Next to us, Liza was suddenly crossing herself. Both Willy and I regarded her in utter astonishment.
“Just what are you doing, comrade?” I snorted with laughter after recovering my senses at last.
“At this point, this won’t hurt.” She shrugged nonchalantly.
“But you’re not even a Christian!” Willy was laughing.
“I’m not Jewish either if we’re speaking of religion. I’ve been raised an atheist but right now I’m ready to pray to whoever, as long as this affair pans out.”
“You just believed in a cuckoo bird that lives in a Jewish Cemetery,” I reminded her with a wry smile. Gallows humor, but that was all we had left.
“I’ll pray to the cuckoo bird just as hard. Let’s all pray.” She suddenly grasped our hands and signed for us to link ours as well. “Let’s all pray to some universal God of Goodness who still exists and perhaps just got distracted by something to let this all happen right under his nose. Let’s pray one of his assistants hears an old communist scarecrow, like me, pray and thinks it to be a most hilarious affair and pats God’s shoulder to point him at such a veritable anecdote. Let’s pray that God sees us at last, even if just for the laugh of it and realizes how much evil has been done in his absence and decides to fix things. At least for us. At least because we made him laugh. I don’t care what his reasons, as long as he decides to keep us alive. Let’s pray, to whoever you believe in.”
The entire bizarre scene was beyond any comprehension – a Luftwaffe officer, a Soviet communist, and a German Jew praying as hard as they had ever done in their lives – yet it felt like the most natural thing to do given the circumstances. We prayed to the Jewish God, to the Christian God, to the mischling boy, to the cuckoo bird, to everything that still bore goodness in it, in the desperate hope that at least one would answer our prayers.
Chapter Twenty-Three
February 18, 1943
On February 18, the German government had finally broken its silence. The officers were ordered to gather in the mess hall for the official radio translation from the Berlin Sportpalast. Left all alone on the entire floor, Liza and I positioned ourselves in front of the radio in Willy’s office. The transmission had just begun and the crowd was already cheering Propaganda Minister Goebbels who was to speak to them momentarily.
I disliked his voice immensely; he hadn’t uttered a word yet and I was already dreading hearing his sharp Berlin accent. Unlike Liza, I knew precisely what to expect of him, the sardonic little being who managed to stir so much hatred just with those carefully chosen words of his, to instill such loathing and contempt into the hearts of the ones who didn’t know any better and perhaps would have ignored certain matters entirely had their blissful ignorance not been broken by his artfully outrageous rhetoric, that I was expecting the speech with a faint incensed tremor in the very tips of my fingers. He reminded me so of my former school headmaster, with his thin mustache, with his Party badge, with his wooden pointing rod with which he’d jab in my direction – in those rare moments when he’d deign to acknowledge my presence in his class – and demand, with a disgusting sneer, which I had grown to loathe with such passion, “you, girl, from Palestine; what do you say to that question?”
No one called me a girl from Palestine before he had made his appearance and taken up the position of the “politically unreliable” headmaster Krupp; soon, half of the uniform-clad class was addressing me in the same mocking manner. No one had thought German Jews to be enemies of the state before Minister Goebbels went and announced them as such; soon, we were herded into ghettos by the uniformed-clad men and exterminated on a mass scale. Who would have thought that words could hold so much power, to stir so much hatred that it would eventually lead to genocide? I, for one, had always believed that we, the human race, were better than that. However, Minister Goebbels had gone and proven me wrong.
“I do not know how many millions of people are listening to me over the radio tonight, at home and at the front. I want to speak to all of you from the depths of my heart to the depths of yours. I believe that the entire German people have a passionate interest in what I have to say tonight. I will, therefore, speak with holy seriousness and openness, as the hour demands. The German people, raised, educated and disciplined by National Socialism, can bear the whole truth. The blows and misfortunes of the war only give us additional strength, firm resolve, and a spiritual and fighting will to overcome all difficulties and obstacles with revolutionary élan. Now is not the time to ask how it all happened. That can wait until later when the German people and the whole world will learn the full truth about the misfortune of the past weeks and its deep and fateful significance. The heroic sacrifices of our soldiers in Stalingrad have had vast historical significance for the whole Eastern Front. It was not in vain. The future will make clear why.”
