Winds of War (34 page)

The ride was too bumpy for conversation, and the refugees were still tired, and perhaps frightened by the deepening awareness of being in the hands of the Germans. Hardly a word was spoken in the first hour or so. They came out on a tarred road, narrow and primitive enough, but by comparison with the cart tracks of the back country, a glassy highway. The convoy stopped at a knoll of smooth green lawns and flower gardens topped by a brick-walled convent, and the word passed for women passengers to dismount and “refresh themselves.” The ladies happily went off, the men scattered among the trees or urinated by the roadside, and when the convoy rolled again everybody was much more cheerful.

Talk sprang up. Natalie brought back gossip from the ladies’ room. All the neutrals, she said, would be offered a choice of flying to Stockholm, or else of taking German trains to Berlin, and thence going out via Belgium, Holland, or Switzerland.

“You know,” the girl said, with a mild glint in her eye, “I’d sort of like to see Berlin myself.”

“Are you crazy?” said Hartley. “Are you absolutely crazy? You must be kidding. You go to Stockholm, baby, and you just pray they
let
you go to Stockholm. This girl has a screw loose,” Hartley said to Byron.

Byron said, “Berel’s message to A.J. goes for you, too.
Lekh lekha
.”

“
Lekh lekha
.” She smiled. Byron had told her about this. “Get out, eh? Well, maybe.”

“In the name of God,” Hartley muttered, “stop with the Hebrew.”

The ride stretched out to four and five hours of grinding through farmland and forests. All traces of war faded from the landscape. Houses, churches, whole towns were untouched. The inhabitants looked and acted as they had in the peacetime countryside. There were few young people, no horses, and very little cattle and poultry. In the towns a red swastika flag flew over the main square, either on a flagpole or from the town hall, and German soldiers stood sentry or patrolled on foot or on motorcycles. But the conquered land was at peace. The absence of livestock and young folks gave it a dead look, the peasants seemed somewhat more dour and sullen, perhaps, but life was going on exactly as before, except that the Germans were in charge.

The sun sank behind the distant flat horizon in a brief glow of pale orange. The trucks rolled on into the night. The passengers quieted. Natalie Jastrow put her head on Byron’s shoulder and took his hand in hers. They both dozed.

Commands shouted in German woke them. Lights blazed. They were in a square before a wide railroad station, and people were streaming down out of the lined-up trucks. The lower half-door of their truck was still closed, but two helmeted Germans came along and opened it with a clank. “
Bitte raus! Alle im Wartesaal!
” Their manner was brisk, not hostile, and they stood by to help down the women and old men. It was a cool moonlit night and Byron was glad to see darkness and stars overhead once more, instead of a smoke pall and a fiery glow.

The refugees gathered in a confused mass in the waiting room, still blinking at the light. Double doors opened at one end of the room, and soldiers shouting in German shepherded them through, bearing along Byron and Natalie. Byron carried their suitcases and Hartley clung like a child to his elbow. They entered a dining hall full of long plank tables on trestles, laden with food.

It was the most dazzling banquet that Byron had seen in his life - or so it seemed in the first thunderstruck seconds, famished as he was after the long ride and the three weeks of wretched food in besieged Warsaw. There were platters of smoking sausages and sauerkraut, there were many whole pink hams, there were mounds of boiled potatoes, piles of fried chicken, stacked loaves of fresh bread, pitchers of beer, immense whole yellow and orange cheeses. But it seemed a mockery, a cruel Nazi trick, a Barmecide feast, because the soldiers herded the neutrals along the walls away from the tables. There they stood, hundreds of them, staring at the distant food, and in the space between stood a few alert German soldiers with lowered tommy guns.

