Love and Hate Page 7

  The guard looked nervous; he knew Erich’s ways and status as much as anyone else in the ghetto. He knew that there would be hell to pay to question Erich’s orders.

  “Sorry, but I don’t want to be responsible for their return. How do we know that they will return?”

  “You aren’t responsible for anything. They won’t make it long out there. I think Obergruppenführer Beck is punishing them. Because you are under orders not to let them back in.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  He grinned, as did the other guard.

  He swung open the gate and said, “Good luck, Jews, you will need it.”

  Then they all laughed at our misfortune, the two gate guards and Erich’s guards.

  And then we were out of the gate. Two Jews walking the streets. It helped us that I looked like Hitler’s dream: tall, blonde hair with blue eyes and ruddy skin. Lilo looked like she could be Jewish, but not necessarily so, especially in my company.

  Outside of the gates we entered a bustling street full of people, but the problem was we were both wearing clothing with a bright Star of David stitched to our chests. We had to conceal the emblem, but we had to get outside of the sight of the ghetto tower guards before even thinking of how to do that...

  I whispered to Lilo, “Just follow my lead.”

  She looked up at me timidly and whispered, “I am not frightened when I am with you.”

  She grasped my arm. I didn’t know what lead I would provide just yet. So we walked nervously down the street. I had papers to prove permission, but that would only help us once we were detained. I didn’t want to be detained; that could go badly in so many ways.

  People had begun to stare at us, blonde hair or no. At least we had made it past the view of the guards.

  A little boy got a devilish look on his face, pointed at us, and yelled, “Jew, Jew, JEW!”

  I said, “Hush,” but that only made him yell louder.

  He stood in front of us and yelled, “Stop, Jew. Everyone, there is a Jew here, two Jews.”

  The people to our left and right stopped and stared. They were a little taken aback to see us walking down the street, obviously not on worker detail. A man from the crowd walked in front where the little boy was standing.

  He said, “You, you don’t look like a Jew. Are you really Jewish?” The crowd was watching.

  I nervously said, “I have permission to be outside of the ghetto. My name is Hans Beck. I am not Jewish. I have papers to prove my right to be outside of the ghetto. I am a Nazi guard, I disobeyed orders, and was punished as you can see from my face. My punishment is to walk around as a Jew for a day with this woman.”

  He thought for a moment. “Beck, that sounds familiar. Are you Carl’s son?”

  “Yes, Carl Beck’s son from here—from Regensburg.”

  “Yes, I remember you, you and your father used to come into my pastry shop when you were a boy. Carl was a good man. We used to have a few beers now and then.”

  “Mr. Vogel?”

  “Yes, okay, everyone, he is not a Jew, leave him be. I will take care of him, and the Jew girl will be taken back to the ghetto. On your way now!”

  The crowd dispersed.

  He came up to me. “What a horrible punishment. It looks like they beat you too. Why is she with you?”

  “She is not Jewish either.”

  He eyed me suspiciously. “Now do I need to ask for papers, Hans?”

  “I can tell you she isn’t Jewish, but it would do you no good to see her papers. They say that she is Jewish. She is from Passau, where I was adopted from, and I knew her father. She isn’t Jewish, and so I defended her.”

  Erich was wrong. I could lie well, when it was for the right reasons.

  “How do you know she isn’t Jewish?”

  I thought quickly. “She had the misfortune of being adopted by Jews. She has their name. But her blood is German-Swiss. Her aunt used to visit her, and she was Catholic.

  “That is a good story, but again, why should you I believe your story?”

  “Defending her didn’t turn out well for me, as you can see. You know that I am not a dirty Jew. Why would I go to this extreme if it were not true?”

  He looked her up and down. “I agree, she doesn’t look Jewish. They are subhuman, and a good German should be able to pick them out quite easily. How horrible for you, dear. What is your name?”

  I hoped she would think of a good German last name quickly. And she did.

  “Liselotte. Liselotte Braun.”

