Stumble Stones

by Marilyn Baron

  His neighbor came up behind him. “Not everyone approves of these stones. Sometimes they are smeared with tar during the night. But the artist comes back and removes it.

  “Even Jewish leaders sometimes object that people walk all over the plaques. But it’s not meant to desecrate. Its intention is to memorialize the victims and preserve their memories. You don’t stumble over the plaques, because they are street level, but you stumble upon them.”

  “Are you—” Alexander began.

  “If you are asking if I am a Jew, yes, I am. I’m a survivor. There aren’t many of us left. I didn’t know the family, but I feel as if I did.”

  Alexander was silent. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He felt a little uncomfortable, guilty even, though he had nothing to feel guilty about. His boss and the founder of his company were Jewish. Some of his coworkers were. But he hadn’t given it much thought. He decided that he liked the idea of the memorial in front of his house.

  Alexander went up to the artist.

  “Why are these stones at an angle to my house?”

  “I place some markers at an angle to the building and some straight and some on asphalt sidewalks and some on cobblestones because I want some variation both physically and artistically,” the artist remarked. “So you live here, in the house where the Hirschfelds lived?”

  Alexander nodded.

  And suddenly it hit him. This family, the Hirschfelds—father, mother, daughter, and young son—once lived where he was now living. Before the war. Before they were seized by the Nazis and carried away on crowded trains to their deaths. He was the usurper, living in their house. None of the Hirschfelds appeared to have survived the war. Who had taken over their house after they were deported? Was that person still alive? Did the family have relatives who had survived? Were the survivors ever compensated for the house and property that was stolen from them? It was important that he find out. More important than work. More important than anything in his life right now. He was desperate to solve the mystery, so he decided to skip work and start his research.

  There wasn’t much to go on. The Germans were good record keepers, so he had no doubt he could find out the owner of the house after the war and the people who had lived there up until the time he had purchased it. Alexander was methodical. That’s the way his mind worked. He was going to track down the facts. He owed it to the Hirschfelds. He longed to know more of their story. Fate had placed him in this house, in the house where these people had once lived, for a reason, and he was determined to find out what that reason was.

  PART TWO

  A PORTRAIT OF EVIL

  The SS Officer’s Woman

  Chapter Four

  Hannah

  Berlin 1943

  “Ready or not, here I come. I am coming to find you, liebchen.”

  Hannah sat, shoulders scrunched, in her hiding place under the stairwell as her mother’s voice got colder and colder. Mutter was probably carrying her baby brother, Aaron, who was being particularly fussy that morning, so she might have been confused and turned around. Aaron was too little to understand what was happening, but he knew something monumental was occurring, and he was making his displeasure known by fretting and demanding to be held. This time Hannah had chosen a very good hiding place where no one could find her. She hoped her father wouldn’t give the location away. He had shown it to her just yesterday.

  Mutter had been tutoring the children about popular games for Americans because they were leaving today for the Port of Hamburg and were then to sail to New York in the United States. It would be a dangerous crossing, but less dangerous than remaining in Berlin with all the restrictions being placed on the Jews. Stories were circulating, horrific stories if they could be believed.

  Although Hannah was too old for childish games, she played along for the sake of her brother. Mutter had shown her their ultimate destination on a map. She’d never admit it, but hide-and-go-seek was fun. Maybe America wouldn’t be so bad after all. Of course, she had protested when she first heard the idea.

  “But why do we have to go to America?” Hannah had cried when her mother made the announcement and started the packing process. “I will miss my friends and my home. Why must we leave Germany?” The truth was many of her friends had already left the country.

  “Papa says things will just get worse for us in Germany. We will go away until it is safe for us to return.”

  “You’re getting colder,” Hannah whispered, as her mother’s voice faded. She willed her mother to hear her, but there was no answer.

  Hannah startled at the sound of heavy pounding on the door. Her father answered politely in the voice he reserved for company. Formal, insincere. A cool welcome.

