Secrets She Kept

by Cathy Gohlke

“For the entire day?”

  “For as long as you’re in Berlin, as often as you like.”

  “Just like that. I can’t believe it. This must be costing Grandfather a fortune.”

  “I believe he can afford it.”

  Why do I hear ulterior motives behind every statement? I’ve got to stop this. I leaned back against the soft leather seat and breathed. “The general tour sounds wonderful.”

  Unter den Linden, Humboldt University, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and Charlottenburg Palace topped Carl’s choices for the day—a long and exhausting day that focused on the accomplishments of the German people. I wanted to ask about the Berlin Wall, but there was no time or space, and I didn’t want to interrupt his obviously prepared tour.

  By midafternoon I was weary, but grateful for my companionable guide. “I must say it’s so good to speak comfortably in English. I haven’t needed my dictionary once today.”

  Carl laughed. He didn’t look tired in the least. “You give me good practice, Fräulein. Most of my clients are German, of course. It’s a pleasure to use my English.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my asking . . .” I hesitated.

  “Ask.”

  “You mentioned having attended a fine boarding school in Britain, and therefore I assume university.”

  “So, why am I driving for hire? Is that your question?”

  “Yes, not that it’s any of my business.”

  “It’s not so bad a job, and it gives me flexibility to do other things, to research other projects of interest to me. It’s temporary, until I find something better here . . . or elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere? You’re thinking of emigrating—to England?”

  He smiled indulgently, but without condescension, and winked. “I think of many things.”

  He bantered as flirtatiously as I could have wished, but explained no further. At the coffee hour Carl introduced me to the most amazing apple strudel smothered in custard sauce I’d ever eaten. We laughed and talked as we sat in a cafe, and part of me wanted the day to wear into evening right there. But it brought me no closer to understanding my mother or learning who my father was, the purpose of my trip.

  I can’t ask Herr Eberhardt to translate my questions. They’re entirely too personal, for me and surely for Grandfather. Grandfather must be so anxious to know what became of his daughter, and I need to understand why she left Germany, why she left him.

  “Carl,” I interrupted our banter once we’d settled into the car, “I need to learn to speak German.”

  He smiled into the rearview mirror. “On your first day? Americans are so . . . industrious.”

  “My grandfather speaks no English, and I really want to get to know him. Learning German is the only way I can imagine doing that.”

  I couldn’t see Carl’s mouth in the rearview mirror, but the creases in his forehead deepened.

  Does he think I’m incapable of learning a language? “I took French in school and picked it up quite easily. I’m sure I can learn; I just need to find a teacher. Can you help me?”

  “You expect to stay, then?”

  “For a while. I’ve taken a leave of absence to come here, but I’ll have to get back to my job at home soon. My grandfather is all the family I have on my mother’s side now, you see—at least I think he is. I need to be able to talk with him.”

  “You are certain he speaks no English, Fräulein?”

  “Practically none. Why?”

  He hesitated, shifting in his seat. “It is common for Germans to study English.”

  “Well, now, perhaps.” I hoped I sounded knowledgeable. “But Grandfather’s an old man—old school. I doubt he would have had that opportunity.”

  Carl’s glance into the rearview mirror undermined my confidence.

  “Perhaps your grandfather could hire a tutor for you.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s possible. But I’d really like to work more independently, to do this on my own.”

  He glanced into the mirror again, taking my measure. His shoulders squared as he stared at the road ahead. I was certain he was about to say something but stopped, and we drove into the lowering dusk in silence.

  10

  LIESELOTTE SOMMER

  JUNE 1940–JULY 1941

  Mein Vater courted Fräulein Hilde all that summer and into the fall. I made certain to keep from sight as much as possible—and, I prayed, from their minds.

  I turned fifteen; only the Kirchmanns noticed. By then—October of 1940—there was no sugar to be had for anything so frivolous as cakes. It always puzzled me why they demanded our sugar to win the war. Couldn’t soldiers have spared a little for a Fräulein’s birthday Kuchen?

