The Auslander (23 page)

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EPILOGUE

Stockholm

September 1943

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Peter woke from an afternoon sleep and went out into the garden to join Ula, her sister Mariel and Anna. They were burning leaves in the tired sunshine, and he picked up a rake from the greenhouse and began to scrape together another pile for the bonfire.

Less than a month ago Mariel had opened her front door to find them waiting, exhausted, on the steps. She simply stared in disbelief, and then rushed to hug each of them, tears streaming down her face. Later, she and her family sat in stunned silence as Ula told them about Otto.

They lived in a big house on Stora Essingen, on the waterfront overlooking the south of the city. There was more than enough room for three guests. For Peter, the light, airy rooms were the perfect remedy for his months in the Kaltenbachs' claustrophobic apartment.

‘You shouldn't sleep during the day, Peter,' said Ula. ‘It makes it so much more difficult to sleep through the night.'

Peter nodded. He wasn't going to disagree. But since they'd arrived here he had only been able to sleep for a few hours every night, so he caught up during the day. His dreams were too intense, too frightening: running, always running, or vague shadowy imaginings where he was trapped in a building or a train, just waiting to be caught. He knew Ula and Anna slept badly too. Otto was never far from their thoughts.

Later that afternoon they took a tram into the city centre. They walked down to the quayside, the three of them arm in arm, and looked over the sweep of the waterfront with its grand pastel mansions glowing in the sunshine. Ula said, ‘All these beautiful buildings. And not a single swastika flag among them.'

For as long as Peter could remember he had been haunted by a creeping sense of dread. It had sometimes been dim and nebulous – like the fear of Hitler invading Poland – or the more immediate fear of being killed in an air raid. Or the hour by hour terror of being arrested and tortured by the Gestapo. But now there was nothing dark on the horizon. Nothing at all. Peter felt something he hadn't felt for so long. He felt free.

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FACT, FICTION AND SOURCES

When writing about such an extreme and grotesque ideology as Nazism, it is easy to lapse into caricature. But instances such as the Christmas carol (p. 101), the Swastika Christmas tree decorations (p. 102), and the school text book questions (p. 59 and p. 89) are all taken from eyewitness accounts or photographs from the era. Charlotte's doll's house can be found in the National Socialist era gallery at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin.

Sometimes the exact dates of real events depicted here have been altered slightly to fit with the flow of the story. The ‘human material' research into epidemic jaundice was begun in June 1943, for example, and the more grotesque aspects of Karin Magnussen's iris research were carried out, as I understand it, in 1944 rather than 1943. Also, Plötzensee Prison was bombed by the RAF on September 3rd and 4th 1943, rather than the middle of August.

The account of Piotr's examination in Chapter 2 was inspired by a passage in the autobiography of Gershon Evan (formerly Gustav Pimselstein),
Winds of Life
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Artur Axmann's speech to the Hitler Youth in Chapter 11 is based on a speech reported in the autobiography
Other Men's Graves
by Peter Neuman (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1958), as is the wording of the boys' oath. The speech is actually by Axmann's predecessor, Baldur von Schirach, but I've assumed Axmann would spout a similar pseudo-scientific ideology. Some of the school text book questions included here also come from Neuman's account of his childhood in Hitler's Germany.

In Chapter 14 the extract from Peter's war book comes from a translation of Walter Menningen's
Vorwärts, immer vorwärts! Vom Siegeszug unserer Infanterie im Osten
(Steiniger-Verlage, Berlin, 1942). You can read more of the story in Randall Bytwerk's fascinating German propaganda website at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan (http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ kb135.htm).

The character of Ula Reiter was partially inspired by Ruth Andreas-Friedrich and Marie ‘Missie' Vassiltchikov – two brave women who defied the Nazis in wartime Berlin and wrote fascinating journals about their wartime experiences.

Of the scores of books and websites I used while researching this project, the following were especially helpful:

Deadly Medicine
– Creating the Master Race
, eds Dieter Kuntz and Susan Bachrach, the University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

A Social History of the Third Reich
by Richard Grunberger, Penguin Books, 1977.

The Racial State
by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Berlin Then and Now
by Tony Le Tissier, After the Battle, 1991.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to my editors, Ele Fountain and Isabel Ford, for their magnificent editing, and to my agent, Charlie Viney, for his support and enthusiasm, and Kate Clarke and Blacksheep for the evocative cover. And to Dorit Engelhardt for her generous suggestions, especially on the ins and outs of colloquial German, and also Anna von Hahn, Katinka Nürnberg and Stefan Roszak who ensured my stay in Berlin was a real pleasure.

Thank you also to Jenny and Josie Dowswell, Dilys Dowswell, who kindly read my first drafts, Mrs Julie Rose and the pupils of St Peter's Collegiate School, Wolverhampton, Jane Chisholm, Karin Altenberg, Anne Foster and Adam Guy.

Thanks are also due to Kaspar Nürnberg at the Aktives Museum Faschismus und Widerstand in Berlin, and to the staff of the Imperial War Museum, London, the Wiener Library, London, the Topographie Des Terrors Bibliothek, Berlin, and the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin, for their valuable help.

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By the same author

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The Adventures of Sam Witchall in reading order:

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Powder Monkey

Prison Ship

Battle Fleet