The Night of Shooting Stars Read online

  THE NIGHT OF

  SHOOTING STARS

  Ben Pastor

  BITTER LEMON PRESS

  LONDON

  To everyone else who resisted,

  but nobody remembers

  Es brauchet aber Stiche der Fels

  (“But rock needs splitting”)

  FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN, ‘DER ISTER’

  MAIN CHARACTERS

  Martin-Heinz von Bora, Lieutenant Colonel in the German army

  Nina Sickingen-Bora, his mother

  Benno von Salomon, Colonel in the German army

  Bruno Lattmann, Major in the German army

  Max Kolowrat, journalist, traveller, former war correspondent

  Arthur Nebe, Head of the German Criminal Police (Kripo)

  Claus von Stauffenberg, Deputy Commander of the Reserve Army

  Willy Osterloh, civil engineer

  Emma “Emmy” Pletsch, Staff Leader in the Reserve Army

  Margaretha “Duckie” Sickingen, Bora’s sister-in-law

  Florian Grimm, Detective Inspector in the Berlin Criminal Police

  Albrecht Olbertz, Nazi physician

  Ida Rüdiger, hairdresser to the Party wives

  Berthold “Bubi” Kupinsky, a shady character

  Gerd Eppner, jeweller and watchmaker

  Roland Glantz, Sternuhr Verlag publisher

  Gustav Kugler, former Kripo officer

  Namura, Lieutenant Colonel in the Imperial Japanese Army

  Sami Mandelbaum, a.k.a. Magnus Magnusson, alias Walter Niemeyer, clairvoyant and stage magician

  GLOSSARY

  Abwehr: The Third Reich’s military counter-espionage service

  Alex: Nickname for Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, used here mainly to denote the police headquarters

  Brownshirt: Member of the paramilitary SA (Sturmabteilung)

  Einsatzgruppen: Special SS paramilitary death squads employed on the Eastern front

  Garde-Regiment zu Fuss: The 1st Foot Guards, a Prussian infantry regiment

  Heimat: German for native land, homeland

  Kripo: Contraction of “Kriminalpolizei”, the German Criminal Police

  NSKK: Short for “Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps”, the military transport corps which provided drivers, mechanics and motorcycle riders

  OKW: Short for “Oberkommando der Wehrmacht”, the High Command of the German Armed Forces

  Old Warrior (German “Alter Kämpfer”): term for members of the NSDAP who joined the party before 1933

  Ostarbeiter: A prisoner from the occupied territories of Eastern Europe, used as forced labour

  Ostjude: Eastern European Jew

  Revoluzzer: Derogatory name for a revolutionary

  Ritterkreuz: The Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, a coveted military and paramilitary medal

  RSHA: Short for “Reichssicherheitshauptamt”, the Reich Security Central Division

  Schejner Jid: Yiddish, “a real Jew”

  SD: Short for “Sicherheitsdienst”, the SS Secret Service

  Shtreimel: Mink hat worn by observant Jews in Eastern Europe

  Sonderausweis: Special orders papers, issued to soldiers travelling for duty reasons

  Stulle: An open sandwich

  TeNo: Contraction of “Technische Nothilfe”, a paramilitary technical emergency corps

  Verlag: German for “publishing house”

  Zdravstvutye: Russian, a polite “Hello” or “Good Day”

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  MAIN CHARACTERS

  GLOSSARY

  PREFACE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BITTER LEMON PRESS BY BEN PASTOR

  COPYRIGHT

  PREFACE

  Berlin, Sunday, 9 July 1944, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

  The solemn state funeral of Dr Prof. Alfred Johann Reinhardt-Thoma, who passed away suddenly in his residence on the evening of Friday, 7 July, will take place tomorrow at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Dahlem.

