“The only thing we cannot do is sit and wait,” Amelia replied.
The new regime was losing control of the situation. They couldn’t stop the discontent, or the demonstrations and the strikes. Some party buildings, as well as the cars of party functionaries, were the object of the demonstrators’ anger. The Soviets needed to intervene because the government was not capable of controlling the explosion of anger among its citizens, and they declared a state of emergency in Berlin.
The party hierarchy must have been scared, or else they were urged on by the Soviets, and on June 21 the Central Committee decided to instigate a program of improvements, but they didn’t manage to prevent a new wave of Germans from leaving for the Federal Republic for good.
Amelia suggested to my father that we do so as well.
“I think that we should go, with every day that passes this is more like the Soviet Union.”
“And where would we go? To the American zone? No, at least we have a house here, Amelia.”
“We don’t have anything, Max. This house does not belong to you anymore.”
“Of course it does. The Constitution acknowledges private property.”
“But the party acts in the name of the people, and decides what the people needs, that is, what each person is going to get. We are living in the caretaker’s apartment, Max, and I don’t care about that, we’ve turned it into a home, but don’t let that fool you.”
We still have time to change our minds, Berlin is not a closed city, we can move to another zone whenever we want.”
“It will not always be like that, they can’t let people keep on leaving. One day they’ll do what their bosses the Soviets want them to do, and they will stop us from leaving.”
“How ridiculous!”
“Max, I can talk to Albert, he’ll help us, maybe we could be useful to him somewhere else.”
“This building is the only inheritance I can leave to my son. They will not take it away from me while I’m here.”
“They’ve taken your land, they’ve ‘socialized’ it, as they say... Max, don’t you realize that this isn’t yours either?”
But she could not convince my father. I listened in silence and was secretly in agreement with Amelia. I could not stand the indoctrination they were forcing me to submit to in the school. I don’t think it was that different from what children received under Hitler, except the uniforms and the insignia and the songs had changed.
Konrad spent six months in prison. He was such a prestigious figure at the university that even some committed Communist teachers stood up for him, not because they supported him, but because they realized that the damage he did to them by being in prison was greater than what he did out of prison. Konrad’s students and many others would not stop calling for his release and that of the other teachers who had been arrested. I can still remember how excited Amelia was the day Konrad was released. Garin had asked us not to go and wait for him, because the Stasi would take note of everyone who did so. Amelia wasn’t going to listen to him, but my father convinced her not to put herself in danger.
“It’s a useless gesture, Amelia. One second and then you’re on a list forever, so how are you going to carry on working for Albert? Garin is right. You must be discreet. Konrad won’t want you to show yourselves, he knows what’s at stake.”
Amelia accepted this, reluctantly. She knew that Garin and my father were right. We stopped seeing Konrad. He was under observation, and every house he went to would become a target for the Stasi, so the group went under cover and started to meet in secret.
One day Amelia came home crying and handed my father an article from a newspaper. He read it and shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you know what it means?” Amelia said.
“Life goes on, that’s what it means.”
Amelia got in touch with Albert and asked him to come to see her urgently. Albert came to see us the next day and as soon as he arrived Amelia sent me to my room. I complained. I was sick of being sent to my room every time someone interesting turned up. Also, I wanted to tell them that it was useless for them to send me out, as I could still hear everything that they said. But I preferred not to, in case they ended up thinking of a plan that would stop me from hearing things for good.
“It’s over, Albert, I’m pulling out.”
He was surprised. He saw the emotion in Amelia’s eyes and didn’t understand why.
“What’s going on? Tell me.”
“No, I’m not the one who has to explain things to you. You have to explain things to me, to tell me how it is possible for Nazis to be given important public posts in the Federal Republic.”
“What are you saying, Amelia! Don’t tell me that you’re falling for the propaganda too!”
“No, I don’t believe Soviet propaganda. I believe what I read in the Daily Express.” She held out the newspaper cutting, and Albert cast his eyes over it.
“It’s an isolated case,” he said, uncomfortably.
“Really? Do you think that I’m going to believe you? General Reinhard Gehlen, chief of German intelligence. The very distinguished general who was in charge of spying on the Red Army during the Third Reich, and now he’s working for Adenauer.”
“You think I like it? But we would be mad to reject the people who have information, useful information that we need. You knew Canaris, he wasn’t a fanatic, many of his agents weren’t fanatics either. Remember Colonel Oster. They executed him.”
“Please, Albert! Are you going to tell me that just because Canaris and Oster conspired against Hitler that none of their agents were Nazis? From what I can see, anything goes: In exchange for a little information you can erase an individual’s past. So what was the point of the Nuremberg trials? Just so you could tell the world that you had punished the bad guys while you were doing deals with them on the side? Is this why I risked my life In Warsaw, in Athens, in Cairo, here in Berlin? So that you can tell me that there are Nazis whom I have to understand, whom I have to learn to get along with?”
