White Lies

by Rudolph Bader

  “Oh, I remember. I often walked past that shop. It was in the Sorge. That was the main shopping street, just over there, behind those houses. Still is.”

  “Do you remember the name?” I suddenly became excited.

  “I’m afraid I can’t think of it at the moment. You see, we were too poor to go shopping there. That delicatessen shop was for the rich. When the Nazis took over it was mostly them that went there. I remember the elegant people or their servants coming out of that shop, with their noses up in the air.”

  “And you really can’t remember the name?”

  “I am so sorry,” the woman shook her head. “It’s too long ago.”

  What a disappointment! But at least I now knew where about the shop had been. I asked the good woman if she could show me the exact house where it had been. She said yes. So, we stood up and walked over to the street called Sorge, where many new chain stores that were familiar from other German cities had recently established themselves. The woman, who introduced herself as Trudy Kleinschmidt, stopped in front of one of the buildings which now housed a new pharmacy.

  “This must be it,” she pointed at the front.

  I looked at the building. It was one of those that had obviously been rebuilt after the war and refurbished again now after reunification. It was clear that the people who owned it now would certainly be unable to tell me anything about the owners before the war.

  Trudy Kleinschmidt and I stood there and went on chatting for a while, until she said she had to leave. I gave her my mobile number and told her the name of my hotel, “just in case you suddenly remember the name of the shop,” I added.

  We parted, and I walked back to Markt, where I sat down on the same bench again. There were only few people about. I studied the large building across. It looked as if it had seen better times. A most impressive building with a wide front facing the Markt. What could it have been? Today it was apparently uninhabited and observing it carefully, I detected some cracks in the walls and some rotten beams under the eaves. But its size meant it had at one time been a building of considerable importance. A government building? A modest town palace? A guildhall? A foreign embassy? I was reminded of yet another of my father’s Latin catch-phrases, sic transit gloria mundi, “such is the decline of former glory”. Somehow, I felt I wanted to find out more about this building.

  I bought a newspaper and walked back to my hotel, where I caught up with my writing. My diary was behind schedule. The rest of the day I spent reading the paper and staring at the map of Gera, hoping to draw some information from it and wondering where my grandfather’s house had been.

  I spent three days wandering around the town without any significant results. Then, quite out of the blue, I got a phone call from Trudy.

  “Can we meet?” she wanted to know.

  “Of course. Have you found out the name?” I asked back.

  “Yes, I have. But I have found out more information that might interest you.”

  That afternoon, we met at the same café where I had started out on my first day in Gera.

  Our talk was mostly about the town of Gera in general. I couldn’t get away from the impression that Trudy was afraid of something. She seemed to shy away from the sort of information she had made me believe she had found out for me on the telephone. While we were discussing the progress of modernity in the Eastern Länder, the awful behaviour of some arrogant Wessies and the good things that the reunified Germany ought to have taken over from the GDR - such as certain patterns in the education system or a commitment to full employment among the people - I observed her face and her body-language. She was really a very good-looking woman despite her advanced age. Whereas at first I had judged her to be in her seventies, I now estimated her age to be in the mid-sixties. Her slight nervousness showed in the movement of her hands and her blinking eyes. As I was to find out later in the course of our acquaintance, whenever she was nervous her hands moved in the air very quickly, especially her left hand, which she flapped in front of her as if she could emphasize a certain point like that, and she accompanied this hand-flapping with repeated winks which gave the impression of a person who was dazzled by bright light or beginning to cry any moment. But with her these idiosyncrasies were signs of extreme nervousness. Though I had not been able to interpret those signs yet at the time of our meeting at the café, I still caught her nervousness. And I wondered what she could be so nervous about.

  Eventually our general topics had run out of steam and we sat in silence for a few minutes. We both ordered more coffee. Then I decided to take the initiative.

  “On the telephone you mentioned something that is of great interest to me,” I ventured. “You said you’d found out the name of my grandfather’s delicatessen shop in the Sorge. If you don’t mind, would you be ready to let me know now?”

  She looked at me. “Yes, it was called Weidmann’s, and it was a very elegant shop, as I think I told you.” She hesitated. “But you see, there’s a lot more to tell. Only, I don’t quite know where to start.”

  “What is it, then?” I asked.

  “It’s all so long ago. But it suddenly came back to me when I spoke to my cousin. She was... well, she could remember it all. How could I ever have forgotten that name? Of course, it was Weidmann’s.”

  I felt there had to be a lot more behind this information. Why else should Trudy and possibly her cousin be so emotional about the name of that old shop?

  “Did you know the family who owned the shop?”

  “No, I didn’t. But my cousin did, and only too well.”

  “So, can you tell me more about your cousin and what she knows?”

  “I think you should talk to her. I don’t know how much I can tell you. Some of the things are too private, so she’d better tell you personally.”

  “But what do you feel entitled to tell me? Or can I talk to your cousin soon? What’s her name anyway?”

