Paul went rigid, all warmth between us extinguished. He saluted properly and said, “Jawohl, Herr Captain.”
I calmed down, and the enmity in me fizzled out. “Very good. Now come, let’s get that beer.”
He stared straight ahead. “I’d rather not…sir.”
Now I felt deflated. “Please,” I said. He stood silent. I think I even saw his lip quiver. The tough Nazi wasn’t made of the same material as his father and me, it seemed. So I tipped the balance with a smile and said: “That’s an order.”
He finally relaxed, and that sheepish grin spread across his face. “Well, I can’t disobey an order.”
I grinned widely as I took him by the arm and led him to the Kasino, where I knew Mueller would be waiting.
We had a wonderful evening. The beer flowed and the wine was poured as a thick haze of smoke clung to the ceiling of the noisy hall. Music played on the phonograph, and we sang along to songs of love, of loss, of country and a general longing to have this damned war be over. It was good to have family with me. The squadron subjected Paul to the usual initiation of beer over the head. They poured it on extra heavy, as they knew he was my brother. In a way, their jovial mistreatment of him was a token of their affection for me. We pilots lived an odd life.
Paul, his eyes half closed, weaved up to me at the bar at one point and asked: “Say, Harmon. Whatever happened to that old Jew who used to teach you piano?”
An electric charge ran up my spine. I paused and wiped my mouth. “Krupinski?” I said, trying to sound deadpan. I swigged my beer for effect but I was quaking inside.
“Yes, that’s the one.”
I shrugged. “I guess he went where all the others went.”
Paul actually grinned. “Then we won’t see him anymore.” And he even drew a finger across his throat to emphasize his satisfaction. “Good riddance to them all, I say.”
I stared at him, my fear shifting to disgust. “Why do you say that?”
He swallowed a shot handed him by Lieutenant Stahl, who was behind the bar. Slurring his words, Paul prodded my chest with his finger. “They are a plague. Like lice. Even that old man. I know you had a fondness for him, Harmon. I mean, Herr Captain. Sorry. It was something I never understood. Although I’m not a musician. But no matter how this war ends, whether we just declare a truce or achieve ultimate victory, I do know yet another thing that the Führer has done for our national good.”
“Oh?” I said. “And what’s that?
“He rid our country of Jews once and for all. For that alone he’ll go down as one of the great men of history. He is in a pantheon with Frederick the Great, Hannibal, Attila, Caesar, indeed, even Jesus Christ.”
“Hear! Hear!” echoed young Stahl. “I’ll drink to that!” I looked at them both in disbelief as they clinked shot glasses. But I said nothing as Stahl poured a refill.
Paul finished with a blurry-eyed pronouncement. “We are blessed to have seen such times!” Before I could utter another word, he was pulled into a circle of dancing pilots. Spouts of beer, like from the blow holes of a pod of whales, flew into the air. I for one didn’t feel so blessed as my dear brother. And although I’d seen hatred in the men fester and grow as we suffered more and more losses in the desperate fighting since the new year, I felt none—and that was for men trying to kill me. How Paul, young Stahl, and the rest of my nation’s youth could harbor such animosities against people like Krup who had never done them any harm, I just couldn’t comprehend. I buried my face in my beer.
At one point during the festivities, Mueller and I caught each other’s eye. Both of us had grown old in our time at the front together. I noticed deep lines on his once-smooth face, and a general hard look to him that betrayed years of fighting. I knew what he was thinking. It wasn’t the same without Borner and Gaetjens. Trautloft’s dire prediction was coming true. But we still lived, as Mueller was fond of reminding me. We stood tall amidst the rows of the slain who had fallen under the reaper’s blade. Mueller raised his bottle of wine to me in a gesture of warm-hearted friendship. From across the room I toasted him back with my beer. He seemed gratified that tonight at least I was taking his advice. I took another swallow and with my kid brother at my side, I lived for the moment as we swayed arm in arm singing martial songs. All of the rest, the madness, the death, the constant tension of my two lives—one as a fighter pilot, the other as the keeper of Amelia’s traitorous secret—gave way to gaiety and cheer. But for Paul’s commentary, the forlorn family hidden away in a small corner of Stauffenberg was out of my mind. It was good to feel human again.