A voice spoke over a loudspeaker in clear conversational German: “
Welcome! The German people are your hosts. We welcome the citizens of the neutral countries in peace and friendship. The German people seek peace with all nations. Relations with Poland have now been normalized. The treacherous Smidgly-Rudz regime, having met its just punishment, has ceased to exist. A new Poland will rise from its ashes, cleaned up and law-abiding, where everybody will work hard, and irresponsible politicians will no longer provoke disastrous foreign adventures. The Führer can now seriously pursue a peaceful settlement of all outstanding questions with Great Britain and France, and afterward Europe will enter on a new order of unparalleled mutual prosperity. Now we ask you to sit down and eat. Hearty appetite!
”

A dozen smiling blonde girls in white waitress uniforms made their entrance, almost like a theatre chorus, carrying jugs of coffee and stacks of plates. The soldiers smiled and walked out of the space in front of the tables, making inviting hospitable motions with their lowered guns. There was an awkward, shocked moment. First one and then another refugee hesitantly stepped out of ranks to cross the space. Others followed them, a few sat on the low benches reaching for food, and a noisy break and rush began.

Like the rest, Byron, Natalie, and Hartley dived for places and gorged themselves on the richest, sweetest, most satisfying meal of their lives. Almost the best of it was the coffee - ersatz though it was - hot, all they wanted, poured again and again by willing cheery buxom girls. Over the loudspeaker, while they stuffed, came a cascade of brass band music - Strauss waltzes, marches, and jolly drinking songs. Many of the neutrals began singing and even the watching soldiers joined in.

Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen,

Du, du, liegst mir im Sinn -

Byron himself, relaxed by the beer and carried away by ecstasy of a full belly, the lift of the music, and the outburst of relieved high spirits all around him, swung his stein and sang:

Du, du, machst mir viel Schmerzen,

Weisst nicht wie gut ich dir bin

Ja, ja,

Ja, ja!

Weisst nicht wie gut ich dir bin,

and Mark Hartley sang right along too, though his eyes never ceased rolling at the German soldiers. Natalie, silent, regarded them both with a satirical motherly look.

Returning to the waiting room, stuffed and dizzy after this incredible, this visionary feast, they saw crudely lettered placards around the brown tile walls: BELGIEN, BULGARIEN, KANADA, NIEDERLANDE. They went and stood under the VEREINIGTE STAATEN sign. Laughing, chattering, the refugees sorted themselves out, gay as though returning from a picnic. Men in black uniforms entered the waiting room. Conversation died among the Americans and the cheery noise faded throughout the station.

Slote said soberly, “Listen, please, everybody. Those are the SS. I’ll do any talking to them that has to be done.”

The men in black fanned out, one to each group of neutrals. The one who headed for the Americans did not appear sinister. Except for the operatic black costume, with its silver double-lightning-flash insignia, he looked like an American himself, perhaps a young insurance salesman one might sit next to on a train or plane. He carried a black leather portfolio. Slote walked out to meet him. “I’m Leslie Slote, first secretary of the United States embassy and acting chargé d’affaires.”

The SS man bowed, heels together, both hands on the case. “You have a gentleman named Byron Henry in your party?” His English was smooth.

“This is Byron Henry,” Slote said.

Byron took a step forward.

“Your father represents the American Navy in Berlin?”

Byron nodded.

“This message is forwarded to you via the foreign ministry.” Byron put the yellow envelope in his breast pocket. “You may read it now, of course.”

“Thanks. I’ll look at it later.”

The SS man turned to Slote. “I am to collect the American passports.” His tone was brisk and cool, his blue eyes distant, almost unfocussed on the Foreign Service man. “Let me have them, please.”

Slote was very pale. “I’m reluctant to surrender them, for obvious reasons.”

“I assure you it is quite routine. They are to be processed on the train. They will be returned to you before you arrive in Königsberg.”

“Very well.” At a motion from Slote, an assistant gave him a thick red portfolio, which he handed to the man in black.

“Thank you. Now your roster, please.”

The assistant held out three clipped sheets. The SS man glanced through them, and then looked around. “No Negroes in your party, I see. How many Jews?”

Slote took a moment to reply. “I’m sorry, but in our passports we make no record of religious affiliation.”

“But you do have Jews.” The man spoke offhandedly, as though discussing doctors or carpenters.

“Even if there were Jews in the party, I would have to decline to answer. The policy of my country on religious groups is one of absolute equality of treatment.”

“But nobody is suggesting that there will be inequality of treatment. Who are these Jews, please?” Slote looked silently at him, touching his tongue to his lips. The SS officer said, “You have mentioned your government’s policy. We will respect it. The policy of my government is simply to maintain separate records where Jews are concerned. Nothing else is involved.”

