The Far Side of the Sky Read online

  “This is real life.”

  Karl’s eyes glistened. “You cannot protect me from them, Franz. No one can.” He gently clutched Franz’s wrist. “Promise me that if anything happens to me, you will take care of Essie. Franz, please. I need to have that peace of mind.”

  “Of course I will,” Franz said, his voice thick. “Always. You have my word.”

  Esther snapped her fingers, drawing Franz from the memory. “What do you think, Franz?” she asked.

  He busied himself with the bandage. “I’m sorry, Essie. What do I think of what?”

  “Shanghai.”

  He dropped the bandage in surprise. “Shanghai? For us?” “Why not?”

  “Aside from the fact that it’s on the far side of the world and we have no way of reaching it?”

  Esther laughed softly. “Aside from those inconveniences, yes.”

  “I thought the Japanese invaded Shanghai last year.”

  “Which is precisely why we would be allowed in!” She sat up, pulling her arm away from Franz in her excitement. “No one is checking passports. So you don’t need a visa to enter the city. I heard the Klinebergs are going. And I spoke to Frau Weiss on the street, who whispered that her son had already left for there. On a luxury liner, no less!” She held her hands skyward. The last strip of her bandage unfurled like a banner. “Apparently, with only proof of transit, the Nazis will allow us to leave. For them this is the ideal solution: banishing Jews to the other side of the planet.”

  “Stay still, Essie, please,” Franz said as he removed the final remnant of her dressing. “The last place we should go is somewhere other Jews are heading.”

  “Franz!” Her jaw fell open. “How can you say that?”

  “Because I’m practical,” Franz said. “The Germans have persecuted us with total immunity. The rest of the world has responded by closing their borders to us. Remember the Evian Conference last summer? No country wants the Jews. We are targets wherever we go. Our religion is a curse.”

  Esther eyed him stone-faced for a moment, then her lips cracked into a faint smile. “Perhaps the Orientals will have more trouble telling us apart from the goyim? We must all look the same to them.”

  “Shanghai.” Franz shook his head as he lifted a fresh strip of cloth and began to rebandage Esther’s wound. “Even if we could find a ship with space, how could we afford to pay the passage? And what would we live off once we got there?”

  Unperturbed, Esther shrugged. “You find the ship, and let me worry about the cost.”

  Franz raised an eyebrow. “Essie, what are you not telling me?”

  She glanced over in the direction of Hannah’s room before whispering, “My mother’s jewellery.”

  “It’s illegal, Essie,” he breathed. “If they caught you trying to pawn jewellery or smuggle it out of the country …”

  Esther rose from the table and took a step back. She pulled up the hem of her sweater to reveal the large leather buckle on her grey belt. “I have a friend. A jeweller. He melts the precious metals down and recasts them as buckles, buttons and other clothing accessories. He covers them with cloth to make them less noticeable.” She ran her thumb and fingers over the base of her sweater, squeezing it in places. “And the finest pieces, like my diamond earrings and ruby ring, I sewed into the hem.”

  “Ach so! It’s brilliant, Essie.”

  Her face reddened, and she gazed down at her feet. “I never told Karl. I worried he would have insisted on giving it all away to the neediest of his clients.”

  “You were right to stay silent. Karl’s generosity was his undoing.”

  The blush left her cheeks, but when she tried to speak her voice cracked. “It isn’t much of a nest egg, but I had hoped it would help tide us over.”

  “You have done well, Essie. But Shanghai?” Franz sighed. “You really think it could be better than London for Hannah?”

  “As long as Hannah is somewhere where they can’t touch her, then I think it’s best for the girl to be with her father. No matter where.”

  “I wonder.” As a surgeon, Franz had long been accustomed to making difficult decisions in critical situations. He rarely second-guessed himself. But as he stared into Esther’s resolute eyes, he felt crippled by uncertaincy.

  The front door suddenly reverberated with three crisp raps. “Adler! Franz Adler!” a harsh voice roared.

  Ice ran through Franz’s veins. He turned to Esther, whose pupils had widened with fear. Hannah came scurrying into the room, moving as fast as her weakened leg could carry her. She threw her arms around him. “Papa!” she cried.

