrested for violating the Editors Law. He was sentenced in a sham trial to eighteen months, and he suffered horribly. His imprisonment was an egregious violation of his civil rights.”

  “And of basic human decency,” Greta broke in, instinctively lowering her voice and glancing over her shoulder for eavesdroppers. “We’ve heard his story only secondhand, through his sister. I can only imagine how harrowing the full truth would be, offered to an impartial third party.”

  “Do you think he would speak with me?” asked Clara. “I could withhold his name from the official record if he’s afraid of repercussions.”

  Greta shook her head. “You’d have to withhold more than that, or I’m sure the Gestapo would be able to identify him.”

  “I think he would speak to you anyway,” said Mildred. “He’s very brave, and as a journalist, he would want the truth to be told.”

  Greta had misgivings, but she trusted that her two American friends understood their judicial system better than she did. If they believed Natan Weitz would not find himself thrown back into a prison camp for speaking with a representative of the New York courts, she would not protest. There was always a chance the Gestapo would never know.

  Mildred set up a meeting through Sara. Natan agreed to speak to Clara alone, as long as his name and all other identifying details were omitted from the record so that he would not put his family at risk. After they met, all Clara would reveal to Greta and Mildred was that his story had been a revelation and his experience a nightmare.

  The rest of Clara’s mission brought mixed results. For the two prisons she was permitted to tour, the Gestapo had chosen institutions for citizens convicted of ordinary crimes—theft, forgery, murder—not for political prisoners like Natan and the countless thousands of others arrested simply for being Communists, Social Democrats, or Jews. Clara’s Nazi escorts refused to allow her to speak alone with prisoners and rejected her requests to inspect Oranienburg and Dachau. They would not allow her even to approach the front gate of Plötzensee, where a female political prisoner of particular interest to the New York courts awaited execution.

  When the time came for Clara to observe the two trials, she invited Greta and Mildred to accompany her, passing them off as her assistant and translator. The first trial was for eight Communists charged with manslaughter for allegedly shooting a restaurateur four years before. That the man had died was certain, but the entire proceeding reeked of artifice, and Greta had to carefully arrange her features to conceal her profound skepticism. There had been one gun, one shot, no eyewitness testimony, and yet eight men, who all happened to be Communists, were found guilty and sentenced to five years at Dachau.

  The second trial was for seventeen men and boys accused of high treason for distributing literature critical of the Reich and for organizing meetings where “subversive sentiments” were expressed. Greta sat almost motionless through the hours of testimony, scarcely able to breathe, feeling as if a rough hand were tightening around her throat. The men and boys in the dock—pale, defiant, tearful, angry—had done nothing she, Adam, Mildred, and Arvid had not also done. When the defendants were sentenced to die for their crimes, Mildred seized her hand. They clutched each other so tightly that Greta’s fingertips went numb.

  In the days that followed, Greta and Mildred helped Clara acquire more information that they hoped would be useful to the New York courts. What they might do with the information back in the States, Greta could only guess, but if it helped shake the Americans out of their complacency, the effort would be time well spent.

  The day before Clara departed Berlin, the three friends met at the Palast-Café for a farewell lunch and one last walk through the Tiergarten. “You should leave Germany, both of you,” Clara urged as they were parting at the Brandenburg Gate. “It’s too dangerous here. You’ve gotten used to it so maybe you don’t see just how horrifying it is.”

  “Mildred could go, but it’s not so simple for me,” said Greta. “I would have to get immigration papers, and there are quotas and a very long line ahead of me. Even if I could get a student visa—somehow, if someone at the University of Wisconsin would do a favor for an alumna—eventually it would run out and I’d have to come home.” She stopped herself before blurting out that she could not bear to leave Adam, or to be even farther from her aging parents in Frankfurt an der Oder, or to abandon the resistance network when it had barely begun and by every indication was becoming more crucial every day.

  Clara fixed her gaze firmly on Mildred. “Just you, then, Mildred. You’re an American. Come home.”

  Mildred shook her head. “I can’t leave Arvid.”

  “Convince him to come with you.”

  “He wouldn’t. His family is here, his work—”

  “Then come without him. I know you
don’t want to leave him, but he would want you to be safe.”

  “He would,” Greta interjected, not because she wanted Mildred to go, but because it was true.

