Chapter 11 Born to Duty #2
Father says the issue with the cinemas and the opera isn’t really about the coal, although the shortages are worse even than last month, and food, too, has become scarce.
My birthday torte on Christmas seems like a long time ago.
Other than the preserves, we haven’t had any sugar since, and Herr Kolbe’s brother hasn’t delivered any smuggled milk or butter or eggs to us for over a week.
It isn’t the fuel shortage stopping him, as he’s still using his team of horses to pull the wagon, and the Wehrmacht won’t requisition them—food is too precious for that.
Horses may be more work than trucks, but at least they don’t require petrol!
We’re hoping that nothing has happened to Karl Kolbe, but the Russians were reported to be in Danzig over a week ago, and who knows where they may be now?
The rumor at school says that they’ve reached the outskirts of Berlin, but surely that can’t be true.
Frau Schultz has to queue for hours at the shops now, and sometimes brings home little more than carrots, cabbage, the occasional onion, and, always, potatoes.
We are eating a great deal of potato soup.
With a little bacon, it isn’t so bad, although rather monotonous.
We still have most of our last bag of good flour, so our bread is better than others are getting, anyway.
Frau Heffinger says that she never intended to be a baker, so I’ve taken over that chore.
I find the kneading quite soothing. Perhaps I was born to be a Hausfrau and not a princess!
Mother will have something to say about that.
Oh, the cinemas and the opera. Father says it isn’t the coal, but the talk.
The authorities don’t want people gathering and talking, he thinks, in places where they can’t easily be overheard.
I don’t much fancy bellowing out my opinion of Hitler in the midst of a love scene, though!
I can’t imagine who would, so I think it really is the coal.
No more air-raids. We had two more alerts last week, but we didn’t even go down to the cellars, as there was no sound of planes. I do think we are going to be lucky here in Dresden. Paris was never bombed, after all, and surely Dresden is as beautiful.
Joe was advancing again, too.
February 12, 1945
Dear Dad:
Just a quick note to tell you that they’ll be moving us out again soon, so if you don’t hear from me, don’t worry too much. It’s mighty hard to write a good letter from a foxhole!
At the moment, we’re not allowed to do much but patrol, but we’re sure doing that and, after our rest, itching for more.
Hiram Cassidy, a jokester from Nevada, says, “What’s the beef with us actually firing a gun now and then?
We could have them halfway to Berlin if we could just keep going.
” We’re hearing that the Germans have mined the roads from here to Doomsday, though, as they get driven back, so maybe we should be happy to have stayed where we are.
Somehow it doesn’t work like that, though.
There’s a job to do here, and we’d just as soon go on and get it done so everybody can go home.
(Don’t worry about the mines. I’m still carrying that radio, and no kind of scout. It won’t be me up there in front. I wish I weren’t quite so relieved about that.)
Got to go—it’s our turn for the showers, and I’m not going to pass up that chance! But tell Mom—DON’T WORRY. I’m pretty sure I’m bulletproof by this point.
Joe
For me, the war had finally come home. I turned the page of the diary with a reluctant hand. I didn’t want to read it, but I had to.
13 February 1945
I can hardly write this. I can’t believe it, but it’s true. Father has been summoned by the Gestapo.
He and Mother called me into his dressing-room just as I was getting ready for bed.
Now I know the reason the wireless is in such an awkward place: they’ve been listening to it.
Oh, not to Goebbels, which is allowed, of course, but to other, forbidden stations: to the news from the BBC, for one thing, which is a hanging offense.
And they’ve been communicating in other ways, too, I think. Dangerous ways.
Father said to me, first, “I won’t tell you too much. What you don’t know, you can’t say. This is to protect you. But you deserve to know this much, in case I don’t come back.”
When he said it, I started to cry. He didn’t comfort me as he would normally do. He looked at me sternly instead and said, “You must be strong now. You must be grown up.” So I dried my tears and stifled my sobs, and he told me.
The Gestapo want to question him about his role in the conspiracy to kill Hitler last summer, he thinks. But that makes no sense, and I said so. I told him, “But they know who did that. They know, and all the men involved have been shot or hanged.”
“Yes,” Father said, “and their families sent to concentration camps. But they think I may have helped. I haven’t been very friendly to the regime, you see.
Not flying the swastika over the palace was noticed, naturally, and some of my friends have been taken up as well.
They say that others have informed against me, but that’s an old Gestapo trick.
Still, there’s no doubt we’ve been friends in the past, and that’s enough. ”
“But you didn’t do anything,” I cried.
