As she walks, the smell of burning wood drifts on the November air. Something is missing on the corner she is approaching. The rising Gothic shape of the synagogue that usually draws her eye — where is it? For the first time in her life no roof blocks the sky, the blueness of which makes her blink. Only charred walls remain. A blackened chandelier sits amid the ashes of wooden seats and Torah scrolls. This was the orange glow she saw from her window that godforsaken night. How many more across the city like this?
She continues on her way, filled with loathing. She can’t get out of her mind the image of Vati being shoved into the truck, his face pale and bloody. People have started talking about transports to the east, work in labour camps. She hopes if he is taken to a camp, it will be in Germany. Is he strong enough to work?
She reaches Herr Doktor Kochmann’s building and steps inside. On her way down the hall she stops. Something is wrong: the door to his office is wide open.
She creeps to the door and looks in. The desk is broken in half and books lie scattered on the floor, the wooden shelves in pieces. She hears someone moving about in the apartment behind the office where Kochmann lives with his wife. If it were the Gestapo, they would be shrieking curses and orders. She steps inside, tiptoeing to the apartment, where the door is also open.
A rustling sound is coming from down the hall; the bedroom, she thinks. She has been in the apartment only once, when she was young and visiting with Oma.
When she reaches the room, two men dressed in shabby black suits and skullcaps are bent over the bed, fastening string around two forms wrapped in rubber sheeting. She gasps as if someone has punched her in the stomach.
One of the men looks up and stops what he is doing. “Are you their daughter?”
She stares at him, numb to her feet.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “You didn’t know ...”
He straightens up from the bed, and she sees that the form he has been preparing is larger than the other one.
“They didn’t suffer,” he says, folding his hands in front of him. The stance of an undertaker. “I’m sure it was quick. And painless.”
Her head is shaking; it won’t stop. “Was it ...? How did they ...?”
“Pills.” He points to a small bottle on the night table. “Believe me, they were the lucky ones. I’ve seen some that do it, much worse. It’s better this way, at their age. They’re well out of it.”
The other man steps to the foot of the bed and lifts the feet of the larger body. The first man begins to put his hands beneath the shoulder area to raise it off the bed.
“Wait!” she says. “Please. Can I see him?”
The two men look at her, then at each other. The man near the top loosens the string around the head and moves to the other body. In a practised movement, they lift the smaller form off the bed and carry it out.
She steps toward the side of the bed on wobbly legs, a pounding inside her head. Touches the black rubber. Unravels the string. She pulls down the top, revealing the pale grey face, the high forehead with its scant hair, the mouth open, like every corpse. It is no longer her beloved doctor but a shell of matter that will disintegrate in a few days. Where did he go, the gentle man who cared enough about her to change the course of her life? The picture of him in Vati’s store all those years ago rises before her eyes like a chimera. How unhappy she was then, working in the shop. If not for him, she would never have known anything else.
She bends down and kisses the cold forehead.
Frieda has been warned to stay away from Gestapo headquarters at Grosse Hamburgerstrasse, despite her anxiety for Vati. Two different patients have passed on cautionary tales about relatives who insisted on inquiring about missing loved ones and never came back.
At least when she is treating patients, Frieda has to focus on work and Vati is pushed to the background. But when she returns home, the apartment is full of his absence. Oma and Mutti are downcast, pecking at their food. Luise has stopped chattering, and Wolfie stays out as long as he can.
Then one day shortly after Christmas, a postcard comes from Vati.
“Thank God!” Oma cries.
They all crowd around Frieda, who holds the card in her hand.
She reads it aloud. “My dearest Karolina and family, I miss you all very much. I am working hard but you mustn’t worry. Hope you are well. All my love, Ernst.”
It was posted from Buchenwald. Literally, “forest of beech trees.” Frieda has heard about the camp there, that it is filled with “undesirables,” many of whom are never seen again. She stares at the words, trying to pry meaning from them.
