Partisans and Patriots

By Ron Duffy

PARTISANS AND PATRIOTS

They refuse to bow to tyranny when their homelands fall to Adolf Hitler's Fascism. They fight back with no thought for themselves, with no weapons stronger than their daring and their courage.

 

Werner Brandt, a rebel against Nazism, is sent to a reformatory for insubordination, then conscripted into the German army. He deserts in Poland and joins the Polish Resistance. He leads a group of partisans and fights alongside the legendary Major Hubal in southern Poland.

 

Bram Edelstein's Jewish family seek safety in Paris. When the Germans overrun France, Bram joins the French Resistance and engages in daring acts of sabotage. His sister Rona flees to Poland and risks her life in helping rescue children from the Warsaw ghetto.

 

When her mother is arrested as a spy, Ania Olenski escapes to her uncle's home on the border of Ukraine and fights with Russian partisans against  Germans retreating from the Eastern Front.

 

Erich and Roksana Brandt smuggle a young Jew out of Warsaw. Sentenced to separate concentration camps, they endure the brutal barbarity of the death camps of Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück and Auschwitz.

 

With no help from the Allies, the heroes of this novel and the downtrodden but intrepid people of Poland  converge on devastated Warsaw and face with defiance the overwhelming might of the German army.

 

"When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death—that is heroism." So quoted the American orator Robert Green Ingersoll. Partisans and Patriots celebrates that will, that duty, and that honor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Duffy
• Release date: Jul 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201624255

Ron Duffy

Born and raised in Northern Ireland, Ron Duffy spent three years “on the road”, mostly by bicycle, travelling extensively in both western and eastern Europe, with “working sojourns” in Norway, Austria and England.  HisMy adventuring over, he settled down to studies, and obtained a BA in Geography from the Queen’s University of Belfast. He then emigrated to Canada, took an MSc in Biogeography at the University of Calgary and studied for his PhD at McGill University in Montreal. In Montreal he started a long career as a university lecturer in geography. Duffy’s writing career began when he started publishing mostly travel and history articles in numerous Irish, British and Canadian newspapers and magazines. In 1988 McGill-Queen’s University Press published his non-fiction book, The Road to Nunavut: The Progress of the Eastern Arctic Inuit since the Second World War which was based on his PhD thesis. In 1988 his play, Hearts and Minds, won first prize in the novice section of the annual Alberta Playwriting Competition. Another play, Loved and Left, was given a staged reading by Theatre 80 in Calgary. Retired from lecturing, Duffy turned to writing full-time. In the Whistler Independent Book Awards competition in 2012 his novel Crossed Lives was a nominee, and his historical novel O’Hanlon received an Honourable Mention. He has also written a trilogy of Irish novels, The Unquiet Land, In Turbulent Times, and A Further Shore, since published independently in one volume, and a World War Two novel Brandt.  As a companion volume to the Ulster trilogy he wrote Until The Troubles Started: A Brief Political History of Northern Ireland.

Book preview

A novel of the Second World War

RON DUFFY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

NON-FICTION

The Road to Nunavut:

The Progress of the Eastern Arctic Inuit Since World War II

Until the Troubles Started:

A Brief Political History of Northern Ireland

Two Wheels South:

Travels by Bicycle in Southern Europe

Seven Social Evils:

Major Issues of our Time

FICTION

The Janus Web

Crossed Lives

The Ulster Trilogy:

The Unquiet Land

In Turbulent Times

A Further Shore

O’Hanlon

First published as Brandt 2017

This revised second edition 2022

© Ron Duffy 2022

All rights reserved

ISBN:

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 10 May 1940

DEDICATION

With reverence and admiration

I humbly dedicate this novel

to the Heroes and Heroines

of the Second World War

who risked their lives

and sacrificed all

to save the lives of others

from the unspeakable horror of Nazism.

Sadly their names are now all but forgotten.

When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death—that is heroism.

Robert Green Ingersoll, American orator (1833-18??)

`

JULY 1932

They lay naked after their swim, full-length on the grass, their eyes shut against the glare of the afternoon sun that warmed and dried their lithe, teenaged bodies. One was pale-skinned, lightly tanned, with straight hair summer-bleached to a lighter blond; the other was darker-skinned, heavier, his hair black and curly.

‘My sister was asking about you again last night, Werner.’

‘That’s nice,’ Werner said in a drowsy voice.

‘I’m beginning to think she has a crush on you.’

Werner opened his eyes and turned his blond head towards his friend. ‘What was she asking?’

‘So you’re interested.’

‘Of course I’m interested, you nitwit. She’s a pretty girl.’

‘Just casual stuff. How you like your summer job in your Uncle Walther’s cheese dairy ... If you have a girlfriend.’

‘So she’s jealous.’ Werner looked up again and closed his blue eyes. His lips parted in a secret smile.

‘She thinks you’re the fastest man on two legs. I told her you weren’t a man yet.’

‘Thank you, Bram Edelstein. Some friend you are.’

‘My father was talking to my brother about Arthur Jonath setting records in the hundred metres sprint at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Rona told them you had won the hundred metres sprint at the school sports. She said you could beat Jonath’s record when the Olympic Games come to Berlin. She thinks a lot of you.’

‘Sounds like she expects a lot of me.’

Bram glanced at his friend. ‘Hey, Werner Brandt! You’ve got a hard-on.’

‘It happens.’ Werner raised his head from the grass to look.

‘I don’t like it happening when you’re thinking of my sister. She’s only twelve. Thirteen next month.’

Werner ignored Bram’s objection. ‘Your Pimmel looks funny without a foreskin.’

‘It’s bigger than yours even without a foreskin.’

‘You’re almost a year older than I am. You have a nice thick bush of black hair there. You can barely see my hair.’

‘As I told Rona, you’re not a man yet.’

