The Secret Letter

by Debbie Rix

  ‘Thank you Magda… for your friendship, but you must go now – for your own sake.’

  Fräulein Müller bustled across the concourse and pulled Magda forcibly away, muttering to the soldier: ‘I’ll speak to her, don’t worry.’

  ‘Get them out of here,’ said the soldier wearily, gesturing to Magda’s companions, who stood gawping at the scene.

  Magda was dragged bodily across the concourse, calling her friend’s name:

  ‘Lotte, Lotte…’

  ‘Why did you do that?’ asked Otto furiously, as they marched away from the station towards the centre of the city. Magda wept openly, looking over her shoulder in case she could still see Lotte, but the Kalmans had already disappeared, swallowed up into the station building.

  ‘She’s my best friend,’ Magda sobbed. ‘They were driven away from our village. My mother told me you were there – spitting in their faces. How could you do that? She was at our school…’ She sank to her knees, weeping, in the street. Otto hauled her up.

  ‘Don’t stop… keep moving.’

  ‘Where are they taking them?’ she said, stumbling, trying to force her feet to fall back into the rhythm of the group as they marched up Luisenstrasse.

  ‘A work camp, probably,’ Otto said dismissively.

  ‘A work camp? What sort of work?’ She thought about the newspaper article her brother had sent. Before she could stop herself, she asked Otto: ‘Are they going to be killed?’

  Otto came to a sudden halt. ‘Why do you say that?’ he said, staring at her. ‘Why do you care? They are nothing to you – scum.’

  ‘They are not nothing!’ she shouted, her misery turning to rage. ‘Dr Kalman is a doctor – a good man.’

  ‘Jews are not allowed to be doctors.’

  ‘But he is a doctor!’ protested Magda. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s against the law,’ said Otto calmly.

  ‘Well the law is stupid and cruel and wrong,’ said Magda, glaring at him.

  ‘Don’t say that! Never say that!’ Otto’s blue eyes flashed icily. ‘Now – march.’

  ‘Are you ordering me?’ asked Magda.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ asked Fräulein Müller, pushing through the rest of the group. ‘Magda Maier – start marching, now!’

  The rally took place on the Königsplatz. This vast square was surrounded on three sides by neo-classical buildings, modelled on the Acropolis in Athens. It provided a magnificent backdrop for National Socialist rallies and was filled that day with thousands of young men and women from the Hitler Youth, standing in regimented rows, cheering as various announcements and speeches were made from the platform. A phalanx of senior SS officers was assembled in front of the monumental Propyläen – the central building complete with pediment atop a set of Doric columns. On either side of the stage were flaming torches shimmering in the heat.

  The grandeur of the square and the sheer energy emanating from the thousands of Hitler Youth was overwhelming. All around, Magda’s fellow league members cheered and saluted. Their eyes were filled with passion, as if they had lost their hearts and minds to the cause and to the men who stood on the stage.

  One by one, young men who had showed ‘leadership’, or ‘devotion to the cause’ were called up to the front and presented to the officers. Otto was amongst them, walking proudly up the steps and across the stage where the officers shook his hand and slapped him on the back. He bowed and raised his arm in the Hitler salute. The crowd roared in delight. Once all the chosen boys had been presented, they were lined up on the stage and a senior officer spoke to the crowd.

  ‘These young men have served their country well. They will be given the honour of becoming part of a new elite military group – the W-E Lagers. They will be sent to special training camps in preparation for their eventual call-up to the military.’

  The crowd was ecstatic – screaming and cheering. The officer held up his hand and they fell instantly silent.

  ‘This programme begins in November; support them, nurture them. These young men are our heroes. They are our future.’

  The crowd cheered again and the boys walked off the stage, buoyed by the mass hysteria. Just one boy, at the end of the line, looked anxiously around, as if confused by this announcement. He looked frightened, Magda thought.

