When We Were Brave

by Karla M Jay

  “Are you up for a drive, Pops?” Herbert pushed to his feet.

  “Count me in.”

  Herbert helped his father into his winter coat and donned his own. He scribbled a note for Jutta, explaining where they were going and that they’d be back midmorning.

  Andel Smith’s one-story brick home sat on twenty-five acres outside the town of Lititz. A year ago, he’d switched out his crops from corn to hemp when the government initiated the Hemp for Victory campaign.

  Andel’s wife, Maria, offered a tray of coffee, biscuits, and peach jam. She was robustly built, with strong arms and a straight back. She wore her silver hair braided and twisted into a bun. The joints in her hands were enlarged, and her fingers were no longer straight, but her movements were delicate as she served them.

  “Thank you,” Herbert said. “How’s the cannabis business, Andel?” He liked to tease the older man about growing the previously controlled drug.

  “Lucrative.” Andel chuckled. He had a shiny bald head with a body like a bear. Andel loved German dancing but graciously embarrassed himself weekly, tripping across the floor with his too-large feet. His gaze though, just chips of sapphire set in narrowed eyes, said he was nobody’s fool. “I’m supplying any one of the forty-four processing mills, and until the Philippines open up again, and as long as the Navy needs rope, I’m in the hemp business.” He turned to Otto. “You could convert your old mill. Get into fiber instead of grains.”

  Otto shook his head. “Nein. We will stay, with what we do. The war will not, last forever.”

  Herbert hoped that was true. They were well into the second year and he never thought it would go on this long. He scooted forward on the brown tweed armchair. The living room suited Andel’s size. An overstuffed couch, two side chairs, a standing gramophone, and a wireless radio on the fireplace mantel. “About the war. We had some trouble last night at the house. We wondered if you’ve heard of other families being harassed.”

  Andel’s face knotted. “What happened?”

  “Some name-calling, accusations about helping Hitler, pushing.” The anger returned as he thought of his family’s vulnerability. “We’re all fine, but I’m not sure who to report it to.”

  “One of the boys . . . is related to the sheriff,” Otto said.

  “I’ve heard that attacks are on the rise. Though I’m not sure how they’re picking and choosing people.” Andel spread jam on a biscuit. “There’s a lot of us here.”

  “Once . . . you said something about problems . . . the First World War.” Otto scratched his cheek. “We had not, moved here yet.”

  “Lordy. After Roosevelt denounced us and called us hyphenated Americans, we were in trouble. The government kept lists of about half a million German-Americans, and thousands went to jail.”

  So, the registration process Herbert’s parents went through three years earlier had occurred before. He’d wondered about that. But thousands sent to jail? If his family were to be accused of spying or helping Germany, seems like it would have happened three years earlier, not now. He took this as a good sign—last night was a fluke.

  “Ühm . . . who did you complain to, back then?” Otto asked.

  “We had no one to complain to. When the president deems you untrustworthy, well . . .” He raised his hands as if to say, What are you going to do?

  “I remember we were offered the chance to prove our loyalty.” Maria held her coffee cup in both hands, close to her chest.

  “Yes, that’s right”—he slapped his thighs—“We were forced, I mean encouraged to buy as many war bonds as we could, and it damn near wiped us out.”

  Herbert’s family bought war bonds. Jutta’s women’s auxiliary club rolled bandages. And the children were involved in the “We’re all in this together!” programs, collecting Hershey’s wrapper foil, rubber bands, nylon stockings, brown paper bags, tin cans, and empty toothpaste tubes.

  “You might want to change your names,” Maria said. “We did.”

  Herbert’s eyebrows rose. That was a surprise.

  Andel smiled at his wife. “Yes, we did. Adalwolf and Mareike Schmidt didn’t suit the neighbors, but Andel and Maria Smith did.” He shook his head. “You could easily change to Miller.”

  Herbert knew times were different during WWI when the country was more anti-immigrant. But he would say, these days people understood a country’s diversity was its strength. “I’m imagining all the legal paperwork to get our names changed. I don’t think we need to go that far.” He looked to Otto, who nodded.

  “Back then, some German-Americans were arrested, and I remember a man in Illinois was killed, dragged out of jail and lynched.” Andel leaned forward and stirred his coffee. The spoon made a high-pitched whirring sound against the porcelain cup.

  Herbert never heard there were atrocities committed against Germans, although he knew of America’s dark history when it came to the Negro population. “I think we’re past all that,” he said, wiping his sticky fingers on a napkin.

  “I do, too.” Andel reached for another biscuit, and his wife swatted his hand away. He chuckled and patted his large stomach. “You see how I am abused in my own home?”

  “I am sure they see how starved you are, dear.” Maria stood and collected the dishes.

  Herbert took it as a sign they were finished and rose to his feet. “Thanks for your help.” He pulled on his coat and helped his father with his. They walked out onto the front porch. The fields were pockmarked with dead hemp plants, the large leaves lay like brown layered skirts around the place where the harvested stems used to stand tall.

  “Glad you figured out how to grow that stuff,” he said, tipping his chin to point out the crops.

