All God's Children (13 page)

This indeed was a copy of a White Rose leaflet—different from the one he’d read in the summer before he and his fellow medical students had left for their military assignments. Reading that original paper, he had been stunned and more than a little excited to realize that whoever had written those impassioned words shared his feelings about the current state of politics in their homeland. That essay had been a call to action—not to save the Jews and others designated as undesirable by the Third Reich, but rather to save Germany from Hitler and his Third Reich.

He turned his attention to the paper in his hand. This time the author or authors had taken a more strident tone:

Josef read the words quickly, not because he feared being discovered but because he was in complete agreement with the author. The last line of the piece was especially compelling.

“We will not keep silent. We are your guilty conscience. The White Rose will not let you alone!”

Josef leaned back in his chair and realized that his breath was coming in short gasps of excitement as if he had run a race and crossed the finish line ahead of his competitors. Given the events referred to in the document, the leaflet had been composed sometime after July— possibly just before the White Rose leaflets had simply stopped. He had assumed the author or authors had been caught. But if that was true, their cause had been taken up by others. This document—written months earlier—had been copied and left for someone like him to find—just as the original leaflets had been. Whoever had left this was still fighting for the Germany that Josef loved. He felt the sting of tears—tears of relief. Tears of hope.

Since returning from his military duty, he had been stunned by the changes in Munich. Beneath the surface of gaiety and holiday festivity ran an undercurrent of fear and caution that permeated everything. He thought about that autumn day when he’d first seen Beth Bridgewater. That day she had come into the apartment so full of vitality. He had thought of her high spirits as American, but now he realized that in some ways she had displayed the openness and energy of Bavarians as they had been before the war—before Hitler came to power, before everything changed.

Beth
.

It had taken weeks for him to secure the precious document that could assure her safe departure. Of course, his father had named his price—to deliver the document himself and meet this American woman. Josef had had no choice but to agree, and he had hurried back to the apartment to prepare Beth for his father’s visit. His plan had been to coach her on what to say—and more to the point what
not
to say. But then he had walked into the house and come face to face with Anja and her children, setting off a series of events that he could not have imagined.

Outside the laboratory door, he heard footsteps and froze. He glanced at the paper still clutched in his hand and crushed it into a ball as the doorknob turned.

“Ah, Herr Doktor Buch,” the custodian said. “You are here earlier than usual.”

Josef glanced at the wall clock and ran his fingers through his hair. “I could not sleep.”

Instead of leaving and apologizing for disturbing Josef, the custodian rolled his mop bucket into the room.

Irritated at the interruption, Josef wrapped his fingers more tightly around the wad of paper clutched in his palm. “I’ll likely be here for at least another hour before I leave for class,” he said, hoping the custodian would move on down the hallway to clean another room.

“We all have our duties, Herr Doktor. I won’t take long.” He set his mop into the sudsy water and began moving around the room, swiping the wet mop under lab tables and desks, pausing only to move or empty a wastebasket or retrieve a fallen piece of paper.

Josef turned back to his work, glad that once he’d decided to abandon any possibility that he might be able to concentrate he hadn’t packed up his papers and books. All the while he considered how he might best dispose of the incendiary leaflet still gripped in his hand. A metal wastebasket was close enough that he could certainly drop it there and then tear off sheets from his notebook and add them to the refuse.

He glanced over his shoulder to see what the custodian was doing and saw the man emptying a similar basket into a larger container that he had dragged into the room along with his mop bucket. But it was the way he emptied the contents of the trash that gave Josef pause. The man did not simply upend the smaller receptacle into the larger one. He pulled out the contents one paper or wadded ball at a time, setting the crumpled papers aside in a separate bucket as he tossed the others into the garbage bin.

Josef stealthily worked the incriminating leaflet beneath the cuff of his shirt and then stood and stretched as he reached for the uniform jacket draped over the back of his chair and shrugged into it. The custodian looked up.

