The Arms Maker of Berlin (26 page)

The truck stopped again. A guard threw down the tailgate and pulled back the flaps. They were staring at an open door leading into a brick cellblock.

His life in prison had begun.

T
HE FIRST LETTER
from Liesl arrived a week later, five handwritten pages smuggled between their cells by a guard bribed with ration coupons from her family. It was Kurt’s first moment of joy and color in a drab world that had shrunk to the dimensions of his five-by-nine cell.

Kurt had entered a sort of hibernation. It hadn’t even occurred to him to try to communicate with the others—not that he would have been inclined to do so except in Liesl’s case. The less they knew of his guilty thoughts, the better.

So he passed the time reading books sent by his parents. He was mildly amused when his sister forwarded her worn copy of
The Sorrows of Young Werther
, which he was able to read with a certain detachment, taking comfort in the knowledge that he, unlike Werther, might still win his true love in the end.

At other times he stared longingly out his small, high window for hours on end. The view across the prison’s outer wall was of the Hohenzollern Canal, the waterway leading to the loading docks of the biggest Bauer factory. Sometimes he smelled the smoke from the factory as it drifted on the afternoon breeze. At least that meant it was still functioning—no sure thing judging from the frequency of the bombing raids. Almost every night now the sky filled with the beams of searchlights. Whenever the pounding of the explosions and the flak bursts finally stopped, there was always plenty of chatter from the other cells. Some of it was in foreign tongues, usually French or Polish. Kurt never tried answering, even when the words were in German.

Liesl, on the other hand, had obviously been working diligently to establish connections to all their friends. This was clear from the surprising wealth of information in her letter. Some of the news was hard to take.

Dearest Kurt
,

I suppose by now that you, too, have suffered the awful and degrading experience of interrogation at the hands of our captors. Yesterday I was made to stand for five hours in the middle of a room while a guard watched through the door. I pissed into my clothes and nearly fainted. The only break they allowed was for a glass of water, but even then I was not permitted to sit down, and of course this only caused me to piss again. Afterward they did not let me wash or change clothes, so as you can imagine I am quite impossible to be around. Even the guard seems to grimace as he passes my door
.

Unfortunately, I am told that they wish to speak with me again this afternoon, so who knows what the hours ahead will bring. I am told they have been similarly harsh and determined in their efforts with all of us, but suffice it to say that so fiar I have been steadfast in my refusal to speak at all about any activities other than my own, for which I have willingly assumed full responsibility as a matter of conscience. In my lowest moments I try to remember the words of Dr. Bonhoeffer. Truly, no easy grace remains for us now, so we must summon all of our faith and fortitude. I am confident that you are doing the same, and I wish you strength even as I send my love
.

I am afraid that some of the others are of the opinion that Dieter must be to blame for our fate. They cite his carelessness in having kept the pamphlets at his house. Some of them have also remarked on the ease with which the officers entered his house, and the strange way that
his father behaved that evening, as if he was ashamed to have anything to do with us. I suppose they see that as evidence he was already aware of what was to come. Perhaps they are right, but I have tried to keep an open mind. I have always found Dieter to be a sweet boy even though he is impulsive and has never been a careful planner. It is difficult to accept that he would have been a party to this without having revealed it through some false word or gesture. We shall see, I suppose
.

Have you heard yet from your family, and your poor sister? One of my first thoughts after the terrible night of the raid was that this event would only make things worse for them, at a time when they can least afford it. Please send them my love, and, if possible, reassure me that they, too, have not been dragged into this awful abyss
.

With all the idle hours now at my disposal, I confess to experiencing many moments of weakness when I try to imagine what will become of us. I do take some hope from the days that have already passed. The students who were arrested in Munich were tried and executed in only a day or two, and I believe that many of them were several years older than us. Perhaps the thinking here is that they will offer us a second chance. Or maybe I am being terribly naive in my wishful thinking, and their only intention is to drag out the process as long as possible. One of the others seems to think that we will be here for weeks, or even months, based on things that he has heard from his parents. It is the uncertainty which is hardest to take. My lowest moments seem to come when I dare to dream that we might still have a future
.

All right, I must finish. The guard has promised to pick up this letter in the next hour just before the shift changes. Please stay strong, my darling
.

All my love
,

Liesl

As the days passed, Liesl’s notes continued, and Kurt always answered. He, of course, had not been interrogated since their imprisonment. But to cover for himself he wove elaborate descriptions of tough treatment and steadfast resistance, tales that were so deeply imagined that at times he almost believed them.

Word trickled in from the others. By the end of the second week he had received letters from everyone except Hannelore, although the only one he bothered to answer was Christoph, whom he had always admired.

Even poor Dieter sent him a message. It was obvious from his aggrieved and defensive tone that he had picked up on the suspicions of the others, and his shrillness only served to make him seem guilty. Kurt thought it best to say nothing at all on the subject, figuring that the whisper campaign and Dieter himself would do the job for him.

The third week brought devastating news from the outside. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been arrested. Details were sketchy, and Kurt agonized that his own revelations might have somehow led to it. It might have been easier to take if Bonhoeffer had been jailed at Plotzensee, where he could have joined their network of secret correspondence. Instead, the authorities took him to Tegel Prison, just across town.

But events within Plotzensee soon reminded them that they had plenty to fear regarding their own prospects. On the evening of May 13, nearly eight weeks after their arrival, Kurt heard a stir of activity outdoors. He looked out the window to see a single file of prisoners casting long shadows as guards led them into a low building between the cellblock and the outer wall. He counted thirteen in all. It was just before 7 p.m.