  Sugar was not the only, or most important, thing gone. Simplicity and innocence had disappeared—in our culture and in our church. I questioned everything—the state’s insistence that we blindly obey the Führer, the Confessing Church’s insistence that we give our allegiance first and only to Jesus Christ, and my moral obligations to my family, who seemed as fiery and radical as the brownshirts on the street.

  I wanted the assurance that enveloped Frau Kirchmann, that radiated peace in her soul and through her eyes, her smile. But I knew that came from her relationship with Jesus, and I was still uncertain about giving my life to Him. I’d learned that I must rely on myself, trust only myself.

  With Vater swooning like a teenager and Rudy blustering his manhood and Lukas pretending to be half-crazy for the Führer through the weekdays and carrying out his furtive exploits to help Jews by night, I felt my world stood in limbo—inside out and upside down.

  Marta and I ran or bicycled as couriers, black market ration cards and forged identity papers wrapped in our school satchels or slipped into our kneesocks after evening BDM meetings. Sometimes I bicycled outside the city in the dark to fetch milk or butter or potatoes from a farmer, then dropped them in a ditch for the next runner to pick up and deliver to a household hiding Jews in their attic or cellar or in a secret room behind the false wall of a kitchen pantry.

  How many people helped in similar work, I’ve no idea, but the missions gave me purpose, and the danger raced my blood.

  Late at night, I slipped through our kitchen window, left unlocked. I don’t think Rudy or Vater even knew I was not asleep in my bed.

  Vater believed I spent long afternoons and evenings with the BDM, helping with the choirs that sang for wounded soldiers or assisting nurses in the hospitals. He believed that in the interim I absorbed all the appropriate and needful things to become a good German Hausfrau, and mother to lots of little Aryan babies for the Reich. Let him think that. I learned those housewifely skills from Frau Kirchmann with pleasure, but did not expect to need them for years. As far as I was concerned, life could go on like this forever . . . at least until the war ended.

  But in April, our troops marched into Yugoslavia and Greece; in June, the Soviet Union. Lukas turned eighteen. I held my breath. He’d soon be sent for compulsory military training—there was no avoiding that. By all rights he should join the Wehrmacht.

  By some miracle—or miraculous connection—his father convinced the authorities that Lukas assisted him in essential war work. But his birthday party—a picnic luncheon held in the Kirchmanns’ back garden with Rudy and me—should not have been the place to make that announcement.

  “You’re not signing up?” Rudy said in disbelief. “All our unit is signing—this summer. I will next month. The day I turn eighteen you’ll find me on the doorstep of—”

  “There are more things to do for Germany besides marching and crowing.” I shoved the plate of cold cuts toward my brother. I would not stand for Rudy’s condescension toward Lukas.

  “Lieselotte—” Frau Kirchmann reached for my arm.

  “So, now you hide behind my sister’s skirts?”

  “I hide behind no one,” Lukas countered. “But Lieselotte is right—there are many spokes required to turn the wheel. Supplier contracts are essential to the war e
ffort. I’ve been trained to help my father in this as much as I’ve been trained to march in the Hitler Youth.”

  “Old men, like your father and mine, do those jobs—desk jobs, talking jobs. Young men, strong and in their prime—you, me—we’re needed at the front. You will be branded a coward!”

  “Is that what you think of me, Rudy? That I am a coward?” Now Lukas condescended, but it was clear Rudy’s words cut him.

  We all looked to Rudy. I felt my brother’s turmoil. Lukas had been his friend since childhood. His family was our family now.

  “It’s a question of bravery—and obeying orders. We are trained to obey orders. You know this. There is honor in—”

  Herr Kirchmann interrupted quietly, “There is honor in work well done. Remember that Lukas’s work has been approved by authorities with a broader view of the war effort than yours or mine.”

  “And who are these ‘authorities’?” Rudy challenged.

  I cringed inside but kept my spine straight. Herr Kirchmann was a gentleman and a gentle man, but he brooked no disrespect.

  He waited, perhaps half a minute, until all eyes were on him and Rudy shifted in his seat, a slight squirm beneath Herr Kirchmann’s stare. “I do not believe I need explain that to you, Rudy. As you know, questioning orders that come from above is verboten. Obedience, as you say, is a noble thing.”