41
Much of what I’m going to tell you going forward I did not witness with my own eyes. How could I? But after many years of profound reflection, and tying together the strands of what I’ve learned since, I believe I paint an accurate picture of the events that followed, including how the players behaved, and what were their motivations. I knew these men and women. Some more than I would have liked. Others not enough. This is their story as much as mine.
In the sleepy town of Stauffenberg, a Jewish family in hiding sweltered in Amelia’s sauna of an attic while the June sun beat down on the tile roof directly over them.
The family sat, motionless, shades drawn. Sweat rolled down their faces, filling the sticky folds of their necks, their armpits, running down their backs. This was their third summer in these hellish conditions. Had Amelia not brought them a daily supply of water, and removed their rancid waste from old bedpans, they would have died in days. Yet they persevered through frigid winters and roasting summers. But they were reaching the end of their endurance. Their confinement combined with the heat was having a maddening effect upon them. And it was only June.
Constanze looked to her husband in despair. “How long are we to live like this?” she moaned.
Krupinski, his breathing growing more labored by the day, could only sit in his wet shirt clinging to his itchy skin, and shake his head.
“Mommy,” breathed Elsa, fanning herself with a towel in the corner. “It’s so warm. May we please open the window?”
“No, Elsa,” answered her father. “It’s too dangerous in daylight.” The little girl slumped in disappointment.
“Try to sit still, bug,” her mother offered, using her pet name to reassure her.
Krup looked at his wife, and a silent message passed between them. “Have you not seen all the SS men out there lately? They might see,” he protested, annoyed that he needed to justify his caution.
“Perhaps the children can at least wash off in one of Amelia’s basins downstairs?”
Krup shook his head. “Out of the question. It’s the middle of the day.”
Constanze begged off, toweling off her high forehead. “Sometimes I think it would have been better to go with the soldiers when they came for us. It could not be a worse existence than this.”
Her husband ignored that. He knew it could be much worse. He often pressed Amelia as she handed him up food and water to relay what she knew about the Jews of Europe. A whisper here. A rumor from over there. Drunken boasts by SS men. Stories of trainloads of Jews transported east, stuffed to overflowing in cattle cars, never to be seen again. No food trains ever spotted on the same rail lines. Just people. Endless shipments of human cargo. Talk of camps where signage with the evil slogan Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Will Set You Free) offering hope where there was none greeting the new arrivals at the gate. Hitler’s ravings in Mein Kampf. Goebbels’ anti-Semitic vitriol. The “war of annihilation” being waged in Russia against the Untermenschen. It all created a sinister tapestry from which Leopold Krupinski, a musical man with an eye for patterns, could draw only one logical conclusion. The Jews were being systematically exterminated. Luck had preserved him long enough to see the truth.
Leopold recalled the day the SS had finally come for them. They pulled up in an Opel truck and leapt out screaming “Raus! Raus
, Juden!” A young Obersturmführer Keitel, now a decorated SS lieutenant just returned from Russia, directed the men with single-minded purpose to search the grounds in a gesture of newly commissioned authority. They kicked in the door and tore through the house.
But the Jews weren’t there. Only by chance had they been off in the forest bordering their home enjoying the fine weather, picnicking in the sun, desperate to recapture a fleeting sense of the good life they once knew. Until this moment—despite the yellow Star of David patches he and his wife and son were now forced to wear in public—Krup had clung to the hope that it could get no worse for the Jews. But when he watched Keitel from afar, while hunkered down among the brush in the wooded hills overlooking the house, he saw that all was lost. The SS was determined to take his family away. It was a chilling moment of clarity, and as he surveyed his confused, frightened clan, they in turn looking at him to make sense of it all, he realized he’d made a terrible mistake in believing in a Germany that was long dead.
