Vienna Prelude (47 page)

“
Gott mit uns!
God is with the Nazis! Can’t you read it on their buckles? I was beaten by one of those buckles,” he scoffed.

The priest began to sing softly:

From the far corners of the barracks, weak voices added their strength to the song. Theo closed his eyes and sang loudly. Never mind that the Kapos would come and beat them—
never mind!
And if they were shot for singing, what did it matter?

Theo opened his eyes as the one match sputtered into flame. The tiny, fragile flame touched the bundle of straw, and the cantor, his voice clear and bell-like as he sang, touched the fire to the wicks of the eight Hanukkah candles.

For an hour the candles burned as the cantor and the priest led the men in songs of hope and deliverance. And indeed a great miracle happened there that night; no guards came near the barracks; no clubs smashed the heads of the thousand who joined the songs. For one hour that barrack in Dachau became synagogue and cathedral, where men lifted their hearts with one voice to the One God.

***

Leah and the three children stayed with Elisa, while Shimon waited out the storm of the Judenplatz with another orchestra player on the other side of the city. The Austrian police arrested fifty-four Nazi demonstrators as Hitler began enraged broadcasts against the government of Chancellor Schuschnigg. The Austrian Secret Police, armed with new information about Nazi activities in Vienna, raided the Austrian Nazi headquarters.

How the government had gotten access to secret orders issued from Germany to Captain Leopold’s thugs was a matter for discussion in every café in the city. Obviously the Austrian Nazis had a very bad leak. Orders issued by Himmler in Germany had been discovered: An
incident
was to be provided as the excuse for Hitler’s armies to march into Austria. The planned incident was the murder of Germany’s ambassador to Austria, Herr Franz von Papen. The instructions from Germany indicated that the assassination of von Papen must be blamed on a Jew—a Bolshevik, if at all possible. When Germany’s ambassador was cooling in the city morgue, it would be expected that the Austrian Nazis would riot, at which time the German army would march in and restore order.

The secret agenda of Adolf Hitler was no longer a secret. Of course, no word of the plan was printed in Germany, where Hitler raved about the Nazis of Austria being denied their rights. But everywhere else, the documents were passed from hand to hand, and a shudder coursed down the spine of every professional diplomat from every nation: “You mean Hitler was actually going to have his own ambassador bumped off for the sake of the cause? I dare say!”

Mention of a scurrilous forgery was made in Hitler’s tirades. Such broadcasts were listened to without amusement in Austria. His demand that the Nazi Party members be set free at once was also no laughing matter. Perhaps the man doing the hardest thinking in the entire situation was von Papen himself. He was not ready to become the sacrificial lamb on the altar of Hitler’s plans to take over Austria. Needless to say, the German Embassy in Vienna was a quiet and unhappy place.

No one argued that Vienna was no place for German-Jewish children without proper papers.
“Grüss Gott,”
Leah said quietly as Elisa left the apartment. “God bless.” It was a prayer, as much as a way of saying good-bye these days.

***

Elisa made her way quickly to the telegraph office. She paid and passed the simple message across the counter.

She instructed the telegrapher that she would return tomorrow afternoon to see if a reply had arrived; then she left and returned home by way of the bakery for a load of cream puffs and strudel for the restless children. Elisa bought a newspaper from a shivering boy outside the Konditorei. She stood staring silently at the front page for a moment, astonished at the photograph of the man Otto had called Sporer.

“He’s a very bad man, Fraülein,” offered the newsboy. “Albert Sporer is his name. A German Nazi.”

She glanced at the boy. “Yes. Very bad. An evil man.” She wished now that she had not burned the memory of Sporer’s face into her memory.

“You can see” —the boy stepped forward to share her paper with her even though he had dozens of his own—“they say he is wanted even in Czechoslovakia for murder. The Czechs want him back to hang him, but Chancellor Schuschnigg will throw him into the darkest prison in Austria.” He seemed satisfied with the pronouncement.

Elisa scanned the page, reading with alarm that the Nazi Party in Germany had already protested the arrest of Sporer as “interference with the right of Austrians to self-determination.”

“I hope there is a hole deep enough for him,” Elisa muttered, and the newsboy laughed in agreement. She looked at the child then. He was dressed in rags and wore a yarmulke on his head. His eyes were bright at the thought of such a wicked man as the Nazi Sporer being tossed into a dungeon. “Where do you live?” she asked gently.

“On Judengasse,” he replied.

“Then you saw them?” He was no more than nine years old—too young, she thought, to see such things as the riot in the Judenplatz.

His bright smile left as easily as it had come. “Yes.” His deep brown eyes seemed old beyond their years. “We saw them. But Mother says they will not be back. You see in the newspaper, Chancellor Schuschnigg will not let the Nazis come to Austria. We will be safe in Vienna.”

Elisa recognized her own hope in his words. Only a few days before, she had said what the Jewish boy said now. She had believed the hope then.

She looked again at the face of Sporer. Thin lips and high cheekbones. Wire-rimmed glasses on a sensitive face. He could have been an artist or a poet, but the words of the Führer had become an evil cancer that had twisted this man into a form so frightening—she shuddered at the thought and tried to see the image of Sporer as though she had not felt his grip on her in the street, as though his breath had not been hot and violent against her cheek.
Do men and women looking at his face in the newspaper see what I have seen?
she wondered.
Has he always been this, a contagion of hatred, capable of infecting other men with his disease?

She thought of Otto then. It could just as easily have been his photograph on the front page. Perhaps one day it would be his face that would be condemned. Yet his mother had told her that Otto had once thought of becoming a priest.

