A girl stood at the intersection of the Kantstrasse and the Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse with a sandwich board strapped over her shoulders. From the front and from behind, everyone was to read, i slept with a jew. That’s all it said, and this girl stood there, day after day, for many days, perhaps a week, and maybe even longer. I felt so sorry for her. Did she have food? She cried sometimes, I saw her tears; I think she was scared, and I was certain she would never do it again. I was scared too, for I was beginning to see what this “new regime” really meant.
Then this happened. The date fell in the middle of the school week. It was November 9, 1938. I had gone to bed early; there was to be an exam the next day in Geometry and, as everyone knew, I hated the Maths. Mutti and her husband had retired early, and Dieter, who had just turned thirteen, was the only one still awake. He happened to be in the parlor, doing something, writing perhaps, when suddenly there was commotion down below in the street, and it caused him to run to the window and draw the curtains aside. What he witnessed made him run to my room quite out of breath and shout, “Margarete, hurry! You must come! Come and look! It’s a terrible thing! Komm her! Schnell! Guck mal was da los ist!” He couldn’t believe what was going on in the street. I ran with him down the hall to the front room.
There, outside our parlor window, we saw it with our own eyes, the men in brown uniforms, the SA. They were screaming at the leather shop people: “Raus! Raus! Ihr sollt raus! Ihr seit Juden. Raus!” We stood with our mouths wide open and watched. As they were screaming, they smashed the store window with sacks filled with rocks, the window that displayed the lovely bags and the pretty gloves, the same window that had the sign that read jewish establishment. do not do business with jews.
This night would become known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. I didn’t see the woman or the man, the couple who so kindly offered me their help that day. I never saw them again, nor did I know what to do about what I had witnessed. Tell my parents? What would they do? The room would become silent with anxious looks. I already knew this. Tell the authorities? It was the authorities that had done the window smashing. I could only think as a naïve young girl could think—these people must have done something very, very bad.
At school the next day, we were dismissed early. It was my confirmation class, and Pastor Jentsch told us to go home. “The Synagogue is burning,” he said. That was all. He didn’t say why; he only looked worried. His face was white, stern. Or scared. I didn’t know which, but I knew something had gone wrong. Later, on the radio, we heard that synagogues were to be destroyed, because the Jews were holding secret meetings in them, and secret meetings were against the law. I supposed that meant all of the synagogues had to be burned.
The next day, again, we were dismissed early. This teacher told us to leave, to go home, to study. This was the same teacher, the Maths teacher, who had always refused to say “Heil Hitler” when he entered the room and we stood in response. Rather, he simply said, “Setzt Euch”—please sit—which now was not only improper but against the law.8 He too looked very worried, but he still did not raise his arm or say “Heil Hitler,” and I can only wonder what ever happened to him.
I left my class and walked down the street from my school in Schmargendorf, and as I passed it, I saw that the retirement home for elderly Jewish people was empty. All the windows and doors were wide open, and there were SS men everywhere. That building never again had people in it. It would stay empty until it was no longer there—only a few more months.
A German diplomat had been killed in Paris. This was the story we were told over the radio in the following days, and the killer was a Jew. This was the propaganda we heard and the reason we were given for purging the Jews.
You could feel it. There was something terrible in the air, something that never went away again. It was fear. I felt it, and I saw it in the eyes of others as I passed them in the street. No one spoke about anything anymore. Anything relevant, that is. Speaking, we all knew, would land us in a prison somewhere. Even telling a joke against the regime could get you picked up. So no one spoke, and I could not ask questions of anyone. Not my parents. They didn’t speak about things. And to ask Karl Spaeth only meant he could get angry at me again. For the first time in a very long time, I wept because I missed my real Papa, the man named Werner.
6
THE ANNOUNCEMENT CAME
I.