  “If the medical community wins back the right to prescribe it again, I’ll keep on growing it.” Andel stuck out his hand and they all exchanged a handshake.

  “One more bit of advice. Maybe keep to yourselves,” Andel said, “and limit speaking German in public. This’ll blow over.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  They turned toward their truck when Andel spoke again. “If you have more trouble, call the FBI. They have a division to protect your civil rights.”

  Herbert stored away the idea but hoped last evening’s events were a one-time occurrence.

  Wilhelm Falk

  Naples, Italy - December 1943

  The coast of Italy slowly revealed itself under the gradual creep of morning light. The overpowering stench of mildew and smoke lingered in the camp as the POWs formed groups of twenty for interrogation. British officers and interpreters called each captive to a separate table outside the officers’ makeshift tent. The interpreter at Falk’s table was American, tall with dark wavy hair, clearly a well-fed youth. He stood beside two seated British officers.

  “Papers, please,” the interpreter asked in perfect German.

  Falk held the officer’s gaze as he reached into his uniform. The next moments were crucial to his plan. He handed over Klaus Stern’s soldbuch. The army would tell Stern’s wife her husband was a POW whisked off the continent until the war ended. Guilt flared in Falk’s gut over this ruse, but it paled compared to the burden of remorse he harbored for the dark road his countrymen had chosen. Not all Germans, but too many. This downward spiral from decency and morality seemed unstoppable. Yet it was impossible to point to a specific circumstance when this terrible military endeavor was set in motion. Was it revenge over WWI, or had evil trailed humankind throughout history and waited for a man without integrity and a loud voice to rise again?

  He had spent too much time hobbled by visions of starving children, those innocent youngsters instinctively crafting a game during a free moment at a train depot. Merely doing what children do, unaware that creative moment would be one of their last.

  Perhaps it wasn’t guilt Falk felt for Frau Stern. Sadness was more like it. The woman plann
ed a life after the war with Klaus but now would spend her days wondering why her husband hadn’t returned home. How would his own wife, Ilse, feel if she were informed he was captured and then never returned? Hope would slip away as the empty years dragged on. His sons growing up without a father. He said a silent prayer for the Stern family.

  One British officer asked a question and the German-speaking American interpreted. “Do you have relatives in America, and if so, are you in touch with them?”

  On his mother’s side there was a very distant cousin somewhere in Arizona, but he was no longer his mother’s son, now was he? Pastor Graf was also not a relative. “No.”

  The interpreter’s breath carried the scent of sausage, reminding Falk that, although he was hungry, he fared better than the other POWs on the front lines. His status as an SS officer allowed him to enter a city and choose a sizable house or apartment in which to billet, an act which always felt wrong. The family, without recourse, invited him to join them for meals, often made from meager rations. He tried to be nonintrusive and often brought food or sweets if there were children in the house. But most times he was too emotionally unstable to be a good guest, wandering the house during all hours of the night, battling nightmares. He often snuck away before dawn to avoid seeing the tremendous relief on the homeowner’s face.

  The world could use a return to a habit of kindness, if there ever were such a time.

  “Tell us how you came to be captured,” said the interrogator.

  Falk scratched at his short beard. He needed to convince them he was not a deserter because the Allies wanted to retain that type of soldier. A runaway who forgot what he was fighting for could be instrumental when embedded with allied forces. Although they were often used as laborers, a soldier knew valuable military strategy. He had no desire to stay behind.

  “We were pinned to the hills in Avellino when our company commander called it defeat,” he said. “Tenth Army Division.”

  The British officer took notes. Falk was ready for questions about his loyalty to Hitler’s cause and whether he supported Nazism, when the two interrogators fell silent. They studied the picture of Stern inside the soldbuch and passed it back and forth, glancing at him and then the photo of Stern. Although Falk believed he was careful in handpicking Stern from the other dead soldiers, Stern wasn’t a perfect match. He hoped all blond-haired, blue-eyed Germans looked similar to the British.

  In rapid-fire German, one interviewer asked, “What is your height?”

  “One point eight three meters.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Hamburg.”

  The translator looked bewildered at the speed of the questioning.

  “Date of conscription?”

  “Twelve, June, forty-one.” Falk was pleased that, even under pressure, the time he took to memorize Stern’s information paid off. It sounded like his own.

  The officer slowly closed the identification booklet and handed it to Falk. He motioned for him to join the long line of POWs approved for shipment off the continent. Sagging in relief, he walked to the wire fencing and studied the enormous grey ships docked in the busy harbor below. He and the other prisoners were told ten ships would sail tonight to take advantage of the blackout conditions. To put as much distance as possible between their convoy and the treacherous German U-boats. His military may not have quality soldier boots, but their submarine division was deadly.

  A salty wind rose off the water. Tall waves with deep troughs crashed against the rocky cliffs, sending spray impossibly high. Falk shoved his hands in his pockets, fists clenched, more from exhaustion than cold. The contempt for his country left him fatigued. Germany, a nation known worldwide for its art and culture, was now steeped in horrific crimes perpetrated under the orders of a dozen madmen. Add to that his personal guilt, and he felt drained. He’d watched the trains unload whole villages of people at the death camps, and did nothing.

