William Russell - Berlin Embassy

J ^COPYRIGHT 1941 B 9 Y A t . BUTTON & CO., INC.

. RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

FIRST EDITION

AMERICAN lOOK-STKATIOED PRBS8, INC,, N1W YOSK

For MY MOTHER AND FATHER

No matter how old 1 may grow to be, no matter 'what life may bold in store for me, there are two words I shall never be able to forget. I heard them when 1 first entered Germany in 1937; they were shouted after me as I left. I heard them spoken in small shops, in the street, in swimming pools, in busses, everywhere. I heard them spoken by waitresses, housewives, grocers, bankers, prostitutes, bootblacks, soldiers, drunks, S.S. men, Americans, people who hated Hitler and people who loved him. Two words which more than a hundred million people must repeat many times each day; two words which have changed the course of history; two words which are more revered than the Bible itself and more despised than the -foulest curse:

HEIL HITLER!

W. R.

BERLIN EMBASSY

CHAPTER I

As I WALKED along the Hermann Goering Strasse toward our Embassy a siren shrieked with startling closeness. The unexpected blast of noise made me jump. I looked about to see where it came from.

Across the street, Adolf Hitler's new Chancellery stood long and quiet and pink in the early morning sun. Stiff sentries wearing steel helmets and massive black boots guarded the huge portals. I looked around back of me. There was Potsdamerplatz, its converging streets choked with army trucks, motorcycles, heavy motor-drawn cannon. Still the siren shrieked. I looked up at the roofs of the buildings and saw the long, slim barrels of anti-aircraft guns poked into the sky, but the siren itself was hidden. I walked on, looking curiously at the truckloads of soldiers rumbling past, at the silver airplanes which circled high above Berlin. The excitement of a city preparing for war pounded in my veins.

Before I left my apartment I had listened to tense news reports from Paris and London and Berlin radio stations. Today was Friday, the thirty-first of August, 1939. War was close at hand. It could not be true, of course, and yet it looked that way. All night long the crowded European ether had sputtered with angry words, with fearful words, with ominous words. A few days ago Germany had signed a ten-year peace pact with the U.S.S.R., and the lights

were now green. My British and French friends were leaving Berlin on every train. Americans resident in Berlin had packed their most valuable and portable possessions and were poised for flight. Every moment brought a new telephone call, a new rumor, a new sensation. Poland had given in to German demands; Poland had not given in. Poland would fight, Poland would not fight. England and France had let Poland down, England and France were standing firm. The only truth was untruth and the only certainty was uncertainty.

The unseen sirens scattered over the German capital cut into the morning air and split it into a thousand fragments. They were being tested to acquaint the people with the "alert," the "take cover" and the "all clear" signals to be used when enemy bombers appeared over Berlin. There were soldiers stationed on every roof in the center of Berlin; they peered aloft through their telescopes at the planes which circled overhead. Many more policemen than usual walked along the Hermann Goering Strasse; the side entrances to Hitler's private gardens were heavily guarded.

As I neared the Embassy I felt a touch on my arm. I turned around quickly and saw behind me a small man, seemingly bald, dressed in a wrinkled brown suit, a gray hat trembling in his hand. He looked back over his shoulder anxiously and then at me. "I must talk to you," he whispered.

"To me?"

"You work in the American Embassy, don't you? I've seen you in the Immigration section, haven't I?"

"Yes, I work there."

"I tried to get in just now but there's such a crowd I couldn't get near the door."

"We might as well walk along," I said. "You tell me as we walk."

We started off. "The police are after me," he said, looking back over his shoulder again. "The Gestapo ordered me out of Germany ten days ago. I've got to get out today, or never."

"You're telling me the truth? A lot of applicants"

"My God, look at my head if you don't believe me." I saw that his head had recently been shaved. Underneath the newly grown hair were harsh red gashes. Then I saw that his left eye was half-closed and that the flesh around it had been broken.

He put his hat back on. "War is going to start tonight. I have friends who know. If I don't get across the border, I'll lose my last chance to escape. God knows what they'll"

"You want an American visa?"

He gesticulated impatiently. "I've written and written to your Immigration section, and I never got an answer. I've been hiding out with friends in Berlin because I was afraid to appear on the streets. I waited a whole week for a letter from the Embassy but today I knew I couldn't wait any longer. I had to come down here, police or no police."

"Come with me, then. I'll look up your dossier and see what we can do for you. You have affidavits from the United States?"

"Everything's in order. I was supposed to get my visa in July when my wife and son got theirs. Those gangsters had me locked up in Dachau and though I tried everything they didn't let me out until last week."

"Are your wife and son in Berlin?"

"They're in Holland waiting for me. We have tickets on a Dutch boat that sails day after tomorrow. If I can't escape by tonight, they'll have to go without me." He

H BERLIN EMBASSY

clenched his fists. "But that just can't happen, not after everything else I've been through."

The man looked at me excitedly. His eyes were bloodshot, his necktie wrinkled. He looked as though he had not shaved in days.

"How will you get to Holland?"

"I have a ticket on a plane leaving tonight at nine for Rotterdam."

"Have you got a Dutch visa?" *

"Not yet, not yet," he said tensely. "I have to get my American visa first and then try to get a Dutch visa."

We reached the entrance to the Consular section of the American Embassy. A long line of refugees blocked the door; a thick crowd milled around the old porter who tried to keep them from pouring into our reception room. "Come on," I said to the harried man at my side. "What's your name?"

"Hans Neuman," he answered, pushing through the crowd to keep up with me.

"Let this man in," I told the doorman, and we walked together into the waiting room. It, too, was full of Jewish refugees, many of them there to get their visas and the rest of them straining against the Information desk where Joe was trying to answer their frantic questions. "Follow me," I said to Neurnan. I went down the corridor to my office, I motioned him to a. chair in front of my desk. I went to the file room to get out his dossier. There was a big red "C" on the top of the dossier; that meant "concentration camp case." I checked his statements and found them correct.

The Embassy was a madhouse that morning. It overflowed with tearful refugees, clamoring American citizens,

* A visa Is a written permission for a person to enter a foreign country.