Padlocked, page 12
By 1943, the structures throughout the Jewish quarter were overflowing as Jews from rural areas were brought to Będzin for the war effort. Homes built for one family were expected to house seven or eight. While Jews had been encouraged to emigrate to other continents before the war voluntarily, they were now prohibited from leaving. They were prisoners within Będzin, guarded by scores of Nazis, used as slave labor in the factories.
Hank was a prisoner, too, though his and Rafe’s circumstances were far more humane than those of the Jewish inhabitants. He had not received any correspondence from Dottie, and he didn’t know if any of his letters had reached her. He kept himself busy during the day, between Max’s assignments for them and an underground media pipeline that Rafe had tapped into. As long as he was kept busy, thoughts of home were pushed into the dark recesses of his soul.
In the dark of night, however, they reared their heads. He dreamt of Dottie, Mary, Susanna, and Ray. He had nightmares that they were attending a funeral service, and when he peered at the tombstone, he discovered it was his. He dreamt that one or all of them needed him desperately, but he couldn’t reach them. He dreamt that the magazine had stopped his paychecks, and without them, his family became homeless, and America had been turned into one huge dustbowl.
Only rumors about the world outside Poland reached him, and he never knew whether to trust them. Max informed them rather arrogantly that Germany had declared war on America after Japan destroyed or damaged almost all of the American battleships at Pearl Harbor. After that, he dreamt of Nazis invading North Carolina and his family being subjected to inhumane conditions, conditions from which he could not protect them.
Hank learned through his German sources that additional factories were being built between Będzin and a small village to their north called Oświęcim. While the area had been industrialized previously, the war effort had significantly accelerated its growth. And while the Jews were not allowed to leave their Będzin zone on their own, the Germans had begun calling for volunteers for the additional factories. Overcrowded and underfed, many volunteers hoped that the new location would provide ample accommodations. They were transported on repurposed cattle cars, with trains departing several times a week. Rumors flew that Jews from Oświęcim, Kraków, and as far away as Warsaw were also transported to the new facilities. As a result, it was rumored that the new location, formerly a small internment for Russian prisoners of war, had grown larger than Będzin and Oświęcim combined. Its name, Hank learned, was Auschwitz-Birkenau.
For the past few years, Hank and Rafe had played an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse with their journalism. Each day, they dutifully covered the day's stories provided by their German handlers, usually Max. Assignments often consisted of covering German soldiers receiving commendations and promotions, of carefully choreographed scenes from Będzin factories showing the happiness of the workers, which Rafe called “pure propaganda shit,” or Polish people playing ball games, dining at sidewalk cafes, or other activities to show the normalcy—and supposed complacency—of Germany’s newly acquired land. All of this was sent to Berlin, where it would be used to prove the superiority of the Nazi machine.
Then there were the real stories.
And Otto.
Hank sat in the abbreviated back seat as he glanced at the back of Otto’s head while he drove through the streets of Będzin on the way to the Jewish sector. Rafe sat up front, a position he sometimes exchanged with Hank, as Otto dutifully transported them from one job to the next.
Private Otto Schubert, or the generic Obersoldat, was twenty-one years old. He’d spent his seventeenth birthday running out of a pillbox and crossing the Polish border, having spent the previous ten years in training as a Hitler Youth to serve the Third Reich. He had been assigned as Hank’s full-time driver and escort, an assignment that could stretch into the overnight hours or go for weeks without a day off. He slept in the same facility, ate his meals with them, and, as Rafe was fond of saying, did everything but shit with them.
Now Otto had the shakes, and he had them bad.
Otto pulled in front of the gate closest to the chemical factory. The soldiers called out their greeting to him as Hank hopped out of the back seat. As Rafe joined him, he leaned into the vehicle to retrieve two large boxes. “Ich werde in fünf Minuten zurück sein,” Hank said.
“Someday,” Rafe said as he carried one of the boxes past the guard, “you’ll say that without an American accent.”
“If I don’t remember anything else once I leave this place, I will remember how to say ‘back in five minutes’ in German,” Hank said under his breath.
They passed by a block of squalor on their way to the chemical factory as citizens hungrily eyed their boxes. Hank tried not to look at them; if he did, he felt a wave of guilt sweep over him. Besides, his eyes were needed to survey the ground in front of him, as it was uneven and often covered in debris. Furniture, crates, and used building supplies were stacked against the structures as if every day were moving day.
