10. Danner

TEN

Munich, Germany

The closer I am to the city hall, more red flags donning a centered white circle emblazoned with the Nazi’s black swastika appear. The city is cloaked in blood-red flags rather than the familiar black, red, and yellow striped German flag. Nothing about this city resembles the Germany I used to be a citizen of. On each lamppost is a vibrantly colored poster with childlike illustrations propagating support of the regime and hatred against the Jews, naming us betrayers of the First World War.

But as usual, after checking the paper records that list deported or deceased male citizens of Munich for Papa’s name, I feel the familiar sense of surprise and disappointment when I come up empty handed. I leave without an answer as to where he might be, as I always do. There’s only so long I can remain in a state of denial that he wasn’t deported and is still alive.

The winds are mild, and the thick clouds give way to warmth from the spring sun. If I close my eyes, I can remember the city as beautiful, flowers blooming everywhere, and cheerful citizens shuffling down the streets. But those memories are from when I was a child. Now, the streets are barren, colorless aside from the red, white, and black flags. There are fewer people and none of them stroll casually.

The scuffles from my borrowed shoes scrape along the pavement and I can’t convince myself that I’m not making a racket and that I don’t stand out amongst others. We’re supposed to believe life has moved forward as usual, just without the Jewish population. Not all of us have. How many are like me, living with forged identification?

With heavy feet and heart, I amble around the back of the houses on the street I used to live on with Mama and Papa, the route I take to remain unseen by the neighbors. I’m just an intruder now—a temporary guest.The chains of a bicycle clatter and chirp as the rubber tires bounce along rubble behind me. If I didn’t recognize the sound of Felix’s bike, I’d be looking for a place to hide.

I peer over my shoulder, expecting him to whiz by me and pull up to his front door. Except this time he stops next to me, kicking up dirt from between the stones. He’s out of breath, and since the spring season seems to be hiding behind winter’s gloomy tail, steam pours out of his mouth like dry ice from a chemist’s beaker. “You have to get inside and hide. I’m so sorry. I’m so?—”

“Wh-what’s going on. What happened?” I peer past him down the road, but I don’t see anyone following him.

“Just go—go into the house, please,” he says, his words frantic. He shoves his hand against my shoulder, urging me forward, and I obey his strong command, making my way into the house as fast as I can.

With one step inside the back door, I hear his bike crash against the side of the house and his boots clomping behind me.

I walk through the mudroom and out to the living room, considering my options for where to hide. Frau Weber rushes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “What in the world is going on?” Her cheeks flush with a dark red hue.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” Felix says.

“For what?” she shouts in return.

“We need to hide Danner. Then I’ll explain.”

We all look at each other with fear and puzzlement because there’s only one place to hide and apparently not much time. I lunge for the bookshelf along the stairwell. Felix helps me pull it away from the wall and search for the seam along the wall panels. It’s taking too long to find the crevice and Frau Weber runs toward the kitchen, returning a moment later with a butter knife. She knows precisely where the seam is, stabs it and releases the loose wall panel. “Go on,” she says, ushering me into the hole that’s hardly big enough to store a dining table chair, never mind me. Just as the wall is pieced back into a seamless sight, the bookshelf scrapes against the floor until it hits the wall, vibrating the interior of this black hole I’m crouched into.

Sweat forms and trickles down my neck, then spine, and each of my limbs until I’m soaking wet.

“What happened, Felix?” I hear the muttering of their conversation through the wall.

“I—I’m not sure,” he cries out. “When I was at Ed’s house the other night?—”

“You didn’t go to Ed’s house. You both stayed here,” Frau Weber corrects him.

“No, Mama, I went alone after Danner went to sleep. I shouldn’t have gone. I shouldn’t have had anything to drink. We were all talking and?—”

“You didn’t,” Frau Weber says, scolding him.

There’s a pause before Felix answers his mother. “We were all friends and I mentioned Albert would be coming with me earlier in the day. Ed asked if my friend was still on his way, and I said he wasn’t coming.”

“Then what?” Frau Weber hurries him.

I can tell her what happened next. It’s not Felix’s fault. It’s my own.

“There was a man there that Danner and I had gone to school with—a mutual friend of Ed’s, I guess. He stepped into my conversation with Ed and asked me if I was still friends with Danner Alesky—the Jew I had grown up with. I said we were talking about someone named Albert. I might have stuttered or—I don’t know, but Ed and the man Danner and I went to school with laughed at me as if I had no pants on. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.”