From far away, the distant memory of her father’s voice came to her. In the soft glow of his library he had read aloud to his children and a shudder had coursed through her as she heard the words of Faust’s evil spirit:

Without another word, she tipped the boy a shilling and walked slowly home. There was nothing more to explain. Sporer, Otto, the men in the Judenplatz, the mobs of Germany—all had given their hearts to wrath and fire. There was no room for goodness in such a bargain with the devil. All else was crowded out and forgotten. In a sickening flood of realization, Elisa knew they were capable of anything. Of
everything
! Even the unthinkable. Had she not seen it in Rudy’s hands, and then again when she lay beneath Sporer in the Judenplatz? Yes. She had seen the look of disappointment on his face when Otto had shouted that she was Aryan. He had
wanted
to hurt her! He had
hoped
that she was the enemy! Her cries had given him pleasure!

Like the newsboy, she prayed that there was a hope deep enough to contain such all-consuming evil. But the dull ache in the pit of her stomach warned that the evil growth had already spread far and sent a taproot deep into the heart of Austria.

***

In Paris, banner headlines screamed the plot of Austrian Nazis against von Papen. There was no mistaking the intention of Hitler in spite of his enraged denials.

Thomas scanned the newspaper and leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on the desk. He had done the right thing, going to Churchill and Eden. Admiral Canaris and the others had done the right thing to send him. The British had gotten the word to Schuschnigg in time; surely, the world would put a collective foot down to stop the madman at the helm of Germany. Perhaps there would be no need for the generals to revolt. Now, certainly Britain would demand a halt! Prime Minister Chamberlain would hold up the military might of Britain. The French would trumpet their denunciation of such tactics as Hitler’s diabolical scheme.

Thomas rubbed a hand over his face in relief. It had been worth the risk. Now if the world would come to its senses, it might be unnecessary for Thomas to leave Germany. The life of his nation could return to some sanity again, and he and Elisa—

“Thomas.” Ernst vom Rath poked his head into the office. His cheeks were pale, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.

“What is it?” The sense of elation left Thomas as suddenly as it had come.

Meet me
, vom Rath mouthed silently as he held up two fingers. Then he shut the door. Thomas listened to the clack of his heels across the marble floor of the embassy.

Thomas arrived at Notre Dame a full five minutes before vom Rath. As he knelt before the statue of Mary, his heart thumped wildly. Was Ernst coming to warn him that he had been discovered? Had he been trailed by the Gestapo in spite of his elaborate route to Churchill’s hotel suite in Cannes? The memory of the man who had seen him in the hallway came back to him. He must have been Gestapo. Plainclothes. An agent sent to sniff him out.

He jumped in spite of himself when Ernst knelt beside him. Thomas glanced at the shaking young diplomat whose eyes looked beseechingly upward as he spoke.

“At a dinner here in Paris last night,” Ernst began, “your Anthony Eden tried to talk to the Italian ambassador, Grandi.” The words were half choked, a horrified whisper. “Eden wanted to find out how Mussolini was reacting to Nazi pressures on Austria.”

Thomas looked at vom Rath. He was blanched, white as death. His clenched hands trembled. “And?”

Tears swam in vom Rath’s eyes. “Prime Minister Chamberlain was there too. He kept changing the subject. Said how he and Mussolini were friends. Talked about Anglo-Italian reapproachment.” He swallowed hard. “About friendship between Britain and Germany. Britain and Italy.” Vom Rath buried his face in his hands. “Chamberlain didn’t let Eden say a word! Count Grandi was on the phone to Hitler this morning. They’re all laughing!” He turned tortured eyes on Thomas. “It doesn’t matter that Hitler planned to have his own ambassador killed. The British prime minister is still talking small talk over tea and cakes! Are they mad, Thomas? Are they mad? We risk our lives to ask for some show of strength, and this is what they reply with! The Führer mocks Chamberlain; Mussolini imitates him to the amusement of his friends. If the English are still talking friendship, what hope have we got of stopping Hitler? What hope?”

“How did Anthony Eden react?”

“He asked Grandi again if Italy intended to support Austrian independence. After all, Italy has always stood by the Rome Protocols to protect the integrity of Austria.” He looked back toward the statue. The votive candles reflected against his skin in a bloodred light. “Eden asked if Mussolini and Hitler had some sort of agreement about Austria.” He frowned as though he could not believe what he was about to say. “Then Chamberlain interrupted again. Insisted that they have a bit more tea. That the only business that should concern them was England’s relationship with Italy!” Vom Rath sat, motionless. He was drained, frightened for the future and for himself.

“The Italians hate Eden because he’s one of the few in the British government to demand the Italians pull out of Spain.”

“Then they celebrate a great victory tonight. Prime Minister Chamberlain had emasculated his own foreign secretary in front of Grandi. Tonight both Mussolini and Hitler will no doubt drink a toast to silly Chamberlain and his umbrella. And the rest of us—what do we do now?”

Thomas rose from his knees. He had no reply. There was nothing left to say in the face of Chamberlain’s actions. The British prime minister had already decided that peace meant appeasement. What did it matter to him if there was an incident in Vienna? What did it matter if German troops marched into Austria? Vienna was not London, after all. Thomas looked around the massive cathedral. It was empty with the exception of a few tourists and Ernst vom Rath and himself. He was suddenly sober and clearheaded, as though everything he had hoped and thought and done in the last few days had been the dream of a drunkard. So this was the reality. Berlin was coming to Vienna—then, probably, to Prague. He leaned his head back and stared up into the huge rib cage of the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral. Would the Nazis also come to Paris one day? to London? Where could he take Elisa that they would be safe?