Max and our mother escorted us to Hamburg via a private train car. Our mother nervously watched the door of the compartment the entire ride. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the conductor arrived to collect our tickets.
About an hour into the journey Max went to use the restroom, leaving us alone. A few minutes later two Gestapo officers appeared at the door of our private car. My mother gasped at the sight of them but tried to compose herself as they stepped inside. One was tall with glasses, the other short and round. Both wore black dress uniforms and hats with the death skull insignia.
“Guten Morgen,” the tall one said. “Papers, please.”
“Certainly,” my mother said. She handed over her passport.
I noticed my mother’s hands shaking and shot her a glance as if she could make them stop.
“And the children,” the short one said, gesturing to me and Hildy. His eyes lingered on Hildy.
Hildy looked down into her lap.
My mother nodded, and we each handed over our passports.
The men opened the books. Each had a prominent red J stamped on the inside.
“And where are you going?” the tall officer asked.
“Hamburg,” she said.
“And is that your final destination?”
“The children are going to America.”
“America. I hear it’s a very good place for mongrel children like these,” the tall one said. “And why are you not joining them?”
My mother bit her bottom lip, considering her answer. She obviously could not talk about my father, which would put us all in danger.
“I have business to conclude here,” she replied.
“What kind of business?” the tall one asked.
“What kind of business?” my mother repeated.
“Ja. It’s a simple question,” the tall one said.
My mother stared at him for a long moment, biting her bottom lip.
Just then Max reentered the train car.
“Is there something wrong?” he said.
The short officer’s eyes widened at the sight of Max.
“Herr Schmeling,” the short officer said excitedly, “it’s an honor.”
He extended his hand, and he and Max shook. The tall officer seemed less impressed. Max extended his hand, and the tall officer shook it slowly.
“We were just getting to know your friends,” he said dryly.
“Her husband is a business associate of mine,” Max explained.
“How interesting.”
“I can assure you everything is in order,” Max said.
“Herr Schmeling,” the short officer said “would you mind signing an autograph? It’s for my son.”
“Of course,” Max said, removing his fountain pen and a small pad from his jacket pocket. “His name?”
“Rudolf,” the man answered.
The tall officer suddenly laughed.
“Rudolf! That’s your name. His son is Friedrich.”
Rudolf blushed.
“Okay, I want one for me too,” he said. “What’s the big deal?”
“No problem,” Max said.
He signed the autographs.
“There you go,” Max said, handing the autographs to the short officer.
“Danke.”
“And one for your children?” Max asked the tall one.
“I don’t have children,” he said curtly.
“Then one for you?” Max offered.
“No,” the tall officer replied. He turned back to my mother. “May I ask what kind of business you and your husband are in?”
My mother’s eyes widened, and she hesitated. Hildy curled her hand into mine.
“Her husband is an art dealer.” Max jumped in. “And Frau Stern is a decorator. They’ve been helping my wife, Anny, and me decorate our country house.”
“Is that so?” the tall one said.
“Ja.” Max continued. “In fact Magda Goebbels was so impressed by their work the last time they visited that she and the Reich Minister are considering using them to do their Berlin home.”
“Reich Minister Goebbels?”
“We’ve already met several times about the project,” my mother said.
“He’s planning to build a small film screening room right in their home,” Max added. “It’s going to be quite spectacular.”
The tall one hesitated, took a long look at my mother and Max, and then turned to his counterpart.
“Come on, let’s go.”
He abruptly turned and exited the train car. Rudolf shook Max’s hand again and followed the tall officer out. We all exhaled as the door closed and we were alone again. In that instance, the feint had worked.
We arrived at the Hamburg docks just in time to board the ship and barely had time to say good-bye.
My mother held me close and whispered in my ear: “Karl, I’m counting on you now to be a man and take care of things. You have the books?”
My mother had carefully packed away the large books she had taken from the gallery: the atlas, the old book of photographs of European landmarks, a collection of prints by Dutch masters.
“Yes,” I said. “I have them.”
“Those books are special, Karl. Guard them very closely. If anything happens to me or your father, I want you to bring them to a man named Louis Cohen in New York.”
“Louis Cohen,” I repeated.
“He’s a book dealer who owns a shop called The Argosy in Manhattan. I wrote all of his contact information on a piece of paper that I put inside the atlas. He’s a good man. Can you remember that?”
“Yes. Are they valuable?”
“Not the books. Long ago your father hid things in the endpapers that Louis Cohen will help you sell. I packed you extra glue and endpapers in case you have to reseal them. Be careful with these books. They are our future.”
“I will,” I said.
She hugged me tightly and kissed me on the top of my head just like she did when I was a little boy.
“You make me very proud, Karl.”
“I love you, Mama. And tell Papa—”
My words were cut off as I choked back a sob rising in my throat. I hugged my mother closer.
“I will,” she said. “I will.”
I held her a moment longer, and then she turned to Hildy.