My membership in the BDM allowed me to get close to the Führer one day. It was 1939 by now, and it was his birthday. A huge parade, one such as Berlin had never seen, had been planned to celebrate it. Germany had just marched into Prague, and the Sudetenland was to be German once again. There was euphoria everywhere in the streets. To have taken back the land that had been disputed since time immemorial was, for us, a great accomplishment. It meant, for one thing, we would stop repaying France the unbearable debt the Versailles Treaty had required of us and use the money instead to rebuild our own country.
You must understand, we in Germany had had a very difficult time. We had hyperinflation, and everywhere neighbors, people we knew, were out of work. There were long lines of men, men like Bertha’s father, who wanted work but could find no work. The Versailles Treaty that was signed after the Great War was intended to ensure we would never be a world power again. Germany was being counted on to rebuild the European infrastructure that had been badly damaged during the Great War, but to do so would take another ninety years. And paying off the debt we owed, as we understood it, would take more money than Germany even had in its gold reserves.
It was, in truth, an impossible task, and it threw our country into chaos. The new German regime stopped making the payments, and Hitler saw to it that our six million unemployed men had work again. People were elated. Men began building new roads and railway lines. There was such enthusiasm, such euphoria, suddenly. There were many people who spoke, in the early days, with excitement about Hitler. The radio talked about it, constantly. No wonder the air around this day, April 20, 1939, was a festive one.
One day earlier our building manager, Frau Schulz, had come to our door to deliver a flag with the new swastika on it. “It’s been implied by the law, Frau Spaeth,” she told my Mutti when she was asked why. “I believe it even is the law that this flag is hung where it can be seen. I was notified of this. Each house with a window facing the street must hang our new flag.”
When she saw Mutti’s hesitation, she added, “Take it anyway, Frau Spaeth. It was a gift, no one asked for money,” and so Mutti hung it in our parlor window, the one facing the street. On the day of the big parade, I noticed that everywhere—lampposts and houses alike—there was a swastika hanging. Every window was bright, everywhere there were red banners, and the atmosphere was filled with excitement. For me, it was even more so because my particular troop of BDM girls were going to be very near the parliament building, the Reichskanzlei, just there on the Friedrichstrasse.
We were each given a large bouquet of roses, red ones with long stems that we would throw onto the Führer’s car as it drove by. With any luck, I could be in the front line, as I hoped I would be, and I would see this man, the one who said he was going to save our country.
And it did happen. I did stand in the front row, and I was able to throw roses onto Hitler and into his car as it drove past. Tears were in my eyes, and I was euphoric. I cried the same tears Bertha had cried: tears of joy. What joy? I wonder now. I never even knew what all the fuss was about anyway. I’d had a good life, no one in my family had suffered up to that time. We had money, we had food, we even had a telephone when no one else did, and my Papa always had work. But I was moved by the feeling that day, just as so many other people were moved by it, and as the Führer’s car drove past me, I saw him wave, and I even imagined he was waving to me. This man who looked much too small inside his large Mercedes, and I do remember I was surprised to see he didn’t give the Heil Hitler salute at all, merely a bent arm with his hand held as if it hurt—the one I thought migh
t be waving at me.
Later, years later, Papa Spaeth told me Adolf Hitler always had such terrible breath. “It was impossible to be in the same room with him. You would want to find a window somewhere and open it wide and then stand very close to it so that you could at least have a moment of fresh air,” he said. He told me this after the war was over, but talk like this would have been impossible now, and even though my Papa Spaeth would have preferred to serve another man, an egalitarian man, a righteous one, he said nothing. He did what he was supposed to do: his work.
So Hitler had bad breath! All that shouting and waving, all that stuff he did to make himself look so important, his screaming, not to mention that silly Schnurrbart, that idiotic patch of a mustache he wore, and no one could even get close!
II.
We were at the Wannsee when the announcement came. It was a Sunday, I remember it clearly. Mutti, Dieter, and I had arrived early that day at this lake with its long white beach that ran all along the Grunewald Forest near Potsdam, just south of Berlin. It was our favorite place to spend our Sundays.
