Resistance Women Page 11

  “Günther Weisenborn has more courage than the rest of us combined,” said Anna. “His play Warum lacht Frau Balsam? premiered last month at the Deutsches Künstlertheater as scheduled, but word had gotten out that it was antifascist, and Nazis rioted at the theater. The show closed that night and the play was immediately banned. God only knows when Weisenborn will be able to produce a play in Berlin again.”

  “Such a loss,” Greta murmured. Günther Weisenborn was exceptionally gifted—as was everyone Anna had mentioned. “With Jessner gone, what will become of the Staatstheater?”

  “Nothing good, I’m sure. Franz Ulbricht is in charge now, and he’s made no secret of his admiration for Hitler and Mussolini.” Anna shuddered and bent over her teacup as if to draw strength from its warmth. “I for one shall never work there again.”

  “And what of Adam Kuckhoff?” Greta inquired, too casually.

  Anna regarded her knowingly. “He’s received many offers to join theaters elsewhere in Europe, but he seems determined to stay put. He told me that as someone who is neither a Communist nor a Jew, he’s one of the few politically engaged writers in Germany who is not under attack either racially or politically. He’s able to stay, and so he’s obliged to stay, to fight fascism from within.”

  Greta felt a rush of warmth and pride. That was so like Adam, so brave and selfless—and reckless. “I hope he manages to stay out of those new prison camps.”

  Anna held her gaze for a moment before glancing away. “His brother-in-law, Hans Otto, does not get along well with Ulbricht. He’s received invitations from theaters in Vienna, Zurich, and Prague, but he seems as reluctant to leave Germany as Kuckhoff is.”

  Greta nodded, understanding what Anna was trying to say. If Otto would not leave, then his wife would surely remain as well, as would Armin-Gerd, Marie’s son by Adam. If the rest of the family stayed in Germany, it was very likely that Gertrud—Marie’s sister and Adam’s wife—would too. Adam’s domestic situation would remain as complicated as ever.

  “You’re better off here,” said Anna suddenly, reaching across the table to clasp her hand. “We both are.”

  “My friends from the university in Frankfurt say the same. They tell me how lucky I am to be able to breathe freely and write, and that I shouldn’t even think of returning for several months.”

  “And yet?” Anna prompted.

  “Germany is my home,” said Greta, impassioned. “I agree with Adam. If we can stay and fight, we should. Jews and Communists—yes, they should flee if they can. They wear targets on their backs. But as for the rest of us—” She shook her head. “Who will remain to resist the Nazis if all decent people run away?”

  “Well, this decent person is staying in London until she’s sure it’s safe to go home.” Anna studied her. “You must realize that if you go back, it may cost you your career, your freedom, even your life.”

  Greta’s heart thudded, but her friend’s anxiety compelled her to shrug and force a smile. “Maybe. You’re very persuasive. Why shouldn’t I stay here to plug away at my dissertation and to enjoy as much of the West End as I can afford? What difference could one woman make, especially one as utterly unqualified for politics as I am?”

  Some of the worry left Anna’s eyes. “When I write home to friends,” she said carefully, “should I say that you asked about Kuckhoff?”

  Greta waved a hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. I asked about a lot of people. There’s no need to mention Kuckhoff unless you mention them too.”

  Anna shrugged and sipped her tea as if it were of little consequence, but Greta suspected it would not be long until Adam knew she was in London.

  A week later, Professor Mannheim arrived in London, exhausted but effusive in his praise and thankfulness for Greta’s efforts on his behalf. “This will do nicely,” he said. “I feel as if I had been cast adrift on a lifeboat, and the London School of Economics pulled me in to a safe harbor. I wonder if you would recognize the university in Frankfurt anymore, so many faculty have left.”

  “I feared as much,” said Greta. “In his last letter, my father mentioned that he had read in the newspaper that professors throughout Germany are suddenly taking leaves of absence. He said there were six listed from Frankfurt am Main alone.”