  Franz knelt down and kissed her forehead. “Shh, liebchen. It will be all right.”

  The door shook with another hammering. “Franz Adler!”

  “Just a moment,” Franz called over his shoulder. Still holding Hannah tightly in his arms, he looked up at Esther. “Call my father!” he whispered urgently. “Tell him to get in touch with Mr. Edgewood at the British consulate to enrol Hannah in the Kindertransport, straight away!”

  Esther’s face crumpled with worry, but she only nodded.

  “Adler!” the voice bellowed. “Open this door immediately or we will break it down!”

  Franz gently pried Hannah’s arms off his neck. “Hannah, whatever happens, you must do as your tante says.” He kissed her on both cheeks. “Everything will be all right, my darling.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Two young men stood rigidly at the door. One had dark hair and the other was fair, but with their matching scowls and jet-black SS uniforms, they looked interchangeable to Franz.

  “Franz Adler?” the darker one snapped.

  Franz’s throat turned to sandpaper. “Yes. What is the—”

  “Identification!”

  Franz dug his passport out of his jacket pocket and handed it to the man, who flipped it open and examined the photo as though studying a counterfeit banknote.

  Don’t make a sound! Franz silently implored Esther and Hannah, who had run into Hannah’s bedroom.

  Finally, the man snapped the passport closed and tossed it back to Franz. “You will come with us!”

  “I will just get my coat,” Franz said, loud enough for Esther to hear.

  As Franz turned back toward the apartment, the darker one grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. The men clamped crushing grips around each of his upper arms. They jerked him forward and marched him down the hallway to the waiting elevator, leaving the apartment door wide open behind them.

  Even inside the elevator, neither man loosened his hold. The cloyingly sweet hair oil worn by one or both of them turned Franz’s stomach. He hoped they couldn’t hear his heartbeat, which slammed like cymbals in his ears.

  The Nazis ushered him out of the building and past his ransacked office, pulling him toward a long black sedan, its antenna-mounted swastika flapping ominously in the frosty breeze. A driver sat behind the steering wheel, the engine running. The blond man shoved Franz through the back-seat door, while his partner hurried around to the other side.

  The car sped off before the doors had even fully closed. As Franz sat sandwiched in the back seat between the two SS men, his concern for Hannah mushroomed. He imagined his daughter, frightened and alone, struggling to carry her luggage aboard a train bound for England.

  Dreadful scenarios tumbled around his head as the car roared along Vienna’s unusually quiet main roads. From time to time, the tires crunched over glass, but the hordes of frightened Jews scrubbing the pavement were nowhere to be seen. The men on either side of him stared dead ahead, as though at attention. No one spoke. The jerky driving and overpowering odour of hair grease nauseated Franz.

  They sped past a burned-out building that had been reduced to a few stone columns rising from rubble. A stooped old man was picking through the debris. It wasn’t until they had already passed by that Franz recognized it as the remains of the Leopoldstädter Tempel, the city’s largest synagogue, where Karl and Esther had been married.
r />   A mile or so later, the car turned onto Prinz Eugen Strasse and slowed to a stop beside the curb. Franz noticed the long swastika flags draped between the Corinthian columns of what used to be Palais Rothschild, the former residence of Vienna’s pre-eminent Jewish family. His heart leapt into his throat. All of Vienna’s Jews had heard of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration and the fearsome SS lieutenant who ran it. Jews who wanted to leave the country—even those in possession of legitimate visas—had to first report to this office, where they were stripped of the last remnants of their citizenship and what little money or valuables they had left. Rumour had it that they were the lucky ones.

  Fingers dug into Franz’s biceps as the men jerked him up the staircase that led to a set of wide, ornamental doors. As they mounted the last step, the doors flew open and a middle-aged man stumbled out backwards, staggered and collapsed onto the cement. Blood gushed from his nose, down his chin and onto his shirt. He glanced at Franz with the panicked eyes of a trapped animal. Scrambling to his feet, the man scurried past them and almost tripped down the staircase in his rush to flee.

