Danzig Passage

by Bodie Thoene

  She began to babble as she held his hand. All about the wedding. Her family. A priest. Marriage, so that the child would have a father and mother and a name. . . .

  “I would like my parents to meet you, Wolf,” she said. And then she looked into his face. None of her emotion reflected in his eyes. There was only a sort of cold derision for her. She drew back, horrified. She had been talking too much, making plans. He did not like that in her. “Oh, Wolf. I did not mean to—”

  He shook his head and pulled his hand away. “You have thought all this out, have you, Lucy?”

  “I thought . . . I mean—”

  “What have I told you about thinking too much, Lucy? It is for me to think, ja?”

  “Of course, Wolf. I did not mean . . .”

  He was cool and businesslike again. “So I will tell you what we will do. Just outside Vienna the SS has a very nice place for young women like you, and SS officers like me who make little babies for the Führer. It is called a Lebensborn. A very nice place where you will have all your needs met. You will be pampered and well fed and you will have the baby. An SS baby. SS babies are considered worthy of such special treatment. As are mothers of SS babies.”

  “You will be with me, Wolf?”

  “Fathers are forbidden to visit. Such visits often cause difficulties.”

  “But if we are married—”

  “We did not speak of marriage.”

  “But the baby—”

  He jutted his chin up in an impatient gesture to silence her. “We did not speak of marriage,” he said firmly.

  “But—”

  “I told you. No commitments, eh?”

  “But the child must have a . . . father. A name.”

  He smiled patronizingly. “Of course. I am the father. He will have my name.”

  She frowned. “Then we will . . . marry?”

  He eyed her with incredulous amusement. “Lucy, little cow.” He tapped her on the forehead with his finger. “I am married. I have a wife in Prussia. And three children. All girls. We will hope this one is a son.”

  She blinked at him in horror. Married! How could it be? All this time, and he had not told her! All this time, and he had led her to believe. . . .

  “So,” he continued matter-of-factly, “you will have a lovely pampered stay at the Lebensborn. It is a resort, really.”

  She could barely speak. “Our . . . baby.”

  “And when you deliver the child, I will adopt him if it is a boy. He will be raised in Prussia with my other children. A very nice home, I assure you.”

  “But, Wolf—” Tears came in spite of her vow. “I thought . . . I hoped you loved me.” She bit her lip and stared hard at his hands. Such beautiful hands. She loved his hands because they were the most gentle part of him. Would those hands now take her baby away and never touch her again?

  His tone became conciliatory and patronizing. “You will be cared for afterward as well, of course. And if the child is as fine as I expect, then we will continue our relationship. Really, Lucy. I should think you would be relieved. You receive all the pleasure and benefits of being an SS mother and none of the responsibility of raising a child.”

  She did not reply. She thought of all the things he had said to her over the last few months. Everything made sense now. All of it was suddenly clear. Words about the nobility of motherhood for the sake of the Reich. His praise of beauty and perfection. None of that had meant that he loved her! He intended to give her baby to his wife, and all the things she had dreamed of would belong to another woman. How would her family react to such news—her father, and the priest at home?

  “We will raise him in the State Church,” Wolf added. “It does not bother me that you are Catholic. The child will never know the difference.” He checked his watch. “I cannot stay any longer.” He held himself aloof, as though they were speaking of business. He tossed some money on the table for her. “Have something nourishing to eat,” he instructed. “And take a cab home, will you? Tonight I do not want you out walking. There are important demonstrations planned for tonight. You are carrying a baby for our Führer, and so you must be especially careful.”

  He stood and then bent to kiss her cheek. “Heil Hitler,” he said in farewell, and then he left her sitting alone and stunned at Café Sacher.

  3

  Inferno

  Neither the acrid smell of smoke nor the crash of breaking glass could drag the sixteen-year-old boy into reluctant consciousness.

  “Peter!” The voice of his mother came as a hoarse whisper. “Wake up! Peter!” She shook him gently in spite of the terrified urgency of her tone. “Wake up! Get up! Quickly!”