  “Only six? Your father’s information is out of date.” Professor Mannheim gave a derisive snort. “Leave of absence. What a pretty euphemism. Jews, Communists, and other undesirables are being forcibly excised from academia. Who will be next?”

  “Women, I imagine.”

  The professor regarded her with sympathy over the rims of his glasses. “You must not let that discourage you from completing your degree.”

  “I won’t.” Her interest in her dissertation was waning for entirely different reasons.

  Any reasonable person would conclude that her only rational choice was to enroll in the London School of Economics, earn her doctorate, and wait out the strife at home. Let others engage in that fight for Germany’s soul, people better suited for waging political battles, people like Adam.

  A fortnight later, Greta received a letter in care of the Department of Sociology, a letter from Germany she had anticipated ever since her unexpected reunion with Anna Klug.

  Adam had not written to her in months. She pocketed the letter and resolved not to read it until later that evening, or perhaps the following morning. She had plans to meet a friend at the British Museum and would not let Adam’s words distract or distress her. But her heart pounded fiercely as she walked northwest along Drury Lane, each theater she passed reminding her of him, of their long, engrossing discussions about classic plays and the renaissance of German theater and the role of the artist in society.

  She made it to the steps of the museum before she tore open the envelope and withdrew a small sheet of paper.

  Adam had written scarcely more than a sentence: “Come—I’m waiting for you.”

  A mix of emotions flooded her, joy and hope, longing and wariness. Adam was waiting for her, but had he done anything to extricate himself from his marriage? Or was she misreading him entirely, and he only meant that she should return to join the struggle against fascism?

  She was apprehensive—she could admit that. Returning to Germany meant willingly accepting uncertainty and danger. Yet Adam’s brief message, five simple words, forced her to acknowledge how homesick she truly was. She missed her family and friends, German food and culture, the Berlin theater. She ached with anger and indignation when she thought of Jewish friends suffering under the Nazi regime, friends she could help if she were there.

  The more she brooded over it, the more she yearned for home.

  Her decision, once made, was firm and immutable. She would return to Germany, but whether Adam would play any role in her life, and whether she wanted him to, was impossible to know.

  Chapter Thirteen

  March–April 1933

  Sara

  Sara could ignore the swastika flags and the Brownshirt recruiting posters proliferating all over the University of Berlin campus, but she froze in terror whenever she came upon storm troopers smashing windows of Jewish-owned shops, destroying merchandise, and roughing up the frightened proprietors. At first city police attempted to intervene, but they were no match for the SA, and over time many began to look the other way, as if it were more important not to muss their green uniforms than to uphold the rule of law.

  Natan told Sara that he had seen SA officers stride into courthouses, haul Jewish lawyers and judges out to the street, berate them, beat them, spit on them. Attacks on synagogues were so commonplace that it had become second nature to glance over one’s shoulder while walking to Shabbat services.

  The outrages received widespread coverage in the international press, and a movement began among Jewish organizations worldwide to boycott German goods in protest. Adolf Hitler denounced German Jews for turning the international press against the Nazis, and in retaliation, he proclaimed a national boycott of Jewish busin
esses beginning the first day of April.

  Sara thought the date was a curious choice, as April 1 was a Saturday and many observant Jews closed their businesses for Shabbat. Perhaps Hitler hoped people would see the darkened windows and assume the intimidated Jews had not bothered to open their doors that morning. Or perhaps he knew that observant Jews did not shop on Shabbat, preempting any attempt the Jewish community might have made to offset the boycott with shopping sprees.

  Indignant, Sara phoned her sister. “Dieter invited me to a party and I need a new dress,” she said. “Want to come shopping with me on Saturday?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Amalie agreed. “Don’t tell Mother,” she warned.

  “Of course not! She’d lock me in the house.”