  “It’s not his decision, but mine,” said Mildred. “Clara, I know the answer seems so obvious—we should get out now before things get worse. But some of us feel we have to stay to keep an eye on developments.”

  Greta nodded. How could they flee? How could they abandon Germany to evil men who were determined to destroy everything good about it?

  Clara took a deep, shaky breath and told them she understood. “This isn’t goodbye,” she vowed, embracing each of them in turn. “We’ll meet again, in better days.”

  Greta wanted to believe her, but better days seemed very far away.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  June–September 1935

  Sara

  A few weeks after Dieter arrived in Australia, he sent Sara a gift—a boomerang, a graceful curve of smooth dark wood, polished to a high sheen and painted with black geometric designs that Sara guessed were tribal insignia. He had enclosed a letter in the package, contrite, imploring, full of apologies and explanations. He was no Nazi, he insisted, and if Sara knew him at all she ought to know that. He was wrong to have worn the swastika pin for the sake of diplomacy in business and he would never wear it again, even if it cost him his last commission. Better to lose his job than Sara’s respect.

  “Even your favorite instructor had to join the National Socialist Teachers League to keep her job,” Dieter wrote. “If you could forgive Frau Harnack, then surely you can forgive me.”

  If they had not been separated by almost ten thousand miles, Sara would have retorted that Mildred had joined the league only with great reluctance after agonizing over the consequences. Dieter had willingly pinned that swastika to his lapel to convince clients he was a Nazi in order to make sales. His motives and complicity and Mildred’s were nothing alike. The only reason Sara would ever want to see Dieter again would be to tell him so, and to return his ill-considered gift—and the engagement ring.

  She could not bear to wait until he returned from Australia to settle the matter once and for all. She mailed him a heartfelt letter breaking off their engagement, trying as best she could to be gentle and kind. Then she carefully tucked the ring and the boomerang in a box—only those, it would have been spiteful to return every gift he had given her through the years—and set out for Dieter’s apartment.

  His mother answered the knock, pursing her mouth and narrowing her eyes as her gaze traveled from Sara’s face to the box in her arms. “What’s this about?” she asked.

  “Would you please see that Dieter gets this?” As Frau Koch accepted the parcel, she added, “Please keep it somewhere safe. It’s . . . valuable.”

  A faint triumphant gleam lit up Frau Koch’s eyes. “Does this mean what I hope it means?”

  “I don’t know what you hope.”

  “Then it’s true. He finally ended it.”

  Sara saw no reason to clarify the finer points of their breakup. “The marriage is off, yes.”

  “Praise God!” Frau Koch clutched the box to her chest and gazed heavenward. “This is an answer to a poor mother’s prayers.”

  “Yes, well—” Sara forced a tight smile and stepped away from the door. “Goodbye.”

  “He’s better off with his own kind,” Frau Koch called after her as she left. “You both are.”

  Sara broke the news to her family the next time they gathered for Shabbat. Wilhelm and the girls were off at the Riechmann ancestral estate in Minden-Lübbecke, but her parents and siblings absorbed the news with obvious relief. Everyone expressed their sympathy in careful phrases, but no one seemed surprised or regretful.

  Soon thereafter, Amalie tremulously made a far more upsetting announcement: She, Wilhelm, and their daughters were leaving Germany indefinitely.

  “But why?” their father protested.

  Because recent events and rumors in military circles had convinced Wilhelm that withdrawing to Schloss Federle would offer Amalie and the girls scant protection in the days to come. He intended to move the family to Switzerland until the Nazis fell from power and the persecution of Jews ceased. He had already resigned from the Wehrmacht and was getting their affairs in order, preparing their homes and household staff for a lengthy absence.

  Tears filled Sara’s eyes as she embraced her sister. “I’ll miss you so much! I feel like my heart is breaking.”

  “I’m sorry, Sara, but Wilhelm insists.”

  “Wilhelm’s right,” said their mother. “You must get out while you still can.”

  Sara and Amalie broke off their embrace and turned to her, startled.

  “Far be it for me to complain that Wilhelm is too devoted and protective,” said their father, shaking his head, “but I believe he’s overreacting. Surely the Nazis have already done their worst. If we go about our lives, do our work, pay our debts, and cause no trouble, they will leave us alone.”

  “The way they left Natan alone?” Sara said, incredulous.

  Her father fixed her with a look of pained reproof. “Natan broke the law.”