For the next half hour, a series of barked commands issued from the windows of the low building. Some were followed by muffled cries, others by a great slamming thud, which echoed across the yard. Finally there was a brief period of silence, followed by a frantic spell of hammering. When that stopped, the door of the building opened and two guards emerged, carrying a wooden coffin. Two more guards followed with a second coffin. Thirteen bodies came out in all.

The next morning he got the full story from a guard, who seemed to relish explaining what all the fuss had been about. The low building was the Plotzensee death chamber. The sickening thunks had come from the slamming blade of a guillotine. The prisoners that weren’t beheaded had been hanged from hooks along a rear wall. The thirteen victims were members of a resistance cell known as the Red Orchestra, for its ties to the Soviets.

The next few months brought further killings. The peak came on August 5, when nineteen more members of the Red Orchestra filed into the death house. But the worst was yet to come. In mid-August, the news arrived in a note from Liesl: Their trials had begun. Kurt had to pretend that he knew all about it and that he, too, was going into the dock. But he could only imagine how horrible it was as he read the descriptions from the others, as each was led into the so-called People’s Court for trial and sentencing.

The worst and most vivid account was Christoph’s.

Our judge was Roland Freisler, the devil himself in his awful red robes. He wore a perched crown hat and saluted like a madman, as if pointing to the thunderclouds and awaiting their command. He hardly listened to a word I said. He just screamed and sneered and berated me at every turn. When the end came he shouted the verdict of guilty, and then his sentence, screaming to the gallery, “This beet must be uprooted and replanted! Yank him from the ground, then bury him in it!” That is his way of saying I am to be hanged ten days from now, on the 29th of August, along with Ulrich and Dieter, who I am ashamed to admit that I have sorely misjudged in this affair
.

What is the word from you, and have you been to court yet? I await your news with equal measures of dread and compassion. I am determined to carry myself with dignity and defiance to the very end, and I am confident that you will do the same
.

Your loyal friend
,

Christoph

Kurt crumpled the note in anguish. In the following days word arrived that Klara and Hannelore had also been sentenced to hang, but not until September 5. Kurt considered writing that he, too, had been sentenced to death, to keep the others from assuming the worst. But if he did, Liesl would know later that he had lied to the others. Before he could think up what to say, the news arrived that Liesl had inexplicably—to everyone else, at least—been sentenced merely to five years in jail. The official explanation was that she was the youngest of the three girls. That gave Kurt the out that he had been seeking, because at seventeen he was the youngest of the males, and the Nazis had generally avoided executing underage suspects, as long as you weren’t a Jew. The beheading at Plotzensee the previous year of a seventeen-year-old boy—yet another pamphleteer—had led to a rare public outcry against the government.

Liesl, while overjoyed to hear his life had been spared, seemed to suspect that his family’s prominence must have had something to do with it. She concluded that this must have worked to protect her as well, because in her next note she asked, “Is there nothing your father can do for the others, or, at the very least, for Hannelore?”

He decided that the safest bet was to play along, so he replied, “With regret and no small measure of shame, I must reveal that my father has expended all of his possible influence, and I can assure you that even that did not come without many sacrifices, in light of what the government now knows about my family.”

Executions at Plotzensee always began at 7 p.m. On the day that Christoph, Ulrich, and Dieter were to be killed, Kurt lay on his bed waiting in dread for the groan of the downstairs door and the tramp of feet toward the death chamber. They were right on schedule. He couldn’t bear to watch, and when he heard Christoph’s voice, wavering yet loud, yell, “Our memory will outlive our killers!” he shut his eyes tightly and sobbed in shame. Then he clamped his thin pillow around his ears, pressing hard and humming like a boy afraid of thunder, so that he wouldn’t hear the shouted orders, the muffled cries, or the hammering of the coffin lids.

His humming wasn’t loud enough, so he began singing like a madman—old tunes from kindergarten, Christmas carols, whatever came to mind. And when he opened his eyes much later and dropped the pillow, which was soaked in tears and sweat, he saw that it had grown dark outside. His untouched dinner sat cold on a tray the guards had brought. The only sound was the twitter of a nightingale, tuning up for the evening. A half hour later an air raid siren wailed into action, and he listened for the distant drone of approaching bombers. On came the flak guns and the bomb bursts, and for a change he welcomed them. The searchlights seemed to sweep the sky clear of all the ill spirits that had been set loose from the death chamber.

For the next several days he ignored contact with everyone, even Liesl. At noon on September 3 he finally wrote her. He had just penned the salutation when there was a knock at the door. Guards never knocked, so he wondered who it could be.

“It’s Gollner. Your time is up.”

For a harrowing moment Kurt was convinced that their deal was off and that he was about to be led downstairs to the death chamber, where he would find Liesl already hanging by a hook. Instead, Gollner entered with a sheaf of documents.

“These are your release papers. Come downstairs. All you have to do is sign.”

He sagged in relief, not least because it meant he would not have to endure the executions of Klara and Hannelore. In his mounting guilt he had even begun to admire Hannelore’s reckless defiance.

“And Liesl?” he asked. “She is being released, too?”

“There has been a slight delay where she is concerned. Nothing to worry about.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s why they sent me. To explain, so there will be no fuss. She will be coming out later, perhaps at midnight. Some sort of glitch with the paperwork. But, as I said, not to worry. You will have three weeks to spend with your lady love before going off to the army. Maybe she will volunteer for the nursing corps and you will see her at the front.”