War and Resistance, page 1
War and
RESISTANCE
SOPHIE MASSON
An Omnibus Book from Scholastic Australia
In memory of my grandparents.
PART ONE
PRELUDE
CHAPTER
ONE
ROTORUA, NEW ZEALAND,
30 MARCH 1939
It was stuffy in the town hall. There were a few high windows in the room, but they were closed. The wooden chairs were set up close together, to fit all the people packed into the room. Even so there weren’t enough chairs, and people were standing at the back of the room, two to three deep.
Sasha was seated with her mother and five-year-old twin brothers in the first row, and though she tried to concentrate on her father’s speech, the fact that she had heard this same talk several times before made her mind wander.
‘Cast your minds back twenty years,’ he was saying. ‘The war, that terrible war of 1914 to 1918, which caused such terrible carnage, had ended. Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, Germany was forced to publicly accept that it carried the most blame for the war. We would make them pay for it, in money, land, and humiliation, because we wanted revenge. It was understandable, of course. Millions of lives had been lost, millions more ruined. But looking back now, we can see it was a mistake. Crushing and beggaring Germany and ignoring the fact they too had suffered in the war made the perfect conditions for the rise of a vicious, clever bully like Adolf Hitler who promised that he would not only rebuild Germany into a great power once more, but also give them revenge on a grand scale. Six years ago, the German people elected him to the highest office in the land, and he proceeded to go about his promises. Today, Germany has rebuilt. Has re-armed. Has transformed in dark and dangerous ways. And now, under Hitler, it is ready for revenge. Already, we have seen a little of what that means. But worse is to come, and...’
He broke off as the sound of shouting filled the room. Turning, Sasha saw a small but noisy group of people bursting in through the door, waving placards which read NO MORE WAR and PEACE NOW and LIVE BY THE SWORD, DIE BY THE SWORD. As they ran forwards, pandemonium erupted as several men from the audience sprang from their seats and launched themselves at the intruders, wrestling the placards away from them and eventually frogmarching them, still shouting, out of the room.
It wasn’t the first time somebody had disrupted one of her father’s speeches on his Australasian lecture tour. Mostly, it all went well – people were eager to hear Louis Jullian, the famous French-Australian journalist and author, an expert in modern European politics. But not everyone liked what he said.
The twins’ eyes were round with excitement. ‘What’s going to happen?’ Paul asked. ‘Are the police going to take those bad people, Papa?’ added Simon.
Their father sighed. ‘They’re not bad people. They just don’t understand the true situation.’
‘Trouble is, they don’t want to understand,’ said their mother, sharply.
Louis smiled a little sadly. ‘You can’t reach everyone, Marina. Many people don’t want to hear. And who can blame them? We thought the last war was the one to end all wars. And here are the drumbeats, again. No wonder some people lash out.’
‘Their placards are silly,’ burst out Sasha. ‘You don’t live by the sword, Papa, you’re a writer!’
He laughed and ruffled her hair. ‘That’s right, I live by the pen. And some people say it’s mightier than the sword.’ His expression darkened. ‘Sometimes that’s true. In the wrong sort of way.’
Before Sasha could ask him what he meant, everyone went back to their seats and her father returned to his speech, but not quite the one he’d prepared.
‘Just because the Versailles treaty was a mistake,’ he said, ‘doesn’t mean we must keep making mistakes. And the mistake now is to keep making excuses for Germany, to keep giving Hitler a chance to reform, when he never will. We can try and appease him all we like, we can allow him to get away with taking over Austria and Lithuania and now Czechoslovakia. We can raise barely a murmur when he mounts vile persecutions. We can ignore all the wicked things he and his Nazis have done – all in the name of peace. But it’s wrong. And what’s more, it won’t work. Hitler set it all out in his book, Mein Kampf, which he wrote years before he became the German Chancellor. He has never changed his mind. Hitler is no ordinary leader, and under him and his band of ruthless thugs, Germany has become no ordinary country. A darkness has engulfed it that is hard to understand.
