Chapter 8 Escaping the Swastika #2
Helene gasped. “What did the rest of the class do? What about the other professors, and the staff—did no one intervene?”
“The dean told me I’d better leave before they killed me, that I shouldn’t come back, and that he’d work out early retirement
for me. ‘It would be better for everyone that way,’ he said. His eyes were sad, but his tone was firm, like someone was listening
in.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Helene said, sitting beside him and gently resting her arm across his shoulders. At her kind gesture,
Dr. Vichow began to weep. It was hard to tell what was sobbing and what was labored breathing through his broken nose.
“You can’t go back home. It’s too dangerous. Those fanatics are capable of anything, and they won’t be held accountable. Come
with us.”
Derek glanced at Helene. They could not put themselves at risk like that. But Helene nodded firmly.
“Could you bring the car around?” she asked Derek. “I’d rather it be seen that we’re leaving.”
Against his better judgment, Derek did as his fiancé asked.
A few minutes later, the Mercedes was at the door. They got Dr. Vichow seated in the back and then headed to Helene’s apartment.
“I don’t trust Sebastian. Can you distract him while I get Dr. Vichow to the service elevator?”
The Nazi web had extended even to the apartment’s doorkeeper.
Sebastian was a conceited old man who acted like his concierge uniform was equivalent to that of a Prussian general.
His stand was covered with the Nazi periodicals he pored over daily, though most of the press had gone pro-Nazi by then.
Few journalists were willing to stand up to or criticize Hitler and his henchmen.
At Pariser Platz, Derek parked a few yards from the front door and then went inside the apartment building. Sebastian’s mustache
had recently been trimmed to imitate Hitler’s. Derek struck up a lively conversation with the man and managed to get him to
turn his back to the door while Helene slipped in with Dr. Vichow and disappeared into the service elevator.
“. . . quite strange, truly. So you’re telling me that no packages whatsoever have been delivered for me at this address?”
“No, none at all, sir. Perhaps it will arrive tomorrow,” Sebastian offered, taken aback that the officer was speaking to him
at all.
A few minutes later, Derek entered the apartment and found Dr. Vichow huddled over a cup of hot tea.
“How have we come to this?” Derek asked aloud to the universe.
The tea had revived Dr. Vichow enough that he could speak with almost his normal cadence. “Fear begets hatred, and whoever
talks loudest can light a fire in the minds of simple folk. The Germans are fed up with instability, inflation, and being
humiliated. This Austrian promises to make them a strong people again. One time I listened to one of his speeches live on
the radio. I did it intentionally so that I could really understand his message. I was terrified when I realized his words
had almost seduced me—someone who knows all the oratory and homiletic secrets, coming as I do from a long line of Lutheran
pastors and theologians.” The old man’s words reverberated in the dark living room, lit only by the lights from the street
outside.
He continued, “Soon the swastika will be everywhere, the blood-red color and hooked cross leading the world to evil. I’ll stand up to it with the last drop of my own blood!” Dr. Vichow had leaned forward and raised his fist as high as his bruised muscles would allow him.
“Quieter, please!” Derek begged. “These walls are paper-thin.” He did not want all three of them to end up in the basement
of the downtown building that Goring was turning into headquarters for a new police force called the Gestapo.
The old man crumbled again. “I’m so sorry . . . I didn’t mean to . . .” and he drained his teacup.
“We’ve got to get you out of the country,” Helene said.
“No, I’m not leaving,” Dr. Vichow vowed.
“You’ll do more good abroad than here. You’ve already lost your post, but in Poland or Denmark you can denounce what’s going
on. That’s how you can stand up to Hitler and his gang.”
Dr. Vichow made a noise between a snort and a scoff. What could one old man do to change anything if he sacrificed himself
on the altar of knowledge?
“Hitler is greatly admired, and parties like his and other Fascist entities are cropping up all over Europe. We can’t turn
this tide. We have to just ride it out, though I fear it will ruin everything in its wake. I’m old, and after a lot of suffering,
you develop a taste for it, like the soul gets used to sadness. I’d rather die in Germany than live far away.”
The old man spoke with conviction, but Helene knew that he was not thinking clearly. His bruise-covered body was evidence
that he was in shock.
“As soon as the doorkeeper is out, we’ll go down and drive to the Polish border. I know you’ve got plenty of friends in Warsaw. We’ll leave you at a train station there with money. Do you have your passport on you?”
Dr. Vichow’s resolve waned under Helene’s insistence. He nodded and pulled it out. Since Hitler had been named chancellor,
Dr. Vichow never left home without his passport. He had always vowed to stay in Germany no matter what, but his determination
had weakened with the passing days.
“Okay, good,” Helene sighed.
“But can’t I go by my house and collect a few things? What will those brutes do with all my books?”
“I’ll save what I can and will send you some of your belongings in Poland once things calm down,” Helene promised and then
gave him a hug.
At midnight, the three of them were traversing the calm streets of Berlin. At every corner they feared running into a police
car, but apparently the unsuccessful boycott had had a positive effect in that regard. Instead of being out on patrol, the
SA who weren’t drinking at the bars had gone home to lick their wounds.
They started to breathe easier once they left the well-lit downtown streets and got into the working-class neighborhoods.
Dr. Vichow fell asleep in the back of the car. Helene and Derek listened to his uneven breathing while watching the forests
and fields flash by the highway illuminated only by the Mercedes’s headlights.
Maybe getting out and away was not such a bad idea after all. The treasure that makes young people wealthy is doubt, which
is better than the certainty of those who know that they will do nothing with their monotonous, humdrum lives.