Two Brothers (31 page)

In the centre of the sparsely occupied ballroom, the Fischers, who had been making the rounds of their few guests, had arrived at Wolfgang and Frieda.

‘I must say,’ Herr Fischer remarked, ‘I had expected better of Berlin. To think that people are so craven, it is astonishing.’

Fischer was swaying slightly, having clearly had a number of glasses of wine.

‘You mustn’t blame them, Herr Fischer,’ Frieda said. ‘People know that their names will be taken, you saw the Gestapo outside.’

‘But that is exactly why those with a position in society should show themselves. And lead by example. Otherwise they’re cowards!’ Herr Fischer said. ‘This government rules not by law but by fear!’

The drink was making him indiscreet, his voice was slightly raised.

‘Hush, dear,’ Frau Fischer said, looking at the hovering waiters with concern, ‘we must remember where we are.’

‘And again, that is the point,’ Herr Fischer went on defiantly, although lowering his voice slightly. ‘Everyone is terrified to speak the truth. Well, I am done with this country now and may say what I like. In fact –’ Herr Fischer leant forward conspiratorially – ‘I gave a valedictory interview to the Berlin correspondent of the
New York Times
this afternoon. The man was witness to what happened outside my store on April the first. He himself was manhandled.’

‘I wish you’d left it, dear,’ Frau Fischer said. ‘Talking about it can’t do any good now.’

‘I will not leave the land of my fathers with my tail between my legs, my dear. We are not running, we have been
driven
out and I’m damned if I’ll make a secret of it.’

Once more Frau Fischer looked nervously about her.

‘I think they’re serving coffee, dear,’ she said.

‘Yes, and we really should be going,’ Frieda added. ‘The boys have school in the morning and I must be at the clinic.’

‘Then before you go,’ Herr Fischer went on, taking Wolfgang by the hand and speaking carefully like a man who knows he’s had too much to drink and wishes to disguise it, ‘there is something else I must say. My wife and I owe those splendid boys of yours a great deal.’

‘Please, forget it,’ Wolfgang interrupted, ‘you gave them each a hundred marks at the time, they couldn’t believe their luck.’

‘It’s quite possible that they saved Dagmar’s life that day,’ Herr Fischer went on, ‘or at least saved her from the most terrible sort of attack. I can never repay them for that.’

‘Dagmar’s their friend,’ Frieda interjected. ‘You really mustn’t—’

‘All I’m saying is I won’t forget,’ Herr Fischer said. ‘Dagmar, Frau Fischer and I will be Americans soon and I have friends who have friends in Congress. I beg you to write to me … if things become … well, if they … if you ever feel you are in need.’

Wolfgang looked Herr Fischer in the eye.

‘Thanks very much,’ he said. ‘I hope you mean it, Herr Fischer, because I think there’s a very good chance we’ll be taking you up on that offer.’

‘I mean it most sincerely,’ Herr Fischer replied, squeezing and shaking Wolfgang’s hand. ‘You and
Frau Doktor
Stengel are fine, fine people and those are two very precious boys you have there. My wife and I will never forget them.’

Auf Wiedersehen

Berlin, 1933

DAGMAR NEVER GOT the chance to be the American girl she dreamed of becoming because she and her family never left Berlin.

Later, looking at the photographs of the arrest in the newspaper, it was pretty obvious to Frieda and Wolfgang that the Gestapo had held back deliberately. They could have taken Herr Fischer into custody as he had left his house, but by catching the famous store owner with his feet on the very steps of a first-class carriage, they made him look all the more like a sneaky, pampered fugitive attempting to make his getaway. The caption underneath it in the
Völkischer Beobachter
read:
Not so fast, Jew! The German people want a word with you!

The expression of surprise on Isaac Fischer’s face, captured forever by the photographer (whom the police had conveniently alerted to the arrest), showed that he had no inkling of what was coming. It was a cruel and terrible blow.

The Fischers had driven to the station from Charlottenburg in their gleaming Mercedes, confident in the knowledge that soon they would once more be living in a country where they were safe from robbery and assault.

It is true that the journey had been made somewhat unpleasant by an article in the morning paper, reporting on the party that had been held at Kempinski’s on the previous night. The article was not in the social pages as it would have been had it been published just a year before, a gushing description by a female fashion correspondent of the gorgeous gowns and wealthy elite dancing till dawn. This report was in the news section and it was a damning and violent attack headlined
Food for two hundred gorged by scarcely forty Jews
. The article went to great length to describe dish by dish how a handful of rich, spoiled Jews had arranged for themselves quantities of food which they could not possibly consume while true Berliners tightened their belts against the hard economic times and stern tasks the nation faced.

Fischer had bitten his lip with anger at the outrageous twisting of the truth, screwed the paper up and thrown it on the floor of the car. Nothing, however, could dampen Dagmar’s rising spirits. In fact in a way the vicious article (which had named her specifically as a disgusting and spoiled Jewish princess) served only to strengthen her resolve and steel her soul to emigration.

‘They will have to lie about someone else now, Papa!’ she said, squeezing her father’s hand. ‘We are sailing away from all this! Thank you, Papa. Thank you so much for making sure that we would be safe after all.’

At the station the Fischers dismissed their car and hired a porter. The Mercedes was to be sold along with everything else the Fischers owned in Germany, Herr Fischer having left it in the hands of his bank to liquefy his assets. He was aware of course that the state would claim a large part of his fortune but at this early stage of the Nazi administration he was confident of getting something out. Besides, he had substantial assets overseas, and the main thing was they would be free from further persecution.

