Fire in Red Berlin

By Michael Tomlinson

The scene is Amsterdam. The Nazis invade The Netherlands early on Friday, May 10, 1940. Hitler says the Dutch will surrender in four hours.

Tonny Ahlers comes from a disfunctional family. He runs from school after punching his teacher. Tonny believes the Dutch Nazis, The NSB, will help him. Cherryl, a Jewish girl, falls for him. She will not give up on Tonny.

Jews returning after the war must pay overdue property taxes. The Dutch want to keep Jewish children they have hidden during the occupation. These Jews are now part of the family.
What would you do?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664180406

Michael Tomlinson

About the Author R. Michael Tomlinson is a resident of Mont-Tremblant, Quebec. He likes the French. Born on October 19, 1946, he lives his life to the full. His father was a master sergeant in the USMC and the family resided in six states. Michael is a retired ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher in Quebec with twenty years experience. An average student in school, Michael won a creative writing prize in the sixth grade. He played football in high school. He has published a short story about homeland security in AIM; his first novel, In Memory of Sonny Pinto (Xlibris 2011); and an article about condominium insurance in Quebec, Revue de lAssurance (1986). This novel, A Funeral for Sonny Pinto, is a sequel to his first book. With unpublished poems and short stories, Michael likes to express himself in words. He wasnt ready for Penn Stare four days after high school. In ROTC, he rose to the rank of corporal and had ranger training. His father was against him going to the war in Vietnam. Michael sliced lots of baloney for the A&P and worked making helicopters for Boeing-Vertol during the summers of his university years. He met Diane at Expo in Montreal in 1969. He worked in insurance for eighteen years, thirteen of them in Montreal. Michael has a BA, Honors English, from Widener, 1969; attended Temple Law School; a diploma in education, McGill, 1991; and an MA in English, 2012. With his creative power, Michael writes for fun. With his exceptional qualifications and years of experience, he has a way with words. He is a great human being.

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Copyright © 2021 by Michael Tomlinson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/14/2021

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Dedication To Emma Lazarus

Author’s Note

Introduction

Chapter 1     The Oath

Chapter 2     Article 48

Chapter 3     Article 231-The War Guilt Clause

Chapter 4     Corporal Steiner

Chapter 5     Spit

Chapter 6     Tonny

Chapter 7     The Gangster

Chapter 8     Cheryl

Chapter 9     Poland

Chapter 10   One-Eyed Jacks

Chapter 11   The Red Queen

Chapter 12   Maggy and Helene

Chapter 13   Pick and Helmet

Chapter 14   NSB

Chapter 15   The Bridge over the Rhine

Chapter 16   The Philips Factory

Chapter 17   Surrender

Chapter 18   Death

Chapter 19   Suicides

Chapter 20   Corrie

Chapter 21   Koco’s Ice Cream

Chapter 22   On Strike

Chapter 23   Puss’n’Boots

Chapter 24   Training

Chapter 25   The Zoo

Chapter 26   Central Station

Chapter 27   Bystanders

Chapter 28   Caught

Chapter 29   Westerbork

Chapter 30   The Last Train

Chapter 31   Crazy Tuesday

Chapter 32   Court Martial

Chapter 33   Children

DEDICATION TO

EMMA LAZARUS

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The retched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I’ll lift my lamp beside the golden door.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

What would you do in these circumstances?

My story has two heroes. Tonny, a troubled teenager, changes with Cheryl’s love. Dr. Joseph Polonsky, a middle age man, has lost everything in Spain and tries to start over with Maggy. Father Kohler, like the Holy Spirit, is everywhere teaching unconditional love. The older generation passes the world to the younger people, hoping they can do better.

If you want to know about Tonny first, read chapter six, then chapter eighteen.

INTRODUCTION

Joseph Polonsky rubs his eyes and slaps his face. His fingers shake. Dirt darkens his fingernails. Shell splinters in his arms and legs from Spain make him limp and keep him in constant pain. He speaks slowly after thinking about every word because an NKVD corporal broke his teeth with a hammer during an interrogation about missing machineguns.

Joseph sits with Corporal Marx in the prison yard. Is the tea all right? I know you like strawberry jam in your tea, but we do not have any left. We will get more jam, soon. The corporal takes out his cigarettes and matches. He passes them across the table to Joseph.

Joseph pushes them back. I don’t smoke.

How did you get through grad school without cigarettes? University of Warsaw, Doctor of Philosophy, 1927. You wrote your dissertation on Trotsky’s dog during the Russian civil war, in English. I have read it. It is a good read.

Do you know comrade Pogachev? Corporal Marx lights a Lucky Strike. I like American cigarettes.

No, Joseph answers. He left before I got here. I m innocent of all charges.

How can you be innocent if we have not charged you with anything yet?

Pogachev is a dangerous man. You have not shot him?

We will try him then execute him, with or without your cooperation.

Why do you need me if you are going to shoot him?

We need a witness. Pogachev and other Republicans stole Soviet machineguns and sold the to the Nationalists.

I know nothing about stolen machineguns.

But you know Nationalists who want them.

I have been a party member since 1916. I have nothing to do with stolen machineguns. The NKVD ordered me to investigate these missing machineguns. I did not steal them. I do not know who did. I can not investigate when I am detained in this prison. Joseph Polonsky rubs his nose.

Now, you can demonstrate your party devotion with testimony that the Nationalists buy our machineguns. You will be rewarded with a promotion and a horse.