“That’s enough, Amelia, don’t be a child! The Nuremberg trials were enough to show the world the horrors of Nazism, to say that we would never let anything like this happen again, to show the wickedness of National Socialism.”
“And once you’ve had your catharsis, turn the page and everything’s back to square one. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“You were in this business before I was, and you know that there’s nothing innocent about it. You know that all too well. The German intelligence service was very efficient.”
“And what does that mean?”
“That there is going to be another war now, a war without tanks, or planes, or bombs, but a war all the same. The relationship we have with the Soviets is getting more difficult by the day. They are building themselves an empire. Don’t you know that that’s what’s happening? They have been installing Communist governments in all the countries that they had under their influence. In all of them. And they have put Communists in charge, Communist puppets who obey Stalin without complaint. Churchill has spoken of the Iron Curtain. The Soviets are now our adversaries, we need to be careful with them, to know what they’re doing, what they want to do, what steps they’re going to take.”
“And you can use former Nazi spies for this. The end justifies the means. Is that what you are telling me?”
“You tell me, Amelia. Tell me if the end justifies the means. You are a field agent, you’ve had to take decisions on the go.”
“Never in favor of the Nazis, they were our enemies, we fought to topple them. You have to get rid of all Nazis, wherever they are, wherever they are hidden.”
“Do you really think we can do that? To put the whole of Germany on trial and get rid of everyone who cannot prove conclusively that they were fighting against Hitler? It would be crazy, and wouldn’t lead anywhere. Do you think that the Soviets aren’t striking deals with former members of the German intelligence service? Do you think the Soviets ignore the
information they can offer simply because they didn’t fight against Hitler? You didn’t care when we captured Fritz Winkler, and you shot his son without a flicker of hesitation. Is a Nazi scientist different from a secret agent? Tell me, where’s the difference? Tell me and I’ll understand all your scruples.”
“Albert is right.” Max had been listening to them from his wheelchair.
He didn’t normally intervene when Albert and Amelia met up, he would give his opinions later, when the two of them were alone, but on this occasion he did so.
“How can you say that after what we’ve suffered!” Amelia said.
“If we carried your argument through to its logical conclusion, what would you have to do with me? I was an officer in the Wehrmacht, I swore loyalty to the Führer even though I hated him with all my soul. I fought, I was at the front, I did what I could to win us the war. I wanted to see Hitler defeated, but without seeing Germany defeated. I wanted to defeat him politically, or even kill him, but I never betrayed my country. I don’t know how many other Germans thought the same as I did, but I know that those of us who stayed, who didn’t leave the country, don’t have alibis for having acted as we did. We could all be accused of having participated in the horrors of Nazism. Me too, Amelia, me too.”
When I heard my father’s voice, I opened the door a crack and stuck my head out to see what was happening. Amelia was looking at Max and could not find words to rebut his arguments. Albert was looking at them booth and fighting against his desire to intervene.
A little while went by before Albert decided to speak.
“There will be more, Amelia, more hateful names that make your guts turn over when you read about the jobs they’ve been given.”
“That’s why you supported the Christian Democrats. The Social Democrats would never have let something like this happen.”
“Are you sure? I don’t know, but you’re right, it is a relief to know that West Germany is in the hands of the Christian Democrats. Adenauer is a great man.”
“If even you think so...”
“Yes, I believe it.”
“Here they put the Social Democrats in prison.”
“I know.”
“So you have to know that I will not carry on working for you, that I will not risk my life for the information that I obtain to end up on some Nazi’s desk.”
“You work for us, not for the West German government.”
“Yes, but the West German government is your ally, you help them and support them, as if there were no other way of doing things, and I myself understand that it has to be like that. And so it might be the case that the information I gather will be shared with them, lots of this information will have to do with plans connected to the Federal Republic. And... you know what, Albert? You’re right. Yes, I have killed people, I have done terrible things in my life, but I will not do this. Albert, I will not do it, not for anything in the world.”
“I respect your decision.”
When Albert left, Max asked Amelia if she was really going to stop working for the Americans. Amelia said nothing, she only started to cry.
It would not be Amelia’s only disappointment. The secretary of state in the Chancellor’s office, Hans Globke, had been an official in the Interior Ministry during the Third Reich, and it was known that he had been an enthusiastic supporter of the Final Solution, the plan to exterminate all the Jews in Germany and in the countries the Nazis had occupied.
If Amelia had any trace of innocence left, she now lost it for good. She was also inflexible about no longer working for the Americans. She met Albert again to tell him that he could no longer count on her collaboration. He tried to make her change her mind, but it was useless; Amelia might have had many defects, but she was not a cynic.
After deciding on her course of action, Amelia told Garin to find a replacement for her. She said that her position should be covered by someone from an opposition group ready to work with the Americans. But Garin asked her only to think a little more and to take a few days off work. He would tell them that she was ill.