Two young girls stopped in the street to watch them, and Hank quickly snapped his camera several times, hoping that the surrounding squalor would frame their images. Too young to wear the Star of David, their hair was neatly combed, their clothing neat but soiled, their shoes worn and dusty. The smallest reminded Hank of Susanna when she was little.
They reached the back door of the chemical factory, a large concrete brick structure whose drab gray exterior nearly blended into its surroundings. The metal door locked automatically upon closing, but today it was propped open with a single brick.
They made their way inside, stopping momentarily to adjust to the dim light cast by grimy windows high up near the two-story ceilings, locations that were not meant for people to peer through, but rather for natural light to replace nonexistent bulbs.
“There you are!” a burly man exclaimed in German as he made his way toward them. These regular encounters, along with their constant escort, had allowed Hank and Rafe to learn conversational German. They exchanged pleasantries as if they were old friends while they made their way to a corner office. Once there, the man closed the door and lowered the blinds across the broad, cloudy windows overlooking the factory floor.
“What do you have for me today?” he asked as they placed the boxes on the desk.
“A little of this and that,” Rafe answered as he held up a bottle of beer in one hand and schnapps in the other.
“Gut! Gut!” he exclaimed with delight. He combed through the boxes, discovered more alcohol in the form of gin and even a small bottle of cognac, before finding various food items. “Gut! Gut!” he repeated appreciatively. Then abruptly, he placed everything back in their boxes and retrieved a key from his pocket, which he used to open his center desk drawer. He retrieved several boxes of Pervitin. As he handed them to Hank and Rafe, they quickly stuffed their shirts with the thin pill boxes.
They were out the door in under three minutes, making their way across the slum to the gate, where the soldiers were still conversing with Otto. Their laughter and casualness were a stark contrast to the rifles slung over their shoulders and the grim mood inside the gate.
Reaching the light truck, the two men hopped back inside. Rafe had already pulled a box of Pervitin out of his shirt. As he handed it over to the guards, Otto was quick to pull away. They hadn’t gone half a block before he held out his hand. “Eins,” he said, indicating one.
Rafe opened another box, extracted a single pill, and plopped it into Otto’s open palm. As the young man swallowed it dry, Rafe slipped the opened box into Otto’s jacket pocket. “That ought to hold you for a while,” he said in halting German.
Hank watched the interaction with the same guilt he felt every time. Before the war, Pervitin was a commonly available over-the-counter medicine, much like aspirin in the United States. Unlike aspirin, which targeted pain, Pervitin made a person more alert. It could be used by students studying all night, long-distance drivers, shift workers, or even doctors performing lengthy operations. It was so popular and reliable that it soon caught the attention of top military brass.
The problem with soldiers was that they needed rest. A man could only march so far before his body grew tired, and even forced marches required breaks to keep the men from passing out. They also needed sleep. And when a soldier was sleeping, it meant he wasn’t marching.
All that could—and did—change with Pervitin and a similar product, Isophan. Both made soldiers so alert that their minds failed to register the need for breaks or sleep. As a result, they could advance deep into enemy territory without the need to sleep for as much as seven days. The pills ensured Blitzkrieg, a rapid advance by air, vehicles, and infantry, could overwhelm the enemy forces with such speed that the enemy was woefully unprepared for the advance. It created the myth that the Nazi army was filled with a superior Aryan race of superhumans.
One pill could cause alertness. Several taken over time could create feelings of superiority and grandiosity. As the soldiers continued to take them, it resulted in escalating forms of aggression.
The problem, Hank quickly observed, is that some soldiers became addicts because the active ingredients in Pervitin and Isophan were methamphetamines.
And no matter how quickly the factories churned out the pills, they could not keep up with demand. The chemical factory in Będzin’s Jewish quarter had been a possible solution; by converting the original purpose from processing metals to generating pills, the transportation issues from Berlin, which often resulted in lag times and shortages, were resolved through manufacturing on-site. Every day, thousands of the little pills were manufactured and boxed in the facility that Hank had just left, but the vast majority of those pills did not remain in Będzin but were disbursed throughout the immediate area.