  On the morning of April 1, Sara and Amalie met in front of the Café Kranzler in Charlottenburg. Amalie was as breathtakingly lovely as ever, her dark hair arranged in a graceful chignon that emphasized her slender neck and high cheekbones, and her clothing, elegant and perfectly tailored, spoke of wealth and excellent taste. Only a tremulous smile betrayed her nervousness.

  The sisters linked arms and strolled along Kurfürstendamm, their conversation falling silent at the sight of storm troopers standing menacingly outside shops and businesses unmistakably identified by the symbols painted on their windows and doors, a yellow six-pointed Star of David with Jude or Jüdisches Geschäft scrawled in black in the center. Posted on walls and lampposts were chilling signs in stark black and white: “Don’t Buy from Jews,” ordered one, and “The Jews Are Our Misfortune,” another. “Germans, defend yourselves against Jewish atrocity propaganda,” another warned. “Buy only at German stores!” Black-clad SA men strode along the sidewalks with placards hung around their necks bearing identical warnings in Blackletter: “Germans! Resist! Do not buy from Jews!”

  “This is absurd,” said Sara in an undertone as they passed two SA men chatting amiably while blocking the entrance to a Jewish-owned department store, one of her mother’s favorites. “The Nazis are persecuted? They need to resist us?”

  “Hush. I know,” murmured her sister, the picture of serenity.

  Sara had expected the most popular shopping district in Berlin to be nearly deserted, but to her surprise, nearly as many people as on any other Saturday strolled the sidewalks, some gawking at the harsh signs and garish symbols, others pretending they did not exist. Several Jewish-owned shops were darkened, the shades drawn, the signs turned to “Closed” in the front windows, but customers passed freely through the doors of those that were open, carrying shopping bags and string-tied parcels, ignoring the glares of the SA.

  A stocky blond storm trooper stood outside Amalie’s favorite dress shop. “I beg your pardon, ladies,” he said as they approached the door. “This is a Jewish shop.”

  “Yes, thank you, we know,” said Amalie, fixing him with a smile so radiant that he blinked stupidly and said nothing more.

  The proprietor greeted them with a strained smile. After trying on several pretty frocks, Sara chose a lovely crepe de Chine dress, burgundy with cream pinstripes, with a buttoned, jewel-neck bodice, a peplum waistline, and a flounced hem that swirled just above her ankles when she moved. Amalie put the purchase on Wilhelm’s account, and the salesclerk carefully folded the dress in tissue paper and packaged it in a box bearing the store’s name.

  “Thank you, Amalie,” Sara said as they left the store, passing the storm trooper, who studiously looked the other way. “Thank Wilhelm for me too.”

  “I will, but how are you going to explain this to Mother?”

  “I’ll hide the box beneath my bed for a few days. She’ll never know.”

  Their simple act of defiance raised their spirits, so they decided to return to the Café Kranzler for an early lunch. Only when they parted company at the Untergrundbahn did Sara feel a stir of trepidation, wondering how she was going to sneak the box into the house and up to her bedroom without her mother noticing. She pondered her options all the way home, but just as she turned onto her own block, she saw her mother approaching from the opposite direction. From her elbow dangled a shopping bag bearing the name of Ernst Kantorowicz’s bookshop.

  “Mutti,” cried Sara as they met at their own front gate, utterly astonished. “You broke the embargo. And on Shabbat!”

  Her mother drew herself up. “Do you think only the young can defy authority?”

  “Not exactly, but—you’re a wife and mother.”

  “Who more than a wife and mother has a responsibility to make the country equitable and civil for her family?”

  Sara had never been prouder of her.

  By evening the Nazis had declared victory, claiming the boycott had succeeded so overwhelmingly that there was no need to extend it beyond a single day. Their words did not change the facts. Anyone who had browsed Berlin’s popular shopping districts that day knew the truth.

  When her study group met a few days later at Mildred Harnack’s flat in Neukölln, Sara learned that nearly everyone there had broken the boycott. Sara was deeply impressed when Mildred told them how her husband’s ninety-one-year-old great-aunt had imperiously ignored the cordon around KaDeWe, the Jewish-owned department store where she had shopped for decades. The SA had briefly detained her, but had soon released her on account of her age.