Hildy ran into her arms, and my mother held her close and stroked her hair. My mother whispered into Hildy’s ear, and my sister nodded, her moist eyes staring out, trying to absorb the words.
I turned to Max.
“Say hello to America for me,” he said. “I think you will like it over there. It’s a young country, full of energy and different people. But be careful. Sometimes the young can be stupid and reckless. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“Try to keep up your training. You’ve got the tools to be a great fighter.”
“I will,” I said. But in truth I had no idea if I’d ever box again.
“I will take care of your mother. Don’t worry. And we’ll find a way to free your father.”
“Thank you,” I said, although I could sense uncertainty under his forced confidence.
I extended my hand, and we shook. He held my grip and looked me in the eye.
“All Germans are not the same, Karl,” he said. “This will pass.”
The words rang hollow as the voice of my father echoed in my head saying the exact same thing.
Hildy and I boarded the ship. We walked up the gangplank and onto the deck. We scanned the crowd waving from the dock, but our mother and Max had already disappeared.
The ship pushed back from its moorings and groaned to life. The massive engines whirred, and tugboats crept alongside, easing the vessel out of the harbor.
The sun was just going down, and the fading landscape onshore was bathed in dark orange. Hildy and I stood side by side. watching our homeland recede into the distance. She sidled up close to me and took my hand, leaning her head against my shoulder.
Her dark eyes looked out at the crowd on the dock from behind her thick glasses. She blinked back tears and held my hand tightly. We didn’t speak for a several minutes. Until finally I whispered: “There’s adventure in the air . . .”
She looked up at me through tear-streaked eyes and answered: “And cake to be eaten.”
We stood there holding hands on the deck, as tugboats slowly guided us out to sea. Despite my sadness at leaving my parents behind, a feeling of weightlessness came over me as I watched Nazi Germany recede into the distance. Eventually we were clear of the harbor. The tugboats moved away and headed back toward the docks, and the ship slowly turned to the open sea. Hildy and I stood in the same place but turned to watch the land move farther and farther into the distance until it finally disappeared from sight.
Late that night I lay awake in our little cabin, staring at the ceiling, while Hildy slept curled up in the other bunk against the opposite wall. The ship gently rose and fell, but my thoughts were back onshore in Germany, wondering where my parents were at that moment and if they were safe. And then my mind kept drifting to the books and what my parents had concealed inside them. I thought that if I knew what they had hidden, it would make me feel as if they were close by, like they were speaking to me. Finally my curiosity got the best of me. I quietly climbed out of bed, careful not to wake Hildy. I flipped on a small lamp and laid the three books on my bunk. I retrieved a straight razor I had packed in my toilet kit.
First I opened the front cover of the enormous atlas. I took a deep breath and then, using the razor, I gently sliced along the edge of the endpaper, tracing a perfect line around the perimeter. After completing the cut, I very carefully lifted the endpaper off to reveal several pieces of artwork beneath. I immediately recognized two drawings by Rembrandt and several etchings by Albrecht Dürer.
I repeated the same surgical procedure on the other two books, each revealing several wondrous works of art from different eras, including several studies by Rodin, a small landscape by Matisse, a drawing of a boy by Picasso, and several works by my father’s expressionist friends, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The collection was worth a small fortune.
When I removed the final endpaper, I gasped at the sight. It was a drawing by George Grosz of a man dressed in a tuxedo holding a champagne glass up in a toast. I knew, even without the telltale scarf, that it was an image of my father. I felt my throat constrict and my eyes well up at the sight of him in all his glory. I saw so many attributes in the drawing that I had never noticed about my father before: confidence, humor, strength, and, perhaps most important, the pure joy of being alive. My papa. It had taken me seventeen years to start to understand him, and now, when I needed and wanted him the most, we were forced to be apart.
I lifted off the drawing to reveal another sketch by Grosz. This one was a study for the painting he had made of Max Schmeling that had set my whole boxing career in motion. The image of Max, while so familiar, also looked different to me. For the first time I noticed that his hands were held up in a defensive pose, as if he cared as much about self-preservation as triumphing.
Without Max we never would have been able to escape from Germany. Yet I wondered how much, if anything, he would have done for us had I not confronted him. Then I remembered the Countess. No one had displayed more courage than he had in our rescue, braving the worst of our night of terror to guide us through the streets and then selflessly harboring us in his apartment. He could have easily been arrested himself or even killed. In many ways the Countess had more strength than anyone I had ever known.
I placed the two drawings by Grosz side by side. On the surface they appeared to be such opposites, my father a man of culture and intellect, Max a warrior, dedicated to physical strength and sport. And yet they were both what my father would call moderns, men who didn’t want to be encumbered by old traditions and labels. They each strove to define themselves as individuals, and each failed because of the Nazis.
