When We Were Brave

by Karla M Jay

  He left the building and wandered outside, heading to the fence, rubbing his achy hip. He listened to the water slap at the rocky edges of the island. Lost in thought, he startled when Pastor Theodore Graf touched his back.

  Herbert shook his hand.

  The pastor wore his white clerical garment, draped to the ankles and girdled with a rope. These once-clean vestments were stained and now loose-fitting. Curious he wore them today since he reserved them for when he was behind the pulpit. Usually, he dressed in the same military-issued clothes they all wore.

  “How did your meeting go?” Herbert assumed Graf changed clothes for his interview with the review board.

  “It’s a story and a half,” Graf said. “How are you, my friend?”

  Herbert shook his head and relayed what happened to Frieda. A crush of sadness, built on raw guilt for bringing his family in the first place, still sat heavy in his chest.

  “This is terrible news,” Graf said. He dipped his head near Herbert and folded his hands. “I pray for peace for your family that surpasses all understanding at a time as this.”

  “Thank you, pastor. It’s inconceivable, but we’re relieved that it wasn’t worse.” He inhaled deeply. “We’re going to be repatriated the day after tomorrow. I decided to take the offer of a free trip abroad to get away from here.”

  Graf lifted his eyebrows and offered a tight smile. “I also leave in two days. Perhaps, we are traveling together.”

  The pastor sounded less than enthusiastic. Herbert studied him and realized the pastor never answered the question concerning his interview. He was wary these days, and had become a seeker of signs, looking for the smallest bits of information that might hint to the future.

  “And your interview?”

  The pastor shook his head. “A group of eight showed. Three lawyers from the department’s Enemy Alien Control Program, three men from the Special War Problems Division, and two others from the War Relocation Authority.”

  Herbert motioned to a long bench in the shade. The day waxed hotter and this seemed like a story that might take a while. “Sounds serious.”

  Graf sat, pulled out a cigarette, and offered Herbert one. He waved it away and waited for the pastor to get a good light. With the Hudson’s breeze and his shaking hands, it took a while. The pastor was a rock-solid man, always undaunted, even after his arrest, even after the loss of his church when his congregation turned their backs on him. If the pastor was nervous, his news wasn’t good.

  The pastor forced out a long stream of smoke and crossed his legs at the ankles. Like the other men interned for months, his brown shoes were scuffed and ruined from rainwater and lack of a good polish.

  “I guess the news is both good and bad,” he said. “And, we got into a bigger discussion of what I know about the war. I told you my friend sent me those documents. A postal worker saw the European postage and suggested I be investigated. Just now they said my mistake was that I wrote back to him.”

  “Your friend is an SS officer, right?” Herbert knew only what he read in the newspapers, and these men were reportedly Hitler’s vicious lapdogs. “Were you close?”

  “Wilhelm Falk was a teenager in my youth group, the Association of Christian Students. He was an engaging young man, self-deprecating, eager to step up. Always on the side of charity”—he smiled—“He has a gracious wife with intoxicating intelligence and two young boys, though I suppose now they are nearly the age he was when I first met him.”

  “You must have been surprised to learn he was in the SS.”

  “I was. Falk did nine months in Dachau for speaking out against Hitler. My letters on his behalf got him released before I moved here in thirty-nine.” Graf blew smoke rings that warped into ovals before disappearing. “I hadn’t heard from him in nearly four years, and then he sent that package full of anti-Hitler information, so I’d say he’s still the righteous guy I knew. The bible teaches ‘Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.’ Something happened after I immigrated that made him join, and then later go after Hitler’s guards and the German army.”

  “He sounds like a decent man. Who knows what pressure he was under to join.” He folded his arms. “And a brave guy. Did you see what he sent you before the FBI showed up?”

  “I did.” He shrugged. “I was curious. He wrapped everything in melted wax and disguised the package as a canning supply box. I had to know what was so secretive he went to such effort. There was a letter inside asking me to set everything aside until he could instruct me further.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  Graf slowly shook his head. “I wrote to the return address, a postbox in Brussels and asked how I could help him. That was last fall.”

  “Long time ago, now.”

  “If I hadn’t written back to Falk and immediately turned over the documents to the FBI, then I’d still be in my church preaching. But by writing back . . . I wanted to be more helpful to Falk than just storing his documents.”

  “It seems so unfair.” Herbert studied the pastor. “But the FBI has the information now. I guess that was your friend’s end goal. So in a way he delivered his message . . . whatever he felt was so important.”

  “What he wanted the U.S. to know is that Hitler is murdering all the Jewish and ethnic people he can round up. He’s created a well-oiled death machine over there.”

  Herbert recalled something he read in the back pages of the paper. “Around Thanksgiving, there was an article in the New York Times about the Nazis’ attempt to keep secret their Jewish relocation camps. Then nothing else was reported.”

  “Falk’s notes and photos show these camps. I think the national news is refusing to report it because it sounds too unbelievable.” Graf offered a tense smile. “But, yes, the good news is the state department now has this evidence and may act on it.”