  The guards pushed Franz through the doorway into an ornate atrium. A long line of haggard men, interspersed with a few women, queued in front of a desk. The man at the head of the line, about thirty feet away, was trembling violently. A burly SS soldier stood behind the desk, berating the man so loudly that his voice echoed through the atrium. “You Jew-scum! How dare you come here without proper papers? I should shoot you on the spot.”

  Franz’s pulse quickened with each step, but his guards seemed oblivious to the tirade as they marched him alongside the lineup toward the shouting man. As they neared, the trooper unleashed a vicious backhanded slap across the trembling man’s face. “Get out of my sight, you Jew-pig! You’re making me sick.”

  The man grabbed his cheek, swivelled and rushed for the door.

  Franz’s jaw dropped as he recognized the Nazi behind the desk. He had worked at least three years with Horst Schmidt at the Vienna General. He had always considered Schmidt a polite and respectful orderly. Franz had even performed surgery on his then-four-year-old daughter, Gisela, draining a large abscess on her thigh. Afterward, in gratitude, Schmidt’s wife had brought him several baskets of fresh baking.

  “Horst?” Franz murmured with a flicker of hope.

  Surprised recognition creased Schmidt’s coarse features but was replaced in a heartbeat by a contemptuous glare. Ignoring Franz altogether, he turned to the dark-haired guard. “What is this Jew doing here?”

  Franz’s innards turned to stone. Years of friendly professional relationship had been reduced to just “this Jew.”

  “The lieutenant wanted to see him, Hauptscharführer Schmidt,” the guard said, using the SS equivalent title of sergeant major.

  Schmidt turned to the closed door behind him and rapped three times.

  “Yes?” a man replied so softly that it was barely audible. “Obersturmführer, the men have brought you the Jew Adler.” “Send him in.”

  Schmidt turned back to Franz and eyed him, showing not an iota of familiarity. He opened the door to the office and snarled, “Go!”

  Franz braced himself, expecting to be kicked in the back or clapped on the neck as he passed Schmidt. But no blow fell as he walked past him and into the spacious office.

  As the door clicked closed behind him, Franz gingerly approached the man seated at a desk against the far wall. A huge framed photograph of the unsmiling führer, his arm extended in the distinctive “Sieg Heil” salute, hung directly above the desk.

  The lieutenant did not look up from the large ledger in which he was writing. His dark hair was short and thinning, and he wore a perfectly pressed SS uniform. His hat rested beside the ledger facing forward, its central insignia so polished that the skull and crossbones shone.

  Franz stood in front of the desk and watched as the lieutenant continued to write in the ledger, line after line in precise penmanship. Finally, after five or more minutes, the man lowered the pen onto the desk and raised his gaze. With smooth complexion, high cheekbones and chiselled features, the lieutenant verged on handsome. He assessed Franz with an icy gaze, as though appraising livestock.

  “Herr Doktor Adler,” the man said in a soft-spoken tone. “I am Obersturmführer Adolf Eichmann. Thank you for coming to see me,” he said without the least trace of irony. “As you might have heard, I have been charged with the task of centralizing Jewish emigration from Austria.” Eichmann touched a finger to his lower lip, as though searching for diplomatic words. “My job has taken on new urgency in the wake of the cowardly assassination of the Reich’s hero, Ernst vom Rath, by the Jew Grynszpan. As you might have witnessed, our security forces have struggled to contain the exuberance of the very understandable outrage of ordinary German citizens. And, after Kristallnacht, we fear for the safety of the Jewish residents here in Vienna.”

  Franz wondered if Eichmann was making a cruel joke, but he remained silent.

  “Today, we went to the effort of rounding up thousands of Jewish men to put into protective custody. It is not a sustainable solution to the Jewish question.” Eichmann shrugged helplessly. “Of course, that is my problem, not yours.” He sighed. “I understand that you once held quite a distinguished position at the university. True?”

  “Yes, before—” He stopped himself from mentioning the Anschluss. “I was professor of surgery and chief of the department at the university hospital, Obersturmführer Eichmann.”

