The Auslander (3 page)

The only thing they didn't hit you for was being horrible to other children. Bullying was something that didn't seem to bother the adults who worked there at all. Bigger children stole food from smaller children. The more timid children, or boys who had lost limbs or an eye, were endlessly teased. Children who sat in the dormitory reading a book would have it snatched from their hands and thrown across the room.

Piotr couldn't believe how, in barely a week, he had gone from the comfort and security of his home and parents, to this squalor and misery. It was like a terrible nightmare. A strange, numb grief settled over him like a cocoon, and he wondered if he would ever smile again.

.

Warsaw was in ruins. The siege, the street fighting and, most of all, the bombing in 1939, had left livid scars. Now, two years later, a faint smell of brick dust, leaking gas pipes and ruptured sewers still hung over the city and lodged in the back of the throat. Street lights damaged in the fighting stood at strange angles, unlit and awaiting repair. The roads had been cleared, of course, and the trams were running again. German traffic signs and army vehicles were all over the place. Streets had been renamed. Ujazdowski Avenue was now Siegesstrasse – Victory Street. There were no Polish cars. The Poles had to make do with the tram or a horse and cart.

During the day, Piotr would roam the streets. The children in the orphanage were free to come and go as they pleased. No one cared enough about them to tell them otherwise.

He liked Warsaw. He had been here twice before, with his parents. The buildings still fascinated him, especially the Prudential Insurance Agency offices on Napoleon Square, which were sixteen storeys high and the tallest building in Poland. Now it was covered in ugly scars and most of the windows had the glass missing from them.

The people here looked grey, gaunt and downtrodden. Their museums and galleries had been closed, and they were even barred from some of their own parks. Only Germans could enter Lazienki Park. Ujazdowski Park was for the Poles and on a sunny weekend it was as crowded as ever.

But there was something distracted about the Polish people now. They were clinging on to life at their shoddy markets, desperate to trade anything valuable for a little food. More than a few hobbled on crutches; some with missing legs were younger than Piotr. Musicians played at these street markets, sawing at violins, pulling wheezing accordions, grateful for small change.

The German troops were everywhere – those on leave in their soft caps, those stationed there in their helmets and rifles. They treated the locals with casual brutality, especially the Jews, now easily recognised with their yellow star armbands. The soldiers always had a kick up the backside for a Jew. They had to hurry back to their crowded, stinking ghetto at Chlodna Street. Piotr peered through the windows of the tram as it rattled through the ghetto, wondering if it was here that the boys from the village had been sent. Like him they had lost their homes, and perhaps their parents too. And even in his lowest moments, Piotr suspected fate had treated them far worse than him.

.

CHAPTER 6

Berlin

August 31, 1941

.

Professor Franz Kaltenbach felt everything was going his way. It was one of those days. Outside his open window, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Dahlem-Dorf, Berlin, the sunshine lit the wide leafy avenue and the sky was a deep blue. The smell of fresh cut grass mingled with the scrubbed bleach tang of the laboratories and the smell of formaldehyde from another batch of human material which had arrived from one of the camps that morning.

For most of the year the avenue below his window would be bustling with students on the way to classes and seminars at the various university buildings scattered along Ihnestrasse. But they were on vacation and he was making the most of his empty timetable to catch up on research and consultancy work.

In that week alone he had made four-hundred Reichmarks for advice to the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditarily and Congenitally-Based Illnesses. He hoped the committee would decide that parents of sickly infants should be sterilised.

Then there was his consultant post with the Genealogical Office of the Reich. Since the occupation of Poland, many O
starbeiters
– Eastern workers – had begun to work in Germany. Now more of them would be coming from the conquered territories of the Soviet Union. Despite the strict laws and draconian punishments that forbade relationships between eastern subhumans – the
üntermensch
– and Germans, they still came before the courts – a sorry parade of farmers' wives pregnant from affairs with Polish agricultural workers, and middle-aged factory managers fooling about with Polish maids.

Kaltenbach had to establish the degree of racial purity in the child. If the Pole had some German blood, then the offspring might be considered acceptable. If the Pole was unadulterated Slav, then the child would be deemed an ‘unwanted population addition'. What happened after that – a termination if the child was yet to be born or consignment to the lowest sort of orphanage – was not the Professor's business. In these cases the parents would be punished harshly. The Slav, especially if male, would be executed. The German would be sent to a labour camp.

