Jumping Over Shadows

by Annette Gendler

  As a teenager, I asked my father once about his grandfather’s death. He said he had never been told, and since he had been only five at the time, he had no concrete memory himself. But over the years he had pieced together that his grandfather had shot himself on the family grave. Why? Because the Nazis had come and he had been so despondent over the fact that his family was verjudet. Because of that there could be no future.

  Verjudet is one of those brilliant German word creations. The prefix ver means that something is being done to something. For example, Heirat means “marriage,” and verheiratet means “made married,” i.e., married. Jude means “Jew,” and thus verjudet means something close to “made Jewish,” not as bad as being entirely Jewish, but bad enough because some Jewish blood or influence is present. Under the Third Reich, being verjudet took second place in offensiveness to being Jewish.

  I always attributed the reference that the family was verjudet to the fact that Resi was married to Guido. But this was not Josef Rößler’s direct family but his son-in-law’s. It wasn’t as if his only daughter had married a Jew. Why should this extended Jewish family connection prove tragic enough to lead him to take his life?

  My grandmother never described her father as broody or depressed, but depression was not a commonplace diagnosis then. He must have had a pessimistic nature, something she might have inherited, as she always assumed the worst. Then again, she had experienced the worst. In her tales, her father was the accomplished teacher and school inspector, the dutiful only son of a feisty mother. His own father had had a weaving business but had died young. His mother had been left a widow at age twenty and had provided for herself and her son by sewing and by teaching girls how to sew.

  My grandmother Hanne and her father Josef Rößler, June 1932

  Josef Rößler was the bookish type, although he later proved to be a good manager of his mother’s property, house, and orchard in Warnsdorf. He loved German culture above all else, reciting ballads like Goethe’s Der Zauberlehrling by heart. The Nazis’ usurpation of German culture struck him as the rape of everything he held dear. He was an ardent member of the Schlaraffia society, fashioned after the Free Masons, where members (only men) spoke their own Schlaraffia Latin, a kind of cutesy medieval German, and promoted German culture by staging plays and concerts. He was an accomplished-enough writer to be cited as the author of poems and novels in an article on the literary scene of Reichenberg in a comprehensive history of the city, published in 1974. He had survived his younger daughter’s death ten years earlier. He had a loving wife, a lovely daughter, and two young grandsons. Why does someone like that kill himself? No one can ever truly understand why someone else is driven to take his own life, yet the question of why is all powerful, irresistible.

  In a letter addressed to the Czech Communist Party after the war to prove that he had never been a Nazi sympathizer, my grandfather briefly referred to his father-in-law’s suicide, citing it as supporting evidence of his wife’s anti-Nazi stance:

  Her father, Prof. Josef Rößler, who had many Jewish friends, committed suicide on November 3, 1938, because of his grief over the German atrocities.

  This is the only written family reference I have to his suicide and its possible reason.

  CREMATORIUM

  THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SYNAGOGUE, THE SUICIDE, the city turning into a Nazi madhouse—all that was kept from Guido. The water in his legs rose steadily and finally reached his heart. The pressure became too much. On December 12, 1938, Guido died alone in the sanatorium.

  My grandparents arranged for his cremation. Maybe they gave thought to a traditional Jewish burial, and maybe that was not possible anymore. Or maybe Guido’s stance was so reformed that he would have accepted being cremated, something that traditionally is not done in Judaism. Or maybe no one was around anymore to properly bury a Jew. Maybe it did not even occur to my grandparents that cremation, customary in their family, might not have been acceptable to Guido.

  They took their leave of him at the crematorium on top of the Monstranzberg by the cemetery. Generous stone steps led up to the crematorium’s entrance, where two Greek columns stood sentinel. Behind the entrance rose the rectangular block of the ceremonial hall, flanked by more Greek columns. Two flat wings reached out to harbor mortuaries and offices. The cemetery fanned out beyond the building, the small urn burial plots strung along boxwood hedges. Tall maples towered overhead.

