All God's Children (11 page)

“Consider it an early Christmas present.” Josef turned toward the kitchen, then paused and looked back at her. “We are not all monsters, Beth.”

As she met his eyes, so fervent and yet empty of any other emotion, Beth realized that going to his father on her behalf had cost him a great deal. Her uncle had mentioned Josef’s estrangement from his father when she asked why he had moved in with them and not his parents. His break with his father over their divergent political views was why Josef had gone to Boston to complete his studies. It was why now that he was back he went to see his mother only when he knew his father would not be at home.

Beth was so overcome with emotion that she had trouble putting everything she was feeling in proper perspective. Guilt over her doubts about Josef. Relief that she held in her hands the means to go home to her family—her country. Thankfulness that God had shown His mercy. Overriding all was the unsettling idea that there were others who could make better use of this document than she could, people whose very lives depended on their getting out of the country. And the teachings of her faith demanded that if possible she stand up for those who could not stand up for themselves.

“Let me get Anja and the children,” she said. “This calls for a celebration.”

She was halfway up the stairs to the attic when Josef called out to her. “Beth? You cannot give Anja this visa. You will go to prison if you do not leave as my father instructed.”

“I know. That’s why we must find another way to help them.”

Impossible woman
, Josef fumed. Impossibly stubborn. Impossibly beautiful. Impossibly brave and naive.

In spite of any objection that Josef could think to offer, Beth persuaded Anja to stay in the attic with the children for the night. “Tomorrow,” he heard her promise the woman. “There will be time enough for you and the children to leave tomorrow.”

But the following morning as he made his rounds at the hospital, a nurse called for him to take an urgent phone call.

“Our friends,” Beth began, her voice was shaking with panic.

“Have arrived?” Josef replied, his own voice far too hearty to be considered normal, hoping that she would understand that others were within earshot of his side of the conversation.

Thankfully, Beth played along. “No. They are not here…yet.”

“I’m just finishing rounds. I’ll be right there,” he promised, and then he laughed as if she’d said something funny—as if she’d said anything at all.

The minute that Josef entered the apartment, Beth reached for her coat and scarf. Josef grabbed her arm to stop her. “Did you not hear what my father said?”

Beth paused—one arm in the sleeve of her coat, the other in his grasp. “I heard him. End of the month—we have almost three weeks. So there is time, and we have to find Anja and the children and get them to safety.”

“How? They might have been gone already for hours. For all you know, they left last night the minute Anja heard you close your bedroom door. How will you find them? And even if you did find them, what then?”

“We could….” She glanced around as if seeking out a proper hiding place. “We might be able to…”

“We?” He gave her a wry smile. “Are you not forgetting that I am your enemy, Beth?”

“I have no enemies,” she replied as she pulled free of him and continued putting on her coat.

“Anja does,” he reminded her.

“Then help me find her so she will not fall into the hands of those she cannot fight on her own.”

Josef realized that in getting her the precious visa he had earned her trust. In that moment he would have happily moved mountains if such an act would please her. “You stay here,” he said. “I will go. Just let me change into my uniform, and I promise you that I will do what I can.”

“You’ll find them and bring them back with you,” she instructed.

“That’s not—” He saw that she would take no less than his promise to do just that. “All right. Just give me your word that you will stay here and wait for me.”

“Yes, but there’s no time for you to change. You must go now before—”

“Beth, my uniform is a way for me to move through the city without being stopped and questioned. If you want me to find them, then…”

“Yes, of course you’re right.”

To his surprise she touched his cheek with her fingers. “Hurry, please. They must be terrified and so very cold. She did not take the clothes I left for her, although she did leave those horrid stars behind. I burned them in the kitchen stove.”

Her eyes filled with tears, but he knew that she would not let them fall. To do so would show fear and weakness, and she would permit neither. “Just let me get changed,” he said as he hurried up to the attic.

He didn’t bother with more than his military jacket, cap, and boots. They would do, and time was of the essence. No telling where Anja had decided to run.

Sure enough, he was barely outside the front entrance when he was confronted by a trio of soldiers coming out of the bakery. They started toward him.

“Doktor,” he announced, pointing to his medical insignia.

The ploy worked. The soldiers stepped aside without further question as he hurried past them and on down the boulevard. Along the way he scanned his surroundings for possible signs of the woman and her children. Where would she go with two small children? Where could she hide now that it was daylight? At least the boy had eaten something. But the truth was they could be anywhere. Munich was a large city, and he could hardly cover every street.

“Anja,” he whispered whenever he spotted a potential hiding place. It was foolhardy to call for her even in a whisper, but perhaps she would be so startled to hear her given name that she would reveal herself.

The snow had started up again. She might be easier to track in fresh snow—her own small footprints and next to them the boy’s.

He thought about the stories he’d heard from Willi Graf and his friends after they returned from the Russian front. On their way there, they had been in Warsaw for a brief layover. Willi had told him of German soldiers beating Jewish men working outside the ghetto, of the malnutrition they had seen among the few Jewish Poles allowed outside the walls. And he spoke of news from others who had seen the mass executions, who knew of thousands lined up and murdered, discarded in open graves.

