These questions. How to answer such questions? It was not that Peter Blaustein didn't know the answers, but how to give answers that this young American could understand. This young, innocent American, in his officer's uniform. It would be difficult enough to describe for him how it had been in those nightmare years. How, almost overnight, thousands of normal lives had been turned up-side down. How people who had thought of themselves as good, loyal German citizens were suddenly cast in the role of unwanted outsiders, despised traitors, fugitives in their own land.
Those memories - those feelings that he had so carefully stored away in the far corners of his mind, he had now dusted off and brought our for this young man. Perhaps because he was Jewish, or perhaps because he was Inge's niece's fiancee, or perhaps just because he wanted to know. No one had ever really wanted to know before. In all the years since 1945, no one had ever asked Peter how he had managed to survive the war right here in Berlin.
But now this nice American boy was here, and it was Rosh Hashonah, and Inge and Hildegarde were in the kitchen, and in his broken German, the young man had asked how it had all come about.
Peter refilled their wine glasses, took a long sip, leaned back in his armchair and said, "You see, I was never very interested in politics. Perhaps because my parents were uninterested. I don't know. We just never spoke about those things. My father worked for the post office, and he always said it didn't matter which party was in office, he would always have his job. Even when the Nazis began making things difficult for Jews, my father called it "nonsense" that would blow over. Even when my brother-in-law, Max, wanted to get out, my father said, 'Max, Max. You and Ruthie, you are Germans. Where will you go? What will you do? What good will your German Phd. do for you in some other country? Don't be crazy and throw everything away. These times will go away and life will go on.'"
Peter closed his eyes. His thoughts went back to those times. They seemed so long ago. Like another lifetime ago. And he thought of his parents, and Ruth, and Max, and little Miriam - all gone.
"And?" asked the young man.
Peter opened his eyes and came back to his tiny living room, in his small apartment, just off the Kurfurstendam.
"And", he continued, "I was working at the KDV department store. Small electrical appliance department. Second floor. It was 1938. I was single, not bad looking, had an apartment and a little money, and a wonderful bachelor life. One of the girls I was dating was Inge Stockler - a nice girl, but they were all nice girls - the Jewish ones and the non-Jewish ones, alike. Then one day, all hell broke loose. It's the afternoon of the Crystal Night. You know about the Crystal Night?"
"I know", answered his visitor.
"Inge is working for an insurance company and she looks out of her third floor window and sees Jews being chased in the street, and beaten, and taken away in trucks. So, she puts on her coat. This girl who has gone out with me, perhaps two or three times, comes over to the KDV and pulls me in a corner, and tells me what's happening in the streets. And then she gives me a key to her apartment - this apartment, and she tells me to go there and stay there until the trouble is over."
He closes his eyes again and allows his thoughts to drift. 'Until the trouble is over' . . . Who could have known that would be seven years? Seven years of hiding, and deception, and cunning, and lying. How do I tell him about seven years of constant fear? How can I tell anyone about the fatigue? About the bone-deep weariness that come from being on permenant alert. Never being able to relax - to ease up. Seven years of always listening for the unusual sound. Seven years of considering and weighing, and analyzing every move, every action. Will this be the thing that gives me away? Will this be the word or the deed that will cause someone, somewhere to point a finger and say, 'Look. Look at him - a Jew!' Eighty-four months of day-in and day-out vigilance, and being on guard, and all the while the anxiety,and the fear eating away at raw nerve endings. Do our neighbors know about me? How could they not know? That woman from across the hall . . . the way she looked at me this morning . . . the way she didn't respond when I said 'Good morning' . . . the way she stared . . . the way . . .
"And then what happened?"
The young man's voice brought him back "Yes, yes. What happened?"
Peter took another sip of wine, loosened his tie, and continued. "She hid me." He made a sweeping motion with his hand. "Here in this apartment for the entire duration of the war. In the beginning, we were so scared I never left the apartment - almost never left the bedroom during the day. Inge, of course, went on about her normal life, just as before. The only change was in her grocery bills, and it went on like that for the first year, or so. In early '39, she found out that my parents had been taken away, shortly after the Crystal Night. When they got my sister and her family, I never found out, but Inge came home every evening with stories of the madness in the streets. And then the house-to-house searches began. We were horrified - frightened to death - for me, but also for Inge. A German who helped a Jew would be shot - on the spot - no trial, just taken out and murdered. I thought about leaving - turning myself in - but she wouldn't hear of it."
Peter paused, reached out and put his hand on the arm of the sofa where his visitor sat.
"This very couch was my hiding place," he went on. "At first, I merely arranged the cushions so I could hide under them, but then, bit by bit, I took the whole thing apart and reassembled it with thinner cushions, and a false bottom, so I had a place to hide inside. It's still there. Inge uses it for storage now, but back then, it was our only security - especially in the early years."
Those were the facts, Peter thought. Like showing someone the blueprint of a house, but the blueprint says nothing about the life that will go on inside that house. Could he even begin to describe for anyone what it was like in that box? Unable to see. Barely able to breath. Only listening. Listening to the sounds of the search. The running clomping of boots, the shrill whistles, the harsh commands. Where were they now? On the floor below? Above? On this floor? His heart pounding so hard he was certain they could hear it throughout the building. And then the sound of Inge letting them in. And the sound of their voices - 'You take the bedroom'. In the couch - he knew he was trembling. Was it making noise? God. He hoped not, but he couldn't stop it. Couldn't stop the shaking, and the terror.
"Seven years," the American broke his reverie. "How did you manage that for seven years? It seems almost impossible."
