Munich Signature (5 page)

This old woman, who led her little brood up the steps of the imposing Nazi edifice, had become an object of admiration and envy among the Jews of her Hamburg neighborhood. Frau Trudence Rosenfelt was an American, after all. She might have married Herbert Rosenfelt, may he rest in peace; she might have been fifty years in Germany, but she had never given up her citizenship in the Golden Land! Everyone knew she was going back. Every shmo, every shmendrick, every shmegegge on the block could see that. And no doubt she would manage to take her granddaughter and that tall noodle-of-a-husband Klaus, along with the children, too!

What only a few Jews in Germany could accomplish with a hundred trips to the Reich Office of Immigration, Frau Rosenfelt had managed to accomplish with a mere handful of visits to the stern Nazi officers who were in charge of granting or denying exit visas. Today the old woman had come to fetch the promised visas for her and her family. The precious Ausweis papers would be ready today at two in the afternoon. The grim-faced German officer with the thinning hair and the wire-rimmed spectacles had told her as much.

It was five minutes before two when Frau Trudence held out her American passport to one of the two tall Nazi sentries on duty at the door. The handsome young man stared hard at the faded photograph on the passport; then he stared hard at the wrinkled old woman who stood defiantly in front of him.

“Tell him in German that I am an American,” Frau Trudence instructed her granddaughter in English. “Tell him I may be an old woman now, but my passport is current, and I am an
American
!” She held her prominent nose aloft at those words. Her every mannerism dared the young man to attempt to stop her.

Quietly Maria repeated the words that Bubbe had proclaimed loudly in English. Mrs. Rosenfelt could have spoken in German, but she would not profane her lips with
that
language!

Now the sentry asked why Maria and Klaus and five little girls had also come to the office.

Mrs. Rosenfelt understood him and answered in English. “Tell this
shmo—
” she inclined her head slightly at the sentry as she instructed Maria—“that you are
my
family. Americans by right.”

Dutifully Maria repeated the words.

The sentry nodded curtly and stepped aside for the old woman and her entourage. They passed beneath the glare of the German eagle that perched on the swastika above the glass doors of the lobby like an iron vulture choosing which Jews to devour. Mrs. Rosenfelt had determined long ago that the Nazi appetite for violence would not be satisfied with the flesh of her family.

The children bunched up tightly around the legs of their mother and their aged great-grandmother. Klaus placed his long, thin hands on the shoulders of his two oldest children, Trudy and Katrina. Mrs. Rosenfelt was the only one who did not seem at all intimidated by the myriad Blackshirt SS men who emerged from the lobby elevator.

Other small cliques of hopeful Jews turned their eyes away from the tramp of Nazi jackboots on the marble floor. Mrs. Rosenfelt, however, followed the swaggering brutes with her eyes as they moved toward the doors and saluted the sentries with a chorus of “Heil Hitler!”

“
Nebech!
” the old woman muttered under her breath in a tone of derisive dismissal. So this was what she thought of those members of the master race.

Klaus raised his eyes in amused surprise. Then, as if capturing some fragment of her courage, he allowed himself to look at the Blackshirts as they pushed brutally through the crowd outside the building. A stream of additional epithets ran through his mind, but he would not utter them until they were all safely away from this cursed land. Klaus glanced back at the old woman who was also dressed completely in black. He had never seen Bubbe in any other color; Maria had told him that since Herbert Rosenfelt had died twenty-six years before, the dressmakers of Hamburg had been instructed to bring only black fabric for the fittings of Frau Rosenfelt.

From her black high-buttoned shoes to the tall black lace collar of her dress, Bubbe Rosenfelt was a visual anachronism. She did not seem to fit in this century, let alone in this terrible decade of flourishing anti-Semitism. She carried a reticule—black velvet drawstring bag—around her neck. Inside the bag was a small coin purse, a compact with powder, a mirror, and a handful of peppermint candies that she would present to her five great-grandchildren as rewards for appropriate behavior.

