Bearing Witness (16 page)

My mother found an account of Kunze's speech at the Liederkranz Club on October 12, 1939—the one Kruppa had urged Conrad Beckman to attend. H.A.R.'s report read, in pertinent part:

Wilhelm Kunze, newly appointed national leader of the German-American Bund, spoke at the Liederkranz Club before a group of about 150 persons at a secret meeting at which the doors and windows were sealed. Men in SS uniforms moved through the crowd passing out pieces of anti-Semitic literature bearing the official stamp of the German government. Kunze said that the Democratic Party was a puppet of American Jewry, that Jews controlled the newspapers and radio stations, had a stranglehold on industry and the CIO, that Roosevelt was under Jewish domination, and that the recent sit-down strikes were a Jewish idea. Kunze announced that it was time to purify the American race. As the crowd cheered, he promised that “Judaistic gore will soon flow in the streets of St. Louis.”

We found page after page of thumbnail profiles of St. Louis Nazi activists during the late 1930s—a paperhanger, a perfume salesman, a watchmaker, an electrical contractor, a dentist, a sports editor, a mechanical engineer, a “naturopath,” a waiter. Bit players of the Apocalypse, foot soldiers at Armageddon.

It was fascinating and it was creepy, but it wasn't quite what I was hoping to find.

And then my mother found it.

“Oh, my God, Rachel,” she said, looking up from the fifth box. “Come here.”

It was a typed undercover report by M.M.N. prepared in July 1939 in which he described a sunny afternoon at a Bund-sponsored family camp called the Deutsche-Horst (German Nest), located near the Meramec River south of St. Louis. The day's events opened at noon as fifty members of the Bund, all dressed in storm-trooper uniforms, gathered at the two flagpoles on the parade ground in front of the clubhouse. An unidentified commander supervised the raising of an American flag and a Nazi flag. The ceremony ended with the storm-troopers lifting their right arms in a stiff-armed salute, shouting three “Heil Hitlers,” and goose-stepping in double file off the parade grounds to the cheers and applause of approximately one hundred spectators, mostly mothers and fathers and children. As the storm troopers left to change out of their uniforms and rejoin the group, the spectators drifted off in groups for the afternoon's recreation. For much of the remainder of the day, according to M.M.N., the camp “had the appearance of many other Meramec River clubhouses.”

The words that caught my mother's eye were on the last page of the report:

The operations of the Deutsche-Horst family camp are under the auspices of Otto Groshong, a former druggist who now works during the week at the German House. He curses Roosevelt and calls him a Jew. Working as counselors under Groshong's direction are three young men: Rudolphe Schober, Herman Warnholtz, and Conrad Beckman. All three were in uniform at the flag-raising ceremony at the beginning of the day and at the pledge later that afternoon. Schober, age 19, loads trucks at the Lemp Brewery. Warnholtz, 20, is a custodian at a St. Louis public elementary school and an active member of the storm troopers. He has a short temper and has been arrested three times on assault charges. Beckman, age 18, is a plumber's apprentice in his uncle's business. For one week every June since he was 15, Beckman has worked as a boxing instructor at the Hitler Youth Camp.

We continued sorting through the boxes, and as we searched, we drew whatever conclusions one could draw from Rabbi Levine's disjointed and incomplete records of the era. It appeared that the Bund's power in St. Louis began to fade after 1939; by the end of 1941, it was all but irrelevant. But part of the decline was deceptive. As law enforcement shone their spotlights on the Bund, its members scurried into darker corners. Some of the splinter groups appeared to be close to mainstream organizations, while others were far more malignant. Perhaps the most sinister of the post-Bund organizations, according to a January 9, 1942, letter to Rabbi Levine from the Chicago offices of the Anti-Defamation League, was a secret outfit called the American SS-Death's Head Formation (Amerikanische SS-Totenkopfverbände). This band of thugs got its name from the German storm-trooper division of the same name that was in charge of the Nazi concentration camps. Like their counterparts in Germany, members of the American Death's Head Formation wore a skull-and-bones insignia on their black storm-trooper tunics. According to the letter from the Anti-Defamation League, the Death's Head Formation was based in the Midwest with chapters in several cities, and “a somewhat reliable source in Springfield claims that the leaders of the local unit are Edgar Muller and Fritz Voerster.”

I stared at those names, thinking again of Gloria Muller and her vague allusion to her ex-husband's dark past. I handed it to my mother.

“Here,” I said to my mother. “Look at this.”

She looked up from the document she was reading and took the letter from me. She read it with a frown and nodded. On the table in front of her was a folder of materials she had removed from the last box. She lifted the top sheet from her folder. “Read this.”

