Tell Me Who I Am

by Julia Navarro

  At six on the dot, Major Hurley and Lady Victoria arrived. They drank sherry as well. When Lord Richard offered us a second glass I thought that this was not likely to be an evening where much work got done, given that I was already feeling slightly giddy, and I worried about the effect that it would have on my sources of information for them to have a second glass. But I needn’t have worried, Lady Victoria was as upright as always, and Major Hurley did not lose his dour expression for the whole meal.

  I listened patiently as the conversation moved in directions that had nothing to do with the object of the evening. It was not until we were eating dessert that Lady Victoria asked Major Hurley to tell us about Amelia’s journey to Germany. And then it was that he started his story...

  Amelia arrived in Berlin on April 3, 1941. She had prepared her plan meticulously, and decided to go back to stay with Greta and Helmut Keller.

  “I am so happy to have you back in our house, my wife missed you, even with Frank now back in our house. He’s on leave. But women always want to have some feminine presence in their lives, I suppose there are things they only talk about with each other. Greta is no longer in bed any longer, she has been up for a few days, it looks like she’s getting better, thank God.”

  “Thank you so much for letting me stay in your house...”

  Greta Keller was extremely touched by the embroidered handkerchiefs that Amelia had brought as a present.

  Frank, the Kellers’ son, was a strapping young fellow with chestnut hair and blue eyes, who was very interested in Amelia.

  “You’ve grown since I last saw you, I remember when you were a little girl, I saw you a couple of times with your sister Antonietta. I’m sorry about your parents... Don Juan was always very good to our family. Will you be in Berlin long?”

  “I like Berlin. Your father will have told you that I’m doing what I can to save my father and Herr Itzhak’s business... You can’t imagine what Spain is like after the war... There are not many opportunities there . And what about you, will you be here long?”

  “I have a few days’ leave, and then I have to head back to Warsaw.”

  “And we are going to spend some time with my sister in the country. The doctor says that it will be good for me to get out of the city and breathe some fresh air,” Greta said.

  “I don’t want to be a nuisance...”

  “Oh, you won’t be, we wouldn’t have invited you if we’d thought that you would be,” Herr Helmut added.

  Berlin was still living in the euphoria of victory. The German army seemed to be attaining its aims without stretching itself too far, and the city seemed to be somehow isolated from the rest of the war.

  Amelia went to Professor Karl Schatzhauser’s house the day after her arrival in the city. He did not hide his surprise at seeing her.

  “Well, well, well, I didn’t think that you were going to come back. We haven’t heard any news of you or your friend the journalist for some time, and nothing from your British friends either.”

  “I am sorry, I promise that I told them what you asked.”

  “It looks like they don’t take us seriously. They didn’t either when we told them not to carry on appeasing Hitler because it wouldn’t lead anywhere. As you know, Max told Lord Paul James all of this before the war, but without any effect.”

  “Professor, you must know that my only connection with Lord Paul James is via his nephew Albert James. I am sorry I cannot be more useful, especially at this time.”

  “Why have you come back?” the professor asked.

  “I have to tell you the truth, my relationship with Albert has come to an end. That’s why I’m here... I... well, I didn’t know where to go. Maybe it was not a good idea, but... well, I thought that at least here I could be useful. As I told you, my father’s accountant saved some machines from the business and... Well, that brings me a little bit of money, which is vital for my family. But if I can help you as well... I don’t know, in any way at all...”

  “And what can you do? You are not a German and this is not your war. Germany and Spain are allies. Why don’t you just go back to your country?”

  “I cannot, I can’t live there again, not for the moment. I cannot bear my parents’ no longer being there.”

  “Max is in Warsaw, but he may be back in Berlin in a day or so. His wife, Baroness Ludovica, has told a few friends and is organizing a party to welcome him back,” the professor said, looking at Amelia straight in the eyes.

  “And what about Father Müller? And the Kastens?” Amelia asked.

