When Sabine and Gerhard sat in their parlor one September night, listening to the BBC, she knew it was not the Gestapo who disturbed them with a knock at the door. Even though Gerhard switched off the radio and looked frightened.
“No,” she said. “It’s Dietrich.”
She opened the door without hesitation, and he brought the crisp autumn air inside with him. He kissed her on top of the head.
“I left the car several blocks away and walked here,” he said. “I didn’t want your neighbors to see a visitor this late.” He shook hands with a relieved Gerhard and glanced at the darkened stairs. “The girls are in bed?”
“They go to bed at nine on school nights,” Sabine said.
“Good.” He took off his hat and jacket, hung them on the hall tree. “Make a pot of coffee, Sabine, there’s lots to do.”
They did not need to ask if it was time to leave, but over coffee and cake, when the initial packing was done, Dietrich explained why.
“Hans has just found out. In two days Himmler will announce all Jews are required to have a large J stamped on their passports. After that it will be much more difficult for Gerhard and the girls to leave.”
“But they’ve been encouraging people to leave,” Gerhard said.
“Yes. Something’s changed. We don’t know exactly what, but Hans believes it may be too late if you wait longer. I’ve sent a telegram to George Bell in England, a coded message, of course. He’ll be expecting you, just as we’ve planned all along. I’ll drive with you to Switzerland, and you can wait there until we know for sure. But we’ve got to leave tomorrow morning.”
“So soon,” Sabine said. “No time to say goodbye to anyone.”
“No one must know you’re leaving for anything except a short holiday.”
“Of course.” Gerhard took Sabine’s hand. “None of this is a surprise. In a way, we’ve been saying goodbye for years.”
“But I’ll miss this house,” she said. “And of course the family. Dietrich—”
“I’ll visit you in England,” he said. “I’ve got no wife or children to keep me from traveling, not even a position just now. I’m free as a bird to come and go, at least unless there’s a war. Who knows, if they push military conscription, I may be joining you.”
They spent the rest of the night packing. The most difficult task was choosing what to leave behind, for they could take no more than what would seem normal for a holiday. One group of boxes, books and personal mementos, was set aside to go with Dietrich back to Berlin.
“And Mitzi,” Sabine said, bringing out a cage for the family cat. “Suse promised to take her in if need be. The children will be heartbroken to part with her. And can we even allow them to take their dolls?”
“One each,” Gerhard suggested, “if they promise to be responsible for them.”
“And we must all wear several pairs of underclothes.” Sabine planned as she spoke. “And as many layers of clothes as we can bear.”
By six they were ready. While Gerhard and Dietrich packed the family car, Sabine went into her daughters’ bedroom. Mitzi, the gray-striped tabby, slept in the curve behind little Christine’s knees. Marianne, the elder, opened her eyes. “Is it time to get up for school?” she asked.
Sabine leaned over and kissed her. “Darling, you’re not going to school today. We’ve decided to go on a little holiday.”
Marianne sat up. “Where?”
“We’ll tell you later. Right now I must help you dress. Oh, and Marianne. Uncle Dietrich is here. Isn’t that lovely?”
It was lovely, for Dietrich was the favorite uncle of all his nephews and nieces. Because he had no children of his own, he spoiled them, forever taking them to the zoo or the symphony, buying them books or bringing them sweets hidden in his pockets. When the Leibholz family set out from Göttingen on their outing to Switzerland, the girls rode with Uncle Dietrich in the Bonhoeffer Mercedes, following close behind the Leibholz Daimler. They sang and played games, and every time they crossed a bridge, Dietrich gave them a gingersnap from a box sent by Grandmother Paula. But when they grew tired of all this, and Christine had fallen asleep, Marianne said, “We’re not coming back, are we?”
Dietrich glanced at her. She was staring straight ahead as though afraid to let her parents out of her sight. But he saw no tears.
“Someday,” he said. “But not for a long time.”
“Not until Hitler stops being mean to Jews?”
“Yes. But you mustn’t say that aloud to anyone.”