  “SS Sturmbannführer Hoffman, you’re early. We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

  “I’m afraid there’s been a change in plans, Herr Hirschfeld. We had to move up the date, and I’m here for the package.”

  “But, Franz, we had an agreement.”

  The Sturmbannführer laughed. It was a cruel laugh that resounded in the foyer and carried all the way to Hannah’s hiding place.

  “I’m here. I kept my part of the bargain. Now I will take delivery of the diamonds.”

  “But we thought we had until tomorrow to leave.”

  “I have my orders. I am requisitioning your house, and my men are here to escort your family to the train station.”

  “And from the station, where?”

  “Nothing to be alarmed about. Just to a work camp until we get everything sorted out.”

  “But my son, he’s only a baby, he cannot work. And my wife? And my—”

  The Sturmbannführer dismissed him in mid-sentence.

  “That, Herr Hirschfeld, is no longer my problem.”

  “But we shook hands. We had a gentlemen’s agreement, did we not?” Herr Hirschfeld said, trying to maintain a calm demeanor. She knew her father was used to conducting business on a handshake. His word was his bond. He had taught her that lesson many times. If a customer wanted a particular piece of jewelry and couldn’t pay, they entered into a verbal pact. Herr Hirschfeld would get the money eventually, but the customer could take home the fancy ring for his fiancée or a pearl necklace for his wife or a diamond brooch for his mother.

  “I’m afraid I’m not a gentleman,” growled the intruder, his voice growing angrier by the minute. “And neither, it seems are you.”

  The Sturmbannführer looked around. “I see you are all packed up and ready to leave, a day early. What would have happened to our agreement if I had arrived on schedule tomorrow? You and your family would be gone, and I would not get my diamonds.”

  When her father didn’t answer, the Sturmbannführer continued. “No matter,” he clucked disapprovingly, and Hannah imagined he was reining in his anger with a restrained smile. “Things will work out very nicely after all.”

  “B-but my family. What will happen to them?” her father stuttered.

  Even from her hiding place Hannah could sense her father’s nerves by the unnatural pitch of his voice.

  “What matter is that to me? Now, where are the diamonds you promised me?”

  “I don’t have them here,” insisted Herr Hirschfeld.

  “Of course you do. You’ve boarded up your shop, and you are about to flee the country with the false papers I provided you and your friends in return for the diamonds. Only you were going to use those papers to escape and take the diamonds with you. Don’t try to deny it. I’ve already picked up other members of your party, and they were eager to talk to save themselves.”

  The Sturmbannführer directed his men to grab Herr Hirschfeld and his family while he organized the search of the house.

  “Julian, what is going on?” Ana cried as she was dragged into the foyer, Aaron sniffling on her hip. “What are these men doing here in our home?”

  “I’m afraid your husband has failed to meet his part of the bargain, and now you and your son must pay the consequ
ences.”

  “Please,” begged Herr Hirschfeld. “Take me, but leave my wife and son alone. They did nothing.”

  “Stop, you’re hurting me,” Frau Hirschfeld called out, trying to pull away from the man restraining her. Hannah heard a resounding slap and her mother’s soft crying. Aaron started wailing and wouldn’t be soothed.

  “Silence your son, or I’ll shoot him,” sputtered the Sturmbannführer. “Now search this house, every crevice. Tear it apart if you have to, but find those diamonds.”

  Hannah shivered. What if they found her? Why didn’t Papa give the man the diamonds?

  “Take them away. I’ll find what I’m looking for in this house. I don’t need them. How many hiding places could there be?”

  Her father tried to reason with the intruder. “But Herr Sturmbannführer, we can work this out. I will tell you where the diamonds are, and we can forget this unfortunate misunderstanding ever happened.”

  Hannah hugged her knees and soaked up the sweat from her brow with her shirtsleeves. Surely, the Sturmbannführer could hear her beating heart. It was pounding out of her chest. Something bad was happening. She started to come out of her hiding place to be with her mother. Whatever was going on, she didn’t want to face it alone.

