Prague Counterpoint

by Bodie Thoene

  “Amanda Taylor and I did as much as we could.” Murphy could see the church spires over the roofs of the other buildings and wondered how long it would be until they too faced the ordeal of the churches across the border in Germany. “We had a few contacts among the clergy. One guy used to meet me in the Tiergarten in Berlin with information. After the Gestapo murdered him, I pulled back from the whole thing.” His mouth grew dry at the memory. “The Nazis pretty well crushed all the opposition within the church. Amanda still kept up with it. Told me there were eight hundred pastors arrested last year.”

  “Eight hundred and seven.” Skies reached beneath the seat and pulled out the white envelope. He tossed it onto the seat. “Does the name Walter Kronenberger ring any bells?”

  Murphy stared down at the name and the words that were neatly printed across the front of the envelope. The name stirred his memory, but so many names had come and gone while he was covering the first gruesome days of the Reich. “Was he—” he fingered the envelope— “pastor? No. Journalist, wasn’t he?’

  Skies emitted a short, bitter laugh. “You bet. One of the last with the guts to speak out.” He glanced at Murphy as they slowed to a stop behind a tram. “The story is all there, Murph. He was on his way to the INS when the SS goons stopped him. Shot him. Blood and brains all over the newspaper office.” He laughed again, but there was no humor in the laugh. “Seems a fitting way for a reporter to die; don’t you think? He came in to file his last story with us, and they shot him full of holes.” Now the gravelly voice caught and Murphy could see dampness around the tough newspaperman’s eyes. “But they didn’t get the story away from him. Timmons and I found it on the floor. White envelope lying on the white tiles under the desk in the corner. Read it, Murph.What a story! We gotta find a way to get it out of here and publish it in the West.”

  That would be easier said than done, Murphy knew. At Alpern Airport, the Nazis were literally tearing suitcases apart in search of smuggled foreign currency and any papers that might be considered detrimental to the image of the Reich. Reporters would be searched with special thoroughness. Contraband papers were almost as difficult to smuggle out of the country as human contraband. What had been true in Germany was now doubly true for Austria.

  Murphy tucked the envelope into his jacket pocket as Skies pulled up in front of the INS office. Two large cruel-looking men stood beside the door.

  “Gestapo,” Skies breathed, turning pale. As head of the INS offices in Vienna for many years, Bill Skies had run the communication service without having to face the Gestapo methods—until this week. The murder of Kronenberger had been a brutal introduction, and the last few days had contained nightmare after nightmare, none of which could be written down or communicated to the outside world.

  Murphy, on the other hand, had been in Berlin from the beginning of the terror. He had learned to deal with Himmler’s hoodlums with a certain amount of bravado. “Let me do the talking,” he warned in a low voice.

  The Gestapo agents blocked the door as Murphy and Skies tried to enter. “You will come with us, please,” they commanded. “This office is closed for now.”

  “Routine questioning,” the German officer explained as Skies protested. “You will be taken over there—” the man jerked his thumb toward the Rothschild Palace—“along with the other foreign journalists who witnessed the assault of the criminal Kronenberger.”

  Murphy raised his hands in mock surrender. “Well, if it’s witnesses you want, friend, you can let me go. I just flew in from London.” The white envelope containing Walter Kronenberger’s testament seemed ready to burn a hole in Murphy’s jacket.

  “That’s true,” Skies agreed quickly. “Mr. Murphy is an American journalist. Just in from London. He was in no way connected.” Skies nudge Murphy. “Show them your plane ticket, Murphy.”

  It was obvious that Skies had already thought of the Kronenberger document as well. If the story was as hot as Skies believed it was, then the Gestapo and the Ministry of Propaganda would be most anxious to destroy it.

  Murphy pulled out his ticket and stood in nonchalant confidence as the officers scrutinized it. “You have only just landed at Alpern.” The smaller of the two grim men scratched his head as if deciding what to do with Murphy.

  “Right. My luggage is at Sacher Hotel.” Murphy was certain that his room had been taken over but still had some hope that the friendly porters had gathered up his belongings and stashed them safely away.

  “You are staying at the Sacher?” Now the larger officer doubted him. After all, only officers of the Reich were quartered there now.

  Skies interrupted. “He is staying with me. At my apartment. We just left his bags there with a friend in the meantime.”

  “A friend?” The man’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “A porter has some of my things in storage,” Murphy explained. He was relieved that Skies had given Murphy an address at his flat. If Leah and Shimon had somehow found their way to Elisa’s apartment, the last thing Murphy wanted was to draw any attention to that location.

  “Regardless,” Skies defended, “Herr Murphy has endured a long and exhausting trip. He is no way connected with anything that has happened here the last few days. I fail to see what purpose will be served by questioning a man just in from London about an event that happened in Vienna.” He was smiling at the foolishness of detaining Murphy any longer.

  “Quite right.” The officer nodded curtly and clicked his heels as he presented Murphy the airline ticket. “You are free to go, Herr Murphy. This is only a routine examination of witnesses so that we might have some verification of the state of mental derangement of Kronenberger when he ran into the room.”

