Two Brothers Page 17

  But of course she couldn’t.

  Her father was not a man to be disobeyed. He had given his orders and they would be followed to the letter.

  ‘Above all, we must show a brave face,’ he had said.

  Easy for him, Dagmar thought, he didn’t have to face the world dressed as a ten-year-old.

  She turned once more to her reflection.

  Her face did not look very brave.

  If only she could have worn a little make-up. Some of her friends at the expensive school she attended had already begun secretly to wear it when they went out. They said it made them feel smart and confident. Dagmar would have liked very much to be feeling smart and confident that morning.

  She wondered whether if she sneaked some eye shadow and blusher from her mother’s dressing table it might pass unnoticed. Except she knew it wouldn’t be. If she applied enough to make her feel smart and confident then it would be enough to make her father call for a flannel and wipe it off in front of the servants.

  There was no getting round it. The brave face that she put on would have to be her own, plain and unadorned. She must thrust her chest forward and her shoulders back as Fräulein Schneider her swimming mistress always insisted, and put from her mind the fact that she was dreading what her father expected her to do that morning with all of her heart.

  She took up the blue and white sailor dress, put it over her head and pulled it down over her silk slip. Then she sat on the bed, lifted her long elegant legs and reached forward to put on the despised white ankle socks.

  Her mother’s head appeared around the door.

  ‘Are you ready, dear?’ she asked. ‘Hurry with your shoes. You know how angry Father is about lateness.’

  ‘I look like a schoolgirl.’

  ‘You are a schoolgirl, dear.’

  ‘Why can’t we just close for the day like everybody else.’

  ‘Because, dear, we are not everybody else. We are the Fischer family. And as such are expected to set an example with our behaviour. With privilege comes responsibility, you must understand that. People expect us to lead by example and we shall not disappoint them. Now hurry up and put on your shoes. No, not the ones with the heels, the flat ones.’

  Fischer’s department store had been a part of Berlin life for fifty years. It was founded by Dagmar’s grandfather who had begun (as most great shopkeepers do) with only a hand barrow. That tiny street business had since grown into one of the great shops of Berlin, patronized by office girls and movie stars alike. It was a symbol of stability, offering quality products at competitive prices through war and peace.

  Through prosperity and disaster.

  It had never once failed to open for trade.

  ‘And we shall open for trade today,’ Herr Fischer had said over breakfast before calmly returning to his newspaper, a newspaper which made grim reading indeed.

  It was 1 April 1933 and the previous day it had been announced out of the blue that all Jewish-owned businesses were to be ‘voluntarily’ boycotted by all ‘true’ Germans from the following morning and until further notice.

  The edict was shockingly comprehensive in its detail. Non-Jewish employees of Jewish-owned businesses were expected to boycott their own places of work while the ‘law’ insisted that the Jewish owners would be required to pay the absent workers in full for not attending.

  That morning all over the country hundreds of thousands of Nazi Party storm troopers with the full backing and cooperation of the police were to turn out to stand ‘guard’ at the entrance to every Jewish-owned business in the country. This was in order to ensure that the population observed the spontaneous demonstration which their leaders had announced on their behalf. Paint was to be daubed on every window announcing that German citizens were committing a traitorous act if they shopped or did business there. Also to be daubed on walls and windows was the boycott slogan, coined by the notorious Nazi Gauleiter Julius Streicher, a man who was now a senior government official but who up until a few weeks before had been known to the authorities as a mentally imbalanced pervert and rapist. What Streicher’s slogan lacked in elegance it made up for in brevity.

  Death to Jews.

  Most of the businesses thus picketed by the all-powerful Brown Army elected simply to close up shop for the time being in the hope that this momentary ‘punishment’ for their global crimes would pass.

  Herr Fischer, however, famous proprietor of Fischer’s department store, had other ideas.