  “Ah, a good German name. I have known some good Brauns, not from Switzerland, mind you. Well, we need to get you off the streets and fast. Look, my pastry shop is across the street, we must hurry. You must cover those patches. Take my coat, dear.”

  He placed his coat around Lilo’s shoulders, covering her patch.

  He looked at me. “Now walk close, with your patch facing me. We must hurry.”

  We briskly walked to his shop across the street.

  A bell chimed as we entered. I felt safer already. He shouted at a nervous-looking young boy behind the counter.

  “Heinrich! Your shift is over, now leave. I have guests.”

  The boy took off his apron and said, “Yes, Herr Vogel.”

  As he left, he noticed my Jewish patch and looked up at me.

  Mr. Vogel said, “What are you looking at? It is a practical joke. His friends put him up to wearing it. Now leave and go home. Thank you for your work today.”

  The boy looked puzzled and stood there.

  “I told you, leave! This is none of your concern. Can’t you tell he is Aryan? Just look at him.”

  The boy looked at me, looked at me hard, and left without saying a word.

  “Okay, he will go tell his parents, and I will bet you my life that the Gestapo will be here within two hours. How long is this pass good for that you have? When can you return to the ghetto, Hans?”

  “Never. I will not rest until I get her papers to prove her German stock.”

  He nodded that he understood.

  “Well, those papers won’t protect you much, but if we must use them, they are better than nothing, and perhaps they will at least protect me if we are caught. Take off that shirt, Hans, at once.”

  Lilo kept Mr. Vogel’s coat on that covered her star. I had an undershirt on and took off my shirt emblazoned with the star, careful that my sleeve didn’t come up to expose my Star of David branding.

  “All right, give me a minute, I need to think about how to get you to Passau to get your papers,” he said, looking at Lilo.

  Chapter 17

  The boy was fast, Mr. Vogel was right. We had just formulated a plan when the Gestapo agent arrived. We had decided that I would wear Mr. Vogel’s Nazi armband. I would have to pretend that I had been beaten by Jews who had stolen my papers. I looked Aryan enough that there would likely be no issues for me. As for Lilo, she would have to prove herself by association with my blonde hair. But that would not be enough. We would have to be husband and wife. We at least needed some papers. Something to prove a story.

  Mr. Vogel knew a local Lutheran pastor who he said could conduct the ceremony. He said that he could give us a marriage certificate on the spot. Getting to the church without Jewish patches showing shouldn’t be an issue, he assured us.

  “Mr. Vogel, what if they come looking for us? How are you going to explain yourself? I don’t want you getting into trouble on our account.”

  “Let me worry about that. You know boys are given to telling stories. He could have not seen what he thought that he saw, right?”

  I nodded. I was uncertain the plan would work. I was unsure any of this would, but we had to have a plan.

  A thunderous knock at the door. Mr. Vogel looked very nervous at the sound of the pounding fist.

  “Well, there is no point in hiding you. You will have to tell the story; you will have to see if it works here and now. We are all in trouble if it doesn’t. He will detain you even with your papers, and then
your twenty-four hours will be up. And they will search my shop if I try to hide you.”

  “Open up, or I will kick your door in!”

  Mr. Vogel hurried to the locked shop door. There stood a single Gestapo agent, young. He couldn’t be over nineteen years old. He looked at Mr. Vogel, who had to be around sixty, and ordered him to move back from his own shop door at once. He stepped forward quickly, making Mr. Vogel step back, almost falling backward to the floor.

  He had not yet turned his attention to us. We had not had proper time to practice our story. I was very unsure that this would work. I couldn’t look nervous, though; that would be a dead giveaway that we were in fact interlopers.

  The Gestapo agent looked over at us. He came right up into my face out of open-eyed curiosity. He was not angry but genuinely seemed not to know what to think.

  “So, the boy.”

  Mr. Vogel answered, “Heinrich.”

  “Yes, the boy comes home and tells his dear mother that there are two Jews in your shop. Now, I am telling this simple story second hand. But he says that there are two Jews and that you looked to be hiding them when you ordered him to leave work early. I wasn’t inclined to believe him, but then you didn’t open your door, and now I see...”