  Skies fished out his car keys and the key to his apartment. “I’ll call you at home when we’re through. Then come pick me up, huh?”

  The signal flashed from Murphy’s eyes to Bill Skies’. The Kronenberger document would be safely hidden even as the Gestapo gathered their testimony from the journalists. Beyond the borders of the Reich, the words of Walter Kronenberger himself would speak louder than the men who merely witnessed his death. The document in Murphy’s pocket spoke of life as it had been beneath the iron boot of the Nazis in Hamburg. Relief filled Skies’ face as Murphy climbed back into the car and pulled away from the INS office.

  Murphy drove slowly through the armed camp that had been Vienna. Nazi flags hung from the spires of St. Stephan’s; this seemed like the final blasphemy. The shadows of the spires fell across the roofs of the surrounding buildings and pointed toward the Judenplatz, where Vienna’s remaining Jewish population waited for the next outburst of violence.

  It was not sandbags that blocked the entrance to the streets of the Jewish district but broken furniture from Jewish homes, long benches from houses of study and prayer, and desecrated Torah scrolls torn from the synagogues.

  Murphy could see no sign of life beyond the barricades. The presence of swaggering Hitler Youth members at the barricades kept the tormented Jews indoors. As in Berlin, Murphy thought, it was the youth who seemed most filled with hatred and violence. Hitler had proclaimed that the old ones did not matter to his policies, for he held the pride of the Aryan youth in his hands!

  With the Kronenberger document stuffed in his coat pocket, Murphy did not dare to stop at the entrance of the Judenplatz to ask about the Feldsteins. His jaw was set as he rolled past the destruction of the beautiful old district. Leah and Shimon could not have remained unscathed by such violence. Their little house was at the center of it all, just as their lives had been at the center of Vienna’s Zionist movement.

  Murphy frowned. If they had not escaped the first onslaught of the Nazi arrival, they could not have escaped this place at all. They had made no secret where their sympathies were. If they were still alive today, their only regret must be that they did not leave sooner for settlement in Palestine.

  Now it was too late for multiple thousands of Jews in Austria. Most had never seriously co
nsidered immigrating to that desolate, ragged patch of land. One night had made the difference. How they must long now for the relative safety of that place! Murphy thought.

  Five minutes away was Elisa’s flat. Murphy had no intention of stopping, but he drove by all the same. Perhaps he would see some sign of life behind the lacy curtains. What he saw filled him instead with hopelessness for the fate of Leah and Shimon.

  In front of the door of every apartment building on the street stood an SS guard. Bayonet fixed. Jackboots spit-shined. Helmet in place. These fierce young men could not have been more than nineteen or twenty years of age, and yet they alone seemed to control the ageless city of Vienna.

  The sight of these cocky young guards in front of Elisa’s building made Murphy instantly angry. He pulled the car to the curb, set the brake, and forgetting the papers of Kronenberger for a time, he climbed out and walked directly toward the door leading into the building.

  Heels clicked, and then the rifle descended, blocking his path. “Halt!” shouted the fair-skinned, rock-jawed young man.

  Murphy felt himself tense for confrontation. If the kid had not been carrying a rifle, Murphy was certain he could easily have pushed past him.

  “I live here,” Murphy said defiantly. He was instantly sorry he had not simply stopped and smiled politely. The young sentry pulled a clipboard off the stone ledge on the building.

  “Your name, bitte?” He searched the list.

  “Bitte,” Murphy apologized, realizing that his name would not be on the tenant list. “My German is not so good. I mean to say that I have a friend who lives here.”

  “And the name of your friend?”

  Now Murphy had done just what he had not wanted to do. If he mentioned Elisa’s name, then some attention, however small, would be focused on the flat. Murphy stammered, pretending not to clearly understand the question.

  Impatient with this ignorant American, the sentry snapped his question again. “And what is the name and apartment of this friend of yours?”

  “The name of my friend?”

  “Ja, ja, ja!”

  “Bill Timmons,” Murphy replied. “An American journalist, as I am.”

  Hard eyes scanned the clipboard. “There is no tenant here by that name.”

  Now Murphy feigned confusion. “I don’t understand. He said the address was 541—”

  “This is 145! Dumkopf!”

  Murphy smiled. They were not only fierce looking, they had no manners, either. “Well, so it is.” He tipped his fedora and thanked the sentry, who simply rolled his eyes in irritation.

  Angry at himself now, Murphy climbed back into the car. He would not try to enter the apartment again—not while there were sentries on guard, at any rate. If every apartment in Vienna was being searched—and that was certainly the case in Elisa’s building—then Leah and Shimon could not be here either. The tidal wave of Nazi rage was still washing over the city. Murphy could only wait now and plan on searching through the debris after the waters abated.

