‘Well done, lad,’ the sergeant said. ‘I think we’ll take you.’
A Marriage is Discussed
Berlin, 1940
THE NEWLY APPOINTED SS
Obergefreiter
Stengel turned left on to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and walked the length of the state security building. His jackboots rang on the paving stones as he passed the various queues of miserable people who had come with their papers in search of some stamp or other. Helpless suppliants begging for permission to survive.
He turned right on to Saarlandstrasse, a great blood-red double vein of fluttering flags, which led up to Potsdamer Platz. Two lanes plus a central island. So many flags. Red and black. Red and black. Red and black. All the way up to the
Haus Vaterland
.
He saw Dagmar before she saw him.
Which gave him a moment. A moment to drink her in. To savour. To treasure. To stand and stare across the thundering traffic at an oasis of poise and beauty.
She was standing beneath the famous Traffic-light Tower.
They loved the tower. Everyone in Berlin did. They had both been present at its unveiling in 1924. She a much-indulged little princess, separate and safe in a viewing area reserved for city dignitaries and leaders of commerce. He in the crowd, watching with his brother from atop their parents’ shoulders, cheering and shouting as the policeman in his little box seven metres above the ground turned on the lights that would finally bring order to the traffic chaos of the Potsdamer Platz.
The tower had been a symbol of Germany’s burgeoning economic revival. A miracle of modern technology, the first of its kind in Europe.
The tower was hung with swastikas now of course. The whole city was hung with swastikas and had been for six long years. Paulus no longer really thought of it as Berlin at all. Just Nazi Town, capital of Nazi Land, a hostile foreign country in which he was a prisoner.
Paulus looked once more at Dagmar.
How elegant she looked. From her fashionably broad-brimmed Homburg hat to her neat little lace-up brogues. No stockings, of course, they had disappeared from Berlin, but even ankle socks looked sophisticated on Dagmar.
It seemed to Paulus that of all the scurrying creatures hurrying this way and that across the great junction, Dagmar appeared the most naturally placed. Here in the heart of Berlin’s shopping district, standing at the epicentre of its finest thoroughfares, she might have been posing for a fashion photograph to be placed in a stylish magazine. Or, more likely these days, to feature in one of those photo stories they published in
Signal
, to show the troops that life in the capital was still prosperous and normal and that the German girls were still beautiful.
Paulus’s reverie was interrupted by a voice at his shoulder.
‘Come on,’ Silke said, ‘I’ve only got an hour.’
In a rush as ever.
But there, just as she had promised. She never let him down.
Good old Silke.
Golden hair all wrapped up in a knotted scarf, someone else’s baby’s dribble on the shoulder of her housecoat. Shivering against the cold and damp for which she was ill-clad as ever. But smiling nonetheless. A big bright smile spread across a face so sun-browned it was still tanned even now as winter began to thaw.
She put her arm in his and at the automated bidding of the Traffic-light Tower (no friendly seven-metre-high policeman any more), they crossed the street together to join Dagmar.
The three of them were to have lunch in the magnificent
Haus Vaterland
. The internationally famous ‘World in One House’ where up to eight thousand people at a time could dine in the largest café in the world and at the various internationally themed restaurants. They could have chosen the Wild West American Bar, the Bodega Spanish winery or the Japanese tea room. There were Turkish, Hungarian and Viennese options too. With supreme irony there had never been a British or a French restaurant because the ultra-patriotic Herr Kempinski, the Jewish restaurateur who had founded Fatherland House, had never forgiven Germany’s Great War enemies for the Treaty of Versailles.
When Paulus had come here with his parents and his brother back in the dream time they had, of course, always chosen the American Bar. Where they had steak and cornbread and a fancy coloured cocktail for Frieda. Now, however, being a good German soldier in uniform with not one but two girls on his arms, he steered the ladies towards the Lowenbräu Bavarian beer restaurant.
This was the loudest hall in the whole building, in which Nazi marching music blaring from loudspeakers competed with the beer-soaked din. It was a rowdy, triumphalist, unpleasant environment. Intimidating even. It therefore provided the best kind of cover for a planning meeting of race enemies and Communist-inclined traitors to the Reich.
Inevitably the
Horst Wessel Lied
was blaring from the loudspeakers as they entered the room and waited for a table.
‘Don’t grimace, Dagmar,’ Silke said, smiling broadly.
‘I can’t help it. That damned tune. Don’t they
ever
tire of it?’
‘Well, at least there’ll be no chance of us being overheard.’
This was the first time the three of them had been able to arrange to get together since Paulus had returned from Poland and begun to set his plan in motion.
Dagmar was still living at the Stengel apartment, sharing the crowded flat with three other dispossessed Jewish households, including Frieda’s parents, whose own apartment had recently been seized by a minor party functionary.
Silke was still in domestic service and so lived with the family that employed her, and Paulus of course had been first on active service and then tied up with his basic induction training with the Waffen SS.
Now, however, they could finally meet.
They ordered sausage and sauerkraut, which were still freely available in restaurants, plus beer for Paulus and apple juice for Silke and Dagmar. Dagmar fell on the food when it arrived. Rationing had been in place for the whole population for over a year, but Jews were only allowed the barest minimum and certainly no luxuries such as sausage and fruit juice.
‘I’m going to speak quickly because we don’t have much time,’ Paulus said. ‘The truth is things are going to get worse. A lot worse. What I’ve seen in the east defies description and I believe it’s only a matter of time before it happens here.’
‘What more can they do to us?’ Dagmar asked angrily. ‘We are forced to live like beggars, abused and exploited. My father’s store has swastikas hanging from—’
‘Your father’s shop is gone, Dagmar!’ Silke interjected, ‘and so is your father. It’s done, you can’t look back.’