  ‘The people of Berlin know our opening hours and they expect us to be open during those hours. We will not let them down,’ Herr Fischer told his staff on the previous evening (having ‘granted’ his non-Jewish employees a paid day off). ‘The Empress Augusta Viktoria herself visited us only a month before the Kaiser abdicated. She purchased gloves as a present for one of her ladies-in-waiting on the occasion of the girl’s engagement. Should her Imperial Highness be visiting from Holland tomorrow and wish to purchase gloves again, she will find us open, eager to serve and offering the most competitively priced and comprehensive selection of ladies’ gloves in Berlin. As usual.’

  This speech was met with considerable applause and, thus buoyed up with the support of his workers ringing in his ears, Herr Fischer instructed his maintenance department to prepare two signs with which to counter the messages that had already begun to be daubed across the great plate-glass windows of his shop. The first sign was a copy of the store’s war memorial, the original of which was mounted beneath the clock in the splendid central gallery of the building. This memorial listed those employees of Fischer’s stores who had given their lives for the Fatherland in the Great War, of whom several had been Jews. Fischer ordered that those names were to be underlined and marked with a six-pointed star.

  The second sign was a huge banner that was to be hung directly across the grand entrance, announcing that Fischer’s welcomed all its many regular and loyal customers, adding that in respect of that loyalty there was to be a 25 per cent discount on all purchases made on the first of April. This sale would last for one day only.

  Despite the nightmare situation, Herr Fischer almost chuckled when he announced his plan to his wife that evening. ‘Let’s see if we can’t turn this nonsense into a business opportunity,’ he said. ‘If I know Berliners the offer of twenty-five pfennigs in the mark off all goods will be too much to resist.’

  Fischer’s plans for passive resistance, however, were not confined to banners. They included Dagmar, who to her dismay had been called to the drawing room after supper and informed that she would be excused school on the following morning and was to attend the shop instead.

  ‘You and your mother will stand together with me at the doors of our building and we will personally welcome every single customer who graces our premises. The Fischers of Berlin will show these hooligans and the world what a respectable German family looks like.’

  Later, before getting ready for bed, Dagmar phoned Paulus and Otto. She had a telephone in her own bedroom (a refinement the Stengel boys found almost bewilderingly grand) and she often chatted to the boys after she had finished with her homework.

  Paulus and Otto usually fought over the phone when Dagmar called, sometimes quarrelling so hard about who would speak first that she got bored and hung up. Tonight, however, understanding the seriousness of the situation, the boys didn’t fight but clustered together around the receiver trying to offer comfort to their friend.

  ‘It won’t be so bad,’ Paulus said. ‘And a day off school’s pretty good news, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe you’ll get something from the cake department for lunch,’ Otto added. ‘See if you can grab any stales and keep them for us at the weekend.’

  It was a very one-sided conversation and after a little while Dagmar said she’d better go because she wasn’t supposed to use her bedroom phone after eight o’clock.

  She put the little pearly white-handled receiver back into its polished brass cradle and prepared for bed, holding tight t
o the frayed woollen monkey that she had held tight to every night of her conscious life.

  And then it was morning and breakfast which she was allowed to take in her room as a special treat but which she couldn’t touch a crumb of, and then the hated sailor dress and the white socks and her mother’s insistence on flat shoes. And suddenly it was time to go.

  Her parents were waiting for her downstairs in the large entrance hall of their beautiful town house.

  Father trying hard to look as if this was a day like any other.

  Mother looking noble but nervous.

  Dagmar took her hat and coat from the butler and went outside to where the great shiny black Mercedes car was waiting.

  ‘Ten past eight,’ her father said to the waiting chauffeur. ‘I wish to draw up in front of the store at precisely 8.29 that I may personally open the doors exactly on time.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  The chauffeur held the door open as the proud, elegant family got into the car. Dagmar first and then Frau Fischer, who paused in front of the impassive, uniformed servant.

  ‘Thank you, Klaus,’ she said.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘For working for us today.’