‘Very funny. My pubes are blonde, so they don’t show up like yours.’ Werner stood up, his erect penis drooping. ‘Let’s dress and go. Must be near time for ... Hey! My shirt’s gone.’ Werner, hold-ing his underpants and lederhosen, was looking around for his white shirt. Only his shoes and stockings lay on the grass.

‘Mine’s gone too,’ cried Bram.

They looked at each other and said simultaneously, ‘Shandor Lovel.’

‘I saw him in the village this morning,’ Werner said. ‘He must’ve been here when we were swimming.’

Shandor Lovel was a gypsy boy, probably about the same age as Werner and Bram; maybe older. He was one of those known as Sinti or Roma who claim to have lived in Germany for six hundred years. Everyone in the town of Langewiesen knew Shandor. The freest of free spirits, he lived off the land and off the people, owing neither love nor loyalty to anyone or anything. His story, as townsfolk paragraphed it together, was that he had fled from Slovakia when his family was butchered and their camp burned down ‘by racist louts’, as he described them. No one knew if his story was true or false. He turned up in Langewiesen two years ago, looking for a cousin who most people thought never existed; at least never in Langewiesen. But cousin or no cousin, Shandor stayed in the area of the town, a true will-o’-the-wisp, at home everywhere and nowhere.

‘We’ll never get those shirts back,’ Werner said.

‘He’ll sell them,’ Bram pulled on his plain grey lederhosen. ‘He makes money that way.’

‘It could be worse,’ Werner pointed out. ‘He could have taken our lederhosen.’

***

Werner stood at the window of the dining room in the family’s substantial eighteenth-century house. Its salons and parlours and maze of corridors could have been converted to a medium-sized hotel, but it housed only the extended Brandt family. Werner was looking across Heldenstrasse into the small, tree-shaded square that bore the family’s name. Brandt Square was not a geometric square; the side opposite the Brandt House was shorter than the other three. Uncle Walther’s cheese dairy filled the full length of that side. In the centre of the square, raised high on a four-stepped plinth stood a mounted statue of Langewiesen’s most famous soldier-citizen, General Bernhard von Zorn, who was born in the town around 1630 and distinguished himself in several seven-teenth-century wars. His statue in Brandt Square reminded Werner of photographs he had seen of the statue of the similarly mounted Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The young Werner had developed an interest in military history. His ambition was to become a soldier one day and bring as much honour to Lange-wiesen as had General von Zorn.

Werner’s mother in the kitchen was putting the finishing touches to supper when Uncle Walther came home with his son Eckhardt, co-owner and factory manager of Brandt’s Cheeses. The two men joined Werner at the table. Before he sat down Walther hung his walking stick by its curved handle on the back of his chair. He walked with a conspicuous limp, which had for a long time roused young Werner’s curiosity

‘It’s a long story, son, and you might not understand all of it.’ Walther had long refused to explain to Werner how he came to walk with a limp. Then one evening a couple of years ago, on Werner’s birthday, he had relented and did his best to make a complicated chain of events comprehensible to a thirteen-year-old, even to a clever one like Werner. He felt he had to; Werner’s father Marten was involved too.

‘A Prussian civil servant called Wolfgang Kapp and a General Walther von Lüttwitz attempted a coup in March 1920. The coup took place in Berlin, but it failed when large sections of the German people followed a call by the Weimar government to join a general strike ...’

Thirteen-year-old Werner was impatient for Uncle Walther to get on with his story. ‘Where do you and Vati fit into this?’

‘Well, we don’t really.’ Into the empty grate Walther had knocked dottle out of the pipe he used to smoke. ‘The coup encouraged a rising by workers in the Ruhr, which  the government crushed it by military force. It divided the country into different sides and led to what I can only call a civil war in the Ruhr: units of the imperial army against the so-called Red Ruhr Army. The fighting was followed by death sentences and mass executions. We lost more than a thousand men.’

‘We?’

‘Yes, son, we. I was fighting for the Red Ruhr Army. Some unkindly called us the Red Rabble Army, but a rabble army trying to sow the seeds of revolution. Our last stand was at Möllen near Duisburg, April second, 1920.’ Walther had paused in refilling his pipe with tobacco from a pouch; he had a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Several of my comrades were shot dead as we tried to escape. Two bullets shattered the thigh bone in my left leg, but I managed to get away.’

‘How?’ Werner was excited bye thank you for the invitation now. ‘Didn’t they chase after you?’

‘I fell, of course. They probably thought they had killed me and turned their rifles on other targets. I was able to drag myself into a ditch and cover myself with dead leaves from the previous autumn. I eventually reached a road.’

‘Must have been very painful.’

‘Extremely. Worst day of my life.’ Walther lit his pipe, allow-ing puffs of smoke to escape from between his lips. ‘A farmer with a horse and cart drove me into Möllen where a friendly doctor picked bits of bone out of my thigh. Dr Kriegl, God rest his soul. But he couldn’t do much else, except hide me in a spare room in his house. His wife nursed me through a fever that should have killed me. Not getting proper care of my leg before it was too late left me with this limp.’

‘My father was shot dead in Möllen,’ said Werner. ‘How did that happen? He wasn’t involved in the fighting, was he?’

‘No. He was here, five years married to your mother already.’ Uncle Walther stuck his pipe back in his mouth. A few puffs of smoke, then the pipe was in his hand again. ‘Dr Kriegl telephoned your father to come and bring me home. Your father drove our old Daimler to Möllen. Over seven hundred kilometres. A spy for the Reichswehr learned that Dr Kriegl had been aiding members of the Red Ruhr Army. His house was under observation. When Dr Kriegl was seen with your father, a Reichswehr officer shot both of them. That was justice, Werner, army style.

‘But why shoot my father?’

‘The spy probably thought your father was another member of

the Red Ruhr Army. Dr Kriegl was going to be shot anyway. I have no doubt about that. So when he greeted your father and turned to show him into the house, the gunman saw his chance and shot both.’