As Goebbels made progress with his speech, Liza’s brows lifted higher and higher as though the very idea was unfathomable to her that a man could speak with such graveness of openness and honesty and take himself seriously after he had kept his entire nation and, what was even more outrageous and abominable, soldiers at the front, in complete darkness, for the past few weeks. At last, she snorted with contempt. “He should have been an actor. Our Minsk people’s theater would have signed him up in a second.”
I chuckled grimly at the joke. “You wait. He’s just getting started.”
Liza rolled her eyes melodramatically.
The radio crackled. I worked the knob to get a clearer signal.
“We face a serious military challenge in the East,” Minister Goebbels proceeded. “There is no point in disputing the seriousness of the situation. It is understandable that, as a result of broad concealment and misleading actions by the Bolshevist government, we did not properly evaluate the Soviet Union’s war potential. Only now do we see its true scale. This is a threat to the Reich and to the European continent that casts all previous dangers into the shadows. If we fail, we will have failed our historic mission. Everything we have built and done in the past pales in the face of this gigantic task that the German army and the German people face.”
“Historic mission?” Liza cringed with disdain. “Did that deluded half-an-actor truly just say something about a historic mission?”
“It’ll get worse when he gets on the subject of the Jews.” I decided to prepare her beforehand.
I knew what was to follow. I’d heard enough of that rot at home, in Nidda and later, in Frankfurt.
“Danger faces us,” Gauleiter of Berlin Goebbels raised his voice and continued, after a dramatic pause, “we must act quickly and decisively, or it will be too late.”
Liza suggested to switch the damned thing off. Well, we did finally hear their admission of their defeat; what else was there to listen to, was her line of thinking.
“No, wait. I want to hear it all.” I moved closer to the radio.
“What for?” She was already on her feet, ready to get on with her daily chores.
“Before, he – well, all of them – thought that they would win the war.” I paused and looked at her pointedly. “I want to hear what they’re planning to do now that they know that they may lose it.”
Reluctantly, Liza lowered onto the sofa next to me.
“The goal of Bolshevism is Jewish world revolution,” Goebbels continued in the meantime. I gave Liza a certain look; what did I tell you? “They want to bring chaos to the Reich and Europe, using the resulting hopelessness and desperation to establish their international, Bolshevist-concealed capitalist tyranny. I do not need to say what that would mean for the German people. A Bolshevization of the Reich would mean the liquidation of our entire intelligentsia and leadership and the descent of our workers into Bolshevist-Jewish slavery. The German people, in any event, is unwilling to bow to this danger. Behind the oncoming Soviet divisions, we see the Jewish liquidation commandos and behind them terror, the specter of mass starvation and complete anarchy. International Jewry is the devilish
ferment of decomposition that finds cynical satisfaction in plunging the world into the deepest chaos and destroying ancient cultures that it played no role in building.”
“How is that we plunged the world into chaos?!” Liza exploded, at last, her face flushed and contorted into a fierce, livid mask. “Just who marched into our country first?! Who marched into France? Who marched into Norway, Netherlands, Poland, Denmark?! Us, the Soviets most certainly?”
I silenced her. I wanted to hear what new policies he had come up with to fight the Jewish Bolshevik threat – us.