  Peter Wallich opened his eyes to see his mother’s shadow against the wall, backlit by an eerie orange light.

  Was he still dreaming? His gangly body remained tangled in the blankets, binding him like the ropes of his dream. He blinked and then closed his eyes, certain he was dreaming.

  He had been fighting them again, even in his sleep. His arms and legs had lashed out against the skull-faced phantoms dressed in the black uniforms of the Hitler Youth Brigade. They had tied him up and beaten him as they shrieked through wide, grinning mouths, “You cannot hurt us, Jew-pig! We are dead already! Already dead!”

  “Peter!” The voice of his mother penetrated the dark image once again. “Wake up!” The hand on his shoulder was less gentle, the voice impatient. Frightened!

  He opened his eyes to the strange light, fully awake at last. He smelled the smoke. The exploding of glass and the harsh voices in the street below pierced his confusion with a terrible clarity. “Judenschweine! Verrecken! Die, Jew-pigs!”

  Peter sat bold upright. He kicked himself free from the blankets as he grabbed his knickers and pulled them on in one quick movement. Then, his nightshirt half tucked into the waistband, he stood transfixed beside his mother. His eyes stared at the yellow fire that seemed to dance and sway in midair beyond the lacy web of curtains.

  Vienna was burning!

  He looked at his mother. She stared in unblinking horror toward the window. Her long red hair, always neatly pinned up, tumbled down around the shoulders of her dressing gown. At five feet, eight inches, Karin Wallich was as tall as her son. But tonight she seemed very small next to him.

  A woman’s scream echoed up from the street. Peter’s mother winced and clutched his arm. More crashing glass. Now she looked back through the darkened doorway of the bedroom as if she expected the shouts of Nazi voices and the pounding of fists against the front door at any moment. Her wide brown eyes brimmed with tears. In spite of the terrifying sounds emanating up from the streets of Vienna, Peter could only think of how weary his mother looked. Weary and very, very sad.

  She took his hand. “Come to the window, Peter,” she whispered softly, as if she had wakened him to watch the first snow fall.

  He obeyed without speaking. The floor felt cold beneath his bare feet. He reached to pull back the curtain.

  She stopped his hand with her arm and warned him with a look. Then she parted the lace a mere inch to reveal a slice of the inferno that raged beyond the thin pane of glass.

  Putting his eye to the slit, Peter gasped. “The synagogue!”

  Ashes swirled up. Tongues of fire leaped from the broken windows of the synagogue at the end of the block. The great cupola of the building resisted the ring of flames that danced around it. For an instant Peter hoped the city fire department might come and save the shell of the imposing edifice. Then, his mother directed his eyes to the west and then to the east. The horizons of Vienna glowed with a false and horrible dawn.

  “There,” she said. “Do you see? Not just our synagogue, but all over Vienna.” Her voice faltered. She stepped back and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed as Peter continued to watch the fire. So beautiful. So terrible. The burning of the Torah scrolls. The defying of God himself, it seemed.

  As Peter watched, orange sparks showered the cupola, glowing bright as stars. Then the orange
pinpoints deepened in color and spread in broad, hot patches on the surface of the roof. Suddenly a blade of flame pierced through the dome. Then another stretched upward. Within moments the roof collapsed with a tremendous roar, and the fire blazed skyward through the skeletal frame of the building.

  Hearing someone in the room whispering, “Why? Why?” Peter realized with a start that it was his own voice. He turned briefly from the scene to peer with questioning eyes at his mother. Light and shadow played on her pale face. Gold reflected in her hair until it seemed to him that she was also being consumed with flame. He looked down at his own hand. Yes. The inferno touched him as well.

  And then he saw them moving slowly up the narrow street from the synagogue—a dozen of them in the back of an open truck. They were not phantoms, these arrogant Nazi gangsters; they were the stuff this nightmare was made of. They gestured wildly and shouted as the truck approached a Jewish shop. By law, each Jewish business was required to identify itself by displaying the name of the owner painted in large white letters across the window. Not even the most illiterate Nazi could miss such a sign. And so, as they rounded the corner to turn on the street they saw the name J. SINGER stenciled across the window of the lingerie shop.

