Chapter 7 The Elderly Professor
The Elderly Professor
Berlin
Helene picked up Kaiser and, still brushing his hair, went out to the little balcony that overlooked the Pariser Platz.
Berlin was changing so fast she could hardly recognize it. The Nazis had maintained a low profile the first few days after
Hitler was named chancellor, and most of the population had calmed down, as if accepting a lesser evil. But after the fire
at the Reichstag at the end of February, things had sped up. To top it all off, Hitler had managed to come out ahead—just
barely—in the elections in early March and had gotten his Enabling Act passed, thus securing for himself unprecedented powers
of governance.
Things at the library had not improved. One of the new government’s first steps was to freeze all funds destined for community-facing
projects. A memo from Rudolf Kummer—recently elected to the committee in charge of the DVB, the Association of German Librarians—arrived.
It demanded detailed information about every staff member of all public libraries.
Helene was up to her ears in paperwork. To counteract Nazi incursions into the public libraries, some of the more renowned librarians had convened a secret meeting at Humboldt University.
Helene knew that it was risky to attend, but she felt compelled to go.
If everyone just crossed their arms and let the Nazis have their way, the cultural heritage of Germany would be destroyed within a decade.
Yet Helene did not want to go alone. Lena, the braver and more resolute of the two, had agreed the moment Helene asked her.
Helene plopped Kaiser onto the floor and stroked him as she gave final instructions. “Be on your best behavior. Don’t pee
outside your box, and be nice to Derek when he gets here.”
Kaiser meowed as if in protest but arched up and closed his eyes in pleasure when Helene ran her hand over his soft head.
She was wearing her most humdrum clothing. Since the “new Germans” disapproved of miniskirts, cleavage, and bright colors,
the styles of the Roaring Twenties were officially defunct. Countless stores had closed, and people the Nazis considered undesirable—Jews,
beggars, and homosexuals—stayed off the streets or out of the downtown areas. Those who did not, often wound up in the hospital
or the cemetery.
Lena, waiting at the trolley stop, lit up with a smile when she saw Helene, and they sat together on the bench.
“Klaus stayed at the library. There’s not much work today, especially since all our projects with the working-class children
and the literacy campaigns have been cut. The only ones coming through the doors are a few retired people, some of the children
who live close by, and a handful of university students.”
Helene’s chest was tight as Lena described their reality aloud. The past two months had formed dark circles under Helene’s eyes, and her skin had paled to the shade of heroine-in-a-nineteenth-century-romantic-novel.
As soon as they stepped into the trolley car, an unpleasant odor met them. All the riders were clumped together at the front,
and the young women soon understood why. At the back, a man was vomiting. Helene’s first instinct was to see if he needed
help, but a glance at his ratty jacket, dirty face, and hole-pocked shoes gave her pause.
Several people got off at the next stop, unable to take the stench of sweat, urine, and vomit. Three SA officers got on. In
any other context, their ridiculous brown uniforms would have made them look like overgrown school children. They saw the
drunk man and one lifted the man’s head with his nightstick. The vagabond’s blue eyes stared at them in terror.
“Don’t you know that scum like you aren’t allowed on the trolleys?” the oldest Nazi demanded. He was as beardless as the others
but had a prominent beer gut.
“I’ve got a ticket . . .” the beggar mumbled from behind his curly gray beard, soaked with vomit.
“You’re a disgrace to our race! Filth like you doesn’t deserve to live!” the Nazi yelled as he raised his nightstick and delivered
the first blow to the man’s face.
Blood splattered onto the officers’ boots.
“Look what you’ve done!” the enraged Brownshirt roared. His comrades joined the beating.
The beggar curled up into a ball in the vain attempt to protect himself. His groans and screams filled the trolley. Everyone
took a collective step away from the violence, but Lena could not stand it.
She lunged forward and yelled, “Stop!” into the oldest Nazi’s ear.
He turned in shock that anyone would question him, then gave her a malicious grin. The teeth that were not missing were a nasty yellow.
“What did you say, ma’am?” he demanded in the typical condescending tone of the Nazis toward women.
“You’re going to kill him. Just let him get off the trolley. He’s just a harmless old man.” Lena was trying to quell her anger
as she talked. She knew what the brutes were capable of.
The three men stopped. They all sized her up, trying to determine what she was after. Then the oldest burst out laughing,
and his cronies followed suit.
Helene stepped forward and took Lena’s arm. It was cold and trembling.
The SA raised their nightsticks at Lena, and Helene screamed, “Leave her alone!”
Just then a passenger stepped forward and flashed his ID. The SA officers immediately deflated.
“Very good, boys. Your work here is finished. Get this poor devil out of here and leave him alone.”
The SA did not hesitate to obey the authority in the passenger’s voice. They called for the conductor to stop the car and
dragged out the old man, tossing him unceremoniously onto the sidewalk before the diverted gazes of the passersby.
As soon as the trolley had resumed its course, the mysterious passenger turned to the young women and smiled. He had a beautiful
face, the prototype of Aryan grace extolled by the Nazis, marred only by a small scar on his chin. Two dimples nestled in
his clean-shaven cheeks, and the beard shadow indicated that his would be full if allowed to grow.
“I apologize for what happened here. Sometimes zeal gets the better of these boys. My name is Wilhelm Schmidt, of the Prussian Secret Police.”
Helene and Lena blanched but tried to hide their terror. With clenched jaws, they stood straighter.
“Thank you,” Helen eked out, trying not to sound suspicious. Sweat was dripping down her back.