The SS troopers camped outside the house for the rest of the day, waiting in vain for the Jews to return. The Krupinskis hid until nightfall before returning to their ransacked home. Standing in the dark, surrounded by cracked picture frames, upended furniture, and scattered papers, Leopold realized that his world was over. But now it was too late to leave Germany. They would never get through. And through to where? All of Europe had fallen under the Nazi banner.
The SS would come back for them tomorrow, of that much he was certain. Perhaps even during the night. They couldn’t stay here a moment longer. In desperation, Leopold thought hard and long. Who could help them? Who would help them? Who would risk execution to save a family of Jews? There was only one person he could trust. But she lived in the heart of town.
In the dead of night, when all was quiet and the village windows blacked out as a precaution against British air raids, Leopold led his family like stealthy commandos across the bridge spanning the black ribbon of the Main. They crept under the forbidding Rathaus tower and through the deserted streets of Stauffenberg to the home of Amelia Engel.
“Please God,” he whispered to himself as they slunk along the Leiselstrasse, hugging the walls of the little homes that backed up to the lane. “Please.”
Constanze and Elsa clung to him as he gently tapped on the front door. Jakob stood with his back to the wall scanning the block, but the cobblestone street was deserted. It was fortunate the two Engel women lived on a dead-end lane.
A quick flash of light glowed from the second-floor window as a corner of the night shade was briefly drawn back and Amelia’s silhouette appeared like an apparition and then moved away. They could make out just the dimmest hint of lamplight through the shades, lighting up in rapid succession, following her as she made her way from her room down the steps to the front of the little house. The door cracked open, and Amelia, in her nightgown, groggy from being awakened from a deep sleep, peered out to see her lover’s Musikmeister and his family staring back at her with the vacant eyes of the condemned.
Amelia stood in stunned silence and processed the scene rapidly; she knew exactly why they were here.
“Please,” said Leo, shamefully regretting his own intransigence that had brought them to such a desperate state. “We have nowhere else to go.”
Amelia hesitated. The SS had made it quite clear what the penalties were for harboring Jews. And yet, this was her chance to do something. To strike, even in a small way, a blow at the Nazis. Even if it meant her own death at their hands. Who she was defined the moment, which in turn defined her. She carefully looked around to make absolutely sure that no one was watching from behind shadows or drawn curtains. All was clear. With a beckoning hand she ushered them in. “Come inside. Quickly.”
They did, and the doors to the outside world closed behind the family of my master and friend.
“Papa,” a young man’s voice was saying. “Papa?” Krup snapped out of his daydream. Jakob was standing over him. A wiry, intense boy, well on his way to strapping manhood. “I opened the window. I’m sorry but the heat was unbearable.”
Leo sat up and processed what he’d just heard. Too late an alarm rang within him. “You did what?!” he said in a panic. “I said no! It’s dangerous!”
“As is heatstroke,” countered his teenaged son.
Krup gave his son a severe look and quickly moved past him to the window, which was indeed opened wide. A refreshing breeze poured through and the temperature was noticeably cooler, but that meant nothing when sized up against the risks of being discovered. He suspected people were watching this house. Amelia had told him how Keitel loathed Harmon Becker, and how he’d like nothing more than to exact revenge upon them both for the insult of stealing Amelia’s hand. Krup drew one last wonderful breath of fresh summer air and then slammed the window shut, drawing the shades and letting a shadow fall back onto their world.
Constanze and Elsa, lulled to sleep by the heat, rubbed their eyes and inquired what all the fuss was about.
“Your son is trying to get us killed!” Krup hissed to his wife.
“What?” Constanze looked at Jakob, who rolled his eyes.
“I only opened the window, Mama,” he said, dismissing his father’s histrionics.
She considered them both but took no sides. “Do you think anyone noticed?” she said to her furious husband.