  ‘I am not working for you today, madam,’ the chauffeur replied. ‘As you know, I am instructed by the Leader not to do so. I have already informed Herr Fischer that today’s pay must be deducted from my monthly salary.’

  ‘But—’ Frau Fischer began.

  ‘I am, however, honoured to serve you today,’ the chauffeur continued, ‘in my own free time and of my own free will.’

  There were tears suddenly in Frau Fischer’s eyes.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said, getting in beside Dagmar, who was also struggling not to cry.

  Then Herr Fischer joined them and their short journey began.

  ‘Such a lovely day,’ Herr Fischer observed. ‘Perhaps we might later ride together in the park, dear, if the evening remains clement. The horses will forget who is their master if they only ever exercise with the grooms.’

  Frau Fischer attempted a smile in reply but could do no better than that.

  Herr Fischer was right, it was a lovely day, one of the first fine mornings of spring and Dagmar found that her spirits, while not exactly rising, at least ceased to plummet as their splendid car purred its way through the expensive district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. The buds were beginning to show on the great parallel lines of plane trees that graced the grand old Kurfürstendamm as the Fischer family drove along it, and all the splendid shops and cafés so familiar to Dagmar and her rich school friends looked as normal and as exciting as ever.

  Except not quite normal. There were exceptions to the familiar atmosphere of bustling well-being. A few of the businesses were closed, their beautiful plate glass, polished wood and brass facings disfigured with dripping paint, and outside their doors were standing young men in brown uniforms clustered around swastika banners.

  ‘Mandelbaum, Rosebaum,’ Fischer muttered as he stared out of the window. ‘Even Samuel Belzfreund, I thought he’d have more nerve the way he struts about and throws his weight at the Chamber of Commerce, but every one of them has stayed at home.’

  ‘Perhaps we too should rethink this, darling,’ Frau Fischer said gently, ‘if everyone else has—’

  ‘As I have already explained, we are not everyone else. We are the Fischers, of Fischer’s of Berlin,’ was all her husband would say, grim-faced and tight-lipped.

  ‘Don’t you know, Mother,’ Dagmar said, trying so hard to sound cheerful, ‘the empress might come from exile in Holland requiring gloves for her ladies-in-waiting.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Herr Fischer. ‘Imagine if the empress found us closed.’

  And for the first time that morning all three of them managed to smile at once.

  Then suddenly the time had come. The limousine was drawing up alongside the famous Fischer’s department store on the Kurfürstendamm, a shop often compared with Harrods of Knightsbridge or Macy’s of Manhattan. Not this morning, however. This morning Fischer’s store bore no resemblance to those other splendid emporiums. This morning Fischer’s was on its own, in the middle of a unique and terrible nightmare.

  Dagmar gasped in horror as she saw that every single one of the splendid plate-glass windows which she had always so adored with their ever-changing tableaux of fashion and luxury had been daubed and disfigured. Stars of David, crude insults and everywhere Streicher’s leaden, doltish, spite-ridden slogan for the day: Death to Jews.

  There were also at least twenty SA men gathered beneath the coloured-glass canopy which stretched out over the pavement from the shop’s entrance. They were clearly surprised to see the great Mercedes pulling up directly in front of them. Some even gave the German salute, obviously under the impression that this must be some Nazi bigwig come down to check on the progress of the day’s ‘action’.

  This impression remained for a moment longer as the uniformed chauffeur got out of the car and, without a glance at the arrogant brown figures, opened the passenger door. Many arms were raised in anticipation of who might get out, only to be dropped again in angry astonishment as the family Fischer, recognizable from numerous slanderous articles in the Nazi press, emerged from the car. Herr Fischer was first, and stepping out behind him Dagmar could see that beyond the SA men the shop staff were already in the shop, looking out through the big central doors in terror. Doors that had been barricaded from without with rubbish bins. There were, as far as she could see, no customers attempting to get in.

  There was certainly no sign of the ex-Empress Augusta Viktoria.