More agreeable work came with confirming the authenticity of the Ancestral Passports required for membership of the SS – with candidates having to provide evidence of untainted Aryan bloodline back to 1800.

Deciding who was ‘racially valuable' or ‘racially worthless' was making Kaltenbach a handsome income. It also made a major contribution to the recovery and cleansing of the blood that Reichsführer Himmler had spoken of when he visited the Institute. Professor Kaltenbach took great pride in that.

Life had not always been so good. When, as a young academic completing his PhD, no one would offer him a university teaching post. The thought of having to waste his abilities teaching basic sciences to children in high school, just to make a living, incensed him.

But then Hitler had come to power in 1933 and the Nazi broom had swept through the universities leaving them
judenfrei
– Jew Free. All at once there were plenty of posts to fill. And Kaltenbach was just the sort of fellow Germany's new masters were looking for. A member of the Nazi Party since 1931, he had particularly impressed them with his research into racial blood groups. He was convinced, given time and funding, that he could discover chemical indicators in blood serum that would prove beyond argument the racial origins of a person.

This idea struck a chord with the new regime and money was immediately made available. Permission to marry, membership of the elite SS, even the right to breed for some of the lesser elements in German society, all depended on racial purity. A medical test that would prove beyond argument that a person was tainted with Jewish or Slavic blood would be a great benefit. And so much more convenient than having to demand, obtain and then check documents proving Aryan ancestry. The paperwork alone was a major waste of human effort and the Reich's resources. The fact that such a test would deprive him of much of his profitable consultancy work had occurred to Kaltenbach. But a discovery like that would see him acclaimed as one of Germany's greatest scientists.

His research had proved frustratingly inconclusive and in the late 1930s had been taken over by scientists at the Robert Koch Institute in the centre of Berlin. His rivals were still working on the idea but seemed no nearer a breakthrough. Now the most prestigious work at the Institute had shifted to research into twins and the gypsies, and to his colleague Frau Doktor Karin Magnussen, who was convinced that a more effective test of racial origin lay in a person's eyes, specifically the colouring and markings of the iris.

Kaltenbach's academic career had faltered along with his research. To achieve a directorship or some other senior post, he would need to make a significant discovery. Now he pottered along as an Assistant Director and contented himself with teaching and making a very comfortable living from his work on the committees.

The phone on his desk jingled. It was his friend, Doktor Fischer from the Race and Settlement Main Office. When work permitted, they often sat together on one or other committee.

‘Ah, Kaltenbach,' he said, ‘I have a most interesting specimen for you. A young lad from Warsaw. Thirteen years old. Classic Nordic features. He's in Landsberg, awaiting a family.'

‘It is generous of you to think of me, Fischer,' sighed Kaltenbach, ‘but I don't want a Polack. And neither does Frau Kaltenbach. Liese has no patience with them. You should hear the way she talks to the maids at the hostel.'

‘Hear me out, my dear Kaltenbach. This one, he's practically German. His mother has some Polish blood. Of course he speaks German like a native. So no tiresome language lessons. And his Arische table results are excellent. The cranial dimensions are practically perfect. I think you should come and have a look at him.'

The line was very noisy. Kaltenbach needed to discuss this with his wife. ‘I'll call you back tomorrow. Where are you? Still out in the General Government? What number? Good. Thank you.'

.

That night in their apartment, after the girls had been sent to bed, the Kaltenbachs pondered on their opportunity. ‘Reichsführer Himmler himself has said we have a duty to reclaim Nordic blood from the east,' said Professor Kaltenbach. ‘If only to replace our losses in the recent campaigns.'

Frau Kaltenbach was unconvinced. ‘I know you have always objected to me working. But my job at the
Lebensborn
hostel is very important to me. I do not want to give that up to be a nursemaid for a Polack. Besides, we have this apartment to maintain. I know you do well from your consultancies but until you receive a director's salary, you will still need my income. Unless you want us to move to Kreuzberg. Plenty of cheaper apartments there.'

His wife could be sharp. Kaltenbach looked into those resentful, piercing eyes and found it hard to remember what had drawn him to her when they were young. They had met when they were students together, soon after the Great War. His parents had never approved of the match. She was the first in her family to go to university. The Kaltenbachs had been university professors for the past three generations.

‘The boy is thirteen,' said Kaltenbach. ‘He won't need a nursemaid. Just some guidance along the right path.'

‘And what about the girls?' she said, ignoring his reply. ‘How will they take to a boy like that?'