  From the apartment he drove directly to Bill Skies’ flat; it was two blocks from the Vienna State Opera House in an elegant little neighborhood where Beethoven had once lived. Small brass plaques marked the historical structures surrounding Skies’ apartment building, and a dozen paint-smeared doors now bore the word JUDE! The Nazi flag hung from the roof of every house but those with the red paint and the crude Star of David.

  No corner of Vienna had escaped it. No street. No building. No life, it seemed to Murphy. There were left in this unhappy city only two marks of identity: the broken cross and the six-pointed star that branded the forsaken people of a long-ago kingdom.

  20

  Kronenberger’s Legacy

  From behind the slit in the curtain, Leah had watched John Murphy confront the SS sentry below the apartment. A mixture of hope and dread warred within her. She longed to have the comfort of his presence in the flat; but if he came up these stairs, if he argued with the sentry or pushed his way past the stinking bulk of Herr Hugel, they would follow him up the steps and into the apartment.

  Tears of frustration stung her eyes as the lanky American journalist announced that he had certainly come to the wrong place! “No!” she wanted to shout. “We are here! I read Elisa’s note! Please, Murphy! Help me! Help us!”

  Instead Leah had silently watched him drive away. He had done the only thing he could do. And now Leah was a prisoner, trapped by Herr Hugel and the Nazi sentries who stood guard at the door day and night. How long could such an arrangement go on? What were they guarding against? And whom were they looking for? She had turned away the fat Nazi concierge by pure bluff. Would she be able to do it again?

  As the car disappeared around the corner, Leah stepped back and turned to face the pensive stares of the boys. They were only children, but they had lived through more in their short lives than Leah herself. What had they done when they had been prisoners in their own home in Germany?

  Little Charles frowned and clasped his hands together as if in prayer. Louis spoke for him. “Mama always said when we are afraid that we should pray, Aunt Leah.”

  What had those prayers gained them? Leah thought angrily as she gazed into the mournful eyes of children who had never been able to lead a happy, normal life. Entreaties to the silent heavens had not made Charles whole. It had not saved Walter from prison, or his wife from an abortion and death at the hands of Nazi doctors. What benefit had any prayers been in Germany through these long bitter years? The leaders of the church who had not been arrested had turned their hearts to stone against the innocent. In the name of Christianity, the Jews were hounded unto death, and the weak among the flocks were sorted out and marked for the slaughter. Hitler now surely prayed for the glory of a perfect human specimen—one with a beautiful physical body but without any soul at all. This was the Nazi ideal! This was the empty cup that had been drawn up from the well of their prayers!

  Leah did not answer. The sadness in Charles’ eyes deepened as he glimpsed her own emptiness. “No!” she wanted to shout. “I have no faith in miracles!”

  Charles lowered his clasped hands and shook his head as if to tell her that she was wrong not to believe. She replied to his silent accusation. “If such a thing keeps you from being afraid, then certainly you should pray.”

  Louis glanced at Charles, then said, “But what about you, Aunt Leah?”

  “You will pray for me, yes, children? Pray that I will know what I must do. And if you like, pray that I will not be afraid.”

  That answer seemed to satisfy them. Charles nodded solemnly, and Louis promised that they would indeed pray for their Aunt Leah, who could not pray for herself.

  ***

  Two dozen German-Czech Nazis sat in the sweltering room with Albert Sporer, Konrad Henlein, Hans Frank, and Otto Wattenbarger. Here, in the Czech Sudetenland city of Eger, the battle lines were being drawn.

  “The riots must begin by next week at the latest,” Frank instructed his men. “Germans here in Czechoslovakia must rise up as one to declare their wish for union with the Reich. Like Austria, we will be a part of the Greater Reich.” He looked around the room for effect. “What will this cost us? Perhaps our very lives. But what is that compared to the glory of the United Fatherland?”

  The men did not answer. They had been given their assignment.

  They would first attack a Czech police station, and by this act they would begin the rebellion. Those among them who might perish would be proclaimed martyrs for the Fatherland. Their names would be screamed from the Nazi podiums and pulpits! The Sudeten Germans would accept nothing less than death or freedom from the Czech government in Prague!

  Determination steeled each face as the plans were outlined. The times of each shift of police had been noted. The attack would begin at 3 a.m., just as the early morning officers arrived outside the station on their bicycles. What would be simpler? The Nazis would attack and flee. The Czech government would strike back. The Führer would have his propaga
nda.

  The pattern was exactly the same one Otto had witnessed in Vienna in the months preceding the Anschluss. He had witnessed the murder of the German woman Irmgard Schüler and her Jewish lover, Rudolf Dorbransky. From that small flame, riots had been kindled. A hundred such events over the months had led to the end of Austria, the end of many things.

  Spirits were high as German-made weapons and ammunition were issued to the men. Otto lingered behind as the terrorists filed out of the hotel one at a time.

  “You look doubtful, Otto,” Sporer said to him quietly.

  “I am not from the Sudetenland. I am Austrian.” Otto shrugged. “There will be killing. Men will certainly die. You know I am not afraid of that, Albert, but––”