  It was a soft reprimand, but a reprimand. Something Rudy never took kindly to.

  Frau Kirchmann tried to lighten the brooding. “Marta, pass the bread. Rudy, won’t you have some? Take two slices! I bought it fresh, this morning—the last loaf the baker pulled from his oven, saved especially for me, for our party.”

  But the day had gone sour. I was not so much angry at Rudy as afraid of him. He was crazy for fighting—ready to fight and die for his beloved Führer—and could not understand anyone who thought otherwise. Even more than not understanding, he’d grown suspicious of almost everyone. The Hitler Youth taught him that—as the BDM tried to teach me.

  Rudy had already reported our neighbors, the Stoltzfus couple, for helping a beggar who came to their door—a man they knew from before the time all Jewish businesses were liquidated. Thousands had lost everything.

  The man had only come for a meal, but Rudy reported it as if the Stoltzfuses were harboring fugitives—criminals. And the man was just that, according to the new laws of the Reich. He should have come forward for not paying the exorbitant taxes placed upon Jews—taxes he couldn’t pay—not gone into hiding and begging. But that didn’t matter. Both he and the Stoltzfuses were taken away.

  Rudy expressed great pride for his part in the witch hunt. And he searched for witches everywhere. What might that mean for Lukas? For the Kirchmanns? What might it mean for me if he even suspected what I was doing for the “war effort”?

  The next morning a white feather appeared on the Kirchmanns’ doormat. The next week Marta told me the family had woken to whispering, arguing, in their front garden in the dead of night. With lights verboten because of the blackouts, they saw no one. In the morning they discovered a white feather painted across their front door, initials of the perpetrators proudly scribbled in ink across its feathers. The “R. S.” in the lower left corner fit only one young man I knew.

  But it was the ever-present Dr. Peterson who frightened me most. In July, just after Rudy’s eighteenth birthday, he hosted a dinner in his home, in Rudy’s honor. Vater and Fräulein Hilde attended. I was ordered to be there, dressed well and on my best behavior. Rudy had enlisted that morning and appeared, resplendent, in his new uniform.

  No one mentioned that Dr. Peterson had also invited two young Nazi officers, or that they would be seated across from me, each vying for my attention. Both handsome and well mannered, one I privately dubbed Mustache and the other Green Eyes.

  Dr. Peterson rose. “A toast to Private Rudolph Sommer: may he serve long and well in the Führer’s army—for the Führer and the Fatherland!”

  Glasses raised all round. “For the Führer and the Fatherland!” We drank, though the champagne burned my throat. As much as I wanted Rudy gone, he was my brother. I didn’t want him at the front, fighting, perhaps dying—for the Führer or the Fatherland or anyone.

  “Pardon me, Fräulein, but your enthusiasm seems lacking,” Mustache whispered conspiratorially across the table. “You must not be concerned for your brother’s safety. He is fighting with the strongest army in the world. His training will serve him well.”

  I considered picking nits from my scalp, if only I had some.

  Green Eyes refused to be outdone. “You will certainly miss your brother’s companionship and protection. I hope you will allow me to call upon you on occasion, to accompany you, perhaps to dinner or the theatre, to brighten these first weeks of his absence.”

  I thought I might throw up, at least say something sarcastic, but I glimpsed Vater’s head turn in my direction and Dr. Peterson’s piercing gaze.

  “You are most kind—both of you. I know you intend to comfort me. But you misunderstand. I’m very proud of Rudy. I know he will do well at anything he undertakes, and so must I. You all depend on the girls and women of Germany to stand strong. I promise you I will do so.”

  They both looked taken aback by my bold assertion and newfound confidence. Dr. Peterson drew a breath. Father suppressed a scowl. But the dinner proceeded and I busied myself making small talk with the half-deaf uncle of Fräulein Hilde on my right.

