Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  It was early May before she realized she had been keeping another secret from Adam, and from herself.

  A week passed, and then another, before she summoned up the courage to tell him. By then she had seen her doctor, who confirmed that she had not misinterpreted her symptoms. She had also resolved to have the child even if Adam wanted nothing to do with it. She was not a fool; she knew it would be difficult to raise a child on her own. She might have no choice but to return in shame to Frankfurt an der Oder, but after her parents got over their initial shock and distress, they would take her in, and they would love her child.

  She summoned up her courage as she and Adam lay in bed together one glorious spring morning, a Sunday, with sunlight streaming through the open window and the white curtains stirring in a breeze fragrant with linden blossoms and freshly cut grass. “Don’t get up yet,” she told him, grasping his arm when he kissed her and climbed out of bed to go start the coffee, their usual routine when he stayed over. “You should be sitting down for this.”

  He sank down on the edge of the bed, studying her warily. “So this is it. You’ve finally had enough. You’re leaving me.”

  She laughed. “God, no.” Then she realized he was serious. “No, Adam. That’s the last thing I want.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. His expression was pained, disbelieving, which broke her heart a little. “Are you sure?” he managed to say after too long a silence.

  “Yes, I’m sure. I wouldn’t have said so otherwise.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t have,” he said, apologetic. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better now than at first.” Because he had not thought to ask, there was an edge to her voice when she added, “The baby is due in January.”

  “The baby,” he echoed, almost to himself. “Holy Christ, a baby.”

  “Our baby,” she emphasized. “Yours and mine.”

  “Greta—” He grimaced, took her hand and held it in both of his. “Let’s stop and think. Is it right to bring an innocent child into a world full of hate and violence?”

  “There’s more to the world than hate and violence,” she said. “There’s also love, and friendship, and literature and music. And right or wrong, it’s happening.”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  She slipped her hand from his grasp. “I am not getting rid of this child. I can’t believe you’d even suggest such a thing.”

  “We need to be realistic,” he said steadily. “These are dangerous times. Friends are being snatched off the streets and thrown into concentration camps every day. The child would be utterly dependent upon you for years. What if something happened to you? What if you were arrested?”

  “We would make arrangements for a legal guardian ahead of time, as all good parents should.” She climbed out of bed and threw on her dressing gown. “I’m thirty-four, and the Nazis might cling to power for years. If I wait until they’re gone and all is right with the world, it might be too late for me. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I’m having this baby. The only question is if it will be with you or without you.”

  “Of course it will be with me.” He rose, came around to her side of the bed, and stood facing her, his hands on her shoulders. “Do you think I’d abandon you? I missed too much of Armin-Gerd’s childhood. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  She rested her head on his chest, eyes welling up with tears, at a loss for words. A moment ago he was hinting that she should get an abortion. Was it really so ridiculous to think that he might walk out on her? “I don’t want to live apart after the child is born,” she said. He tensed for a moment, then stroked her hair away from her face and kissed the top of her head.

  She was not sure what he meant by the wordless gesture, but a few days later, he told her that he believed it would be best for the child if they married.

  “I think Gertrud would have something to say about that,” Greta said lightly, managing a smile.

  “She’s deferred the inevitable long enough,” said Adam. “We will divorce.”

  At the end of May, Greta met Mildred for a walk through the Tiergarten and their usual discussion of political developments and resistance-circle activities. As a teacher, Mildred was outraged by the mayor of Berlin’s recent decree banning Jewish children from the public schools, and as a wife, she was distressed by the new employment regulations making membership in the Nazi Party all but mandatory for members of the civil service. Against every one of his scruples, Arvid had joined rather than lose his job.

  “He had no choice,” Greta consoled her. “Not even the Nazis consider people in Arvid’s situation to be true believers. You’ve heard what is said about them—they’re like undercooked meat, Nazi brown on the outside and Communist red at the center. It won’t mean anything to people who truly know him.”

  Mildred looked taken aback. “Adam didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Adam and Arvid met by chance on the street not long ago when Arvid was on his way home from work. When Adam saw the Nazi emblem on Arvid’s buttonhole, he called him an unprincipled careerist and boxed his ears.”

  “He did that?”

  “Right there on the pavement, in plain sight of dozens of passersby. It was humiliating, but Arvid didn’t even try to defend himself.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mildred,” said Greta, appalled. “I’ll talk to him. He should know better than to doubt Arvid’s integrity.”

  “His family knows the truth, but I think they would have preferred for him to refuse the job and go off to England like his cousin Dietrich.” Mildred hesitated. “By now, I think—I hope—most of our true friends have convinced themselves that he joined only to conspire against the Nazis.”

  “You shouldn’t tell them how right they are. You’d put them at risk.”

  “But please do tell Adam. He must know he can trust Arvid, if we’re going to continue to work together.”

  “I will.” Greta braced herself. “Mildred, there’s something else I need to tell you.”

  As gently as she could, she explained that she was pregnant and that she and Adam were going to marry.