  “Well, these are a lot of questions all at once,” Trudy frowned at me.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to be impolite. But you see, I’m really interested in the family, the Weidmann family, as you said. They could be my ancestors. So I think I have a moral right to know the truth.”

  Trudy reflected for a few moments. Then she shrugged her shoulders and uttered a deep sigh.

  “I guess you are right,” she finally said. “If you are the granddaughter of the owner of Weidmann’s Delicatessen, then you have the right to know the truth, as you say. But I’m warning you.”

  “Why?”

  “You see, I like you. I liked you from the first moment we met on that bench in Market Square. And some of the things my cousin could tell you, well, they might not be so pleasant, and I wouldn’t want you to worry too much about the past. It’s all so long ago.”

  I looked her straight in her eyes and solemnly declared that I wanted to know the truth, whatever the outcome, even if it was hard to stomach. She replied she wanted her cousin to be free to decide for herself.

  “Let her be the judge of how much of the truth she is ready to tell me,” I suggested.

  “I will call her, and I’ll ask her,” Trudy promised.

  “What’s your cousin’s name?” I repeated my earlier question.

  “She’s Anna.”

  Nineteen

  Anna Kleinschmidt was indisposed for about ten days after my meeting with her cousin Trudy in that café, where I had first learnt the name of my ancestors, Weidmann. Trudy assured me that Anna would eventually talk to me. She was in a retirement home in Gera-Lusan, but she was suffering from a bad pneumonia and couldn’t be visited until she was better again.

  I spent these days with further enquiries. My approach was a personal approach at first. I just addressed older people in the streets and asked them if they had known Weidmann’s Delicatessen or even the owner’s fami
ly. The responses I got were very few. Hardly anyone could remember the Weidmanns, although some people remembered the shop.

  One elderly woman could tell me a little more.

  “Old Herr Weidmann was a very strange character, and so were his two sons,” she stated. “He was known as a liberal freethinker in the thirties, but when his sons left for the War he suddenly adapted to the new order and became as thick as thieves with the Nazi big-shots in town.”

  “And his sons?” I wanted to know.

  “Well, I don’t really know. I was too small at the time, a mere child. But I remember what I learnt from my parents, who went along with the system but always kept their heads low. They didn’t like the Weidmanns. They said the boys always thought they were better than everybody else. One of them was sent to the Nazi elite school near Dresden where they made a real arsehole out of him. The other boy just disappeared in the War. Old Herr Weidmann died in the early fifties. He was a broken man after the war.”

  I was very excited about this information. Obviously, my unknown uncle, my father’s brother Thomas, had become a staunch Nazi after he was sent to a special school where he was brainwashed.

  “Do you think I could talk to your parents?” I asked very politely.

  “I don’t think so. My father is dead, and my mother is very weak. I’m sorry. But tell me, why are you so interested in the Weidmanns?”

  “As it appears, old Herr Weidmann could have been my grandfather, but I’m still not quite sure. That’s why I want to find out.”

  “Ah, I understand. If you can give me your name and telephone number I might call you when I’ve spoken to my mother and she’s agreed to talk to you. But don’t count on it.”

  So I now had two elderly informers whose relatives could tell me more. I had become dependent on the good-will of Trudy Kleinschmidt and of this woman, whose name was Renate Erdinger.

  But it was more than just a start.

  I got a few more bits of information from elderly people, but I suspected most of the so-called information to be based on rumours. A conspicuous delicatessen shop in the town centre with an owner who changed his political attitude during those troubled times must have stood out. But then, of course, such a long time makes people forget or mix up things. Moreover, some of my would-be informers were reluctant to talk about those times, probably because they had either suffered too much or because they had been sympathizers of the Nazis and now wanted to erase that part of their biography. After the War, things must have been similar to the situation now, in certain respects. I am convinced that many of the good citizens that I see in the streets of Gera today must have been agents of the Stasi, the secret police of the Communist dictatorship. A good number of them might even have blood on their hands. And it must have been similar, or even worse, in the late forties and through the fifties. As my readings in history have taught me, many men even in high positions in the early years of the Federal Republic must have been Nazis with blood on their hands. I remember that one of them, Hans Filbinger, even became prime minister in one of the Länder. And then, later, there was Kurt Waldheim from Austria who made it all the way up to the position of Secretary General of the United Nations. Fortunately, both of them were uncovered and had to resign. As far as I know, the Filbinger chap is still alive. I wonder if they will give him a state funeral when he dies.

  For days, I had time to reflect and assess my own picture of my father. Of course, as a young girl I had admired him as a hero. But after my adolescence, I had begun to see him in a more critical light, even though I still felt very close to him. Whilst I admired his pacifist views, I became increasingly curious about his role during the War. The fact that he’d changed his name and his consistent reluctance to talk about those days made me more and more suspicious. It’s strange how you can love your father unconditionally and at the same time question some of the things he wants you to believe. For one thing, I found it odd that he had those scars on his arm, scars that he claimed stemmed from tattoos that he’d had removed some time after the War, which meant that he must have spent a certain time in a concentration camp, but he absolutely refused to tell me more about it.

