Wildflowers of Terezin (2 page)

He signaled with a nod so that his assistant grabbed Fischer by the back of the collar and guided him roughly back up the aisle toward the exit. The man's tasseled prayer shawl fell at Wolfschmidt's feet, but when the Jew bent to pick it up Wolfschmidt couldn't resist holding it to the floor with the toe of his boot.

"Keep walking!" ordered Wolfschmidt.

"Wait!" objected the rabbi. "What has he done? You can't just come in here like this, disrupt our prayer meeting, and abduct our people!"

Wolfschmidt would have gladly taken on this man, here and now, had it not been for his specific orders and the even more specific task at hand. But with a deliberate motion he picked up the shawl and quite deliberately tore it in two.The ripping sound pleased him, even more as he watched the expressions on the men's faces turn from fright to horror.

Without another word of explanation he turned on his heel to follow his assistant and their charge out to the waiting car.

Fifteen minutes later Sturmbannführer Wolfschmidt stood with arms crossed in the middle of the Jewish Community Center offices on
Ny Kongensgade,
New King's Street.Surely it didn't need to take this long to find a simple file of addresses?

And this librarian—Fischer—worse than useless. They could have easily broken down the front door, and never mind the keys which the little man now held in his trembling hands as he watched five uniformed schutzpolizei taking apart his office, file by useless file.

"It's not in this one, either," reported one of the polizei, tossing another file drawer into the middle of the room. Still the librarian trembled.

"You're wasting our time!" cried Wolfschmidt. "Or would you rather we simply torch this place and be done with it? We're going to find it, whether we destroy your office or not."

Fischer looked to be in pain as he closed his eyes and mouthed . . . what, a prayer? Little good it did him now, because a moment later one of the schutzpolizei let out a cry as he pried open a locked metal file cabinet with a crowbar.

"I think I found something!" said the young man. Fischer winced but said nothing as they poured out the contents of the drawer, and then another—hundreds upon hundreds of cards, each one neatly printed with a name and address.Wolfschmidt smiled and stepped over to pick one up.

"Davidsen, Noah." He smiled as he fingered the card. "You don't imagine this could be a Jewish name, by chance?"

By this time the schutzpolizei had dumped the contents of several drawers on the floor. Which was all very well, but now they would just have to gather them all up and cart them away.

"In a box," he said with a wave. "All of them."

All of them, yes. The name and address of every Jew in this little country—and that would constitute close to seven thousand names. Perhaps that didn't amount to much, compared to populations in other countries they had liberated.But it was enough to make their job much easier when the time came.

And that, he knew, would be very soon.

NØRREBRO STREET, KØBENHAVN

FRIDAY EVENING, 17 SEPTEMBER 1943

The matter is very simple. The Bible is very easy to understand.

But . . . we pretend to be unable to understand it because

we know very well the minute we understand, we are obliged

to act accordingly.

—SØREN KIERKEGAARD

P
astor Steffen Arne Petersen never cared much for broken glass. Neither the sound nor the feel of it, even less the sensation of having Hans Larsen's bakery window rain down in crystal slivers atop his head. But having left the parsonage in such a hurry, he had not taken the time this cool September evening to find his hat, which in hindsight he now wished he might have done.

It might have shielded his head a bit more as he skidded out of control and tumbled off his sensible, black, Danish-built gentleman's bicycle—a gift from the congregation for five years' of service since his graduation from seminary in 1938.

But all he could think of now was rescuing the small communion set he carried in his inside coat pocket, the tiny bottle of wine and package of cross-stamped wafers he should have left in their velvet-lined case but had simply grabbed so his favorite eighty-four-year-old parishioner might enjoy the Lord's Supper from her sick bed at Bispebjerg Hospital.

Under the circumstances,
he thought,
Fru Kanstrup might forgive me for arriving a few minutes late.
That, and he wondered how much trouble it might be to repair his only means of transportation.

He did not think of himself yet, even as he plowed the pavement with his chin and came to rest on the sidewalk just past the bakery. The little handbag he'd strapped to the back of the bicycle tumbled along beside him, although his robe and pleated clerical collar would be all right.

In contrast, his head buzzed in shock at the impact, and the cuff of his black trousers tangled in the bicycle chain, but nothing hurt as he might have expected.

Yet.

Three more muffled explosions echoed down the street and off the five- story graystone buildings fronting
Nørrebrogade,
North Bridge Street, the wide København boulevard. Gunshots.He'd heard such before, unfortunately, and more often of late. As he did his best to shield himself while gasping for breath, a rough shout echoed from down the street.

"Head down, fool!"

"Yes, of course." Steffen ignored the rudeness but did his best to crouch closer against the bakery building, where even the bricks smelled of generations of fresh rolls. Yet he felt something wet against his side, imagined he was bleeding, and whispered to himself. "But how am I going to get another bike tire?"