As Otto barreled through Będzin and citizens scattered in advance of his careening vehicle, Hank tried not to think about the drug supply chain he and Rafe had created. Each week, they bribed the commissary staff with drugs to get alcohol and food, which they brought to the factory in exchange for more drugs. They then bribed the guards at the gate, Otto, and numerous others for access to areas officially deemed off-limits, to process film in clandestine locations, and to convey the real, unaltered stories to the Allies through underground networks.
Otto stopped the vehicle in front of a bar, which was lively despite the noon hour. With his shakes gone and a newfound confidence, he was ready to party. While all three entered the establishment, Rafe and Hank would soon find their way out the back door. They weren’t giving Otto the slip, as the drugs also seemed to provide the soldiers with superhuman senses. It had all been prearranged. Within the hour, the two would return and be on their way to an official gig.
As Hank and Rafe exited through the back door, Hank said, “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”
“First John, verse 5:19,” Rafe answered. “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And I paraphrase.” He glanced at Hank as they made their way down the alley. “We are fighting Satan, my friend.”
“I know. That’s what you always say. But, if we fight like this, are we any better?”
“What would you prefer to do? Stand around with niceties? Bake them a cake, or sing for them? The only way to fight against brutality, heartlessness, and evil is to fight on their terms. They don’t understand anything else.”
They entered the back door of an office building and made their way up the stairwell to the roof. It was empty, as it always was. With the Jews confined to their own sector, the population of the rest of the city had dwindled. Offices were vacant, and the army had seized most of the landlords' rental homes for their soldiers.
They crouched down and made their way to the side of the roof that provided an unhindered view of the Jewish sector. Hank snapped several photographs. A bread line snaked for several blocks, as it always did at this time of day; the people appeared noticeably thinner, their clothing hanging as if it were all oversized. Several of the buildings appeared burned out, and one was still smoldering; Hank would have to dig to find out what had occurred there overnight. A soldier walking beside the bread line suddenly stopped and struck a young woman in the back of her head with the butt of his rifle. He continued walking as several people in line attempted to help the woman off the street where she had fallen. Hank hoped he had captured it all on film. As he snapped, he dictated observations to Rafe, who dutifully wrote them down.
There was so much more to photograph, and so much he wanted to write, but time was of paramount importance. He slid away from the barrier along the edge and removed the film, placing it into a canister. He handed it to Rafe, who quickly made his way to the door and down the steps. Hank knew he would bribe his point of contact to use the phone to call in a story to the magazine and to have another person smuggle the film out. The bribes, like the others, consisted of boxes of Pervitin.
As Hank slipped a new roll of film into the camera, he couldn’t help but question his role as a drug dealer. Bribing the factory manager was akin to buying drugs on the black market, and bribing others along the chain was clearly the distribution of drugs, even if they had been over the counter in Germany. They were addictive. Maybe, he thought, it was no worse than bribing alcoholics with alcohol. But when he thought of Otto and compared him to his son, Ray, his heart knew what he was doing was wrong.
Ray had joined the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Barely sixteen and too young for service, a flawed system had allowed him to join. Letters from home had finally begun to trickle through, and they were agonizingly slow to reach Hank; he suspected that numerous Nazis read them before they ever reached him. Dottie had to know this, and Ray would certainly know and understand the government’s policy of “loose lips sink ships,” so Hank received vague information, only that Ray was somewhere in the Pacific fighting the Japanese.
Hank made his way back down the stairwell and along the alley to the bar, where he joined Otto. Hank ordered a drink as he always did, which caused Otto to order another. As he leisurely raised the glass to his lips, he knew this would keep Otto in place for the additional minutes Rafe would need to get their information out.
Maybe Rafe was right. Perhaps they had to fight differently. The soldiers could have murdered them when they were first discovered, and they’d had ample opportunities to knock them off since. It was their usefulness in their propaganda machine that kept them alive. He only hoped the film and underground reports would be helpful to the Allies and those back home. After all, he thought as he raised his glass again, if he were going to compromise his morals and ethics, it had better be worth it.
17
Max
In Germany, the process to exclude Jews, political dissidents, and others the Nazis deemed undesirable took years. It was a gradual undertaking, often with baby steps, so the general populace wasn’t alarmed by a sudden cultural change. Max learned immediately, however, that such would not be the case in Poland.
Much of the city’s medieval architecture was saved through a hasty deal and total surrender. The Polish Army either fled or surrendered before the Nazis were on their doorstep, leaving a void that the newcomers quickly filled. With the language now officially German and Rafe speaking passable German, Max realized his position as an interpreter was on tenuous ground. With troops running roughshod through the city, he went through great efforts to discover who was in charge and then track him down for a deal.
