Thoughts are Free E-Book

Fee-Christine Aks

• Herausgeber: neobooks
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Lost Youth
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 171

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Paul Kirchhoff is 17 years old. He has witnessed the National Socialist domination of Germany for more than half of his life. He sees much that he does not understand. And even more that he does not agree with. But anyone who speaks up is punished. In December 1942, Paul finds a leaflet that will change his life. The'author'of the leaflet is The White Rose.

Leseprobe

Fee-Christine Aks

Thoughts are Free

Novel

Dieses ebook wurde erstellt bei

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

Dedication and Author's note

Instead of a Prologue

Part 1: Neighbours

Part 2: Leaflets

Part 3: Students

Part 4: Arrest

Part 5: Escape

Part 6: Thoughts

Epilogue

Appendix

Copyright

Impressum neobooks

Dedication and Author's note

For Sophie and Hans

This is a fictional story, which takes place against the historic background of the Third Reich during World War II from December 1942 – March 1943.

Instead of a Prologue

We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!

(Munich, July 1942)

Part 1: Neighbours

Hamburg, early December 1942.

Paul is standing behind the window, looking down into the yard. It is snowing. Thick snowflakes are falling from the sky. It has been snowing since the early morning. Down in the yard, the white snow remains on the ground.

Paul can hear how his father steps into the kitchen. He turns around slowly and walks over to the stove to start the fire through the hole for the charcoal. Then he fills water in a kettle and sets it on the stove on the bluish flickering flames. He gets the dried vegetables and bread from the pantry. Father sets a beef bone next to the stove.

“Where is Mother?” Paul wants to know.

“She helps Katja Lipowetzky with Alina. The fever got higher again.”

Father starts to cook the vegetables and the bone, and after a few minutes the aroma of soup fills the kitchen.

“When will Mother be here?” Lured by the smell of the soup, Annemarie stands in the doorway, holding her rag doll in her hand.

“She helps Katja Lipowetzky with Alina”, Father repeats.

Annemarie does not reply anything, just sits down at the table and waits. Who knows when Mother will come home? If Alina is feeling worse again, that can take a long time.

Alina has been sick since last winter. She felt a little better during the summer months, but ever since it is winter again, she is doing worse every day. Alina is only twenty months old.

Paul remembers the day, when Alina was born very well. Back then, almost the entire neighbourhood visited the Lipowetzkys to take a look at the baby. Now, ever since Alina is feeling worse, his mother pays the Lipowetzkys upstairs plenty of visits. Axel says Alina will not survive this winter. Axel should know it. His uncle is a doctor. Paul hopes that he will be wrong this time. Until now, Alina is still alive.

“Hey Paul! Stop dreaming. Otherwise we will eat all your food.”

Father’s voice interrupts Paul’s thoughts. Quickly he sits down at the table, next to Annemarie, who looks at the quarter loaf of bread with hungry eyes. Father sets the soup down on the table. Then he gets Louise out of her crib and puts her on his lap. Paul hands out the soup and some bread.

Father spoon-feeds Louise. She is two years old already, but very skinny. The reason is that they do not have much money to spend. The majority of the money, Father is making at Blohm & Voss dockyards as a deckhand, goes towards the rent payment. They have to buy wood and charcoals for heating and groceries from the remaining money. They can only afford new clothes once a year, if at all. Therefore Paul is still wearing his coat he has had over the past three years, even though he outgrew it a long time ago.

Father often complains at home that the workers do not get paid well. He builds warships for the Führer and is working himself to death. The Führer only pays a pittance, barely enough to feed himself, but it is close to impossible to feed a family of five with such a small wage. The conditions are almost as bad as before the revolution twenty years ago, Father says. There were more groceries available back then, but they rarely have enough anyway, because money was so tight. Things would be different, if they had an actual victory back then, Father says.

The revolution shouldn’t even be called that, because it only achieved a weak republic with the government changing constantly.

Father and his comrades had something different in mind in 1918, when they marched together with the other red jacks from Kiel to Berlin to down throw the Emperor of Germany. They wanted to found a socialistic state, a real People’s Republic. Everyone would have had the same rights, there wouldn’t have been any workers or employers, and everybody would have been equal.