  For a moment, Mildred looked pained, stricken, and her eyes filled with tears. A heartbeat later, she was smiling radiantly and embracing her. “I’m so happy for you,” she said. “You’ll be a wise and wonderful mother. What a lucky little child this will be!”

  Greta’s heart went out to Mildred, who had longed for a baby for so many years and had borne disappointment so bravely, without ever succumbing to bitterness. Greta broke down in tears, overcome by the profound injustice of the world, that what Mildred desired with all her heart would be denied her, and yet had come to Greta unexpectedly and unsought, a disruption rather than a joy.

  Soon more generosity of spirit came to Greta from an unexpected source. Gertrud did not contest the divorce, but wished Adam and Greta well and signed the papers as soon as they were delivered. Only then did they begin planning their wedding. It angered and offended them that they were required to obtain an Ariernachweis, a certification of their Aryan purity, before they would be permitted to wed. Resenting the necessity, they nevertheless scrambled to collect proof of their ancestry from family members, church records, and government archives.

  On August 28, Greta and Adam married in a civil ceremony surrounded by their family and dearest friends. The guests included Mildred and Arvid; Rudolf and Franziska Heberle, another couple Greta had first met in Wisconsin; several of Greta’s childhood friends and university classmates; Adam’s son Armin-Gerd, accompanied by Marie and Gertrud; dozens of luminaries from the German theater, close friends of the groom; and a few members of their resistance circle who did not fit into any of the other groups but were scattered among them, revealing as little about themselves as possible.

  The two witnesses of the ceremony were Hans Hartenstein, a prominent official at the Mini
stry of Economics whom Greta had known since her school days, and Adam’s good friend Adolfe Grimme, the former Prussian minister of culture. Greta had to suppress her laughter at the reaction of the officious registrar, a stout little fellow who went wide-eyed and tongue-tied when he recognized the two very distinguished men who stood before him.

  “He’s duly impressed,” Greta murmured to Adam, concealing her smile behind her bouquet.

  “Apparently no one told him that they were both sacked for refusing to join the Nazi Party,” he replied.

  “Hans wasn’t sacked. He resigned.”

  “Fair point.”

  Then they could say no more, because the registrar, in accordance with protocol, ordered the two witnesses to attention, snapping out the one-armed salute and a shrill “Heil Hitler!” The two men regarded him mildly and did not return the perfunctory greeting, nor did anyone else in the company. Flustered, cheeks scarlet, the registrar stammered and sweated his way through the rest of the ceremony, clearly at a loss for what else to do. It was too important and happy an occasion to spoil with irritation or annoyance, so by unspoken agreement the wedding party decided to regard the registrar with amusement instead.

  They soon forgot him as they strolled a block down the street to their reception, where Greta danced and ate and laughed and accepted warm wishes and congratulations from new friends and old, all the people she loved best in the world. It was a wonderful day in a bleak season, when the promise of love lit up the world in a golden glow and the air tasted as sweet as wine.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  October–December 1937

  Martha

  On October 29, Bill drove Martha and their mother in their reliable old Chevrolet to the Lehrter Bahnhof to meet their father’s train from Hamburg, where his ship from New York had docked earlier that morning. His lengthy absence had been hardest on his wife. As Martha watched her mother clutch her purse in her lap, her lips pressed together anxiously as she gazed out the window, she wished once more that her mother could have accompanied her father to the United States. She needed a respite from Berlin almost as much as Martha’s father had.

  The previous year had been the most arduous, stressful, and frustrating of Ambassador Dodd’s life. He had watched, powerless to intervene, as German troops marched into the Rhineland in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. He had observed Hitler mock the Olympic ideals at the Berlin Games, the Führer’s assurances of peaceful intentions in sharp contrast to Germany’s growing military might. As before, her father had shunned the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, noting with horror and disgust that the German people increasingly revered Hitler as a god. Women wept tears of joy when his motorcade passed. Men dug up the soil he had walked upon and preserved vials of it as sacred relics. Young boys in crisp brown uniforms marched, trained, and sang songs glorifying blood spilled on the battlefield in defense of the Fatherland. To a young American woman raised on democracy and rational thought, it was repulsive and disturbing, but Martha found it impossible to tear her gaze away.

  One day soon after the 1936 rally, Martha went looking for her father only to find his study empty, a draft of a letter marked “Personal and Confidential” on his desk. Naturally she stole a glance.

  “With armies increasing in size and efficiency every day; with thousands of airplanes ready on a moment’s notice to drop bombs and spread poison gas over great cities; and with all other countries, little and great, arming as never before, one cannot feel safe anywhere,” her father had written to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. “What mistakes and blunders have been made since 1917, and especially during the past twelve months—and democratic peoples do nothing, impose no economic or moral penalties, to halt the process!”

  Martha stopped reading there, deeply troubled by her father’s grim, foreboding assessment. After that, his frequent wistful reminiscences about Chicago and Stoneleigh took on a new significance. A month later, as they wandered through the garden of Tiergartenstrasse 27a admiring the changing autumn hues, her father confided that he was suffering from severe headaches and digestive troubles, which his physician attributed to stress. “You mustn’t mention this to anyone, but I don’t see how I can continue in this atmosphere longer than next spring,” he said, oblivious to her rising fear at the thought of her indomitable father brought down by the pressure of impossible demands. “I can’t render my country any useful service with my hands tied with red tape, and the stress of always doing nothing is too much to bear.”

