Two Brothers

evening remains clement. The horses will forget who is their master if they only ever exercise with the grooms.’

Frau Fischer attempted a smile in reply but could do no better than that.

Herr Fischer was right, it was a lovely day, one of the first fine mornings of spring and Dagmar found that her spirits, while not exactly rising, at least ceased to plummet as their splendid car purred its way through the expensive district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. The buds were beginning to show on the great parallel lines of plane trees that graced the grand old Kurfurstendamm as the Fischer family drove along it, and all the splendid shops and cafes so familiar to Dagmar and her rich school friends looked as normal and as exciting as ever.

Except not quite normal. There were exceptions to the familiar atmosphere of bustling well-being. A few of the businesses were closed, their beautiful plate glass, polished wood and brass facings disfigured with dripping paint, and outside their doors were standing young men in brown uniforms clustered around swastika banners.

‘Mandelbaum, Rosebaum,’ Fischer muttered as he stared out of the window. ‘Even Samuel Belzfreund, I thought he’d have more nerve the way he struts about and throws his weight at the Chamber of Commerce, but every one of them has stayed at home.’

‘Perhaps we too should rethink this, darling,’ Frau Fischer said gently, ‘if everyone else has—’

‘As I have already explained, we are not everyone else. We are the Fischers, of Fischer’s of Berlin,’ was all her husband would say, grim-faced and tight-lipped.

‘Don’t you know, Mother,’ Dagmar said, trying so hard to sound cheerful, ‘the empress might come from exile in Holland requiring gloves for her ladies-in-waiting.’

‘Exactly,’ said Herr Fischer. ‘Imagine if the empress found us closed.’

And for the first time that morning all three of them managed to smile at once.

Then suddenly the time had come. The limousine was drawing up alongside the famous Fischer’s department store on the Kurfurstendamm, a shop often compared with Harrods of Knightsbridge or Macy’s of Manhattan. Not this morning, however. This morning Fischer’s store bore no resemblance to those other splendid emporiums. This morning Fischer’s was on its own, in the middle of a unique and terrible nightmare.

Dagmar gasped in horror as she saw that every single one of the splendid plate-glass windows which she had always so adored with their ever-changing tableaux of fashion and luxury had been daubed and disfigured. Stars of David, crude insults and everywhere Streicher’s leaden, doltish, spite-ridden slogan for the day: Death to Jews.

There were also at least twenty SA men gathered beneath the coloured-glass canopy which stretched out over the pavement from the shop’s entrance. They were clearly surprised to see the great Mercedes pulling up directly in front of them. Some even gave the German salute, obviously under the impression that this must be some Nazi bigwig come down to check on the progress of the day’s ‘action’.

This impression remained for a moment longer as the uniformed chauffeur got out of the car and, without a glance at the arrogant brown figures, opened the passenger door. Many arms were raised in anticipation of who might get out, only to be dropped again in angry astonishment as the family Fischer, recognizable from numerous slanderous articles in the Nazi press, emerged from the car. Herr Fischer was first, and stepping out behind him Dagmar could see that beyond the SA men the shop staff were already in the shop, looking out through the big central doors in terror. Doors that had been barricaded from without with rubbish bins. There were, as far as she could see, no customers attempting to get in.

There was certainly no sign of the ex-Empress Augusta Viktoria.

‘Good morning,’ she heard her father saying, ‘my name is Isaac Fischer and this is my shop. Where is my banner?’

Now Dagmar noticed that there was no sign advertising discounts hung above the door as Herr Fischer had promised there would be. Nor was there a large and prominent memorial to the war dead.

‘What have you done with my banner, please?’ Fischer asked again.

The Brownshirts began to snigger, one or two of them mimicking Herr Fischer’s cultured accent: What have you done with my banner, please? Others were glancing down gleefully at the pavement. Dagmar saw why they were laughing: at their feet was a great quantity of rope and painted cloth. Her father’s proud banners, a war memorial and the notice of a discount sale, torn and shredded amongst the rough hobnailed boots.

‘Oh,’ said one of the thugs, a man who by the badges on his sleeve affected the rank of some kind of sergeant, a Truppfuhrer, as the Nazis styled it. ‘So this is your banner, is it? Well, I must say, that’s very unfortunate.’

‘Stand out of my way,’ Fischer demanded, ‘all of you. I wish to open my store.’

‘Stand out of your way?’ the Truppfuhrer roared in sudden, spitting fury. ‘Stand out of your fucking way! Who the FUCK do you think you are, you Jew cunt!’

Fischer stepped backwards as if he had been struck. Dagmar reached out for her mother, who was shaking violently.

To be spoken to in such a manner.

On the Kurfurstendamm — outside their own shop.

It was impossible. Unheard of. It could not be happening.

But it was.

The Fischer family of Fischer’s department store of Berlin were discovering that not one single rule of civilization applied to them any more. Their wealth, their accomplishments, their cultured and educated ways counted for nothing. They were without rights and utterly defenceless.

The lead SA man spoke again, or screamed, in fact, in fair imitation of his leader.

‘How dare you give orders to a Truppfuhrer of the Sturmabteilung! You fucking rodent! You fucking germ. How about this, Jew boy! How about some of this!’

And with that, the young man, who was no more than twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, took a step forward and knocked Isaac Fischer, a slight man in his late forties, to the ground. In a single moment he had taken a knuckle-duster from his pocket, slipped it into his clenched fist and slammed it into the side of Fischer’s head, collapsing him, semi-concussed, to the floor. Then the Truppfuhrer kicked him, burying his great jackboots into Fischer’s prostrate and undefended body several times.

It was all so sudden, so utterly out of proportion.

Such violence. From nowhere, for nothing. In seconds.

For a moment Dagmar and her mother stood motionless, their reluctant minds struggling to catch up with the evidence of their eyes and ears. Then with guttural screams they both stepped towards the fallen head of their family, the husband, the father. The protector. The man on whom they relied utterly and who they trusted without question.

But they could offer him no comfort or support. Before they could help him they were seized and pulled roughly away by other members of the brown troop. The chauffeur had also leapt in, perhaps hoping to get Herr Fischer back into the car, but he too was grabbed and blows were raining down on him.

As Dagmar struggled in the arms of the laughing SA men, feeling their hands upon her, pulling, it seemed to her, at her coat, their hands everywhere, she saw that across the traffic, in the middle of the wide boulevard, on the central reservation, beneath the row of plane trees, two policemen had stopped to watch. For a moment she imagined that their ordeal was over. She knew the Berlin Police, Paulus and Otto’s grandfather was one. Her father made regular contributions to their benevolent fund. They had kept the peace in Berlin through all the violent years without fear or favour. Surely they must keep the peace now.

‘Are they Jews?’ one of the officers shouted.

‘Yes,’ a trooper replied. ‘Dirty Jews who thought they could order National Socialist comrades around.’

At this the policeman smiled and waved. He and his colleague watched for a moment or two more and then moved on.

Now the SA attackers dragged Fischer to his feet.

The chauffeur they dismissed with a few further kicks but they had not yet finished with the Fischer family.

‘So now,’ the Truppfuhrer snarled into Fischer’s face, on the right cheek of which a