The Reckoning: A Family Drama in Hitler's Berlin in the 1930s (The Lion's Den Series Book 6) by Eoin Dempsey

Author:Eoin Dempsey [Dempsey, Eoin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

12

Sunday, November 13

The stated purpose of the meeting was to put new safety measures in place for the Jewish workers, but those attending must have known it would be much more than that. No one invited into work on that Sunday questioned why. What Jewish person wasn’t fully aware of the emergency unfolding in the Reich? The Gestapo was still making its rounds, arresting mainly middle-class and wealthy male Jews by the truckload. His factory workers didn’t seem to be under threat, however, and none refused to attend the meeting. According to the newspapers, the orders to arrest so many had come directly from the Führer himself, so the wisdom behind them was unquestionable. Heinrich Müller, the head of the secret police, a more pragmatic man than Hitler, who tended to express himself in parables and wish lists, ordered the arrest of between 25,000 and 30,000 Jews. The overworked Gestapo didn’t have enough men to complete the job, so they enlisted the help of the local police, the SA, and even the SS. Most Jews were taken from their homes, but many were plucked from what still existed of their places of business or even from the train station as they tried to escape. It seemed the Nazis were trying to make an example of the more monied members of Jewish society or to extort wealth from them. Thieving from the Jews had become an essential facet of the National Socialist economy. The Nazis never passed up an opportunity to steal.

Seamus, Gert, and Lil were at the factory an hour before the employees began arriving. Seamus’s office wasn’t big enough for the gathering, so they set the chairs in an empty space downstairs where some calibrating machines had recently been removed. Seamus wondered what Helga would say if she found out about the gathering. He’d only spoken to her briefly since the riot between the Jews and the Nazi sympathizers in the factory, and that was only to have her concur that production should shut down for a day.

Helga’s attitude toward the unrest seemed to be that it was an unfortunate expression of over-exuberance. Seamus didn’t push her, just accepted her opinion with as polite a nod as he could muster.

The workers didn’t know Helga well. She relied on Benz, the head of the Trustee Council, to be her go-between. She never dealt directly with the employees anymore because they didn't take orders from a mere woman. Benz and his rabble-rousers were an ever-increasing thorn in Seamus’s side. Most of his non-Jewish workers were at least ambivalent toward Hitler. But those who did approve of the Nazis did so with such full-throated enthusiasm that they tended to drown out all others. Their actions were so brazen that they made it seem like no one else existed.

“I heard the Kaiser say he was ashamed to be German for the first time after the events of Kristallnacht,” Gert said as they finished laying the chairs.

“His opinion isn’t much more important than mine these days,” Seamus said.

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