Chapter Thirty-One Berlin, Christmas 1944 Gisele
Chapter Thirty-One
Berlin, Christmas 1944
Gisele
Gisele had spent much of her life defying her mother, which meant that preparing for Christmas, however small this year, at least gave her a distraction from thinking about Amira. She had continued the tradition of celebrating Christmas, despite it not being favoured by the party – and in turn her mother put up little decorations around the house. There was no sweet smell of baking this year because she simply hadn’t found the energy, even though Hans had come home with some sugar and other treats that he was able to procure due to his rank.
‘Gisele, I didn’t know you had a dog,’ her mother said, shooing Otto away. ‘Don’t you have your hands full enough with all these children?’
‘Otto is Mira’s dog,’ Frieda said, picking Otto up and carrying him around in her arms on his back, as if he were a baby.
‘Who’s Mira ?’
Gisele froze. ‘Take the dog out of here, sweetheart. I don’t need him under my feet while I’m cooking.’
‘Who’s Mira?’ her mother asked again, looking between them.
‘Mira is Mama’s friend,’ Frieda said, as she skipped out of the room. ‘But she’s gone away on holiday!’
Gisele quickly went back to preparing the pheasant to put in the oven, not daring to look back at her mother and see the sharp gaze that she knew would be waiting for her.
‘I’ve never heard of this friend, Mira ,’ her mother said.
‘Just as you’ve never heard of my friend Mathilde, or Heidi who I meet at the park each week,’ Gisele said brightly. ‘They’re all very nice women, mothers actually, all of them. I’m very fortunate with all the lovely friends I’ve made since becoming a mother myself.’
‘It only caught my ear because it sounded so like Amira , that revolting little girl you used to play with at school,’ she said. ‘Thank goodness we were able to put an end to that.’
Gisele had to bite her tongue to stop from snapping back, refusing to take the bait. All these years she’d managed to keep her friendship with Amira secret, and she intended on keeping it that way. There was no way her mother could know that she’d stayed in contact with Amira; they weren’t young girls sneaking out to see each other on their bicycles anymore.
‘You’re right, Mama. The name does sound very similar, surprisingly so.’
‘I imagine that girl is long gone. What do you think they did with her? I suppose her father denounced her and moved on with his life, and tried to forget all about his first wife. It was all such a tragedy if you ask me, such an upstanding man being caught up in all that.’
‘Her father always seemed like a very kindly man, I wouldn’t have thought—’
‘She was a Jew , darling,’ her mother interrupted. ‘He would have to be stupid, not simply kindly, to keep her. She wasn’t a pet like that little dog you’re minding, she was a girl who should never have been allowed to exist in the first place.’
Gisele finished what she was doing and put the pheasant in the oven, grateful that she had something to do and hadn’t had to look at her mother while they were speaking. She’d always loved Christmas dinner, and she’d been so happy when Hans had come home with a pheasant that he’d managed to obtain from a friend in the countryside, along with some fresh vegetables, but her mother had even managed to ruin that by coming to stay. And now she was having to try to keep her face neutral and not scream at her mother about how much she hated her and her hateful ideology. Not to mention trying to stop thinking about Amira, and whether she even had enough food or where she was sleeping.
‘I’m just going to go upstairs and freshen up before Hans comes home,’ she said, knowing that her mother would approve. ‘Would you mind watching the children for me for a moment? I won’t be long.’
It was barely twenty minutes later, as Gisele sat and stared at her reflection in the mirror, that Hans arrived home. She heard him downstairs, greeting the children and being the cause of much excitement, before he came upstairs and closed their bedroom door behind him.
‘Merry Christmas, my love,’ he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
‘Merry Christmas,’ she said, turning to look up at him, smiling when he leaned lower and kissed her lips.
‘I have something for you,’ he said.
Gisele turned as he took a velvet box from his jacket pocket and presented it to her. ‘Hans, you shouldn’t have.’
‘Open it.’
She did, and found a fine gold chain with a small diamond in the centre of it. He reached over and lifted it, placing it around her neck and doing the clasp for her as she held her hair out of the way.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, admiring it in the mirror. ‘Absolutely beautiful.’
‘You deserve it,’ he said, placing his hands on her shoulders as he looked at her in the mirror, their eyes colliding.
