The Luck of the Weissensteiners (The Three Nations Trilogy) (12 page)

Greta had two weeks to go before she was due to give birth and Wilhelm knew he could not postpone his departure any longer. Any day now there could be either a civil war between Czechs and Slovaks or a German invasion.
Either way, there was a sense of doom or negativity on the streets, mixed with an air of expectation and the possibility that literally anything could happen. He felt it was simply too risky to wait and see any longer. He actually scolded himself for having waited so long when he could already be across the border safely. He had done so because he was afraid that the emotional trauma of him leaving Greta would cause harm to the unborn baby, whose prospects were already in question as far as he was concerned. Now that Greta was at least so close to her due date, Johanna said the chances for survival of a prematurely born baby would be much better. Eventually he found the courage and told her.

“Greta I have something to tell you,” he said with his eyes averted to the floor.

“That doesn't sound like good news. What is it Wilhelm?” she asked calmly.

“I have the papers we were waiting for,” he said shyly.

“Oh,” she said, sensing from his tone that this was not entirely good news.

“You don't seem very happy!” Wilhelm observed.

“I can't say that I am. No,” admitted Greta. “It means saying good bye to my family and leaving everything and everyone behind us.”

“Greta there have been some problems,” Wilhelm said uncomfortably. “I was not able to get you a passport as well. The forgers refuse to help full blood
ed Jews. I did not know that. I tried but they said I could pay and get the papers for Karl or leave with nothing at all. So I took what I could get. I am so sorry my love.”

“Oh dear,
” Greta sighed.  “Well, you did the right thing, Wilhelm. At least our boy can get to safety. We really should have seen this coming. We can be so naïve. Well it does not matter, we can go across the border separately. Nothing must happen to our Karl. Once you are in Poland I will find a way in as well.”

“You are right,” Wilhelm agreed. “The problem is that Poland is harbouring a German minority as well. Politicians expect that Hitler will go there next and we would have gained nothing a
t all. I have thought about this long and hard and I think the best thing for me to do is to take Karl and go back to Berlin, not Poland. A blond boy with a German passport from the Czechoslovak Embassy has nothing to fear in Berlin. Johanna and I think that you are safest here on the farm. You are heavily pregnant, it would be a risk for you and the baby to travel now and probably for some time after it is born. Benedikt and Johanna can hide you on the farm, no one outside would even know that you are still here. We can wait and see what happens to the country and its Jews and then make decisions how to reunite later.”

“How long have you planned
this?” Greta asked stoically, a sense of his deceit at last entered her mind.

“I have thought about it for a while. I was looking for alternatives. Leaving you behind was always the last resort. Now that the passport for you has not materialised the decision was made for me. We simply can't afford a journey to America. Nowhere in Europe is safe for us all together right now. At least here you have my family to support you.”

“You are right,” she agreed. “We have been fooling ourselves. It is really going to happen, isn't it? It is not just a rumour or a vague possibility. Hitler will swallow the country up.”

“I think so,”
he said.

“Somehow I always doubted it would come to this. We have talked about it all th
e time but now that it is so close I am still surprised. If I am stuck on the farm it is going to be like a prison for me. I am not going to see anyone who means anything to me, my family, you or Karl,” she said sadly.

“It won't feel like a prison
,” he tried to console her. “You will be busy with the new baby and hopefully the situation in Europe will be resolved soon. Johanna and the girls are also going to take care of you. Don't worry.”

“When are you planning to leave?” she
asked. “You’ll miss the birth of your child.”

“
I know. Promise me you’ll send me photographs of the new child,” he said, now more confident since the emotional outburst he had feared had not occurred. “I have waited too long as it is. I am leaving tomorrow morning. I am really scared for Karl, Greta. More than you can imagine. If it was not for Karl I would wait but I must get him out of here. You must appreciate that.”

Greta sunk her head onto his shoulder and cried.

“Just hold me Wilhelm,” she begged him. “Oh what a disaster this continent has become.”

Wilhelm was very pleased about the way Greta had taken the news. Better than he had ever could have hoped for.
She was so calm and understanding and the conversation had not gone at all how he had expected. He was incredibly relieved that she had not queried his decision any further. He had had nightmare visions of having to justify himself more and ending up having to talk about the Jewish genetic diseases and his worries about the new baby. She would not have believed him and tried to convince him otherwise. He was sure that the pamphlets were right, why else would Hitler be so obsessed with eradicating the Jews? The fear of those dreadful genes was the real reason why he was leaving and he had long stopped pretending to himself that he was ever going to come back to his wife. There was no future in a mixed marriage in these times. He had once loved his wife but he was no longer infatuated, naïve and uneducated. Now he knew the dangers he had played with and the miscarriage should have been a final warning to him; they should have stopped trying for another baby then. He felt bad about abandoning Greta like this but what he was doing was better than what some German men allegedly did to their Jewish wives to save their own skin. At least his family was offering to look after her. She was not left stranded and she was not being deported as so many Jews had been.