His point of contact would be Oberführer Wilhelm Keller. With his Nazi armband and newly appointed corner office as proof of his esteemed stature, he positioned himself as a liaison to journalists for propaganda that Berlin would surely want, as well as an insider who could identify threats to the Nazi regime.
The Jews were an easy target, as they were more easily identified. The Nazis began by burning or confiscating their homes, businesses, and synagogues, and soldiers were often given free rein to confiscate any of their less valuable possessions for their own personal use, while those items of considerable value were sent to Berlin. An area of the city was established to corral the people, and barbed wire was erected faster than Max could have imagined possible.
As Jews were rounded up and sorted, Max accompanied Wilhelm to the block where Mrs. Weiss owned much of the property, including the apartment where his mother lived and the bakery that he so often frequented. Max witnessed the sorting with dizzying speed, as if the process had been repeated countless times and was so well-oiled that there was hardly any thought given to it. Able-bodied men were placed in one group and able-bodied women in another, as they would be used for slave labor. They were immediately marched through the city under guard to the Jewish sector.
The elderly and the invalid were shot on the spot, their bodies left where they fell. Children suffered the worst atrocities, as they were separated from their parents, and those too young to work were killed in ways too violent for Max to watch, but he could not avoid their screams. His nerves were rattled so severely that he was certain someone would notice him shaking. He remained close to Wilhelm, afraid that soldiers would mistake him for an undesirable, and barked orders whenever possible to further cement his status.
They were thankfully getting ready to leave the neighborhood when Mrs. Weiss was hauled out of her bakery with her daughter, Celina. Max was so close that he witnessed the recognition and relief in Mrs. Weiss’s eyes when she spotted him, but when his eyes rolled from her to Celina, he found the younger woman’s face growing pale as she stared at his armband. For the briefest of moments, he wanted to tear the armband off and run out of sight, but he forced himself to assume a noble stature.
“That woman and her daughter,” he said to Wilhelm in German, “are hard workers. I suggest that you send them to the Jewish sector.”
“Max!” Mrs. Weiss shouted. “Max!”
Max glanced again in her direction. Soldiers were manhandling her, knocking her kerchief askew, and Celina had been pushed against the brick wall.
Hank was a prisoner, too, though his and Rafe’s circumstances were far more humane than those of the Jewish inhabitants. He had not received any correspondence from Dottie, and he didn’t know if any of his letters had reached her. He kept himself busy during the day, between Max’s assignments for them and an underground media pipeline that Rafe had tapped into. As long as he was kept busy, thoughts of home were pushed into the dark recesses of his soul.
In the dark of night, however, they reared their heads. He dreamt of Dottie, Mary, Susanna, and Ray. He had nightmares that they were attending a funeral service, and when he peered at the tombstone, he discovered it was his. He dreamt that one or all of them needed him desperately, but he couldn’t reach them. He dreamt that the magazine had stopped his paychecks, and without them, his family became homeless, and America had been turned into one huge dustbowl.
Only rumors about the world outside Poland reached him, and he never knew whether to trust them. Max informed them rather arrogantly that Germany had declared war on America after Japan destroyed or damaged almost all of the American battleships at Pearl Harbor. After that, he dreamt of Nazis invading North Carolina and his family being subjected to inhumane conditions, conditions from which he could not protect them.
Hank learned through his German sources that additional factories were being built between Będzin and a small village to their north called Oświęcim. While the area had been industrialized previously, the war effort had significantly accelerated its growth. And while the Jews were not allowed to leave their Będzin zone on their own, the Germans had begun calling for volunteers for the additional factories. Overcrowded and underfed, many volunteers hoped that the new location would provide ample accommodations. They were transported on repurposed cattle cars, with trains departing several times a week. Rumors flew that Jews from Oświęcim, Kraków, and as far away as Warsaw were also transported to the new facilities. As a result, it was rumored that the new location, formerly a small internment for Russian prisoners of war, had grown larger than Będzin and Oświęcim combined. Its name, Hank learned, was Auschwitz-Birkenau.