  But the moment that broke him was when he met the boy with the strings. After that day, Falk started taking photographs, gathered documents about the exterminations, and wrote down the camp officers’ names. In order to get his parcel off continent, he visited a friend’s canning factory. He bought 4.5 kilograms of slab paraffin wax and a how-to book, explaining that Ilse canned more as the food supply became scarce. Falk sealed his documents, first in layers of wax paper, and then submerged it in melted paraffin. Once cooled, he packed the thick slab in a box containing the canning book, canning lids, and jar rings with a note to his trusted friend in America, Pastor Graf.

  He pictured Theodore Graf, a clergyman he had not seen in four years. Graf was his mentor when Falk belonged to the German Association of Christian Students as a young man. This intense priest taught him passable English, eerily prophesying that perhaps there would come a day when English was a passport to better opportunities.

  In the note, Falk told Graf Graf he would find a wealth of knowledge in his exploration of the canning package. The postal department was on high alert for armaments, and as he hoped, his package with canning supplies reached Graf. Apparently, Falk communicated the dire situation facing the Jews quite well because Pastor Graf’s return letter was full of disbelief about the horrors his country was perpetrating and asked what more he could do. That was the letter Falk was caught reading in the Brussels’ post office.

  He studied the harbor. A stone jetty in the shape of an exclamation mark pointed toward the U.S. Metal cables clanged against the sides of the ship’s iron hull, and seagulls screeched, circling the fishermen’s boats returning with their evening catch.

  Falk worried about Pastor Graf’s safety. Writing to someone in wartime Germany might land his friend in trouble. From the return address on Graf’s letter, the pastor still lived in a small town in the state of New York, the place he immigrated to in ‘39.

  He planned to meet Graf in America, and with the pastor’s help, reach Washington, D.C. with the contents of his package. He’d give testimony as a witness to all he’d captured in the photos and notes. And then his plan had a fork in the road. If Ilse and his sons could be protected by the U.S. government, he’d move them out of Germany, possibly to the United States after the war. But if his actions as a traitor could put them in danger of imprisonment or death after he delivered his information, he would never let them know he was still alive. He’d swallow the cyanide pill, killing Wilhelm Falk once and for all, eliminating any chance his family would be harmed.

  Squinting at the horizon, Falk studied the cobalt edge of the ocean where the water pressed against the sky. A blue line offering America on the other side, a place where sanity prevailed. A place for the telling. And, hopefully, a place to forgive himself for his silence, for hesitating too long, for the deaths of another hundred thousand.

  Izaak Tauber

  Alkmaar, Netherlands - December 1943

  “Where is the hospital from here?” Mama asked the farmer, Mr. Luca, who picked them up along the road just before dawn. The man smelled like pigs, which made sense since he explained that’s what he raised when he offered them a ride. His cheeks were pink, and his hands on the steering wheel were red and cracked. His big smile was missing several teeth.

  Mr. Luca pulled his truck to a stop at the edge of Alkmaar. Izaak sat on the front seat between Mama and the farmer.

  “Four blocks that way.” Farmer Luca pointed to the right, where the red-roofed city began. The sun hadn’t quite risen, and the storefronts were backlit by a soft purple that always painted the sky before the sun peeped over the edge of the world and streaked everything with yellow.

  Izaak was glad to be in a town. His legs ached like they had bruises inside, and his hands stiffened into claws from gripping the suitcase handle for hours.

  Mama pushed open the truck’s door and stepped down. She helped Izaak out and leaned into the cab to speak to the farmer. “Thank you again.”

 
“You are welcome. Enjoy your visit with your mother.”

  She lied to the farmer about needing to visit her sick mother in Alkmaar. Mama was raised in an orphanage by nuns after they found her wrapped in a blanket on the steps. She never knew her mother which really was sad when Izaak thought about it. But Mama prepared him for the lie. During their long walk last night, she’d explained that in the next few days they might have to do and say things that went against what they believed, until they found their way back to Amsterdam.

  As Izaak pulled the suitcases from the truck bed, he spotted a giant windmill in the nearby field. The blades made a creaking noise as they slowly turned, and as far as he knew, they never stopped day after day unless the wind died. He might have to lie and say he wasn’t Jewish, but inside, like the windmill, he’d never stop believing in everything Papa taught him about being Jewish.

  “Let’s find a church,” Mama said. They followed a wide cobblestone street past the darkened windows of stores and shops. Benches painted in orange showed off their country’s favorite color to honor the last name of the Royal Family, van Oranje-Nassau. The sky brightened and golden beams painted the underside of the charcoal clouds. When the ancient church came into view, they turned down the street leading to it.

  “Will the church have a toilet?” Although Izaak had nothing to drink in a long time, he’d been nervous-peeing all night.

  “It should, love.”

  A block later, they climbed the steps of the St. Laurenskerk, a massive tan building with slate roofs angled off each story. Mama pulled on the front door, but it didn’t budge. “We’ll go around back.”

  Now he really had to go. With his free hand, he clutched his crotch under his coat even though it wasn’t polite and duck-walked alongside the church. Mama climbed the steps first and tugged on the handle. That door was also locked.