  “A law so unjust that the only proper response was to break it,” said Natan.

  “Please, let’s not argue,” Amalie begged. “Wilhelm is worried for me and the girls, and he won’t change his mind. As soon as he can make arrangements, we’re going, and we urge you all to come with us.”

  “Sara and Natan, you should go,” said their mother. “I would too, but I won’t go without your father.”

  He reached for her hand. “There is no need. We are German. This is our home.”

  “I can’t leave,” said Sara, thinking of the resistance, deliberately avoiding Natan’s gaze. “I won’t interrupt my studies.”

  “I won’t leave,” said Natan. “I just got a job. I have too much to do.”

  “You could write for another paper at least as good as the Judische Nachrichtenblatt in Switzerland,” said Amalie, but her despondent expression revealed that she knew it was a lost cause.

  Within days, Amalie, Wilhelm, and their daughters left for Switzerland. Amalie invited the family to visit them at the chateau Wilhelm had taken in Geneva, but Sara missed her sister terribly and not even the hope of a brief reunion comforted her.

  In the second week of September, Natan attempted to rouse Sara out of her unhappiness by inviting her to accompany him on a trip to Nuremberg to cover the annual Nazi Party rally for the Judische Nachrichtenblatt.

  “That’s an odd choice for a cheerful distraction,” said Sara.

  “I didn’t say it would be cheerful, but it won’t be boring.”

  Sara mulled it over. Perhaps she might observe something at the rally that would benefit the resistance, something worth enduring several days in the company of tens of thousands of fanatical Nazis. She decided to go, although her parents had strong misgivings and begged her never to leave her brother’s side when they were out in public.

  On September 10, Natan and Sara took the train to Nuremberg, squeezing into the crowded third-class compartment, each carrying one small suitcase and Natan his typewriter case as well. They were still standing in the aisle when the train unexpectedly lurched forward. Sara instinctively grabbed the nearest seat with her free hand and managed to keep her feet, but Natan stumbled and the corner of his typewriter case nudged another man in the back.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Natan. In reply, the man shot him a withering glare over his shoulder.

  As the train picked up speed, Natan and Sara tumbled into a seat, but they had barely gotten settled when she felt eyes boring into the back of her head. A surreptitious glance revealed the same man two rows back and across the aisle, fixing her and Natan with a hard stare.

  Sara resolved to ignore him. “They’re calling this the Reichsparteitag der Freiheit,” she said to Natan in an undertone. “The rally for freedom—freedom from what?”

  “From the Treaty of Versailles,” he
replied. “Now that Hitler has reintroduced compulsory military service and has revealed his secret rearmament program to the public, Germany is no longer bound by the treaty’s restraints—”

  “You there,” a voice broke in. “Where are you from?”

  Sara and Natan turned in their seats to find the same man glowering at them. Sara quickly looked away, but Natan smiled. “From Berlin, where we boarded,” he replied affably.

  “That’s not what I meant. Are you Jews? You look Jewish.”

  Natan’s smile deepened, but his voice took on an edge. “So what if we are? Anyone is allowed on this car.”

  “Not for long. You’ll see. You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

  Heart pounding, Sara squeezed her brother’s arm. “Pay no attention to him.”

  Miraculously, Natan obeyed. The angry man said nothing more to them for the rest of the journey, but Sara was conscious of his malevolence, and of the sidelong suspicious glances from other passengers. In the seat in front of them, two young women about Sara’s age murmured to each other and inched as far away from her and Natan as they could. From time to time they glanced over their shoulders, their mouths pursed and noses wrinkled as if they smelled something foul. Cheeks burning, Sara fixed her attention on the scenes passing outside her window, the early autumn hues coloring the countryside, the disheartening sight of picturesque villages draped in swastika flags and banners.

  When they reached Nuremberg, Sara and Natan quickly retrieved their luggage and disembarked before anyone else could confront them. First they went to the home of a friend of Natan’s, a fellow journalist who had offered them a place to stay since rally attendees had booked every hotel room and boardinghouse in the city. Over supper, their host and his wife repeatedly emphasized that they should avoid drawing attention to themselves and must deny that they were Jews if challenged. As they walked to the site of the rally, six square miles of stadiums, buildings, and parade grounds, Natan handed Sara a stiff paper card. “Keep this in a safe place,” he said. “It’s your press credential.”