THE TRUTH OF WHO WE ARE

A Reading

4 Berlin 1947

A year after settling into his position with the ICD, Martin was able to trace any German citizen who had been registered as a National Socialist and was now living in the American Zone. It was only a part of his tasks. He was also looking over files and checking that the correct boxes had been filled in, the proper forms signed and dated—in triplicate—before processing the name to be filed and moving on to the next one. He was also translating pages of files from German to English; German to French; and French to English.

He knew looking for a single name in that tangle of documents was more than an impossible chore. It was the futility of literally searching for one name out of millions. It was looking through files where nothing was organized, or alphabetized, where some of the names had been rubbed out, or redacted, some of the ink they’d used faded, or the files damaged, and incomplete. A lot of the records had been lost in bombing raids which explained why so many former SS and Gestapo members were able to move about undetected.

Martin was eventually able to track down three different lists filed under the name Beck. A total of more than twenty thousand names for him to go through. It took him more than a month, but he finally found him—and when he did, he felt as if his world was suddenly closing in around him. He had to stop and take a deep breath. He felt a tightening in his chest and fought to hold back the tears. His emotions were the last thing he’d expected to get the better of him, but Beck had been like a father to him, and for all his faults and failings, it was hard to forget that about the man.

Beck had moved to the town of Offenbach, just outside of Frankfurt am Main—a quick bus trip across the Kaiserleibrücke. It was somewhat ironic, Martin thought, that one of the most respected German conductors of the Reich would choose to live in the very town that had the name of a man he’d detested more than any other in his life.

He made the trip from Berlin to Frankfurt on the Express in little under six hours. He made certain to wake up before the dawn, washing himself with water he boiled in a pot on the stove; shaving with no soap and using a dull razor. He pressed his pants and linen shirt. He even made a single sandwich with heavy rye bread and a thick slab of meat he found in the ice box. He checked and rechecked his billfold to assure himself that his papers were in order and then he walked to the railway station, setting himself a brisk pace.

The morning chill soaked through his threadbare coat, with the steam of his breath and the smoke of his hand-rolled cigarettes funnelling behind him with each step he took. He watched the sun breaking through the dawn, the clouds lined with red and gold. Berlin was a broken city cast in silhouette, the shadows slowly giving way to the light. There were few people out on the streets at this time of the morning, and he could see lean-to shelters with small fires that were nothing more than a glow of dying embers. He wondered how those people would fare with winter fast approaching.

The train station was crowded with travellers hoping they might leave the city early enough to return home in time for dinner. He showed his papers and bought a ticket, wondering what he’d say to Beck when he finally faced him. They hadn’t parted on good terms, he was quick to remind himself. He’d disappointed the man after spending his formative years as Beck’s premier student. As his teacher, Beck had been hard and difficult at times, drilling it in to Martin’s head that he had to practice for thousands of hours if he wanted to achieve any modicum of success. He remembered the first time he’d performed on stage. He was just ten years old; too young to realize he should be nervous, and too polite to ask questions of the conductor, Furtwängler. He remembered how grateful he was that he wouldn’t have to join the Hitler Youth; instead, he was meeting all the greats of the day, and travelling across Europe, performing.

And what did that get me?

He sat looking out of the train’s window, watching the countryside slowly slip by. They passed small, lonely towns, standing off in the distance, with nothing left but the forlorn hope of its displaced citizens. Some towns had been heavily bombarded by Russian artillery. The church spires had provided obvious targets, he thought, looking at castles and old walled cities that had once stood in silent witness to age-old wars and battles, falling in one day after having stood the test of time for hundreds of years. The fields were flushed with greenery and late blooming flowers, with trees swaying in the gentle breeze; the natural world seemed to have recovered in one season, what it would take the towns of the area years to rebuild. There were huge mounds of upturned earth where track from tanks and trucks and millions of marching men from both armies had churned up the dark anonymous ground—much as a child would roil the waters of a mud puddle with a stick—where they’d buried the anonymous dead in unmarked graves, all of them having heeded the call none of them understood, but all of them answered.

The city of Frankfurt was a skeletal wasteland, a remnant of what it had once been. But the people there were quick to rebuild. There were buses navigating the narrow, bombed out streets, and he thought he recognized some of the older buildings that were still standing. He saw the Festehalle and remembered his first time playing there as a child. He was twelve. He looked at its shattered dome as the bus rounded the corner.

His last memory of the city had been in November, 1938. He had played piano in accompaniment for the opera basso, Hans Erl. He told a soldier standing nearby that he’d be honoured to play for such a great man. The soldier told him there was no honour to be had playing for a Jew. It was two days after Kristallnacht—two days after he and Dieter first…it’s best not to think about that, he thought. Only after arriving at the Hauptbahnhoff did he realize that all of the city’s Jews had been rounded up and were about to be sent to Concentration Camps outside the city.