Herr Fischer bought a button-hole carnation at the station flower stall, a lilac corsage for his wife and a posy of primroses for Dagmar. Dagmar herself bought a bag of sugar-coated pretzels.

‘If they don’t have these in New York, Papa,’ she said, ‘we should set up a bakery and sell them.’

‘Darling,’ Frau Fischer remarked, ‘they have
everything
in New York.’

‘They will have once they’ve got me!’ Dagmar replied and she even skipped for a few steps until she recalled that she was a grown-up now. She was after all wearing actual proper stockings instead of her usual ankle socks. And young ladies in stockings did not skip.

They made an elegant-looking threesome on their way to the boat-train platform, dressed in their fashionable travel clothes, the ladies in splendid hats and with their beautiful matching luggage trundling behind them on a cart.

They were certainly not difficult for the Stengel twins to spot as they emerged from the
U-Bahn
entrance.

‘Dagmar! Dagmar!’ came the shout as Paulus and Otto rushed across the station to intercept them just as the Fischers arrived at the ticket barrier.

‘Boys!’ Herr Fischer said with stern surprise. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’

‘Oh, it’s one of their festival days, sir, no lessons,’ Paulus explained.

‘We bunked off, sir!’ Otto said at exactly the same time.

Dagmar laughed as Paulus punched Otto. Same old twins.

Herr Fischer pretended to frown. ‘One useful lesson in life, boys,’ he said, ‘is to always get your stories straight,’ at which Paulus cast a further angry glance at Otto. ‘Anyway, it’s very nice to see you.’

‘We wanted to say goodbye to Dagmar,’ Paulus said.

‘Well,’ Frau Fischer said, ‘that’s very sweet. Dagmar, it is time to say goodbye again.’

‘And I’m afraid we must hurry along a bit,’ Herr Fischer added. ‘We depart in twenty minutes and I like to be settled before the train begins to move.’

Dagmar looked from one twin to another.

‘I’m so glad you came, boys,’ she said. Then she gave them each a kiss and a hug.

‘We’re glad too!’ Paulus said.

‘Yeah!’ added Otto.

Dagmar pushed her bag of sugar-coated pretzels into Otto’s hands.

‘To
share
,’ she said, and turned away.

‘We’ll be waiting right here at the ticket barrier till you’re gone!’ Paulus shouted after her.

‘In fact, we may just stay here till one day you come back!’ Otto called out.

‘Be sure to lean out of the window,’ Paulus added.

They watched wistfully as Dagmar’s elegant figure made its way along the platform, hoping she would turn once more and wave, which of course she did, every few steps. They saw Herr Fischer consulting with a guard and being shown towards the carriage with their reserved seats.

They watched as Dagmar boarded the train.

In later years Dagmar often thought back to that cosy carriage. She was only in it for a minute at most but she felt she could remember every detail of its deep plush upholstery. The little lamps on the tables. The face of the smiling attendant who showed her to her seat. The feeling of security and comfort as she contemplated the happy journey to Bremerhaven. The coffee. The magazines. Lunch in the first-class dining car.

She had not quite sat down when she heard her father’s voice raised in anger.

‘What is the meaning of this!’ Herr Fischer was demanding of someone on the platform. ‘I have committed no crime.’

But he had. He had defamed the German state. He had libelled the SA. He had invented the most dreadful lies about the Berlin police force, saying that they were indifferent to the law.

He had told the truth to the
New York Times
but neglected to ensure that it was only published after he had left Germany. In fact, quite the opposite, he’d intended the story as a parting shot.

They had so nearly made it too.

It had been nine a.m. in Berlin when the telegraphed transcripts of the first edition of the
New York Times
had landed on various desks in the offices on the Wilhelmstrasse.

Nine a.m. in Berlin. Three a.m. on the east coast of the US.

Somebody had been up either very early or very late at the German embassy. And bad news always travels fast.

If the German attaché had slept later, or if the Fischers had been on an earlier train, they would have been out of Berlin by the time the Minister of Propaganda caught sight of what Herr Fischer had done. But then they would probably just have been stopped at the docks or even intercepted at sea. They were after all travelling on a German ship.

But then at least Dagmar would have got her coffee and her lunch. An hour or two of extra happiness before the darkness closed in.

Josef Goebbels liked to boast that he read all of the foreign press but that morning he must have stopped short at the
New York Times
. With its front page article about the famous Jewish store owner beaten up at the entrance to his own shop. His wife and young daughter terrorized and abused. About how one of Germany’s foremost families was being forced to leave what had become a ‘gangster’ nation for safety in the USA.

Such a slur could not go unanswered. This after all was
exactly
what the Leader had accused the Jews of doing. Slandering the Fatherland abroad.

In no way did the fact that the minister and his staff knew perfectly well that the article was true diminish their genuine righteous indignation. Theirs was a world in which it was
always
possible to have things both ways. To be both bully and victim.

And so the Gestapo were despatched and an arrest staged.

Later, Isaac Fischer was to ask himself the bitter question whether his catastrophic lapse of judgement had been a genuine mistake or suicidal vanity.

Was it pride that had led him to speak out before he had reached safety? He had known in his heart that it was a risk. Why had he taken it?

Lying on the bare floor of his cell, his legs and arms broken, blood seeping from his face, he tried to take comfort in his anguish from the thought that his intemperate interview had simply given them a convenient excuse.

That they would have stopped him anyway.

But in the darkness that engulfed him Fischer knew that it wasn’t true. That had he not insisted on speaking out on what he had believed was to be his last day in Germany, he would almost certainly have got away.

Other rich and prominent Jews had got out. Plenty of them. But they had had the sense to leave quietly.