  As Otto squeezed back to his place at the front of his troop, he looked back at Magda, hoping, she assumed, for some sort of acknowledgement – a smile or a wave. His handsome face was shiny with sweat, his blond hair pushed away from his forehead, his blue eyes filled with zealous pride. She took no pleasure in his elevation. His cruel comments about Lotte and her father had been so repugnant, and his lack of remorse for the way he had treated them so appalled Magda that she couldn’t bear to look at him, and turned her face away. The hard leather jewellery box in her skirt pocket pressed, uncomfortably, against her leg. Something about that brooch had seemed familiar, she thought – as if she had seen it somewhere before.

  One girl from each troop had also been selected for special recognition. Erika, with her long blonde plaits and eager personality, had been chosen to represent their village. Now she joined a group of other girls and walked to the front of the crowd. Thirty or so young women, aged no more than fifteen or sixteen, were lined up facing the stage. Dressed in their uniforms of dark skirts and white shirts, their blonde hair plaited and tied neatly across their heads, their faces free of any trace of make-up, they were the perfect vision of German womanhood – ripe and ready for childbirth. The officers walked down the steps and along the line, inspecting the girls. They chatted to some, admiring their pretty faces, their firm bosoms. The officer who had previously spoken to the crowd stopped opposite Erika. He patted her arm and leant towards her, whispering in her ear. She blushed and giggled, and when she returned to the group taking her place next to Magda, she had a look of sly contentment, like a cat. One or two of the other girls whispered to her – presumably asking what the officer had said to her, but she tossed her head coquettishly and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, ‘It was a private conversation; I’m not allowed to say.’

  Magda observed all this with cool detachment. She was grateful she had not been selected for this particular inspection. She hated the way the officers admired the young women; it reminded her of her father inspecting heifers at the market. This attitude – that girls were there for the pleasure of men – permeated the whole Hitler Youth. She had heard the boys talking amongst themselves when they went on camping trips. They would sit around the fire laughing and sniggering, talking about girls who had agreed to have sex with them ‘for the Führer’. They called them the ‘mattresses’.

  Two girls in Magda’s own troop had left the village suddenly after one such trip the previous summer, and rumour had it that they left because they were pregnant. The other girls seemed full of admiration – as if it was some significant rite of passage. Magda, by contrast, had been horrified. The pregnant girls deluded themselves that the boys cared for them, whereas it was obvious to anyone that they were just using them, laughing at the girls behind their backs.

  Magda clung faithfully to the idea that to have a child was a responsibility to be shared between a man and a woman, and their local pastor still preached that to have a child out of wedlock was a sin. But Fräulein Müller told the girls that motherhood should be the pinnacle of every young woman’s aspirations. ‘To have an Aryan child is the ultimate gift a girl can give the Fatherland,’ she was fond of saying. And in the last few months, she had even gone so far as to advocate children out of wedlock. ‘It doesn’t matter if a girl is married any more,’ Fräulein Müller had said. ‘The union of two perfect Aryan young people is a beautiful thing.’

  It was hardly surprising, Magda thought, that the boys tried to take advantage of the girls in the League; they knew no one would reprimand them.

  Now, having seen the way the officer spoke to Erika, and overheard her comment about their ‘private conversation’,
Magda wondered if the girls were being selected to have children with SS officers. She did not like Erika, but she would not wish such a fate on anyone. The officer who spoke to her was old enough to be her father.

  When the rally was finally over, Fräulein Müller assembled her group together. ‘We will go back to the station now by a different route – down Brienner Street – and pay our respects to the Honour Temples. I expect you all to behave properly.’

  The Honour Temples contained the sarcophagi of sixteen members of the National Socialist party who had been killed in the abortive ‘Beer hall putsch’ on 10th November 1923. During this failed coup attempt, Hitler and his supporters were confronted by armed police outside the Feldherrnhalle – a monument built in 1844 to honour Bavarian soldiers. In the riot that followed, four policemen and sixteen National Socialist members were shot, and Hitler himself was arrested and imprisoned. In 1933 Hitler turned the Feldherrnhalle into a memorial to the failed coup, guarded at all times by the SS. In 1935, he erected two temples next to his own headquarters on Brienner Street to house the graves of these ‘martyrs’, and they had since taken on an almost mythical significance.