Paul however cannot imagine how this would work. There always has to be somebody in a higher position, who’s in charge and leads the others. Even the new state that was established after the down throw of the German Emperor and lasted for fourteen years had a man at its head.

At first, it was the rather cautious Reich President Friedrich Ebert, then his follower Paul von Hindenburg, an old general with a moustache like the emperor Wilhelm.

At the beginning, the principle of majority rule had worked more or less, Father had explained. But after the big economic collapse and an increasing election success for the brown shirts, almost every third Sunday became an election Sunday. Riots and presidential governments with so-called emergency decrees were the consequence. There was a constant change at the top: Reichskanzler (Imperial Chancellor) Brüning, then Reichskanzler von Papen and after that Reichskanzler Schleicher – one debilitated government after the other.

And on top of that, they had quarreling parties and a massive political shift to the right, towards the Nationalists and the Fascists, which Father fought till the end. He fought with posters and went to demonstrations; until he was arrested at the beginning of 1933. He came back after three days, deadly tired and with a broken left hand.

Ever since, Father is trying to keep quiet. Paul knows how hard that is for him. About a year after his first arrest, it almost happened again: back then, when the first residents of neighbouring houses disappeared, never to be seen again.

Maybe it would have been better, if the revolution had been successful after the first Great War and the Communists had come to power. Maybe they would have been able to prevent the little man with the funny moustache and the precisely parted hair.

At least he would not have shouted out his Anti Jew ideology as full-throated and they would have been spared his extreme gesturing. And Father’s favourite author’s books would not have ended up being burnt.

Or is it simply fate that Germany is ruled by the Führer’s party for over eleven years now? Ruled by the Nazi party with the Swastika symbol and Adolf Hitler who brought them the second Great War.

Most people that Paul can see in the streets seem to believe that. They sing praises of the government top in Berlin. Even after the air strike’s bombings that destroyed wide parts of the inner city around the river Alster, most of the people in the streets still have an unshakeable believe in the Thousand-Year-Reich and the best general of all times.

But Paul isn’t so sure. Unlike the others, he does not believe everything the Führer tells. For instance, Paul could never understand why a German should be blond, tall and blue-eyed only.

Not, that he would have problems with that, as he is pretty tall himself and has bluish gray eyes and a head full of hazelnut coloured curls; quite contrary to some others, especially among the government leaders: There is fat and aged Reichsmarschall (Reich Marshal) Hermann Göring and, of course, small and limping Reichspropagandaminister (Reich Minister of Propaganda) Joseph Goebbels. And even the man who calls himself Germany’s Führer (Leader) is of just average height and has neither blue eyes nor blond hair.

But why are they instigating such hatred against the Jews? They never did them anything. And what does the Führer have against people like Maria Goldberg for example, who met all requirements for the German ideal with her blonde curls and blue eyes? Or Katja and Peter Lipowetzky? What did they do?

Paul asked his father those questions numerous times. But Father does not know the answer. He often remembers the revolution, back then in 1918, when he was just twenty years old, full of ambitions and ready to change the world.

Back then, he was a very devoted member of Karl Liebknecht’s and Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartakus-group; an idealist. Then he became a moralist, like his favourite author Erich Kästner whose works are all blacklisted; all but Emil.

Just like Kästner his father is older, more settled and more thoughtful now.

During the past years he tried his best, to live a more secluded life. He called it an inner emigration. But sometimes he just can’t control himself.

Even at forty-four years old Father still has the energy and sparkling eyes of a young sailor, whenever he talks in a low voice about a better Germany.

But even those break-outs became less, after many of his former comrades went to Fuhlsbüttel prison or were deported to one of the concentration camps with their infamous sections for political prisoners. None of them survived even a year in the camps.

Four years ago, when an enormous wave of arrests rolled through the Reich, Father got lucky and was spared. Most of his co-workers had to attend at least a police questioning at the Gestapo Headquarters on Neuer Wall.

That was when Father had to promise to Mother to be a lot more careful in the future: No more meetings, and no more communication with the former members of the Communist party.

Father agreed. Since the Communist party was prohibited, he only belongs to his own party anyway, he told Paul. And that from now on he would only fight on his own behalf. For the personal freedom of the individual, for peace, equality and for the abolishment of the anti-Semitic Nürnberger Gesetze (Nuremberg Laws), because every person is born equal and should be treated that way.