There was a low and rather long building at the entry to the beach, a pavilion of sorts, and it was surrounded by a wooded area. We could change our clothes in this building, and we could buy milk and Brötchen with cheese there. It had been built at the turn of the century, and it had that majestic feel of times past: a lazy time when things moved slower and women still wore dresses when they entered the water, every one of them carrying a parasol, and men wore straw hats.
Strandkörbe, large chairs made of woven rattan, with high backs and a curved roof, stood here and there in a sort of disorganized fashion all along the otherwise tidy beach. Under the roof of each was a blue striped cushioned seat where two people could sit comfortably and enjoy looking out over the water at the other sunbathers and still have some protection from the sun. There was even a sort of curtain—also blue-and-white striped—that you could shut if you needed to hide yourself to change into swimwear. Under the seat was a drawer where you could put your towels and hats, and Dieter and I always filled it with the books we brought to read. The Strandkörbe were much in demand and could often be found fully occupied, so we had come early that morning to be sure we would have one—Mutti leading the way, Dieter and I running behind with our picnic basket and towels. We had made sandwiches with Schinken and thick smears of lard, and we brought pickles Mutti had made from cucumbers.
Our towels were laid out, our books placed into the drawer, and Mutti was fussing with a long scarf she was trying to tie around her hair. Children were running along the water, screaming at each other about something, and a ball was rolling by just as the announcement came. It was loud, blaring from the speakers that were mounted high on the roof of the pavilion and pointed toward the beach. We all heard it, clearly, and everyone stopped what he or she was doing.
“As of 5:45 this morning, we are returning fire for fire …” It was only a part of Hitler’s speech, but we already knew what was to come next. We already knew. We were, as of 5:45 that morning, at war with Poland. It was September 1, 1939, and Poland was our new enemy.9
This early morning announcement gave reason to what my aunt in East Prussia said she had witnessed during the weeks before: trainloads of soldiers, every day, and several times each day. And all the trains were heading east. “We all said to one another, ‘Isn’t it odd? It certainly looks like we’re going to war.’ ” Tante Emma had told Mutti this only days earlier over the telephone.
Helga with her children at the Wannsee. “It was a Sunday. I remember it clearly.”
This early morning announcement also gave reason to something else we had heard over the evening news broadcast. It was the last day of August. There was nothing particularly special about that day, but we would all learn in the years to come that it was a day that would change the world forever. A radio station near the Polish border, Sender Gleiwitz, broadcast the news that night, news that Hitler said was clearly anti-German propaganda. And he said it made it clear that Germany needed to attack Poland. We had heard it all on the radio, shouted at us in his whiny voice.
I was now fifteen. I had had my birthday in July and I didn’t know what all this would mean. Would I need to stop my studies and go to work? Worst of all, would I never be able to fulfill my dream of swimming in the Olympics? Would I be needed for the war? Mutti began to cry. “Wasn’t one war enough? Wasn’t it?” she kept sobbing as she hurried us to gather up our belongings. We were going home, and it was still so early in the day. With our bags and towels and sandwiches, the three of us ran past the signs that read no jews allowed and took the S-Bahn back to our home, Mutti’s face now frozen. No more tears, no more words, just hurry hurry, and the sandwiches we had made just lay there on our table in the kitchen. No one had the appetite to eat.
“The first dead ones have been reported on the front …” came over the radio the morning of the second of September, and yes, it became clear, we now had more than one front: the western one with France, the front where we had just fought for the Rhineland, and now the radio let us know we had a new front. The eastern one with Poland. On the third day of September, we heard this: France has entered the war, and England has done the same.
III.
Our car was requisitioned. That was the first effect of the war we felt personally. Some men from the SS came to our door and told us they wanted our car. They would pay us something for it, of course, but it was “for purposes of the war effort.” Anyway, it would be impossible to purchase petrol from now on, they told us, as it too was needed for “the war effort,” so our car would be useless even if we were to keep it.