  Magda and the rest of the troop set off for the temples, marching in tight formation. Otto, revelling in his new status as part of an elite fighting group, predictably strode out in front, followed closely by Erika. As they passed the temples, they saluted smartly, before carrying on down the road, past the Karolinenplatz obelisk, and turning right towards the station. Magda, unnoticed, gradually slipped to the back of the column, and as the rest of the troop turned right, she hung back and ducked into the doorway of a small café, watching as her troop marched away. When she was sure they had gone, she slipped inside and hid behind the door.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asked a waitress.

  ‘Oh, no thank you,’ said Magda, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

  ‘Would you like a table?’ the waitress asked, clearly confused by the young girl’s strange behaviour.

  Magda sat down at a dark corner table, peering anxiously out of the window, in case anyone had returned to look for her, and ordered a glass of water.

  When the waitress set the glass down, Magda asked her where she would find the university.

  ‘Oh, you mean Ludwig Maximilian. It’s not far. It’s just north of here. You can walk up Ludwigstrasse, or you could go through the Hofgarten and then on through the Englischer Garden – that’s very pretty at this time of year.’

  The park was filled with families enjoying the summer sunshine. Couples sat together in cafés enjoying a beer or a coffee. Children ran laughing to their mothers. Faced with a scene of such tranquillity Magda wanted to scream at everyone: ‘Do you know that a few miles away from here, families – just like yours – are being herded onto trains, taken to work camps, or worse. Don’t you know what’s happening in your name?’ As she skirted the large pond, the sun filtering through the trees, she remembered what Otto had said on the station concourse: that Lotte and her family were ‘nothing’. How could that be true? They had as much right to a good life as these families here in the park.

  As Magda approached the main university building, its white stone walls gleamed impressively against the bright blue sky. A tall bronze fountain, green with age, spilled water into a wide stone pool. Groups of students, chatting and laughing, perched on the stone edge, dragging their hands in the cooling water, their bulging bags and bicycles abandoned on the green lawn. Compared to the ritualised behaviour of the Hitler Youth rally she had just left, these young men and women laughing together and discussing ideas seemed so relaxed and happy. Magda had been indoctrinated with the idea that women should be discouraged from further education, and yet, here they were, studying on an equal basis to men. She sat down nervously on the grass, hoping – in spite of her uniform – to blend into the background, while eavesdropping on snatches of conversation.

  ‘He’s such a letch,’ said a girl with short brown hair. She wore slacks and man’s shirt tied in a knot around her waist and was lying languorously on the green lawn, her head resting on her rucksack. ‘He told me yesterday that I would get an A* if I let him kiss me.’

  ‘No! Really?’ said another.

  Magda, fascinated, leaned towards the group, surreptitiously trying to hear what the others were saying. The girl with short brown hair looked over at her and smiled.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, rolling over onto her side and propping herself up on her elbow. ‘You look a bit lost. Can we help you?’

  ‘Oh… no, thank you,’ said Magda, blushing. ‘I’m just visiting.’

  The girl shrugged, rolled back over and resumed her conversation with her friends.

  Magda stood up, intending to leave. But as she brushed the grass from her skirt, the girl with short hair smiled at her again and Magda felt emboldened to speak to her.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she began. The girl jumped up and came and stood next to Magda.

  ‘It’s no bother,’ she said.

  ‘It’s just that I’m sixteen, and people keep telling me that girls don’t need to go to university. But I’d like to come here one day.’

  ‘I understand. I was discouraged from coming too. I had to do war work for a year before I came here. I worked on a farm – it was terrible.’

