Ashes

Table of Contents

 

 

 

VIKING
Published by Penguin Group
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First published in 2010 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

Copyright © Kathryn Lasky, 2010 All rights reserved

 

Bye Bye Blackbird
Lyrics by Mort Dixon
Music by Ray Henderson
© 1926 (Renewed 1953) by OLDE CLOVER LEAF MUSIC (ASCAP)/ Administered by BUG MUSIC
and RAY HENDERSON (ASCAP)/ Administered by RAY HENDERSON MUSIC

All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Lasky, Kathryn.
Ashes / by Kathryn Lasky.
p. cm.

Summary: In 1932 Berlin, thirteen-year-old Gaby Schramm witnesses the beginning of
Hitler 's rise to power, as soldiers become ubiquitous, her beloved literature teacher starts
wearing a jewelled swastika pin, and the family's dear friend, Albert Einstein, leaves the
country while Gaby's parents secretly bury his books and papers in their small yard.

eISBN : 978-1-101-18523-0

1. Germany—History—1918-1933—Juvenile fiction. [1. Germany—History—1918-1933—Fiction.
2. Family life—Germany—Fiction. 3. Nazis—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L3274As 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009033127

 

 

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T
he historical fiction you are about to read is set during one of the most tumultuous times in modern history, a time when it seemed that a nation lost its mind, and a tyrant, Adolf Hitler, became Germany's leader.

Here is what you need to know about the world in which the book's main character, Gabrielle Schramm, lived during the years 1932 and 1933 in Berlin.

Gabrielle was born in 1919, the year after World War I ended. Not only had the Germans been defeated during the war but the Treaty of Versailles required Germany to disarm, to give up large areas of territory, and to pay the victorious Allies back the complete cost of all losses and damages caused by the war.

The immense cost of this repayment imposed many hardships on the German people and helped lead to the collapse of the German economy. Bitter resentment saturated the defeated nation and provided fertile soil for Adolf Hitler to sow the seeds of hatred that led to the rise of Nazism.

The German state that emerged in 1919 was an attempt to establish a liberal democracy in a country that had previously been ruled by an emperor. It often became known as the Weimar Republic because it was formed at a national assembly that convened in the city of Weimar. The new German government was headed by a president, who was elected by popular vote. The parliament, or Reichstag, was also elected by popular vote. The president then appointed a cabinet, and a chancellor who headed up the government. The president had the power to dismiss the chancellor, dissolve the Reichstag, and call for new elections whenever he chose, while the Reichstag could force the resignation of any cabinet member by a vote of no confidence. Power struggles among the president, chancellor, and Reichstag made the new government potentially unstable, and it was also threatened from the start by conflicts between left- and right-wing extremists, and by economic hardship.

Hitler, a mesmerizing figure, exploited the instability of the government to orchestrate his own rise to power. He had joined the newly formed, deeply conservative German Workers' Party in 1919. After being arrested for a failed political coup, he decided to try to gain control from within the political system. Soon he started to gain popularity among the working classes by promoting extreme nationalism and promising to override the Versailles treaty. His party, renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazis for short, began to win seats steadily in the German parliament in the early 1930s.

In March of 1932, Hitler was one of four candidates for president. He came in second, behind the incumbent president, a war hero named Paul von Hindenburg, but no candidate won a clear majority. A runoff election took place in April, which Hindenburg won, but these two elections helped weaken the public's faith in the government.

By the time our story opens in the spring of 1932, the Weimar Republic was on its last wobbly legs. Hitler and his Nazi Party were determined to undermine the republic by using both the tools of the political system and violence. During the 1920s Hitler had created his own private army known as the
Sturmabteilung
or “storm force” (SA). Because they wore khaki shirts purchased from the German Army, they became known as the Brown Shirts. An elite group known as the
Schutzstaffel
or protective squad (SS) acted as Hitler's personal guard. The targets of SA and SS violence were primarily Communists and Jews. Hitler claimed in his book
Mein Kampf
that it was the Jews who were to blame for Germany's defeat in World War I. He also believed that the Jews and the Communists were united in a joint conspiracy to take over the world.

In April 1932, only four days after the runoff election, the SA and SS were banned by the Reichstag. It was hoped that this action would weaken the Nazi Party. But instead the effect was the opposite. The Nazi Party solidified and grew stronger.

Between June and December of 1932, the Reichstag was dissolved several times, making it necessary to hold new elections. Hitler was by this time was desperate to be named chancellor. Since the chancellor was supposed to be chosen from the party with the most seats in the Reichstag, Hitler needed the Nazi Party to do well in the elections, but a clear majority of votes eluded him. There followed an extremely confusing period of behind-the-scenes deals and double-crossing, during which the government seemed on the point of collapse, and martial law was threatened. Finally the frail President von Hindenburg was forced to name Hitler the chancellor of Germany, and he was sworn in on January 30, 1933. Although the republican system of government was officially still in place, practically speaking, Hitler was now in power. (When Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler took on the role of president as well as chancellor, giving himself the title of
Führer und Reichskanzler
—Leader and Chancellor.)

Terror and violence were quick to follow. Communists and Jews were not the only targets. The Nazi Party was also deeply suspicious of intellectuals, artists, and writers. Scientists, too, came under attack, especially Albert Einstein. His theories were labeled “Jewish physics.” This was a derogatory term used by violently anti-Semitic scientists who were deeply suspicious of Einstein's general theory of relativity and many of the ideas that became the basis for modern physics. The campaign for “Aryan physics,” which had begun before World War I, intensified after Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize.

Within days of Hitler becoming chancellor, laws were passed restricting freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and orders were issued for the confiscation of literature considered to be dangerous to the state.

This story is based on meticulous research, and all major historical events are described as they happened. Sometimes, for dramatic purposes I took some creative license with minor events, moving or revising them slightly. In such cases, I tried to stay true to the historical reality of the time. For instance, the speech of Hitler 's that Gaby and her family listen to on the radio in Chapter 18 is actually created from an earlier speech given in a private club, combined with passages from Hitler's book
Mein Kampf
. However all the words are really his.

It is against this turbulent background that the story of Gabrielle Schramm begins.

 

 

 

 

I
n 1914 my story begins. Without me. I had not been born yet. Not for another five years. But that doesn't really matter, for in truth this is not just my story. It might be similar to those of others who lived in Berlin at this time, but my story, like most people's, begins before I was born. The stage is set, so to speak. After all, the universe began billions of years ago, and who was here then? Not me, Gabriella Schramm. Not my parents. Not my sister. Not Albert Einstein. Yes, he is part of my story too, and part of the universe's story, for he was certainly one of its diarists.

Nineteen fourteen, then, is perhaps the prologue to my story. That was when my father went to observe a solar eclipse in southern Russia. You see, my father believes that light is affected by gravity. It is almost as if light has weight. At least, that is the way I like to think of it. So my father measures the “weight” of light. The eclipse of 1914 was supposed to help prove this theory. He hoped to use it to measure the way mass makes light bend. But the eclipse of 1914 was itself eclipsed by an even more meaningful event. The Great War broke out while Papa was in Russia, and he, along with four other scientists, was captured because he was from the enemy side—Germany. His captivity did not last long. The Russians released him and his colleagues within a matter of days. He went back to Germany, to Berlin, to the apartment on Haberlandstrasse, to Mama who would soon become pregnant with my older sister, Ulla, and to his lab at the university.