  After the fruit and cheese, once the compotes of candy and nuts were passed, the ladies prepared to retire to a separate drawing room for demitasse. Dr. Peterson pulled me aside. “I commend you, Lieselotte. You comported yourself well this evening. Perhaps we can interest you in someone of higher rank next time.”

  “I was simply being polite, Herr Doktor. I’m not interested in—”

  “Lieselotte is besotted with a childhood flame,” Vater interrupted. I’d not seen him approach. “It dims her view of the better opportunities before her.”

  “Then perhaps it’s time to leave the things of childhood behind.”

  The hairs rose on the back of my neck. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “No? Then let me help you understand. Lukas Kirchmann is a nobody, a nothing. Even his ‘work’ is suspect. In order for your father to continue to rise within the Party, in order for him to find favor with such a woman as Hilde von Loewe, he must be favorably noticed. His family must be noticed, must be seen as strong supporters of the Führer and the Reich.

  “Now, Rudy has done his part. He has performed admirably within the Hitler Youth and enlisted at first opportunity. He is officer material, and that will soon be made clear. But you, Lieselotte, have a different field of battle.”

  “I’m a member of the BDM—as befits my age.” I felt I might drown. “I’m not even sixteen.”

  “But nearly, and the last year has served you well.” I hated how his eyes roved over my chest. “Rather than enter a program you might not naturally choose, you have the opportunity to catch the eye of an officer of rank. If you prefer someone older than those you’ve seen tonight, I know of several—”

  “Nein! I mean, I’m not ready.” But I was ready to burst into tears. Oh, Lukas, where are you?

  “Then it is time to prepare yourself.”

  “Lukas and I have—we have an understanding.” It wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be true. More time. I needed more time to make Lukas see—see me.

  “An understanding is not a marriage,” Vater broke in.

  “He works for the war effort,” I begged. “His mother took care of Mutti—to the end.”

  “His family’s part of that Confessing Church,” Dr. Peterson persisted, directing his speech to Vater, as if I no longer stood there. “A number of their pastors have already been arrested. No matter. It won’t be long before the whole thing is disbanded—blows up. You want no connection with them, Wolfgang.”

  11

  HANNAH STERLING

  JANUARY 1973


  It was nearly five when Carl returned me to Grandfather’s. He stood, cordial, as he waited for Frau Winkler to open the door—as cordial as he’d been all day, but preoccupied. He spoke briefly in German to Frau Winkler, who looked over her shoulder and into the hallway, nodding with understanding. Carl tipped his hat to me before leaving.

  I followed Frau Winkler toward the kitchen.

  “Dinner is at seven.”

  “Thank you. I just wondered if I might make a cup of tea, please. I’m frozen to the bone.”

  She filled the kettle and set it on the burner, then pulled a canister from a high shelf and measured out a teaspoon of leaves.

  I perched on the stool beside her counter, understanding I was not welcome to “make myself at home.” “I’m so glad you use real leaves. I don’t much care for tea bags.”

  She raised her brows, this time in mock amusement.

  “Have you worked for Grandfather long, Frau Winkler?”

  She visibly stiffened, as if I’d questioned her regarding something personal, but after a moment’s hesitation answered, “Five years, nearly six.”

  “You must know him very well.” Hope rose. I’d no idea she’d been there so long the way Herr Eberhardt had spoken. “I want to get to know him too, but the language is such a barrier. Perhaps you could help me.”

  “Help you? What do you mean?”

  “Tell me what you know about him, what he likes, what he’s done in life, anything you know about his family—my family, really. Does he ever speak of my mother? Did she have siblings—does she? What happened to Grandmother? I saw her picture—at least I suppose it was her picture—in Mama’s room.”

  They seemed like such normal questions, but Frau Winkler fumbled her spooning of the tea into the pot and looked as if I’d asked her to steal across the Berlin Wall. She didn’t look at me, but busied herself scooping up the spilled tea.

  “Perhaps Grandfather told you. My mother recently passed—the middle of September, actually. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t know Mama very well, never understood her. I didn’t even know until recently that I have a grandfather, let alone one who lives in Germany. So, you see, I really know nothing about my own family. I’m anxious to learn all I can.”