‘They will understand that “a boy like that” is to be welcomed into the National Community with open arms. They understand their duties as National Socialists,' said Kaltenbach. ‘Of that I have no doubt.'

The girls would take to him in no time, he felt certain. Although recently, Elsbeth, the oldest at twenty, had been something of a disappointment. Announcing she no longer wished to continue working as a nurse, she had returned to live at home. They had found her work at the post office, which Kaltenbach felt was beneath her and them. She had been such an obedient, dutiful daughter before. Perhaps she was having her rebellious adolescence at a later stage than normal. She had even started to go to church again – not something the Party approved of at all. Traudl, a lively thirteen, and Charlotte, a delightful eight-year-old, had yet to dissatisfy him.

‘The boy, he's blond, you say?' said Frau Kaltenbach. ‘Won't he look a little out of place in this family?'

Professor Kaltenbach was dark, almost swarthy in appearance. His round face was beginning to look slightly podgy in early middle age. Frau Kaltenbach had thick brown hair. The girls were dark too. Nothing wrong with that. Dark hair was a classic trait of the Bavarian or Austrian German. The Führer himself was dark. But Kaltenbach had always envied his fairer, more Nordic-looking countrymen, like Gruppenführer Reinhard – with his blond hair and sharp features. He would be proud to bring up a boy who looked like that.

‘But he must be a strapping lad – thirteen you say?' said Frau Kaltenbach. ‘If he was a baby, perhaps the girls would be more likely to accept him.'

Her husband reached across the table and placed his hand on hers. ‘Liese, having Charlotte nearly killed you. And even if we took the risk of having another child, the probability is almost certainly for another girl. I propose we go and inspect him. Then we shall make our decision.'

Leave of absence was hastily arranged and Franz and Liese Kaltenbach headed east to the
Lebensborn
hostel at Landsberg.

.

CHAPTER 7

Landsberg

September 2, 1941

.

Piotr sat alone in a spartan side room of the hostel. Fräulein Spreckels had taken him here from the train station and left him with a friendly pinch on the cheek. For the last week or so he had been waiting. Too restless to settle down for long with a book or magazine, Piotr had been allowed to go for walks around the grounds, and no further.

‘I had two of you Polacks bolt on me the other week,' said the matron when he arrived. ‘That will NOT be happening again.'

‘Frau Matron,' said Piotr indignantly, ‘I
want
to go to Germany. Why are you all assuming I'm going to escape?'

Outside, late summer sunshine fell on the beautifully kept grounds of the hostel. Young women wandered in twos and threes with their babies and prams, chatting together. At first, Piotr had wondered what they were doing there. Then one of the nicer nurses had explained that the
Lebensborn
hostels weren't usually for children like him. They were mainly for unmarried young women eager to give a child to the Reich, but anxious to be away from disapproving relatives or gossiping neighbours. Once they had their baby, they would give it up for adoption and go back to their old lives.

The sunshine made Piotr feel lonely. It was five or six weeks now since his mother and father had been killed. He had stopped thinking about them as if they were still alive. For weeks afterwards he had said to himself ‘Dad will be really pleased with me for doing that' or ‘I must tell Mum, she'll find this interesting.'

Then the reality of it would hit him like a steam train and he would have to fight back his tears. This was the time when he most wished he had a brother or sister to keep him company. He had never felt more alone in his life. Still, what was it his mum had always told him? ‘Try to look on the bright side.' She used to say that whenever he complained about anything.

So he did. Yesterday the matron here had told him about the family from Berlin who were very interested in meeting him.

‘They are well-to-do, important people,' she said. ‘Professor Kaltenbach is an assistant director at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Frau Kaltenbach runs a
Lebensborn
hostel in Berlin like this one. They have three daughters. So if they take you, they'll make no end of a fuss of you.'

Now he had been called in and told that they were on their way. As he sat there wondering what they would be like, the clock ticked loudly. Where were they? What was happening?

He stared at a calendar on the wall. The picture for August showed an SS soldier in full uniform and knee-high black boots, crouching by a wicker pram. He was smiling benevolently at a tiny blond-haired baby who poked his head curiously over the side. Piotr thought of the soldier who had shooed him away from his family's farm in Wyszkow and shot his dog. He had the same black boots, and the same lightning stripes and death's-head skulls on his uniform.

Piotr got up and turned the calendar over. It
was
September now, after all. This picture showed a proud German mother with five boys – all dressed in the uniform of the
Hitler-Jugend
, all barely a year apart in age.

