The Luck of the Weissensteiners (The Three Nations Trilogy) (13 page)

“No, let's carry on. Let's hold her by her feet s
o she can have a real good view of the river. After all that is what she wanted,” insisted the ginger one.

“
Let’s push her in.” “Drop her boys!” other ones shouted.

Wilma was terrified. Were they really going to drop her or were they just playing? If it were a fight, one on one, she could have taken on any one of them easily and given them a go
od beating. They were young, green behind the ears and no match for her but in a group like this they were dangerous and the situation could easily end badly. Her father had always taught her to be careful and, while she usually did not take his advice, this seemed to be an occasion where it might be wise to take it and just shut up.

The boys pretended
to drop her a few times but they always caught her in time. Wilma was scared and nearly soiled herself in panic but she also felt a slight sense of hope underneath her fear. They may not mean business after all? They would have dropped her by now, wouldn't they? The question was, should she show her fear and scream to satisfy their sadistic egos or be cold and calm to make them lose interest?

At that moment an old man approached the boys and asked them first in Czech and then in German what they were doing. Wilma wanted him to go away. She was certain the situation would only escalate if he was getting involved on her behalf and it would only stimulate the boys
into doing worse. Nothing good could come from one fragile old man standing up for her.

“Oh we are just offering that dirty Jew a wash in the river,” the red haired boy said casually.  “Do you have a problem with that?” 

“Not a problem at all,” came the reply. “As long as you throw her in quickly. Don't get the wrong idea and think about raping her. You'll get your knobs dirty on that filth. Throw her in already,” he sneered and turned away.

“Don't worry! S
he is too ugly for us to touch her. I would rather do it with an animal than with her,” one of them shouted after the old man.

At that point
, a group of slightly older Slovak boys came on the scene and started to confront Wilma’s attackers.

“Let her go you idiots. That's not funny
anymore,” one of them told them in almost accent free German. He appeared to be a strong and confident looking young man with a very provocative and intimidating body language.

“Leave us alone,” said the boy with the big ears defiantly.  “We are just doing your job for you. You should be thanking us. Can't you deal with your Jews by yourself?”

“We don't drown our Jews,” came the curt reply.

“Well you should and soon you will. Just you wait,” promised the ring leader of
the Hitler youth. “Do you really think that you can live under German protection and get away with treating your Jews like they were real people? How stupid are you?”

“Jus
t let her go,” said another of the Slovaks calmly and with an aura of authority and determination. He also appeared very strong and ready to fight. The Hitler Youth leader started to become unsure of him. He and his friends were clearly outnumbered and could not possibly win in a fight with them.

If there was going to be a
clash he would have to go back to the youth hostel where they were staying and explain to his superiors and the party officials what had happened. It would be hard to justify how they had got into this fight in the first place when they had been sent to the city to instigate a similar youth organisation in Slovakia and should be making friends rather than enemies. His superiors would not be impressed. It was surprising that anybody should interfere on behalf of a Jew – obviously a lot of work had to be done here in Slovakia. Maybe the gentle approach of peer education and bonding with the local lads was not going to work if this was the case. After carefully weighing the best retreat he finally said:

“Okay, if you love this Jewish
slut so much you can have her.” He turned to his friends and ordered them: “Bring her back up guys.”

“You better watch out,” he warned the group of Slovaks. “Times are changing and next
time you may not be so lucky,” and the German troopers left the scene.

Wilma took a
long time to regain her breath but despite these difficulties she managed to utter a wheezy thank you to her saviours. However, instead of the reassuring pat on the back that she expected from them, one of the guys walked up to her and struck her heavily with his hand across her face and hatefully said to her.

“You stupid Jewish bitch.
What are you doing out on the street? Don't you know any better yet? Go back home and lock the door. We don't want to see your kind around here, is that clear?”

“Then why save me?” she asked without thin
king that she should just flee while she still could.

“We don't like anyone
telling us what to do. Not the Hungarians, not the Czechs and certainly not the bloody Germans. That's why. We were not saving you, we were showing them who the bosses are here. Don't think we wouldn't throw you in the river ourselves if we felt like it. This is Slovakia, not Palestine. Now go.”

