Secrets She Kept

by Cathy Gohlke

  “Fräulein Sterling?” Geoffrey stood at the door.

  It took me a moment to remember who he was or why he was here. Grandfather.

  “I wanted to let you know that Herr Sommer has asked for you.”

  “Asked for me?”

  “Ja, he started to speak yesterday—moans, really. But today he asked for you by name.”

  Carl pressed my hand.

  “He is sleeping now, but perhaps tomorrow—in the morning?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Perhaps you can let Fräulein Sterling know in the morning how he’s doing,” Carl suggested quietly.

  Geoffrey hesitated. “Ja, I will do that.” He turned to go, but stopped and turned again. “There is a man who has come twice to the door, asking for Herr Sommer. The first time I did not answer—as you instructed. But the second, he beat on the door, demanding.”

  “Dr. Peterson?”

  “Ja, that is his name.”

  “You let him in?”

  “Nein. Your instructions were clear. But I thought you should know I opened the upstairs window and told him to go away. The neighbor across the street had come out onto her walk to watch. I thought she might telephone the Polizei.”

  “Thank you, Geoffrey. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Ja, well, gute Nacht, then.”

  “Gute Nacht.”

  I pulled my hand from Carl’s. “If he’s able to say my name, that means he’ll regain his speech.”

  “He can’t hurt you. You must remember that.”

  I leaned my head back. “He’s hurt so many.” I pushed the heels of my palms into my eyes. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “You’ve already met with two survivors, and you’ve set in motion contact with those in the US. Your attorney has written them.”

  Nausea washed over me. “Ward Beecham can handle that. He doesn’t need me.”

  “Then perhaps it is time to do what you came for, to discover what you need to know. If Herr Sommer remembers your name, he most likely remembers where he was and what he was doing when he collapsed. He must realize you’ve put the pieces together. You hold the cards. That gives you leverage.”

  “He’s dying. Anything I ask him could bring on—”

  “Ja, he’s dying, so there may not be much time. How important is the truth to you?”

  I considered that. Could I go home knowing only what I knew? I pulled my hands away from my face. “I must know what happened to Mama and what made her the mother I knew.”

  “Then ask, Hannah. Before it is too late, ask!”

  When I reached Grandfather’s door the next morning, my fledgling confidence wavered. Carl had made it sound so simple the night before. His urgings reminded me of a Scripture I’d learned in Sunday school as a child: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

  I needed to ask now, before Grandfather died, or before he regained strength enough to refuse me. I wanted to follow the trail—to seek and find my mother. I wanted to be courageous, to knock on the doors of the past and have them opened to me, to reveal the truth. But what I most wanted was a happy ending to it all—a happy ending I could in no way imagine. And if the ending should not be happy, what then?

  It was the memory of those he’d used and abused—those whose lives he’d betrayed and thrown to their deaths—and the need to understand my mother and what happened to her that carried me through that door.

  The minute I entered, his eyes found me. I couldn’t keep the heat from my face or disguise my fury.

  He blinked, and I knew he knew.

  “G-Geoffrey,” he whispered. “L-leave us.” His words were deliberate, with a slight slur, but clear enough.

  Geoffrey looked to me for confirmation. I nodded, and he slipped from the room.

  “You f-found . . .”

  “Everything. The ledger, in all its detail, and your treasure room.”

  I couldn’t read his face. Anger? Defiance? Humiliation? Defeat?

  “I want to know about my mother. What happened to her, and who is my father? What did you do to them?”

  He closed his eyes.

  “You do n-not understand.”

  “No, I don’t. So explain to me why you sold human beings to a death machine.”

  “We did not kn-know.”

  “I don’t believe that. You were a member of the Nazi Party. How could you of all people not know?”

  “Beginning—” He shook his head.

  “You’re saying that in the beginning, you didn’t know that they would be tortured and starved and killed?”

  “We did n-not know.”

  “But later—the dates in the ledger kept on until 1944. By then you must have known.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “There’s no way to justify what you did, no way to reconcile your conniving, your complicity in murder, with human decency.”