As the war had progressed, few Germans could doubt the fate of those people that the authorities found objectionable—political adversaries, the mentally ill, Poles, and Jews, the most hated of all. Josef could no longer pretend that he—and anyone who really considered the situation—didn’t know the fate that awaited Anja and her children. If caught she would be either killed on the spot or taken to one of the network of concentration camps that had been established across Eastern Europe. Rumors claimed that several of those camps were meant for more than incarceration. Some of them had been specifically designed to be facilities for extermination—death camps.

Josef quickened his pace to a run, desperate to find the woman. Not just to save her but to show her—and her children—that not all Germans agreed with the tactics of the current government. “We are not all monsters,” he had told Beth the night before. But he had to wonder if Anja would ever believe that.

He paused to allow a convoy of military trucks pass. Each truck was loaded with people—people whose pleas for mercy and protests of innocence lingered in the air like exhaust fumes once the trucks had passed. If Anja had been picked up—if she and the children were now on one of those trucks—he could do little for them. But he ran toward the train station anyway. He had no doubt that this was where the trucks were headed, and if Anja was on one of them…

These days the cattle cars were loaded in plain view of anyone who cared to watch. Josef had noticed that most people either turned away, busying themselves with something else so as not to see, or they stood by and watched. To his shame and utter disbelief he had even heard that some people taunted the prisoners and applauded their captors.

It was still fairly early, and the station was not yet as busy as it would be later in the day. By the time Josef arrived, the trucks had come to a halt, and all the passengers were being ordered to proceed to the freight train that sat waiting on the track closest to the platform, its engine huffing and wheezing.

“Schnell!”

Up and down the long platform, the order was repeated again and again. Sometimes it came with a blow of a rifle butt or the snapping and growling of a barely restrained dog.

Josef walked quickly along the length of the train, peering into cars that had already started to fill, and then moving on even as behind him he heard the slam of the sliding doors and the wails of the people inside.

And then he saw her.

    CHAPTER 6    

A
nj a was lifting her son into the waiting arms of a man already on one of the cattle cars. The man was clutching the baby close to his chest. He held out his hand to Anja as she tried to avoid the crush of others who were determined to get aboard ahead of her. Common sense would dictate the importance of finding space close to the door in order to have fresh air. If you had to go—and no one here had a choice—you might as well fight for the best position. Even freezing fresh air was preferable to what the stench inside that crowded car would be within a few hours.

“Halt!” Josef shouted. The guard charged with loading the car Anja had just climbed into looked up. “That woman,” he shouted. “Stop her.”

Roughly the guard grabbed Anja’s arm and pulled her back from the car. She fought him because the rest of her family was already aboard. The guard struck her hard across her face with the back of his hand, and she crumpled to the ground.

“The boy and the man,” Josef said as he reached the guard and forced himself not to even glance at Anja.
“Alle!
This family is not to go until they are questioned by order of the Gestapo,” he added, having learned the magic of those words. “Get them out of there. Now.” He saw the boy huddled next to the door, his eyes riveted on his mother, who remained lying on the ground.

“You there,” he ordered. The boy recognized him but showed no relief at Josef’s presence. His eyes were wide with pure terror. “Come down from there at once. And you,” he added, pointing to the father, who was trying to calm the wailing baby.

Josef grimaced as the guard roughly grabbed the boy’s thin arm and swung him to the ground next to Anja as if he were no more than a sack of potatoes. “Stand back,” Josef ordered and was relieved to see the guard obey. “Get up,” he ordered Anja. “Schnell.” He made a motion as if to strike her, and she scrambled unsteadily to her feet. The boy immediately clutched at her coat as the man climbed down from the cattle car and stood helplessly by.

“Kommen Sie!
” Josef barked out the command. Fortunately the chaotic scene around them—dogs barking, children wailing, people begging for mercy, and guards shouting out orders—gave Josef the cover he needed to get Anja and her family safely away, but when Anja and her husband hesitated to follow his order, the guard raised his rifle.

“Nein!” Josef shouted as he stepped between the guard and them.

Anja started to cough, and Josef wondered if her hacking was the result of being too long in the cold or a ploy to help him rescue them. But when she looked up at him, he saw only fear in her eyes. She did not trust him even though he had moved to protect her from the soldier’s bullet. She thought of him as no different from the others. Her cough was real.

“Gehen Sie, los,”
he ordered and pointed toward the other end of the train—the long line of cattle cars with doors slamming shut like the prison cells that they were.

With her shoulders hunched as if to ward off any further blows, Anja took her son’s hand as her husband sheltered his daughter with his arms and upper body. She gave Josef a sideways glance as they started to trudge back down the platform toward the station. Everything in their posture told Josef that at any moment they expected to be shot or perhaps simply thrown with their children beneath the train that was now moving slowly away.

He locked his hands behind his back in the manner that he had seen his father do on numerous occasions and moved closer so that he was not quite walking with her but was near enough for her to hear him. “Just keep walking,” he said quietly. “If anyone approaches, say nothing. Let me handle it.”