A Daring Escape Read online

  “Czechoslovakia,” he said under his breath, already considering what arguments he would use to urge Amity not to travel there. No woman had any business traveling to Czechoslovakia, especially with Hitler’s troops rattling its gates.

  Clark picked up his pen again and tapped it on his lips. The softest smile played there as he imagined Amity squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin in defiance, voicing her reasons for why she wished to travel.

  Then another thought came to mind—maybe a change of scenery would conjure new book ideas. Surely an American woman shouldn’t travel Europe alone, especially with Hitler on the rampage. But then again, he couldn’t leave Celia, and he couldn’t take her with him. His mind became quite muddled with all the unanswered questions.

  THREE

  Olomouc, Czechoslovakia

  Monday, December 12, 1938

  Konrád Hanak strode over the cobblestone streets of Olomouc, heading to the main square, recently renamed Adolf-Hitler-Platz. Just ten days ago he’d stood not twenty yards from Adolf Hitler in this very square. With fist held high, Konrád’s voice had raised in unison with fellow countrymen as they proclaimed, “Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!” The fervor of the crowd had been electrifying. In all his days he’d never forget that moment when he looked into his savior’s face. The cries of unity and devotion continued until Konrád was certain he’d lose his voice. Finally, motioning to the crowd to quiet, Hitler had approached the microphone.

  As he spoke, the Führer’s eyebrows tipped down and his mouth straightened into a thin line as he cried out with conviction about his continued hope for a united German people. The Führer had met Konrád’s gaze, and his voice had risen in fervor as he spoke of racial cleansing.

  Can Hitler sense the blood on my hands? he’d wondered.

  Konrád’s heartbeat quickened with a knowing that this was just the beginning of his fight. He would be a willing participant to any of the Führer’s plans. The German people had suffered long enough. Now it was their turn to show the world their strength and power.

  Today, though, the fervor of the previous week had been replaced with the raw tension that came with the new occupational forces. Uniformed German soldiers milled around the Holy Trinity Column and up and down the streets. Their eyes swept the roads and alleyways for any sign of resistance.

  In contrast, Czech students, professionals, lay workers, and housewives hurried along, carrying their bundles pressed tight to their chests. One middle-aged woman, with a grocery sack in hand, urged her young son to quicken his steps so they could make it home before curfew fell.

  Not too many years before, the opposite had been true. At only five years old, and raised solely around German-speaking people, he’d not understood then that the country’s boundaries had been redefined. Overnight the part of the world he’d lived in had been placed under Czech control.

  Konrád remembered the first time he’d been shooed home by a Czech police officer after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He hadn’t understood the new language, and after not responding to the Czech officer’s strict demands, Konrád had been rewarded with a whack over his head with a stick. Tears had streamed down his eyes as he ran home, mixing with blood from the gash on his forehead. Yet instead of running into his mother’s arms and seeking comfort, he’d come upon his parents packing up their apartment. Their own tears and heartache kept them from providing comfort to their son. That night he’d fallen asleep on a pallet on the floor, with all his things in crates. All he knew as he drifted off to a fitful sleep was that a dark road lay ahead of him, filled with the unknown.

  With the memory, a familiar ache tightened Konrád’s gut, but he pushed those feelings of helplessness down. He was no longer a defenseless five-year-old boy. He—not they—now held control. Glancing around, Konrád appeased himself by noting large red banners bearing swastikas hanging from windows and balconies. The fabrics writhed and turned as if having lives of their own as they fluttered in the icy breeze.

  Such disgrace will never be upon our people again, he told himself, which calmed his spirit.

  They will be repaid for their mistreatment of my people. A half smile curled up his lips. The Greater German Reich was now a reality.

  He tightened the scarf around his neck and gave a slight shudder at the cold breeze that carried with it the aroma of coffee from a nearby café. Konrád still had time before he was due to meet friends at the pub. He moved to the nearest bench and sat, his frosty breath clinging to the air around him. Despite the cold that seeped through his coat, he wanted to enjoy his last day in this city, to revel in the transformation before he moved on.