‘So how did you and Vati’s body get back here?’

‘Your father’s body was returned to Langewiesen by the Reichswehr after the police here confirmed that he had only just left Langewiesen to drive to Möllen to bring me home.’

‘Then how did you escape?’

‘When I heard the shots that killed your father and Dr Kriegl, I left the house by the back door and hid in the woods behind the house until it was dark. I could walk with a stick by that time. I went back to where your father had left the car...’

‘The Daimler?’

‘Yes. The police had searched it, but the key was still in it. I was able to drive it thirty-or-so kilometres to Essen.’

‘Wasn’t that very painful?’

‘My thigh had healed fairly well by then, but yes, it did hurt to drive. I stopped at the house of a close Austrian comrade, Ulrich Wendel. I knew that Ulrich was tired of Essen, tired of working for Krupp, and wanted to return to his home in Innsbruck. He was a friend in the factory where I worked, but he was not involved in the Communist Party, nor in the Ruhr rebellion. He packed all he had into our Daimler and drove it to Langewiesen. When one of our cheese salesmen was making a regular delivery to Innsbruck, he drove Ulrich the rest of the way.’

‘And you have lived with Mutti ever since?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you never married her.’

‘No. To her, you were a constant reminder of your father, if one were needed. She and your father had been childhood sweet-hearts, devoted to each other. She clings to his memory still ...’ Walther had paused again, pulled on his pipe, released smoke from his mouth like a train, and then continued, ‘... even after ten years.’ His face had taken on a distracted, thoughtful look for several moments. He wanted to end this conversation with his young nephew, wished he had not started it, was unsure how much he could say to a thirteen-year-old boy, or how to say it.

‘Your mother is a beautiful woman,’ he had continued. ‘Beautiful, thoughtful, and only thirty-three, much too young to be facing the rest of her life as a single widow. I have asked her if she would marry me. But she has always refused. Kindly, of course. Your mother would never hurt anyone’s feelings. She’s a good woman, Werner. I don’t mind telling you that I would marry her tomorrow if she would agree to it.’

‘Why have you not married, Uncle Walter. Mutti says you are the same age as she is. My Jewish friend Bram’s Uncle Asher got married last month and he is forty-seven.’

Walther Brandt had smiled at that. ‘Maybe I’m waiting for your mother.’

Werner paused, thinking about this. Then he said, ‘Bram told me that in his religion a man marries his dead brother’s widow.’

‘I’ve heard of that. But we are not Jewish. And besides, even if we were, I believe the dead brother has to have been childless.’

Werner had sat in silence for a while, then asked, ‘Are you a Communist, Uncle Walther?’

Taken aback, Walther removed the pipe from his mouth. ‘I was, Werner; I was for several years. Like many others, I thought that a new era was about to begin. Until Stalin showed his hand. His red, bloody hand.’

***

Frieda Brandt rested her fingertips on the wooden sill of her bedroom window. The door stood open, and from downstairs she could hear the clatter of dishes from the kitchen as Malina, the maid, washed up after supper. Mother-in-law Margareta and Tante Jannike had retired to the quiet of the library to drink kirsch and talk about whatever old women talked about in the evenings. Werner had gone to his Boy Scouts meeting in the hall behind the Evangelical Lutheran Church, to do whatever Boy Scouts did on Friday evenings.

Remembering what she and Werner’s father used to ...

She felt the claws of nostalgic remembrance close around her heart. Her heart ached with a longing that could never be allayed. A dozen years of healing time had failed to ease her mind, erase the memory of her dead husband. She was subject to recurring moods of melancholy that could, she knew, drag her into a depression, like the long, debilitating depression she fought after Marten was shot dead. By mistake.

Looking downwards she could see Walther, his brother Hartwig, and Hartwig’s son Eckhardt, seated in chairs on the lawn, each holding a stein of beer. They all bore the Brandt family likeness: handsome, fair-haired men with the same hollow cheeks, the same slenderness of body, the same look of good health and well-being. Young Werner would be tall and lean like that when he grew up. At fifteen years of age, he was already as tall as she was, and she was not a short woman. Small-breasted and slim-waisted, her once long, blonde, shiny hair cropped short, her boyish look belied her thirty-five years. Her late husband had been taller, broader, sturdier than was characteristic of Brandt family men. He had been a mountaineer, never happier than when hiking the high trails in the alpine uplands to the north of Langewiesen, stopping to let his blue eyes revel in the far-flung views southwards over lush, green hills and valleys and woods, and spending the night with fellow hikers in an alpine hut, perched like an eagle’s nest, high on a peak or on a ridge along his favourite mountain trails. Walther sometimes went with him on summer hikes along the lower-altitude trails, to meadows where countless Brown Swiss cows grazed, bells jingling. But Walther was less attracted to the mountains than he was to the urban landscapes, referring to himself as a Stadtmensch, a city slicker. He always dressed in ‘city clothes’ and never wore the lederhosen that many men and boys in that part of Germany wore almost every day.

Margareta Brandt had borne five sons but no daughter. Of the five, her third son, Rudolf, and the youngest, Walther, marched off with their father, Karsten, to fight in the hell of the First World War. Twenty-two-year-old Rudolf was killed in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Karsten and Walther survived the war, but even that experience failed to slake Walther’s thirst for excitement. Encouraged by a friend who had migrated to the Ruhrgebiet, Walther rushed off to the urban, industrial region of the Ruhr after the Great War ended: a reckless young daredevil looking for work, adventure and trouble, and finding all three. Work he found in the Krupp weapons factory in Essen; adventure and trouble he found in the Spartacist movement, precursor of the Communist Party of Germany. and then, in the new year, in the Communist Party itself. What most concerned Frieda was that, as a young boy missing his father, Werner was drawn to Walther, no doubt influenced by the stories he had heard of his ‘wild’ uncle or stories that Walther had told himself. Perhaps he was too strongly influenced by Walther, had adopted too much of Walther’s free spirit, his reckless con-tempt for authority. ‘Stand up for what you believe is right, son,’ Walther often charged his young nephew. ‘Never be afraid to defend your principles.’ That attitude had already brought Werner into trouble at school for ‘insubordination’. In contemporary Germany it could have much more serious consequences. Frieda worried about her son. If only he had chosen Hartwig as a role model, but Hartwig was much too sober and conventional to appeal to a spirited young boy. Frieda often wondered how Werner would have grown up had his father not been killed. She knew it was unfair of her, but she could not help it: she would always hold Walther Brandt responsible for her husband’s death and never forgive him. A gritty kernel, that might have been taking form there since Marten died a dozen years ago, had grown and hardened in the hollow of her being.