  The truck squealed to a halt. A clamor of shouts echoed up, ricocheting off the facades of the surrounding buildings. Men tumbled out of the truck, directing curses and obscenities toward the Jewess who owned the once-fashionable shop. Peter thought he saw a movement of the curtain in the window above the store.

  “Frau Singer,” Peter said softly. The gracious old lady was a legend in the neighborhood, a legend of kindness. A widow for twenty-eight years, Frau Singer had supported herself with the lingerie business. When times had become desperate in Vienna, she had held classes in corset making for the young women who hoped somehow to leave Austria. Surely such a trade will be useful in the world beyond the Reich, she reasoned. But as for herself, she chose to remain in Vienna. Bad times cannot last forever. I will wait it out. Even Aryan women are in need of excellent corsets. Good times will return for my little shop.

  But good times had not returned. Stones heaved through the window, destroying even the smallest of Frau Singer’s hopes.

  At the mention of the old woman’s name, Peter’s mother joined him at the window. She held her hand over her mouth as she watched a large stone being handed down from the truck and passed from man to man like a bucket brigade. Then the last fellow hoisted the stone to his shoulder and hefted it through the air into the shop window.

  The name of J. SINGER shattered into a million shards of jagged glass. More obscenities rang out as yet another huge stone was hurled to smash what remained of the shop name. A ragged guillotine of glass hung above the display. Glass fragments slithered down to cover the sidewalk with shimmering crystal.

  Peter glanced back along the route the men had taken to come this far. In their wake it looked as if the dome of the sky had shattered and fallen to earth. The street, the sidewalk, caught the reflection of the raging fire until even the ground seemed to be burning.

  “What did we . . . do . . . to them?” Peter’s mother croaked.

  Peter did not reply. The Nazi answer to that question was a Jewish boy named Grynspan who had mortally wounded a German in Paris. That answer was enough to unleash a wave of fury that swept across all of Hitler’s Reich.

  From the other direction a second group of Storm Troopers moved inexorably toward the first group. Behind them lay the rubble of their hatred. Everywhere along the route, Peter saw men pounding against doors with axe handles and crowbars. Although the lights inside Jewish apartments remained off, the Nazis knew the location of each Jewish residence as well as they seemed to know the stores and businesses.

  From the high angle of the third-story window, the scene took on a surrealistic appearance, as if Peter and his mother had awakened to a vision of judgment and hell. Peter shuddered and looked back through the doorway toward the front door. It was locked and bolted. But Peter knew, as did his mother, locks and bolts meant nothing at all tonight. Nothing if you were Jewish.

  Now the terror began in earnest. More screams. Shouts and demands reverberated through the street.

  “Filthy Jew pig!” A middle-aged man in his night clothes was pushed onto a pile of broken glass. “We Germans have had enough of your treachery!” The toe of a jackboot swung up to catch the man in his face, throwing him back against the wall.

  Three doors down and across the street, the plate glass of a window burst outward. A human body flew screaming through daggers of glass and then fell in a bloody heap on the sidewalk.

  Others, pulled from bed, were herded into the street and beaten. More Storm Troopers came. A fire truck moved slowly past; the fire brigade made no move to put out the fire that consumed the synagogue. Fireman sat languidly on the fenders of their truck and watched to make certain the fire did not spread to Aryan buildings. German-owned shops must be protected, after all.

  A distant explosion rattled the windowpanes. Peter’s eyes widened with horror. Flames and smoke billowed over the rooftops. “It is the Hietzinger Synagogue! They have blown up the Hietzinger!”

  His mother crowded next to him, as if she could not believe it. Her head moved slowly from side to side in disbelief. The most beautiful synagogue in all of Vienna! A series of explosions followed in quick succession, as each of twenty-one synagogues were demolished in turn.

  The Aryan citizens gaped from their windows, some smug and satisfied, others grim. Still others seemed numbed by what they saw.