For the past few years, Hank and Rafe had played an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse with their journalism. Each day, they dutifully covered the day's stories provided by their German handlers, usually Max. Assignments often consisted of covering German soldiers receiving commendations and promotions, of carefully choreographed scenes from Będzin factories showing the happiness of the workers, which Rafe called “pure propaganda shit,” or Polish people playing ball games, dining at sidewalk cafes, or other activities to show the normalcy—and supposed complacency—of Germany’s newly acquired land. All of this was sent to Berlin, where it would be used to prove the superiority of the Nazi machine.
Then there were the real stories.
And Otto.
Hank sat in the abbreviated back seat as he glanced at the back of Otto’s head while he drove through the streets of Będzin on the way to the Jewish sector. Rafe sat up front, a position he sometimes exchanged with Hank, as Otto dutifully transported them from one job to the next.
Private Otto Schubert, or the generic Obersoldat, was twenty-one years old. He’d spent his seventeenth birthday running out of a pillbox and crossing the Polish border, having spent the previous ten years in training as a Hitler Youth to serve the Third Reich. He had been assigned as Hank’s full-time driver and escort, an assignment that could stretch into the overnight hours or go for weeks without a day off. He slept in the same facility, ate his meals with them, and, as Rafe was fond of saying, did everything but shit with them.
Now Otto had the shakes, and he had them bad.
Otto pulled in front of the gate closest to the chemical factory. The soldiers called out their greeting to him as Hank hopped out of the back seat. As Rafe joined him, he leaned into the vehicle to retrieve two large boxes. “Ich werde in fünf Minuten zurück sein,” Hank said.
“Someday,” Rafe said as he carried one of the boxes past the guard, “you’ll say that without an American accent.”
“If I don’t remember anything else once I leave this place, I will remember how to say ‘back in five minutes’ in German,” Hank said under his breath.
They passed by a block of squalor on their way to the chemical factory as citizens hungrily eyed their boxes. Hank tried not to look at them; if he did, he felt a wave of guilt sweep over him. Besides, his eyes were needed to survey the ground in front of him, as it was uneven and often covered in debris. Furniture, crates, and used building supplies were stacked against the structures as if every day were moving day.
Two young girls stopped in the street to watch them, and Hank quickly snapped his camera several times, hoping that the surrounding squalor would frame their images. Too young to wear the Star of David, their hair was neatly combed, their clothing neat but soiled, their shoes worn and dusty. The smallest reminded Hank of Susanna when she was little.
They reached the back door of the chemical factory, a large concrete brick structure whose drab gray exterior nearly blended into its surroundings. The metal door locked automatically upon closing, but today it was propped open with a single brick.
They made their way inside, stopping momentarily to adjust to the dim light cast by grimy windows high up near the two-story ceilings, locations that were not meant for people to peer through, but rather for natural light to replace nonexistent bulbs.
“There you are!” a burly man exclaimed in German as he made his way toward them. These regular encounters, along with their constant escort, had allowed Hank and Rafe to learn conversational German. They exchanged pleasantries as if they were old friends while they made their way to a corner office. Once there, the man closed the door and lowered the blinds across the broad, cloudy windows overlooking the factory floor.
“What do you have for me today?” he asked as they placed the boxes on the desk.
“A little of this and that,” Rafe answered as he held up a bottle of beer in one hand and schnapps in the other.
“Gut! Gut!” he exclaimed with delight. He combed through the boxes, discovered more alcohol in the form of gin and even a small bottle of cognac, before finding various food items. “Gut! Gut!” he repeated appreciatively. Then abruptly, he placed everything back in their boxes and retrieved a key from his pocket, which he used to open his center desk drawer. He retrieved several boxes of Pervitin. As he handed them to Hank and Rafe, they quickly stuffed their shirts with the thin pill boxes.
They were out the door in under three minutes, making their way across the slum to the gate, where the soldiers were still conversing with Otto. Their laughter and casualness were a stark contrast to the rifles slung over their shoulders and the grim mood inside the gate.
Reaching the light truck, the two men hopped back inside. Rafe had already pulled a box of Pervitin out of his shirt. As he handed it over to the guards, Otto was quick to pull away. They hadn’t gone half a block before he held out his hand. “Eins,” he said, indicating one.
Rafe opened another box, extracted a single pill, and plopped it into Otto’s open palm. As the young man swallowed it dry, Rafe slipped the opened box into Otto’s jacket pocket. “That ought to hold you for a while,” he said in halting German.