The second new thing I noticed was that Berlin was to “stay dark.” Suddenly, everywhere there were posters that read the enemy sees you. put out your light. Leaflets were circulated, and everyone was instructed to know exactly what to do in case of an attack. Shutters were to be closed over the windows; blankets were to be hung to block out any stray light; the streets were to be black all night, no headlamps on our bicycles.
And yet life went along as if none of this mattered. We did what we were told and we rode our bicycles without headlamps. At night we closed our shutters. Even Unter den Linden, that lovely avenue of flowers, suddenly had camouflage netting spread over the top so it was as if we were now strolling under a huge tent, and we could no longer see the clouds. Still, none of this seemed to matter.
What did matter was the food. As soon as the war began, food rationing began as well. Suddenly we were supposed to use margarine instead of butter. Margarine! And it smelled so bad; just try to fry potatoes with that! Restaurants started serving soup made of everything they had. This became commonplace; all of them did it. And why all the soup tasted the same, I don’t know, but it was, across the board, icky. Gray, tasteless, sometimes not even hot, with barely anything recognizable in it. This soup was served all over the city, sometimes even out in the streets. It came in large vats on wheels that we called Gulaschkanonen.
Although our ration cards with the tear-off coupons, Essensmarken, said we were allotted a certain amount of bread and meat per person each month, and for each person in the household there would be soap and clothing, based on what was deemed to be sufficient, there never seemed to be enough.10 On the black market, of course, this was not true, and everyone began to look for what they needed there. The most famous area for the black market was right under the Nazis’ noses! Right in front of the Reichskanzlei.
The food rationing was unsettling. Sometimes we were hungry—Mutti just couldn’t find food to buy, even with our ration cards. Other times there was more than plenty of something, but only that one something—grapefruits, for example. Bread was not what it used to be either, and sometimes it wasn’t even available at the baker’s. A sign would hang in the window saying no bread today, and that was that. Our table was often more bare than we were used to, or, at the very least, we had to be more creative to make do with what we could
get.11
For example, once Berlin’s markets were flooded with curly endive. Every night, night after night, we ate Endiviensalat, something I will never eat again. Night after night I stayed hungry, refusing to eat it. This went on for weeks, it seemed. Then suddenly we had cantaloupe, lots and lots of cantaloupe, and I don’t know where we got them all, but we had to eat cantaloupe.
Mutti tried. She shopped every day, looking for what was available. She knew the bakery family well, a man and his wife and their young son. Every morning Mutti would walk down to the bakery—it was only at the end of our street—to buy our morning Brötchen, and she would always hear the latest news from Frau Ritter, who would already have been awake since four in the morning, baking.
“Frau Spaeth! How are things with you? And your children?” And Mutti would ask the same of her. “How is your son? He’s grown so much. I saw him just the other day on his bicycle! My, but that boy learns fast. It seems only months since you were pushing him in the buggy!”
“And what will it be for you this morning, Frau Spaeth? We haven’t got much, but I know Dieter loves these Mohnsemmel, and we happen to have received poppy seeds just yesterday. I saved some for you.”
Oh, how Dieter always loved the Brötchen with poppy seeds on them, and Frau Ritter, the baker’s wife, had a special place in her heart for him. She had lost a son in childbirth, and he would have been the same age as Dieter. Always she asked about him. What is he learning? How are his manners? Is he becoming a gentleman?
Mutti told her about his studies and that he loved reading, and then, even when there was no flour, or the bread they had baked had already been sold, or the baker had to hang a sign in the window saying no bread today, Mutti still walked there each morning. “I do it for the ritual. What else will I do with my morning?” she’d say.
No one had coffee anymore. No one! Can you imagine? We were to drink Ersatzkaffee now. Always the reason was that the coffee or the bread, or the meat or the sausage, was needed for the war effort. Was it being shipped to the front? I wondered. But then, I thought, why can soldiers have coffee but we can’t?
Letters From Berlin: A Story of War, Survival, and the Redeeming Power of Love and Friendship Page 6