  “They are more active than ever, and working with Pastor Schmidt. Helga and Manfred are very brave and are helping us a great deal. Manfred is a man who is highly respected by his diplomatic colleagues, and they still ask his advice; also, his former position means that a lot of very important doors are open to him. He has a very busy social life, and you cannot imagine how much information he manages to gather at receptions and dinners.”

  “When can I see them?”

  “We will be having a literary evening here in a few days’ time, you know why we’re really meeting. Come along, they’ll be happy to see you too.”

  Amelia’s next visit was to Dorothy and Jan, who were living in a modest apartment on Unter den Linden. Their neighbors were well-off supporters of the Third Reich, who did not seem at all surprised at this couple who had rented an apartment in the area.

  Dorothy was pleased to see Amelia again. It had not been easy for her to pass as the wife of a man who had been a total stranger to her a few months ago. She and Jan had both been widowed and had reached that age where one learns how to control all one’s emotions, but even so, they each felt uncomfortable when the time came to share an apartment, even though they had separate bedrooms.

  Jan was a man of middle height, with light brown hair the same color as his eyes, methodical and cautious, to the extent that he asked Amelia several times if she were sure she had not been followed, and did not appear to be satisfied even when she said several times that she had not been.

  Their code names were “Mother” and “Father,” which was how they were referred to in London.

  “He’s a good man,” Dorothy said of Jan, when he had stepped out of the sitting room for a moment.

  “And very cautious.”

  “Imagine yourself in our situation, we have to be careful, any mistake could cost us our lives, and not just our lives, but yours and those of all the other field agents.”

  “Major Murray did not tell me who the ‘others’ were...”

  “And I won’t tell you either: The less we know about each other, the better; that way the possibility of danger is lessened. If the Gestapo arrest you and torture you then you’ll only be able to tell them about Jan and me, and not the others.”

  “But if they arrest you then it will be worse, as you know the names of all the agents.”

  “If that happens, Amelia, then we won’t live long enough to tell them anything. We have our... well, I suppose they’ve given you a cyanide pill as well. It’s better to die than fall into the hands of the Gestapo.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  “When we accepted this mission we also accepted the possibility of dying. No one is making us do anything we haven’t agreed to do. Our mission is to help win the war, and there are losses in every war, and not just on the front line.”

  Jan came into the room with a tray. On it were a teapot and three cups.

  “It’s not like our tea back home, but you’ll like it,” he said, looking at Amelia.

  “Of course I will... and you shouldn’t have gone to any trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble, and visitors are always a good excuse for having a cup of tea. And now we need to think about protocols for your future visits. It is not a good idea for you to come to see us all that often, except if you have information that cannot wait. The Gestapo have eyes and ears everywhere, and we run an obvious risk every time we send a message.”

  “I know, I
know, Major Murray gave me instructions about how we should work together.”

  “We should be even more careful than he suggested, and we shall need to think about a place where we can meet. I suggest the Prater, no one will notice us there.”

  “The Prater? I don’t know where that is,” Amelia replied.

  “In Mitte, in the Kastanienallee; it’s a very popular beer hall. In the summer it is overflowing with customers, it has excellent sandwiches and there’s also a theater.”

  “Won’t we call attention to ourselves?”

  “There are so many people there that no one will notice us. Of course, we should be discreet, and wear unobtrusive clothing.”

  “I never wear obtrusive clothing,” Amelia said, a little annoyed by Jan’s warning.

  “It’s better like that.”

  Jan explained how they should prepare for their meetings, and what they should do if they thought they were being followed.

  “If you carry a newspaper in your hand it means that no one is following you and we can meet; if you’re not sure, then you should take a white handkerchief and blow your nose. That’s the signal that we should abandon the meeting and get out of the area as soon as possible without attracting attention.”

  Amelia felt very happy that she had met Dorothy again, but even more happy for having got in touch with Professor Schatzhauser’s opposition group. She told herself that she had been lucky so far. They had approved of her report on the Madagascar Plan in London, and had been even more impressed by her work in Italy and the information she had been able to give them about Mussolini’s invasion of Greece. She trusted that her luck would hold, even though she was aware that the longer the war lasted the more danger she would be in.