  With my grandparents at Guido’s funeral were only Herta and Ludwig, an employee from his business, and a neighbor. Resi stayed at the store. She was, after all, the divorced woman who did not care about her ex-husband anymore. Or, at the very least, she had to keep up that appearance.

  Gestapo men stood by the Greek columns at the entrance, eyeing the mourners. Nobody closed the door. One of the Gestapo men was chain-smoking. My grandfather tried to concentrate on the eulogy but couldn’t help noticing how this man dropped his cigarette butts and ground each one with the heel of his boot, as if he were trying to grind it into the unyielding, smoothly polished stone steps.

  Crematorium Liberec (Reichenberg), 2009

  IN THE STAIRWELL

  ONE SATURDAY MORNING IN THE SUMMER OF 1987 found me sitting on the cold steps of the stairwell in Harry’s apartment building. Minutes before, we had been lounging about, reading the newspaper, when the doorbell had rung. Harry got up to press the intercom button, and a short exchange in French followed. Then he rushed into the living room. “It’s my mother. She’s coming up. I don’t know why she’s stopping by.”

  I jumped. “Okay, I’ll leave.”

  He took my coffee cup and carried it to the kitchen. Thankfully, I was dressed, so I grabbed my keys, dashed out, and ran along the fourth-floor balcony, which led to the elevator and the emergency stairs. On the elevator’s light panel, E, for Erdgeschoss (ground level), was illuminated. Soon the numbers would climb. I stepped into the stairwell and bounded up to the next landing. There I paused and listened. Sure enough, the elevator doors opened with a hum, followed by soft, squeaky steps trailing off.

  Now what? I was sitting on the concrete steps. The stairwell was silent. I hugged my knees. My heart was still thundering from the shock and from my running. I was the girlfriend hiding in the stairwell. Did I really want to live in a movie? A drama?

  Would the apartment give us away? What traces that couldn’t be from just any girlfriend, but from a woman who stayed there, were there? My mind churned with details. My big plastic comicstrip beach bag with all my university paraphernalia—where was that? That wouldn’t be something a woman would leave behind if she left in a normal manner, now, would it? And it looked feminine. It was probably in the bedroom by my desk. My desk! That desk was me, evidence of my existence. There was only one way to hide that: Harry had to close the bedroom door and keep it closed. He could not let his mother into the bedroom. Then again, why would she go into the bedroom? I hoped she wouldn’t ask for a “tour,” though that would be quite natural, as she hadn’t been in the apartment since he had first shown it to his parents a year ago. What was there to see? Bedroom, living room, balcony, kitchen, bathroom, entryway. She didn’t need a tour for that; she could size that up in one sweeping glance. Maybe it would be better if the bedroom door was ajar, so as to prove that no one was hiding in there. The desk stood way over by the window, so if she walked by, she wouldn’t necessarily see it.

  None of my clothes were strewn about—that was good. Were my shoes in the entryway? I hoped he had seen those and kicked them into the closet by the front door. The living room? No tattletale items there, just my books on the shelves, and those could be Harry’s, or anybody’s. Well, maybe not Introduction to the Political System of the United States, but his mother wouldn’t be stopping by to inspect his bookshelves, now, would she?

  Maybe she had brought a casserole and they were standing in the kitchen, chatting? The kitchen! Was there anything suspicious there? Not really. Nothing that was obviously a “hers.” The bathroom? Oh, pleas
e don’t let her go to the bathroom! But how could Harry deny her that if she needed it? Okay, so there were two toothbrushes and some female items, such as my walnut shampoo, mascara, rouge, and concealer, on the ledge under the mirror. Had he thought to put those away?

  Why had his mother all of a sudden decided to stop by, without warning? Usually, whenever Harry needed something from his parents, like their toolbox, he drove to their house in the next neighborhood, ten minutes by car. Whenever his mother wanted to give him something, like leftovers from a dinner party, he would go pick it up, rather than her bringing it.