‘You look sad,’ she said, one hand rising to touch the diamond at her throat. ‘Is everything alright?’
He took a breath, sitting heavily on the bed. She turned to look at him, worry rising inside of her at the way his head hung.
‘Have you heard anything?’
‘I can’t just ask how they are,’ he muttered, but he didn’t sound angry.
Gisele moved from the chair and went to sit beside him. She’d never seen Hans like this, almost as if he were about to break down before her.
‘I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me,’ she said. ‘Please, if there’s something, anything—’
‘Gisele, I applied for a transfer that would see me in a new role,’ he said, standing and pacing in front of her. ‘I would be spending an extended amount of time at Buchenwald.’
Her breath died in her throat. ‘At Buchenwald camp?’
Hans nodded and stopped walking. ‘Amira has been your best friend your whole life, and the fact that she’s in there, when I know what happens to those prisoners...’ He took a few steps back and sat down on the bed, unbuttoning his jacket and pulling at his tie to loosen it. ‘I know she should be safe in the special camp, but if I’m there at least some of the time, then I can make sure she stays alive.’
Gisele couldn’t help but think he looked defeated, and knew she was partially responsible. Amira was her friend; she was the reason Hans felt an obligation to help.
‘I sent her there, Gisele. I was the one who helped her enter the camp, and I can’t sleep at night knowing what could happen to her.’
Gisele rose and went to her husband, dropping to her knees and putting her arms around his waist, her head falling to his lap. His fingers found her hair, and she held on to him even tighter when she realised he was crying.
‘Hans,’ she murmured, rising so that she could sit on the bed with him and hold him properly in her arms. ‘You didn’t send Amira there, she went of her own accord. If you hadn’t helped her, she would have found another way. This is not your fault, nor your responsibility.’
He shook his head. ‘But if I hadn’t told them where to find Fred in the first place—’
‘Stop.’ Gisele looked at him long and hard, seeing her usually strong, capable-of-anything man slowly breaking before her. ‘What would have happened to us if any of your superiors had discovered that you knew Fred and hadn’t assisted them? What would have happened to our family? I might have been angry with you at the time, but I understand.’
He hung his head. ‘I have reasoned with myself for years, telling myself that everything I do is to keep you all safe. But I don’t think that’s reason enough anymore, Gisele.’
Tears formed in her eyes then, because she knew it wasn’t enough, too.
‘Darling, I’ve spent my entire life telling myself that I’m not like all the others,’ she said, clasping his hands in hers. ‘I’ve told myself that just because I’ve always protected Amira, that I was somehow superior. But that didn’t stop me from going along to Bund Deutscher M?del and practising like a perfect little German girl, or letting my friends talk about Nazi policy as I nodded politely and agreed with every word.’
‘It’s different for you. The things I’ve done, the things I’ve been witness to—’
‘Shhh,’ she whispered, in case her mother or one of the children was in the hallway or pressed to the door trying to listen to their private conversation. ‘You have done what you had to do, Hans, just as I have done what I felt I had to do. We are no different to each other.’
‘But you don’t see it like I do,’ Hans said, shaking his head as more tears fell. ‘Gisele, if you could see, if you could see the way they cram those families into the cattle cars, the way they pretend they’re not sending them straight to their deaths...’ She gently wiped his eyes, her heart breaking for him and for the families he’d seen. ‘The documents that I’m given, the truth about what’s happening, they’re not even things I could tell you without you hating me for being part of it.’
‘I would never hate you, Hans. Because I know your heart,’ she whispered, placing her hand to his chest. ‘I know you .’
‘I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.’
She watched him, wishing away the pain in his eyes, the fact that he was breaking in front of her. ‘Hans—’
‘I know, I have to, but some days I just don’t know if I can wake up and do it all over again.’
They sat together, her hand still to his chest, feeling every inhale of his breath until he was finally ready to speak again.
‘I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Gisele.’
Her heart sank as she tried to imagine what he had done, but before she could speculate he dropped his voice even lower.
‘I was so hard on you when I found out the secret you’d been harbouring about Amira, but I’ve been keeping a secret, too,’ he said. ‘One of my colleagues, he serves with the SS, he is very well respected, but he, well, he’s a Jew.’
‘A member of the SS is a Jew?’