It was a carbon copy of a half-page typed report from H.A.R. dated February 27, 1942:

Efforts to obtain substantive information about the operations of the SS-Death's Head Formation unit in St. Louis have been unsuccessful to date. Given the small size of the unit, the prospect of finding a reliable informer is low and the likelihood of infiltration is nil. The current fuhrer (leader) of the unit is rumored to be Herman Warnholtz. According to a source who was at Sauters Roadhouse on Telegraph Road late one night after Warnholtz and a man named Haupman had consumed several pitchers of beer, Warnholtz bragged that his storm troopers are prepared, if necessary, to engage in acts of violence to further the cause of Nazism in America.

The remainder of that last box contained more than a dozen drafts of Levine's proposal for an updated Passover Haggadah (and letters of rejection from various publishing concerns) and copies of his correspondence with various national Jewish organizations during the late 1940s and early 1950s on a variety of topics wholly unrelated to the American Nazi movement. There was no further mention of Conrad Beckman, the Death's Head Formation, or anything having to with the American Nazi movement in the 1930s and 1940s.

***

As I walked to my car in Temple Shalom's parking lot, I thought of the creepy bonds between my investigation and Jonathan's. I was trying to unravel an American Nazi connection dating back fifty years while Jonathan was trying to unravel a different Nazi connection right here in the present. I let the car engine idle in the cold weather as I recalled the hateful words of G. Wilhelm Kunze's speech that Kruppa quoted in his letter to Beckman and the hateful words of Bishop Robb's sermon from that Sunday morning several weeks ago.

My mother's family had died in the Holocaust. “Never Again” was the motto of those who insisted that we never forget the lessons of that terrible moment in history. Yet here we were, more than a half century later, and the grand march of progress had delivered up a modern version of the same old monsters. What a dismal parallel. Were we just Time's captives, running nowhere forever on ancient treadmills?

Chapter Fifteen

My secretary was able to match initials with names through records at the Anti-Defamation League, which had merged with the Jewish Defense Alliance in 1949. All four men had been volunteers, doing their investigative work at night and on weekends. Two of them—Myron M. Newman (M.M.N.) and Lester A. Bronkowski (L.A.B.)—had been dead for close to twenty years. A third, Bernard P. Proskower (B.P.P.), was alive but far beyond reach; according to a nurse at the Jewish Center for the Aged, he was in the final stage of Alzheimer's disease and spent his days curled in a ball.

But H.A.R. was alive and well. Harold A. Roth was now eighty-nine years old, a widower who lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of an older building on Waterman Avenue in the Central West End. Back in the 1930s, according to the materials Jacki obtained on him, Harold Roth had been a plant manager in a metal-casting factory in South St. Louis. He first learned of the American Nazi movement from leaflets brought into the plant by some of his workers. Although not a religious Jew, he was a proud and defiant one. On the schoolyards of his youth, he had fought the neighborhood bullies who taunted the smaller Jewish kids. Accordingly, he was outraged by the Bund literature. Eager to join the fight against Nazism, he went down to the offices of the Jewish Defense Alliance after work that day to enlist as a volunteer.

I pulled my car into a space in front of his apartment building on Monday morning. The trial against Beckman Engineering started in one week. My five student volunteers were hard at work at my office this morning, and Benny was up in Chicago taking the deposition of Otto Koll. Although my to-do list of trial preparation tasks seemed to keep growing, I had to see Harold Roth. It was one loop I felt compelled to close.

I found his name on the lobby mailbox for apartment 3C and rang his bell to let him know I'd arrived. The inner lobby door, once a security door through which guests were buzzed, no longer served that function. The entire doorknob was missing—there was a clean round hole where it had been—and the door pushed open at the touch. The steam was hissing and clanging in the stairwell radiators as I walked upstairs. The gray carpet tread was old and frayed, and the smells from last night's dinners—the roasted meats, the fried onions, the cooked garlic—still hung in the air. It had snowed again yesterday, and there were snow boots, some still wet, in front of the four doors on each landing.

The door to apartment 3C opened as I reached the landing. Holding it open was an elderly man with fierce dark eyes magnified behind heavy black horn-rims. His upper torso curved forward, which made him seem to peer up at me even though we stood at eye level to one another. He was wearing off-brand tennis shoes, black trousers belted high on his waist, and a freshly pressed red-and-gray-plaid flannel shirt buttoned to the collar, which seemed about three sizes larger than his neck. His bald head was covered with age spots.

“Miss Gold?” he said in a thin, reedy voice. He was leaning on a wooden cane. There was a hearing aid in each pendulous ear, and his head shook with a slight palsy.