Frieda’s forehead leaned against the glass of the window. Her mind was not miles away, as the saying was, but years away. She was recalling her happiness when she and Marten had started going out together. Their courtship had seen its bashful beginning in the town’s high school. Then Marten started working full-time in learning the business of making Emmentaler and Hirtenkäse[1] cheeses that his great grandfather had begun in Langewiesen. When he had days off she would partner him on his hikes into the high country. Then came that blissful day when, lying together in the warm grass of a flower-hazed summer meadow, high on a long ridge of the Hörnerkette, Marten had raised himself onto his knees beside her and asked her in shy, faltering words if she would marry him. With not a moment’s hesitation she rapturously accepted his stumbling proposal. They married in October and moved into the house across Brandt Square from the cheese dairy. Marten’s mother and father lived in the large stone house with Marten’s oldest brother Hartwig and sister-in-law Jannike, and their year-old son Eckhardt. The second-born son, Johann, was a dairy farmer further up the valley, near the village of Sägerstufe. The father was bedridden by then with what the family doctor had informed them with warning solemnity was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

‘We have no effective treatment for it,’ Dr Fuhrmann had warned the family. ‘I am very sorry. It is just a matter of time now. I would blame his exposure to gas in the trenches in France during the war.’

She would not have believed, none of them in the house would have believed, that her husband of only five years would be dead before his stricken father, leaving her, a young grieving widow with a two-year-old son.

***

The sun hung low in a milky blue sky above the rolling green hills of Unterallgäu. Out in the garden, the balmy, summer-evening air was still and pleasantly cool after the heat of the day; it would begin to chill when the sun slid down behind the high horizon. Away to the south the cracks and crannies and steep rocky ridges of the Tannheim Mountains and the crest of the Falkenstein were both shadowed and sunlit, looking like woodcuts in the evening light.

Hartwig pulled a long drink from his beer mug. ‘What do you think of this man Hitler, Walther?’

‘Hindenburg thinks he might be suited for postmaster, but not for any higher position. I would agree with Hindenburg.’

‘Never the Chancellor of Germany.’

Walther smiled. ‘If ambition alone could raise him to such heights, he could rule the world. I have never seen a man so greedy for power.’

‘He has Joseph Goebbels working for him. That is as likely as his own ambition to push Hitler to the top.’

‘It didn’t push him to the top in March. In spite of Goebbels’ furious propaganda campaign on his behalf, Hitler still couldn’t beat an old man in his eighties who said he wasn’t interested in running again.’

‘I don’t believe Hitler expected to.’ Hartwig lowered his glass to the table after taking a drink. ‘I think he campaigned knowing he was unlikely to unseat the old man in his eighties. But the campaign was an opportunity to win support for himself and his Party and extend Nazi influence.’

‘And his support in the April run-off election amounted to more than thirteen million votes,’ Eckhardt put in. ‘His share of the vote jumped by more than six per cent. Over a third of the electorate. Freedom and Bread was a very successful slogan.’

‘You sound as if you favour this little Austrian, Eckhardt,’ his Uncle Walther said.

‘I do. I see Hitler’s National Socialist Party as the wave of the future. And I am not alone. Thousands of new members have joined the Party after its success in 1930. Now here we are in the summer of ’thirty-two. Look around, Uncle Walther. Six million unemployed; chaos in Berlin; starvation and ruin; the ever-present threat of Communism; a very uncertain future. And from our elected leaders?’ Eckhardt paused for effect. ‘Nothing. Irresolute indecision.’ He lifted his stein of beer and drank thirstily.

‘No doubt about where you stand, young Eckhardt,’ Walther said. ‘You should join the little Austrian’s next campaign.’

‘I might. Hindenburg, the Old Gentleman, failed to get the absolute majority he needed, so there’ll have to be a run-off elec-tion. I’m prepared to bet that Hitler will win next time.’

‘I think Eckhardt could be right, Walther,’ Hartwig said. ‘The people are turning to Hitler by the millions. Eckhardt mentioned the indecision of our leaders...

‘The irresolute indecision were his well-chosen words, as I recall.’

‘Adolf Hitler on the other hand is a very decisive man,’ Hartwig continued. ‘He promises a better future for the German people. And the people seem prepared to give him a chance to prove himself.’

‘So you appear to be joining in support of the Nazis too, Hartwig. I am outnumbered.’

‘I’m surprised at you, Walther.’

‘Oh. And why’s that?’

‘Given that Hitler has renamed the old German Workers’ Party as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, I would have expected you to be in favour of it, given your past background.’

Walther stared into his Bierkanne in silence for a moment, as if giving Hartwig’s remark some thought. Then he looked up. ‘It’s the old question: what’s in a name? I am afraid of this man Hitler. He is a megalomaniac, a power-hungry racist. His campaign promise to tear up the Treaty of Versailles and end war reparations could bring a heap of trouble on our heads. Another war. And the last thing this country can afford is another war.’

***

‘Where is your shirt?’ his mother immediately demanded as Bram entered the family house from the Edelsteins’ shop on Helden-strasse. It being Friday, the shop was closed.