Hank watched the interaction with the same guilt he felt every time. Before the war, Pervitin was a commonly available over-the-counter medicine, much like aspirin in the United States. Unlike aspirin, which targeted pain, Pervitin made a person more alert. It could be used by students studying all night, long-distance drivers, shift workers, or even doctors performing lengthy operations. It was so popular and reliable that it soon caught the attention of top military brass.
The problem with soldiers was that they needed rest. A man could only march so far before his body grew tired, and even forced marches required breaks to keep the men from passing out. They also needed sleep. And when a soldier was sleeping, it meant he wasn’t marching.
All that could—and did—change with Pervitin and a similar product, Isophan. Both made soldiers so alert that their minds failed to register the need for breaks or sleep. As a result, they could advance deep into enemy territory without the need to sleep for as much as seven days. The pills ensured Blitzkrieg, a rapid advance by air, vehicles, and infantry, could overwhelm the enemy forces with such speed that the enemy was woefully unprepared for the advance. It created the myth that the Nazi army was filled with a superior Aryan race of superhumans.
One pill could cause alertness. Several taken over time could create feelings of superiority and grandiosity. As the soldiers continued to take them, it resulted in escalating forms of aggression.
The problem, Hank quickly observed, is that some soldiers became addicts because the active ingredients in Pervitin and Isophan were methamphetamines.
And no matter how quickly the factories churned out the pills, they could not keep up with demand. The chemical factory in Będzin’s Jewish quarter had been a possible solution; by converting the original purpose from processing metals to generating pills, the transportation issues from Berlin, which often resulted in lag times and shortages, were resolved through manufacturing on-site. Every day, thousands of the little pills were manufactured and boxed in the facility that Hank had just left, but the vast majority of those pills did not remain in Będzin but were disbursed throughout the immediate area.
As Otto barreled through Będzin and citizens scattered in advance of his careening vehicle, Hank tried not to think about the drug supply chain he and Rafe had created. Each week, they bribed the commissary staff with drugs to get alcohol and food, which they brought to the factory in exchange for more drugs. They then bribed the guards at the gate, Otto, and numerous others for access to areas officially deemed off-limits, to process film in clandestine locations, and to convey the real, unaltered stories to the Allies through underground networks.
Otto stopped the vehicle in front of a bar, which was lively despite the noon hour. With his shakes gone and a newfound confidence, he was ready to party. While all three entered the establishment, Rafe and Hank would soon find their way out the back door. They weren’t giving Otto the slip, as the drugs also seemed to provide the soldiers with superhuman senses. It had all been prearranged. Within the hour, the two would return and be on their way to an official gig.
As Hank and Rafe exited through the back door, Hank said, “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”
“First John, verse 5:19,” Rafe answered. “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And I paraphrase.” He glanced at Hank as they made their way down the alley. “We are fighting Satan, my friend.”
“I know. That’s what you always say. But, if we fight like this, are we any better?”
“What would you prefer to do? Stand around with niceties? Bake them a cake, or sing for them? The only way to fight against brutality, heartlessness, and evil is to fight on their terms. They don’t understand anything else.”
They entered the back door of an office building and made their way up the stairwell to the roof. It was empty, as it always was. With the Jews confined to their own sector, the population of the rest of the city had dwindled. Offices were vacant, and the army had seized most of the landlords' rental homes for their soldiers.
They crouched down and made their way to the side of the roof that provided an unhindered view of the Jewish sector. Hank snapped several photographs. A bread line snaked for several blocks, as it always did at this time of day; the people appeared noticeably thinner, their clothing hanging as if it were all oversized. Several of the buildings appeared burned out, and one was still smoldering; Hank would have to dig to find out what had occurred there overnight. A soldier walking beside the bread line suddenly stopped and struck a young woman in the back of her head with the butt of his rifle. He continued walking as several people in line attempted to help the woman off the street where she had fallen. Hank hoped he had captured it all on film. As he snapped, he dictated observations to Rafe, who dutifully wrote them down.
There was so much more to photograph, and so much he wanted to write, but time was of paramount importance. He slid away from the barrier along the edge and removed the film, placing it into a canister. He handed it to Rafe, who quickly made his way to the door and down the steps. Hank knew he would bribe his point of contact to use the phone to call in a story to the magazine and to have another person smuggle the film out. The bribes, like the others, consisted of boxes of Pervitin.