“We also know our historic responsibility. Two thousand years of Western civilization are in danger. It is indicative that when one names it as it is, International Jewry throughout the world protests loudly. Things have gone so far in Europe that one cannot call a danger a danger when it is caused by the Jews. The paralysis of the Western European democracies before their deadliest threat is frightening. International Jewry is doing all it can to encourage such paralysis. During our struggle for power in Germany, Jewish newspapers tried to conceal the danger, until National Socialism awakened the people. It is just the same today in other nations. Jewry once again reveals itself as the incarnation of evil, as the plastic demon of decay and the bearer of international culture-destroying chaos. This explains, by the way, our consistent Jewish policies. We see Jewry as a direct threat to every nation. We do not care what other peoples do about the danger. What we do to defend ourselves is our own business, however and we will not tolerate objections from others. Jewry is a contagious infection. Enemy nations may raise hypocritical protests regarding our measures against Jewry and cry crocodile tears but that will not stop us from doing that which is necessary. Germany, in any event, has no intention of bowing before this threat but rather intends to take the most radical measures, if necessary, in good time.”
The crowd in the Sportpalast broke into thunderous applause. Their chants and shouts wouldn’t let the minister speak for a few minutes during which Liza sat and looked at me in pure astonishment.
“Please, do not tell me they all approve of what he’s saying.”
“The audience for such meetings is always carefully selected. They want to make sure that no one starts whistling and booing in the middle of the live broadcast. But yes, the majority of the population does approve of it.” I gave an indifferent shrug.
“There must be a minority though. People who disagree.” Liza looked at me almost imploringly. “During my student years, they taught us that the German nation is the nation of great literature, great music, and great culture. I refuse to believe that it has been reduced to a nation of killers after that madman has come to power and brought all these hateful minions along with him.”
“There was a minority,” I replied after a pause. “In 1933, they began taking them off posts and putting them away in Dachau, the very first concentration camp. After they didn’t come back, the others – who disagreed – promptly learned to keep their heads down. Then, there’s Willy, of course.”
She smiled in response to my little joke. Then, suddenly, she switched the radio off and leaped to her feet, catching my hand in hers before I could begin protesting. “Wait! Wait for just a second; they’ll be clapping for five more minutes. Come here instead!”
She was holding the door open into the corridor. I approached her, utterly confused.
“Hear it?” She demanded, excitedly.
“Hear what?”
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me after herself into the corridor. We ran along it until we reached the grand staircase. She bent over the railing, motioning me to do the same. The mess hall was only two floors below us and we could clearly hear the applause coming from it.
“What?” I regarded her, scowling.
“Listen closely, you silly cow!”
And then it dawned on me, the mechanical crackling which interrupted the steady applause and cheers from time to time. It was coming from the speakers, not the mess hall. The mess hall listened to the transmission immersed in graveyard-like quiet.
Goebbels began speaking again and we remained where we were, riveted to the spot, blissful smiles now sitting on our faces. Nothing was lost yet while at least a few officers didn’t cheer the madman. Hope could still be heard in their defiant silence.
“The tragic battle of Stalingrad is a symbol of heroic, manly resistance to the revolt of the steppes. It has not only a military but also an intellectual and spiritual significance for the German people. Here for the first time, our eyes have been opened to the true nature of the war. We want no more false hopes and illusions. We want bravely to look the facts in the face, however hard and dreadful they may be. A merciless war is raging in the East. The Führer was right when he said that in the end there will not be winners and losers, but the living and the dead. The German nation knows that. The German nation is fighting for everything it has. We know that the German people are defending their holiest possessions; their families, women and children, the beautiful and untouched countryside, their cities and villages, their two-thousand-year-old culture, everything indeed that makes life worth living. Total war is the demand of the hour. I ask you – is your confidence in the Führer greater, more faithful and more unshakable than ever before?”
More mechanical cheering from the dynamic and nothing from the men seated in the mess hall.
“Are you absolutely and completely ready to follow him wherever he goes and do all that is necessary to bring the war to a victorious end?”
The mechanical crowd in the radio erupted in applause. It was them, who bellowed “Führer command, we follow!” and “Sieg Heil!”; not the officers who sat silently two floors below us. Next to me, Liza was looking at me with swimming eyes. I squeezed her palm tighter.