  He lay in bed, his eyes watching me as if he stood on trial in the middle of a courtroom—like a replay of the Nuremberg trials. I felt powerful in a way I’d never felt, as if I could rake him over the coals and pronounce judgment on his evil heart—judge and jury rolled into one. But even that did not feel clean. Who am I to judge? “Why? Why did you do it?”

  He turned his head away.

  “My mother was part of the resistance. I know now that you preyed upon people she’d been helping. And she discovered that, didn’t she?”

  He didn’t speak for the longest time and it was all I could do not to shake him, to thrash him. At last he whispered, “Jew lovers.”

  “What ‘Jew lovers’? The Confessing Church members? The Kirchmanns?”

  “Pretending they we-were n-not.”

  “You said Frau Kirchmann nursed Grossmutter. And Mama loved Lukas Kirchmann—they were engaged. You gave them a party, gave them your blessing. What happened that you sold them out? Why?”

  “Jews! She was part Je-Je—”

  “You sold your daughter’s fiancé and his family away because they were partly Jewish?”

  He closed his eyes, acquiescing.

  “Mama must have hated you for that. Is that why she left you—why she ran away? Or did she run away? Was she arrested with them? What happened to Mama? I need to know!” I wanted to shake him.

  But Grandfather turned his face to the wall and did not speak.

  “She did not run away—not exactly.”

  I whipped around to find Dr. Peterson standing in Grandfather’s bedroom doorway. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your good friend Geoffrey stepped out for a cigarette. He failed to lock the door. In any case, you’ve no right to keep me from my client. We have a great deal to discuss, do we not, Wolfgang?”

  Grandfather’s eyes widened in vulnerability. I hated Dr. Peterson and his smug, nearly licentious stare, but I would not back down now. “What do you mean she didn’t run away?”

  “Ah, Wolfgang, you have not told her?”

  Grandfather looked like a squirrel in a sharp-fanged steel trap.

  Dr. Peterson wagged his finger at Grandfather, as if scolding a small child. “I warned you not to alter our arrangement, my friend. Bringing Fräulein Sterling into our partnership . . .” He shook his head. “Not a wise plan. Though it does increase our leverage with her.”

  He glared at me in a proprietary way. My skin crawled.

  “Under the circumstances, I believe it will do her good to know the truth.”

  Grandfather attempted to reach out for Dr. Peterson. He nearly fell out of bed, but I caught his arm and helped him back.

  “Your mother was quite the advocate for the downtrodden, Fräulein Sterling. But you would learn that on your own, eventually. So I’m not telling anything out of school, am I, Wolfgang?” He smiled unpleasantly. “Unfortunately, her sympathies were misguided by her infatuation—for at that age, we can hardly call it love—with the Kirchmann boy. You must not blame your Grossvater, Fräulein. We were
all taken in by them.”

  Dr. Peterson laid his hat aside and pulled the scarf from his throat. “We all believed the Kirchmanns Aryans of the finest order. But Frau Kirchmann was the daughter of a Jewess, which meant she was a Mischling, a half-breed. I believe I was first to suspect.” He shrugged. “A coincidence that the truth came to light the night of Lukas and Lieselotte’s engagement party. Is that not correct, Wolfgang?”

  “You denounced the family at Mama’s engagement party?”

  “Nein, nein—not I, and not then. I simply brought my suspicions to the attention of your Grossvater. He set in motion all the rest.”

  “Grandfather?”

  “Sh-she b-broke the law.”

  “Because she was in love?”

  “You musn’t simplify this, Fräulein Sterling,” Peterson interrupted. “Your mother stole food and ration books, dealt shrewdly in the black market—for quite some time. Because she was complicit in forging documents and helping Jews steal funds from the Reich, she deserved detainment, at the very least. It would have been illegal not to report her.”

  “My mother stole funds from the Reich?”

  “You may know that Jews were allowed to leave the country possessing a certain amount of funds—anything more drained crucial assets belonging to the Reich. Helping them to leave with more than the law allowed was tantamount to stealing. It was stealing.”