  She heard her mother’s faint voice. “Julian, if we can save one of the children…” There was a pause, and then she heard her mother’s voice again, this time rising strongly.

  “Don’t come out, don’t come out, wherever you are,” her mother sang in a chirpy falsetto, as if it were part of the song from the game. Hannah couldn’t see the scene from her hiding place. She clenched her fists and waited. Did this song hold a message for her?

  The Sturmbannführer barked another order. “This woman is insane. Take her away,” he said, dismissing her.

  “But our luggage,” said Herr Hirschfeld.

  “You won’t need that where you’re going.” And to his remaining men, the Sturmbannführer ordered, “Search the house, but don’t destroy it. I will be living here from now on.”

  Two sets of jackboots stomped out of the room and up the stairs, pounding the stairs above Hannah’s head. She stayed frozen in place on her mother’s orders as her parents and little brother were dragged away. Before she had a chance to tell them she loved them. Not a final hug or a final goodbye. And that was the last time she ever heard her mother’s sweet voice or her father’s nervous laughter or her brother’s booming cry. But she would never forget the strident voice of the man who had taken them.

  Chapter Five

  Hannah’s Story: The Duplicitous Hausfrau

  Berlin 1948

  It was not difficult to get the Sturmbannführer to notice her. She wasn’t practiced at flirting, but she barely had to bat her eyelashes or feign an indecent reveal. He was easy to lead, and once he’d stumbled, it was a short trip to falling in love. He was almost twice her age. And it didn’t hurt that she embodied the ideal Aryan woman—blonde, beautiful, and buxom. She was outside his house…formerly her house…desperate to get in to see how the place had changed, to see if she could find a trace of her former life or her family.

  For a long time, after the war, she had held out hope her parents might still be alive. She posted their names in all the proper places, with every search organization she could find, checked the refugee lists daily, eager to talk to anyone who had been in the camps and ask if they had seen her parents and her little brother. Until one day she saw their names on a list in the archives—the Hirschfeld family—Julian, Ana, and Aaron, all killed the same day, upon their arrival in the Auschwitz extermination center, not long after they had been forcibly taken from their home to the transports. They didn’t survive the selection process, but how did they die? Were they lined up and shot? Shot in a crowd trying to get to each other? Hanged? Electrified on the perimeter fence trying to escape? Beaten to death by the SS? Or by the kapos, Jewish prisoners who served as executioners for the Germans, in the killing center? Gassed in the showers and burned in the crematoria? Singled out during one of the frequent random selections?

  Many inmates, she knew, fell victim to illness or malnutrition. There was so little food the prisoners literally starved to death. There were many ways to die in the camps. She’d heard every unimaginable story at the displaced persons camp. Her parents’ method of death wasn’t recorded. She hoped it had been over quickly, that they hadn’t suffered too much.

  But she didn’t really believe the lists until she ran into Madeline Hammerman, her mother’s best friend, after the war. Madeline had been to Auschwitz. Her registration number was tattooed on her left forearm. According to the survivors Hannah had spoken to, by the time the last people arrived at the camp, they were no longer identified by name, just their numbers. Madeline had seen Hannah’s parents because they’d traveled on the same suffocating railcar to Poland, so she recounted the story. And then Hannah could no longer pretend.

  “Your mother was holding your father’s hand,” Madeline recalled. “Then they were separated. He was sent to the right and she and your baby brother ordered to go to the left, with me. He refused to be parted from her. He tried to reason with the guards, but they couldn’t be reasoned with. So he got a bullet in the head for his trouble. Ana lost her will and lost her mind then, and she and Aaron and I were herded into another line with the children, women, and old people. A line where people went and never came back. Your father was the lucky one. It was over for him very quickly.”