  He peered into my swollen eyes. “I see what looks to be two Germans, not Jews, one badly beaten.”

  Then he looked at Lilo. “But as for her, maybe she is tricking me, maybe I just need to see papers.” He looked at her. “Your papers please.”

  She stood there and looked at the ground. That was the absolute worst response, I thought. If she had at least looked at him in the eyes, she would have maintained status enough to try our story. It not only looked like she didn’t believe whatever story she might tell, it also made her look submissive. It made her more likely to be Jewish. Jews had been tortured into being submissive. It was believed to be one of their natural traits when confronted with Aryan superiority. Aryan superiority was just an imagined ideology that superior numbers and guns had made seem a reality. These Jewish “traits” were just human traits anyone would exhibit when outgunned, but in the racist’s eyes, they confirmed superiority.

  So when Lilo did that, I knew it was over before it had begun—our story. I had two options, and I had to consider them simultaneously and not sequentially. I could be violent and try to overpower him. Or I could tell him the truth. The truth that we were allowed to be out of the ghetto for so many hours and why. But how would that explain my shirt with the patch being off? How would that look for Mr. Vogel and more importantly to him? We needed his help to get out of town. He would no longer help us with our new story when he found out that the story we had told him so far was false.

  I stepped forward. “I have her papers.”

  I reached into my coat pocket with my left hand (I was right-handed). As I did so, I kept looking at him. He was a kid; he had never seen war. I was twenty-five, and though beaten up from yesterday, I was stronger than him. I just needed to get his gun.

  I yelled, “Mr. Vogel, no!”

  This made the Gestapo boy turn to look at Mr. Vogel, thank god. I was back in the trenches as an infantryman, my gun on the ground. The enemy soldier had given me an in. With my right arm I put him in a stranglehold, pressing hard enough for him to pass out, turning his speech into gurgling nonsense. I knew he would go right for his holstered firearm. I kneed him in the back, causing further pain. As I suspected, he didn’t have the experience over his body and the learned ability to manage through his pain in order to reach for his gun fast enough. So I grabbed it with my left hand, not so deftly, and it fell. I kept squeezing until he went limp and his eyes closed. If I kept squeezing, just a little longer, he would painlessly slip from passed out to eternal sleep. I was going to keep squeezing until I looked at Mr. Vogel, and I knew that he would pay dearly for this. He looked terrified. I let the passed-out boy fall to the floor, grabbed the gun, and pointed it at Mr. Vogel.

  “Mr. Vogel, the story would not have worked with him. I had to do it. The only way to protect you is to tie you and him up. You will have to explain yourself, but since you have not touched the Gestapo boy,” I looked down at him, and he was already twitching awake, “You can tell the truth, but I suggest you will be safer just saying that we held you captive.”

  He nodded that he agreed.

  “Please go write the address for your pastor friend with your signature and bring some aprons to tie yourself and the Gestapo agent up.”

  He hurried behind the counter to do just that. The Gestapo agent was starting to open his eyes, so I didn’t even get to thank Mr. Vogel but was able to give him a half smile. He weakly smiled back.

  I pointed the gun at the Gestapo agent’s head and said, “Listen, you fucking small thing. Go sit in that chair with your chest facing the back of it. I want your arms straight behind you, or I swear by God that I will send you to Hell.”

  He silently obeyed. He knew I was serious. I asked Lilo to rip up Mr. Vogel’s aprons and bind him with them. After he was tied up well, I barked at Mr. Vogel to do the same. Lilo tied him up.

  “Mr. Vogel, it is your fault for alerting the boy.” I slapped him across the head as the Nazi watched.

  I’d slapped him hard. It needed to be believable. Then, out of view of the Nazi, I went to the counter and grabbed the paper Mr. Vogel had written on. I grabbed the whole small pad and shoved it in my pocket, leaving the gun on the counter. If I only grabbed the top page, the Gestapo would see the indentions of his writing.

