Anne Blankman: Prisoner of Night and Fog

GRETCHEN MÜLLER PEERED THROUGH THE CAR’S rain-spotted windshield. Up ahead, a man was crossing the street, so far away he was little more than a child’s cut-out stick figure of spindly legs and arms and head. She could tell from his broad-brimmed hat and long coat that he was a member of the Hasidic sect.

“Look at the Jew,” her brother, Reinhard, said. He and his friend Kurt started snickering. Gretchen ignored them and glanced at her best friend sitting beside her in the back. Lights from passing buildings flashed over Eva’s powdered face and the lipstick tube she was opening.

“You needn’t fuss with your appearance for Uncle Dolf.” Gretchen smiled. “You know how he always says he’s a man of the common people.”

Eva reddened her lips with a quick, practiced sweep of her hand. “Yes, but he’s so fascinating. I want to look my best for him.”

Gretchen understood. Adolf Hitler might be an old family friend to her, but to Eva, he seemed glamorous and mysterious, the most famous man in Munich. Although Uncle Dolf had never held an elected office—for serving as a mere Reichstag deputy would be beneath him, and local politics didn’t interest him—he had set his sights on the Chancellery itself, and was campaigning for the presidency. Lately, politics had kept him so busy that his invitation to share dessert and coffee with him was a rare treat.

The car jerked to the left.

“What are you doing?” Gretchen cried.

The engine growled, a sure sign that Kurt had punched the accelerator. The tires skidded across the rain-drenched cobblestones, and Gretchen gripped the front seat so she wouldn’t slide into Eva.

Yellow beams from the car’s headlamps cut through the darkness, illuminating the Jew for an instant, making his face ghostly as he stood still, staring in shock as the car shot toward him. His mouth opened in a scream, and, dimly, Gretchen heard herself screaming, too, begging Kurt to stop.

The Daimler-Benz careened in the other direction, its back end fishtailing. The abrupt movement shoved Gretchen against Eva so hard she lost her breath. They were going too fast—they were going to fly over the curb and plow into a group of ladies in front of a clothing shop—and then there was a harsh grinding of gears and the brakes slammed so hard, she and Eva were thrown back in their seats. The car stopped.

For an instant, no one moved. The engine ticked as it cooled down, a tiny sound in the silence. Gretchen took a deep breath, trying to slow her frantic heartbeat. Then the boys slithered out and started to run, their jackboots thumping on the ground. A small piece of her wanted to cheer them on—after all, Uncle Dolf had explained to her many times how Jews were subhumans, determined to destroy her and other pure-blooded Germans—but part of her hesitated. The man’s face had been so frightened.

“I wish they wouldn’t bother with him.” Eva pouted. “Now we’ll be late.”

Being late was the least of their problems if Reinhard and Kurt started a street brawl. Through the windshield, Gretchen watched the boys launch themselves at the Jew. He barely had time to cry out before they seized his arms and began dragging him toward the alley.

Gretchen scrambled out of the automobile. She knew her brother too well to doubt what would happen next. Just as she knew how furious Hitler would be if Reinhard started a street fight. Uncle Dolf was always complaining that Party members had been branded as a group of brawlers. Dozens of times he had said that if the National Socialists wished to make any electoral progress, they must appear law-abiding. For Uncle Dolf’s sake, she had to stop her brother.

The wet cobblestones, slick from the recent rainfalls, slipped beneath her feet, but the breeze was dry and it carried the sounds of the boys’ shouts. “Filthy Jew!”

From the back seat, Eva sobbed. “Don’t leave me alone!”

“I need to stop them.”

Gretchen slammed the car door shut. Dusk had fallen early, painting the jumble of brick and stone buildings along the avenue with stripes of blue and black. Electric streetlamps broke apart the descending darkness, throwing small white circles on the Müncheners walking along the sidewalk—burghers in fine suits strolling to restaurants for a fancy meal, day laborers in stained jackets and patched trousers trudging to beer halls, office girls in flounced frocks striding to their rented rooms, all with their heads down, faces turned away, so they didn’t have to watch the two boys pushing the Jew toward the yawning gap between the stone buildings.

Exhaustion slumped their shoulders, and hunger hollowed their cheeks. Rampant unemployment and inflation and starvation had weakened them—that’s what Uncle Dolf would say. Germans had become so wrapped up in their tiny lives, in trying to survive by any means they could, that they didn’t see the danger creeping closer. This was how the Jew triumphed, a sewer rat slipping into a barrel of apples and spoiling them all, without anyone noticing until the first rancid bite.

Gretchen exhaled a shaky breath. The Jew was her eternal enemy . Those words had guided her heart for twelve years, thanks to her honorary “uncle” Dolf. She owed him so much. He had taught her about art and music, all the things that her father hadn’t understood and her mother found dull. In gratitude to him, she had to prevent Reinhard from damaging the Party’s reputation with another street fight.

The Jew’s heels slapped on the cobblestones as Reinhard and Kurt pulled him closer to the alley. Nobody looked toward the struggling boys. Across the Brienner Strasse, a group of men opened the Carleton Tea Room’s door, letting out a stream of soft lamplight. They wore the plain brown uniform of the SA—the Sturmabteilung, or storm troopers—the same division within the National Socialist Party to which Reinhard and his friends belonged.

There would be no help from that quarter. If she called out, they would run across the avenue, their fists raised and ready.

“ Please! ” the Jew screamed. The long, harsh sound pushed against her ears, so hard that she wanted to clap her hands over them and block the cries out. What could she do? SA men across the street, and inside the café, Uncle Dolf probably sat with his chauffeur, eating strawberry tarts and waiting for her and the others with growing impatience because he wanted to leave for a musical at the Kammerspiele. She couldn’t go to him, not when asking for his assistance would expose Reinhard’s part in a street beating, and Mama wanted the Müller family to remain above reproach.

She had to stop the boys.

Her feet smacked into the pavement as she ran into the alley. It was lined with stone, and so dark she had to blink several times for her eyes to adjust. Rubbish bins leaned against a wall, and they were probably stuffed with kitchen waste, judging from the rank stink assailing her nose. And there, at the far end, her brother and Kurt leaned over the man.

He lay on the ground. Between the boys’ legs, she caught sight of him: a sliver of his face, pale and smooth; an eye, dark and wide; and the corner of a mouth, red and moving as he shouted, “ Stop! ”

A cry hurled itself from Gretchen’s throat before she could snatch it back. “Don’t hurt him!”