The Girl from Berlin: War Criminal's Widow

by Ellie Midwood

  I think Heinrich sensed it somehow, because he hugged me gently and said, “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. I’ll understand.”

  I shook my head and put my hand on top of his arm that he was holding me with.

  “Heinrich, don’t be silly. Of course I’ll go with you. You’re my husband.”

  “I don’t want to force you into anything.”

  “You’re not. I love you.” I closed my eyes for a second. “I know how hypocritical it may sound after everything I’ve done to you, but I do. I really do.”

  I was struggling to find the right words, and decided to say what the right thing to say was, and not how I truly felt. After all he was my husband, and he pardoned me so many times when no one else would have, and I would never forgive myself if I betrayed him once again.

  “All that… it was a mistake. It should have never happened. It wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the war, and everything… You’re absolutely right, we have to move.”

  “What about Ernst?” he asked me openly this time, as if giving me the last chance to change my mind.

  “He’ll go back to Austria, and from there somewhere to South America maybe, with his family. That’ll be the right thing to do. He has his family, and we have ours. That’s how it was supposed to be from the very beginning.” It was very difficult to speak about it, but deep inside I knew that it was the only way this all could end. “I’ll be very happy to put everything behind and start from a scratch. With you, in New York. Just the two of us.”

  “The three of us,” Heinrich corrected me with a slight grin and gently pressed his hand to my belly, for the first time since he’d learned that I was pregnant. How could I leave him now? He was my family, and you can’t leave family.

  “Do you want to go home?”

  I nodded, and in five minutes we were in our car, on our way home. And then the familiar roar of the planes mixed with the even sound of our car engine, right before the bright fire of falling bombs exploded in a distance, right where we were heading to. For some reason the sirens didn’t go off in time, and several violent blasts ahead of us seemed even louder because of that.

  “Shit!” Heinrich hit the brakes and swung the car into the opposite direction as fast as he could. I had to grab onto his shoulder to keep balance.

  “Heinrich! Why aren’t the sirens working?!”

  “They didn’t see the planes. It’s a cloudy night.”

  “Where’s the nearest bomb shelter? They’re right behind us!”

  “Several streets away. Don’t worry, we’ll make it.”

  I could swear I felt the ground rumbling underneath after every new blast.

  “Heinrich, please, go faster, I’m begging you!”

  “It’s the fastest this car goes, honey.”

  “Not fast enough!”

  I wasn’t the panicky type, but it was the first time I watched the actual bombs exploding dangerously close, and to say that it was petrifying is to say nothing. I saw how the concrete buildings looked after one of those bombs would hit them, and thinking what would be left of us if we happened to be under the plane when it would drop another portion, was horrifying.

  After yet another blast, the glass in the car made a shuddering noise. I grabbed Heinrich’s sleeve.

  “Sweetheart, please, go faster, I’m really scared!”

  “We’re almost there, honey, I promise.”

  He stopped so abruptly that I almost hit the dashboard.

  “Open the door, get out, quick!” he yelled, jumping out the car and rushing to get me.

  I guess the instinct of survival kicked in, because I sprung out of my seat in a split second. Heinrich immediately grabbed my wrist and dragged me to the bomb shelter, marked by sacks with sand around it. As we were running inside, the sirens mixed with nearing explosions. Several violent ones shook the ceiling above our heads when we were already inside.

  There were very few people in the shelter, since not many made it out of their houses; the bombs started falling before the alarms could warn them about the air raid. The ones who were lucky to be close to the shelter, gave us a look filled relief and grief at the same time. We made it that night. Thousands didn’t.

  _______________

  We had to spend the night in that basement, since we were too afraid to come out fearing the second attack. When at the dawn the police came and told us that it was safe to go back, we found our car in one piece but buried under a pile of dust, rocks and bricks from the nearby buildings. It was obvious that it was far from being in driving condition.

  “Looks like we’re walking home.” Heinrich faked a bright smile and I had nothing better to do than mirror it.

  “Alright. Walking it is.”

  We would have made it under an hour according to our calculations, but since the severe air raid made some streets and even areas impossible to walk through, we had to make a huge loop to get to our house. But as soon as we finally turned to our street, we were stopped by one of the police officers.

  “Heil Hitler, Herr Oberführer!” he saluted Heinrich and then added with the same eagerness. “I’m sorry, but you can’t go through, this street has been completely destroyed. Try to go around. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  Heinrich and I exchanged alarmed looks.

  “We live on this street,” my husband finally said.

  The policeman looked at the ruins behind his back and at the firetrucks arriving from the other side. “I’m very sorry, Herr Oberführer. Nothing’s left over there.”

  I clasped my mouth with my hand.

  “Heinrich!” I stared at him in terror. “Magda! The dogs!”

  Even he was at a loss now. Nevertheless he turned back to the policeman.

  “Our maid was in the house. A young girl, short, with brown hair and blue eyes, she was wearing a maid’s apron on top of the black dress, around twenty four years old, have you seen her by chance? And we also had our two dogs there, a small white Maltese and a German shepherd. Could you ask your people, maybe someone saw them?”