He looked sternly at his unrepentant son. “For our sakes we’d better hope not.”
Stefan Rosner stood on the cobblestone Leiselstrasse by a lamppost and continued to study the window. He’d been spying on the Engels’ little yellow house with the pretty flower boxes for several weeks now, as per Sturmbahnführer Keitel’s instructions. But he wasn’t even sure what he was looking for.
“Anything out of the ordinary,” was the SS officer’s curt reply, whenever he asked. He wondered if it had to do with the famous pilot he’d met here this winter. There did seem to be a tense air about the place, what with the sick mother and all. Who knew? All he cared about was that he was doing his duty by helping the SS watch those suspected of disloyalty. Perhaps they were engaging in criminal acts, conspiring against the Reich in there. Maybe they were even Bolsheviks, although Herr Hitler said there were no more Jews, Gypsies, or Communists left in the New Germany, so to think otherwise was to call the Führer a liar—an awful crime. He shrugged; who was he to say? He was bored and just wanted to go home. But duty kept him watching the house. And no one in the Hitler Youth would call him a shirker.
Then he saw the human form in the attic window. He appeared briefly, and the window slid open. Stefan continued to watch, paying close attention. Five minutes later another figure, bearded and frail, showed himself for a brief second and shut it. Then the shades were drawn, leaving a tiny, dark shuttered rectangle under the A-frame that supported the terra cotta roof.
After standing there for twenty more minutes, Stefan decided that he’d observed whatever was going to happen. Should he report this? It was strange that people would be up in an attic on a summer day. And keeping the window shut rather than opening it wide to beat the stifling heat? He concluded this was, indeed, out of the ordinary enough that it was worth mentioning to Herr Keitel.
So he left the Engels’ home behind and made his way to the center of town, where people were out in the Himmelplatz enjoying the sunny weather. He would find Herr Keitel and do his duty to the Fatherland. The Führer would be very proud of him. And that was all he cared about in the whole world.
Sturmbahnführer Keitel and two other SS officers sat at one of the tables arranged along the Wilkestrasse under the shade of an umbrella, sipping tea and watching the town pass by while discussing the Normandy invasion.
“Oh yes,” Keitel was saying to the two other men in uniform. “We’ll be on our way to the front in a day or two.”
Stefan approached him sheepishly, his hands folded behind him, not wanting to interrupt
the Sturmbahnführer while he was speaking.
“What’s the status anyway?” inquired one of the soldiers.
“We’ll drive the Anglo-American mob into the channel, of course,” declared Keitel. “Just as we did at Dieppe.” He leaned back in his chair, casually put his cup to his lips, and crossed his jackbooted legs. “Or we’ll all die trying.” Then he noticed Stefan, standing at attention in front of him. “What is it, boy?” asked Keitel, looking up from his seat.
“Heil Hitler!” shouted Stefan with an extended palm.
“Heil Hitler,” the Sturmbahnführer answered.
Stefan clicked his heels. “I wish to report odd activity at the house, sir.”
Keitel sat up straight and put his cup back on the saucer. “Oh? What kind of odd activity?”
“Movement in the attic. At least two people. Although I can’t be certain. They looked like men. I thought it best to report it to you.”
“And what of Fräulein Amelia?”
“I watched her leave ten minutes before. She’d not yet returned.”
Keitel considered the officers with him. If there were any men at the Engel home, a house supposedly occupied only by an invalid granny and a whore, he would want to investigate them personally. “We’ll discuss this later at my office. Now run along.”
“Yes, Herr Sturmbahnführer,” he chirped obediently. And then he ran along.
“Trouble, Johann?” one of his companions asked while ripping a bread roll in two.
“I’m not sure,” the SS commander said, as wheels inside his head lurched into motion. “But I’ll find out in due time.”
Keitel would come to regret not investigating sooner. But who could have predicted what was to happen next? Certainly not me.
42
Of Another Time and Place Page 22