‘Werner and I were swimming at Bachmeier’s Bay and someone stole both our shirts.’

‘That ne’er-do-well Shandor Lovel, no doubt.’

‘That’s what Werner and I thought.’

‘Well, go and dress for ma’ariv.’ Chenya Edelstein could not have been more different from Frieda Brandt. The mother of six children, she was short, large-bosomed, rotund, her once-black hair already streaked with strands of silver-grey.

‘Where is Abba?’

‘It is Shabbat,’ Chenya Edelstein replied peevishly. Bram should have known where his father was.

Every Friday a declining number of men met in a room above the synagogue to study the ancient writings of the rabbis. A quiet, humble man with an intellectual cast of mind, Alvah Edelstein, Bram’s father, was widely esteemed for his knowledge of the Torah and halakha, the corpus of Jewish religious laws derived from the Torah.

Bram climbed two flights of oiled birch stairs to the bedroom in the attic that he shared with his younger brother Shimeon. An older brother, Tsuri, a law student, enjoyed a room of his own in the attic that Bram hoped to move into one day. Three girls, a pair of twins—the youngest members of the family—and Rona, shared a room on the second floor. Chenya and Alvah slept downstairs in a former sitting room behind the shop, converted to their use as a bedroom. The old house, built in 1874, had been renovated to incorporate a bathroom, and a third bedroom upstairs which Chenya and Alvah could have used but reserved for guests because it was next to the bathroom.

Eleven-year-old Shimeon, already dressed for the Sabbath service in his best clothes, sat at the desk below the window, reading a boy’s book Wolf Hagenreuter.

‘Enjoying the book?’ Bram had to repeat the question before Shimeon grunted an affirmative reply without looking up from the page he was reading.

Bram grabbed a towel from the end of his bed and descended to the bathroom. As he was going in, he met Rona coming out.

‘I hope you left me some soap,’ he said.

‘Yes ... And perfume to dab behind your ears.’

‘Very funny.’

Rona was her mother’s height and still had growing to do. Slim and long-legged, she was developing into an attractive young lady, her unblemished, oval face framed by straight, shoulder-length, dark-brown hair.

‘Werner sends his undying love,’ Bram teased as he stepped halfway into the bathroom.

Rona blushed and ran off. Before every Sabbath she and her mother worked hard to have their home tidy and the evening meal prepared. Once Sabbath began at dusk on Friday, absolutely no work was done in the Edelstein house until Sabbath ended at dusk on Saturday. Not even a match was struck to light the fire. Small tasks like those were done by the young girl, Karlene, from the next house who, not being Jewish, could carry out a few chores for Frau Edelstein. Chenya paid her a few Pfennig for doing so, and she ran home pleased with this easily-earned pocket money. Such was common practice in the dwindling number of Jewish homes in Langewiesen, except for those who had a goy maid. The Edelsteins had employed a goy maid for many years, but she died from a heart attack, and with three daughters in the house Frau Edelstein saw no need to employ another.

The three sons assembled downstairs, dressed smartly in black suits, collars and ties, then left for the walk to the synagogue. As they crossed the cobbled Marktplatz, the main square of Langewiesen, Bram saw Werner, dressed as a Boy Scout, arrive from the other side to join a boisterous group of boys and girls at the fountain in the centre. His friends shouted greetings at Werner, and a girl in a beige-rose dirndl reached her hand to his and drew him down to sit beside her on the rim of the fountain.

Competition for Rona, Bram thought.

As the Edelstein boys were passing the group at the fountain, one of the girls, the youngest daughter of Albrecht Becher, the Bürgermeister of Langewiesen, took a step towards them, raised her right arm stiffly and shouted, ‘Heil Hitler.’

Werner leapt from his seat on the rim of the fountain and pulled her back into the group by the arm. ‘There is no need for that here.’

A bigger boy punched Werner on the shoulder. ‘Leave her alone. Carla can do what she likes.’

Werner gave the bigger boy a similar but harder punch and stepped closer, his fists clenched. ‘Because she’s the Bürger-meister’s daughter?’

Werner’s friend, Arndt Hausler, pushed in between the two. ‘OK, that’ll do. We’re here to enjoy ourselves.’

‘You’re a Jew lover too, are you? Like your friend Werner.’ Carla pronounced Werner’s name with a sneer. ‘I can’t enjoy myself in company like this. I’m going home.’ She turned with a petulant pout to another girl. ‘Are you coming with me, Elke? I have a magazine to show you.’

‘May as well,’ said Elke. ‘The fun’s gone out of this evening.’

The group dispersed dejectedly.

‘Is it always going to be like this now?’ Werner said to Arndt.

‘I’m afraid so, Werner. Until someone assassinates Adolf Hitler.’

***

Just before sunset each Friday evening, Chenya Edelstein lit her candles and recited the traditional blessing to welcome the Sabbath into her home. Then she and her daughters waited for the male members of the family to return from prayers. They found her table set with the best linen cloth and china, her Sabbath candles taking centre place. Beside them the wine and the challah were traditional to every Sabbath dinner. Alvah, looking tired and worried, recited a blessing over the wine, then all washed their hands in accordance with Jewish practice. Trying to look more cheerful at this important family meal, Alvah said another blessing over the bread, and the loaves were passed around for everyone to take a piece. With all the necessary blessings given, the Edelsteins tucked into a meal of fish, fried crisp in olive oil, and potato cakes with fresh vegetables. Warm apple strudel was to follow.

‘You do not look yourself, Alvah,’ said his wife. ‘What is wrong? You look worried.’

Alvah Edelstein, a burly man with a square face more lined than it should be for his age, was just about to give an answer that would not upset the nine-year-old twin girls, when a loud crash from the shop in the front room of the house brought them to their feet with startled, frightened eyes. As he left the room, Alvah said, ‘Stay here. All of you. I fear that this is what I was worried about.’