“Always remember, Paul”, he had said. “Even the ‘almighty’ Führer is just a human being; and a giant liar as well. Forget all that rubbish about ‘master race’ and ‘inferior race’. We all are human beings and have to treat each other respectfully, no matter where we are from or who our parents and grandparents are.”

Back then Paul realised for the first time that what he learned at school is wrong: Arians, Racial disgrace, blood and soil. Ever since, whenever his teacher talked about the Nordic race and their advantage over the inferior races, he imagines a big pack of puppies, little dogs clumsily stumbling over their own paws. Some are black, some are white, others brown. Some are spotted. They all are dogs. They do not make a difference; they wag their tails for all and everyone.

Father was pleased and laughed, when Paul told him about that thought.

“You turned out all right, my boy”, he had said.

But then he warned him, to keep this thought better to himself. Don’t ever mention it to the teacher. And don’t talk about it, when Herr Braun or the Blockwart (block warden) is anywhere near.

“You can think what you like”, Father said seriously. “But these days, you have to be careful what to talk about in public.”

Paul didn’t understand that right away. Then his father reminded him of Herr and Frau Müller from across the street. They were former Communist party members, just like Father, and just opened their mouth in public one too many times. That was, when the Nazis raided the Jewish music store in May 1936. Herr Müller was standing at the scene, shook his head and murmured: “It’s a shame that those brown pigs won’t get punished for that.”

Unfortunately he didn’t notice the three smirking Hitler boys behind him in the gateway. First they insulted him, calling him a Jew-friend and a traitor to the fatherland; then, protected from views, they beat him down and kicked him. The same evening they could hear Frau Müller’s desperate screams, when she and her husband where pushed onto a truck. Paul never saw them again.

“They were brought to Dachau concentration camp”, Hans Schönemann told him later. He lived in a little attic flat above the Müllers’ apartment until 1938, when he was arrested himself.

In the spring of 1934, people already started to vanish from Paul’s street. Goldbergs from No. 41 were picked up in April by numerous men in long coats. The Reichbergs, the Schönfeldts and the Giesemanns and many others followed.

When Paul asked his father, where they were taken, Father told him about the concentration camps the Nazis set up. Everybody the Nazis have a problem with is taken there.

Since the year before last, there is a camp named “Auschwitz”.

This camp is located in occupied Poland and the reason why Father broke his promise and became active again. His conscience just doesn’t allow him to sit around and do nothing, he told Paul. Not as long as “Auschwitz” exists.

Paul did not want to believe his father, when he told him that people in there, in particular Jews, are truly murdered. Is something like that really possible? That somebody just gives a cruel order to murder thousands of people, just because he doesn’t like them?

The whole thing sounds outrageous, but it is the truth. Father knows one of the Jews that was in there and lucky enough to escape. Father and his friend Hein helped this young man to get away to America. For hours, Paul’s parents and Hein were talking in the kitchen about that incredible cruelty, while he and Annemarie were sleeping. Father also told Paul about the selection process, the furnaces and giant mounts of laundry, jewelry and human hair that pile up in one of the extermination camp’s big halls.

They had this talk two weeks ago. Back then, they took the Weiß family that was living underneath their apartment for many years. Paul remembers how Pauline Weiß and he always played together with Axel, Maria and Liza, when they were younger.

They got woken up early in the morning. They could hear loud voices and crying in the hallway.

After that, the Behm family moved into the Weiß’s apartment. Behms are brown shirts, Father says. He is talking about the Nazis that used to wear brown shirts in the beginning of Hitler’s reign. Nowadays you can’t really tell who a Nazi is. Not all of them are wearing a uniform or a Nazi Party Swastika badge in their coat’s buttonhole.

“Come on, eat, Paul!” Father’s voice interrupts Paul’s thoughts.

The soup already turned cold. Annemarie fell asleep on the couch. Father sits at the table and flips through the weekly newspaper, Die Woche (The Week). Every now and then he makes some notes on the side of the newspaper.

Paul thinks about Alina. About Pauline and her parents, about Maria Goldberg; and about cute Liza Giesemann, he once was in love with. Katja and Peter Lipowetzky are afraid as well that they could be picked up. They both have to wear the star.