"Oh," Peter replied, focusing again on his guest, "we became very sophisticated. Very clever. And, then too, we had alot of help." "Who would have dared help you?" asked the American. "It was extremely dangerous. You have no idea. Everything was so uncertain - so risky. That the police and the Gestapo were a danger - that we knew, but there were spies, and informers, and infiltrators. Deciding who to trust was a matter of life and death, but we came to realize we couldn't go on without assistance."
Peter's gaze went to the wall behind the sofa - to the photograph of Gunther Maas - the one Gunther's mother had given him, after the war. Gunther, he thought. The printer's apprentice with the crippled arm, who came to be the forger of documents for people in hiding - until they caught him in '43. Frau Maas never found out what they did with him. They just came for him, and he was gone, and he never came back. He sighed, deeply, remembering Gunther and some of the others who helped, and paid with their lives. His eyes returned to the young man, and he went on.
"Aside from the fear, you see, the worst part was not knowing how long it would go on - a year? five years? ten? forever? There was no way to even guess. And then, once the war started in earnest, every problem was maginified. Food was rationed. How could we get enough for two? Housing was in great demand. What would we do if they wanted to move someone into Inge's apartment? It became clear to us that I could not go on living in the bedroom forever. I had to have some reason for being in Inge's apartment and a way to explain why a 30 year old man was not in the Army."
"So I became her polio-crippled cousin who was bombed out of his apartment, and I never went out without my cane and my "limp". But, you see, to play that game, we had to have help. I needed papers, and ration coupons, and all the various documents for this, that, and the other that onehad to have, living in the Third Reich. Believe it or not, I came to run a business from the apartment, here. People brought their broken electrical appliances to me, and I fixed them. Toward the end, I even became a sub-contractor for an electrical repair shop around the corner."
"What I don't understand," said the young man, "is how you can go on living here - after everything they've done to the Jews - and everything you've suffered - why didn't you leave?"
Ah, thought Peter, the ultimate question. Had he known it would be asked and chose to push it aside - like so many of his thoughts and memories of those times? Or was this question, in fact, the very reason he preferred not to think much about those years? Had he always believed, in his heart, that he should have left? That, somehow, by staying, he had betrayed his family - his people? He had certainly planned to leave. As soon as the war was over he would marry Inge and they would get out. He had envisioned that there would be a cease fire, and then the war would end. How could he have known that Hitler would chose to make his last stand here in Berlin? That this city would be blasted away, brick by brick, until the last moment. They had come out of their cellar when the shelling stopped, like mice out of their hole, to find only their building and one other on the street, basically in tact. And then the Russian shock troops came - the Mongols - shooting at everything, and looting - running through the streets with five and six watches on each arm - and raping every German who didn't have a penis - and some who did. Thats when he had been able to save his Inge. Explaining to the officer, in his terrible Russian, that he was a Jew and that this woman had saved him. And that awful moment when he had not been believed until Peter showed him his circumcision. . . And the Russian had put them in the cellar with two soldiers to guard them . . . and they had stayed there for three days - afraid to move . . . and . . .
"There aren't many Jews still living in Berlin, are there?" asked the American.
"No. Not many," Peter replied, with a heavy sigh. They did want to leave, Peter thought. To get married and then go, but there was so much chaos, at first. Who would marry them? How would they leave? Were there trains? And then, miraculously, their building still stood. They had a place to live . . . and then came the chance to have his own shop . . . and then, in the final analysis, he had always thought of himself not as a Jew living in Germany, but as a German who happened to be Jewish.
Peter placed his wine glass on the table, rose slowly and walked to the window. Drawing the curtain aside with the back of his hand, he looked down into his street, and said, "This is a difficult question you have asked. Why didn't we leave? How can I go on living here?" His gaze focused on the corner where old Frau Heimbach was patiently waiting for her little dog to finish watering a tree. It was dusk and the street lamps had just come on. A girl rode by on a rusty old bicycle - a large package tied down behind her. Two middle-aged men with briefcases made there way home, on the opposite sidwalk - one after the other. Some young boys were playing in the skelatal remains of the bombed out building across the street. He let the curtain fall closed and turning to his visitor said, "I'll try to answer your question with one of my own."
Returning to his chair, Peter went on. "In your neighborhood - in America - where you grew up, do you know who the pigs are and who the good people are?"
His young guest thought for a moment and then replied, "Yes . . . When I think about it, I suppose I do."
"Well," Peter responded, "perhaps this is merely my rationalization, but this is the way I've come to see it. In a normal society the good people are in charge and the pigs are kept in their place. For twelve years, here, we had a government that put the pigs in power and the good people were supressed. When the war was over, the pigs didn't disappear. The ones that survived are still around. I see them in the streets every day, but now they're back in their place, where they belong."
As he spoke, Inge entered the room. Coming up behind his armchair, she put her hands on Peter's shoulders.
"During those terrible years," he went on, almost fifty of my neighbors helped me to survive. Got me papers, and food . . . brought me work . . . warned me about searches. Just imagine. Fifty people willing to risk their lives for me - a Jew - a stranger. And some of them paid that price. Now I'll tell you that over five hundred Jews lived underground in Berlin during the war. That might not sound like a lot, but each one had to rely on a network of good people to make it. Thats a lot of very brave and very good people."
Peter reached up and patted Inge softly on the hand.
"I see you two had a nice chat," she said.
"Yes," Peter replied, "a very interesting talk.
His young visitor closed his eyes and nodded in agreement.
Comments
writers@mcint.com
Last Updated: 9/20/95