Chapter 38 Kummer and the Clue
Kummer and the Clue
Berlin
Despite the more frequent bombings, the human library had survived to the end of another winter and continued to grow. Lena,
Gabor, and Mark had gone to live with Helene and Amalia in the house in Grunewald, which was outside of Berlin just far enough
to offer a degree of safety. The capital’s inhabitants were fully tasting the gall of war by then. Large sections of the city,
built up and beautified by Prussian kings, now lay devastated by fire and bombs. People lived in air-raid shelters, and food
was scarce. The Russians were advancing in the east and the Americans through Italy. The fervor after Goebbels’s “Total War”
speech from the year before had fallen flat, and the Nazi regime seemed at the brink of collapse, no longer even believing
their own propaganda. Yet, still none of the leadership was willing to reverse course.
Helene was relieved that her country was losing the war. It was the only way to save the nation. But she did not know what it would mean for Derek and the kids, still in Konigsberg.
Living alone with Helene had been hard on Amalia for several months. Helene tried to make a nice home for her sister, even
while she struggled to breathe under the weight of her own grief. There was no way to know what had happened to their parents
after their detention, but the stories that drifted back about the extermination camps left little doubt.
The winter of 1943 had been brutal, and spring was dragging its feet into 1944. At least most of the snow had melted, and
their firewood had not run out. They had it a bit easier than the Berliners who still lived downtown. Helene and Amalia kept
chickens, and Lena had started raising rabbits, so there were plenty of eggs and meat. But other food was hard to come by,
even on the exorbitantly priced black market.
On the other side of Berlin, Rudolf Kummer was licking his wounds. Derek had been removed from his custody, and then Klaus
had died at Dachau before Kummer could get much information out of him. However, one of the few things Klaus confessed under
torture was that the library was right under their noses, but he never gave up the exact location.
With Klaus’s arrest came a portion of the banned books that the astute Jewish librarian had been concealing, but Kummer felt
defeated. He could not stand that Helene Nathan was getting away with her plan.
Kummer no longer believed in Nazi victory but, like many Germans, did believe that a Germany without Hitler should not exist. If destiny had led them to this point, annihilation was better than being subject to Russia or the US, two of the most decadent countries in the world.
Kummer now slept in the basement of the Gestapo building. He occasionally ventured out to a meeting or to the war ministry
building, but he no longer walked the streets of Berlin freely. There were traitors all around.
Kummer was smoking a cigarette and drinking straight from a bottle of schnapps, which reminded him of his hometown of Nuremberg.
“I’m going to end up dying in this infernal city,” he muttered, staring at the large map of Berlin tacked up on the otherwise
blank wall. “Where would the Jew have put her library? Somewhere right under my nose . . .”
Kummer stood and studied the map for the thousandth time. He concentrated on the bureaucratic hub of downtown and then on
his own building.
“What’s that one?” he asked, noting for the first time an inconsequential building just yards away. He took a final swig and
decided to venture forth from the dank, moldy basement—a devil emerging from hell.
He crossed the street and went up to the building, studying it from the outside. The gate gave way when he pushed, but the
front door was locked. His pistol made short work of that problem. The street was empty, and shots fired had long ceased to
draw anyone’s attention.
He kicked open the door and peered inside. The foyer was unexceptional. He entered and went to the closest room. There were pieces of carboard strewn about and a few solitary pages that had come loose from old bindings. But there were shelves, shelves, and more shelves.
“Eureka! She was right here in front of my face the whole time! What a sharp little witch—and her stupid husband, right across
the street all those months, and not a word!”
Kummer got to work searching the house from top to bottom. It was clear that Helene had lived there, and probably with her
children too, judging from the clothes left behind. But there was no indication of what had happened next. In the basement,
Kummer examined every scrap of cardboard and was rewarded with a notebook consisting of a few handwritten pages. He flipped
through, but none of the information was of import until he came upon a roughly sketched map. It was of the Grunewald forest,
west of Berlin.
“Aha! I’ve got you!” he cried aloud to the empty air. He stormed out of the building, not bothering to close the door. The
Gestapo was busy chasing down the remaining Jews in Berlin and hunting traitors and deserters. Kummer would be satisfied if
he could just trap Helene Nathan.