‘He’s the same as Amira. His mother was Jewish, just like her.’
‘No!’ she gasped. ‘But how?’
‘False paperwork I suppose. He confessed to me one night when we’d had too much to drink, broke down about what he’d been witness to, what he’d had to do to his own people. I think there are more of them serving the Reich and hiding in this way than anyone could realise.’
Gisele’s hand fluttered to her mouth. ‘That’s awful. Just awful.’
‘But Gisele, this is the thing, we are all doing awful things, even this Jewish soldier. We are all being forced to be evil just to stay alive.’
‘Which is why you want to go to Buchenwald,’ she said, understanding now why he’d made what seemed to be such a sudden decision. ‘You feel this is your chance to repent, to do some good?’
‘Even if I only save Amira and Fred, it’s something, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s not enough, but it’s something .’
She wrapped her arms around him. ‘It’s more than something, Hans. You must know it’s much, much more than something.’
They sat like that for what felt like hours, until there was a knock at the door and Frieda called out. Gisele rose, pulling Hans’ head against her breast as she held him one more time, whispering kisses against his skin.
‘I’m so proud of you, darling. And I know it doesn’t feel this way now, but we have to believe that we’re different. We can only do what we can do, and for now, that has to be enough.’
But even as she said the words, they felt empty to her. It wasn’t enough. Helping one or two people and being complicit in everything else wasn’t enough, and it never would be. But she wasn’t going to tell her husband that.
He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes again, and she patted his shoulder.
‘Take all the time you need. I’ll go down to the children and keep my mother occupied until dinner time.’
Hans nodded, but it wasn’t until she’d taken a step away from him that he reached out and caught her hand. He lifted it and pressed a kiss to her skin.
‘I love you, Gisele.’
She blinked away fresh tears. ‘I love you, too.’
‘There’s one more thing.’
Her heart stopped, seeing the way he was looking at her, knowing that she didn’t want to hear whatever he was about to say.
‘The commanding officers and their families have to live nearby, near the camp. There are ten villas, and they’re occupied at present, but when one comes up, if I take a permanent post there...’
She swallowed at the thought of moving there, so close to so much suffering, her worst nightmare. ‘If we have to move, we have to move. But perhaps you could try to delay it for as long as possible?’
Hans ran a hand down her arm, his smile sad. ‘I understand.’
Gisele should have known dinner was going to be a disaster. She’d always hated when her mother came to stay, and now that she’d returned to Berlin for good, she was going to have to suffer through her staying for weeks, possibly months. If only her father had still been alive, she might not have been so insufferable, but he’d passed soon after she’d moved to Berlin from a stroke. Hans had politely suggested that Gisele’s mother would be safer staying at home, given the uncertain times, but it hadn’t deterred her. And now, Gisele was left wondering if she should have asked Hans to be more firm about her coming at all, or at least about her finding her own quarters.
‘Hans, do you think our Führer will commence exterminations on the Russians once we win this war?’ her mother asked, between mouthfuls, as casually as if she were making small talk about the weather. ‘I’ve heard on good authority that the gas chambers are proving very effective.’
Gisele choked and had to quickly reach for her water glass, spluttering as she tried to clear her throat.
‘I think our Führer will be concentrating on winning this war for now,’ Hans replied. ‘The Allies are no longer proving to be as easy to conquer as we’d once thought.’
‘Well,’ her mother said, her fork slightly raised with a piece of pheasant and carrot pierced on it. ‘He’s already made it very clear that he thinks them both subhuman, so I’m certain he’ll make quick work of them. All vermin, the lot of them, if you ask me, pretending all these years as if they’re the same as us.’
‘Mother, enough!’ Gisele shouted, slamming her hand down on the table, ready to snatch the fork from her mother’s hand and ask her to leave right then and there. ‘I will not have you speak of such things at the dinner table, in front of my children.’
The children in question looked as if they were about to cry, not used to her raising her voice at all in the home, but Gisele didn’t apologise. She would do that in private, as she tucked them into bed, but she certainly wasn’t going to let them see her back down on such a matter.
‘You always were so sensitive about the Jews,’ her mother said, offhandedly, as if there were nothing wrong with her own behaviour. ‘She had this little Jewish girl she was friends with, has she told you about her, Hans? Her—’
‘Enough,’ Hans said, his voice reverberating around the room as he set his own knife and fork down. ‘My wife has asked you to stop, and I agree with her. This is not a suitable conversation for our young children.’