“May I escort you to wherever you’re going? Things are far from calm in the city. The communists and socialists are unwilling
to accept defeat. We’re after them and will soon have them far away, but brawls in the street are not uncommon. A little chaos
now will pave the way for order to reign.” As he spoke, Wilhelm was carefully sizing them up, not in a sexual way, but to
ascertain who they were and where they were going.
Helene pulled the cord, and the bell chimed. “Thank you so much, but that won’t be necessary. This is our stop.”
As the car slowed, Wilhelm looked out the open door. “You’re going to the university? I thought you looked like students.
Have a wonderful day!” He raised his hat to them.
Without a word, Helene and Lena got off the trolley and hurried to the university.
Lena looked back once the car had moved on. “I don’t know which of the options was worse. I thought we were going to end up
at the commissary.”
“Well, at least we’re here on time.”
They walked under the two imposing columns and ascended the white stairs. It took some time to reach the designated room in
the basement, which was no longer used for classes. Nostalgia seeped through them. Both Helene and Lena missed the luxury
of indifference to the world that student life had afforded them.
Several men turned when the two young women entered the room. Right away they recognized Herman Apecy, Alfred Kerr, and Ernst Toller, but the man they were most excited to see was their former professor, Christian Vichow.
The elderly gentleman strode over with his arms held wide when he saw them. He was still in good shape. “Lena and Helene!
I should’ve known you would get mixed up in this plot,” he said, embracing them both at once. Any men in the room who had
not already turned to look did so now, and Helene and Lena shrank back. Female librarians were few and far between in Germany,
and they stood out like shocks of color against a gray background.
“Professor Vichow, how wonderful to see you here—always standing in the gap!” Lena said. She had looked up to Dr. Vichow since
she met him her freshman year.
Helene hung back until Dr. Vichow said, “Come now, Helene, I’ve heard of the work you’re both doing in the library. It’s really
quite admirable. We need more people with good ideas like yours.”
The rest of the men stayed in their little groups, and a dozen or so more had slipped into the room by the time Apecy sat
at a table at the front alongside Kerr and Toller.
Dr. Vichow led Helene and Lena to the chairs and sat between them. Except for wrinkles lining his green eyes and the whiteness
of the beard covering his chubby cheeks, he was exactly the same. Helene had heard that Mrs. Vichow had died two years before.
The only thing the man had left was teaching, and that was now in jeopardy. Dr. Vichow was unwilling to swear any oath to
Hitler.
Apecy started the meeting off. “I imagine you all know why we’ve called this meeting.
Rudolf Kummer is making a list of books to be purged from the public libraries of Germany, and after that, something similar with private libraries.
Those who are not members of the Nazi Party, who have a political past with the left, who have a drop of Jewish blood, or who simply have the misfortune of being disliked by the Nazis will lose their jobs and salaries. ”
He paused as murmurs of indignation ran throughout the room. Abandoned chairs and desks were crammed together on the far side
of the dimly light room that smelled of dust and varnish, but no one was paying attention to the surroundings. They were concentrating
on Apecy’s words.
Then Apecy turned to Alfred Kerr. Kerr was a prestigious writer as well as a librarian. Despite his advanced years, he was
a reference point for his colleagues and one of the most highly regarded intellectual opponents to the Nazis. “Let’s be realistic,”
Kerr began. “Most of us here are outside the network of public libraries. I figure that the purge will reach much farther.
These fanatics won’t stop locking up or exiling anyone they consider dangerous. The only thing we could do is to beg President
von Hindenburg to stop the plan. But, besides being senile, the old military man has always hated books. So I have little
faith in that desperate attempt.”
The room fell so quiet that Helene could hear the footsteps of those passing by the upper windows, which were tall enough
to let a bit of light into the dilapidated room.
“But there must be something we can do!” Lena cried.
Helene looked at her with both admiration and jealousy, unable to overcome her own shyness in large gatherings. Derek said
Helene presented herself well in public, but even so, a voice in her head—her mother’s?—always demanded she be prudent and
perfect.
“Of course we must do something, ma’am,” Kerr answered with a frown.
When he did not offer what that thing might be, Helene decided it was time to voice her support for Lena. “I’m Helene Nathan,
director of the Neukolln Public Library. My colleague and I are here to advocate for the reinstatement of funds for our literacy
campaigns and our traveling library, as well as to speak out against the publication of a list that will get us all fired.
Maybe all of us librarians and public employees need to march to the doors of the government administrative buildings, and
when people find out what’s going on—”
“They’ll look the other way,” Kerr cut in. “Don’t forget that this monster has won parliament and that all the conservative
parties are bowed before him. The army is on his side, and so is the president himself. What good would a strike do? I’ll
tell you plainly: nothing. They control the union, and all we’d do is give them an excuse to kick us out for treason or whatever
charge occurs to them. Nazis do everything underhanded, and they’re more divided than they seem. We can send a commission
to speak with Alfred Rosenberg. Of all the fanatics, at least he’s educated.”
“Rosenberg is the worst anti-Semite of them all! He’s one of the few—very few—Nazi intellectuals, but even so, we haven’t
banned his books from the library,” Lena retorted. She knew it was terrible to make his books available, but she held liberty
in higher esteem than anything.
“Our only shot is to save what we can,” Kerr concluded.
The meeting broke up with no resolution. Lena and Helene were supremely dissatisfied. They bid farewell to Dr. Vichow and
then slipped away without a word to anyone else.
As they walked through the plaza, they spotted Derek, who had offered to pick them up in his new car.
He waved them over, and they hopped in as the cars behind started honking.
The streetlights flickered on one by one as an uneasy night descended over Berlin.
Helene wanted to believe that most of the people she observed around her did not support their executioners, but she had her doubts.