  Just two years prior, Konrád had joined the Kameradschaftsbund, an organization of Nazi-supporting Germans who were preparing themselves for leadership roles in a possible future with an independent Sudetenland. Konrád had volunteered his time to stand guard over their meetings. His forward thinking had done him well. Many of these men were now in control, chosen by the Nazis for their dual language skills and their understanding of the Czech people. And in a matter of days, Konrád would be starting a new position. Even though nowhere on paper would he be listed as part of the Gestapo, he would still be on their employ. More than that, he’d be reporting in Prague, and he’d do so knowing his family had once again reclaimed what they’d lost.

  He stood and strode toward the pub. He would be celebrating with his friends in the Kameradschaftsbund today. It was the last day they would lift their glasses together before most of them were transferred to various positions in Germany, around the Sudetenland, and beyond.

  With the joining of the Sudetenland, the new nation’s birth certificate had been signed. Austria and the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia were united with the motherland. Overnight Konrád had become as a native son. Joy flooded his soul as he realized he was just as much a part of the German nation as those in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, and Vienna. The German youth to come after him would never again have to face such disgrace—living in a world of prejudice, being ruled by a weaker people, living apart from one’s true home.

  Twenty years ago, after the end of the Great War in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had been divided, and many ethnic Germans found themselves living on Czech soil. Overnight, Germans in positions of authority were out of jobs, including his father. Instead, Czech soldiers, policemen, and bureaucrats rushed in to take their place. Like everyone else, Konrád had to learn a new language and follow new rules.

  The new foreign policies were bad enough, but then it was declared that expanding the Czechoslovakian government would overcome social injustice through the redistribution of wealth. Konrád’s grandparents were one of many families who had portions of their land turned over to Czech peasants. And not long after that, the country fell into a state of depression. There were no jobs, not enough food, no hope.

  Previously dependent on foreign trade with Germany, thousands of men lost their jobs and homes. Konrád knew the pain. His family had been one of the first to lose their home…to a Jewish family who could pay the mortgage that his family could no longer afford. Every day as Konrád walked to and from school, he witnessed the Jewish boy playing in his yard, running through his front door. Konrád seethed over knowing the boy was sitting in his kitchen, sleeping in his room.

  Konrád’s fingers curled around the pistol handle at his hip as new memories surged up to replace the old. It brought extreme satisfaction knowing that Jew-boy—grown into a man—would never run, never laugh, never breath again. Konrád had seen to that.

  On the evening of the Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, only a month prior, Konrád had done his part to make sure there were three fewer Jews in the Sudetenland. The terror on their faces as they dug their own graves was still fresh in his mind, as were Abram’s pleas.

  “I am a husband, a father now. Please have mercy on me. We—my family—will give the apartment back to you. We will leave the area. Just give us the chance, Konrád.�
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  Hearing his name on the Jew’s lips had caused anger to surge through his veins, and even though the November night was cold, Konrád had felt hot all over.

  Even now, on the walk to the pub, the memory filled him with heat inside. An older woman strolled by with a shawl heavy on her shoulders. Noting Konrád’s uniform, she lifted her fist in a “Heil Hitler.” The next instant her worried, wrinkled face broke into a smile. Konrád lifted his arm straight out, returning the gesture. Yet even as he saw the old German woman before him, another face filled his mind, that of Abram’s mother. Instead of crying, instead of pleading, she’d stood at her husband’s side with her arm wrapped around his shoulders, as if accepting her fate. There was even pity in her gaze as she looked upon Konrád, who had drawn his pistol. The pity only fueled his anger.

  “I will pray for your mother, Konrád,” Rebekah Šimonová had stated simply. “She always was kind to me.”

