Ashes (28 page)

Papa came into the kitchen. Barely acknowledging my presence, he slapped something down on the kitchen table.

“Papa, what is it?”

“Take a look at that.” He indicated the papers he had put on the table then he sank down into a chair opposite me. I began reading what was called “12 Theses Against the Un-German Spirit.” I skimmed down the pages

The first thesis declared:
language and literature have their roots in the
Volk
. It is the German
Volk
's responsibility to assure its language and literature are pure and unadulterated expression of its
Volk
tradition.

The fourth and fifth stated:
Our most dangerous enemy is the Jew and those who are his slaves. . . . A Jew can only think Jewish. If he writes in German he is lying.
The screed was written against Jewish writers but apparently one did not have to be Jewish to offend the purity of the German spirit. Many names on the list of banned authors I did not know, but several I did. Jack London! Ernest Hemingway! Mark Twain! None of them Jewish, but all deemed offensive.

“They'll start building the pyres soon,” Papa muttered.

“Pyres? For what?” My voice dwindled away.

Papa reached across the kitchen table and took my hand. “Pyres for burning books, Gaby.”

“You can't be right. Pyres . . . they burned witches on pyres long ago, four hundred years ago.”

“Oh! I'm sure they'll find some witches, too,” Papa said, standing up. “I need to discuss this with Hessie.” He walked out of the kitchen and I soon heard the front door close behind him. He left the papers on the table. I was afraid to move them. I didn't want to touch them again. Was it just last week that Papa and I had stood at the sink and burned the picture of Hitler? Was it because we had burned Hitler's photograph that now the flames were coming back to haunt us? Had our little kitchen sink fire ignited a larger one? I knew this was irrational. But suddenly the world had become irrational.

 

 

One day in early May, Rosa and I met at the southeast corner of the Opernplatz, which was adjacent to the university. We joined a throng of spectators as students in the uniform of the German Student Association and Brown Shirts with swastika badges on their sleeves carried timbers to the center of the stone square. We watched for perhaps fifteen minutes and within that short time the scaffolding for the pyre rose three or four feet.

“How tall will they build it, do you think?” Rosa whispered to me. A robust man standing next to her who wore a monocle and was dressed in a three-piece suit with a gold watch chain spanning his large belly turned to us. “As high as it must be to burn all those Jew and Commie books,” he said, smiling pleasantly as if this were the most natural thing in the world to say, as if we had inquired about the weather and was he told us it going to be sunny today. I reached for Rosa's hand and we both turned and left.

But the scaffolding for the pyre was like a magnet. We came back to the square often over the next few days. Perhaps we came with our secret hopes that somehow when we arrived we would find that the building had stopped, the scaffolding had been removed, and the lovely broad stone plaza had returned to normal. No such thing happened. The pyre continued to grow. It spread out as well, like a tumor, a terrible malignancy. I thought of my father's remarks months before. It was the night that Philipp Lenard had visited. He told me about how Lenard had led the attacks on Einstein and Jewish physics. He was trying to assure me. His words came back to me:
And remember things are getting better, I really think so. By spring there will be no more Hitler, just lovely tulips.
I recalled the wistfulness in his eyes.

Now it was spring and the tulips I had helped Mama plant were in full bloom and so were the lilacs. The scent of the linden along the broad avenue named for the fragrant trees was just beginning to tinge the air.

Rosa and I were not the only ones fascinated by the pyre. Every day the crowds watching the erection of the scaffolding grew. Vendors had begun to come to sell hot pretzels and ice cones from pushcarts. There was an odd joviality to the scene, which was strange and uncomfortable and yet we kept coming back. One day when we arrived, the scent of the linden trees was very powerful. The wind was strong and blowing the fragrance across the square. One could even hear the rustle of the heart-shaped leaves. As I drank in the scent of the linden trees and stared at the scaffolding, I was trying to imagine what the pyre would look like burning and how the smell of the petrol and the flames eating all that paper would eradicate the perfume of the lindens. Just as I was thinking this, the woman next to me who was holding a baby turned to her friend and spoke. “You know, books are actually hard to burn. My son went with a group of engineering students into the Rhineland. They were all part of the German Student Association. They did some experimentations while they were there to explore what was the best fuel for igniting books. Oh, they tried all sorts of things—paraffin, gasoline. He came back reeking of fuel and burnt paper.”

And then it came to me, a memory—bitter, acrid, a hot searing blade cutting through the scent of the linden trees. That same odor that I had detected in Karl's beautifully tailored jacket when he had come to our house for dinner the night he had returned from the Rhineland. It was the smell of burning books.

In two weeks the sheep-like masses can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that the men are prepared to put on uniform and kill and be killed, for the sake of the worthless aims of a few interested parties. Compulsory military service seems to me the most disgraceful symptom of that deficiency in personal dignity from which civilized mankind is suffering to-day.

-Albert Einstein,
“The World as I See It”

 

 

 

 

O
ne day in the second week of May, the phone rang as I was working on some mathematics problems Papa had assigned to me.

I jumped up to answer it.

“Gaby!”

“Rosa! Where are you calling from? It's a school day.”

“Yes, it's Wednesday, May tenth.” She paused. “Do you know what is happening today?”

“Yes, they are lighting the pyre, but aren't you in school?”

“No. I'm calling from downtown. Meet me at the Brandenburg Gate, on Ebertstrasse near the underground entrance. I'll explain when you get here. Come quick. Make any excuse to get out of the house.”

Papa had gone to meet Hessie and Mama and Ulla were out doing wedding things. No excuse would be needed.

When I got off the bus, Rosa was already there waiting for me.

“So what are you doing here?” I asked.

“Hah!” A sharp sound exploded from her. It wasn't really a laugh at all, more of a snarl. “Pays to have connections.” There was a bitterness I had never seen before in her gray-green eyes.

