Two Brothers

for six long years. Paulus no longer really thought of it as Berlin at all. Just Nazi Town, capital of Nazi Land, a hostile foreign country in which he was a prisoner.

Paulus looked once more at Dagmar.

How elegant she looked. From her fashionably broad-brimmed Homburg hat to her neat little lace-up brogues. No stockings, of course, they had disappeared from Berlin, but even ankle socks looked sophisticated on Dagmar.

It seemed to Paulus that of all the scurrying creatures hurrying this way and that across the great junction, Dagmar appeared the most naturally placed. Here in the heart of Berlin’s shopping district, standing at the epicentre of its finest thoroughfares, she might have been posing for a fashion photograph to be placed in a stylish magazine. Or, more likely these days, to feature in one of those photo stories they published in Signal, to show the troops that life in the capital was still prosperous and normal and that the German girls were still beautiful.

Paulus’s reverie was interrupted by a voice at his shoulder.

‘Come on,’ Silke said, ‘I’ve only got an hour.’

In a rush as ever.

But there, just as she had promised. She never let him down.

Good old Silke.

Golden hair all wrapped up in a knotted scarf, someone else’s baby’s dribble on the shoulder of her housecoat. Shivering against the cold and damp for which she was ill-clad as ever. But smiling nonetheless. A big bright smile spread across a face so sun-browned it was still tanned even now as winter began to thaw.

She put her arm in his and at the automated bidding of the Traffic-light Tower (no friendly seven-metre-high policeman any more), they crossed the street together to join Dagmar.

The three of them were to have lunch in the magnificent Haus Vaterland. The internationally famous ‘World in One House’ where up to eight thousand people at a time could dine in the largest cafe in the world and at the various internationally themed restaurants. They could have chosen the Wild West American Bar, the Bodega Spanish winery or the Japanese tea room. There were Turkish, Hungarian and Viennese options too. With supreme irony there had never been a British or a French restaurant because the ultra-patriotic Herr Kempinski, the Jewish restaurateur who had founded Fatherland House, had never forgiven Germany’s Great War enemies for the Treaty of Versailles.

When Paulus had come here with his parents and his brother back in the dream time they had, of course, always chosen the American Bar. Where they had steak and cornbread and a fancy coloured cocktail for Frieda. Now, however, being a good German soldier in uniform with not one but two girls on his arms, he steered the ladies towards the Lowenbrau Bavarian beer restaurant.

This was the loudest hall in the whole building, in which Nazi marching music blaring from loudspeakers competed with the beer-soaked din. It was a rowdy, triumphalist, unpleasant environment. Intimidating even. It therefore provided the best kind of cover for a planning meeting of race enemies and Communist-inclined traitors to the Reich.

Inevitably the Horst Wessel Lied was blaring from the loudspeakers as they entered the room and waited for a table.

‘Don’t grimace, Dagmar,’ Silke said, smiling broadly.

‘I can’t help it. That damned tune. Don’t they ever tire of it?’

‘Well, at least there’ll be no chance of us being overheard.’

This was the first time the three of them had been able to arrange to get together since Paulus had returned from Poland and begun to set his plan in motion.

Dagmar was still living at the Stengel apartment, sharing the crowded flat with three other dispossessed Jewish households, including Frieda’s parents, whose own apartment had recently been seized by a minor party functionary.

Silke was still in domestic service and so lived with the family that employed her, and Paulus of course had been first on active service and then tied up with his basic induction training with the Waffen SS.

Now, however, they could finally meet.

They ordered sausage and sauerkraut, which were still freely available in restaurants, plus beer for Paulus and apple juice for Silke and Dagmar. Dagmar fell on the food when it arrived. Rationing had been in place for the whole population for over a year, but Jews were only allowed the barest minimum and certainly no luxuries such as sausage and fruit juice.

‘I’m going to speak quickly because we don’t have much time,’ Paulus said. ‘The truth is things are going to get worse. A lot worse. What I’ve seen in the east defies description and I believe it’s only a matter of time before it happens here.’

‘What more can they do to us?’ Dagmar asked angrily. ‘We are forced to live like beggars, abused and exploited. My father’s store has swastikas hanging from—’

‘Your father’s shop is gone, Dagmar!’ Silke interjected, ‘and so is your father. It’s done, you can’t look back.’

‘It’s easy for you to—’

‘Please, Dagmar,’ Paulus interrupted. ‘Silke’s right. What’s done is done but I am here to tell you that what has been done is nothing, I mean nothing, compared to what’s coming. He’s said it. Over and over again. At the Reichstag, on the radio. This war will end either with the destruction of Germany or the destruction of the Jews.’

‘Yes, but he—’

‘He does mean it, Dagmar. The mass killing has begun, I’ve seen it, and I believe that once you begin on that path there’s no turning back. I don’t believe in five or perhaps ten years’ time there will be a single Jew left alive in Berlin. We can’t run any more, that option’s closed to us. So you’re going to have to hide.’

At that point they were interrupted, a Wehrmacht sergeant and two corporals appearing suddenly at their table.

‘Hey, what’s this,’ one of them said, a big tough-looking customer. ‘Keeping all the girls to yourself, comrade? That’s not fair, is it? Two for one? I thought we were all supposed to be pulling together.’

The soldier put his beer down on the table and pulled up a chair between Silke and Dagmar.

‘Excuse me, but we’re busy,’ Paulus replied quickly. ‘There are free seats elsewhere.’

‘Busy! I’ll bet you’re busy with two girls to yourself. Come on, mate, where’s your army spirit? I can see you’re bloody Waffen SS but we’re all in this together you know.’

The soldiers’ two companions were also pressing closer now. Breathing beer and tobacco over Dagmar and Silke’s heads.

‘These ladies are my sister and my cousin,’ Paulus insisted. ‘We have family business to—’

‘We’re in luck, lads!’ the big sergeant shouted. ‘This lad hasn’t pulled either of them. Looks like we’re three to two, not bad odds, I’d say. Hel-ooh, ladies!’

‘Hey, lads, give us a break,’ Silke said. ‘We’re talking here.’

‘So talk,’ the sergeant said, putting his arm around her.

For once Paulus was at a loss. Any kind of scene would spark an investigation, papers would be demanded which Dagmar didn’t have. The sergeant outranked him by a stripe.

‘You. Sergeant!’ an imperious voice snapped.

Dagmar had risen to her feet, her eyes blazing. Her tone was loud and commanding.

‘What is your name and what is your regiment?’

The sergeant was taken by surprise, recognizing a genuinely authoritative voice when he heard one.

‘Now just hang on a minute, miss,’ he replied. ‘Why would you want to know that?’

‘Because you and your friends are insulting German womanhood, that’s why. The sister and the cousin of a serving man. And what is more you will be sorry for it because I am not some slut to be approached without an introduction. You will give me your names that I may report them to my fiance.’

‘Fiance?’ the sergeant asked, now clearly worried, his arm no longer around Silke.

‘Yes, my fiance. Kriminal-Oberassistent Heinz Frank of the Geheime Staatspolizei will be very interested to know how Wehrmacht non-commissioned officers conduct