A pair of pince-nez glasses dangled from a silken cord attached to the third button of her blouse. If a child misbehaved, the old woman would simply raise those glasses to her nose and balance them there to cast a glare of disapproval toward the offender. Squabbles, tantrums, or sloppy table manners were stopped and corrected instantly with one narrowing of those faded blue eyes. Then the old woman would arch her right eyebrow slightly and let the pince-nez fall to the end of its cord. It bounced and swung from her bosom like a miniature hanged criminal. The effect was quite successful.

Confronted by these arrogant Nazi officials, Mrs. Rosenfelt had used the same tactics on them. It took a brave man to stare down the outrage in the old woman’s eyes. So far, not one Nazi bureaucrat had managed to do it.

At first Klaus had assumed that it was because of the way Bubbe Rosenfelt dropped the word
American
like a bomb. After all, Hitler still had hopes of appeasing the Americans. As their struggle to obtain exit visas had progressed, however, Klaus had begun to realize that the old woman’s citizenship had little to do with her power to intimidate. She simply treated the whole German master race with the utter disdain they deserved so completely. She was too old, she said one evening over coffee, to let these Aryan bullies
shtup
her. There was only one concern left in her life since they had stolen her beloved porcelain factory to make commemorative swastika plates—she was going to take her family
home
!

Bubbe was fearless because, at seventy-eight, she was unafraid for herself. Yet fear for her family had made her stand toe-to-toe with every Nazi official in the immigration office. “Go ahead! Throw an old woman in Dachau, why don’t you! And an old American woman, at that! Just see what the American press will have to say about you then!”

For three months the Nazis had hoped she would simply die. When she had not obliged them, they granted the papers. What every Jew in Germany needed now, Klaus and Maria decided, was a grandmother like Trudence Rosenfelt!

At precisely 2:00 p.m., Frau Rosenfelt stood before the desk of Colonel Hans Beich. Klaus, Maria, and the children stood behind her in an expectant semicircle.

“We have come for our papers.” Bubbe Rosenfelt fingered the pince-nez as she peered down on the balding head of the colonel.

The colonel spoke a heavily accented English laced with German idioms. “Frau Rosenfelt.” He appeared nervous. His voice was higher than usual. “You are quite punctual.” Rubbing his hand through his thin hair, he smiled slightly. “However, I regret . . . your papers are not here.”

“Not here?” she uttered with disdain. “Then you are telling me that the German Reich is not punctual?” This was a high insult to the Prussian sense of precision.

The colonel drew himself up. “There is some problem. The husband of your granddaughter—” he looked at Klaus for effect—“he taught chemistry at the University of Hamburg, no?”

Klaus felt himself grow hot beneath the gaze of the officer. Of course he had taught at the university. If Hitler had not created laws banning Jews from teaching positions, no doubt Klaus would still be there.

Frau Rosenfelt stepped between the colonel and Klaus. She held her cane in one hand and the pince-nez in the other. “What has that got to do with anything at all?”

The colonel cleared his throat. He would have liked to continue to stare at Klaus as if he were an offender, but he old woman blocked his view. “The . . . authorities . . . felt that perhaps since his position was in chemistry . . . there was research going on at the university, and there was some concern that perhaps . . . Klaus Holbein might have some information that would be best kept within the borders of the Reich.”

This was utter and complete nonsense, Klaus knew. He was simply a professor. A teacher of chemistry. What could he know that might harm the Reich in any way? He started to speak, but the old woman inclined her cane slightly, a signal for silence in the ranks. The pince-nez was raised dramatically to the nose and she glared at the colonel with a look that made all the children cling to their mother.

There was a long and terrible silence. The colonel began to sweat. He squirmed a bit. Then Bubbe Rosenfelt spoke. “So. First the Reich and the Führer deprive my grandson of his livelihood because he is a Jew. Then they say he cannot go elsewhere to find a life because he is a Jew. I will tell you what state secrets Klaus knows about the Reich, Herr Colonel. Klaus knows precisely which members of the Aryan ‘master race’ were unable to pass the course in chemistry at Hamburg University. A frightening thing to think of, that perhaps an Aryan might not pass a course taught by a Jew.”

“Frau Rosenfelt, I assure you, the authorities are checking—” The colonel could not tear his eyes away from the pince-nez. The old woman had him.