“I just remembered that I need to stop at home before class,” Josef said as he gathered his papers and thrust them inside his briefcase.

“Sorry for interrupting your work, but…” The janitor smiled but did not return to his work.

“Kein Problem,”
Josef said as he left the room. But there could definitely have been a problem—a huge one if the custodian had come in and caught him reading that paper.

He was halfway down the hall when he heard the custodian call out to him.

“You must have dropped this paper, Doktor.” He was holding up a page that had clearly been crumpled into a ball and smoothed out again.

Josef felt the start of panic but realized that he could feel the leaflet he’d hidden in his sleeve scratching against his arm as he moved. Whatever the custodian was holding, it was something else. Josef took the paper the man held out to him and held it up to the light spilling into the dim hallway from the laboratory. It took less than a second for him to realize that this was another copy of the leaflet he had hidden in his sleeve.

The custodian watched him closely. The man was testing him.

“Where did you get this?” Josef demanded, waving the paper in the man’s face. He saw at once that he had effectively turned the tables. The custodian was now the one on the defensive, having realized too late that in giving such a document to Josef, he had raised questions of his own involvement in distributing such seditious literature. “I could report you for this,” Josef added for good measure.

The custodian backed away, his hands raised in protest even as sweat leaked from every pore of his balding head. “Nein, Doktor. I…I saw the paper on the floor near where you were working, and I thought perhaps—”

“Get back to work,” Josef ordered. “I’ll take care of this.” With that, he turned on his heel and strode down the hall, taking the second copy of the leaflet with him.

Outside he drew in long deep breaths of the cold morning air. How many of these papers were there? The originals had been printed on a mimeograph machine. This one as well as the copy hidden in his shirt sleeve had been typed. There could not possibly be many copies. It was possible that he had in his hands the only two.

He knew that he should simply burn the papers and forget about them. But somewhere people felt as he did. They were afraid for the future of their beloved country as he was and had decided to try and reach out to others who shared their concern. If they all banded together, perhaps they could change the course the Third Reich had set for their beloved fatherland. They could make a difference.
He
could make a difference.

I have a concern…
.

He thought of the evening when Beth had uttered that phrase— the night when he had learned the true story of her missing visa. The night their lives had become intertwined.

Beth Bridgewater had taken actions every bit as risky and courageous as the author of the call to action against the Third Reich that Josef had hidden in his sleeve. She had done so not because of her love of country or even because of any special connection to the woman she’d given her visa—or for that matter Anja and her children.

She had been faced with a choice between doing what was safe and doing what was right, and on at least two occasions that Josef knew of, she had chosen the more dangerous but noble path. In so doing she had shown more courage than any soldier Josef had ever encountered on the field of battle.

He pulled the leaflet from his sleeve and folded it with the one he had taken from the custodian. Somehow he would find the author or authors of these papers—and once he did, he would join them. For the first time in weeks, he felt a kernel of hope sprout inside him, and he was determined to help it grow.

    CHAPTER 7    

F
or two days and nights Beth managed to keep Anja, Benjamin, and the children safe. She slept in her own bed, alert for any sound coming from the attic. In the evenings Josef joined them, and in spite of the meager supper Anja helped Beth prepare, their time together was filled with discussion and laughter and the rudiments of building friendships. They took turns telling the children stories until they fell asleep. After that the four adults would sit in a corner of the attic and talk about their lives before the war—places they had traveled, plans they had made for their future, people they had known in common.

While Anja asked Beth about life in America, her eyes shone with excitement when she imagined one day she and Benjamin might take their children and live there. “In peace,” she always added quietly.

On these occasions, it seemed perfectly natural that Beth should sit with her head resting on Josef’s shoulder as Anja stretched out so that her head was on Benjamin’s lap. Josef would gently stroke her hair as he and Benjamin talked about sports—the 1936 Olympics in particular. Beth would link her fingers with Josef’s as she told them about her life in America.