“You needn’t tell me that,” she said. “We’ve been to school, you know. The others call us dirty Jews. And my teacher doesn’t like me either. She never calls on me in class. Mummy and Papa won’t let us say anything about Hitler at school, or about our family. So we don’t talk at all.”
He glanced at her again, heartbroken at the worldliness, the hardness, in the nine-year-old face.
“What will happen to Mitzi?” Marianne asked.
“I’ll take Mitzi to Aunt Suse’s house.”
Marianne nodded her head. “Aunt Suse has a nice big garden, and she likes cats. But you must tell her that herring is Mitzi’s absolute favorite thing. She gets a bite every night. And Mitzi’s afraid of the telephone when it rings, so she should have someplace quiet to sleep where she needn’t hear it. You tell Aunt Suse.”
Dietrich put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, and she turned to look at him.
“Aren’t you coming with us, Uncle Dietrich?”
“Only as far as the border.”
“What will you do with Mummy so far away?”
He said, “Oh, don’t worry about us. Your mummy and I can talk to one another just by shutting our eyes.”
“That would be magic,” Marianne said suspiciously.
“It is. It’s twin magic.”
Ten miles from the border they pulled off the road near a grove of trees and a clear rushing stream, opened a hamper, and spread out a picnic of bread, cheese, and sausages. The children ate quickly and then began to tease each other.
“Girls, this stream will be going to the Rhine,” Gerhard said to distract them. “So if you toss in a twig, it may reach Basel before we do.”
“We’re going across the Rhine,” Marianne said.
“Yes,” her father said. “Now, go. Find some twigs.”
When the children were busy, Sabine said, “Dietrich, Gerhard and I have been talking. We don’t think you should go to the border with us. If something goes wrong, we don’t want you caught up in it. And even if everything is all right, there’s no need for you to be seen traveling with us. It can’t help anyone, and it may call needless attention.”
“But how shall we know you’ve arrived safely?”
Gerhard said, “Go back to Göttingen and wait there. Assume the best. Once we’re across the border, we’ll either call you there or send a telegram.”
“But—”
“If we’re detained,” Sabine said, “there’ll be nothing you could do anyway. Hans will have to look into it.”
They finished eating and walked slowly back to the cars.
“Mummy, Daddy!” Marianne cried. “I’ve an idea! If we want to send a message we won’t have to telephone. You can call Uncle Dietrich with your twin magic.”
“My what?”
“Twin magic, twin magic!” Marianne skipped to her parents’ car, flung open the door, and plopped down on the backseat as though she’d already forgotten ever having lived in Göttingen.
Dietrich said, “I was telling her how we sometimes anticipate each other. Only I’m afraid I made it sound more spectacular than it is.” He looked away, fighting back tears. Gerhard tactfully busied himself making the car ready and settling the girls in back while Sabine took Dietrich by the hand and led him away.
“We’ve seen little enough of each other,” she said. “Your work has kept you so busy.”
“This is different. You’ll be out of the country.”
“Yes, but it’s not the
country I’ll miss. It no longer feels like my country. Or yours.” She put her arms around him. “If things get worse, promise me you’ll leave too.”
“I promise. You’ll like George and Hettie Bell. They’ll be good to you. George shares our birthday, you know. Perhaps he’s our triplet.”
“Do you remember when we were children and we used to hang out our windows and talk to each other after everyone had gone to bed?”
“Of course I remember. Do you remember when we were lost in the snowstorm and slept in the peasant barn?”
They said nothing more and clung to each other. Then Gerhard, as from a great distance, said, “We’d best be going, dear. It’s nearly four o’clock.”
Gerhard embraced Dietrich, helped Sabine into the car. Then he got in the car and started the motor, and they left Dietrich standing desolate beside the road.