  I grabbed Mr. Vogel’s keys from the countertop, and we left quickly. We didn’t have long to find that pastor and get out of town. It was barely dark, and there were only a couple of people further up the street. As I looked up at the sky, I saw the first twinkling of heaven’s bells. I wasn’t in heaven, though, I was here on Earth. I turned to Lilo without speaking and grabbed her hand. I knew where the Lutheran church was. And what’s more, I knew the back way there.

  Chapter 18

  Lilo and I were there in front of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church. It was in the very center of town. Everyone from Regensburg knew this, and most visitors could spot the church’s centrally located spires that rose above the rest of the medieval city. Growing up in Regensburg, I had the added knowledge of how to get there quickly, out of sight of the mostly dissipated crowds, with the remainder of silhouettes dissolving into the night’s dark mass. The darkness was our friend and our enemy. It being dark, we were hidden from view. However, it was also likely that the pastor was not at the church, and what would we do then?

  As we walked Lilo, asked me, “How did you learn to fight like that back there?”

  “I was an infantryman.”

  “Then how did you come to be a member of the SS?”

  “Erich ‘encouraged’ me to join, to be transferred, so he could keep an eye on me. He likes control.”

  Eventually we made it and we stood under an ornate, stoned archway with two pillars. I looked up at the center of the archway to the face of an angel staring out and away from us. She had feathered angel wings to fly her to safety. I put my thumb and forefinger to my eyes to massage my weary eyes for a second. I imagined the angel flying away to Jesus, praying for our deliverance. I opened my eyes again to see her still there, holding the archway open. Lilo looked at me.

  I whispered, “I don’t believe in God, but I prayed anyway, for her to speak with God for us.”

  “Maybe she has,” Lilo said.

  “No, she is still here. She hasn’t left.”

  “She is facing the city. Maybe she is looking out to protect us,” Lilo pondered.

  I looked below the angel to a set of thick, lacquered doors, carved and etched with various shapes, one being a long shell. I chose that for my knock to announce our presence, four knocks, heavy and hard. The door was so thick that it made my knuckles ache slightly, and the sound of my knock was mostly absorbed by the thick wood.

  I breathed in and out once to give the sound time
to travel to a recipient’s ear. I wouldn’t have seen or heard any approach behind this ancient door. However, I was impatient, so I tried to open the door. But it did not budge; it felt not just heavy, but locked. As I tried to push it—this time, instead of pulling it—it opened, swiftly, into the dark interior. It opened as if someone had helped me, as if the door was made of balsa wood, and I fell inside.

  I caught my balance, somehow finding my footing despite the darkness. I would have motioned for Lilo, but I could not see her, and she wouldn’t see me. I felt naked and under attack by the darkness. Suddenly, I didn’t feel safe whispering for her, so I grasped about, trying to find her.

  I felt her and almost chuckling said, “Thank God, Lilo, I was worried I’d lost you.”

  “Son, you are in God’s house and are never lost here.”

  I jumped back. I pushed the figure I had grabbed instinctively and fell into Lilo.

  The light came back on, blinding me temporarily, and a large man’s face was staring at us from the darkness.

  “So, it is a man and a woman, both Jews who I find on my doorstep.”

  I looked down at my Nazi armband and then looked at him, giving my best offended face.

  “Don’t think me a fool. I know who you are. Everyone in town does. They have alerted us to be on the lookout for two dangerous Jews, one that looks Aryan—but is not.”

  “Do you know Mr. Vogel?” I desperately asked, looking at the note. “Gunther Vogel?”

  “Yes, of course, why?”

  “I have a note from him. He said to give it to you.”

  “Yes, well, you had better let me see it now, because my desire to talk with you is short.”

  I pulled out the pad of paper that Mr. Vogel had written his note on and handed it to the man.

  He read aloud, “Lucas, help these two in need. Do it as if you helped me. Love, your brother, Gunther.”

  He looked at us again and then at the note. He held it slightly away from himself as if it had some contagious disease associated with it.