Hugo Hamilton - The Sailor in the Wardrobe

The prosecutor argued that he had heard from other patients that he was an angry man, but the Jewish woman said he was always friendly to her.

My mother says it was very similar to the famous case of Wilhelm Furtwängler, the famous conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra who stayed in Germany and continued to conduct all through the Hitler years. For the Nazis, he was the great showcase for German music, but Furtwängler himself said he was only devoted to the music. But music was not neutral, my mother says, no more than babies were neutral, because everything became part of the war machine. When it became law that no Jewish people could take part in German culture, Furtwängler refused and stood up for his Jewish colleagues in the orchestra, sending letters to Goebbels personally to protect them and keep them working with him. Because Furtwängler was such a famous conductor, the Nazis went along with him for a while. But as time went by and the Nazis became stronger, he found himself having to conduct under the Swastika, with Goebbels and other leading Nazi figures in the audience. There is a well-known moment after one of those concerts when Goebbels came to shake his hand. Immediately afterwards, Furtwängler took out his handkerchief to wipe his hand. Maybe it was a true sign of how he felt about the Nazis and their concentration camps, or maybe it was simply a sign that he had sweaty hands after the performance. It made no difference because the great German conductor had compromised his music, just as the great gynaecologist had compromised his profession, even though there were a lot of good babies born during the Nazi times. My father says there is a recording he would love to hear of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony which was made during the war with the sound of bombs falling in the background and it goes to show that Furtwängler was not afraid to die for his music.

The trouble at the denazification court began when my mother had to type up the reports and the prosecutor asked her to change things. He said she had mistaken some of the testimony and that what the Jewish woman had actually said was that the gynaecologist was always angry and hostile towards her. My mother was to put down that the Jewish woman was in fear of her life that the gynaecologist might suspect that she was Jewish.

My mother refused to write any of that. She said she had taken very careful notes, they could check her handwriting. The prosecutor then said she could lose her job if she did not comply, he would accuse her of trying to help a former Nazi. When she continued to refuse, he asked her if she was taking bribes from people. It was only then that she realized what was happening. She had seen packets of cigarettes and other things like cognac and tins of meat in the prosecutor’s office at various times, so she began to understand why some people got the authorization to work and others didn’t.

She decided not to work under these conditions any longer. She handed in a letter of resignation, stating that she could not go along with it. The letter caused an instant crisis. Before she had time to clear her desk and leave the office, the prosecutor, Willenberger, asked her to withdraw the letter. He said he would make it easy for her, all she had to say was that she had made a mistake and he would allow the gynaecologist to have his name put forward for authorization. Then he changed his mind and said he would bring her before the court herself and say that she had been friendly with the gynaecologist, that they had been seen together. He would see to it that she would be blacklisted.

My mother says she didn’t need to make life so difficult for herself all the time, but she could not get the gynaecologist out of her mind, the way he sat there quietly without getting angry. The letter of resignation came to the attention of the American administrators who were responsible for the denazification courts, so they came and asked my mother if she had written this letter freely, without any pressure from anyone. They asked her if she wanted to take the letter back. My mother explained why she had come to this decision and says she felt very stupid, sitting there with a number of officers smoking and offering her cigarettes, asking her why she was so eager to give up such a good job. They couldn’t believe anyone had a conscience in Germany and wanted to find out what was really behind the letter. It was only after a few days, when they realized that she was not going to change her mind, that they began to believe her.

The problem was that the letter was on file now. They must have thought she would contact the lieutenant from Vermont and tell him what had happened, so they were forced to take the letter seriously. They made more attempts to change her mind. The prosecutor asked her if there was anything she needed, things he could provide for her and her family. He even mentioned the use of a car. He was kind one minute and then turned aggressive. She was afraid and decided to leave immediately.

She thought she was safe back in Kempen, but the prosecutor, Willenberger, came after her, appearing on her doorstep, begging her to withdraw the letter. She could only assume that he had now lost his job as a result. It was going to be on her conscience that Willenberger was blacklisted. He explained that he had a wife and family and that she was making them all destitute with her grand, untouchable conscience. And what did she do during the Nazi years, why was she suddenly so worried about her conscience when she could live through the whole of the Third Reich and not ever have to write a letter like that before?

My mother says she wishes she could have had the courage to write that letter during the Nazi times, that she might have been more like Sophie Scholl and protested openly. But then she would not be alive now. And now is the time to reshape your conscience, she says. Maybe it was the silent negative that she and her family had kept in their heads that was finding its expression at last in words. At some point you stop being silent. She says it’s even more difficult to resist now than it ever was under the Nazis, because there is more to lose. It’s easier than ever to say it doesn’t really matter all that much now. Just getting rid of every Swastika in the world is never going to be enough. Just because the Nazis are gone, doesn’t mean that injustice is gone.

She would not change her mind. Willenberger kept following her around the town and people in Kempen must have thought he was a former fiancé whom she didn’t want to marry any more. He sat behind her in church. He whispered that she had made him desperate and that if she didn’t change her mind, he would do something really drastic, something she would not like to be responsible for. He even pulled out an envelope and said he could let her have a nice little sum of money.

‘You cannot sting me,’ she said aloud outside the church.

She could see the anger in his eyes and thought he was about to attack her. She says a woman knows when her life is in danger because you can smell dead leaves in the air and you can feel your legs going weak and lose all the colour in your face. She thought she had already met her killer. Very often when they found a woman’s body, they first assumed she was a prostitute. It was something that Willenberger said to her then, that convinced her that he had been the true Nazi himself all along.

‘You would not have lasted long,’ he said. She took a few steps back. She was afraid to turn around and stood there until he finally left.

By this time, my mother had already applied for a visa to Ireland. She wanted to get as far away as possible. She was afraid to stay in her home town any longer. She didn’t want to tell her sisters or her aunt any of these threats. Onkel Gerd knew and made sure she was always accompanied when going out. The weeks that she had to wait were agonizing. But then the visa came at last and the house was full of excitement. Even when she was leaving on the train and had embraced her family, even when she was still sitting on the train, wiping her tears, she knew she had still not got away, because Willenberger came after her.