by Anna Patrick
***
Dear Diary,
I never understood why people kept diaries. It seemed such a waste of time to write about things instead of living them, but now I understand how liberating it is to put your thoughts down on paper and it’s something to do when I’m so big it’s hard to do anything else.
On Hitler’s 50th birthday, they organised huge celebrations in Berlin. I put flags out on the balcony, like everyone, but even though Heinz had got the day off work, we decided not to go into the centre and listened on the radio instead.
When I heard the descriptions of all the pomp and ceremony, my spine tingled. The cheering and applause of all the crowds filled our little home. What a difference to the depression and the poor state of Germany before Hitler came to power. Heinz bought me a book of photographs they published after the event and I enjoyed having it on display and looking through the pages.
Then, suddenly, we were at war. That came as a complete shock. I was only ten when the Great War started but I loved my three older brothers and cried as much as Mama did when the news came of their deaths. Nobody who lived through that terrible time wanted another war, I am sure of that, and I trusted Hitler to use all those troops to keep the peace.
I know it was selfish of me, but I was so glad Heinz was older and in the Gestapo, so there was very little chance of him going to war. I wasn’t sure how Albrecht would be affected in the SS, but at least he wasn’t in the army.
Although we had rationing and things became difficult, I didn’t worry about the war that much, once it started. With three children to bring up I was busy and before long we were getting ready for Christmas. We tried to make it special with a large tree and all the decorations I’d kept from previous years. There were few presents but plenty of love and laughter and we played games and sang carols and had a wonderful time.
The memory of that Christmas kept us going through the following months when it turned so bitterly cold. All the canals and lakes and even the larger rivers froze. Snow is great fun at first, especially when you can take the children sledding and come home to a cosy apartment. But it didn’t take long for the city to grind to a halt. The coal supplies ran out, and they only allowed us to have hot water at the weekends. Thank goodness we had an old electric heater, but we still ended up sleeping in one room to keep warm. ‘We’re camping indoors’ we told the children, and they loved it.
More than the cold, I worried about the lack of food. There was no milk, no potatoes, nothing unless you knew somebody who knew somebody. And it turned out Heinz knew a lot of somebodies.
Every few days there would be a knock at the door and I would find a sack left on the mat. Sometimes there would be a few potatoes, sometimes a cauliflower, usually a container of milk, sometimes coal. I didn’t ask him about the supplies, but when I looked at him at the dinner table, he said ‘People are very kind.’
Much later he told me several people owed him their lives and responded generously to his requests for help. I didn’t ask him for details because I didn’t want to know. I had milk to give the children and food for the table, nothing else mattered.
***
Dear Diary,
I realised today I haven’t had my nightmare once since coming here. I never told anyone about it because it seemed so silly dreaming about a huge and threatening teddy bear. It belonged to Monika and had swastikas for eyes and kept telling me to watch out. I used to wake up in a terrible sweat wondering if I’d said or done something wrong.
Once Monika started school in 1940, life became a minefield. She was so proud of school and wanted to bring home the things she learnt there.
‘Mama, our teacher says we should begin the day the German way.’
‘Don’t you want to say Good Morning and give Mama and Papa a kiss first?’
Poor little Monika looked so confused.
‘Yes, I suppose so, but then we should all have the German greeting.’
‘Well, that sounds a great way to start the day. That’s what we’ll do.’
Monika looked pleased, but the idea appalled me. I’d tried for so long to keep politics out of our little home and now it would not be possible. Imagine having to chant Heil Hitler round the breakfast table.
When I looked at her reading book, my heart sank. It contained pictures of evil looking Jews, nothing as bad as the poster, but still not pleasant. But I didn’t dare say anything. Heinz told me about the denunciations made by school children about their parents. He always gave the parents stern warnings in the cases he investigated, but in others they sent the parents to prison. I would not risk that happening with Monika. I love her with all my heart, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence the nightmare teddy bear belongs to her.
Heinz didn’t bat an eyelid when Monika kissed him, said good morning and then gave a Heil Hitler salute.
‘Heil Hitler’ he replied and then added ‘I don’t think we need the salute at home, do you? Just Heil Hitler will do inside the house.’ His tone was very pleasant, but it didn’t broach any argument and Monika agreed straightaway.
That Sunday we took the children to Muggelsee and while they splashed about in the water we talked. Heinz agreed it wasn’t fair on Monika to have to deal with a different set of values at home and we would have to pretend that teacher knew best. Oh, but it was difficult.
‘My teacher says this, my teacher says that.’ My only response was ‘I’m sure your teacher is right.’ Then I changed the subject or asked her to help me with something. Once or twice she gave me a funny look, but I smiled and told her Hitler would be proud of her. That satisfied her.
Needless to say, I dreaded Carola starting school, but she took all the Hitler business in her stride. Back home she played with her dolls and practised the piano.
Tomas will start school this September. And this year Monika will have to join the League of Young Girls and get a double dose of Hitler this and Hitler that. Where will it all end?