Greta in her naivety believed his assurances that this was only a temporary solution until the situation had changed and that he could not wait to be
reunited. Once she had shown herself so calm and reasonable he felt safe to make her promises he knew he would not keep - anything to get away quickly and without a scene.

Next morning, a
fter Wilhelm and Karl had left, Greta cried for a long time but Johanna scolded her and told her to pull herself together, which helped. They sent a letter to Jonah and informed him that there should be no contact between the two families at least until the birth. Four days later Greta went into early labour and delivered another Aryan looking little boy, whom Johanna insisted for good measure they christen right away. They named him Ernst (the serious) after Johanna's father as a thank you for all her help but also to impress on the little child the seriousness of the times he had been born into.

Johanna wrote to Wilhelm at his parent's new addre
ss in Berlin with the good news. His child was a boy, healthy and blond. Her prayers had been answered and Greta had even allowed them to christen him right away, so now even a priest could vouch for the little boy not being Jewish. Greta’s father had agreed to the no visit policy and in turn, Johanna had promised she would soon take the new baby into town to the weaver workshop to show him off to his other relatives.

Wilhel
m was relieved to hear the news but once he had arrived in Berlin and taken in its fascist climate, he decided to abandon any remaining link with Greta. There was zero tolerance for interracial marriages here and he was told that the only way to recover from such a marriage in the eyes of the authorities was to initiate the divorce proceedings and to do so immediately. Oscar arranged for Karl to stay with Wilhelm's brother Bernhard, who had recently got married. To muddy the waters, Oscar had come up with a complex plan in which Karl was to receive a new identity as the son of a communist. Then he would be adopted by Bernhard and his wife, while Wilhelm was handling the divorce. That way there would be no link to Greta at all.

When it came to annu
lling an interracial marriage, the German efficiency knew no limits; Greta did not even have to be consulted about it. The authorities sent a notification to Bratislava to inform her about her divorce on racial grounds but Johanna intercepted the letter and left Greta in the belief that everything was still fine. After a few weeks of no letters from Berlin, Greta was naturally concerned that Wilhelm had not written to her. Johanna calmed her down and explained that frequent contact could be dangerous. If the Germans ever did invade, an ambitious mail man would inform on her to ingratiate himself with the occupying force and tell the Hlinka Guard that she was still living on the farm. Greta continuously swayed between thinking that this was overly cautious and agreeing with Johanna. The times were unpredictable, that much was obvious.

The winter was hard that year. The thought of exposing her little new born boy to the harsh elements worried her, as did the idea of someone else taking Ernst to s
ee her family, but Johanna insisted they must not take any risks and in order to avoid unwelcome visitors alone she took Ernst to the workshop to introduce him to his other family.

By the time the New Year had come, Greta could no longer pretend that everything was alright; there was a major problem in her marriage. Wilhelm had not been in touch with her, not even via a third party. Johanna kept reassuring her that this was all temporary and part of some plan to protect her and Ernst, but Greta knew Wilhelm well enough to sense that there was more to this than met the eye.

At first
, she worried that father and son had run into trouble with either the border police or the authorities in Berlin but only a week after Wilhelm and Karl had left Bratislava, a letter arrived at the farm written by Elizabeth and addressed to Johanna. Wilhelm was mentioned in passing - enough to assure everyone about his health and well-being but without any further information. Most hurtful for Greta, there was no message for her and the new born baby. Johanna could talk all she liked about necessary discretion and secrecy but there would have been a way to communicate, either indirectly or in some understandable code, to get a message past potential censors. The way Wilhelm handled all this was nothing but a slap in the face.

L
etters went missing or were opened by the Gestapo in Berlin and presumably by the Hlinka Guard here as well but it seemed extremely unlikely that Wilhelm would be under such observation. Greta could not help but feel that this excessive care was nothing but unjustified hysteria and way beyond what was reasonable. Johanna disagreed and defended Wilhelm and his caution. Their discussions were so focused on the issue of safety in Berlin that the subject of his willingness to write to his wife never came up.