  “You Jews certainly excel in medicine and law, don’t you? Not to mention banking and money lending.” He laughed quietly to himself. “Dr. Adler, I have made it a priority to take a personal interest in the plight of Vienna’s most prominent Jews, such as yourself. In fact, I have insisted on special treatment for you and your family. But in light of the happenings last night, I am not sure we can continue to guarantee your safety. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Franz said, though he was more baffled than ever.

  “Good.” Eichmann nodded. “That is why it is of the utmost urgency that you make arrangements to leave the German Reich. The sooner, the better.”

  “Obersturmführer, I spent most of today at various consulates, trying to secure a visa for my family.”

  Eichmann’s face broke into a smile devoid of empathy. “It never fails to amaze me how the rest of the world decries our legitimate racial policies, and yet they could not make it more clear that they don’t want Jews in their midst any more than we do. Would you not agree, Dr. Adler?”

  Franz looked down. “It seems that the rest of the world has not gone out of its way to help the Jews, Obersturmführer.”

  “That is one way of putting it,” Eichmann grunted. “What progress did you make at the consulates?”

  Franz considered his answer carefully. He did not want to endanger any of his options by sharing them with Eichmann, but he wasn’t sure what the lieutenant might already know regarding his visit with Edgewood. “It is possible that my daughter might qualify for the Kindertransport program.”

  “Yes, of course.” Eichmann wrinkled his nose. “Seeding England with more young Jews.”

  “She is only half Jewish,” Franz said. “My wife was Catholic.”

  Eichmann scoffed. “In our eyes—as established by the Nuremburg Laws—that makes her a Jew. Nothing more.”

  “She is much more,” Franz blurted, regretting the words as soon as they left his lips.

  Eichmann stiffened. His face went blank, and his eyes froze over. “How is that?” he asked in a soft voice more frightening than all of Schmidt’s screeching.

  “I meant no disrespect, Obersturmführer,” Franz said, desperate for a way to placate the man. “It’s only that … my family has lived in Vienna for generations. We have lived a secular life. I always saw myself as an Austrian first and foremost. I never even raised Hannah as Jewish.”

  Eichmann eyed him for several seconds without moving a muscle. “And yet, that’s all either of you ar
e,” he finally said. “Please don’t imagine for one moment that I care a whit for your university standing. We have rid ourselves of far more famous Jews than the likes of you—Einstein, Freud and Mahler, to name only a few.”

  Franz dropped his gaze to the desk. “Of course, Obersturmführer.”

  Eichmann leaned back slightly in his seat. His tone turned philosophical. “I am forever astounded at the total lack of appreciation among you Jews for just how deep-seated anti-Semitism is in society and the very legitimate reasons behind it.”

  Franz continued to stare at the desk without replying.

  “If you will excuse the medical analogy, Dr. Adler,” Eichmann went on, almost speaking more to himself than to Franz, “Jews remind me of microscopic parasites. As I understand it, those germs invade a healthy body with the sole purpose of multiplying and spreading. All they care about is continuing their line. They mean no harm to the host. In fact, if the host dies, then they will be lost as well. Nonetheless, these tiny leeches do weaken their host and, if left unchecked, they will destroy it.” He looked up at Franz, clearly proud of his analogy. “You see, the same is true of Jews and Germany. It isn’t personal, but it is imperative we rid the fatherland of this dangerous parasite, and soon.” He paused. “Do you understand, Dr. Adler?”

  Franz understood more clearly than ever. Kristallnacht was only the beginning. If the Eichmanns of the world had their way, countless more Jews would suffer the same fate as Karl and the Yacobsens. Emotions raged inside his chest, and Franz did not trust himself to speak. Keeping his expression as neutral as possible, he looked up at Eichmann and nodded.

  “I’m glad we agree. And if you ask my advice, I suggest that you drag your family to somewhere far away. I doubt the rest of Europe will be much more welcoming to Jews in the near future.” Eichmann lifted the top sheet from a stack of papers. He slowly filled in the blanks and then signed the bottom with a flourish. “Consider this your notice. Once you have proof of an accepting destination, bring me the paperwork and I will sign your exit visa. You have two weeks to leave.”