  The Jewess’s words had pushed him over the edge, and she’d received the first bullet. Her husband’s anguished sobs had erupted in the forest and filled the night, so his death came next. In the course of a minute’s time, it was just Konrád and Abram standing face-to-face. There was no other sound, except for the echoing of the gunfire in their ears and the heavy breathing of them both. Neither of them moved as the blood of Abram’s parents spilled onto the ground.

  “Move into the apartment and take our things,” Abram repeated again. “We have never meant you any harm. Our mothers, wouldn’t you consider them as friends? If only—?”

  The sound of an approaching automobile had drowned out Abram’s words. He lifted his voice, repeating his plea. “Take all that we have! Just let me escape with my wife, my children—”

  The auto was nearing, driving down the road to the edge of the woods. Konrád had walked the family to this location. He had come to this secluded place for a reason, yet he was certain if the approaching driver looked into the woods he would be seen. And then what? He knew Hitler’s opinion of the Jews, yet this he had done of his own accord. Konrád would not sacrifice his future. He could not be seen. But he also had to erase the scourge from his past. With a shaking hand, Konrád had lifted his pistol, pointing it directly at Abram’s heart.

  Even in the dim light Abram must have realized his own end had come, yet he tried yet again. “What about the treasure? Surely you would want the treasure,” Abram asked, jutting out his chin. “I have hidden most of our valuable things and—”

  The automobile was nearly upon them. Konrád had only a split second to escape into the woods. The sound of the gunfire surprised even himself. A look of horror filled Abram’s face as he crumpled to the ground.

  It was only as his legs were propelling him into the woods that Konrád realized what Abram had been saying. Hidden treasure? It made sense. Greedy Jews and opportunist Czechs had robbed his own German countrymen. Abram’s family had stripped his family of their home, and that was just the start. Losing their home, their things, had caused both parents to sink into depression. All through his growing-up years, his parents’ unemployment, mixed with their increased drinking, had taken its toll. His parents became dark shadows of the vibrant people they’d been before.

  Still, why had he pulled that trigger? How foolish.

  The next day the three bodies were found in the woods without a note about their discovery in the local paper. The new German authority had much more to worry about than three dead Jews, or about Abram’s wife and children, who had also disappeared that night.

  Once the paperwork was turned in to local authorities, Konrád’s family had taken over the Jew-family’s home, making it theirs once again. There had been no one to claim the family’s fine things, and all their personal items that no one wanted to deal with ended up in the rubbish.

  Still, even though his parents had been returned to their rightful place, Konrád couldn’t shake the Jew’s words out of his mind. He had no doubt the Jewess and her children had escaped to Prague—or the surrounding villages—with hundreds of thousands of other Jewish and Communist refugees.

  The lights from the pub glowed just down the street, and new hope buoyed in Konrád’s heart. As part of the Gestapo, perhaps he could use government information to find her. And once he had her, he’d be able to seek the treasure that had slipped through his grasp.

  All will be made right again. The apartment redeemed what was lost, and the treasure will make up for what was taken.

  He strode the final steps to the pub, picturing himself as a knight of old, preparing to conquer for one’s own glory and that of the king.

  Stepping through the door, the aroma of beer and sausages filled his nostrils, and the voices of his friends consumed the air as they sang in unison to “Die Fahne Hoch,” the anthem of the Nazi party.

  Clear the streets for the brown battalions,

  Clear the streets for the storm division!

  Millions are looking upon the swastika full of hope,

  The day of freedom and of bread dawns!

  Millions are looking upon the swastika full of hope,

  The day of freedom and of bread dawns!

  Konrád’s voice rose with the others, joining with them as one as he entered with clenched fists and a new resolve in his heart.

  FOUR

  London, England

  Monday, December 12, 1938

  Amity turned over the telegram in her hand, almost afraid to open it again and reread her brother’s request. Andrew had written a letter every month. He’d stopped by to visit her when he was in London and not traveling throughout Europe. Yet as much as she loved her brother, Amity always felt inferior in his presence. While she’d had no desire to attend college, Andrew had excelled at university in political studies, and at the young age of twenty-three had gotten a job at London’s Home Office.