Gisele’s mother didn’t say another word, her mouth pinched as she bowed her head for a moment. She might like to rile her daughter, but she certainly wouldn’t speak against the man of the house, especially a respected member of the SS such as Hans.
‘Darling, dinner tonight was wonderful,’ Hans said, gesturing to his almost empty plate as he deftly changed the subject. ‘I’m looking forward to this war being over soon, so that we can all enjoy your cooking more and eat like this every night.’
‘Thank you, darling. It was certainly nice to have so many ingredients to work with for once.’
Her mother still looked as if she wanted to say more, but thankfully she held her tongue when Hans cleared his throat, and Gisele took the chance to rise and usher the children upstairs. Archie and Frieda had both finished their dinner, and she hurried them along to wash their hands and faces, but not before she heard her mother address Hans again. She was thankful the two smaller children were already tucked up in bed asleep.
‘You really shouldn’t let her be so sensitive about the Jews, Hans, especially in front of the children. She’s always been that way, and I blame that dreadful friend of hers from childhood, but there’s no need for your children to be shielded from the truth.’
‘Hilda, my wife asked you to refrain from speaking of such vulgarities at the dinner table, and I agreed with her. Please don’t ever undermine my wife like that again in front of our children, nor me. I won’t stand for it.’
‘Hans, please don’t tell me you agree with her? It would be a shame for the party to—’
‘Hilda, I would like to suggest that you refrain from saying another word. Your sharp tongue may work on your daughter, but you will quickly find yourself ex-communicated from this family for even suggesting that I am anything but a dedicated, loyal member of the Nazi Party who works tirelessly to uphold its principles. And on a personal note, I would have thought that you, a mother, would have a better grasp of what is and is not appropriate to speak of in front of children.’
Gisele smiled to herself and clapped her hands, chasing her children up the stairs and making them giggle. When they got to the top, she swept them both into her arms and held them fiercely, kissing their cheeks over and over until they wriggled.
‘I’m sorry about yelling at the table before,’ she whispered. ‘Oma Hilda makes me very cross sometimes, that’s all. And Papa, too.’
‘Mama, why did Grandma say things about Mira? Why did you say it wasn’t her name when she asked?’
Gisele closed her eyes and breathed deeply. This was not a conversation she wanted to have with her young daughter; she was too young to be asked to keep secrets. ‘We must never talk of Amira in front of your grandmother, and if she ever says her name or asks you about her, then you tell her you don’t know who she’s talking about.’
‘She doesn’t like Mira?’
Gisele stroked her daughter’s blonde hair from her face. ‘It’s hard to explain, but I want it to be our little secret. When you’re older, I promise I’ll explain it all to you.’
Frieda nodded earnestly, and Gisele only hoped that she could trust her to keep quiet. Amira had been a much bigger part of their lives than their grandmother had ever been – the children all loved her – but Gisele knew that a child keeping secrets was never a good idea, especially when they couldn’t be told precisely what was at stake.
‘Can we sleep in your bed tonight?’ Archie asked, as he put his thumb into his mouth.
‘Not tonight, because Papa is here, but when he goes away again, you can both sleep with me every night, alright?’ she said. ‘I don’t think he’d be very happy to come upstairs and find his bed taken tonight though.’
‘But what if the bombs fall again?’ Frieda asked.
‘Then we shall come and get you, and sweep you out of bed and into the cellar with us,’ Gisele said. ‘But perhaps Otto could sleep in your room to guard you tonight?’
At the mention of the dog, the children became particularly animated and ran off looking for Otto. And as soon as they were gone, she took a moment to lean against the wall in the upstairs hallway and catch her breath. She shut her eyes, not sure whether to be terrified or relieved that Hans would soon be closer to Amira.
Buchenwald was becoming the place of her nightmares, a place she couldn’t even imagine in her mind. And now all three of the people she cared deeply about were going to be there, although at least Hans would be able to come and go. But if someone found out what he’d done, that they were personally connected to Amira and Fred and that he was trying to help them... She squeezed away her tears, refusing to let them fall. She’d never let herself be afraid of protecting Amira before, and she wasn’t going to start now.