  Until 1933 head surgeon at St Jakob’s hospital in Leipzig, Dr Prof. Reinhardt-Thoma was the founder and director of the Clinic for Children’s Welfare and Health, a private institution in Dahlem. His wife, Dorothea Reinhardt-Thoma, née Baroness von Bora, daughter of Field Marshal Wilhelm-Heinrich von Bora, hero of the Seven Weeks’ War, preceded him in death two years ago. Saskia Reinhardt-Thoma, adopted daughter of the illustrious deceased, is unable to attend due to a grave illness. His sister-in-law, Nina Baroness von Sickingen, widow of the late lamented Maestro Friedrich Baron von Bora, has arrived from her residence in Leipzig; and shortly to arrive from the front, where he is heading up an assault regiment, is her son, Lieutenant Colonel Martin-Heinz Douglas, Baron von Bora, bearer of the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, nephew of Dr Prof. Reinhardt-Thoma.

  Honouring the departed with their presence will be His Excellency the Head of the Party Chancellery, Martin Bormann; Dr Leonardo Conti, SS Group Leader, Secretary of State for the Interior and Director of the National Health Department; the Lord Mayor of Berlin, SS Major General Ludwig Steeg; and the former Lord Mayor of Leipzig, Dr Jur. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler. Also attending will be Dr Karl Gebhardt, President of the German Red Cross and Chief Surgeon to the SS and Police; Dr Max de Crinis, Chair of Psychology and Neurology at the Friedrich Wilhelm University; and the illustrious colleagues of the departed, Drs Matthias Göring, Karl Bonhoeffer, Hans-Gerhard Creutzfeldt, Kurt Blome and Paul Nitsche, along with many others. Lieutenant General Dr Siegfried Handloser, Head of the Armed Forces Medical Service, will deliver the funeral address.

  In accordance with the testamentary disposition of the late Dr Prof. Reinhardt-Thoma, no religious ceremony will follow, and no funeral procession. Burial will take place at a later date in the family plot at the Waldfriedhof Dahlem.

  Born in Halle an der Saale in 1878 and educated at the universities of Leipzig, Jena and Berlin (where he also held the Chair of Internal Medicine), Dr Prof. Reinhardt-Thoma will be remembered as a star of the first magnitude in the firmament of medical research and practice. Through the many years of his distinguished career as a paediatrician, experimenter and academic, he received the highest awards in the Fatherland and abroad for his studies of congenital and perinatal malformations.

  The Führer and Chancellor of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, always solicitous in remembering every comrade who has honoured the German Fatherland, sent a personal note of regret for the grave loss brought upon the family.

  1

  Great events usually come unexpectedly,

  and whoever expects them only delays them.

  JOSEF ROTH, HOTEL SAVOY

  APPROACH TO SCHÖNEFELD AIRPORT, NEAR TELTOW, MONDAY, 10 JULY 1944, 6:38 A.M.

  The ink in his fountain pen was running low. The last sentence on his diary page was of a watery blue, and, providing that he found the needed supply for sale somewhere, Bora would have to rewrite it to make it legible. The blotting paper was hardly needed; he replaced it as a bookmark and rested the diary on his knees. He felt the aeroplane bounce through the layer of clouds as it descended. Lazily, the metal body met air pockets and seemed to let go, only to be buoyed back up. It was banking now, lining up with the runway, regaining some altitude. Then came the vibration and change in pitch of the engine at the final descent, the short racket of the landing gear coming out, the wind resisting before it gave way. The wheels touched th
e grassy ground with a thump.

  Flying in from the Italian front, Bora considered it fortunate that there was no window from which to see the condition of the terrain traversed. He was all too aware of recent air raids, but somehow not seeing their actual results helped a little. So he had not seen the state of Berlin from the air – but soon he would have to go out and look around.

  While the aeroplane taxied towards the hangar, he reread what he’d jotted down in his diary hours before, when he had anticipated reaching his destination before nightfall, as false a hope as could be had that summer. The presence of enemy fighters had forced the cargo plane to stop over in the first airfield available within German borders, and that’s how it was that dawn had broken with them still in flight.

  Entry begun on 9 July in a northern Italian airfield, while awaiting a flight to the Fatherland. The occasion is a sad one. Uncle Alfred’s death comes as a surprise. Nina (whom I spoke to briefly by telephone, and thankfully will see soon) says she heard from him on my stepfather’s birthday in June; Uncle was sixty-six, but hale as far as we knew, busy in his clinic caring for young patients shocked by the air raids, as well as for those physically wounded. The former would, in his opinion, suffer longer-lasting effects.

