The Berlin Girl by Mandy Robotham

Author:Mandy Robotham [Robotham, Mandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-09-09T17:00:00+00:00

29

The World Wakes Up?

11th November 1938

‘Way to go, Rod.’ Bill slapped his friend on the back and held the New York Times aloft, its front-page headline pulling no punches. Despite some of the US papers previously holding a conservative stance on Hitler – that perhaps he wasn’t such a bad fellow at heart – almost all had reacted seriously to the night’s atrocities; ‘smashed’, ‘wrecked’, ‘pillaged’ and ‘plundered’ peppered the front pages from both sides of the Atlantic.

Georgie’s own News Chronicle headlined with: Pogrom Rages Through Germany: Hitler Turns Down Mercy Call, and she felt relieved Henry hadn’t toned down her description of ‘Nazi hooligans’. There was a general feeling that reporters and photographers had laid out what Germany was currently about, warts and all, in its coverage of the newly christened Kristallnacht – the night of broken glass. Now, it was up to the public and the politicians to react, to tell Herr Hitler this was not acceptable.

Yet the mood amongst them was anything but celebratory – more of a wake for a life gone by. Even if the world hadn’t experienced their eyes smarting at the acrid burning or caught the distress in their nostrils, every press member had; Georgie felt a deep sense that something had changed. The honeymoon in Berlin was over.

It was only the next morning, after a good, full night’s sleep, that she remembered missing her appointment at the Haas Institute. She rang the number from a phone booth, took a deep breath and affected a flighty voice, twittering about all the ‘awful events making it slip her mind’ and could she rearrange? They were suddenly very busy, the receptionist said, but they could fit her in the next week. With the continuing aftermath, Georgie was relieved to have the breathing space.

Rubin appeared for work, looking already thinner, and she signed his work sheet and sent him away to be with Sara. There was no news of Elias, he said, and little gossip of where the men had been taken. Their best hope being that the Gestapo headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse simply couldn’t accommodate such large numbers.

The entire press pack spent the next few days sweeping up the debris in print; there were embassy and ministry briefings, although Georgie used any spare time knocking tentatively on the hastily mended doors of Jewish shops and businesses, looking for a dim light inside and talking to those now contemplating leaving their life and country behind. There were no names and most of what she wrote down would never be printed, she knew, but it was important for her to hear it, as if it was slowly knitting her fabric as a reporter.

She was constantly amazed at the resilience of each family – they were wary, frightened even, of a future in Germany, and yet saddened to leave a country in which they retained some hope, while everything around them urged leaving for any kind of safety.

Despite the initial condemnation from abroad, it took four days for foreign politicians to make a real stand.

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