  Maybe she had come out of idle curiosity. Harry had been overprotective of his privacy, even before we met. It was his way of swimming free of the family grasp, of establishing his independence. He had never introduced a woman he was seeing as a girlfriend, and thus his parents had the image of a son who was playing the field, who was not seriously involved with anyone. It helped that he had a bunch of female friends who would call his father’s business where he worked, who even stopped by, and in his father’s view of the world, Harry said, men and women weren’t just friends.

  I, on the other hand, never called the business. Well, once I had, when I had come home to find the kitchen floor a sea of soapy water. But when his father had answered the phone, I had asked only, “Is Harry there?” and when he wasn’t, I had dealt with the dishwasher flood myself. And how many female voices called to ask, “Is Harry there?” So that wasn’t suspicious at all and was the only time his father had heard my voice.

  Sitting on the steps, I smoothed out my skirt, tapped my feet, considered escape routes, but in my fear of running into his mother, I stayed put. Waiting was the best option. Waiting is often the best option.

  I do not remember how the stairwell episode ended. Did Harry come for me, or did I hear the elevator clang and come down myself? He doesn’t recall the entire episode; it must not have caused him as much anxiety, or maybe the mode of constant concealment was second nature to him then. I don’t recall what his mother’s errand was, only that it turned out to be a harmless visit.

  I do remember that it didn’t last long—fifteen minutes, maybe. But those fifteen minutes in the stairwell drove home the fact that I was living a cold, concrete, real-life drama. This was not just a romantic predicament to be pondered in a Spanish dormitory room. It involved flesh-and-blood people who had survived trauma and loss that I could not possibly fathom. People who could appear at any time and challenge what I was doing. People for whom my relationship with Harry was the greatest disaster that could befall them after the war, for it brought to life their greatest horror: their son marrying a non-Jew and, on top of that, a German.

  The grandchildren would not be Jewish. For what, then, had his parents survived? Even if this girl converted, how could they be sure she meant it? Could they trust her to raise the children as Jews? Harry had told me that one of his uncles, his mother’s younger brother, had married a Frenchwoman who had formally converted, but that had been only show. Their daughter, Harry’s first cousin, had gotten married in a church. Most of the Jewish side of the family had not attended that wedding.

  Not to mention the shame Harry’s parents would face. How would they tell their friends, in the small Jewish community of Munich, where everyone knew everyone, where weddings were five-hundred-person affairs celebrated by an entire generation and their families?

  My German heritage would seem like God’s final reckoning: For whatever reasons—and those would make their own story—Harry’s parents had not moved on to Israel, or the United States, or Canada, like most of the other Jews who had found themselves in displaced-persons camps in postwar Germany. They had dared to raise their sons in Germany, the land of the murderers, in a Jewish community intent on its children not identifying with the land of their upbringing. And now one son was seriously involved with a German girl.

  I wasn’t the daughter of a Nazi, and our story would not be one of victims’ child marrying murderers’ child. But in the rumor mills, it would be. It was a grand setup for drama.

  A QUARTER AND A HALF

  AFTER CLOSING UP THE STORE ONE EVENING DURING the summer of 1942, Resi came to visit my grandfather. Karl was home alone with his boys. My grandmother Hanne was spending two weeks with her mother in Franzensbad, a popular Bohemian spa in the Jizera Mountains. He could see Resi had come on an errand; she had that purposeful look, that busy bustle, about her. Upon Guido’s death, Karl had become Herta and Ludwig’s guardian (apparently, having their mother was not enough), and now that she was on her own, Resi often sought his advice or approval.

  Family Outing: Karl, Hanne, Herta, and Resi in the Jizera Mountains, 1939

  “Karlo, ich muss mit dir reden.” I have to speak with you.