  Civilians and soldiers use words very differently. The adverb “afterwards” is one I more and more tend to avoid. Is it superstition? In Stalingrad, one of my commanders forbade the use of the word “tomorrow” in his presence. We were under siege, and soon 84 per cent of us would fall into enemy hands, dead or prisoner – or wounded, which meant dead. Less than twenty months ago, Colonel von Guzman did not want to hear the word “tomorrow”. Imagine what neologisms we had to invent, to indicate the day after. Nothing has been heard of him since. Did he fall into the meat grinder at the close of 1942? Is he languishing in a Soviet prison camp, where tomorrow truly does not exist, or – God forbid – has he joined those who have betrayed the Fatherland out of desperation or cowardice, like our own commander-in-chief on that front? That field marshal’s name is truly one I refuse to write.

  I do say “tomorrow”, even in the harsh face of reality. I believe it will come, in some form. “The sun also rises”, we read in Ecclesiastes. Whether or not I will see it matters less to me at the moment than the horn button clasping my shirt collar.

  I force myself to write to my family (I am “the only one left”, my mother Nina reminds me without faulting me for it, a year and a month after my brother Peter died). How can I explain to them, to Nina or to my 74-year-old stepfather, that every letter sent or received costs me a great effort, because it confirms my ties to them? No ties means freedom, because even hope is not so necessary when you are alone.

  PS Added the following morning, 10 July, en route. Ink failing. I still enjoy writing to Professor Heidegger and Captain Ernst Jünger. The dialogue with them is entirely abstract, and does not hurt as much. I even received a letter from my friend Bruno Lattmann, seriously injured but thank God alive and recovering near his native Berlin. Meeting him (if at all possible), and especially Nina, is a consolation at this time of family loss.

  “We made it, Colonel,” the co-pilot called out to him. “But this is as close to the city as we can get, couldn’t obtain clearance for Tempelhof this morning.”

  That they’d landed on grass, not a paved runway, Bora knew already.

  “Where are we, then?”

  “Schönefeld.”

  “I thought there were some paved runways there.” Ever the counter-espionage officer, asking questions was his second nature. And Bora had a schedule to keep to.

  “There are three. But they’re not long enough to manoeuvre on, and this old lady will need to take off again.”

  “Thank you.” The diary found its place inside Bora’s briefcase. “It feels like a storm is coming. Is it raining outside, by any chance?”

  “Why, no.”

  The car expected to take Bora to the south-western quarter of Dahlem was probably waiting for him in town at the civilian Tempelhof airport, kept open as an exception the night before for his military flight. Now the change in schedule, with the official start of the ceremony in two hours, left little hope of securing a ride there in time, from this patch of countryside at the south-eastern edge of Greater Berlin. Bora used the telephone in the control tower to communicate his delay; it turned out that the driver assigned to him had been informed and was already motoring towards Schönefeld.

  KAISER WILHELM INSTITUTE, DAHLEM, 8:55 A.M.

  Bora hastened to the crowded university hall just before the authorities walked in. He barely had a moment to greet his mother before all had to rise for the Head of the Party Chancellery. Bora had frantically clasped and clipped on his medals as he stepped into the building, where someone who introduced himself as Dr Olbertz – who evidently had been waiting for him – briefly detained him. He’d only whispered a single sentence in his ear, but one that Bora couldn’t get out of his head. Army and party greetings, nods, handshakes seemed strange and misplaced after hearing those words. And it still felt like a storm was brewing, when odours grow stronger and hues grow sharp, and there is an ominous sense of expectancy in the air.