I introduced myself. He nodded, unsmiling, and gestured me in, turning to lead the way down the short hallway. Although he took small steps and leaned on his cane, his physical frailties were offset by an aura of sheer resolve.

The living room was small and sparsely furnished with odds and ends that looked as if they once stood in the showroom window of a 1950s discount house. He moved toward an easy chair covered with a brown corduroy fabric. At the side of the chair was a TV tray. Resting on the tray were an empty mug with an old tea bag that stained the bottom brown and a well-used set of red bicycle playing cards dealt in an unfinished game of solitaire. He settled into the easy chair and pointed me toward a sagging grayish couch against the side wall.

I took my seat, placed my purse and briefcase on the floor beneath the coffee table, and gave him my friendliest smile. “Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Roth.”

He had the cane resting between his knees, with his hands crossed on top of the cane handle. He was watching me with a distinctly guarded expression. Yesterday, I'd had to practically beg him on the phone before he reluctantly agreed to see me. He frowned. “Where'd you find my reports?”

I explained.

He listened carefully. “Levine, eh? Good man. Even if he was a rabbi. Don't like rabbis.” His voice grew louder. “Never did. Don't trust 'em.” He snorted. “Steal your eyes right out of your head if you gave 'em a chance.” He glared at me. “Haven't been in a damn synagogue since the day I married Mrs. Roth. Fifty-seven years ago. Never gone back.” He thrust his chin forward. “Never will.”

I nodded silently.

“Don't get it,” he said with a frown.

“Pardon?”

He grunted. “You. Your interest in this.” He shook his head. “Ancient history. What do you care?”

I gave him a short description of the lawsuit and how I thought Conrad Beckman's dark past might have some relevance to at least the origins of the bid-rigging conspiracy, especially his relationship with Max Kruppa in Memphis.

“Kruppa,” he mused, squinting as he tried to remember. “Rings a bell.” He paused, eyeing me dubiously. “What else?”

I gave him a puzzled look. “I'm sorry, Mr. Roth, I'm not following you.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “That Bund stuff—ancient history. Has to be more than that.”

I thought it over. “Well, my friend—a boyfriend, actually—has been investigating one of the modern Nazi groups. Their headquarters are here in St. Louis. They're called Spider.” I paused for a moment, and then shrugged. “I guess that's not a logical reason for me to be here, but it makes me want to know more about what happened then.”

“Spider?” he repeated.

I nodded.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, angry. “Those bastards again.”

“Again?”

He shook his head in disgust. “Nazi bastards.” He pronounced “Nazi” to rhyme with “snazzy.”

“In addition,” I said slowly, hesitantly, “there's another reason. Probably the most important reason.” I reached for my purse and opened my wallet to the photograph of my mother. I walked over to him. “Here,” I said. “This is my mother.”

He held the photograph close to his face and squinted at it. He looked up at me.

“When the Nazis came to power,” I said quietly, “she was a little girl in Lithuania. She was lucky. She lived. So did her sister and so did her mother—my grandmother Rachel. They escaped. But her father—my grandfather—didn't. Her uncles and aunts didn't. Her grandparents didn't. They all died in the concentration camps. The Nazis murdered them.”

He handed me the wallet. I walked over to the couch, surprised by the rush of emotions, trying to keep them in check. I took a deep breath, searching for the words. He was leaning forward on his cane, waiting.

I shook my head helplessly. “I'm not sure what the connection is, Mr. Roth, but I know that I have to do this, to see it through. When I started this lawsuit, I had no idea that there was this other stuff, but now I do. I'm not sure what's hidden back there, but I have to find out. I have to try to close the loop.” I gave him a sad smile. “I'm not kidding myself, Mr. Roth. Believe me, this is no crusade. I know that what I discover isn't going to bring my mother's family back. But still…” I paused, wiping a tear from my cheek. “I feel that I owe it to them.”

He studied me. I met his gaze, blinking.

Finally, he grunted. “Okay.”

“Thank you, Mr. Roth.”

“Call me Harold, young lady.”

I smiled and sniffled. “Okay, Harold.” I paused to open my briefcase. “I've read all of your reports. Or at least I think I did. I read the ones on the Bund and the ones on the other groups.”

“Been a long time. Don't know how much I can recall.”

“I can help,” I said, pulling out a folder.

I went over his various reports. His mind was sharp and his memory excellent. Before I could finish a description of a report he had written more than fifty years ago, he would have already recalled most of the key facts in that report and a subsequent one on the same topic. When I reached the last one—his half-page report on the Death's Head Formation—I paused to pull a photocopy of it out of my briefcase.