“Good! And while the authorities are checking, I shall wire my nephew, Franklin D. Rosenfelt, who will certainly wire the Führer when it is learned how badly we are being treated here!”

Klaus and Maria exchanged looks. The great-nephew Bubbe had mentioned was less than two years old. He lived in a place called Brooklyn and had acquired his unusual name when he was born on the same night Franklin Roosevelt won his second presidency. Of course, Roosevelt and Rosenfelt sounded quite similar to the German ear, and the Nazis did indeed suspect the president of being Jewish, but perhaps this was taking family connections a bit too far.

But beads of perspiration formed on the brow of the Nazi officer. “Franklin D. Rosenfelt? You mean—?”

The old woman rose up on her toes. The pince-nez stayed perched on her nose. There was power here. “Exactly!” spat Frau Rosenfelt. “My great-nephew. He will be quite interested to hear the trouble we have been put to over a few small documents. He will certainly relay such information to Hitler. The embarrassment of holding his relatives in Germany when they wish only to go home—” Now the old woman let the pince-nez drop to the end of its cord. It jerked and bobbed. The lynching was quite effective. The colonel put his hand to his own throat as he stared at the pince-nez.

He smiled nervously. “One moment, Frau Rosenfelt.” He said the name with an astonishing respect. He rose from his desk and clicked his heels before he hurried from the office.

One hour later Bubbe sipped tea in her parlor with Maria and Klaus. The five girls were presented with peppermints and sent off to the bedroom to concoct a play.

“I told Sadie that naming that child Franklin Delano Rosenfelt would come in quite handy as the years progressed.
Oy!
But I did not think it would be so useful so soon!”

Along with the peppermints, she had pulled out a handful of travel documents and exit visas from the black velvet handbag. She fanned them out neatly on the tea table and counted them again.

3

Barriers

Bubbe Rosenfelt had accomplished much through sheer bluff and bravado at the Hamburg Office of Immigration. All of that meant nothing, however, as she stood at the high counter of the American Consulate and peered through her notorious pince-nez at the stubborn American clerk.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Rosenfelt.” The clerk shrugged in bureaucratic helplessness.

“But surely you can see that the papers granted by the Nazis are valid for only two weeks! You don’t have eyes, young man? If my grandchildren are not out of here within two weeks—” she drew a finger across her throat in an unmistakable gesture—“Like a chicken at the butcher’s!”

The “young man” behind the counter was actually more than fifty years old. His gray hair was parted in the center, and he wore a high celluloid collar that had been an American fashion when he left the country years before. Years of experience had taught him now to turn away even the most persistent individuals. This old woman was no match for his expertise.

“Look, Mrs. Rosenfelt, there are laws now restricting the number of immigrants we let into America. Remember? Fifteen years ago there would have been no problem.”

“
Oy!
Fifteen years ago Hitler was hanging wallpaper, not Jews!” she let the pince-nez fall. “Fifteen years ago Germany was a cultured civilized country!”

“That may be so, but the fact remains that all quotas for immigration have been filled. For months the quotas of Germans have been filled. Every Jew, every democrat, every socialist in the Reich wants out of here. What are we supposed to do about it?”

“Give them a place to go, maybe? Save a few lives?”

“America is already packed with a lot of hungry people. Men out of work. Looking for jobs. Trying to feed their kids, see? Sorry, Mrs. Rosenfelt. There just isn’t any room on the list for your granddaughter and her husband and five more children. My hands are tied. The quota is filled.”

“How many a month is my country letting in now?” she asked bitterly.

“A thousand.”

“Only eight hundred,” the old woman corrected. “And such a big place, too.”

“And what kind of life do you think anyone is going to have if we throw away the quotas and let every undesirable—”

Mrs. Rosenfelt slammed her cane on the counter to silence this discussion.

The head of the clerk snapped back in startled indignation.

“Enough talk, already!” Her faded blue eyes blazed angrily. “The Nazis have not made it half as hard to leave as you make it to go. How long is this waiting list of yours?”

“A year.” He continued to stare at the cane. Perhaps this mad old woman would decide to use it on him.