***

Werner took his leave of his friends and crossed the medieval market square, around which most of the historic and picturesque buildings of Langewiesen stood, shoulder to shoulder, defying the ravages of time: the tall, towered Town Hall, the arcaded Guildhouse, the painted Tax House. Like sunflowers turning with the sun, visitors to Langewiesen’s Marktplatz would turn slowly, gaping in admiration at the splendid buildings that surrounded them. But Werner lived here, saw the square every day, and rarely paused to admire it. Still feeling angry at Carla Becher and the big lad who had defended her, and sad that a rift appeared to be opening among his friends, Werner entered the broad tree-lined Ulmerstrasse, noted for its flower market, then turned into Grönenbach Weg, named after the founder and first pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the plain white building with a red roof and a square tower that closed off the end of the short street. In the newly built hall behind the church the Boy Scouts of Langewiesen held their weekly meetings. They were also expected to attend church service on Sundays, about which Werner was often chastised at Scout troop meetings for ‘laxity’.

When he entered the church hall, still uneasy after the scene in the Marktplatz, he saw immediately that something was different. The room was quiet. Four rows of chairs had been set out, and early arrivals were already seated, talking in unusually subdued voices.

This isn’t a regular Scout meeting, Werner thought, taking a seat beside his friend Paul Hahn.

‘What’s going on, Paul?’ he whispered.

‘A visitor is coming to speak to us. Pastor Frei has gone to his office to bring him in.’

The boys waited, twenty-two of them this evening, chatting quietly among themselves. When the door opened, Pastor Joseph Frei, the scoutmaster, led in the visitor: Bürgermeister Albrecht Becher. Becher carried a leather briefcase, which he placed on a small table to the right of the door. He strode forward, faced the silent troop of Boy Scouts, then raised his right arm, fist clenched. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he shouted.

Surprised at first, then, led by Pastor Frei, he and several of the Scouts responded in like manner. Werner Brandt, his arms stubbornly, conspicuously, folded, looked around in his chair to see who had stood and given the Nazi salute. He was not surprised: Dollmann, Jahnke, Osterhagen.

‘Good evening to you, Boy Scouts of Germany,’ the Bürger-meister began in his rich, baritone speaking voice. Tall, broad, his belly a dome of fat, his head completely bald and shining in the light of the ceiling lamps, he allowed his dark eyes, deeply sunk in puckered flesh, to inspect the four rows of young, well-washed faces in front of him. ‘I come before you on this fine summer evening, quite frankly, openly, and honestly, to ask for your help in a matter crucial to the future of our great nation.’

He paused to let this sink into the youngest minds in his awed, silent, audience. ‘You boys are our hope for that future. As many of you—even all of you—are aware, our nation is caught in one of the most dangerous crises we Germans have ever had to face. Six million of our people are unemployed. We face the threat of godless communism, eager to turn our nation into a vile dictator-ship. Last month Communists instigated riots on the streets of Berlin. More than four hundred street battles. More than eighty citizens killed. Chancellor Franz von Papen gave a speech in Berlin outlining his views on the economic crisis Germany is facing. In his speech he gave a warning to which you young men should pay attention. He alluded to the fact that an ever-growing number of young people have no possibility and no hope of finding employment and earning their livelihood ...’

Werner leaned toward his friend Paul and whispered. ‘It wasn’t just Communists. Hitler’s Brownshirts were just as guilty. Uncle Walther told me.’

Coming from a family in which political discussions were as common as sauerkraut, Werner knew that the weak Chancellor Franz von Papen had to rely for support on Hitler’s Nazis in the Reichstag. The Brownshirts were the SA or Sturmabteilung, known also as the Stormtroopers, Hitler’s private militia, which he used to intimidate rivals and disrupt the meetings of competing political parties. As Uncle Walther had argued, the SA were as responsible as the Communists for the riots in Berlin.

Werner had to force his attention back to Bürgermeister Becher.

‘... most influential industrialists, bankers, and business leaders have sent a petition to President Hindenburg asking him to appoint Herr Hitler as Chancellor. They believe that Adolf Hitler would be good for business.’

Becher glanced behind him to where Pastor Frei stood in respectful silence, his hands clasped in front of him. Then he turned again to face the Boy Scouts.

‘Let me remind you, that the Reichstag has been dissolved and new elections have been called for the end of this month, perhaps the most crucial elections ever held in Germany. Herr Hitler has told Chancellor von Papen that he is determined to make his Party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the strongest in the country. Each and every one of us who can vote has a duty to ensure that Herr Hitler’s Party, and not the socialists nor, God forbid, the Communists, wins this federal election. Von Papen’s ineffective cabinet of aristocrats and industrialists must go. Then Herr Hitler will become Chancellor of Germany.’

The overweight Bürgermeister paused again as heads in his young audience came together in whispered comments. They knew that the aging and ailing President Hindenburg had asked Hitler if he would support von Papen as Chancellor and Hitler had agreed. Why then was the Bürgermeister calling for Adolf Hitler to become Chancellor when Adolf Hitler had already agreed to support von Papen? Sometimes adult politics were hard to under-stand.

‘One man, one man, has the vision, the ability, the ambition, to save our floundering nation: Adolf Hitler. Many see his Party, as the wave of the future. The more uncertain that future appears to the suffering people of Germany, the more new members are rushing to join the Party. The German people are turning to Herr Hitler in millions, but in this upcoming election we need millions more to ensure victory for National Socialism. I am calling on you, as I am calling on other youth organisations and schools, to do your part to ensure the complete success of Adolf Hitler.’

Becher strode to the table by the door, opened his briefcase, and drew out a thick wad of paper with which he returned to his station in front of the troop of Boy Scouts.