  It all made perfect sense. The destruction and violence was so organized, so methodical; it had to have been planned long before. Peter stared at the fragments of lettering that identified the corset shop as a Jewish enterprise. The edict ordering labeling of Jewish-owned shops had been carried out just the week before:

  Letters to be stencilied in both Hebrew and German must be clearly visible from the street.

  Frau Singer had smiled and shrugged as the sign painter carefully painted the Hebrew letters she ordered. NO NAZIS NEED APPLY, the sign read in Yiddish.

  “Those hoodlums will not know the difference,” she had chuckled when it was finished.

  Such small displays of defiance and humor had lifted the spirits of the Jewish community in Vienna. Frau Singer’s business had improved the past week.

  But tonight the civilian Nazis of Vienna came like vultures after the front line of destroyers were finished.

  A portly couple from two doors down appeared outside the shattered window of Frau Singer’s shop. Good people. Moral, upright citizens. They reached in through the shattered glass to pull out lingerie from the debris. Underwear. Nightgowns. Stockings. These things they stuffed inside their coats until they looked fatter than ever.

  Peter’s mother gasped indignantly and rapped on the window to admonish them.

  They glanced up furtively, wondering who had seen them looting. Everyone had seen them—everyone who was not being beaten and dragged away. And others were coming to join the plunder.

  “What am I doing?” Peter’s mother cried as she stepped back from the window and pulled Peter away as well. “Those thieves! What is to stop them from coming up here next? Stay away from the window! They might see us and come up here!”

  She put her hand to her forehead in a gesture Peter had seen made by the heroine of a movie before she swooned. He guided his mother to the edge of the bed.

  “We are safe here, Mother.” He tried to reassure her, even though he was uncertain as well. “They would not dare to break into this apartment. Herr Ruger is not Jewish. Why would they think to come here?”

  She nodded, glanced at the front door again and then back toward the eerie light. “Do not go near the window,” she managed to whisper. “They must not see us here. Herr Ruger would also be punished.”

  Herr Ruger was away on a business trip. He had left the key with Peter along with strict instructions on the care and feeding of his two cats,
Mozart and Gert. Tonight, when news of the death of Ernst vom Rath had been broadcast on the radio, Peter had insisted that they all come here to sleep, just in case there might be a demonstration. Another mass arrest, perhaps, like the one in which Peter’s father had been taken.

  Mozart, one of Herr Ruger’s cats, rubbed against Peter’s leg, then jumped onto the windowsill to stare out peacefully upon the carnage below.

  Peter moved to the window again and peered around the golden tabby to their own neighborhood. No smoke; nothing happening there—yet!

  “I should have known,” Mother moaned. “Why didn’t we bring the Fischers here with us?”

  “The Storm Troopers are not there yet, Mother,” Peter reported. “I can sneak out the back, through the alley. I know a short cut. The Nazis are staying on the main streets. I’ll bring the Fischers back.”

  She shook her head in stern disagreement even though she knew he was not asking permission. Since her husband’s arrest two months before, Peter was the man of the house. He was telling her what he was going to do. “Peter, do not go!” she cried as he pulled on his socks and shoes.

  Reaching for his coat and cap, he said confidently, “I know this neighborhood better than anyone. I tell you, they won’t even see me, these Nazis!”

  He was not afraid. A strange sense of adventure filled him, first with excitement and then with guilt. Such a terrible night, he thought. How could he feel anything but anger and sadness? He was grateful, at least, that he was unafraid.

  Peter took one last look at his mother on the edge of the bed. She would be safe here. He did not doubt that.

  “Just keep away from the window,” he warned. “And if Marlene wakes up, don’t let her know what’s going on out there.” He gestured toward the second bedroom where his nine-year-old sister and baby brother were sleeping. Marlene should stay asleep; otherwise she would be gawking out the window before they knew it!

  “Be careful,” his mother managed to say before she turned away, as if trying to hide the emotion. But he had already seen in her eyes that she felt everything he did not yet feel. Fury. Grief. Fear.