As I stared at the drawings, it struck me that I might not see either one of them again. A deep heaviness filled my chest, and my eyes stung with tears as I tried to see myself in each portrait but realized that I didn’t fit perfectly into either frame. I would have to try to hold on to the best elements of both. But I would have to become my own man.
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction set against the backdrop of real historical events. Max Schmeling did rescue two Jewish boys on Kristallnacht. Though this is not their story, the incident inspired me to explore the history of Schmeling and the Jews of Berlin. Any similarities between the Stern family and the family of the rescued boys are purely coincidental.
Because of his loss to Louis, Schmeling was no longer protected by the government and was drafted and served as a paratrooper during World War II. He was old to be a paratrooper, and there were strong suspicions that he had been forced into the dangerous duty as punishment for losing to Louis and never officially joining the Nazi Party. After the war, he and Anny Ondra put their lives back together, and he eventually became a successful businessman as one of Germany’s leading Coca-Cola executives. After reuniting on the television show This Is Your Life in the 1950s, Max and Joe Louis became friends and stayed in touch until Louis’s death in 1981. Louis had fallen on hard times, and Schmeling helped to pay for his medical expenses and burial costs and served as a pallbearer at his funeral. He rarely spoke about his heroic actions during Kristallnacht. He and Anny Ondra were married for fifty-four years and had no children. Max Schmeling died on February 2, 2005, just a few months shy of his hundredth birthday.
Sources
I consulted dozens of sources during the writing of this book. For background on Schmeling and his fights with Louis, I relied upon David Margolick’s Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling and a World on the Brink; Max Schmeling: An Autobiography (translated and edited by George von der Lippe); and Ring of Hate by Patrick Myler. Two books in particular offered wonderful insights into the heyday of Jewish boxing: Barney Ross: The Life of a Jewish Fighter by Douglas Century and When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport by Allen Bodner. For general facts and timelines of Nazi Germany, I utilized The Holocaust Encyclopedia by Walter Laqueur and The Holocaust Chronicle by John Roth, Ph.D.
YouTube proved to be an invaluable resource as I was able to watch newsreels of 1930s Berlin, films of both Schmeling and Louis bouts in their entirety, as well as many other fights from the era. I even found clips of Max and Anny Ondra’s film Knockout.
The Neue Galerie in New York City is a wonderful museum devoted to German and Austrian art of the early twentieth century. There I was able to view works by most of the great expressionist artists mentioned in the book and sample great Austrian cuisine at the Café Sabarsky.
I reveled in revisiting the work of comic book and comic strip pioneers Wilhelm Busch (Max und Moritz), Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (Superman), Bob Kane and Bill Finger (Batman), Ham Fisher (Joe Palooka), Rudolph Dirks (The Katzenjammer Kids), George Herriman (Krazy Kat), Lee Falk (Mandrake the Magician), Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie), and many others. For general background on the history of cartooning I relied upon 100 Years of American Newspaper Comics, edited by Maurice Horn. And I would be remiss if I did not mention the inspiration I took from Art Spiegelman’s epic graphic novel series Maus.
By far the most valuable insights I gained came from talking to people who lived in Germany during the period. I’m deeply indebted to Gerald Liebenau, Ursula Weil, and Rose Wolf, who shared stories with me about their childhoods living in Nazi Germany. They made history come alive in a way that no book or film ever could.
Acknowledgments
First, I want to thank my editor, Kristin Daly Rens. When I found out we would be working together, the only piece of information I had about Kristin was that she was a German speaker. I have been extremely pleased and privileged to discover that she is also a brilliant and creative editor.
My agent, Maria Massie, of LMQ, is a wonderful adv
ocate, adviser, and friend (not an easy trio of roles to juggle). I also want to thank Kassie Evashevski, at UTA, who bravely navigates the trenches of Hollywood for me. My assistant Barbara Clews is always an enormous help to me and bravely endures my grouchy moods when I get in to my office after an early-morning writing session. Many friends read early drafts of the manuscript. But I want to especially thank Martin Curland, whom I can always count on for good and honest insights. I also want to thank Keith Fields, who taught me the rudiments of boxing despite my almost chronic lack of rhythm and discipline.
My parents are unwavering in their love and support of me and my writing. My sister, Susan Krevlin, read to me and drew with me when I was a little boy and helped to nurture my love of books and art. My darling daughters, Annabelle and Olivia, are my greatest loves and distractions. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Finally I want to thank my other greatest love, my wife, Stacey, to whom this book is dedicated. Every book in my life begins and ends with her.
About the Author
ROBERT SHARENOW is an award-winning writer and television producer. His first novel, My Mother the Cheerleader, was chosen as an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and a VOYA Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers. Julia Roberts’s production company, Red Om, is currently developing the book into a feature film. He is also an Emmy Award–winning television producer and serves as senior vice president of nonfiction and alternative programming for A&E Network and Bio Channel. He lives in New York with his wife, two daughters, and their dog, Lucy.
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