  ‘I live on a farm,’ said Magda, smiling. ‘It’s not so bad when you’re used to it. But my brother always hated it. He went to university and I want to go too.’

  ‘Where did he go – your brother?’

  ‘Heidelberg and then to Oxford… in England.’

  The girl looked surprised.

  ‘Really. When was that?’

  ‘Before the war. He left in ’37.’

  ‘And now?’ she asked.

  ‘He stayed there and was put in jail – at least I think that’s what happened.’

  The girl smiled. ‘So he didn’t come back to fight.’

  Magda shook her head.

  ‘He sounds interesting, your brother.’

  ‘He is,’ said Magda, uncertain how much she should reveal. ‘I miss him.’

  ‘And you’re in the League,’ the girl said, gesturing to Magda’s uniform.

  ‘Yes. I had to go to a rally in the Königsplatz today. I hate it.’

  It was a risky thing to say. You never knew, these days, who you were speaking to, but something in the girl’s demeanour made Magda feel she could be trusted with such unpatriotic thoughts.

  ‘What – the rally or the uniform?’

  ‘Both,’ said Magda.

  ‘I understand. I hated it too,’ the girl whispered. ‘We’re all going to a café soon – for a meeting. Come with us.’

  ‘No,’ said Magda, ‘not dressed like this. Besides, I ought to get back to Augsburg; they’ll be angry that I missed the train.’

  ‘Then take this with you,’ said the girl, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a leaflet. ‘A group of us are spreading the word. I have a feeling you might be interested.’

  She pressed the leaflet into Magda’s hand.

  ‘Only read it when you’re alone. I hope you get to study here one day.’

  On the train home, sitting alone by the window, Magda pulled the leaflet out of her pocket and read it with growing amazement.

  Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in a bestial manner. Here we see the most terrible crime committed against the dignity of man, a crime that has no counterpart in human history. Is this a sign that the German people have become brutalised in their basic human feelings? That they have sunk into a terminal sleep from which there is no awakening, ever, ever again?

  It seems that way… if the German does not arouse himself from this lethargy, if he does not protest whenever he can against this gang of criminals, if he doesn’t feel compassion for the hundreds of thousands of victims – not only compassion, no, much more: guilt. Everyone shrugs off this guilt, falling asleep again with his conscience at peace. But he can’t shrug i
t off; everyone is guilty, guilty, guilty!

  We will not be silent. We will be your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!

  Magda folded the leaflet and put it back in her pocket. Staring out of the train window as it rumbled through the outskirts of Munich, she shaded her eyes against the sun, hanging like a vast red orb over the dark buildings. Magda, exhausted and confused, closed her eyes. So much had happened that day: the appalling treatment of her friend Lotte; the rally with all its pomp and ceremony and nationalistic pride; her surprise meeting with the brown-haired girl at the university. But as she fingered the leaflet in her pocket, she felt something she had not felt for years – hope. For the first time since she had read Karl’s letter, she realised she was not alone in her feelings of revulsion and anger. There were people like her, young people who cared passionately, just as her brother did, who wanted to make a difference. Who wanted to stop the madness and the cruelty. And she was determined to be part of it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Keswick

  June 1942

  As Imogen and Joy approached their final few weeks of school, the weather grew hot and balmy. During the previous year their school had moved into a large mansion outside Keswick on the shores of the lake. Rather than being billeted with families, most of the pupils now shared dormitories in a couple of boarding houses on the edge of town, which created a sense of shared camaraderie; it also meant Imogen and Joy could finally be together. One morning, as they prepared for school, Imogen received a letter from Freddie.

  ‘Joy,’ she said, grabbing hold of her friend. ‘You go on ahead of me to school. I just must read Freddie’s letter. I’ve not heard from him since that night we went out at Easter.’

  ‘All right…’ said Joy. ‘I’ll get the bus. Don’t be late though, will you? You’re taking the register for the Lower Fourths, remember?’