But Amelia did not go back to work, even though Garin and Iris and Otto and Konrad all tried to make her change her mind.
It was difficult to understand that a woman who had been willing to kill had been so affected by the idea that a few former members of the Nazi Party were working in West Germany for the Adenauer government.
Garin came to her house one day. He was worried.
“They are going to investigate you,” he said.
“Why?” Amelia said indifferently.
“You have left your job and you don’t seem willing to take another one... Some people are saying that you’re not right in the head. You have to do something, or they’ll send you to a hospital until you recover.”
“A hospital? But I’m not ill.” There was a note of fear in Amelia’s voice.
“If you are not physically ill and you reject the chance to work, then it is because you are not right in the head. Let me help you, Amelia. Come back to work, please.”
“I will tell them that Max is ill and that I cannot leave him. We don’t have anyone to look after him, so I had to leave my work because of that.”
“They could say that Max is a burden on you, that he should go and live in a hospital. There are no excuses, Amelia, don’t fool yourself.”
“I don’t want to go back to work for Albert.”
“I’m not telling you to work for him, but you do need to work. I can help you. Your job has not yet been covered by anyone else, but they have told me that they will send someone tomorrow. Please come back, Amelia, or you will trigger huge problems for this family. If they take you or if they take Max...”
“I don’t want to work for the Americans ever again, or for the British.”
“You won’t have to, I’m not asking you to do that. I am going now, I’m going to Iris’s house, but I will see you tomorrow.”
My father and Amelia were speaking all through the night. I slept, but I woke with a start and they were still talking out in the room. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, they were talking very low, as if they were afraid of their words passing through the silence of the night.
Amelia took me to school as she did every day. We were quiet and I only dared break the silence when we reached the school building.
“You’re going to go to work, aren’t you? You won’t let them take you or my father.”
She gave me a hug and tried to stem the tears that flowed from her eyes.
“My God, you’re frightened! Don’t worry, Friedrich, nothing’s going to happen. Of course I won’t let them take me, and I definitely won’t let them do anything to your father! How could I!”
“So promise me that you’re going to work,” I begged.
She paused for a couple of seconds and then kissed me and whispered in my ear: “I promise.”
I went into the school with more confidence. I trusted her.
2
Amelia didn’t work with the British or the Americans for five or six years. She was still friendly with the members of her former group, but she didn’t see them as often as before, although they came to our house to have dinner on a few occasions; they didn’t speak about their work, just about politics and daily life.
Garin was her guardian angel. He had stood up for her and he kept her at his side, but he never asked her to help in his spy work.
In those years, from the mid-fifties into the sixties, Amelia lost a great part of her happiness. She woke up at six thirty every morning, made breakfast, cleaned the house, got Max out of bed, helped him to tidy himself up, and then we went out together: She took me to school and then she went to the Culture Ministry. She came back home at midday just in time to make my father eat something, and then she went back to work until six.
Her life was now running according to a routine, and this was a cause of unhappiness to her. For many years she had lived on the edge of the abyss and she had now lost the excitement th
at this brought.
My father was happy. He was no longer worried about what might happen to Amelia, and by extension to us. He preferred monotony, he preferred to grow old without anything more disagreeable than having to put up with the shortages that affected all East Germans, although now that Otto worked for the Politburo he would sometimes bring us produce that was not within our normal budget: Western items that were permitted only to the members of the Politburo.
As was the case in the Soviet Union, the nomenklatura of the Democratic Republic were given privileges that the rest of the citizenry were not allowed. Garin was extremely efficient when it came to getting hold of these products, which he generously spread out among his friends.
As I grew older, I grew to admire Amelia’s solicitude for my father. She looked after him as if he were her most precious possession. I thought that she must love him very much for deciding to share her life with him when she could have a better one elsewhere.
Amelia passed the age of forty, but she was still so delicate that she looked younger. She had no gray hairs and was very thin. When we went out walking I saw how people looked at her, she was very attractive and I think that Garin was secretly in love with her. Even Konrad, who was married with two children, looked at her out of the corner of his eye when he thought she was not looking.
Amelia seemed unaware of the effect she had on other people, and this distance only served to increase her attraction. I felt proud that a woman like this could love my father.
I remember that in 1960 we all gathered to celebrate my entrance into Humboldt University in East Berlin. Konrad tried to convince me to be a physicist, so that I would have a great career, but I had decided to be a doctor, as my father had been before me.
“I will take care of him, even if he is not a student of mine,” Konrad promised my father.
“Try to make sure he doesn’t get into trouble like you,” Amelia asked.
For the young students at the university, every day made clear the difference between West and East Berlin. Thousands of Berliners went to work in West Berlin every day; the Allies were transforming it into a shop-window of capitalist propaganda. Try to imagine the frustration, or rather the schizophrenia, inherent in living between two worlds, with two different currencies.