“I’ll never forget this. I swear. What do I say to Danny? Your father’s a criminal? It has to be a mistake. I mean, Herb, he’s been a Party member since—they can’t just do that. It has to be a mistake.”
It took a few minutes to be put through to the desk, a little longer to explain why he was calling, Roberta hovering, hands in her coat pockets, clenched.
“He’s in Oranienburg,” he said finally, hanging up.
“Oranienburg?” Her voice dropped, almost a whisper. “That’s Sachsenhausen. A concentration camp. He’s in a concentration camp?”
“Not like that—for political prisoners. If you want to see him you have to apply to the commandant. In person. That’s all they’d say. Do you know someone in the Party you could—?”
“My God, a concentration camp. Come with me. Please. I have to see him. I’ll never ask another thing as long as I live. Oh my God,” she said, breaking down now. “How could he be a political prisoner? What does that mean? He came to be with them, the Party. It’s a mistake.” She put a hand on his arm. “I have to know if he’s all right. Please speak for me. You’re an American—I can trust you. The others, at the Kulturbund, it’s like I had the plague.”
They took the S-Bahn north to the edges of Berlin, Alex feeling his chest tighten as they approached the last stop. In the street he looked at a passing truck, the way he’d come here before, packed in the back, standing. Then hit with clubs, climbing out. People watching. An ordinary suburb. But his prison was gone. He stood on the curb, unable to move, disoriented.
“What’s wrong?”
“It was here. An old brewery. People could see in. They leased us out in work parties.”
He asked an old man waiting for a bus.
“They closed that one in ’34. Then they built the new camp. Over there.” He jerked his head east. “The bus, you have to wait forever. You’re young. It’s not far, fifteen-, twenty-minute walk. Down there and then left at the corner.”
On the walk they were quiet, Roberta finally silenced by fear. A place she’d never thought she’d see, something in a nightmare.
They turned down a street lined with trees, the walls of the camp on their left, barracks for the guards on the right. Where the SS used to devise new tortures, boot testing, the prisoners walking endlessly around a track until their feet were crippled. What did the guards say to each other at night, stories over schnapps?
“Oh God,” Roberta said, faltering, grasping Alex’s arm for support. “I can’t.”
Ahead of them, the camp gate with a wrought iron “Arbeit macht frei,” beyond it acres of barracks arranged in a semicircle, the open roll call field, electric wire fences and guards, men shuffling in the distance. For one surreal moment, Alex felt as if they had entered a newsreel. All of it still here. Russian now. They had changed nothing, except the guards’ uniforms. His throat closed. He’d never get out. Fritz was gone. His father’s money. Nobody would buy him out this time.
A guard pointed them toward a large building in the outer courtyard. “Administration Offices,” as if the camp beyond were a factory and the white-collar bosses had to be kept away from the soot.
The clerk, a thin stubble of hair over a broad Slavic face, had only rudimentary German.
“Kleinbard?” he said, a sneer in his voice that said “Jew,” a sound as familiar to Alex as breathing. Nothing had changed. New uniforms.
The guard consulted a log. “Counterrevolutionary activities. Do you want to apply to visit?” He held out a flimsy paper form. “You can fill it out over there.” He pointed to a table where a woman, white-faced, with the tight, forced calm before hysteria, was scribbling on a similar paper.
“Counterrevolutionary? What are you talking about?” Roberta said. “He’s a good Communist.”
The clerk handed her the form again, nodding to the writing table.
“I want to see the commandant. You can’t do this. I’m an American citizen.”
The clerk looked at her, his face a sullen blank. “It’s not you in prison.”
“Did Herb keep his passport?” Alex said.
Roberta shook her head. “He had to choose. He said, what difference did it make? The State Department was revoking it anyway. So he’s German.” She stopped midstream and turned to the clerk. “But where is he? My husband.”
The clerk cocked his head toward the camp, his only answer, then pushed the form toward her again. “If you want to apply—”
“How long does it take?” Alex asked. “Usually.”
The clerk shrugged.
“It’s in German,” Roberta said, looking at it. “German and Russian.”
“I’ll do it,” Alex said.
The woman at the table looked up. “They lose them. This is my fourth.” Her eyes cloudy, distant. “But they tell you if he’s dead.”
“Oh God,” Roberta said. “He’ll die here.”
“No he won’t,” said Alex calmly. “Here, help me with this.”
“What’s the use?”
“Then it’s on file. If you get somebody in the Party to intervene, he can say, we’re moving up your application. Like any office. Otherwise you’ll start over.”
“They lose them,” the woman at the table said.
On the way back they were quiet until they were out of the camp.
“Look at them all. Living right next door. All this time. Down the street. I said to Herb, how can you go to Germany? And he said, it’s Socialist now, it’s all different. But nothing’s different. My God, a concentration camp. But why?”
“Something going on in the Party.”
“But he’s in the party. It’s his whole life.” She kept walking, brooding. “My father warned me. How can you do such a crazy thing? But he’s not married to Herb, is he? So what do I do now? Take Danny and go home? And leave Herb? But what happens if I stay? What if they don’t let him out? What kind of job could I get, with a husband in jail. The Party would never—” She stopped, as if not saying it would make it go away. “I can’t go back and I can’t stay.”