  Two days later, Amelia went to Professor Karl Schatzhauser’s house once again. She found him in a nervous state, convinced that the Gestapo were monitoring him. He knew that some of his friends had disappeared without trace after the Gestapo had turned up at their houses. Friends who were not left-wing activists or Jews, but just normal people like him, teachers, lawyers, businessmen, who hated seeing Germany under Hitler’s control.

  Helga and Manfred Kasten greeted Amelia warmly, as did Pastor Ludwig Schmidt. Amelia was worried not to see Father Müller.

  “Don’t worry, he will come,” Pastor Schmidt said. “We’ve called this meeting specifically so he can tell us what is happening in Hadamar.”

  “Hadamar? What is Hadamar?” Amelia asked.

  “It’s a lunatic asylum to the northeast of Frankfurt. A friend told us that horrible things were happening there. Father Müller volunteered to go over there and see if it was true what we were being told,” Ludwig Schmidt explained.

  “But what are the horrible things they have said are happening?” Amelia asked.

  “It’s so horrible that it can’t be true, not even Hitler would sink so low. But Father Müller is young and passionate, and his intention, if what he has been told turns out to be right, is to inform the Vatican immediately.”

  Amelia insisted that the pastor tell her what was alleged to be happening there.

  “They say that they are killing the mentally ill, to stop them being a burden on the state.”

  “How horrible!”

  “Yes, it would be euthanizing poor innocents who cannot look after themselves. The person who told us about this has worked there, he said he fell ill because he couldn’t bear to see mad and mentally ill people being put to death. I am still skeptical about what he said, he was a Socialist sympathizer and he might be exaggerating,” Pastor Schmidt said.

  While they were waiting for Father Müller to arrive, Manfred Kasten told them that Max von Schumann would be in Berlin in a week or so. That, at least, was what Baroness Ludovica had told him, and she had said that when Max was back in the city she would like to organize a little dinner to celebrate his return. Ludovica was sad that her husband had been sent to Poland.

  Father Müller arrived at last, he was with a woman, his sister Hanna.

  Amelia thought that he was changed, he was thinner and had a bitter twist to his mouth. He barely paid any attention to her, such was his need to tell everyone what he had seen in Hadamar, where he had spent the last two weeks.

  “Everyone knows what’s going on in the asylum, even the children. I saw a child in the middle of the street fighting with his brother, and saying ‘I’m going to tell everyone you’re mad and then they’ll send you to Hadamar and cook you.’”

  “Come on, tell us what you have seen, step by step,” Pastor Schmidt said, trying to make Father Müller recover a bit of the calm that he seemed to have lost during his trip to Frankfurt.

  “The man who gave us the information was telling us the truth. I went to the address he gave me, his brother’s house; his brother is a gentleman called Heinrich who lives with his wife and their two children. Heinrich works in Hadamar as well, as a nurse. He corroborated what his brother had said in every detail. He said that he would leave too if he could, but that he had a family to maintain and so he was fighting against his scruples in order to stay working there. It was not easy, but he helped me get into the asylum. I turned up pretending to be a friend of his who needed work. The director of the asylum seemed not to trust me so much, but Heinrich told him that our families were good friends and that he had told me all about his work in the asylum. I had to play the most horrible role you can imagine, that of a committed member of the party, sure above all things of the superiority of the Aryan race and the need to get rid of every element that might affect or stain that race. I must have performed the part well, because the director seemed to trust me and said that what he was doing there he was doing for the good of Germany. I suppose that he must have thought it would be good for him to have a few more pairs of hands to help deal with the madmen. The villagers refuse to work there, and don’t like to deal with those who do. When the day was over, Heinrich would go down to the local bar and have a couple of drinks before going home, he said that if he didn’t then he would be unable to sleep. He needed to numb his conscience in order to look his children in the face. In the bar, the other clients avoided us as if we had the plague. Heinrich kept on drinking even so. What I saw in Hadamar... It was horrible!” Father Müller fell silent.