  “How could anyone arrest a ninety-one-year-old woman for ignoring a boycott?” exclaimed Sara. “She didn’t break the law, and at her age, she’s earned the right to shop where she pleases.”

  Mildred smiled. “That’s essentially what she told the SA.”

  Less than a week after the boycott, on April 7, the Reichstag passed the Professional Civil Service Restoration Act, or Berufsbeamtengesetz, which required all non-Aryans and members of the Communist Party to retire from the legal profession and civil service. President Hindenburg had objected to the original bill, but he approved it after exemptions were made for veterans of the Great War and those who had lost a father or a son in combat. Even in its amended form, the law meant that thousands of Jewish lawyers, judges, teachers, professors, and government workers suddenly lost their jobs, and when a second law was passed soon thereafter, countless doctors, tax consultants, notaries, and even musicians were thrown out of work too.

  “See, Mutti?” said Natan sardonically the next time the family gathered for Shabbat. “I was right to choose journalism over law school.”

  “They may come for reporters and editors next,” she replied.

  Sara and Natan deliberately avoided each other’s gaze, and Sara offered only the slightest shake of her head to say that she had not told anyone about his arrest and questioning. Why give their mother more reason to worry about her son’s occupational hazards when he had resolved not to give up his occupation?

  By then the Nazis had arrested more than forty-five thousand of their opponents, nearly all of them Communists and Social Democrats. Day by day, the SA and the SS intensified their attacks on Jewish businesses and synagogues. Four times Sara went to class only to find a stranger at the front of the lecture hall, someone invariably fair-haired and blue-eyed and male. After introducing himself he would explain with righteous condescension that he was taking over as instructor because his predecessor had decided to take a leave of absence.

  Sometimes the news met with murmurs of confusion or disgruntlement, sometimes with a smattering of applause, sometimes both. Only once did a student call out, “I spoke with Herr Professor yesterday evening and he said nothing of this.”

  The new instructor allowed a thin smile. “It was a sudden decision.”

  “He lent me a book,” the young man persisted. “Where shall I return it to him?”

  The smile hardened, turned brittle. “Leave the book with the department secretary and we will see that he gets it.” Without pausing he began his lecture, and the student sank back in his seat, glowering mutinously.

  What will happen next? Sara wondered as policies that would have seemed outrageous a year before were
written into law, enforced, obeyed. What more does Hitler have to do before the German people realize that he is unfit to lead? Sara and her friends asked one another in hushed whispers when they crossed paths on campus or met for a beer after a long day of study. Mildred urged her to remain watchful, but to let nothing distract her from studying, working, earning her degree. Sara devoted so much of her time to her books that Dieter ruefully lamented that he rarely saw her anymore. Fervently she read and wrote and learned, as if she were running out of time, as if she feared that she too might be banished from academia as nearly all her Jewish professors had been.

  And then one day, she nearly was.

  On April 25, the Reich government passed the Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities—another title with a lie built into it, like “National Socialist,” for there was no overcrowding and that was not the situation the law sought to amend. Quotas were established to reduce the number of Jews in German public schools and universities until the percentage fell to that of Jews in the general population. For new admissions, Jews could make up no more than 1.5 percent of the class. Schools that were judged to have more students preparing for a profession than there were jobs available were required to reduce enrollment, with Jews the first to go, until the school reached a maximum of 5 percent non-Aryans.

  Sara was brought up short on her way to class by an ugly placard listing the provisions of the new law in dispassionate legalese. Blood rushed to her head, but her panic subsided when she read past Paragraph 4 to the exemption for certain Jews, including “Reich Germans not of Aryan descent whose fathers had fought at the front during the World War for the German Reich.” Her father had served and had been decorated for bravery. Thanks to him, Sara could continue her education, for now.