“This is the last one in Rabbi Levine's archives,” I told him as I stood up and came over to his chair, “and the only one on this organization.”

He took the report from me and read it slowly, holding it close to his face. I returned to the couch and waited. When he finished, he looked up, his lips pursed solemnly.

“Did you write any others on that group?” I asked.

He shook his head gravely.

“Any other reports at all?”

He scowled as he considered the question. “Not a report,” he finally said.

I waited.

“Kept a journal,” he said. “On those people. Others, too. All those Nazi bastards.”

“What kind of journal?” I asked carefully.

He gave me a proud look. “What I saw. What I learned.”

“Did that include the Death's Head Formation?”

“You bet,” he said fiercely.

“Do you still have it?”

He leaned back and eyed me warily. “Might.”

I caught myself, realizing that I was moving far too fast for him. According to what Jacki had been able to glean from the Anti-Defamation League records, his wife had died of lung cancer twenty-one years ago. Their only son had died in Vietnam in 1967. Harold Roth had been living alone for many, many years. And now, out of the blue, a young woman arrives eager to pry into a chapter of his life that had been closed for more than half a century.

I gave him a sheepish smile. “I'm sorry, Mr. Roth. I guess it's because I have this trial coming up and I'm so excited to have found a person who might be able to shed a little light on Conrad Beckman's past. Every time I think I might be on to something important, it seems like five lawyers from his firm pop up to block me.” I sighed and shook my head. “Some people put themselves to sleep at night counting sheep. Well, I do it by counting lawyers from Roth and Bowles.”

“Roth and Bowles?” he said sharply. “That's his lawyers?”

“Technically, they represent his company. Why, do you know of them?”

He nodded darkly. “Stanley Roth.”

“Really?” I was intrigued. “How?”

“Bastard's my nephew. My brother's son. Beckman's lawyer? Jesus Christ.” He shook his head. “Poor brother. Spinning in his grave.”

I was as surprised as he, but the unexpected link seemed to lessen his distrust of me. I tried to work him gradually back around to the journal. We talked some about his brother and the rest of his family and some about how he used to do his surveillance of the Bund in the early days. I told him about Max Kruppa's letter in German to Conrad Beckman.

“Memphis, eh?” He leaned forward and rested his chin on the top of his cane. “Rings a bell. What business was Kruppa in?”

“Back then? Construction, I think. Maybe plumbing. The company grew into a pretty big contractor over the years.”

“Successful?”

I nodded. “Definitely.”

“Your lawsuit.” He paused, frowning in thought. “You think there's a connection between that Memphis company and Beckman's company?”

“Definitely.”

“Run that by me again.”

I gave him a brief outline of the bid-rigging allegations.

He nodded as he listened. When I finished, he nodded his head slowly. “Any other connections?”

“Not really. Well, actually, they did do a joint venture outside of the United States back in the 1950s. A water treatment plant. It doesn't seem relevant to my case, but my expert witness tells me that the two companies had to have lost a lot of money on the project.”

“Where was it?”

“Down in South America.”

“Where?”

“A little resort town in the mountains. San something—I can't remember the name.”

“San Carlos de Bariloche?”

I looked at him, stunned. “How did you know?”

“Memphis, eh?” he said, ignoring my question. “Had a unit down there.”

“You mean the Bund?”

He snorted. “Later. Death's Head, and all the rest.”

“All the rest of what?”

He scratched his neck as he stared at me.

I waited.

“Die Spinne.”

I wasn't sure of what he said. “Spin?” I repeated.

“Spinne,” he said. “S-P-I-N-N-E.”

“Spinne? Die Spinne?”

He nodded.

“What is it?”

He studied me for a moment. “It's in my journal.”

I paused, not wanting to force the issue. I gestured toward the photocopy of his last undercover report. “According to your source at that tavern,” I said, “the leader of the Death's Head Formation was bragging that his storm troopers were willing to commit violence to further the cause.” I paused and looked at him. “Did they?”

He crossed his arms over his chest stubbornly. “Don't need my journal for that.”

“But where else would I look?”

“In the damn newspaper.”

“But when? Which days?”

“When?” he said irritably. “Big celebration days.”

I frowned. “Like July Fourth?”

He laughed. “Nazi days.”

“But isn't that information already in your journal?”

He paused, sizing me up again. “Might be.”

“Is your journal here? In the apartment?”

He chuckled. “Oh, no. Don't keep it on the premises.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “When I die, it's going to that Holocaust Museum in Washington. Got the whole thing laid out in my will.” He sat back, pleased and defiant. “People are going to sit up and take notice.” He nodded firmly. “You bet.”