‘My friends, Last October, in Berlin, I saw that darkness with my own eyes. Shops and houses looted and smashed and burned, people threatened, beaten, even killed. You’ll have read about it in the papers, no doubt. Kristallnacht, they called it. The Night of Crystal, because of all the broken glass that lay about in the streets afterwards. But my friends, behind that pretty name lies a horrible thing, and that is the true nature of Hitler and his Nazis.’
He paused. He was pale, with two red spots in his cheeks, his fists clenching. A hush had descended on the room, and Sasha remembered how shaken her father was when he’d come back from Berlin. Sitting here now, in a warm room on the quiet other side of the globe, Sasha felt a sudden chill, as if the poisonous breath of another and more dreadful world had crept in under the door. Shivering, she caught the glance of a teenage boy sitting a few seats away. Tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed, dressed in neat shirt and trousers, he looked about sixteen, four years older than herself. Their eyes met and he nodded, briefly, before she turned away again to concentrate on the rest of her father’s speech.
‘Nazism is an evil that must be resisted,’ her father went on, ‘and it won’t be appeased, no matter what we do. Appeasement is not only contemptible, but it’s foolish. All it’s done is to make Hitler think no-one is willing to stand up against him, and given him time to make Germany even stronger, ever more threatening. The time for appeasement is past, long past. We have to stand firm now. We have to say No more!’
A storm of applause followed his words, and afterwards, a long line of people came up to shake his hand. Amongst them was a man who looked like an older version of the boy she’d seen earlier, only there were medals pinned to his jacket and he walked with a limp. ‘Monsieur Jullian,’ he said, ‘I have never forgotten the day you came to see us in France in 1916. The Maori Battalion, that is. I’ve kept the piece you wrote.’ And he handed Louis a carefully folded bit of newspaper. ‘I sent it to my parents. It was the first time they’d seen a picture of me since I’d joined up. I can’t tell you what it meant to them. I am so glad to have heard you today.’
‘And I am so glad you came,’ said Sasha’s father. ‘I’ve never forgotten that day either, and the privilege it was to speak with such legendary soldiers! Thank you, Mr?’
‘Tameti,’ the man responded, ‘Amos Tameti, and this is my son Joe,’ he added, pointing to the boy hovering nearby. ‘He is keen to join up as soon as he can.’
‘That is most admirable. I am pleased to meet you both,’ said Louis, handing him back the scrap of paper. ‘May I present in my turn my wife, Marina, my daughter Alexandra – we call her Sasha – and I would present my boys Paul and Simon, too,’ he added, laughing, ‘if they hadn’t run off outside.’
Everyone nodded and smiled. ‘I wish you good luck for the rest of your trip,’ Amos Tameti said. ‘Where are you speaking next?’
‘This is my last engagement. Tomorrow we leave for Sydney. We’ll be spending time there with family for three months or so before going back to Europe.’
‘Safe travelling, then,’ said Amos Tameti, ‘and may God bless you all. You are doing good work.’ And, touching his hat to them in farewell, he left, with his tongue-tied son in tow.
‘Excuse me,’ said the next person in line, a fair, thin woman in a crumpled dress, ‘I could not help overhearing. If it’s not a rude question, Mr Jullian, why go back? To Europe, I mean. It sounds dangerous there.’
Sasha’s father exchanged a glance with his wife and daughter before replying, ‘Yes, that’s true. But my work is over there. And my family agrees that we should return, rather than stay in Australia. I’ve never been a soldier, but I do fight. In my own way, with words.’
Sasha knew that her father’s words were powerful. They helped people understand and opened their eyes, even, sometimes, changed their minds. It made them care about things happening a long way away from their homes.
Once, she had dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps, but though she loved reading books, writing didn’t come easily to her. ‘It didn’t to me either at first,’ her father had reassured her. ‘It was your uncle Thomas who was the writer when we were young. I much preferred taking photographs.’ But I’m no good at photography either, Sasha had thought. I don’t have any real talents. Not like Papa, famous everywhere for his work. And not like Mama, who built up her little travel agency in Paris into a society success. Why, she thought, with parents like mine, why do I have to be so ordinary?