Paul remembers his teacher Herr Wolf at school who told them about the bad Jews. Supposedly all Jews have a hooked nose and black, wirily hair paired with black, piercing eyes. Besides, they all are supposed to be pudgy and stealing whatever they can. But the Jews that Paul knows are completely different.

Liza Giesemann had beautiful hazelnut brown curls, brown almond eyes and a cute snub nose. Furthermore she was very petite and the cutest and nicest girl, Paul had ever met. Maria Goldberg had blonde curls and blue eyes. She was slim-figured and a real good friend. She liked his friend Axel quite a bit.

Frau Lipowetzky is slim as well and has a pretty face, a straight nose, grayish blue eyes, brown hair; and besides that, she is the most honest woman Paul has ever known. Her husband is very thin and probably average height. His grey hair was brown, when he was young; his grey eyes are hidden behind thick glasses. He was a goldsmith before the Nazis closed down his shop. He is exceptionally honest and trustworthy.

But somebody like Herr Wolf doesn’t care at all. Herr Wolf is a brown one as well. Many people are brown: the families Schulze and Möller from across the yard, Herr and Frau Behm and Herr Braun in Paul’s house, just like most of the others from the surrounding houses, or Hamburg, or Germany.

Eventually there are some that do not believe the Nazi lies: The Sommer and the Schmidt family, Herr Holz and Fathers friend Heinrich Schön.

“Red Hein“ they call him; he lives somewhere hidden away. He is well known at the Gestapo, they have a big file about him. In there is documented that he was a jack on the same ship as Father. Luckily Hein was always able to escape and the Gestapo could never get a hold of him.

Axel’s father, Bernhard Sommer, a friend of Father’s as well, was a Socialist. He was not liked by the Führer and his men either. He was hit by a bullet at a meeting of the Social Democratic party that was brutally ended by the Nazi Storm Troops. He died the same day in the hospital, deadly wounded.

“Well, here I am.”

Mother comes through the door.

“Good that you’re here, Grete”, Father says. “Here, you should read that.”

He holds up the newspaper. Mother is reading and shaking her head at the same time.

“They are crazy. This time of the year in Russia…”, she murmurs and is talking about the “Operation Barbarossa”, the official Nazi name for the war against Russia. Thousands of German soldiers have frozen to death already. But the Führer won’t order the retreat. Instead he lets them continue to fight. More men are dying every day due to the arctic temperatures of Russia’s winter. That is why it was announced that they all have to collect winter clothes; so the soldiers won’t freeze to death.

Paul gets up to start the cast-iron stove again, so his mother’s soup can be heated up as well. But Mother pushes him back on his chair.

“Don’t worry. I’m not hungry anyway”, she states and gently strokes his hair.

Annemarie woke up. Mother sits down on the couch next to her.

“Did you feed Louise yet?” she wants to know from Father who just nods and goes back to reading his newspaper.

Annemarie snuggles up to her mother to sleep some more.

“Come on, Annemi”, Mother says, picks her up and carries her into the bedroom. “All right, both girls are asleep”, she sighs when she comes back. “Well, and how about you?”

She stands next to Paul and looks at him.

“How is Alina?” Paul inquires. Father looks at Mother as well.

“Her temperature is very high”, Mother says quietly. “She probably won’t make it through the night.”

Both Paul and his father look concerned. Mother sits down at the table and takes some soup. Paul watches her for a little while, then gets up and gazes out the window again.

The snow remained on the ground. A white blanket of snow formed over the yard. It still keeps snowing. Paul can only imagine the white snowflakes in the dark. But he can see the ice crystals on the kitchen window just fine. They sparkle in the candle light. They are not allowed to turn on the electric light, in case of another air attack. When there is light, there are people.

A chair scratches over the floor. Father got up. He walks over to the kitchen sink and fills a cup with tap water.

He drinks three more cups, then sits back down at the table and continues reading his newspaper. Mother takes the kettle with the soup and puts it in the pantry. Then she starts to do the dishes.

Suddenly they all stop and listen. There are heavy footsteps in the stairway.

Mother turns off the tap and Father puts his newspaper to the side. Paul walks over to his mother and waits next to her. Mother grabs his hand and holds it tight. Father is already in the doorway, trying to hear, what is going on.