“He doesn’t say anything,” Wolfie exclaims.
“He says he’s alive,” says Oma, smiling for the first time in months.
Frieda has little time to use her mentor’s stethoscope and blood pressure cuff before the government decrees that all Jewish physicians are to be decertified. Their certificates have become null and void and they can no longer practise medicine. Only a small number of the most senior doctors are allowed to keep tending to the Jewish community. Frieda can no longer treat patients at the hospital but continues to go to the Jewish school for part of the day, now in the capacity of nurse. She joins all the other Jewish doctors in the country in their slide toward poverty. The Eisenbaums rely more and more on Wolfie’s winnings at cards. When he loses, they have less to eat. Luise spends more time across the hall with Frau Thaler, who happily feeds her and sometimes sends her home with extra bread or potatoes.
Since his father’s heart attack, Leopold has had to take on a new job to help support the family. He has begun to sell black market cigarettes, Gauloises from France, a more lucrative income than teaching history to impoverished Jewish students. On his forays into the small cigar shops, he wears a large overcoat with deep pockets sewn on the inside, filled with packs of cigarettes.
Several times a week, Frieda stops by their apartment on her way home to check on Herr Sussman. Though physically recovered, he is depressed and has lost weight. She has learned from Leopold and takes the chance of carrying her stethoscope and blood pressure cuff in a pocket she has sewn inside her coat. If she is stopped, she will say she is trying to sell them.
Frau Sussman has served her some ersatz coffee when Leopold comes home accompanied by Hanni, both wearing large coats. They look sheepish in front of her.
When Frau Sussman leaves the table to get more cups, Frieda whispers to Leopold, “Did you take Hanni with you to sell cigarettes?”
Hanni stares daggers at her, but Leopold blushes. “She wanted to. We need the money.”
“It’s dangerous,” Frieda whispers. “What if you get caught?”
Hanni lifts her chin. “I’m not a child. It’s really not your business.”
March 1939
One morning in March when the air is milder and Frieda thinks they might survive the winter, Hanni storms into their apartment. Her curly hair stands out around her head; her coat is open.
“Where’s Wolfie?” she cries.
“What’s happened?” Frieda asks, afraid to know. “I need Wolfie!” Hanni shouts, her face swollen from tears.
He has been home barely two hours after his usual night at cards, but Wolfie rushes out, a robe thrown over his nightclothes.
She throws herself into his arms. “They’ve taken them away! My father and Leopold! They’re gone! They just pushed them onto a truck.”
Frieda’s heart contracts. She backs into a chair and sits heavily.
“My father won’t survive! He’s too weak.” She looks at Frieda. “It’s her fault!”
“You’re upset, Hanni,” Wolfie mutters.
“Stop it.” She pulls away from him. “I blame you!” she shouts at Frieda. “If you’d married him, if you’d thought of someone besides yourself, we’d all be out of here. He wouldn’t go without you. And now he’ll die because of you. We’ll all die!”
Frieda is breathless at this attack. She cannot speak as Wolfie pulls Hanni away. It
’s true, Frieda thinks, it’s all true.
She feels Oma watching her. “She’s hysterical,” Oma says. “Don’t listen.”
But Frieda can’t shut out the voice in her head that repeats the words. That week, the Nazi juggernaut rolls into Czechoslovakia, the country that Hitler said he didn’t want. Unlike the citizens of Austria, the Czechs do not welcome the conquerors but mourn the loss of their country. They are pictured in the newspapers, lining the streets of Prague, weeping while tanks roll past. What would Leopold say if he were here, Frieda wonders. That maybe now, England and France must realize there is no appeasing Hitler? The Jews in Germany have known that for years.
She misses Leopold’s pronouncements on the events of the day. She misses the security of having him on her arm. She misses his freckled face with the intelligent eyes observing the world behind wire-rimmed spectacles. She misses him, she misses him. She dares not think of what’s happened to him, whether he’ll ever come back.