He arrived back at the Göttingen house around midnight and spent what was left of the night with Mitzi the cat sprawled on his chest. Sometime after daylight the bedside telephone rang and the cat was away like a shot. Dietrich fumbled with the receiver, nearly dropping it, then holding it upside down before he finally woke enough to right it and recognize Gerhard’s voice saying, “Dietrich? We’re having a lovely time in Basel. A beautiful city. We’re staying at the Hotel Drei-Könige-am-Rhein and we’ve an incredible view of the river from our room. Yes, everyone’s fine. We’ll be waiting to hear what the weather is like before we proceed with our trip.”
The weather was stormy. Next day the government announced the stamping of Jewish passports with the J, and the restriction of travel for Jews. Passports of Jews without a J would no longer be valid. Dietrich sent a telegram to G. Leibholz care of the Hotel Drei-Könige-am-Rhein in Basel, Switzerland: YOUR RETURN NOW UNSUITABLE STOP GO TO GEORGE STOP GODSPEED STOP
Kristallnacht
DIETRICH MADE THE LONG LONELY DRIVE back to Berlin with the personal effects of the Leibholz family in five boxes and the cat, Mitzi, in a wire cage. As though Sabine and her family had died and he must dispose of their goods.
He counted his other losses. The Confessing Church swallowed up by the state church, the will to fight weaker than the longing for acceptance. He tried to imagine what it must be like for Niemöller in Sachsenhausen. Had he any idea what was happening without him?
Elisabeth. Was she well? Had the new restrictions convinced her she should join her father in England? Had she been able to leave?
Why didn’t the Gestapo agents who came to Finkenwalde take him away with them? Not that he wanted that. It was in fact his greatest nightmare, for he knew all too well how he loved creature comforts—a glass of wine and a thick cut of meat, a warm fire, a firm bed with clean sheets. He recalled sitting with Niemöller late at night and hearing the story of a young pastor who had just emerged from a year in Dachau after preaching an anti-Nazi sermon. Dietrich had forced the man to describe everything in great detail—the drafty huts with a single stove to keep out the winter cold, the moldering bread and thin fetid soup, the slop buckets, the sounds of beatings, screams of pain, and now and then a gunshot.
Dietrich took to his room in the Marienburger Allee in such a deep depression that he could not get up in the mornings. At night he swallowed pills to sleep. He told his worried mother that he was nursing a strained muscle in his back.
News reports of the deepening crisis over the Sudetenland drew him downstairs sometimes. Each evening the family ate a quick supper and then gathered around the radio. They listened to the BBC, for unlike most of their countrymen they did not trust the German state radio, the RRG. Christel brought her children to visit, because her husband was often working at his new office in the War Ministry. Dohnanyi arrived as late as ten or eleven, worn out and worried. Then the radio was switched off and he shared his own news. He told them the Nazis were fabricating the stories of atrocities by Czechs against ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland. (These atrocity stories were being repeated indignantly in shops and on the street by Berliners who were stunned, stunned, that the Czechs could bear Germans such ill will.) He told them German troops were massed at the Czech border, ready to move at a word from Hitler. Propaganda Minister Goebbels had taken surreptitious soundings of the mood of the German people. Despite the atrocity stories, the people seemed to be against a war. It was not that anyone feared the Czechs or thought it wrong to intimidate them. No one wanted to fight the British.
Dohnanyi said nothing to the family about the plot. But when Dietrich took him aside one night and asked, he said, “We have a man in London right now, trying to get to Chamberlain. That’s all I’m at liberty to tell you.”
SS-Hauptsturmführer Alois Bauer was visiting the Prussian State Library. He wanted to see the manuscript of Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and was ready to threaten and swagger as on his first visit, but with the added bravado of a Futurist. On he went, past the iron gates, past the nightmare of a fountain with its greenscum water, across the chipped tile floors yellowed with age. To the same scrawny curator with pocked skin.
But something was different. The curator, pitiful specimen of Aryan manhood though he was, no longer cowered at the sight of the black SS uniform. Because this time Alois Bauer was not an unexpected visitor from a new and unpredictable conquering army. The new order had long been firmly established and the curator himself had found a place in it. He had his own orders and they came from someone higher than a middling officer in the SS.