  * * *

  Neither Trudy Kleinschmidt nor Renate Erdinger has called. It’s time for some sort of reckoning or position-finding. I don’t know how long I’ll have the patience to wait for my kind informers to contact me. It’s possible I might have to return to England with the scarce information that I have accumulated up to now.

  So, what information do I have?

  First, my grandfather’s name was Weidmann. His shop was in the Sorge.

  Then, he had two sons. Thomas, my uncle, who was obviously a Nazi, disappeared during the War. He’s probably dead. The second son, Dieter, - if that is his real name - is my father.

  Furthermore, my father must have known the Kleinschmidts.

  What will my next steps have to be? What questions will I have to ask those old women if and when they’re ready to talk to me? What stumbling blocks are there when I interview them? I’ll have to be polite and careful and ask my questions with empathy. Those old women might have suffered during both periods of dictatorship, the Nazi times as well as the GDR times.

  * * *

  Several days have passed. It’s only now that I find the time and the energy - or should I say courage? - to return to my diary and write down what I have found out in the course of my research. It is not easy to stomach. But let me begin at the beginning.

  One morning, Trudy Kleinschmidt called to say her older cousin Anna was now ready to talk to me. As she pointed out, Anna only agreed after Trudy had told her I was a daughter of one of the Weidmann boys.

  We took a tram to Gera-Lusan. It was a quarter or suburb that must have grown up during GDR times. Most of the huge apartment blocks were constructed out of those standard-sized grey slabs, so-called Plattenbauten, which you can find in all former Socialist states of Eastern Europe, but most widely spread and conspicuous in the former GDR.

  The retirement home was located in such a building, but it had had a thorough refurbishment, probably right after Reunification.

  A male nurse showed us to Anna Kleinschmidt’s room.

  As we entered, I was surprised to meet the bright smile of an extremely good-looking woman who hardly looked older than in her mid-sixties, but who had to be in her mid-seventies. Her bright eyes beamed and exuded an emotional warmth that I immediately liked. Her hair was well-groomed and tinted a pleasant bluish grey. Her lipstick was elegant but not overdone, a hue between red and dark pink, emphasized by the woman’s winning smile. The wrinkles produced by her friendly smile didn’t make her look older because her skin was of such smooth and soft quality to make many a younger woman envious.

  We shook hands and sat down in two elegant armchairs, while Trudy busied herself with the tea-making paraphernalia in the background. I imagined we would begin with the usual small-talk, but Anna went straight into the heart of the matter.

  “Yes, I can see, my dear young woman,” she said, looking at my face with what seemed like fascination, and I was touched to detect a tear running down one of her cheeks. “I can see it in your features, you must be Manfred’s daughter.”

  I was so puzzled, I couldn’t respond immediately.

  “But my father’s name is Dieter,” I managed to croak eventually, in full knowledge that I had to be wrong and she had to be right.

  Anna slowly nodded her head. “I can understand why he had to change his name after the war. But to me, he is still my beloved Manfred, Manfred Weidmann, the great love of my life. How could I ever forget his features? And you are his spitting image. What did you say your name was?”

  “Nora. Nora White.”

  “And your father?”

  “Dieter Woolf. He said it was Wolff in Germany, but actually he must have changed his name before, as y
ou say, because he betrayed that one day when he had a slip of his tongue and mentioned his escape from the East. Originally, he maintained that he’d changed from Wolff to Woolf when he went to America, but when he told me of his dangerous escape from the Russian Zone right at the end of the War, he accidentally mentioned that he had to change his name during his escape. At the time it didn’t strike me as important - I was only a young teenager - but more recently, as I was trying to put together all the pieces of the puzzle that was my father’s biography, it suddenly dawned on me as an inconsistency.”

  “I see.”

  “So, you are quite sure his name was Manfred Weidmann, and we are actually speaking of the same man?”

  Anna thought for a moment. Then she began to describe her young lover of the nineteen-thirties, giving me his exact date of birth - which indeed was my father’s - and she added some of his typical idiosyncrasies, such as the twitching of his left shoulder when he was nervous.

  “And he was always so fond of quotations from Latin,” she added.

  I had to swallow hard. There was no doubt. We were really speaking of one and the same man. And Anna had been his girlfriend before the War.

  “Tell me. How is dear Manfred today? Is he well?”

  “I’m afraid he isn’t very well. Physically he is okay for his age, but he seems to worry so much. His mind seems to go funny, if you know what I mean.”

  “Please, tell me more about him and about your family.”

  So I told this charming woman the whole story. I told her of Dad’s time in Frankfurt, then in Switzerland, in Chicago, and finally in England. I told her of my mother Emily and of my sister Margaret. I gave her a history of my father’s professional career, as far as I knew about it, and I concluded with a report about my own family, my husband George and my children Andrew and Lisa. I could see that my listener was very pleased with what I told her.

  We were silent, all three of us, digesting what we had just found out, when a young nurse entered and put an end to the intimate atmosphere.