  The policeman shook his head hesitantly.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t, Herr Oberführer. Whoever survived was taken to the hospitals, the others to the central morgue where they’ll stay before someone claims them. And as for the dogs, they normally survive the bombing, they’re small, not like humans, they hide away and then get out of their shelter and run away. Because they’re scared. But then they usually come back to the place where they used to live. Maybe yours will too… But I’ll tell my men and will keep an eye for your maid and dogs. Who shall I contact in case if we find somebody?”

  “SD Oberführer Heinrich Friedmann, the head of the Department D, Reich Main Security Office.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Oberführer.”

  Heinrich put his arm around me and turned me away from the unrecognizably destroyed street.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. They’ll be fine, Magda and the dogs. They’ll find them.”

  I wanted to hope so. For some reason I didn’t even think about our documents, all the jewelry and money we had in our safe. I only prayed for Magda, Rolf and Sugar to be alive.

  “What shall we do now?” I asked tiredly.

  Heinrich shrugged. “Let’s go to work. That’s the only place we can go to.”

  I looked down at myself. “I’m wearing an evening gown.”

  “I’m sure they’ll understand. Let’s go.”

  However, Georg still gave me an amused look before getting back to the paperwork on his table.

  “Did I miss out the order prescribing us to dress formally on Mondays?”

  “They were bombing our area last night. Our house has been destroyed.”

  His attitude changed right away.

  “Really? I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  I nodded in appreciation. “We’re lucky that it lasted for so long. It’s been almost a year since they started bombing us systematically.”

  “Nobody got hu
rt, right?”

  “Our maid was supposedly there. She wanted to finish cleaning the library and stayed longer because Heinrich and I were out. We spend a lot of time in the library normally, and she didn’t want to bother us.” I looked away. “I hope she didn’t get hurt. And we had our dogs in the house too.”

  “Dogs are more resourceful than people. They probably got out.”

  “Yes, the police officer we spoke to told us the same thing.” I didn’t want to talk about it anymore and decided to change the subject. “Is our boss in the office? Maybe he wants coffee or something?”

  “He ran out about a couple of hours ago. Someone brought him some papers, and he took off. Didn’t even say to where or when he’s coming back.” Georg shrugged. “So just relax for now. You had a tough night.”

  You don’t know the half of it, I wanted to reply.

  I sorted out the correspondence, brought it to Ernst’s office and since he was gone, I decided to at least wash my face in his bathroom and make myself look somewhat presentable. In the course of last several months he’d sometimes have to stay overnight in his office, so he even had a shaving set and a toothbrush there. I didn’t need the first item, but I thought he wouldn’t mind if I used the second one. I brushed my teeth, undid my tricky hairstyle from last night and was putting my hair away in a modest, more work-suitable bun, when Ernst yanked the door open so unexpectedly that I even dropped his hairbrush.

  “Annalise!” I didn’t even get a chance to say anything because he squeezed me in such a deadly grip that I couldn’t take another breath. “Oh, thank God you’re alive! My angel… thank God!”

  “Why would I be dead, silly?”

  “Your house! Your whole street, everything’s gone! When they brought me the reports on the areas that got destroyed last night, I almost had a heart attack! And when I went by your street…” He buried his face in my hair. “I must have been to ten different hospitals in your area looking for you!”

  I raised my hands to his face and made him look at me. My poor Erni, he was so sincerely worried for me that it made my heart melt. I kissed him softly on the lips.

  “I can’t live without you,” he said very seriously. “I realized it this morning, when one after another I was lifting the covers from the faces of the dead people the police got from under the ruins. I was dreading to find you amongst them. I would have shot myself right there.”

  “Erni, don’t say that!”

  “I can’t live without you…” he repeated once again.

  “I can’t live without you too,” I whispered.

  The worst part was that it was true. I had no idea how I’d be able to be apart from him.

  _______________

  “There’s no way I’m going,” Heinrich said in his ‘end-of-discussion’ tone.

  At the end of the working day, when it was time to go home and we didn’t have one anymore, it was obvious that we had to find some other place to spend the night.

  “You’ll stay by my house of course,” Ernst had declared earlier in the day, in his ‘end-of-discussion’ tone.

  “Both of us?” I knew that Heinrich wouldn’t be delighted by such an idea to say the least.

  “Well, if you want to leave your husband in the street, I won’t mind,” Ernst immediately replied with a grin.

  “Of course I don’t! I’m just saying that he won’t go.”

  I was right. Heinrich crossed his arms over his chest and said that he’d rather sleep in his office. Or in the Gestapo basement. Ernst, just like me, anticipated such a reaction; that’s why after we left his office he walked straight to Heinrich’s and motioned his head to the exit.

  “Friedmann! Take your coat and let’s go.”

  “I appreciate the offer, Herr Obergruppenführer, but I’d rather stay here.”

  “I didn’t ask you if you would like to come, I told you to. And if you don’t follow your commander-in-chief’s order, I’ll throw you in jail in a second.”

  Heinrich frowned at him asserting the situation.

  “You know I’ll do it,” Ernst added with a smile.

  Heinrich finally got up and took his coat.