  Madeline’s own beloved husband, Abraham, had disappeared into the camp, and she never saw him again. She fancied he had been on a forced labor work detail outside the camp in the coal mines or the rock quarries, on a construction project or at a weapons facility, aiding the German war effort, and had somehow escaped, perhaps joined the resistance. He was a very strong and resourceful man. But she knew that was an unlikely scenario. People didn’t escape from Auschwitz.

  Madeline was pulled out of the shower line for other things. Unspeakable things. Things she endured for scraps of food and warmth and to stay alive. Things she was so ashamed of doing she felt guilty and unworthy to return to the normal life she knew. “If anybody asks, you never saw me,” she said.

  The camp had been liberated by Soviet soldiers. The inmates who had stayed behind, mostly the infirm who were at death’s door, like Madeline, woke up one day and found the German officers had gone, disappeared. The Russians who liberated the camp said the inmates could stay on or find their way home. Before the camp’s liberation, most of the inmates had been forced on a death march, which not many survived.

  Madeline was one of the lucky ones. Eventually she made her way back to Berlin, only to find that someone else had taken over the Hammerman house. Since she had no money, no means of support, and no place to go, she ended up at the displaced persons camp. There she met a very kind American soldier—a Jew, in fact. After searching for her husband in vain for months after the war, she had seen his name on a list—not the list of survivors. That’s why he hadn’t found her. If Abe had been alive, he would have moved heaven and earth to get to her. She was sure of it. She agreed to marry the soldier and move to the United States. That was where Abraham had been planning to take her, so that was where she wanted to go. Before she left, her soldier found Hannah a job as a typist in a small accounting firm. The women had hugged, made the usual promises that they would see each other again. And, indeed, they had kept in touch through the years.

  By now, everyone knew the unbelievable truth about what the Germans had done to the Jews. It was no longer just rumor. American soldiers who had freed the skeletal victims had seen the reality with their own eyes. Countless stories appeared in the newspapers. Each survivor had his or her own personal journey, a unique story. Men, women, children. Average Germans gave statements claiming they had no idea what was happening under their own noses, that they were surprised to learn what had happened.

  Hannah could blame the SS guards at the camp, the ones who relayed instructions
to go left or go right. Or the officers who led the people to the showers like sheep to the slaughter. Or even Hitler himself. Heaven knew there was enough blame to go around. But Hannah held only one person responsible. Sturmbannführer Hoffman. The evil man whose voice was the last she heard before her parents and baby brother disappeared forever. Whose face she imagined in her nightmares. And she was determined to spend the rest of her life making him pay.

  Her plan wasn’t fully formed. She wasn’t entirely sure how she, a mere girl, was going to bring down a monster, a seasoned warrior, but she knew she had to try.

  Of course he didn’t recognize her. He hadn’t seen her at the house that morning. And she had grown since then. But she’d heard his voice. It was unmistakable. She would never forget it. And his name. He hadn’t even bothered to change it. He wasn’t held accountable in the trials following the war. He was just a minor player, one of many minor players, regular, everyday Germans who had just gone along with what they were calling the Final Solution. He had sent her family and countless others to their deaths, lining his pockets along the way. But he was just following orders—the guilt-assuaging words that were so popular in post-war Germany.

  He had requisitioned her home for himself, and he was still living in it. Was there no justice in the world? German officials didn’t hold anyone to account. In fact, former Nazis slipped in and out of Germany with impunity. That was the country’s dirty little secret. And all the while, government and major corporations, often staffed by former Nazis, looked the other way.

  She had been one of the lucky ones, one of the 1,500 Jews who survived the Holocaust hiding in Berlin. She had escaped the roundups. But her life was bleak and meaningless without her family. She should have gone with them that day. She wouldn’t have survived, but now, despite being only half alive, really, she was going to take action, to make their lives count for something.

  Being a practicing Jew was not a mantle she was ready to reassume. To her neighbors, she was a good Catholic. She continued to go to church with her foster parents. But she was just going through the motions. How could she pray to a God, any God, who would allow the Holocaust to happen?