“The Mozart manuscript,” he said unctuously, “the manuscript of the Mass in C Minor,” speaking even more slowly, “which you request,” preening a bit, brushing back a stray lock of hair with one finger, “is no longer available for your perusal.”
“And why not?” Bauer demanded.
“Because, my dear Hauptsturmführer, like our other great treasures—” Bauer’s stomach turned at the smugly possessive our—“it has been packed for transportation to a safe place far from Berlin. In view of the growing international crisis. We would not want Germany’s cultural heritage to fall into enemy hands—” he realized his mistake and quickly corrected himself—“not that any enemy could ever set foot in the Fatherland. But there is the destructive nature of modern warfare to consider. I’m sure the Hauptsturmführer will agree totally with the judgment of the Führer in this matter.” Strong emphasis on Führer, followed by a triumphant smile.
“Where has it been sent?” Bauer managed to ask.
The curator spread his hands. “I am not at liberty to disclose that information.”
Bauer was so distraught he could say nothing else. He rescued himself with a sudden straight-armed salute and a quick exit.
Dietrich was alone in his room when Suse came upstairs. She sat on the edge of his bed, where he was propped on a pillow and reading by the light of a small metal lamp. She touched the book.
“Shakespeare?” she said.
“Macbeth.”
“Why don’t you come downstairs? Christel and the children are here and we haven’t seen you for days.”
He said, “One of my strange moods. I’ve been reading the scene of Lady Macbeth’s madness. Out, damned spot! Hell is murky. Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him.”
“You’ve missed the horrible news. It’s just come over the radio. Chamberlain has caved in to Hitler’s demands for the Sudetenland. Our troops are already crossing the Czech border. Papa says Hitler won’t stop. It’s just a matter of time before he controls Prague as well.”
Dietrich closed the book and stared at the ceiling.
“Everyone is desolate downstairs. Won’t you come console us?”
“Me? What can I do?”
“Simply be with us. We miss you when you go off by yourself like this. Besides, you are our pastor.”
Dietrich laughed bitterly. Then he asked, “Is Hans with you?”
“Hans is in his office. Christel says he’s been there for two days and nights, and she doesn’t know when to expect him.”
“So
I am not the only anchorite in the family.”
“No one is forcing you to stay up here.”
“No.” He grabbed her hand and held it. “I love you, Suse.”
She kissed him on the forehead. “I love you too, silly goose. Now come downstairs. We’re going to console ourselves with some Apfelkuchen fresh from the oven. Mother says we must enjoy what we can of life, no matter how gloomy the news.”
Hans von Dohnanyi made an appearance two days later. He was thin, and his cheeks were pale with the fresh-scraped look of someone who’s only just shaved after several days of stubble. But he was neatly dressed in cotton sweater and trousers. He went straight to Dietrich’s room.
“Come on,” he said. “I need to be outdoors. Let’s go out in the boat.”
Hans and Christel kept a sailboat at a dock below their Sacrow house. They liked to wander along the Havel and its connecting lakes, ranging from Potsdam to the Wannsee to the Tegelersee. Dietrich was not comfortable with boats. As a boy he had fallen into the Landwehrkanal while climbing out of a punt, to the great amusement of Karl-Friedrich and his friends, who were watching him from the dock. But he enjoyed going out with Hans and Christel as long as he need only sit back enjoying the water and fresh air without worrying about being knocked overboard. He settled onto a pile of cushions in the bow while Dohnanyi trimmed the mainsail and then sat hunched at the tiller.
The sloop, propelled by a brisk October wind, sizzed across the Havel toward the Wannsee. The day was a chameleon of colors and moods. Sky and water merged in a flat gray, and the tips of cedars on Pfauen Island seemed to float on a layer of creamy white fog. But after half an hour the mist had burned away to reveal the onion dome of SS. Peter and Paul on the far shore. Banks of clouds moved like herd animals across skeins of pale skylight. The Wannsee, now mauve now azure now Prussian, churned as though the water were the skin of some leviathan flexing its muscles.
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