  He sent the boys off to get ready for bed and brought a bottle of Riesling from the cool of the cellar. They retired to the sun porch. The white-framed windows were open, crickets chirping in the greenery beyond. He was in his work pants—wide, baggy corduroys—and a saggy undershirt. He had been snipping dead leaves off the rosebushes and watering the kitchen garden. As they sat down, he poured out a glass of wine for his sister and himself. Immediately, the glasses started sweating into the tablecloth.

  “So, what is it?” he asked.

  “Well, you know, old Mrs. Knina once told me something, in strictest confidence, that could be quite important now,” Resi said, settling into her lawn chair. Old Mrs. Knina would be Guido’s mother.

  “Her husband wasn’t always faithful, you know. They had a maid from Raspenau, and her husband had an affair with her, and that affair had its consequences. The maid gave birth to a baby boy, secretly. Mrs. Knina accepted the child as hers and registered him as such.”

  Resi leaned forward in all earnestness, both hands cupped around the sweating glass of wine she hadn’t touched. She stared straight at him with her watery blue eyes, unflinching. He noticed how straight the part on top of her head was, the hair pulled back into its customary bun.

  A colossal lump was forming in his throat. This was not going to be good.

  “That was Guido,” she said, as if he had been too stupid to comprehend. In fact, he felt too stupid. Stupefied.

  Resi continued. “This maid, his biological mother, died in Raspenau when she was still very young. I’ve been to Raspenau. I’ve seen the grave.”

  “You what?” he managed to interject.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” Her voice was shrill now. “This means that according to the racial laws, Guido was only a half Jew, and so the children are only quarter Jews. They are almost equal to Aryans.”

  “I can’t believe you’re entertaining this.”

  “It makes all the difference, Karlo, don’t you see, if I can get them reregistered as quarter Jews!”

  They were silent for a while. They each took a sip of wine.

  She said, “Just hear me out. I’ve been to Raspenau. There is a grave.”

  “That proves nothing. Did you ever, ever hear anything like that from Guido?”

  “No. But this isn’t about Guido.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s about the children.”

  He got up and paced about the sun porch, hands in his pockets.

  He said, “What do you want from me?”

  “You have this friend who knows all about local history, who’s a respected local historian, don’t you? Can’t you get him to spread rumors that this maid used to work for Jews in Reichenberg and had an affair?”

  He stopped in his tracks and stared at her.

  She went on, “And then we need witnesses to testify that Guido did not look that Jewish. Hanne’s uncle Fritz Jaksch would be good. He knew Guido, and he’s a respected miller, a local leader, but not from Reichenberg, you know. Not someone who they’d think was friendly with Jews and who would necessarily want to help them out.”

  Of course she had it all planned out already. Pulling in Hanne’s relatives to
support such a fantastic scheme enraged him. He had already taxed those connections on Herta’s behalf, arranging with Hanne’s cousin, who was principal of the Academy of Commerce, to keep Herta on as an unregistered student, even though as a half Jew she was barred from institutions of higher education. He would do it again if he had to, but not to support a lie. He had loved Guido like a brother, and Guido had undoubtedly been a Jew. Born and raised as such. It struck him as a desecration of the dead to declare Guido a bastard child and put his parents into the dimmest light.

  “I will have none of this,” he said. “And don’t you dare approach Fritz Jaksch, or anyone else, with this fantastic scheme. Especially not Hanne’s family. They’ve endured enough already.”

  Resi rose as well and blocked his way to the door, looking up at him. “Karlo, don’t you see? Guido is dead, his parents are dead, they’re all dead now, they won’t know. Who cares about their memory? Nobody! They’re all gone! It doesn’t matter! What matters is if I can get the children reclassified. If I can get enough documents, I can send them to Berlin, to the Office of Racial Policies. I don’t know how much longer I can keep them in the store, how much longer I can keep them from being deported. They’ll send Ludwig to the front—you know that. He’s young; he’s able.”