There was a commotion at the door. In walked a tall, burly man of middle age with a goatee beard – the kind that scientists often had – and wearing an expensive suit. He was followed by a rather frightening-looking woman of medium height and slim build, hair held back in a tight, elaborate plaited arrangement. She wore a matching skirt and jacket and a white blouse, and carried herself with glacial self-assurance.

‘Heil Hitler! My name is Professor Kaltenbach,' said the man, saluting and then shaking Piotr's hand vigorously.

Piotr stood and stared. Was he meant to ‘Heil' him back?

‘And this is Frau Kaltenbach.'

Frau Kaltenbach did not touch him. She kept her distance, gave him the ghost of a smile and stood, hands folded in front of her, to appraise him.

‘Guten Tag,' said Piotr. What was he to say to these people? Much to his embarrassment, he was blushing.

‘In Germany these days . . .' said Professor Kaltenbach – he was speaking slowly, as if to a foreigner who knew barely a word of his language, or to a dimwit – ‘. . . we greet each other with “Heil Hitler” and a salute. Like this.' He gave a Nazi salute, with his right arm fully extended. ‘That is the German greeting. You try it!'

Piotr gave a half-hearted salute. ‘Er, heil.'

‘No, no,' bustled Kaltenbach. He was laughing in a good-natured manner. ‘You stand erect. Arm thrust out. Heil Hitler!'

Piotr stood up, feeling very foolish. ‘Heil Hitler.' He could barely bring himself to say the words. Surely they didn't expect a boy from Poland to go around heiling everyone?

‘Now sit down, my young friend. We must get to know each other.'

Piotr was surprised to find he quite liked Kaltenbach. He seemed pompous but jovial. That was a good combination. Pompous and cold. Pompous and quick-tempered. That would be unbearable. Pompous and jovial might be OK.

‘Now tell us your name,' said Kaltenbach.

‘My name is Piotr Bruck.'

‘A good German name. You will need to say and spell it differently of course. From now on you will be
Pay-terh
. PAY - AY - TAY - AY - ERR. There will be no need to trill the r.

‘Tell us what happened to you,' continued the Professor. ‘How did you end up in the orphanage in Warsaw?'

Piotr told them how his parents had been killed on the first day of the Soviet invasion, how the Germans had taken over the farm and shot his dog, and how he had been abandoned in the orphanage. It all poured out of him, and even he could barely believe all the awful things that had happened to him in the last couple of months. As he told the story, he got more and more upset. Herr Kaltenbach put a fatherly arm around him. ‘You can have a good cry. You are among friends.'

Even Frau Kaltenbach seemed touched. She tapped him primly on the knee. ‘You poor boy,' she said, before turning to her husband. ‘He speaks good German for a Polack. Almost without a trace of accent.'

Upset though he was, Piotr felt her scorn. He noticed the two of them give each other a little nod.

‘So how would you like to come back to Berlin with us?' said Professor Kaltenbach.

Piotr had too many questions buzzing round his head. Too many questions that he knew he would not be able to ask. Like, what will happen to me if I don't want to go? What will happen if Frau Kaltenbach here decides she doesn't want me? What are your daughters like? Are they spiteful and horrible?

Knowing he had no real choice, Piotr sniffed and said yes.

.

Piotr's bag of possessions was so pitifully small, Frau Kaltenbach could not believe it was all he had. ‘I took nothing from home. The soldiers wouldn't let me back in,' explained Piotr when she asked. ‘I was given a few clothes at the holding centre. None of them fit very well.'

On the train back to Berlin, Professor Kaltenbach told Piotr what a marvellous city it was. ‘We shall take you to the zoo, and the circus, and the Museum of Antiquities . . .'

Piotr told him indignantly that all the museums in Warsaw had been shut. That did not please the Professor. ‘Ours is not to question the policy of the General Government. I am sure it has been done for the good of the Reich.'

They reached the outskirts of the capital in little more than two hours, just as the shadows were lengthening in the late afternoon sun. First, there were rows and rows of small houses, each with their own little garden. Then everything grew denser. Great long apartment blocks, six or seven storeys high, backed on to the broad scar of the railway line that ran into the centre. Piotr was so excited to see this great city he began to forget his troubles. For the first time since his parents' death he felt a surge of hope. Maybe the family would be nice? Maybe the girls would be as friendly as their father? Maybe this would all be for the best?

As soon as they emerged from the station, he was impressed by the grandeur of his new home. Everything was untouched by war. How terrible Warsaw looked in comparison.