“So how did we get here, to hiding Danner?” Frau Weber shouts. I can picture her arms shooting out in every direction like she does when she’s angry.

“I was at work and Ed asked me if Danner was living with us. I never told him his real name, but he suddenly knew it wasn’t Albert like I had said, and he was sure about it. I’m not sure how he and the mutual person we know put these facts together. I didn’t answer because he had a weird look in his eyes. But my silence must have been enough of an answer because he shook his head and said I should go home and figure out how to fix my living situation before it’s too late. The man who was at that party—the one who went to school with us, is the son of an SS officer who’s looking to fill a quota of removing Jews from Munich by the end of the week.”

Though garbled and hysterical, I understand every one of Felix’s words. I need to leave their house. I can’t put them in danger for my sake. It doesn’t sound like Felix knows when someone will come looking here for me.I can’t get back to Mama and David in Poland, and Germany has been removing all the Jews for the last few months so there’s nowhere good to go here.

“I haven’t the faintest idea of what we’re going to do,” Frau Weber says. “When will they be here?” Her voice trails off, making me assume she’s moving around or pacing.

“You need to let me out. I’m leaving. I won’t do this to your family,” I shout from inside the hole.

“No, please no,” Frau Weber cries out.

“I’ll push over the bookcase if you don’t let me out.”

Never have I threatened a person, but I won’t jeopardize their safety. No one responds, which means I must make a show of my word. I lurch my shoulder against the wall panel, using all my weight to move the hearty bookshelf. It begins to skate across the wooden floor, one small shift at a time until the bookshelf pulls away from the wall.I tumble out of the hole, catching myself with my palms against the floor. My nose hovers over the wood grains that I’ve never seen up so close before and when I push against my hands to pull my knees beneath me, I spot a pair of shiny boots close enough to catch the reflection of my startled wide eyes.

Felix and Frau Weber are nowhere in sight. It’s me, an SS officer and a couple of guards I spot outside the open front door. “A stray Jew,” he says, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Alesky is the name I’ve been given—son of Abraham Alesky. I assume you’ve been looking for your dear old vater, ja?”

I refuse to speak, give him an answer or anything he might want because he won’t do me any favors.

The officer shoves the toe of his boot into my side, knocking me off my hands and knees. “He’s dead.”

The anger writhing through me sparks every nerve in my body and I pull myself up to my feet ready to knock this bloodsucker to the ground. He’s lying. He doesn’t know where Papa is. No one does. That’s what they told me at city hall. It was stupid of me to keep checking for his whereabouts. No one unrelated would care so much and despite using a false name, the wallpaper lining these walls has more knowledge about this city than I do.

The other two guards join the fight. Except there isn’t a fight. I’m defenseless against them and their armor-clad uniforms. I’ve never so much as hurt a fly, but I’m in the hands of the soulless now.

I fear the worst as I face the harsh light of day, the sun blinds me even after only being in the dark for a short amount of time. I don’t see Felix or Frau Weber anywhere and I’m not sure what they’ve done with them. I pray they’ve spared them.

The hands gripping my arms shove me into the back of a metal truck, cloaking me in the dark just like the hiding hole in Felix’s house.

He’s not dead. Papa cannot be dead. They will say anything to infuriate us before locking us up—they were the sick children who taunted stray dogs then caged them before poking at them with a stick. That’s who these boys have become—sick men with the idea of torture as a form of entertainment.

The truck moves along the bumpy road, and I slide around without anything to grip onto like a rubber ball, side to side until I hit a padded corner—a body that doesn’t budge against the shock of my weight slamming into theirs. I shake the torso, unable to see anything within the opaque space, but my hand meets the cool fabric unaffected by the heat trapped within the truck’s containment.

My body trembles beyond my control and I try to push myself away from the limp person I’m against, unsure if there are more at this end of the truck.

Please, God, don’t let me die like this here. Please. I have more life to live. I’ll do better. I’ll do more.

I don’t know where they’re taking me, but at best it will be one of the labor camps, where they have taken so many others. No one knows much about what happens at those camps, but it’s become clear no one returns to where they came from.

The rocks from beneath the truck ping against the undercarriage and echo harshly from every side of me. I’m cold and hot, sweating, and shivering, nauseous and scared to get sick. After a whiff of what I imagine to be a combination of death and body odor, I try to breathe only through my mouth, but maybe it’s a smell I should get used to.

There were days I thought I would outsmart this war and outrun the Nazis. There’s no hope for me now. I’ve been a fool to think otherwise.