  The beribboned wreaths around the coffin gave out an exotic aroma, as if perfume had been sprinkled on branches and flowers that possessed no scent of their own. It was the same sweetish, artificial, sugary odour of carnival confetti. Bora breathed it in from the front row, telling himself that he was grateful to be standing side by side with his mother – much more than for the public display of a state funeral. Contravening general practice, if not etiquette, she had lifted the black mourning veil, exposing the serene firmness of her grief. It was a typical Nina-message. I get my gutsiness from her, he thought. Even without Olbertz’s hasty, unasked-for revelation, he’d correctly and a little anxiously read the hints emerging from the newspaper article, where the list of Party guests ran longer than the dead man’s biography. He hadn’t expected them to mention Reinhardt-Thoma’s adopted son, a resident of America for the past eight years; but pointing out the year 1933 as the end of his uncle’s tenure at St Jakob’s, and Saskia’s tactful illness (requiring hospitalization, to be credible!) drew a picture of political unreliability. Not of disgrace, however – because you do not disgrace an acclaimed physician, whom even the Führer’s “great heart” honours with a personal message.

  Dr Handloser, sombre in his lieutenant general’s uniform, read from a typewritten sheet, which he held up like a royal decree. “Let us bow our heads and lift our proud spirits. Let us impress our virile pain upon the great colleague, teacher and seeker – before the medicus amabilis who, for the benefit of science and mankind, has over three decades of dedicated work adorned the name of our German Fatherland …”

  Yes, the wreaths smelled like confetti. They seemed enormous, like great wheels leaning against the chariot of a fallen hero, actually the luxurious coffin provided for the send-off by the Association of National Socialist Physicians. In comparison, his brother’s burial in Russia had been rushed and understated; these days, one learned to evaluate the political reliability – or otherwise – of the deceased by the ostentation of his funeral. To Bora’s right, his meaty neck stuck in his shirt collar making him look like a mastiff about to attack, stood the Head of the Party Chancellery himself. Along the front row were lined up the Doctors Conti, Steeg, De Crinis and Göring (all of them wearing Party uniforms). Old Professor Bonhoeffer appeared moved. As for Goerdeler, who’d spoken to Nina upon his arrival, he had slipped out before the funeral oration. How far at the back of the hall stood Albrecht Olbertz, behind state officials, bureaucrats and Nazi doctors – whose whisper “Ein nicht so freier Tod” gave the lie to this day? It felt like a storm, a great storm, was coming.

  “… A reverent and heartfelt gratitude stirs in all of us, his collaborators and friends, for we recognize in Alfred Reinhardt-Thoma the virtues of our race and of medical science, incarnated in the highest degree …”

  “Ein
nicht so freier Tod.” If a “voluntary death” was the German euphemism for suicide, what was a death that came “not so freely”? Bora’s well-concealed anxiety was justified. Oversized hall, massive wreaths, guests of great consequence … Things (and circumstances, and events) seemed bigger these days. Unless the opposite was true, and he simply felt crushed by all that was happening. But he honestly didn’t think so. Wounds and the military situation notwithstanding, he had the same energy as always, the bold and slightly arrogant pluck his regiment put so much trust in. “I’m serving with Bora” (or “under Bora”, depending on their rank) was what the men wrote home or told colleagues from other units, and “my Commander” was said with the reflected pride that all in the regiment apparently shared – except Martin Bora. For him, in the summer of 1944, along the embattled Apennines where Germany was playing her last card in Italy, such faith only added ballast to his sense of responsibility. Without ever saying it, he thought, with a dose of realism, I’ll do my best, but we cannot all be saved.

  “The foundation that bears the name of his devoted spouse, now and for ever a beacon of excellence, spurs us on to continue along the trail he so selflessly and brilliantly blazed …”

  All my men want – officers included – is reassurance. For the rest, I have no answers. Uncle Reinhardt-Thoma is dead, and a storm is coming. It wasn’t as if he no longer hoped: without hope he’d have died in Stalingrad, or by the dirt road where a partisan grenade had taken off his left hand, or when Dikta, without asking him, obtained the annulment of their marriage. Yet where did his hope come from? In the last four months, he hadn’t even bothered to pray. Thirty years on earth, seven as a soldier, five spent at war. Martin Bora’s hope existed as long as he didn’t try to imagine a clear future for himself.