  After she’d come to London to live with her brother, she’d lived aimlessly for a time, questioning what she should do with her life. And that’s when Andrew had told her about an open position. Not long after, Amity found herself as a tutor for a young woman. Amity liked her job, but she’d always imagined doing more with her life.

  Back in Chicago she’d spent her free time volunteering at the Children’s Home and Aid Society, helping orphaned children. As much as she enjoyed Celia, Amity missed the children. She’d even written Andrew just last month, asking him if he thought she should return to Chicago. Yet she hadn’t mailed it. Why not?

  As much as Amity felt she’d be more useful in Chicago, she hated the thought of leaving Celia…and her father, Clark. Even though she worked to keep her relationship with her employer strictly professional, Amity looked forward to every moment she was with him, even ordinary ones.

  He thinks of me as an employee and a friend, nothing more, Amity often told herself as she drifted to sleep at night. Yet was that the complete truth? There seemed to be a special connection whenever she met Clark’s gaze.

  She took the telegram from the envelope, read it again, and then turned it over in her hands. What had Andrew meant by Jewish welfare work? If only he’d telephoned instead of sending this cryptic note.

  Amity dressed for dinner in a green velvet skirt and jacket, which seemed fitting for the Christmas season. No one she knew had dressed for dinner in Chicago, but the custom had grown on her. What a wonderful excuse to put on nice clothes, fix one’s hair, and prepare for a fine conversation.

  Thirty minutes later she was sitting at the long dining room table across from Celia and to Clark’s right side. As she turned to look at Celia, Amity was surprised to see the smile on her face. Amity had told Celia about Andrew’s telegram, and after Celia urged her not to go because of the danger, she had decided to refuse Andrew’s invitation. But something in Celia’s gaze told her that Celia had changed her mind.

  After the housemaid, Bonnie, served their salad and bread, Amity shared Andrew’s telegram with Clark. He was focused on her face, intent on every word, but Amity couldn’t quite read the
emotions behind his narrow-gazed expression. Was it worry or fear he was feeling? Or was it bothersome to him that she’d be gone? Maybe a bit of both.

  But it was Celia who spoke of first. “Czechoslovakia…It does seem like quite the adventure, doesn’t it?” She turned to her father. “Just like one of your novels, Daddy. I can just imagine the city being full of spies. I believe Hitler is going to take over all of Czechoslovakia soon. He no doubt already has spies sitting in cafés and strolling over the Charles Bridge as we speak, tagging along behind those who’ve escaped to Prague for safety. Didn’t you say, Amity, that the city is filled with refugees from Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland?”

  “Yes, from what I’ve read in the paper, trainloads of families left the new German protectorate and fled to the center of the country, where they hope to find safety.”

  “Until the Germans set new sights on all of Czechoslovakia, that is. What will happen to them now?” Celia commented. It was a question no one could answer.

  Clark took a drink from his glass. “And what have you heard from Andrew about the situation?”

  Amity shrugged. “His last letter was brief, but it did mention an upcoming journey to Prague. I had no idea that he’d want me to join him. It all really doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Maybe he needs someone to cheer up and inspire the Jewish refugees, especially the women. I was reading just today that Hitler is forcing Aryan men to divorce their wives or lose their jobs—”

  “Simply lose their jobs?” Celia huffed. “It may be that in the beginning, but I doubt that’s where it will end. I also imagine these men and women are worrying about their lives. Who wouldn’t be?”

  Clark looked from Celia to Amity and then back again. “I am afraid you are most likely right, and I am impressed. I never thought I would have such a lively political conversation with my little girl.”

  Celia adjusted her collar on her suit dress. “I am far past being a little girl, Daddy, and you can thank Amity for that. She told me just yesterday that every educated lady should understand the happenings of the world.”