Yet I still keep the portrait of Hitler at home. Mind you, I wouldn’t dare get rid of it now. What would Monika say? At first I displayed it because I was proud of what he was doing for our country, then it became useful as a sign of our allegiance. Now I hate it as much as I hate the red, white and black you see everywhere. Even when you brush your teeth, there’s a swastika on the toothpaste.
That is why I love being back here on the farm, seeing all the natural colours even in winter.
I can’t tell you when I started to doubt Hitler. Lots of things niggled at me, but I didn’t add them up at first.
I didn’t like the way we kept hearing about executions and prison sentences for people found guilty of crimes as silly as malicious gossip or telling a joke that made fun of the Third Reich. Heinz used to say there was more to it than they published but still are we not allowed to laugh anymore?
Perhaps I am making excuses for myself now, but whatever happens in the wider world, home life still carries on when you have small children. I know there was a constant fear of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person or doing the wrong thing, whatever that might be, but there were still plenty of good things to cheer you up and make you feel life wasn’t so bad.
For example, my sadness about the war didn’t stop me enjoying our victories, and I gave a little cheer when Paris fell because it seemed right after everything Germany had suffered because of the Treaty of Versailles. Plus, we had three days’ holiday to celebrate, with crowds cheering and church bells ringing.
Then again, I remember when Hitler returned to Berlin, after visiting the troops in France, a huge carpet of flowers covered the road as he drove to the Reich Chancellery. The radio report described it as a perfumed avenue of greens, reds, blues and yellows. Heinz told me there had been an order not to throw any flowers because of the security risk, but everyone ignored it. That mood of optimism affected everybody.
I think it was not long after England’s a
ir force started their bombing raids on Berlin that I lost faith in the Third Reich. Night after night the air raid alarms sounded and we had to traipse down to the cellar, keeping the children calm and pretending to enjoy the big adventure.
The government told us bombing raids like these were impossible. Goring even claimed if a single bomber reached Berlin, then his name was Meyer. Well, they lied. The damage affected all parts of the city. Fires burning in the night. Families made homeless. People killed.
They lied about the Jews with their posters and suchlike but they always made it clear they didn’t want them living in Germany. This was different, this was lying to the German people and once you know you’ve been lied to, you never trust the same way again.
Because of the bombing they put pressure on families to evacuate their children. Someone from the welfare association interviewed me, but I put them off by telling them I had family in Bavaria and they assumed I would go.
Funny how you can get used to anything, war included. Rationing, air raids, the lack of any new clothes, they all became normal to us. And yet we still had fun and enjoyed ordinary family life.
We’d taken the tram to the Tiergarten the day Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. It was such a beautiful day I couldn’t be downhearted, even though it would mean more losses on the battlefield, but the news upset Heinz.
‘This won’t end well,’ he said.
Later that same year Heinz helped evacuate Jews from the city. It wasn’t his department but everyone had to get involved. I have never seen him so quiet. Each night he put on his favourite record and sat listening to music with his eyes closed. One night he even poured a large glass of schnapps and downed it in one gulp which he never normally did.
When I asked him where they were being evacuated to he said to various places like Litzmannstadt or Warsaw where they had set up camps. When we had the chance to talk, I wanted to ask him more but all he said was ‘The poster worked.’
The next week he was back at the Alex working on a new case and seemed more himself. Not long afterwards, I visited Frau Rose, but she had already gone. When we next talked, I told him how sad I was to lose a friend and I asked if she would be all right.
‘I don’t know, Henni. You’re not encouraged to ask questions and find out.’
Then he told me how a Jew had saved his life in the Great War. Heinz was part of an attack on the enemy when a shell landed near him and blew him off his feet. He lost consciousness in no-man’s-land. When he came to, he saw the danger of his position and so did Isaac Bernstein, another member of his platoon. Despite heavy shelling and snipers and goodness knows what else, Isaac inched his way over and pulled him back down into the safety of their trench. They awarded him the Iron Cross for his bravery under fire.
Then I understood why Heinz had been so upset, not just about the expulsion of the Jews, but about all the propaganda and all the attacks on them. He took every attack personally.
***
Dear Diary,
The problem with writing a diary is that you get carried away. Your thoughts go this way and that and all over the place, but I hope you will forgive me because I am unburdening myself of all these long years of war.
The year 1942 came and went quietly. Carola started school in September, which gave me more time to keep up with Tomas, who always had so much energy.
In February 1943 we found out about our defeat at Stalingrad. As Heinz had predicted it was all ending badly. We had lots of bad news that year but the worst from our point of view was the bombing of Berlin which resulted in huge swathes of the city being turned into rubble.
In June I told Heinz about our fourth Bauer baby. The pregnancy thrilled me because it meant we would be a proper family according to Hitler’s rules, but from the start I didn’t feel right. Tiredness overwhelmed me, I had morning sickness for the first time and my legs swelled up like balloons. At first, I put it down to being older, but something gnawed at me, some instinct that things weren’t going right, not with the pregnancy particularly, but with life in general.