“The nation is ready for anything. The Führer has commanded and we will follow him. In this hour of national reflection and contemplation, we believe firmly and unshakably in victory. We see it before us, we need only reach for it. We must resolve to subordinate everything to it. That is the duty of the hour. Let the slogan be; now, people rise up and let the storm break loose!”
Someone switched off the obligatory broadcast below. Almost at once, officers poured out of the hall and flooded the staircase, bearing the expressions of schoolchildren, relieved at the sound of the bell at the end of the dreadfully monotonous class. Someone had distributed black armbands to them before the assembly to honor their fallen and captured comrades, no doubt; only, if the mourning had been more timely and not presented under the guise of yet another veiled stab in the back by the Bolsheviks, Jewry, and whatnot that Minister Goebbels could come up with. Stalingrad was a stab in the back – a stab in the back of the German army by its own Führer who had no trouble sacrificing hundreds of thousands of young men solely in the name of some abstract idea that it was more honorable for a German man to die rather than retreat. Some officers still grumbled their discontent on account of such an unsound order as they ascended the carpeted stairs. Some offered us amused smiles as they passed us by; some were deep in the exchange of sardonic remarks.
“Did you hear that rot? The Führer commanded,” one spoke to the other mockingly. “Had he not commanded for Paulus to keep the position instead of retreating while he still could, the entire Army would still be fighting! And now he commands for us all to die in the name of the holy mission or some such?”
“Did you read the new orders from the Reichsmarschall though? We are to ram the Soviet aircraft if we are out of ammo, from this day on. Total war!” His friend rolled his eyes emphatically.
“I don’t give a brass tack about that clubfoot’s preaching or the fat man’s orders. I’m not telling any men in my charge to ram anything,” a decorated Hauptmann proclaimed much to everyone’s approval.
“There, look,” one of his younger adjutants pointed at Liza and I as he and two other servicemen leveled with us. We knew them from around; they always treated us to chocolate and tea whenever Liza mopped their room, o
r I brought the reports from Willy for them to distribute. We were good, old comrades by now. “Our most feared enemy stand there, according to Herr Minister. They started the entire affair, these two. They made us lose Stalingrad, too. The clubfoot is right then – dreadful enemy, unforgiving enemy, true savages; aren’t they?” He picked up our hands ceremoniously and kissed them before giving each a thorough press. “Come along, dear enemy. We’ll drink that he falls off the podium next time, that limping ass.”
“Watch it, Guttmann. The Field Police will do you in for your big mouth,” one of his comrades clapped him on his back even though his own eyes wrinkled with mischief.
“I waved that Field Police off just this morning as they were setting off in big tarpaulin-covered trucks; with a white handkerchief, I did! Waved them off straight to the front!”
“There’s still too many of them around for my liking.”
“Not enough to make us cheer their idiotic speeches anymore,” Guttmann commented with a victorious grin. “Not one of them was in the hall today. Not a single one. All sent to the city outskirts to mind the partisans. I hope the forest brothers lay them all nicely there.”
Liza gave me a meaningful look upon hearing those words. Now, if only Lore’s young fellow came through with the request, she’d put before him. We’d be free people then… how terrifying it was to dream of such a thing; how frightening to realize that our very fates depended on a boy from Poland. Flanked by the Luftwaffe officers, we quickened our pace. Liza’s hand was warm in mine. Despite all, we dreamed. We hoped.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Herr Hauptmann, allow me to report.” As soon as Lore appeared in the office – blonde braids and eyes shining with utter excitement – I rushed to lock the door. “The requested item has been procured on your orders.” Immediately, she extracted a working permit blank from under her jacket; she lay it on Willy’s desk with a triumphal look.
No Woman's Land: a Holocaust novel based on a true story (Women and the Holocaust Book 2) Page 23