‘I have here several hundred pamphlets outlining Adolf Hitler’s plans and promises to restore greatness to our nation. I know that you are not yet of an age to vote, but I should like each of you to take a bundle of these pamphlets—twenty, thirty, forty—and distribute them around Lange-wiesen. And beyond, if you can. Deliver them to every house on your street. Pin them on fences, gates, doors, trees. Others will be doing the same, but do not be concerned if homes receive multiple copies. Repeated reminders work well. Now. Come forward one by one and take as many of these pamphlets as you want.’

The boys rose one after the other, row by orderly row, and received batches of the Nazi pamphlets from the fat hand of the beaming Bürgermeister. When it came to Werner’s turn he took the bundle handed to him—the boys had no choice in the number they were given—then, seeing only the swastika at the top of the page, he walked to the table and dropped them all into the wastepaper basket that stood below it.

He wanted to shout, Adolf Hitler is a vile, racist maniac, words he had heard many times from his Uncle Walther, except that his uncle always said ‘megalomaniac’. But Werner stopped himself, overawed by the presence of the Bürgermeister. Uncle Walther had taught him to stand up for what he believed was right, and never to be afraid to defend his principles. Now he felt that he had let his uncle down.

‘How dare you, you impudent young blackguard?’ the Bürger-meister spluttered.

Werner turned to leave, but two of the older and bigger boys seized him roughly by his pullover and pulled him back. Others came forward, forming a ring around Werner. From one boy to another, from one side of the ring to the other, Werner was pushed and punched, and had insults shouted at him.

‘Jew lover!’

‘Jude Liebhaber!’

‘Kommunist!’

He became dizzy, disoriented, stumbled to his knees. When he was down he was kicked, then hauled back onto his feet and pushed around the ring of catcalling Boy Scouts of Germany.

At last Pastor Frei shoved boys aside and stood within the belligerent ring beside Werner, his arm across the boy’s back, holding him steady. ‘That’s enough,’ he shouted. ‘Now step aside.’

Becher’s round face had turned florid, almost purple, showing his extreme displeasure. ‘Let the boys finish what they were doing, Pastor.’

‘They have finished, Bürgermeister.’ Pastor Frei glared at Becher as he led Werner into the foyer of the hall. ‘You are an impetuous young fool, Werner. You must show more prudence in these danger-ous times.’

Werner stood with head bowed but said nothing.

‘You had better miss summer camp this year. It starts next weekend. Come back when our new season starts in October. Dollmann and Jahnke, the leaders of that brawl in there, will have left the troop by then. Now go straight home. And remember what the Bible says: In everything the prudent acts with knowledge, but a fool flaunts his folly.’

AUGUST 1932

With a light, feline tread Shandor Lovel strode along the narrow, cobbled Zornerstrasse. Thin and straight as a fence post, and just as tough and weather-beaten, the russet-haired gypsy boy passed into the dark Gothic arch of the Bernhard Zorn Tor, a tall, square clock-tower with a weather-vaned steeple, one of two gateways surviving from the medieval walls that for hundreds of years had protectively encircled the town of Langewiesen. Shortly after emerging from the shadows of the arch Shandor crossed the bridge over the Ackerfluss, the river that overflowed from Langewiesen Lake, and climbed the steep incline of Holzfällerstrasse. He stopped at the top and knocked on the door of the last house on the west side of the street. He had to knock several times, louder each time, before a woman in her late sixties—maybe early seventies—with curled strands of hair on the chin of her thin, bony face, opened the door and stared at him with no sign of recognition. A miniature schnauzer sat at her feet.

‘Frau Schirmann, it’s me, Shandor.’

‘Shandor, of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you knock. The dog knew someone was at the door. Come in.’ She opened the door wide to admit him into the inside of the house which was much roomier than its exterior would have led one to expect. The dog followed them in, leapt into a wicker basket and lay down, his chin on the rim of the basket, his eyes on Shandor.

‘What do you have for me today, Shandor?’ Frau Schmir-mann’s voice was raspy and dry. Well-dressed, as she ought to be, the short, slim woman, with white hair twisted into a tight bun at the back of her head, was a professional seamstress, highly thought of for the excellence of her work.

From under his left arm Shandor handed Frau Schirmann a bundle which opened into two white shirts. She held each one in front of her by the shoulders and inspected them with experienced eyes.

‘Good quality, Shandor,’ said the seamstress. ‘These did not come from boys in Birkendorf.’ Birkendorf was a poor neighbour-hood on the east side of the town. The seamstress folded them tidily and laid them on a wooden table beside her old Frister & Rossmann sewing machine. She would convert these shirts into stylish blouses for her female customers. Then she disappeared into her kitchen, pausing to steady herself at the door jamb, and returned with a freshly baked loaf of bread and a thick wedge of smoked ham, wrapped in a remnant of white linen.

Frau Schirmann handed the package to Shandor. ‘The Bauern-speck in there was brought from my cousin’s farm in Tyrol just last week. It is the best you can get anywhere.’

On their way to the door she told the homeless gypsy boy to take a couple of apples from a fruit bowl on the sideboard. He put them in his pocket, said ‘Thank you’ and ‘Goodbye’ to the seamstress, scratched the dog’s head, and set off back down the hill to the dark arch of the Bernhard Zorn Tor.

Three young men, dressed in the stylish clothes of the well-to-do, stood in the shadows. Even in the shadows of the arch Shandor recognised two of the three: Erich Dollmann and Kurt Jahnke. The biggest and tallest was Dollman. He grabbed Shandor by the front of his shirt and spun him round, his back to the stone wall. ‘What do you have there, Sinti boy?’

Shandor let the package drop from the clasp of his long, strong fingers. The linen wrap opened revealing the contents. The young men looked down; that was their first mistake. Jahnke bent over to pick up the bread and ham; that was their second mistake. Shandor chopped the sides of his clasped hands down hard on the back of the exposed neck, kicked Dollmann in the crotch, and punched the third of his attackers on the nose which immediately spurted blood. Then he retrieved the loaf and the ham and walked out from under the arch and along the busy street at a leisurely pace, his shoulders back, his head high, a smile on his face.