The Kaltenbachs had left their car close to the station. It was a plush Mercedes-Benz. Herr Kaltenbach announced he was going to take them on a tour of the sights on the way home.

Kaltenbach was very keen to point out that Berlin in wartime was not the place it had been in the 1930s. Some of the statues on the bridges and boulevards had been taken down to save them from bomb damage. Some of the main streets had been covered by camouflage netting, to confuse enemy aircraft looking for recognisable landmarks. But the city was still magnificent. The ornate iron decorations on the bridges, the beautifully sculptured street lamps, the elaborate plaster work of the grand apartment and office doorways, they all spoke silently of confident prosperity.

Piotr had seen big cities before. But there was something about the scale and magnificence of Berlin that put Warsaw and Lodz in the shade. The Professor pointed out the pink palace of the Royal Armoury, the Museum of Antiquities, the Brandenburg Gate, and with the greatest pride, the glittering gold cannons and angel on the Victory Monument. Even though it was piled high with sandbags to protect it, the monument still looked splendid.

The car wheeled down another wide avenue and Herr Kaltenbach announced they were going home to meet the rest of the family. They slowed to a crawl by a grand apartment block with tall, wide windows and a stone and wood facade. The car squeezed through a narrow passageway into a generous courtyard. A few cars, mostly Mercedes and BMWs, were parked here. Kaltenbach led them towards the main entrance – a tall plaster and brickwork arch with an imposing door of carved wood and glass.

The apartment was on the third floor. Piotr was shown into the wood-panelled hall and then a spacious living room where light streamed in through large windows. The place was spotless and sparkling, the wooden tables and bureaux buffed to a gleaming shine.

There were three girls waiting there, each sitting separately on the sofa, armchair and chaise longue that filled the centre of the room. All had their hair in the elaborate braids fashionable in Germany. Piotr guessed they had dressed in their Sunday best. That made him feel welcome. They were making an effort for him!

Kaltenbach stood behind Piotr, placing a hand on either shoulder. ‘This is
Peter
,' he announced to the girls, exaggerating the German pronunciation. ‘He is coming to live with us. I would like you to treat him like a brother.'

The girls stood to greet him.

Elsbeth, the oldest, was most like her mother, with angular features and slender build. ‘He is tall for his age,' she said when they shook hands. It was said as an indifferent observation rather than a compliment. Their eyes met for only a second. She made him feel uneasy.

Traudl was thirteen like him, and a good fifteen centimetres shorter. She gave a beaming smile and a cheerful ‘Heil Hitler! Welcome to Berlin!'

Charlotte was eight and obviously embarrassed by the whole business. She smiled shyly but did not speak. Both these girls took after their father – dark and solid, pleasant round faces with smooth creamy skin.

‘We are close to Wittenbergplatz U-Bahn here,' said Frau Kaltenbach. ‘You can be in the centre of the city in ten minutes.'

‘And five minutes from the aquarium,' said Traudl, ‘and the zoological gardens!'

‘Come and see my doll's house,' said Charlotte, growing a little bolder and taking Peter by the hand.

She led him into her room. The doll's house was there on a low table, a series of miniature worlds – living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. Each was filled with tiny, exquisite ornaments and furnishings.

Peter feigned interest. ‘And who lives here?' he said cheerfully.

‘No one,' said Charlotte. ‘Mummy says I have to keep it tidy and clean in case the Führer comes to visit.'

There was no one inside. No dolls or little toy animals. The living room had bright orange floral wallpaper, its own tapestry rug, a miniature mahogany sideboard. On the dining table sat a lace tablecloth and a tiny bowl of flowers. In pride of place over the mantelpiece, glowering above the little vases and candelabras, was a miniature portrait of Adolf Hitler. Close by the curtains was a row of tiny swastika flags pinned to the wall.

In the miniature kitchen, along with exquisite little pots and pans, and a full set of crockery, was another portrait of the Führer. This time he was with his friend, Germany's Italian ally, Mussolini. It was the kitchen wallpaper though that really caught Peter's eye. The pattern was made up of girls in military uniform, some marching in formation, some dancing with Nazi flags, some camping and cooking around a fire.

She noticed him peering at the kitchen wallpaper. ‘Mummy says when I am ten I can join the
Jungmädel
and go on trips and even stay in a tent like all the big girls!'

Herr Kaltenbach appeared at the door. ‘Very nice, Charlotte, but we have not even shown Peter his own room yet.'