As Hank slipped a new roll of film into the camera, he couldn’t help but question his role as a drug dealer. Bribing the factory manager was akin to buying drugs on the black market, and bribing others along the chain was clearly the distribution of drugs, even if they had been over the counter in Germany. They were addictive. Maybe, he thought, it was no worse than bribing alcoholics with alcohol. But when he thought of Otto and compared him to his son, Ray, his heart knew what he was doing was wrong.
Ray had joined the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Barely sixteen and too young for service, a flawed system had allowed him to join. Letters from home had finally begun to trickle through, and they were agonizingly slow to reach Hank; he suspected that numerous Nazis read them before they ever reached him. Dottie had to know this, and Ray would certainly know and understand the government’s policy of “loose lips sink ships,” so Hank received vague information, only that Ray was somewhere in the Pacific fighting the Japanese.
Hank made his way back down the stairwell and along the alley to the bar, where he joined Otto. Hank ordered a drink as he always did, which caused Otto to order another. As he leisurely raised the glass to his lips, he knew this would keep Otto in place for the additional minutes Rafe would need to get their information out.
Maybe Rafe was right. Perhaps they had to fight differently. The soldiers could have murdered them when they were first discovered, and they’d had ample opportunities to knock them off since. It was their usefulness in their propaganda machine that kept them alive. He only hoped the film and underground reports would be helpful to the Allies and those back home. After all, he thought as he raised his glass again, if he were going to compromise his morals and ethics, it had better be worth it.
17
Max
In Germany, the process to exclude Jews, political dissidents, and others the Nazis deemed undesirable took years. It was a gradual undertaking, often with baby steps, so the general populace wasn’t alarmed by a sudden cultural change. Max learned immediately, however, that such would not be the case in Poland.
Much of the city’s medieval architecture was saved through a hasty deal and total surrender. The Polish Army either fled or surrendered before the Nazis were on their doorstep, leaving a void that the newcomers quickly filled. With the language now officially German and Rafe speaking passable German, Max realized his position as an interpreter was on tenuous ground. With troops running roughshod through the city, he went through great efforts to discover who was in charge and then track him down for a deal.
His point of contact would be Oberführer Wilhelm Keller. With his Nazi armband and newly appointed corner office as proof of his esteemed stature, he positioned himself as a liaison to journalists for propaganda that Berlin would surely want, as well as an insider who could identify threats to the Nazi regime.
The Jews were an easy target, as they were more easily identified. The Nazis began by burning or confiscating their homes, businesses, and synagogues, and soldiers were often given free rein to confiscate any of their less valuable possessions for their own personal use, while those items of considerable value were sent to Berlin. An area of the city was established to corral the people, and barbed wire was erected faster than Max could have imagined possible.
As Jews were rounded up and sorted, Max accompanied Wilhelm to the block where Mrs. Weiss owned much of the property, including the apartment where his mother lived and the bakery that he so often frequented. Max witnessed the sorting with dizzying speed, as if the process had been repeated countless times and was so well-oiled that there was hardly any thought given to it. Able-bodied men were placed in one group and able-bodied women in another, as they would be used for slave labor. They were immediately marched through the city under guard to the Jewish sector.
The elderly and the invalid were shot on the spot, their bodies left where they fell. Children suffered the worst atrocities, as they were separated from their parents, and those too young to work were killed in ways too violent for Max to watch, but he could not avoid their screams. His nerves were rattled so severely that he was certain someone would notice him shaking. He remained close to Wilhelm, afraid that soldiers would mistake him for an undesirable, and barked orders whenever possible to further cement his status.
They were thankfully getting ready to leave the neighborhood when Mrs. Weiss was hauled out of her bakery with her daughter, Celina. Max was so close that he witnessed the recognition and relief in Mrs. Weiss’s eyes when she spotted him, but when his eyes rolled from her to Celina, he found the younger woman’s face growing pale as she stared at his armband. For the briefest of moments, he wanted to tear the armband off and run out of sight, but he forced himself to assume a noble stature.
“That woman and her daughter,” he said to Wilhelm in German, “are hard workers. I suggest that you send them to the Jewish sector.”
“Max!” Mrs. Weiss shouted. “Max!”
Max glanced again in her direction. Soldiers were manhandling her, knocking her kerchief askew, and Celina had been pushed against the brick wall.