“What connections are you talking about?”

“Fräulein Hofstadt. She might have left school, but she has not forgotten us. She works in the office of the Ministry of Propaganda now, and she had three special vans sent to school to take us and the books from the library that were on the list to Opernplatz to witness what we were told would be a wonderful event, an ‘affirmation of the German spirit.' She was on the same van I rode in, telling us the great scene we were about to behold like a tour director.”

“How did you get away?”

“Easy. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of people there—students mostly with Gestapo, SA, and SS troops. I just wandered away from our school group.”

“So they finally finished the building. I want to see the pyre,” I said.

“No, you don't. It's going to be awful.”

“I know.” I had never told her about Karl, my suspicions that he had taken part in a burning in the Rhineland. I just couldn't bring myself to tell her. It was Ulla that I should have told, but my sister seemed to be in some sort of trance these days, ever since the engagement party. A hundred times a day I had wanted to say something to Ulla. To tell her that she could get out of this marriage. But I watched her and it was as if she had crossed a distant horizon and receded into some remote landscape. Often her hands were loosely clasped over her stomach where this baby slept, oblivious to the world that was disintegrating, the world that it would be born into.

I felt a bitterness steal over me. “But I want to see it anyway!” I took Rosa's hand and yanked it. “Come on.”

 

 

The Opernplatz was crammed with throngs of students and SA officers. There were vehicles as well, and on top of one an SA officer screamed out instructions to make way for the arriving trucks with their cargos of “filth,” by which he meant the books.

It was impossible to see what exactly was happening. Rosa and I were getting jostled and squeezed from all directions. A young man wearing a brown shirt and swastika, the uniform of the German Student Association, came up to us.

“Good girls! You are here. This is the schedule of events!” He shoved a piece of paper into my hands. Rosa read over my shoulder. The torchlight procession was to begin at eleven that evening. The second item on the agenda was band music and singing! Singing as books burned! It was as if the whole world was being turned upside down. After the singing there would be an address by Kurt Ellersiek, president of the German Student Association. And then the minister of propaganda himself, Paul Joseph Goebbels, would speak and then ignite the pyres of books.

“Does your mother know you are here, Rosa?” I asked.

“No.” Color suddenly flushed Rosa's checks. “Let's go tell her. And we can see all this from her office. The classics department is right over there.” She pointed at one of the imposing neoclassical buildings that faced out on the square. We threaded our way through the crowd toward the entrance where Rosa's mother worked only to be met by Göring's new uniformed Gestapo officers coming down the steps with loads of books in their arms.

“
Achtung
! Make way! Make way!” We had to flatten ourselves against the stone railing. I tried to look at the books they carried but did not recognize any titles.

“Come on, let's go. Mama's office is on the third floor,” Rosa said.

She and I ran up the stairs, meeting more officers and students who were dressed in brown shirts with swastika armbands coming down the stairs.

“This is the Classics department,” I whispered to Rosa. “What are they burning,
The Odyssey
?
The Iliad
?”

“Who knows,” Rosa muttered

At just that moment a book clattered down the stairs. I bent over to pick it up and read the title
. Homeric Odyssey and the Evolution of Justice: A Critical Analysis
by Max Rothberg.

“May I have that, miss.” It was not a question but a command. A hand suddenly appeared inches from my nose.

I will hate myself if I give this book to him
. I clutched the book to my chest. “I don't want to give it to you,” I whispered. My heart was thumping so hard I thought it would jump from my chest. I pressed the book harder.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I looked up, genuinely confused. He was young. A student. He was dressed in brown. “I mean I don't want to give it to you.”

“You don't have a choice.”

I backed away from him. He couldn't snatch it, or he would drop the armload of other books he was carrying.

“Yes, I do!” I hissed, then turned and ran up the stairs. Rosa followed me.

“Go left!” she yelled. We raced down a long corridor. “This way! There's a back staircase. We can use it to get to Mama's office.”

There was a door with pebbled glass and letters that read DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS
.

“Rosa!” a woman behind a desk who was not Rosa's mother exclaimed when she saw the two of us. “Rosa, what are you doing here?”

“Is my mother here?”

“No, dear. She had to go to your grandmother's. She wasn't feeling well. And I must say that although I don't wish ill for you grandmother, this is a good time to get out of here.” She cast a glance toward the window. “I'm leaving myself as soon as I can. But why are you here?”

“My school brought me.”

The woman blinked. “
Mein Gott!
They bring children to this! Well, I think you're safer in here than down there.” The woman stood up and walked to the window that looked down on Opernplatz. She shook her head wearily. “Not since the Middle Ages!” That was all she said, then took a wrap from the coat tree, picked up her handbag from her desk, and walked out.

“I guess I'd better call Mama,” Rosa said.

Rosa began dialing her grandmother's number.

“Be sure to tell her Fräulein Hofstadt brought you to see the book burning. She'll have to let you leave school now.”

Rosa nodded.

“Mama! Yes, it's me. Is Grandma all right? Oh . . . oh . . . yes . . . Mama you'll never guess where I am.”

Rosa began to explain. “Yes, Gaby is here. . . . Wait, I'll ask.” She put her hand over the receiver. “Mama wants to know if you can spend the night with me, because Grandma's having one of her heart episodes and she needs to stay with her, but if she has to run out for the doctor she wants me there in the building.”

I nodded. Then I called my house and Mama answered the phone. I told her I was with Rosa and was spending the night at her apartment. I did not tell her where I was calling from. I suppose Mama thought I was already at Rosa's, and I thought it best to let her believe that. Mama seemed almost relieved in some way that I was spending the night with Rosa. She just asked that I get back the next morning by nine o'clock.