  “Their own money.”

  “We simply made sure the Reich received its due—and we didn’t do badly ourselves. Wolfgang and I were quite a team in those days, weren’t we, my friend?”

  Grandfather paled.

  “You mean you followed my mother and used her kindness to trick people into trusting you.”

  Peterson removed his coat. “That is not exactly how I would describe it, but yes, in essence. Your mother . . .” He smiled again, that oily smile. “Quite a pretty girl, young, naive. Her infatuation with Lukas Kirchmann blinded her. As long as she led us to criminals thwarting the Reich, she was quite useful.”

  “You mean as long as you could use her relationships to exploit innocent people.”

  “The Jews were not innocent, Fräulein. You speak as if they were human! They were vermin and lawbreakers. Jews brought on the degradation of Germany—our betrayal and loss of the Great War, that hateful, spiteful, humiliating Treaty of Versailles! They caused our economic and moral downfall! It is something you Americans cannot grasp. Though I daresay if the shoe were placed on the other foot—if America could rid herself of those races who’ve become a burden on your society, then . . . well, you would see that we are not the only ones with vision. We were simply the only ones with a Führer made of steel.”

  His prejudices sickened me. “What happened in 1944 to Mama? What happened that you stopped selling Jews?”

  “Selling Jews?” Dr. Peterson winced. “How mercenary you make it sound. It was Wolfgang who stopped the process. Shall I tell her how?”

  Grandfather’s breathing labored. “I f-forbade the marriage,” he stuttered. “It was illegal!”

  “However, that did not stop her, did it, my friend?”

  “They married? Lukas Kirchmann and Mama married?”

  “Verboten! It was f-forbidden!” Grandfather’s eyes flamed.

  “But they married anyway; is that what you’re telling me?” It was the missing piece in my puzzle. Mama didn’t just pretend she was a Kirchmann—she was a Kirchmann. Then that may mean . . .

  “You must understand, Fräulein, that such a marriage was not only illegal, it was ruinous—to Wolfgang’s reputation, to his status within the Reich, even to his own prospects of marriage at the time.”

  The images played through my mind like a film. “You denounced her. You denounced your own daughter?”

  “Nein!” Grandfather barked. “The K-Kirchmanns—not Lieselotte. I never in-in-t-tended . . .” His words grew indecipherable.

  “Tell her the truth, Wolfgang. She is now our ‘partner in crime.’ It is on her head as well as ours.”

  But Grandfather closed his eyes, turning away.

  “Then allow me,” Peterson continued. “For her own good, your Grossvater did all he could to prevent the marriage. But Lieselotte was headstrong, a willful girl. She ran away to the Kirchmanns. One of those so-called pastors of their Confessing Church married them.” He spat the words, then shrugged. “The only logical solution: have the family disappear in the way others had gone.”

  “You had them arrested? You tricked them out of their money and had them arrested?” I had to say the words, needed Grandfather’s confirmation to be certain. “And Mama—she was the fourth Kirchmann.”

  “I d-didn’t know,” Grandfather gasped. “N-not then.”

  “The youngest Kirchmann—Marta—was not there that day. Mama was taken in her place. Taken where?” I stared at Grandfather in horror, in wonder that a man could do such a thing. “Where was she taken?”

  “One of the camps, of course.” Peterson all but smirked.

  “But when you realized, you got her out of prison—away from the camps. Didn’t you? Grandfather?” Grandfather didn’t answer. I shook him, but he was limp, simply staring at me. “Tell me you got Mama out!”

  “Such difficult times,” Peterson continued. “Such negative publicity . . . To carry the shame of such a daughter . . . What could he do? What could any of us do?”

  I pulled away, sat down on the chair by the bed, unable to think, trying only to format the onslaught of information to my brain. Trying to picture my mother as a young woman, torn from her new husband, from the only family who loved her, and taken to a camp, a concentration camp. Mama . . . oh, Mama.

  “Better to forget her.”

  “Where? Where did they take her?”