  ‘Good morning,’ she heard her father saying, ‘my name is Isaac Fischer and this is my shop. Where is my banner?’

  Now Dagmar noticed that there was no sign advertising discounts hung above the door as Herr Fischer had promised there would be. Nor was there a large and prominent memorial to the war dead.

  ‘What have you done with my banner, please?’ Fischer asked again.

  The Brownshirts began to snigger, one or two of them mimicking Herr Fischer’s cultured accent: What have you done with my banner, please? Others were glancing down gleefully at the pavement. Dagmar saw why they were laughing: at their feet was a great quantity of rope and painted cloth. Her father’s proud banners, a war memorial and the notice of a discount sale, torn and shredded amongst the rough hobnailed boots.

  ‘Oh,’ said one of the thugs, a man who by the badges on his sleeve affected the rank of some kind of sergeant, a Truppführer, as the Nazis styled it. ‘So this is your banner, is it? Well, I must say, that’s very unfortunate.’

  ‘Stand out of my way,’ Fischer demanded, ‘all of you. I wish to open my store.’

  ‘Stand out of your way?’ the Truppführer roared in sudden, spitting fury. ‘Stand out of your fucking way! Who the FUCK do you think you are, you Jew cunt!’

  Fischer stepped backwards as if he had been struck. Dagmar reached out for her mother, who was shaking violently.

  To be spoken to in such a manner.

  On the Kurfürstendamm – outside their own shop.

  It was impossible. Unheard of. It could not be happening.

  But it was.

  The Fischer family of Fischer’s department store of Berlin were discovering that not one single rule of civilization applied to them any more. Their wealth, their accomplishments, their cultured and educated ways counted for nothing. They were without rights and utterly defenceless.

  The lead SA man spoke again, or screamed, in fact, in fair imitation of his leader.

  ‘How dare you give orders to a Truppführer of the Sturmabteilung! You fucking rodent! You fucking germ. How about this, Jew boy! How about some of this!’

  And with that, the young man, who was no more than twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, took a step forward and knocked Isaac Fischer, a slight man in his late forties, to the ground. In a single moment he had taken a knuckle-duster from his pocket, slipped it into h
is clenched fist and slammed it into the side of Fischer’s head, collapsing him, semi-concussed, to the floor. Then the Truppführer kicked him, burying his great jackboots into Fischer’s prostrate and undefended body several times.

  It was all so sudden, so utterly out of proportion.

  Such violence. From nowhere, for nothing. In seconds.

  For a moment Dagmar and her mother stood motionless, their reluctant minds struggling to catch up with the evidence of their eyes and ears. Then with guttural screams they both stepped towards the fallen head of their family, the husband, the father. The protector. The man on whom they relied utterly and who they trusted without question.

  But they could offer him no comfort or support. Before they could help him they were seized and pulled roughly away by other members of the brown troop. The chauffeur had also leapt in, perhaps hoping to get Herr Fischer back into the car, but he too was grabbed and blows were raining down on him.

  As Dagmar struggled in the arms of the laughing SA men, feeling their hands upon her, pulling, it seemed to her, at her coat, their hands everywhere, she saw that across the traffic, in the middle of the wide boulevard, on the central reservation, beneath the row of plane trees, two policemen had stopped to watch. For a moment she imagined that their ordeal was over. She knew the Berlin Police, Paulus and Otto’s grandfather was one. Her father made regular contributions to their benevolent fund. They had kept the peace in Berlin through all the violent years without fear or favour. Surely they must keep the peace now.

  ‘Are they Jews?’ one of the officers shouted.

  ‘Yes,’ a trooper replied. ‘Dirty Jews who thought they could order National Socialist comrades around.’

  At this the policeman smiled and waved. He and his colleague watched for a moment or two more and then moved on.

  Now the SA attackers dragged Fischer to his feet.

  The chauffeur they dismissed with a few further kicks but they had not yet finished with the Fischer family.