  “According to Falk, Hitler is killing civilians?” The U.S. government hadn’t done everything right, but it wasn’t killing its own. A seagull floated over Herbert’s head and landed a few feet away. The bird cocked its head as if listening to their conversation.

  “Hundreds of thousands were transported to the camps, but by Falk’s estimate, ten thousand a day are put to death.”

  Ten thousand deaths a day? Times three hundred and sixty-five? Alfred could have done the calculation in an instant. More despairing news. He was already drained because of his family’s catastrophe, but he ached with a new sorrow for the thousands of broken families in his home country.

  Graf scrubbed over his face with his reddened fingers, closing his eyes and digging into them with his thumb and index finger bridging his nose.

  The seagull took to the air, wheeling overhead on a warm current and floating without effort.

  Graf dropped his cigarette and ground it into the dirt with the toe of his shoe.

  “Falk suggested they bomb the railway lines leading into the camps. He drew out maps and made it clear where the prisoners were held versus where the guards live.”

  “Your friend will be a hero. He did this at great risk to himself.”

  Graf rested his hands on his legs as his face fought an expression of personal sorrow. The rattle of the surrounding fencing, as a basketball bounced off it, blended with birds screeching overhead. The warm day was ripe as a pungent rivulet of sewer stench rippled through the air. Graf wiped moisture from his eyes.

  “Falk was killed in November in Italy.”

  “Oh, no.” He let solemn silence fill the space between them. “I’m sorry. Did his men catch him gathering more evidence?”

  “It doesn’t sound like it. He was shot near the front lines although I’m not sure why he’d be that close to the fight”—Graf slapped his legs—“Our government was interested in him, of course, so they followed up. They asked if I knew where his wife and children might be, since a
notice of his death was returned, undeliverable from their home near Düsseldorf.”

  “Where do you think they are?”

  “His wife had a sister in Eindhoven, over the border into the Netherlands. He probably sent them there to keep them safe.” Graf tilted his head and looked at Herbert with his customary squint. “And you know what? I didn’t share the Netherlands’ address with the review panel.” Graf’s voice was low, somber. “I want to be the one to tell Falk’s wife her husband was a hero before he died.”

  Herbert tried to visualize the green pastoral images of Germany he remembered from his childhood, now sprouting large prison camps, imprisoning, even killing, thousands of its citizens. “It’s hard to believe Germany has come to this.”

  Graf nodded. “I’ve been trying to work out how a nation agrees to annihilate their ethnic inhabitants and, in turn, have their citizens, cities, and monuments destroyed.” Following a moment of silence, the pastor offered an ecclesiastical smile. “I suppose we will soon find out.”

  Wilhelm Falk

  United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners Springfield, Missouri - July 1944

  Falk knew doctors were keeping him drugged. He surfaced for a few blurry moments, and then slipped back into the pleasant void where Ilse laughed while playing with the boys. Her voice high, filled with a happy lilt. If he could just get closer and touch her, he’d know the war had been no more than a nightmare. Hans and Dietrich appeared and raced across the yard. They were strong runners for their ages. Then he was conscious again. If only the war would end, and he could hold them. The boys would have grown. Perhaps they could outrun him now.

  There were no pills with breakfast, and his mind felt clearer. His shoulder still ached, but pain no longer radiated down his arm. How long had he been in this hospital? The nurses and guards spoke openly, but his muddled mind was unable to translate. Each day, he asked to meet with someone of importance, but the guards remained noncommittal. He needed to help free Graf. Knowing the pastor sat in a prison weighed heavily on him. He carried enough guilt for what he didn’t do while he served in the Wehrmacht, and now, he had the added remorse of what he did do: he sent Graf the package that led to his arrest.

  The door opened and a nurse he nicknamed Red entered. Her carrot-colored hair was styled into a neat bun below her white cap. Two uniformed guards accompanied her, so something was up. One spoke in German. “You will shower and dress. Your interview begins in one hour.”

  “With whom?”

  “An attaché to President Roosevelt.”

  This was success. One of the last steps in his plan even if it now unfolded in a prison hospital.

  The soldiers left and Red walked him to the showers at the end of the hall. She handed him off to a male orderly who supervised Falk as he turned his back to wash. Trickles of blood escaped from under his bandages, racing down his body in light-pink rivulets. He slowly lifted his aching arm, relieved it wasn’t paralyzed.

  Once dry, he returned to his room where Red changed the wet bandages and then helped him put on fresh clothing—a prison jumpsuit of sorts.

  The guards returned, flanking him as they led him through a maze of green hallways and into another building, the linoleum older and yellowed nearest the wallboards. They climbed stairs to a door with COURTROOM stenciled across its glass. Once inside, he sat in a leather chair at a table facing a raised platform. Where five official-looking men in uniform, heavy with medals, regarded him from behind a long wooden table. He squinted against the brightness of the overhead lights and breathed in the scent of old floor wax.

  Falk’s heart thumped in his ears. The professional setting gave this meeting the weight of something real, something important enough for this caliber of men to gather.

  A court clerk entered. She was a solid woman, her hair in tight blonde curls, with her stocky calves peeking from below the skirt of a crisp army uniform. She took a seat at a table below the five men, in front of her steno machine.

