Among the marchers, clad in SA brown, one of her former students filed past, not two feet from where she stood. His gaze fixed ardently upon the towering pyre, he did not recognize her, but she knew him, and she knew the book tucked under his arm—a collection of plays by the renowned nineteenth-century poet Heinrich Heine, a German Jew.
As she watched him march off to destroy the book, Mildred knew that at universities throughout Germany, other disgruntled, angry, vengeful students were destroying the very books that could teach them that this was wrong, that this would create nothing but ash and loss. It would not bring them joy, or find them work, or fill their bellies. It would not erase the wisdom that resonated from the author’s mind to the reader’s heart.
As flame and smoke rose to the sky, a line from Heine’s playAlmansordrifted into her thoughts: “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.”
Where they burn books, in the end they will also burn people.
Chapter Fifteen
May 1933
Greta
Greta did not respond to Adam’s note to tell him she was returning to Germany. She was not entirely sure why. Perhaps she did not want him to think she was coming back for his sake rather than her country’s; fighting the rise of fascism in her homeland was more important to her than their ill-fated romance. Perhaps she wanted the option to change her mind if she decided at the last minute that she could not see him.
She arrived in Frankfurt am Main two days after tens of thousands of books had gone up in flames in city squares throughout Germany. Students from the Universität Frankfurt had staged their own cleansing by fire in Römerberg in front of city hall. By the time Greta passed through the square, the pile of ash was gone, cleared away by rain or an assiduous street sweeper. Somehow it seemed that the stink of burning lingered, like a ghost from the past or a foreboding vision of the future.
Before setting out from Dover, she had bought a newspaper at a stand near the pier. On the front page was an open letter to the Student Body of Germany from Helen Keller, the famous blind and deaf American author and advocate. “History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas,” she had written. “Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds.” She reminded them that years before, out of love and compassion for the German people, she had arranged for all the royalties from her book sales to go to the care of German soldiers blinded during the Great War, but she concluded with a warning: “Do not imagine that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here. God sleepeth not, and He will visit His judgment upon you. Better were it for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and sink into the sea than to be hated and despised of all men.”
The stirring words had heartened Greta even as the winds off the Channel threatened to tear the newspaper from her grasp, but once she arrived in Frankfurt, the oppressive weight of the Reich fell upon her shoulders like a lead cloak, compelling her to walk with her eyes downcast and shoulders slightly bent, curved protectively around her heart. She forced herself to lift her chin and stride with confidence, suitcases in hand, not seeking out the gaze of SA and SS men but not averting her eyes either. She refused to let the Nazis make her regret returning to Germany. She loved her homeland and would not abandon it to fascist barbarians without a fight.
When she entered her boardinghouse room, at first she found nothing amiss. She had asked her landlady to collect her mail and water the plants in her absence, but as she unpacked, she realized that some items on her dresser had been moved, and the stack of mail on the table near the door was thinner than it should have been. When her gaze fell on her disordered desk, she discovered that her typewriter was missing.
Greta hurried downstairs and knocked on her landlady’s door. “Did you borrow my typewriter?” she asked as soon as the older woman answered.
“Well, hello to you too,” the landlady replied. “I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”
“Did you borrow my typewriter?” Greta asked again, keeping her voice steady. “It’s all right if you did, but I need it back, please.”
“I don’t have it.” The older woman’s voice quavered. “The SA came around asking questions about you. I had to let them search your room. How could I refuse?”
“The SA took my typewriter? Did they say why?”
“No, but I’m to call them if you come back. I suppose I can wait a day—”
“No need for that. I’ll go see them right now.”
The older woman blanched. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
“How else will I get my typewriter back?”
Glancing about for eavesdroppers, her landlady argued against it. When Greta’s resolve did not waver, she sighed, withdrew into her room, and returned with a card the SA officer had left behind.
When Greta arrived at the SA headquarters near the Rathaus on the Römerberg, the clerk studied some papers, grimaced, and ordered her to follow him down a corridor. He halted before a small, windowless room furnished with a wooden table and two chairs placed on opposite sides. “Sit,” the clerk ordered, gesturing into the chamber. She obeyed, her stomach lurching when he remained in the hall and locked her in.
Heart pounding, she stood and paced the chamber, wishing she had never come. She tested the doorknob, but she had scarcely touched it when someone began to turn it from the other side. Quickly she returned to her chair and composed herself as two black-clad SA men entered, one young and tall, the other older and stocky, both regarding her severely.
The older man carried a folder, which he opened upon the table as he seated himself. The younger man planted himself between the table and the door. “Name?” the older man asked, his voice clipped.
Greta assumed that information was in the file, but she said, “Greta Lorke.”
He eyed her, frowning. “Full name?”
“Margaretha Lorke.”
“Place and date of birth?”
“Frankfurt an der Oder, December 14, 1902.” She watched as he checked off two items on the first paper in the file. “I beg your pardon, but I’ve come to collect my typewriter. One of your officers took it from my apartment, and I would like it back, please.”