Byron, a couple of paces forward from the group, wanted to see how Natalie and Hartley were behaving, but he knew it would be disastrous to glance at them.

Slote did look around at the whole party in a glance of caution, appeal, and great nervousness. But he produced a calm professional tone when he spoke. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know if anybody here is Jewish. I’m not personally interested, I haven’t asked, and I don’t have the information.”

“My instructions are to separate out the Jews,” said the officer, “and I must now do that.” He turned to the Americans and said, “Form a double line, alphabetically, please.” Nobody moved; they all looked to Slote. The SS man turned to him. “Your party is in the custody of the Wehrmacht, in a combat zone under strict martial law. I call this to your attention.”

Slote glanced out toward the waiting room, his face harried. In front of several parties - the Swiss, the Rumanian, the Hungarian, the Dutch – a few miserable Jews already stood separated, heads bowed, with their suitcases. “Look here, for your purposes you can assume we’re all Jews.” His voice was starting to shake. “What next?”

Byron heard a shrill woman’s voice behind him. “Now just a minute. What on earth do you mean by that, Mr. Slote? I’m certainly not a Jew and I won’t be classified or treated as one.”

Slote turned and said angrily, I mean that we all must be treated alike, Mrs. Young, that’s all. Please cooperate as I asked –”

“Nobody’s putting me down for a Jew,” said a man’s voice from a different direction. “I’m just not buying that either, Leslie. Sorry.”

Bryon recognized both voices. He turned around as the SS officer addressed the woman: “Yes, madam. Who are you, please?”

“Clara Young of Chicago, Illinois, and I’m not Jewish, you can be darn sure of that.” She was a dried-out little woman - of sixty or so, a bookkeeper in the American movie distributor’s office in Warsaw. She giggled, glancing here and there.

“Would you be kind enough to point out the Jews in your party, madam?”

“Oh, no, thank you mister. That’s your business, not mine.”

Byron expected that. He was more worried by the man, a retired Army officer named Tom Stanley, who had been selling heavy machinery to the Polish government. Stanley was given to saying that Hitler was a great man and that the Jews had brought all their trouble on themselves.

The SS man asked for Stanley’s name and then said to him in a cordial man-to-man way, “Who are the Jews here, please? Your party can’t leave until I know. You seem to understand this matter better than your chargé.”

Stanley, an old turkey-cock of a man with hanging jowls, a wattled throat, and a brush of gray hair, grew quite red and cleared his throat several times, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his loud green-and-brown sports jacket. All the Americans were staring at him. “Well, I’ll tell you, friend, I’d like to cooperate, but so far as I know there aren’t any. Not in this party.”

The SS officer shrugged, ran his eyes over the group, and stopped at Mark Hartley. He flicked two fingers forward. “You. Yes, you, the one with the blue bow tie, step this way.” Again he flicked the fingers.

“Stay where you are,” Slote said to Hartley; then, to the officer, “I would like to have your name and rank. I protest this procedure, and I warn you that this incident will result in a written protest from my government if it continues.”

The SS officer gestured around the waiting room, and said in a reasonable tone, “The officials of all the other governments are cooperating. You see for yourself. This is nothing to protest. This is a simple matter of conforming to local regulations. What is your name, you there?”

“Mart Hartley.” The voice was steady enough, steadier than Slote’s.

“Mark Hartley, I see.” The SS man smiled a peculiar, chilling smile, his eyes wide and serious. It was the smile of the Polish soldier on the road to Warsaw, who had yanked the beard of the taxi driver. “
Hartley
,” he repeated. And under what name were you born?”

“That name.”

“Really! What were your parents?”

“Both Americans.”

“Jews?”

Byron said, “I happen to know him, sir, we’ve been going to church together all the time in Warsaw. He’s a Methodist like me.”

The tall silver-haired minister, standing near Clara Young ran his fingers inside his clerical collar. “I can vouch for that. I conducted services when Mr. Hartley was present. Mark is a devout Christian.”

The SS officer, with a disagreeable, puzzled grin, said to Slote, “This one is certainly Jewish. I think a little physical examination would -”