4
Food pantry
Kaufingerstra?e
“SPREAD THE BUTTER THIN, everyone. We’re low today.
Sprinkle some sugar.” Fritz Gerlich wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve as he looked over the twelve volunteers inside the sweaty kitchen.
“No, look here, Greta.” He grabbed a piece of the thick toast from the young woman.
“Butter one half. It can fold over so the other half is covered. We’re just trying to give it some flavor. Yes?”
“We’re almost out of sugar, Fritz.”
“Then use salt.” Gerlich stepped clear of the kitchen, looking through the window.
The food line was as far as the eye could see, winding all the way down Kaufingerstra?e, adults and children wrapped in blankets over their heads as if they were religious attire, moving their feet in place to stay warm, many with dirt on their faces from spending the night in a dingy alley or sidewalk.
“Where’s Klaus with the buttermilk?” Gerlich called out. The shelter took buttermilk from the local molkereien—dairies—which considered it a by-product, a leftover. When the shelter ran out of water, they offered buttermilk as a beverage; otherwise they used it for leavening.
Gerlich stepped through the side door into the alley, enjoying the rush of cool air.
A journalist by trade, the editor in chief of Der Illustrierte Sonntag, Carl Albert Fritz Michael Gerlich typically spent Saturdays and Sundays volunteering at the food pantry from six in the morning to six at night, with time built in only for Catholic Mass each day, as befit his upcoming conversion.
He reached into his trouser pocket and removed a small case containing his rosary. Clutching the rosary’s crucifix, he closed his eyes, made the sign of the cross, and began reciting the Apostles’ Creed.
“Fritz!” The door popped open. “Someone’s here for you. Someone from your newspaper.”
Fritz gently returned the rosary to its case and walked inside to find Gunther, his deputy editor, waiting for him.
“There’s a police matter, a suspicious death. I think it might require your attention,” Gunther told him, looking alarmed.
“My attention? Why? Who died?”
Gerlich parted the crowd that had formed around Prinzregentenplatz 16. He didn’t stand out. He wore no uniform. He was not especially striking to look at. He was fastidious in appearance, bespectacled and bow-tied, hair slicked and mustache carefully trimmed.
Though a virulent anti-Communist and generally conservative in nature, Gerlich had long ago become wary of Adolf Hitler, and began warning others as far back as 1923, after Hitler’s aborted putsch to overthrow the Bavarian government.
Hitler was a two-faced con artist, Gerlich cautioned, with an uncanny ability to draw people to his cause.
Years ago, in an editorial for his old periodical, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, Gerlich had described Hitler as surrounding himself with people “who all share one common objective: the desire to destroy.”
Now, as Gerlich looked over the many police vehicles, the officers moving in and out of the granite apartment building, he counted just as many brownshirts as cops.
He approached the front entrance, where a police officer stood.
“I am Fritz Gerlich from Der Illustrierte Sonntag. I would like to ask some questions of the kriminalinspektor.”
“No. No. This man must leave.” A brownshirt grabbed Gerlich by the bicep.
“Excuse me, but I am a member of the press.” He worked his arm free, but the guard shoved him, causing Gerlich to lose his balance and fall to the sidewalk.
Before he knew it, four brownshirts surrounded him. The police officer gave him a sympathetic look but did nothing.
Gerlich got to his feet and brushed himself off. “I am a journalist.”
“We know who you are,” one of the guards sneered.
“Then you also know that I have the right to be here.”
“Leave at once,” said the guard.
“I will not.”
The guards looked at each other, nodded, and grabbed Gerlich by both arms.
“You have no right!” he shouted, as the guards dragged him across the street. “The press will not go away!”
The crowd parted, cowed by the brownshirts’ show of force. The guards shoved Gerlich against a wall. He hit it hard, unable to use his hands to soften the impact. He collapsed to the sidewalk, dizzy and disoriented, pawing the ground for his glasses; he was as good as blind without them.
“Here you are, mister.”
Gerlich blinked hard, trying to focus. A young boy held out his steel-rimmed spectacles.
“Thank you, son.” Again, Gerlich got to his feet and brushed himself off.
“Spare a mark, sir?”
Seeing the boy’s ragged, mismatched clothes, Gerlich fished out a five-reichsmark banknote from his pocket. “This is all I have, son,” he said. “God be with you.”
He looked back at the building, where the brownshirts had returned, standing sentry. Why were the police so willing to defer to them?
“God be with us all,” he added.