She must build up her courage to visit Frau Sussman. When she arrives at the door of the apartment, she taps lightly, not to frighten them.
“It’s Frieda,” she says quietly to the closed door. “Please let me in.” She glances down the dingy hall, hoping no one else will notice her.
Finally the door opens. Frau Sussman hovers before her, hair unclasped and lying limp to her shoulders, eyes vacant. Hanni stands in the background, angry arms crossed over her chest.
“I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you,” Frieda begins. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was ...”
Frau Sussman moves away from the door without a word, but leaves it open. Frieda follows, her heart shrinking at the sight of the other’s pain. She nods at Hanni, who looks away without acknowledging her. She expected that. Frau Sussman begins mechanically to put the kettle on and to take out teacups and saucers.
“It isn’t necessary,” Frieda says. “I don’t want to bother you.”
“It gives me something to do,” Frau Sussman says, not looking at her.
Hanni disappears into another room. The two women sit in the too-quiet apartment sipping at their teacups, neither saying anything that matters to them. They mumble platitudes about Czechoslovakia rather than mention the two men close to their hearts. It is a safer topic. Finally Frieda ventures into that minefield.
“I wonder what Leopold would say about Czechoslovakia?” she says.
Frau Sussman glares at her, and Frieda is sorry she has said his name.
But then the older woman gazes away into the distance, her eyes misting over. “He had an opinion on everything, didn’t he?”
Frieda notices she has used the past tense.
The life of the Eisenbaums becomes even more circumscribed. It’s not that they care to go swimming or to visit a café, or museum, or the zoo like normal people. They are too busy trying to feed themselves to remember what it was like to live a civilized life. Jews are only allowed to shop for one hour at the end of the day when there is little left in the shops worth buying. That’s just as well, thinks Frieda on her excursion to the greengrocer, since they have little money to spend. The stores have to be within reasonable walking distance because Jews are no longer allowed to take public transportation. No more S-Bahns or streetcars for her. She never thought she’d be nostalgic for the tram. Some former patients beg her to come when a loved one gets sick. They give her what they can in payment, sometimes a meal shared with the family.
One day she gets tired of their meagre diet and tries to buy some cheese in a store. Another customer, a stout woman in a kerchief, inspects her and announces to everyone who can hear that Jews are not allowed to buy cheese. Frieda creeps away, mortified that someone can tell at a glance that she is Jewish. Later, when she has time to reflect on it, she realizes the woman sniffed her out because Frieda was better dressed, though her clothes are growing shabby with time. She also realizes she is lucky that nobody called a policeman.
Oma gives their friendly neighbour, Frau Thaler, money so that she can buy them some items they are forbidden to buy themselves: milk, cottage cheese, beans. If anyone found out and denounced her, she would be sent to a camp, but Frau Thaler never refuses. She begins to say she has a niece visiting, in order to explain the increase in groceries.
Frieda is asked to come to a neighbour’s apartment building to treat a sick child. The older brother, who has come to fetch her, tells her along the way that their family has been summoned to Gestapo headquarters the following day, like so many others who have been rounded up for transport.
When Frieda arrives, the family is in turmoil trying to decide what to take, what they can live without. The child has a fever; the mother wrings her hands while Frieda listens to the little chest.
“How can he travel like this?” the mother cries. “Why are they doing this to us?”
Frieda leaves, shaken. She can do nothing to help. She doesn’t even have any Aspirin.
August 1939
She has begun to recognize the Nazi rhetoric. It has been months since the clamouring for the Sudetenland in Hitler’s speeches, followed by the gift of appeasement from Chamberlain. If the method works, try it again. Less than six months later, the absurd propaganda hit all the papers in preparation for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Vicious subhuman Czechs were attacking the blameless Germans among them, mainly women and children.
Now it is Poland’s turn. The papers bristle with incidents of depraved Poles — they may as well have horns, she thinks — rising up against the honest, decent Germans along their borders. How dare they? How can peace-loving Germans go on without acting? They must protect their people. It is so predictable it is funny, if only Frieda could laugh.