***

Halfway along Heldenstrasse between Brandt House and the Helden-mauer, the Heroes’ Wall, the Edelsteins’ shop and modest home stood in a row of four identical tall, pale-yellow houses, with steep red roofs and elaborate murals of cheese-making and farming on the gable walls. The front rooms of the first two houses in the row had been turned into shops: Schaaf’s haberdashery, and Edelstein’s Family Market that sold almost everything. Werner pressed his face to the window of Edelstein’s. The pane had been smashed by a large stone and since replaced. Nothing had been stolen.

‘Theft was not the motive.’ Alvah had had no need to say anything else.

The window display of the Family Market was as unique as the shop itself. As he stood indecisively at the new window, Werner’s eyes swept across the motley collection of this and that and other things: packets of shoelaces in black and brown and white; a wooden box full of spools of thread in more colours than a rainbow; a silvery stovetop coffee percolator; a cut glass vase tall enough to hold the longest-stemmed flowers; a fan-shaped array of books; packs of playing cards for adults; a couple of cast-iron toy cars for boys that Werner would have liked to own; and a child’s miniature  dinner service which no doubt Rona’s young twin sisters would love to remove from the window and play with.

Werner glanced hesitantly at the packet he held in his hand, a flat pink box bound with a white ribbon neatly tied in a bow. A card was tucked under the ribbon. He half-turned to walk away. Then Frau Tiehl, one of his former schoolteachers came out from the shop, a wicker basket in the crook of her left arm. She was a slim woman with short, dark hair greying to a shiny pewter colour. A vegetarian, she lived with her brother, the fat, good-natured butcher Rainer Tiehl. He had never married; she had had, and lost, two husbands. 

‘Oh,’ she said, espying the packet in Werner’s hand, ‘is that for me?’

Werner blushed, looked at his shoes, but said nothing.

‘I think I know whom it might be for.’ She was smiling. ‘Go on inside. She’s on her own this afternoon.’

‘I will, Frau Tiehl,’ Werner said, as if she had made up his mind for him. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye, Werner. Say hello to your mother for me.’

‘I will, Frau Tiehl.’

The shop door was of heavy, brown-painted wood with two glass panels through which the curious could see more of the salmagundi of goods inside. They filled shelves and crates, hung from hooks on the ceiling, stood stacked around the walls below a haphazard array of faded photographs, posters, paintings and drawings. Werner wondered where all the stuff came from and who bought it. Obviously many did, because the shop was well known, popular, and usually full of customers. This afternoon it was empty except for Rona, who leaned on the counter reading a book. Her shiny hair hung down over her cheeks until she stood up straight as Werner came in. She closed the book and pushed it to one side. She smiled prettily.

‘Hello, Rona. Happy birthday.’ Werner handed her the pink packet.

‘For me?’

‘Who else is thirteen today?’

She blushed and smiled. ‘Stupid of me. Well, thank you, Werner. Can I open it now, before anyone comes into the shop?’

‘If you like.’

Rona read the card first: To Rona, Happy Birthday, Werner. She placed the card on the counter, gracing Werner with a smile that beguiled him. Then she untied the bow, opened the box, and drew out one of four handkerchiefs, folded in triangles that showed a monogrammed ‘R’ in a corner of each. ‘Thank you, Werner, that’s so very nice of you. I love them.’

She replaced the handkerchief she had removed from the box.

‘It’s unusually quiet in here today,’ Werner said.

‘It is now.’ Rona placed her hands on the box of handkerchiefs, left on top of right. ‘We had a lot in this morning. My mother has just gone inside to have her lunch.’

Werner leaned forward on his side of the varnished wooden counter. ‘It didn’t take long to replace the broken window.’ He turned his head to look at it.

‘We couldn’t leave it broken the way it was. Two men from Vogel’s Glass put the new window in yesterday.’

‘Did the stone cause much damage? Apart from breaking the window.’

‘A porcelain salver was smashed. And a doll lost her head. That’s all. But it gave us quite a fright, the twins especially. We were eating our Sabbath supper when it happened.’

The conversation paused, and Werner did not want it to stop. Nor did he want another customer coming in to interrupt it. ‘What are you reading?’

Rona turned the book to let him read the title.

‘Heidi. That’s a popular girls’ book, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but it’s a pity to think of Heidi as a girls’ book just because its central character is female. There are many male characters in it too, you know. You could read Heidi and enjoy it.’

‘I doubt it.’

Oh, come on, Werner Brandt, don’t play the tough guy with me.’ Rona smacked his arm playfully.

Their faces were only inches apart, almost close enough for each to feel the heat from the other. He wanted to close that gap and kiss her. She wanted him to close that gap and kiss her. Moments passed. They allowed the shy diffidence of adolescence to intervene. Their heads drew apart as each straightened into a standing position. The look that Rona gave Werner, both promising and teasing, made him blush.

The door of the shop opened.

‘I’d better be going.’ Werner said reluctantly.

Rona picked up the pink box and the white ribbon. ‘Thank you for my birthday present, Werner.’

‘I’m glad you like them,’ he said, and with a greeting to Frau Geissler, who had just come in, he left the shop.

***

‘You’re home early,’ Werner said. ‘What happened to the Scout camp?’

Paul Hahn sat beside him on the cement rim of the fountain in the Marktplatz. ‘Well may you ask. It was a disaster. You were lucky you didn’t come.’

‘What happened?’

‘Dollmann and Jahnke happened.’ Paul turned an unusually serious face to Werner’s. ‘Every tent had to have a Nazi flag on it. Every day started with Heil Hitler salutes around a flagpole in the centre of the campsite where we had to assemble every morning. Those who refused to salute had to run twenty laps barefoot round the campsite.’

‘Didn’t Pastor Frei step in and stop it?’