He answered, “No, of course not,” but I thought I saw something in his face. “What you don’t know,” he’d said, “you can’t say.” Was this what he’d meant?
“Listen to me,” he said next. “Very bad things have been happening in the East. To the Jews, the Poles, and others. The war is lost—it’s been lost for a year now—but a cornered beast is the most dangerous, and the Gestapo and SS will only step up their efforts as they see the trap closing.
You must be very careful. And if they take you and your mother—” He paused a moment, because I must have looked shocked, then seemed to steel himself to go on.
“Then you must be very strong and very brave. Remember that it cannot last long. Do what you’re told, wherever you are, keep your head down, and it will soon be over.
It will be over, and we’ll all be together again. ”
“They’re going to—” I had to swallow, for my mouth was dry. “They’re going to take Mother? And me?”
“Almost surely not,” he said. “Just as I will surely be home again soon, too. If they do, though, it will be to Theresienstadt. That’s not the worst place. Not the worst place at all. And you’ll be with your mother. You’ll look after your mother.”
It was so hard not to cry, but I dug my nails into my palms and nodded.
“Good girl.” His hand rested on my head, and I wanted to move into him, to have him hold me and tell me it wasn’t happening, it wasn’t true. But I can’t think that anymore. It is happening, and it is true.
I said, “Surely it matters, though, that you’re a war hero. Surely that will help.”
He sighed. “Many others flew with me. Some of them earned the Iron Cross First Class, too. Three of them, good friends and fellow aviators, were Jews. One had even converted to Christianity, both he and his wife, and they were all good, patriotic Germans. They’re all gone now.
Gone east. What they’ve done for Germany doesn’t matter, because they’re Jews.
And Hitler hates the aristocracy almost as much as he hates the Jews.
No, that isn’t true, but he does fear us.
We can’t even serve in the Wehrmacht anymore, only the SS, because if you’re fanatical enough to join the SS, nobody can doubt your conviction.
And he trusts the Catholic nobility even less than the Prussians.
Graf von Stauffenberg, who brought the bomb into the bunker, was both a count and a Catholic, so you see …
” He smiled with the good half of his face.
“But as I’m clearly quite harmless, I’m sure I can convince them. ”
I can hardly write for crying. I haven’t even been able to change into my nightdress. Father can’t be
The diary entry stopped there, and I remembered why. I remembered quite clearly. Because that was when the air-raid sirens began to sound.
I can see it all as if it had just happened. Me standing there, frozen, my diary in one hand, as the sirens wailed, and Mother coming into the room and saying, her voice controlled and her face deathly white but composed, “Get your things, then, Liebling, for the cellar.”
“Surely not,” I said. “Why should we go down now, when we didn’t last time?”
She said, “We were foolish. We must go downstairs now.”
I hung back still. “Mother,” I said, “it’s perfect! While everybody is in the cellars, we can take the auto and escape! We can go to—to—”
Mother didn’t tell me I was foolish, even though I was. She said gently, “Don’t you think your father will be recognized?”
“Oh.” I swallowed. “But there are so many wounded men now. We could put a—a bandage around his head. We can go to—to Frau Heffinger’s sister, in her village outside Bayreuth! We can hide there.”
She shook her head. The sirens were howling like banshees, up the scale and down it again, but I heard her clearly when she said, “One needs a permit to travel. There’s a Gauleiter in every state and a Little Gauleiter as mayor in every village, reporting on everything he sees, everyone who doesn’t belong.
Harboring fugitives means death. Surely you don’t want to put Frau Heffinger and her sister, and her sister’s family and village, too, in danger?
No. There’s no hiding from this. Your father said that you must be very strong and very brave.
We all are called, sometime or other, to do more than we think we can. That’s what you and I must do now.”
Another sound, now. The hum of aircraft, much louder than we’d heard before, filling every bit of the night. My mother said urgently, “Get your rucksack and come. No time to lose.”
Down the corridor to the main staircase, and quickly down its red-carpeted marble steps as the humming thrum grew louder.
My notebook and pen still in one hand, because I hadn’t had time to put them away, and my mind a whirl of anxiety.
Then down the rough cellar steps, and Father waiting there for us, ushering us through the cellar door and bolting it. Protecting us as he always had.
A line from Robert Louis Stevenson dropped into my mind as if Miss Franklin, who’d taught it to me, had placed it there.
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
I was barely sixteen, and I knew so much less than I’d thought I did. But I was a princess, after all, and taught to do my duty. I’d do my best.