Since the Sudetenland had become part of Germany
, the Czech dominated government in Prague felt weak and insecure. Czechoslovakia was renamed into Czecho-Slovakia and the newly hyphenated Slovakia had been given more autonomy than it had ever had in its history. In the minds of the Bratislava gentry, complete Slovak independence became a real possibility and therefore a threat to the Czech politicians in Bohemia and Moravia. In the first two months of the year a lot of diplomatic and political moves were made, paving the way for an independent Slovak state. Party officials from the Slovak nationalist parties frequently travelled to Berlin and appeared to be on a good footing with the Hitler government.

A
t the same time, the Czech led federal government in Prague was misled by German diplomats who assured it of Hitler's lack of interest in the internal power battle between Czechs and Slovaks. So encouraged by the promises coming out of Berlin, the powers in Prague responded to the situation by invading the rebellious Slovakia in March in a pre-emptive strike. They declared martial law, had the army secure the country and arrested officials that were considered traitors.

This had given the Germans the excuse they were looking for and in “protection of the Slovak state” they invaded the Czech regions and declared it the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
At last, Slovakia was declared an independent state and since it was an ally of Hitler, German troops could enter its soil without occupying the country.

Hoards
of people took to the streets cheering. For centuries the Slovaks had been part of the Hungarian Empire until its fall in 1918. When the idea of Nationalism swept across Europe in the 1840s, the Slovaks were one of the few losing nations whose dream of independence had never come true. With the arrival of this independence almost a century of Nationalist frustration ended and the accumulated relief and joy was celebrated by the ones who cared.

For the Germans in the country this wa
s also good news. Wheras in the past the Germans had been rivals to
Slovak politicians for ministerial positions and power, they could now be considered allies and representatives of the great nation that had helped to secure Slovak independence.

H
owever, huge parts of the population were too scarred from the countless reforms during the Austrio-Hungarian rule to believe that there would be real change. They feared that the cooperation with Germany was just a euphemism for a new kind of oppression and they were waiting for the catch in the new political environment.

Amongst
the pessimists were forces such as communists and Lutherans who knew that the new leaders did not look favourably on them. The dominating force in the new Slovakia was the right wing Slovak People’s Party, which combined both racist and religious forces under one umbrella and which was the political body behind the much feared Hlinka Guard, named after the party leader Andrej Hlinka. Its religious wing was Catholic conservative and less concerned about the Jews in the country; the racist wing however was inspired by the nationalism and anti-Semitism of their German counter part and planned to work closely with Hitler's NSDAP.

This political s
ituation worried Greta slightly but as Slovakia had been spared an invasion – like many Jews – she felt a little relieved. She was unaware that the Slovak People’s Party had already begun to look into the Jewish question in Slovakia without any help or initiation from the Nazis. Jews who had converted before 1918 were not affected but spouses of Jews were being targeted in the drafts for future legislation and so were children where both parents were Jewish.

Johanna and Benedikt looked at
the new laws when they were announced and they were confused. If it was discovered that she had never been baptised then Greta would be considered as Jewish but as she had converted – although after 1918 - there was still hope she might escape prosecution. Wilhelm would be safe if he was still here because of the divorce and so would Karl as only one of his parents was Jewish; these things considered, Johanna lamented that Wilhelm and Karl would be safer and better off here. However, nothing was straight-forward in the local bureaucracy and individual verdicts and circumstances depended on the good will and the efficiency of the processing civil officer.

The law proposed limitations for Jews who wanted to participate in Slovak social and public life, especially teachers, notaries, lawyers and civil servants.
Anti-Jewish sentiment was increasingly noticeable but had still not come to the fore-front of public life in Bratislava. Since the beginning of the year, Czech government officials and civil servants had been expelled from their jobs and Slovak nationals had taken their positions. The establishment of a Slovak in contrast to a Czechoslovak identity was the main agenda on the political platform and so Jews did not feel the impact of the new legislation immediately. Things had never been completely easy for the Jews before but with the hate for all things Czech, the focus was not directed at them. Instead of persecuting or attacking Jewish people, the religious wing of the party used the predominant fear as an opportunity to persuade as many Jews to convert to Catholicism as possible. Jews who chose not to convert kept their heads down and tried not to provoke any attention. In this spirit of caution and safety Johanna declared it was only logical for her to stop even the occasional trips to town with Ernst to see Jonah and his children. 

According to the new laws
, Jonah and his family could also be considered both safe or in danger. They had been given Czechoslovak passports that did not identify them as Jews but gave away their Ukrainian origin. To people in the know, this fact always cast the doubt of a Jewish ancestry over a person because of the mass exodus of Jews from the region during Russian led pogroms. Civil servants, anti-Jewish police or border patrols would notice it and be likely to investigate the matter further. Jonah and his children were not in immediate danger but were well advised to act with caution.  