  “Aren’t you afraid that I’ll shoot you in your sleep?” my husband sweetly asked Ernst on the way to the garage.

  “Aren’t you afraid that I’ll shoot you?” Ernst replied in the same manner.

  I sighed. It was going to be one interesting night.

  We were having dinner that evening in the most awkward silence, but I was still glad that at least we had food on the table and a roof over our heads, when thousands of Berliners were left homeless and hungry. We were lucky to even be alive actually. After dinner Ernst showed us our room, which was the guest bedroom on the second floor, and then he went to his study to finish some paperwork. And then there it was again, the shriek of sirens.

  “Are they serious?” I asked, instinctively looking at the ceiling. I just showered and got into bed hoping to get some rest, and here we go again. The air raid.

  Heinrich, who was reading a newspaper laying on top of the covers, also grunted. Ernst right away called us out from the hallway and told us to take a blanket, pillows and come down to the basement. Still with the impression of last night’s terror on us, we quickly complied, and in less than a minute all three of us (Ernst let his housekeeper go right after dinner) were sitting in the cold basement on the military cot, wrapped in blankets and listening to the sounds above.

  “What’s with the cot?” Heinrich broke the silence first.

  “I brought it here.” Ernst shrugged. “Where do you think I sleep during the bombings?”

  “Is it safe in here?”

  “I never had a chance to find out, but I’ve been told it is. At least I have alcohol here.”

  With those words Ernst walked somewhere under the stairs to the opposite side of the basement and soon came back with two bottles of brandy, one of which he handed to Heinrich.

  “Here. Have some.”

  “Thank you, I’m good.”

  “It will keep you warm, idiot. It’s freezing like in the North Pole here at night, so drink it, unless you want to get yourself pneumonia by tomorrow.”

  I chuckled. Ernst could be very persuasive when he wanted to.

  “What about me?” I asked jokingly. “Since I can’t drink I’m going to freeze to death?”

  “Of course not.” Ernst pulled another blanket from the cot and wrapped me in it. “You’ll have all the blankets for yourself, and we’ll keep ourselves warm with alcohol.”

  “I can bring more blankets from upstairs,” Heinrich started, but the Austrian interrupted him right away.

  “Stay where you are, don’t you hear that they started bombing already? I’m sorry, but I don’t want to deal with both my destroyed house and your dead body tomorrow morning.”

  Heinrich smirked but didn’t say anything.

  Ernst was right, it was freezing cold in the basement, and even all those layers of covers hardly kept me warm after some time. I could only imagine how the two men felt, sitting there only in their shirts. And the explosions didn’t seem as if they would end any time soon. I started to get sleepy: all the exhaustion and stress finally caught up with me and I started nodding off.

  “Annalise,” I heard Ernst’s voice through sleep. “Why don’t you lay down? We’ll move.”

  “There’s not enough space,” I mumbled sleepily.

  “We’ll go by that wall over there. There’s a wooden chest over there, we’ll sit on it. Right?” He addressed my husband.

  “Yes, of course,” Heinrich replied, immediately getting up. “Lay down and try to sleep. We’ll be right over there.”

  I was too tired to protest, so I curled on the small cot and tucked all the blankets under myself.

  I thought that I slept for several hours, but when I opened my eyes and saw Ernst and Heinrich in the same position they were before I closed my eyes, I realized that I had slept for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes at t
he most. They were both sitting next to the wall with their legs pulled up to their chests and with their arms wrapped around their knees to keep warm. They didn’t notice that I woke up and kept staring at the floor in front of them.

  “Don’t lean against the wall,” Ernst told Heinrich quietly. “It’ll take all the warmth out of your body and you won’t even notice.”

  “How do you know?” Heinrich replied in the same quiet voice, but moved away from the wall.

  “I used to work in a coal mine. It’s not always hot in there, especially in winter.”

  “You? In a coal mine?” The surprise in Heinrich’s voice was obvious. “I admit, if someone else had told me, I wouldn’t believe it. I thought you were a third generation lawyer?”

  “I am. But my father got sick after the injuries he got in the Great War and couldn’t support me anymore. I had to pay for my own education if I wanted to graduate and get my doctorate. So it was University during the day, coal mine during the night.” Ernst took a sip from his bottle. “And then Hitler came and told us, the young generation that was broke and hungry after the Great War, that it was all the Jews’ fault. You understand? When you’re twenty years old, you’re very impressionable, and especially when someone keeps pointing out that the Jews are driving nice cars and eat caviar when us, the Aryans, are working day and night and struggling to put food on the table, it starts to get to you, you know? That’s how I got into the SS as soon as the first formations only started appearing in Austria. I met Himmler in 1933 I think… I liked what he told me. He told me that they needed educated leaders who would help them unite Austria with Germany again, to form the new Reich, to unite our people. And I already had my doctorate by then and was helping my fellow SS men who’d get arrested – the SS wasn’t actually legal in Austria – with legal advice. I was very good at it, and Himmler personally appointed me the commander of one of the divisions. He said that my goal was to work towards the Anschluss of Austria, because then we, the Aryans, would take back from the Jews what they’d taken from us. It sounded very appealing back then.”