CHAPTER
TWO
BERLIN, 20 APRIL 1939
Dieter could hear them arguing. His mother had told him to go to his room, but he could still hear them. His chest burned with a familiar anger. He was being kept out of it because they considered he was still a child. Yet he was thirteen in just six weeks’ time!
He clenched his fists. The cause of the argument was the cause of most arguments in his family: his father. Dieter hated him. His father had just come out of prison; he was ragged, unwashed and stank. He was a drunkard, a troublemaker, an unpatriot
Of course, Dieter didn’t carry his father’s name, but his stepfather’s, and his stepfather was beyond reproach, but you never knew. What if other boys at school found out that Dieter was actually the son of that ragged jailbird and that Herr Spengler wasn’t Dieter’s real father at all, but just his stepfather?
That man could be the ruin of the whole family, just as he had nearly been years ago in Vienna, when he had walked out on Dieter and his mother. Dieter was only five at the time, and his mother had no money. If it hadn’t been for the Spengler family’s kindness, who knows what might have happened? When after her divorce Dieter’s mother had married Franz Spengler, no-one was surprised. And when his blossoming career had earned Spengler a transfer to Berlin five years ago, everyone felt it was for the best. In Berlin, they would be far away from Vienna and its bad memories and from the noxious influence of that man, Hans von Leitner, Dieter’s real father.
And so it had proved to be, and even if Spengler was occasionally harsh, it was just something to be endured, for mostly things were calm. But then one day von Leitner had appeared, demanding to see, ‘my son, my Hans-Dieter, if you please!’ (Dieter had long ago dropped the ‘Hans’ as too much of a reminder of that man). Spengler had sent him packing, of course, but that had been the cause of the first argument between him and his wife. Von Leitner had not given up, and until he had been arrested and imprisoned, had turned up at least twice more. Spengler had wanted to call the police, but for some reason Dieter could not quite understand, his mother refused. Although he had left her and her son in the lurch, she said she felt pity for him. And she seemed to think it would be a good idea for some kind of contact to be made. She claimed it would help Dieter understand how lucky he was now, as if he needed to clap eyes on that man to know that! Then von Leitner had been arrested for defacing a Nazi party poster and writing, ‘Murderers!’ on it. It had earned him a good beating, and a few months in jail. And a respite for the family. But yesterday he had turned up again, to stir up trouble.
‘Why are you so weak when it comes to him? Is it about him being a von something? Can’t you understand, being an aristocrat doesn’t matter two hoots any more!’ Spengler’s voice was raised even more than usual, so Dieter heard the words clearly. Was it true? Was his mother, the daughter of a humble tailor, still impressed by the background of her first husband? Von Leitner was the only son of a baron who had inherited the title and a crumbling old Austrian castle on his father’s death. There wasn’t any money, however; the last war had pretty much destroyed the Leitner fortune, as it had destroyed so much else.
‘You know it’s not that!’ His mother’s tone was shrill, indignant. ‘I just remember he fought for our country, once. He was the sole survivor of his unit before being captured by those horrid Russians. He deserves some understanding for that.’
‘Oh, and I don’t?’ There was a dangerous note in Spengler’s voice. Dieter’s stepfather had not fought in the war, due to a heart murmur which had made him unfit for service at the front. Instead, he’d worked as a clerk in a munitions factory before later training as a translator. It was a sore point with him, Dieter knew.
‘Of course you do, Franz! I didn’t mean that at all.’ His mother’s voice was soothing.
‘The man’s a criminal,’ Spengler growled. ‘A drunk and a criminal. If he comes anywhere near our house again, I’ll call the police. And you won’t stop me, do you understand?’
Dieter didn’t hear his mother’s reply, she spoke too quietly. Things would calm down now, he knew. His mother would give up the argument once more, and his stepfather would think he had won, for the moment. Women! Dieter thought. They never give up. They just wait for the next chance.