I do not want a promotion. The men will eat the poor horse.

Do not reject this generous offer from the party of the Order of Lenin.

That night a young Nationalist is beaten to death because he tries to hang himself. All the prisoners hear his agony as the guards break his bones.

Joseph loses other teeth in the prison yard while vomiting. Something moves with the soup beans, a dog paw. He looks at shell holes in the roof and sides of the prison walls cautiously with his left eye looking for snipers on the other side of barbed wire. The prison used to be a monastery until the Nationalists bombed it.

Father Kohler, a Spanish priest with a five-number tattoo, 24601, on his left forearm, holds a syringe with morphine. There’s plenty for two doses. I can get more. They meet in a Madrid prison. It smells defeat from the animals that used to live and die there. Father Kohler brings Doctor Joseph Polonsky a used copy of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

Is today Sunday?

Yes. My bishop, von Galen, has given up on me. Corporal Marx, NKVD, Soviet Secret Police, thinks I am a spy. He told me so yesterday after I got sick. Father Kohler gives Joseph the book held together with greasy tape. It’s not Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but the book makes me think of you as Ashley with your somewhere else stare. Sorry about the smell of the book. Corporal Marx gave it to me. He found it outside. Ashley was also on morphine. Ashley is shot during Gettysburg and stayed in a Yankee prison camp until the end of the US Civil War. His world disappears. Father Kohler can see with both eyes. Ashley smells better than either of us. He also takes a two-year tour of Europe after he finishes university.

Joseph usually waits for other people to speak and rarely starts a conversation due to prison rules. He makes an exception when he sees and hears a guard push Father Kohler into his cell. Straw covers the packed dirt. A pyramid of horse apples decorates one corner. A pig, Dr. Pangloss, still alive, shares the cell with Dr. Joseph Polonsky and Father Kohler. The absent horse fed many people.

The old guard carries a pistol that looks too big for her to shoot and is probably not loaded. The Republicans lack ammunition. She wears blue overalls and looks over fifty and never says anything, so Joseph assumes she is almost deaf. Her rotten teeth add to her smell of incontinence. A leg wound makes her use a crutch.

Will you hear my confession? Father Kohler makes the sign of the cross and kneels before Joseph.

Bless me, for I have sinned. Father Kohler says. They are not in the prison church.

How long since your last confession? Joseph Polonsky says.

Too long. Are the Republicans going to shoot me?

Yes, but I don’t know if I am before or after you. Two fresh graves wait for our corpses beside the manure reserves.

The grandmother guard spits and says, You two, outside. Her pistol slips from her shaking hands into the horse droppings. Yesterday, she shot the old white horse. Father Kohler wipes the brown off the gun with his torn shirt and hands the gun back to her. He cleans his hand on his blood -stained pants. The old pistol is heavy enough to be loaded. The grandmother has no right foot. She keeps a brown photo of her family in her overalls pocket. They are all dead, killed during an Italian Rats bombing raid.

More than a year later, in Amsterdam, Father Kohler introduces Dr. Joseph Polonsky to a university lecture for the benefit of refugees from Austria and Germany. People talk in the aisles and freshly painted green window ledges. People stand along the cracked white and yellow nicotine stained plaster of the classroom walls. Some men walk in on crutches. Another ex-soldier has a leather face covering with holes for his eyes and nose, but none for his mouth. He wears a Star of David pinned to an Iron Cross First Class on a shoelace tied round his neck. Cigarette and cigar smoke fog rises to the ceiling. Only one window is open. It looks like rain. Women and girls put on sweaters.

High school girls hand out copies of laws Dr. Polonsky will refer to during his lecture about Germany. They wear their respective school uniforms, white blouses, and pleated skirts over their knees with matching knee socks and tie shoes. People linger round the coffee pot. Freshly baked cookies are on the table thanks to Maggy Friedman. A stray dog wanders into the room and licks up the cookie crumbs from the floor. The dean keeps a bowl of water in the hall for animals. People take their seats as Father Kohler introduces Dr. Joseph Polonsky. Smokers do not crush out cigarettes. The brown spotted dog leaves.

We are former cellmates of an NKVD prison in Madrid, Father Kohler begins as he introduces Dr. Joseph Polonsky. Miss Maggy Friedman, please distribute the copies of paragraph 68 of the Weimar Constitution. We will take a break in thirty minutes. Before I begin, are there any questions? Books fill the shelves behind the old wooden desk. Cigarette burns stain the desktop. More books cover the cigarette burn marks. Books are on the floor. Somehow, a few plants manage to survive in the corners of this lecture hall. They clean the air.

People, some wearing old clothes, raise their hands.

With help from her sister Helene, Maggy gets up, and Cheryl Stein, Helene’s friend, and Peter Cohen, Helene’s boyfriend, pass out the document. Helene walks close to Peter and blushes. I want to talk to you about something, Helene says as she passes Peter.

Damn Jews, someone whispers. He has no legs.

Dr. Polonsky says, Hitler and I have a common problem. Flatulence.

A girl of about eleven in the first row asks her mother, What’s flatulence?

The noise your father makes when he drinks too much beer.

Disgusting.

Carol, you asked me. You’re old enough to be told the truth.

I don’t like the truth.

People around them laugh.

Maggy graduates this year in nursing. She can not find a job with her first degree in biology. She sometimes beats the dean at chess. When she finishes with the hand-outs, she takes her seat between Father Kohler and her own