At the moment no one had an answer for him. After a bit more shouting, shooting, and general unpleasantness had shattered the muggy evening air (not to mention several more windows), he dared look around to see if anyone found themselves in a similar predicament. It wouldn't do to have passersby see the pastor of
Sankt Stefan's Kirke,
Saint Steven's Church, lying in an undignified heap on the pavement.

Two more shots made him duck again.

Troublemakers,
he told himself.
They shouldn't rush their own funerals.

Funerals he would likely be called upon to conduct. Since he could at the moment do nothing about it, he thought it best to at least get inside—though pulling free of his wrecked bicycle and standing up would not prove as easy as he'd hoped. Not when much of his body remained backwards and improbably twisted.

Then he saw the blood on the pavement and on his hand when he touched his chin, wet and warm. He could smell the vague, salty dampness even before tasting it.

"Not so good, I'm afraid," he whispered. He was used to seeing a bit of blood at the butcher's shop, but not his own. It appeared just as red.

This time when he tried to twist himself free from the wreckage, he felt a bite in his right side, just above the belt. A few moments later his starched white shirt had soaked crimson like a red-and-white Danish flag.

Pretty, almost.

At once fascinated and horrified, he couldn't decide whether to hold his side or cradle his chin. In any case, he knew he had to get up, despite all the terrible noise. So he yanked his legs back as hard as he could, ignoring the pain that shot through his twisted knee. Now his head was too dizzy, and a woman scurried by with her dog and disappeared into the shelter of a nearby alleyway.

Please, Lord, don't let it be someone from my church.

Even if it was, his light head overruled, he would politely ask her for a helping hand,
if you please?

"Være så venlig?"

But no one stopped as his rattled mind loosened its moorings, slipping away from what he knew of Holy Communion, twisted bicycles, and broken bodies. When he finally touched his hand to his shirt he realized what kind of glass had actually punctured his side.

The little bottle of communion wine. That was it! The blood of Christ, symbolic or not, mingled with his own blood, very real indeed. There might be a sermon illustration in there, somewhere. Right now, though, he couldn't think of it.

"Fru Kanstrup will forgive my being detained," he whispered.

She must. He heard another popping sound, no, two, and then a pair of shoes running on the pavement past his head.But by that time he wasn't at all certain if his eyes were open or closed, or why it had grown so dark so quickly. And he heard that rough voice again, only this time much closer.

"Let's get you out of here."

Steffen looked up to see a young man with flaming red hair crouching next to him, grabbing him by the collar and hauling him like a sack of potatoes across the pavement and into an alleyway. Well, was that necessary?

He might have objected, but yet another shot echoed in his ears as the young fellow with the red hair pulled him to safety. Or perhaps it was thunder he heard this time, or another warning.

"Nikolai! Let him go!"

And that was all he remembered.

"Oh, dear!" The other young nurse looked up from the shattered glass on the hospital floor with a big-eyed expression of terror. "Your flowers, Hanne! I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"Don't worry about it, Ann-Grete." Floor supervisor Hanne Abrahamsen didn't have time today to worry about dropped vases, no matter who the expensive flowers came from. She patted her friend on the shoulder as she sidestepped the mess."Just let's be sure to sweep it up before Dr. Jørgensen sees. You know how he gets after . . ."

No need to finish the sentence. Her voice trailed off as she rubbed her eyes and checked her wristwatch.

After working the past fifteen hours straight.

"You won't tell your boyfriend, I hope." Ann-Grete bent to pick out the roses from the glass mess. "See? I'll put them back in water right away. He won't know the difference."

"Ann-Grete, he's not my—oh, forget it. Thanks." Hanne nodded and checked her clipboard, forcing her addled brain to make mental notes as she hurried down the hallway and past the survivors of this latest riot. This past summer København had been heating up in more ways than one, as street demonstrations grew more and more violent. Flowers were the least of her worries.

In 39A, gunshot wounds to the shoulder. He'd been lucky the shooter's aim was a bit off. In 40B, multiple fractures after a run-in with a German guard swinging a half-empty bottle of Tuborg. She wondered how the poor man had made it home.And then there was Room 41, the priest. She paused at the door, wondering if she should bother him.

"Awake yet, Father?"

He blinked, and again. Looked up at her with the same weak, puzzled expression most people wore when waking up in a strange hospital bed.

"I was on my way to Bispebjerg Hospital . . ." His voice cracked. Likely he still didn't know where he was.

"You made it."

"In a manner of speaking." Now he tried to straighten up, which, given the tubes he wore pinned to his arm, might not have been the best of plans. "I was going there to visit one of my parishioners and found myself in the middle of a street battle. Poor timing, I'm afraid. And now—"