Wilma
was devastated over this. She had never been very fond of Karl but she had taken to Ernst like a house on fire and could spend hours with him. Whereas Karl was a very rational and clever boy who wanted to talk sensibly and who constantly asked questions, all of which Wilma was unsure how to answer, Ernst was a lovely and playful boy who related to her in a way she could completely respond to. He laughed at the silly faces she pulled and was always happy to play with her.

Johanna had taken offence when she saw the two of them together, feeling it was ridiculous how this spinster-in-the-making was more of a child at heart than the boy himself. That woman would be a bad influence on the boy and put stupid ideas in his head instead of educating him and teaching him how to be a functional member of the farming community. Johanna missed Karl more than she had thought
she would and the growing feelings of longing and loneliness led her to have also more resentment towards Greta and Ernst and their strong bond with each other. The new child was not as responsive to Johanna’s attention. She thought he was cute and adorable but he was not his brother and she could not be bothered to make much effort with him since it was clear he was so different in nature.

She wrote to Elizabeth several times to let her know about t
he progress of the little child but she never fulfilled her promise to Wilhelm to send pictures of him. In her letters she took a rather negative approach in describing the new-born and Wilhelm mistook this information as a sign that Ernst was showing first signs of the dreaded Jewish genes, just as he had feared. Any doubts he had had about leaving Greta behind were now erased.

Johanna
’s lack of affection for Ernst had made it even easier for Wilma to form a strong bond with her new nephew. She missed seeing her sister and when Johanna stopped coming into town with Ernst, Wilma felt her whole world collapsing. After a few months of trying to accept the situation Wilma decided to ignore the ban on visits and made plans to sneak out of the house and walk to the farm one Saturday afternoon when she was not required in the workshop.

S
he got on her way but as she was crossing the bridge across the river she saw a few uniformed boys coming from the opposite side. How odd, she thought, that boys that age would wear a uniform. She wondered what it stood for and stared at them a little too obviously and a little too long. When she saw the swastikas on their arms she turned her head but it was too late. The boys were a group of visiting German Hitler Youth and closely examined the girl who had so blatantly stared at them. They immediately recognised her Jewish looks and crowded around her on the edge of the bridge.

“Where are you going you Yiddish whore?” one of them almost shouted in
German. He was tall but his limbs had grown faster than the rest of his body and in his short trousers he looked comically shaped. His short hair made his ears appear overly big. He seemed far too young and immature to use hateful language like that.

Wilma said nothing in reply and
tried to get quietly past them but they blocked her way and forced her to stand with her back to the edge of the bridge facing their spotty and hateful faces.

“I asked you a question
. Where do you think you are going?” the big eared youth continued.

“To visit relatives,” she answered in a low voice, realising that she was outnumbered and that showing her raging anger or saying what she actually thought of these cowardly bullies would be a mistake.

“And where are these relatives?” another boy confronted her. He seemed to be the ring leader. He looked a little bit older and stood in front of the other guys. He had flaming red hair, cut short on the sides and had a long strand across his forehead, similar to the hair of Adolf Hitler. He was more muscled than the other boys and his posture displayed much more confidence and menace than the boy with the big ears could muster.

“Aren't you going in the wrong direction?” he asked her. “If I am
not mistaken the Jewish quarter is the other way.”

Wilma was at once struck with panic. She mustn't give away her sister
’s hide out by saying where she was going; she had to think of something to say quickly.

“I was just going to look at the river. I like looking at it,” she said hastily.

“Oh you like the river. That's nice,” the ginger boy mocked.

“Well I think maybe you want to have a closer look?” sai
d the one with the big ears and while another boy lifted her legs off the ground pushed her face towards the river.

“Stop, please sto
p!” Wilma screamed. She was terrified of water.

“I tell you what,” said the ringleader. “If we throw you in the river you can see it really close up and you could swim to your
relatives in the Jewish quarter. That should be much quicker.”

“I can't swim,” she cried in panic. “Please stop!”

“You'll be fine. You can't drown. Shit floats,” another one of them shouted.

There were two of them now holding one foot each. Wilma was scared for her life but she knew if she resis
ted the chances were even greater that she would not be thrown but accidentally dropped off the bridge and drown.

“Throw
that ugly Jew in. I can't bear looking at her,” demanded the ring leader and the two guys holding her legs lifted her higher so that the top half of her body was now hanging completely free over the bridge wall.

“Stop!
Please stop!” Wilma cried.

“Time we let her go
before any of the locals think he has to take the law into his own hands and tries to stop us. It would be a shame if someone wanted to risk his life for such a good for nothing Jewess,” suggested another one.