Like Ingrid Braun, at school. Always teasing him about how serious he was. She was blonde, blue-eyed, pretty, the perfect model for one of those advertisements you saw in the paper, about the perfect Germans. Aryan, they called it. You were supposed to look like that, if you were a girl, that is. If you were a boy, you were meant to be tall and muscly too as well as preferably being blond. That wasn’t Dieter. He was small for his age, with brown hair, brown eyes and high cheekbones. If he was annoyed with Dieter, Herr Spengler sometimes said he suspected there was Polish blood on the von Leitner side. Dieter had no idea if there was. But the thought made his throat tighten. The Poles were Slavs, like the Russians and the Bulgarians and Czechoslovaks and people like that. And Slavs were not much better than Jews and gypsies, he’d learned that at school. They were untermensch, the teacher had said. ‘Underpeople’, inferiors, beasts of burden fit only for the most menial work. Dieter hadn’t met any Slavs or gypsies, though he had met Jews, like Herr Hoffman, the old bookseller who used to have a shop and lending library on the corner. Dieter used to like going there, as a child. Herr Hoffman used to let him read books for free, on rainy afternoons. He said he’d never met such a great reader, and such things had to be encouraged. But one day Herr Hoffman had gone, without saying anything to anybody, and Herr Weber had taken it over. He was a pure Aryan. But he didn’t like children pawing over his books. He said you either bought or you were out. Dieter had stopped going. He never went there now. It wasn’t the same, with Herr Hoffman gone.
Sudden tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, and he angrily dashed them away. He could not waste time thinking about people who were of no consequence. He must not be weak. He had to be strong. He had to show everyone that he was more of a resolute German than any of them, despite the disadvantages of his birth. When he joined the Hitler Youth, he would work at becoming a shining light of his unit. Yesterday, there had been a celebration at school of the Fuhrer’s birthday, and students had read out compositions in his honour. The teacher had praised Dieter’s as being particularly good at describing Adolf Hitler’s greatness. Dieter had felt so proud. His mother and stepfather had been pleased. But now those good feelings had been taken away. By von Leitner shambling back into their lives. His stomach churned. If only they could be rid of him for good!
CHAPTER
THREE
SYDNEY, JUNE 1935
Sasha loved Sydney, even now, with the first chills of June announcing winter. She loved the way it felt both like a city and like something wilder, with its blue skies, big trees, and flocks of colourful birds. She loved the sparkling Harbour with its ferries and yachts and the elegant new bridge leading into the city centre and its big wide streets. She loved the way people were so friendly and everything seemed so relaxed. The drum beats of war seemed far away, even though news of the situation in Europe was in the papers every day, and refugees arrived in greater and greater numbers in Sydney.
They’d been here two-and-a-half months, living at Neutral Bay in Uncle Thomas’ place, and they only had three weeks left, as they were leaving on a P and O steamer on the 8th of July. Sasha wasn’t looking forward to going. She could quite imagine herself staying here and becoming Australian. She’d made firm friends with the girl next door, Lizzie Page, a lively redhead her age who like her had two brothers, only Lizzie’s were older: Jim was seventeen and Adam eighteen. They were much too grown-up to pay much attention to the girls but they were kind enough, and once had even taken Sasha and Lizzie out on the Harbour in the boat they’d built. Sasha thought it must be so much nicer to have glamorous older brothers than pesky younger ones, but thank goodness, the twins had found friends here as well and disappeared practically every day with them.
Her parents seemed to like it here too. Louis was kept busy with the occasional lecture, writing articles and making notes for his new book, as well as catching up with friends from the past. These included schoolmates from when he and Thomas had briefly gone to Newington College, before the last war, an elderly couple called the Jacksons whom he’d met in Belgium in 1914, and Brian Cook, who’d been a war correspondent like himself on the Western Front, and now worked for ABC radio as a news editor. Meanwhile, encouraged by Thomas’ wife Mabel, who was an artist, Sasha’s mother had taken to painting. She loved it, especially after Mabel introduced her to the famous writer and illustrator May Gibbs, who also lived in Neutral Bay, in a beautiful house called Nutcote. Sasha’s father had told her that many years ago Miss Gibbs had recommended his work to the editor of the Sydney Mail, when he was just starting out. It was the first Australian newspaper that had published a Louis Jullian piece, but certainly not the last. And now here was another connection, with May Gibbs’ illustrations inspiring Marina to try her own hand at illustrating for children! That renewed connection was down to Mabel: she was good like that.