  Martha kept his confidence, divulging nothing to anyone, not even Bill or her mother, and certainly not Boris. She had no doubt that the letters she sent him at his new post in Poland were opened by Nazi censors before they crossed the border. Even on the few occasions when, to her parents’ consternation, she slipped away to Warsaw to meet him, she limited their conversations to the local nightlife, gossip about mutual acquaintances in Berlin, sex, and—although he had begun to show an infuriating lack of enthusiasm for the subject—marriage. Not that Boris needed her to tell him anything about conflict within the American embassy. Boris still had contacts in Berlin, and he probably knew more about the challenges her father faced than she did.

  She would have poured out her heart to Mildred, except they rarely saw each other anymore. Martha and Bill were under almost constant surveillance by the Gestapo and Soviet intelligence. If she and Mildred met other than at official embassy events, they would have been observed, endangering their entire resistance network. Martha wished she dared risk it. Kind, sympathetic Mildred would have found the words to comfort her.

  Her father’s circumstances worsened throughout the winter, and spring brought his most difficult ordeal yet. Helmut Hirsch, a twenty-one-year-old German Jew and antifascist, had been sentenced to death for his part in a thwarted plot to bomb sites in Nuremberg, with Nazi Party headquarters and the offices of Der Stürmer among the suspected targets. Although Hirsch had never been to the United States, he held American citizenship through his father, and the State Department instructed Martha’s father to demand a new, fair, and legitimate trial. Outraged that the young man had been condemned to die although no bombing had occurred and no evidence connecting him to any plot had been produced, Martha’s father fought vigorously for clemency.

  On April 27, in the midst of intense negotiations about Hirsch’s fate, her parents hosted a luncheon at Tiergartenstrasse 27a for members of the German Foreign Office. In the middle of the soup course, the doughy official seated beside Martha leaned closer to her and, breath thickly scented with alcohol, said, “You should warn your father that he is wasting his time.”

  Martha regarded him archly. “What do you mean?”

  “Helmut Hirsch, the American Jew who wanted to kill the Führer, cannot be let off with life imprisonment. He must be executed even though he did not actually commit the crime.”

  “What sort of justice is that?” Martha asked, taken aback, but the official merely shrugged and took another drink of wine. As soon as their guests departed, Martha passed on the warning to her father, but he could not explain how Hirsch’s charges of a plot to bomb buildings in Nuremberg had been conflated with an attempt to assassinate Hitler.

  Undaunted, her father continued to fight for Hirsch’s life. At the end of May, informed that Hirsch could be shown no leniency, he convinced two important Reich ministers, Otto Meissner and Konstantin von Neurath, to appeal personally to Hitler, warning him of the repercussions that would follow if they killed an American citizen under such questionable circumstances.

  But her father’s tireless efforts were in vain. At sunrise on the morning of June 4, Helmut Hirsch was executed by guillotine.

  Although Martha’s father had exhausted every option, his failure to save the young man struck him a bitter blow. His headaches increased in severity and duration until he suffered continuous pain for days without respite. Once Martha overheard him complain to his physician that intense pain spread over the nerve connections between his st
omach, shoulders, and brain until he found it impossible to sleep. By early summer, the problems with his digestive tract had worsened so drastically that eating became torturous, forcing him on one occasion to go without food for thirty hours straight. Through it all, he kept up his rigorous schedule at the embassy, until Martha and her mother worried that he might literally work himself to death.

  “Please, please, for our sakes, if not your own, take better care of yourself,” Martha’s mother begged. He promised to try.

  Finally, in late July, Martha’s father was granted a three-month leave so he could rest and recover his health. Why their mother had not insisted upon accompanying him home to the United States, Martha and Bill could only wonder. Their parents were usually inseparable, and other embassy officials or their wives could have filled in for their mother at ceremonial occasions. Then, one afternoon, Martha ran into Mrs. Panofsky when she was returning from an outing with her son and daughter. They chatted briefly, long enough for Martha to observe the dark circles under Mrs. Panofsky’s eyes and the lines of tension around her mouth. As she led the two children to the elevator and up to their attic home, Martha suddenly understood why her parents were so keen to maintain an American presence at Tiergartenstrasse 27a.

  But since Martha’s mother had remained behind, she was powerless to enforce the doctor’s orders. The family hoped he would rest, but soon his letters from America told a different story. Ambassador Dodd described the late summer beauty of Stoneleigh and the abundant harvest, regular checkups with his doctor, and fond reunions with old friends, but also meetings with President Roosevelt at the White House and conferences with State Department officials, some of them contentious. In mid-August he wrote that the president had urged him to deliver lectures on the state of affairs in Germany while he was in the States, to “speak the truth about things” as often and as emphatically as he could. These demands were hardly conducive to allowing a sixty-five-year-old overworked man to regain his strength and peace of mind, but Martha knew her father would endeavor to do whatever his president asked of him.