  Another man entered and sat at the end of Falk’s table. He was burly with ropey arms that led to huge, meaty hands. He had a lift to his eyes that made him appear as if he were surprised even when he wasn’t.

  “I will be your translator,” he said in flawless German.

  Falk nodded. “Danke.”

  The heavily decorated officer seated at the center of the five men, briefly shuffled papers and then spoke. “I am General William Donovan, head of the Office for the Coordination of Intelligence Information.” He motioned to the other men at the table. “These men are trained in enemy affairs and answer to Army Chief of Staff George Marshall and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We’re here on behalf of President Roosevelt.”

  He nodded, pleased and somewhat overwhelmed. He’d pictured this moment for so long.

  “I’m glad to meet with you.” He adjusted his position to afford his sore shoulder and arm a more comfortable resting place.

  “We’re here to determine why and how you obtained official papers and photos of the Jewish extermination camps. We are also interested in other information you may have regarding Hitler and the Third Reich.”

  “Yes, sirs. I’m thrilled to share it, but we may be here for days.”

  Colonel Donovan smiled. “Not a problem, Officer Falk. However long you need.” The colonel folded his hands in front of him on the table. “Let’s start with you telling us about your military service.”

  He explained how he avoided serving the Reich for two years while working as the plant manager for Eastman Kodak Stuttgart, providing film for the war.

  “In forty-two I was forced to join. My father’s friend, Army Chief of the O-K-H General Staff, Generaloberst Ludwig Beck, got me an officer position in the Schutzstaffel.”

  The panel took notes as the translator repeated his story.

  He began speaking of the camps, the dead bodies, the hatred and beliefs that led to slavery and murder. Now the American agents were still. Eyes downcast, heads nodding at times, at other times shaking in disbelief. Did they believe him? Would he believe such things if he hadn’t seen them for himself?

  He spoke of the gas chambers built to look like showers, and the rows of crematoriums constructed to deal with the thousands of dead bodies every day. One dark-haired agent sat with his hand over his mouth. Were the details making him sick? They should. Falk finished, his voice running out of energy as he searched his mind for what more he could share.

  Donovan raised his pen in the air. “To whom did you report these atrocities?”

  The question gave him pause. After his discoveries at the Hadamar hospital, he was on a fact-finding mission, gathering information as quickly as possible.

  “I didn’t tell anyone in the Wehrmacht.”

  “And why not?”

  “I had to survive long enough to get the information out. It was a death sentence for anyone who spoke against Hitler, let alone as an officer in the upper levels of the Wehrmacht.”

  When he said Hitler’s name, it was with the poisonous hatred he harbored for the monster.

  “Surely others opposed him?”

  “Dozens of men, even some senior officers, tried to murder Hitler. Last year it was General Hubert Lanz, Hitler’s chief of staff.” He took a deep breath. “They were all shot.”

  The generals studied him without speaking. The room’s atmosphere was heavy with scrutiny, all directed his way.

  Falk took a moment to gather his thoughts. He needed to convince them he tried to tell other world leaders, but no one would listen.

  “To be killed like all others did not seem to be the answer. I wrote to clergy of all denominations, including the Holy See. Ambassadors from Sweden, Norway and Spain. In 1942 I wrote to Dr. Gerhart Riegner, the representative of the Jewish World Congress in Geneva. He assured me that he would alert the Jewish leaders in the United States. It seemed as if no country wanted to b
e involved. I began to take detailed notes and pictures, if I could, in the hope that one day the forces of the United States and Great Britain would stop the slaughter.” Frustrated, he raised his hands. “I never thought it would take so long to be heard.”

  The colonel glanced at the papers in front of him. “Do you know Anastasy Vonsyatsky?”

  “No.”

  “Do you believe that Jewish families could be considered fortunate because they were moved out of the German cities that were bombed to rubble? That being in a labor camp was a safer place for them?”

  “With respect, sir, that is ridiculous!” Falk’s words came out too loudly. “Operation Reinhard is no more than the thinnest of excuses to bring the Jewish and Roma populations to a place where they could be secretly and efficiently murdered.” He pressed his hands onto the wooden seat to keep them from shaking. “Who is Vonsyatsky?”

  “A Russian,” Donovan said. “He’s being held here as a German spy.” His eyebrows rose in a questioning manner.

  Falk bristled. They doubted his intentions, negating all he sacrificed. “If I were a spy, I would choose an easier way to the United States than I have just suffered.”

  One of Chief Marshall’s associates asked, “Did your family know of your part in this extermination?”

  His part in the extermination? He felt as if he were clubbed.

  “I couldn’t confide in anyone, not even family members. When I joined the SS, I became a munitions factory manager and not a part of the killing squads or Hitler’s guards. My crime is that I observed mass murders in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Sobibór and didn’t intervene to stop them. But I never participated,” he said, gritting his teeth. He never expected to be the one on trial. “Never. My task was to monitor the operations of chemical plants and munitions factories which meant that I traveled extensively. I risked my life often, by destroying shipments of Zyklon-B gas to be used in the extermination chambers.”