  “I believe the women were eventually taken to Ravensbrück—at least for a time. Isn’t that right, Wolfgang? Or was it Dachau? I really can’t remember—so long ago. Prisoners moved here and there as required.”

  What did they do to you, Mama? “The Kirchmanns?”

  Dr. Peterson shrugged, stepping closer. “As you might imagine, we did not follow their ‘career.’ What you need to understand—what is important now—is that we work together to close the circle on this past. It is a sad story, of course, but a story that is finished. We must think of the present, and our future.

  “It would be best to give me the ledger. Once we divide the remainder of the assets, there will be no need to recall this unpleasantness again.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “There is no need for melodrama, Fräulein. Now that you know, now that you have been made by your Grossvater a legal partner, you, too, are responsible for the information you carry. Do not forget that. Do not forget that in the eyes of the world you, too, are accountable.”

  “No, Dr. Peterson, I will never forget—and I will act accordingly.”

  “That is good.” He spoke with reservation. “Until now, things have been safe in Wolfgang’s possession. But with his health . . . precarious, you will both agree that—”

  “Get out,” I began quietly. “Get out, or I’ll call the police this instant.”

  “Do not be foolish, Fräulein.” Dr. Peterson stepped closer—too close. “The Polizei will find you just as embroiled as we. An accomplice to the retention of such valuables is—”

  “No, I’d suggest you not be foolish.” Carl stepped through the doorway brandishing a tire iron, followed by a wide-eyed Geoffrey. “I believe you heard the lady. It is time to go, Herr Doktor.”

  Dr. Peterson glanced from person to person. “Wolfgang, tell her. Tell her that half is mine. Tell her or—”

  “Or what?” Carl asked. “You will have Herr Sommer and Fräulein Sterling arrested? If I do not miss my guess, Herr Sommer has your own complicity well documented, and I will bear witness to all you have said this day. Quite a testimony for the papers and the courtroom. Now get out.”

  “Half is mine, I tell you. It has always—”

  “Fräu
lein Sterling has already contacted some of your victims. They, too, are ready to testify against you and Herr Sommer. You were evidently not as discreet as you imagined.”

  Dr. Peterson paled. “That is absurd. I don’t believe it. Besides, we broke no laws.”

  “You heard him.” I felt my courage returning, though Carl’s improvisation about the willingness of the victims to testify, or their ability to identify the doctor, made me wince.

  “Testimony regarding the ledger—its discovery and contents, and the contents of your hoard—is already on file with an eminent attorney. If anything untoward—anything at all—happens to Fräulein Sterling or her Grossvater, it will be turned over to the Polizei and to an organization with which you are already most familiar, Dr. Peterson. I have no doubt they will expedite prosecution.”

  “Such fools! Nazi hunters do not frighten me.”

  Carl tapped the tire iron against his opposite palm. “Ach, but they should, Herr Doktor. Truly, they should.”

  Dr. Peterson’s bluff crumbled. The rage in his face could not hide the fear in his eyes. “You will be sorry. Wolfgang, you have betrayed me with this Jew lover. You will—”

  But Grandfather’s stare was without emotion.

  “Herr Sommer? Herr Sommer!” Geoffrey was at his side in a moment, taking the pulse in Grandfather’s neck, pulling the stethoscope from the bedside table.

  Dr. Peterson grabbed his coat and hat, heading for the door. “This be on your heads!”

  “Grandfather?” I searched Geoffrey’s face, but he listened intently to Grandfather’s chest through the stethoscope.

  Grandfather didn’t move; his chest never rose or fell. The front door downstairs slammed.

  Geoffrey pulled the stethoscope from his ears. “I’m sorry.”

  “He—he’s dead?” I couldn’t comprehend that. None of us could, if the prolonged silence was any sign.

  Geoffrey noted the time of death and wrote it down. He moved about the bed, doing other things, removing medical equipment, folding Grandfather’s hands. All the while I stood there, not believing. Carl wrapped his arm around me.

  At length Geoffrey stood back, making room for me, offering to give me a moment alone with Grandfather.