In July we heard about the terrible bombing of Hamburg. That is when my gut instinct of being safe disappeared. I didn’t want to leave Heinz, but a few days later we travelled by train to Munich where Papa picked us up.
Mama spoiled me (still does) and insisted I rest and put my feet up. I used to write to Heinz every week (I had a few letters back but not as many as I wrote him!) and he got away a few times to visit us. At Christmas he came to stay for a whole week and I cried when he told me what had happened to Berlin. In November, hundreds upon hundreds of bombers came over the city night after night and they turned it into a mound of rubble. All the magnificent buildings, all the beautiful streets, all destroyed. Thousands lost their homes and their lives.
Even the zoo, with all those poor animals who couldn’t understand what was going on and must have been absolutely terrified, was bombed to destruction.
I don’t want the children to witness all that destruction, and I don’t want to myself. When Heinz went back to Berlin, I wrote to Albrecht explaining how I felt and asking for his help. Every day I wait for a response but so far nothing.
***
Dear Diary,
By the middle of February my enormous tummy made me waddle and kept me from sleeping. When I had my routine check-up at the doctor’s, he wanted me to go to the hospital. His calm and matter-of-fact manner lulled me into a false sense of security.
That changed as soon as the obstetrician examined me. He listened to the baby’s heart, called in another colleague, then a third, so that I was frantic by the time they finished and kept asking if the baby was all right. The baby’s heartbeat worried them and they wanted me to have a caesarean. I was in a complete panic, but what could I do? Minutes later they wheeled me into surgery.
When I came round, Mama sat by my bed.
‘What’s happened? Where’s the baby? Is it all right?’
Mama told me it was a girl, and she was being well looked after by the nurses.
‘I want to see her, Mama.’
‘Now, Henni, you’ve had a big operation, maybe now isn’t the best time.’
‘Not the best time? What are you talking about? I need to see my baby.’
I became hysterical. The first thing any mother wants is to see her baby. Surely my mother, of all people, understood that? Why were they stopping me? The obstetrician came in at that point and I begged him to let me see my baby. He said that wouldn’t be wise, but when I started to get out of bed to go in search of her, he changed his mind and said he would agree on condition I stayed in bed.
‘Perhaps I should warn you…’
‘What?’
‘That things are not as they should be.’
‘What do you mean?’
Mama answered for the doctor. ‘He means she’s mongoloid, Henni.’
‘I don’t care. I still want to see her and hold her.’
They brought her then, and she was beautiful. Lots of dark hair and a cute little nose and when she opened her eyes, I fell completely in love with her.
The doctor explained his concerns for her heart, but I couldn’t take it in. She seemed fine lying in my arms content. They kept trying to reassure me she wasn’t in any pain. Well, I could see that for myself. Why were they making such a fuss?
Mama suggested calling the Pastor, and I agreed to make her happy.
In the early evening he came and baptised Lisle. Heinz and I had already discussed names: Lisle for a girl and Otto for a boy. I was still vaguely irritated by the whole thing.
I insisted they brought me her cot, so that Lisle slept beside me and they thought better of opposing my wishes.
Mama assured me they had sent a telegram to Heinz and that he would be at my side as soon as humanly possible.
The doctor gave me an injection to assist with something
or other, but everything went hazy so quickly that I’m sure he gave me something to knock me out.
When I woke the next day I was so groggy I could hardly work out where I was or what had happened. A nurse sat knitting.
‘Are you knitting clothes for my baby?’ I said and then I remembered.
‘Where is Lisle? Where is my baby?’
‘With the doctor, I’ll get her.’
A few minutes later the doctor walked in.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Bauer, your daughter didn’t survive. The heart disease was more serious than we thought and she died this morning at 9.35am.’
I screamed long and loud. The expression on the nurse’s face made me scream all the more. The doctor called her over and she held me down while they gave me another injection.
When I woke up again, Heinz was by my side. I cried and cried while he held me. Eventually the tears dried up, and I asked Heinz if he had seen her and he said, yes, and that she looked very peaceful and very beautiful. I’m so glad he said that because I needed to know she was beautiful in his eyes and mine.
Heinz made all the arrangements for her funeral while I lay in hospital so grief stricken I barely spoke. Even when they stopped giving me sedatives, my limbs weighed so heavy I thought I would never walk again.
I only began to get better when Heinz brought the children in. Monika was so serious and held my hand, Carola got straight on the bed and hugged me, while Tomas stood hand in hand with Heinz, his eyes full of tears, biting his lower lip.
The children gave me the strength to move forward. Lisle is always in my heart, but I realised they needed me and I had to try for their sake. When Heinz returned that night without them, I walked to the bathroom with his help and slowly I regained my strength.
***
Dear Diary,
I still don’t know what to think about all this. Are they telling me the truth or am I just believing what I want to believe? When I returned to the hospital to have my stitches taken out, I saw a different doctor, but the same nurse assisted him. I recognised her straightaway. She was a hard-looking woman, and I remembered her expression when they told me Lisle was dead. Triumphant. There is no other word for it. How can you look triumphant when a baby has died, and a mother is in despair?