  “Please, make an effort, it is important that you tell us what it is you saw there,” Pastor Schmidt insisted.

  “Do you want to know how many madmen have been through Hadamar? Heinrich thinks it must be about seven or eight thousand. There is not space there for so many people, they bring them from other psychiatric hospitals all over Germany. They come in cattle trucks, as if they were animals. The poor innocents don’t know where it is they are going to end up. When they get there they are taken into the asylum without being given either food or water. If you could only see them... exhausted, nervous, disoriented. They are taken into the basements of the asylum. There are some empty rooms there, without even benches to sit down on. There are tubes that come in through the ceiling. The nurses make them get undressed and then lock them in. The screams are terrifying...”

  Father Müller paused in his narrative. He covered his eyes with his hands as if he were trying to get rid of a horrible image that was floating before his eyes. No one there asked him to carry on speaking, not even Pastor Schmidt chivvied him along. It was Hanna, the priest’s sister, who put her hand on her brother’s shoulder and then stroked his hair and brought him back to himself. Father Müller’s eyes were swimming in tears and he sighed and made a great effort and continued with his terrible tale.

  “There is nothing in these rooms, just a grille in the ceiling. A thick smoke starts to come through the grille while the madmen shout in fear. It is the smoke that chokes them, the smoke that kills them. They have built gas chambers in the basement at Hadamar, and they take all the mentally ill of Germany there to get rid of them. Then they take their bodies to an oven and burn them.”

  “My God! How come nobody says anything, how can the villag
ers allow it?” Amelia exclaimed.

  “Officially nobody knows anything, but it’s no secret for the people who live in the village, the crematorium smoke rises over the roofs of their houses. Heinrich thinks that after they have gotten rid of the mentally ill they will turn their attention to the old and everyone they think of as being useless. He heard the director of the asylum say so.”

  “We have to do something!” Professor Schatzhauser exclaimed. “We can’t let something like this be allowed to happen!”

  “I have told the Archbishop of Limburg, whose diocese includes Hadamar, what I have seen. He had heard rumors, but I was able to confirm them. He has promised to speak to the authorities. He will say that he has heard several reports that have worried him, and he will ask for an official investigation,” Father Müller continued.

  “That may work,” Helga Kasten said.

  “I hope you’re right!” her husband replied.

  “And you... you... What did you do there?” Amelia’s question had a devastating effect on Father Müller. He looked at her with his eyes wide.

  “The director of the asylum didn’t want me to help the other nurses transport the mentally ill people to those sinister rooms. The first week he gave me other things to do, but then he seemed to decide that he trusted me and... well, one day a consignment of the sick arrived, including women and children. Heinrich came to find me and told me that the director had ordered him to tell me that I should help take them to the gas chamber. I couldn’t refuse, and I needed to keep on playing my part, but I couldn’t do it; when we started to push them into the room I started to scream as loudly as they did, as if I were a madman myself. My screams made them even more nervous... Heinrich looked at me in fright and... I screamed that this was a crime, that we should let them leave... Someone hit me on the head with a truncheon and knocked me out. When I woke up, I was in the room where the patients were made to leave their clothes. Heinrich had dragged me there and he told me not to say a word. The director wanted to interrogate me; he had threatened Heinrich with the Gestapo, saying that he had brought an enemy of the Reich into the asylum. Heinrich swore that I was a good Nazi, but just too delicate for this work, and swore and swore again that I was no danger, but the director told him to bring me to his office. He didn’t do it. He sent me out of the asylum through the coal bunker and told me that I couldn’t even go to his house to pick up my belongings. ‘Run away, and I will sort it out. If you are my brother’s friend, then I am sure that the two of you will be able to finish this together. I am not brave enough.’ And I ran away. Yes, I ran away from that accursed place; I sought refuge, I went to see the archbishop, and I am here now thanks to him.”