At the beginning of August a light blinks at the end of the tunnel. The Eisenbaums get a letter informing them they have been accepted for immigration to Argentina. They will receive their papers within three weeks. Frieda feels a great sigh escaping her body, while Wolfie shouts with joy at the news. Certainly they are all greatly relieved, but how can they rejoice? They will have to leave without Vati and Leopold. They must also get permission to travel from the German government.
Frieda risks going on the S-Bahn and gets off at the Oranienburgerstrasse, the heart of the old Jewish quarter where impoverished Jews lived among the prostitutes in the seventeenth century. Above the rooftops, in the distance she spots the so-called New Synagogue, an exotic building crowned by a golden cupola and two Moorish towers glowing in the sun. This, she muses, is the danger of ever calling something new — the structure was built around 1860, but the name was never changed. Heading toward Grosse Hamburgerstrasse, she passes the grounds of the little Monbijou Palace, built for Queen Dorothea, mother of Frederick the Great. On her right lies an old Jewish cemetery, a fitting juxtaposition, considering the old folks’ home the nearby building used to house. Even more fitting now that it’s Gestapo headquarters.
She enters the building on Grosse Hamburgerstrasse that she has avoided up till now, heeding the stories of torture in the basement.
Holding the papers in front of her, eyes down, she waits for the man at the reception desk to look up. He is smoking a cigarette since he is only waiting on Jews. She allows herself a split-second glimpse to take in the clipped blond hair and acne scars.
He scowls at her. “Jew?”
She nods.
“Room Four.” Without looking at her, he jerks his head to the right.
She walks down a hall and finds number four. She knocks, but there’s no answer. After a moment, she timidly opens the door. The large room is filled with people standing in a line winding toward a desk where one official is leisurely checking a man’s documents.
“This affidavit has not been stamped properly!” the official retorts.
“But sir, I was just there yesterday. They told me —”
“Next!”
The man slinks away, eyes downcast. Nobody looks at him; in fact, some of the people turn their bodies to avoid him.
Tho
ugh everyone stands close together, they do not engage each other in conversation. Frieda understands. Nobody wants to tell his story; what is the point, since all the stories are the same, with minor variations. The room is so quiet Frieda can hear people breathing. It becomes unbearably hot as she stands in line. She closes her eyes, trying to think of something else: the little park near their old apartment, the linden trees shading the benches. But after two hours she is perspiring. Finally she reaches the desk.
The youngish man looks her over behind wire glasses while taking her papers. She waits for him to find something missing, but instead he snaps, “Come back in two weeks. Door Number Five.”
She hesitates; he has all their documents. “May I please have a receipt?” she murmurs, looking past his face at the wall. Jews are not allowed to look into the eyes of the master race.
Without answering, he scribbles on a sheet of paper and throws it at her.
“Next!”
They don’t have much left of value to pack. They long ago sold their lovely things — their cherry wood dining table, their damask sofa, their oak bedsteads, their carpets, their paintings. The silver and jewellery, even the watches have been confiscated. Anything remotely valuable after that, including their radio, was destroyed on the night of the broken glass, as it has come to be known. A few of Frieda’s precious medical books escaped the flight out the window, and several more were salvageable even after the drop to the ground. She stacks these saved books into a box.
For many months now, each of them has kept a suitcase packed with the bare necessities under the bed, like every Jew in Berlin. One never knows when the Gestapo will come to the door and drag them from their homes.
A few days before Frieda is to pick up their papers from Gestapo headquarters, rumours circle the city: war is brewing. Voices on the street recount instances of Polish aggression. People crowd around newspapers where inexplicable stories abound of Polish mobs attacking German children. Frieda passes two women on the sidewalk. One says to her friend, “Poland has our territory. The Slavs will attack and murder us in our beds! Mark my words, it’s only a matter of time.” The Nazi rhetoric is still working.
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 81