‘It’s easy for you to—’
‘Please, Dagmar,’ Paulus interrupted. ‘Silke’s right. What’s done is done but I am here to tell you that what
has
been done is nothing, I mean
nothing
, compared to what’s coming. He’s said it. Over and over again. At the Reichstag, on the radio. This war will end either with the destruction of Germany or the destruction of the Jews.’
‘Yes, but he—’
‘He
does
mean it, Dagmar. The mass killing has begun, I’ve seen it, and I believe that once you begin on that path there’s no turning back. I don’t believe in five or perhaps ten years’ time there will be a single Jew left alive in Berlin. We can’t run any more, that option’s closed to us. So you’re going to have to hide.’
At that point they were interrupted, a Wehrmacht sergeant and two corporals appearing suddenly at their table.
‘Hey, what’s this,’ one of them said, a big tough-looking customer. ‘Keeping all the girls to yourself, comrade? That’s not fair, is it? Two for one? I thought we were all supposed to be pulling together.’
The soldier put his beer down on the table and pulled up a chair between Silke and Dagmar.
‘Excuse me, but we’re busy,’ Paulus replied quickly. ‘There are free seats elsewhere.’
‘Busy! I’ll bet you’re busy with two girls to yourself. Come on, mate, where’s your army spirit? I can see you’re bloody Waffen SS but we’re all in this together you know.’
The soldiers’ two companions were also pressing closer now. Breathing beer and tobacco over Dagmar and Silke’s heads.
‘These ladies are my sister and my cousin,’ Paulus insisted. ‘We have family business to—’
‘We’re in luck, lads!’ the big sergeant shouted. ‘This lad hasn’t pulled either of them. Looks like we’re three to two, not bad odds, I’d say. Hel-ooh, ladies!’
‘Hey, lads, give us a break,’ Silke said. ‘We’re talking here.’
‘So talk,’ the sergeant said, putting his arm around her.
For once Paulus was at a loss. Any kind of scene would spark an investigation, papers would be demanded which Dagmar didn’t have. The sergeant outranked him by a stripe.
‘You. Sergeant!’ an imperious voice snapped.
Dagmar had risen to her feet, her eyes blazing. Her tone was loud and commanding.
‘What is your name and what is your regiment?’
The sergeant was taken by surprise, recognizing a genuinely authoritative voice when he heard one.
‘Now just hang on a minute, miss,’ he replied. ‘Why would you want to know that?’
‘Because you and your friends are insulting German womanhood, that’s why. The sister and the cousin of a serving man. And what is more you will be sorry for it because I am not some slut to be approached without an introduction. You will give me your names that I may report them to my fiancé.’
‘Fiancé?’ the sergeant asked, now clearly worried, his arm no longer around Silke.
‘Yes, my fiancé.
Kriminal-Oberassistent
Heinz Frank of the
Geheime Staatspolizei
will be very interested to know how Wehrmacht non-commissioned officers conduct themselves on leave. You are a disgrace to the Führer.’
The three soldiers had had enough. Nobody in Berlin evoked the name of the all-powerful Gestapo without good cause. It was a name that was normally spoken of in hushed tones, not barked out with authority in crowded restaurants. The sergeant jumped up, mumbling an apology and claiming he’d been acting in fun. Muttering their names incomprehensibly, the three soldiers took themselves off as quickly as they could scurry.
‘Wow, Dagmar,’ Paulus said when they were gone. ‘That was pretty crazy.’
‘It got rid of them, didn’t it?’
‘It drew attention to you,’ Silke said. ‘You just can’t afford to do that.’
‘And what if I
hadn’t
done it? While you sat there and simpered?’
‘
Simpered!
’
‘We’d be sitting here now trying to discuss our plans with three bloody Nazi soldiers groping at us, wouldn’t we?’
‘
Our
plans?’ Silke snapped back. ‘
We’ve
been making all the plans as far as I can see. What plan do
you
have to save yourself, Dagmar?’
‘I wouldn’t
need
to save myself if people like your bloody mother hadn’t decided I was subhuman.’
For a moment there was an angry silence. Then Paulus smiled.
‘Nothing changes, eh?’ He laughed. ‘You two have been at each other’s throats since 1926.’
The young women simply glared at each other.
‘Now come on!’ Paulus went on. ‘We’re going to have to learn to get along better than this if we’re all going to live together.’
‘Live together?’ Dagmar gasped. ‘All three of us?’
‘Yes, that’s my plan.’
‘But … I thought … I thought
we
would live together,’ Dagmar said, turning her huge brown eyes on Paulus. ‘That you were going to look after me.’
‘I am going to look after you. But I can’t do it on my own. Silke has agreed to be a part of it.’
‘A part of what?’
‘You need to disappear, Dagmar. And to do it soon. There are thousands of Jews left in Berlin, and let me tell you when the whip comes down they’re all going to be looking for a place to hide.’
‘You think so?’ Dagmar replied bitterly. ‘I think they’ll put their hands up and do what they’re told like the bloody cowards they’ve all turned out to be. That’s what we’ve all done so far, isn’t it? Except my father.’
‘And us, Dagmar, and us,’ Paulus said gently. ‘The point is we mustn’t wait. We need to act now. Disappear now. Dagmar Fischer must die and you must become someone else. You need a new identity.’
‘Who else? What identity?’
‘Why, a respectable member of the Stengel household, of course. I’m a Waffen SS corporal, courtesy of my fine Aryan lobes, and I need a household befitting of my position. I need a wife …’
For the first time that morning Dagmar’s face lit up.
‘A wife! My God, what a funny way to propose!’