Leo turned his head to the side, with a happy smile on his face, and looked at the men, once his clothes were exposed.
The oldest of the men, his gray hair uncovered, reached over and handed Leo one of the flags he was holding. “Sieg Heil!” he screamed out, his arm stretched in front of him.
Leo took the flag, looked at it, and out of instinct dropped it on the ground, grabbed Emi, and pushed through the people as fast as he could until they were a safe distance away.
“Leo! What are you doing!” she screamed, ripping her hand out of his. “You’re going to get yourself killed! And me while you’re at it!”
Leo stood with his hip against hers and suddenly the noise of the crowd drowned out his apology. The Führer had just arrived, in an imposing, stretch, white open-top car. They could barely make him out, but even from a distance Leo saw Adolf Hitler standing up in the front seat, his arm extended straight as a bayonet. He was in uniform, wearing a red armband bearing a swastika. The crowd was ecstatic, the shouts of “Sieg Heil!” nearly deafening.
“I don’t understand why we are here,” said Emi, sounding close to tears. “You’ve seen him, now can we go? Maybe that man followed us, Leo.” She turned around, glancing nervously behind her.
“I need to see it, to hear them,” said Leo. “I need to know how much hate there is in this country for me. Not just in the chemistry classroom, or in the little hallways of our school, but here on the street. I want to see the people who are going to try to kill me. Your words, right?” He knew he was scaring Emi with the determination in his voice.
“We’ve seen it!” she screamed.
“Yes, we are seeing it,” he whispered. “All these people who want me dead. We are seeing it right now.”
He knew he sounded bold and careless to Emi, but what else could he be? There would be time for panic and fear later.
“I’ll never let anything happen to you,” Emi said, as she gripped his arm. He reached for her hand, trying to reassure her.
“Until today, I believed that. But now . . . Do you think you can do anything against all this?” They watched as two women in front of them threw flowers in the air and wept happily.
Emi said yes, but Leo could only see her mouth move, unable to hear her over the ecstatic screams of the men and women around them. He closed his eyes and kissed her forehead. After that, he finally let her pull him out of the crowd and straight home.
Leo knew that Emi was desperate to make good on her promise of keeping him safe, but as the difficult year raged on they both knew it was almost impossible. And after November 9, the first night of the horror that would become known as Kristallnacht, they agreed that no one could keep him safe. In the two days of anti-Jewish violence, the Hartmann chocolate factory was set on fire and almost every window broken with rocks or hammers. The manager of the factory disappeared that night, and though Leo’s parents had their Hungarian staff search the city for hours, there was no trace of him.
“He is one of what?” Hani had screamed to her husband as the terror raged on. “Dozens? People are being taken already, Max! Abducted from the streets. We have to think about leaving. No, we have to leave. Immediately.” She started running around the house, putting her things in suitcases while Max tried to calm her, but Leo could tell no one was calm.
Jewish homes and businesses were being destroyed one after the other and the synagogues were burning like haystacks, the firemen doing nothing to save them. They just stood and watched them, consumed by flames, sometimes trying to save a Christian-owned business if it was being affected by the blaze. When the spontaneous mobs of SA and citizens weren’t breaking glass and lighting fires, they were arresting Jews like the factory manager.
“Dachau, Max,” said Hani, crying, Leo sitting at her feet. “That’s where they’re all going.” They heard a pounding on their door, shouts, and they all ran up to the top floor of the house, locking themselves in the attic as they had done the night before.
When the sun had set on the second night of violence, though they were too terrified to leave the house, the Hartmanns opened their doors for Jews trying to escape the street. The factory manager’s wife, Lina Kofman, was one of them.
“Egon was taken to Dachau, I know it,” she said, gripping Leo’s shoulders when he’d opened the front door just enough to let her inside. Her black hair was covered with a scarf that was tied so low that he had to ask her to raise it, to see her face, before he let her in. “He will die there!” she yelled when she’d reached the Hartmanns’ stairs. Leo gave her his arm, which was shaking.
“People aren’t dying in Dachau,” said Leo, repeating what his father had told him. “It’s a work camp.”
“A camp where they work you to death,” said Lina, breathing heavily. “They say it’s for communists and socialists. Egon isn’t one of those things! But now they hate the Jews even more. I know he’s there, he will die there,” she said, crying as Leo led her upstairs.
That night, the Hartmanns’ synagogue, Leopoldst?dter Tempel, was torched. Hours after that, the word Juden was painted in black, tarry letters on the side of their house. Max had the Hungarian driver paint over it in white the next day, but it didn’t stay covered for long.
Against his family’s wishes, Max went outside the next morning to inspect the damage to their house, and seconds after he was on the street, he was pulled to the ground by the Sturmabteilung, the Storm Troopers. Leo and Hani watched from the window as they threw him against the still-wet paint. Four men circled around him and forced him to clean it off to expose the word Juden again, only allowing him to use a toothbrush and his tongue to do so. They then beat him and left him on the sidewalk unconscious.
Leo had tried to run out of the house, to help his father, but Hani would not let him, instead closing the curtains and forcing them both to stay in the attic until it was quiet outside. Ten minutes later, Leo checked the window and ran out to get his father, who was badly beaten but alive. It was a miracle, said Hani, crying over her husband’s raw face, that he was left there and had not disappeared like the factory manager. They must have thought he was dead.
That was the last day Leo went to school. The last day of Emi and Froschi in the music room or waiting for the black car driven by the nine-fingered Hungarian.
CHAPTER 17
EMI KATO
NOVEMBER 1938