Wilma stood frozen fo
r a second but then ran as fast as she could, back to the other end of the bridge and all the way home. She stormed through the front door of the workshop, ran up the stairs into the private part of the house, got to her room and locked the door. She had heard about such incidences before but somehow had always believed they had only happened because the victims had been too weak and frightened to turn the whole situation around in their favour; now she knew exactly how these apparently innocent scenes could rapidly get out of hand. Once she had seen the determination and hatred of those people she had known that her fate was entirely at the mercy of those thugs. She had always had a huge fear of water and unknowingly they had hit her weakest spot. Wilma hated to show weakness but she was too upset to be able to stop the tears flooding from her eyes. Those bastards, she thought, how dare they attack her for no reason at all. She had felt so helpless, completely different from any confrontation she had ever imagined she might have with Jew haters. It began to dawn on her that she was trapped in Slovakia as a Jew and in no better circumstances than the Jews who were in Germany. Those Slovak boys could talk about independence and autonomy with their big mouths all they wanted but the Germans were already here. They did not need tanks and guns to rule the country, they used ink and paper to write their own laws into the new constitution. How had anybody been so stupid and not seen it coming? Hitler was saving his bullets for a bigger fight but got the job done just as efficiently.

For the first time in her life
, Wilma was really scared. Those guys had broken her spirit. She had always been so naïve and optimistic - so many of 'her people’ still were - but now she felt the complete opposite. If the Slovaks who had helped her could be so hateful, what chance did she have? She and her family should have left while they still could.

Before today she had always thought that l
eaving was a gross overreaction, which naturally it would have been if Germany had not touched the Sudetenland, but history had proven her wrong. She wondered how she could have known it would really happen before it did. Just like her encounter on the bridge that could have easily ended in a different way? She could have been killed on that bridge or, if she had not looked at the Hitler Youth, she might have managed to get past them without any problems. In the big political arena she had always assumed that the European forces would refuse Hitler his demands. If that had happened he might have backed down and everything might have stayed the same. How was a young woman like her to know the future and how could she be judged for getting it wrong?

Without the incident on the bridge she would have carried on feeling
confident and secure but now she stayed at home for months, either inside the house or at the weaver workshop, never daring to go anywhere alone.

Jonah sent the Slovak girls in his employ to do the shopping and run the errand
s - which they loved to do as a break from the boring work on the frame. Before the event on the bridge, Wilma had always been a little nervous, dropping dishes or books on the floor and bumping into doors and tables, but now those accidents happened much more frequently and even the smallest of noises made her jumpy. She never told anyone about the incident, feeling that by sharing her troubles she would make it more real. She did not want anyone to worry about her but she did start asking everyone to be careful and made her family promise to look out for each other, which amused them more than anything else.

Incidents like the one she had lived through were ho
wever not that common and the streets were still pretty safe. The delegates of the Hitler Youth from Germany did not reappear on the streets near her home but in Wilma’s newly paranoid mind they were waiting for her everywhere.

Greta was totally obsessed with motherhood. Having lost her first born son to an unknown existence in Germany
and with no immediate relief of the situation, she focused all of her energy on Ernst and spoilt him the best she could. This one would not get away from her, she would keep him close at all times. As Ernst grew older she saw less of Wilhelm in his features but instead she discovered a rather cunning resemblance to her brother Egon, especially the big nose. She was grateful for the blond hair that diluted the impression that Ernst might not be Aryan.

Apart from these slightly Jewish looks
, the boy seemed however to be a lucky child, blessed with heavenly protection. He never had any problems with anything or anyone, he never complained and he rarely even cried or screamed. Instead, he smiled and laughed a lot and enchanted everyone around him with his cute smile, his curly blond hair and his engaging little games. Even grumpy old Benedikt could not resist Ernst's charm and spent time with him whenever he could, something he had hardly ever done with his own neglected children.

It was a blessing fo
r Greta to have a son like this who even managed to make her forget her absent husband and first born for hours at a time. Every now and then a sting of pain came back but it was the not knowing that bothered her most. What had Wilhelm decided to do with the boy? Was he living with him or had they changed his identity? Was her son being brought up by someone else? What was life like in Berlin? Would there be a war or would this all blow over?

When she allowed herself to get worried and tried to projec
t a vision of the future, Ernst would often come to her and distract her, demanding her attention, making her smile and forget all the doom and gloom. She was cut off from the politics in Europe and with Wilhelm no longer returning from town with all the news it could be days now before she heard anything about what went on in the country at all. It was so much easier and comfortable to get her head down in farm work and child care and lead her life day by day. Johanna and Benedikt never mentioned anything about politics to her and neither did their children. No news was good news she thought and while no news was forthcoming, she could enjoy the carefree existence she had come to lead.

In July the former priest Jozef Tiso became president of Slovakia. While the optimists amongst the Jews thought this would bring more humane conditions f
or them, the pessimists disagreed. Tiso was however part of the religious branch of the Slovak People's party and was rumoured to have a different agenda than the fascist wing. France and Britain initially recognised the new state and its elected president and temporarily established proper diplomatic connections. 'Nobody can deny that these are very positive signs', said one camp. 'What good can this really do?’, questioned the other.

On September 1
, Hitler invaded Poland and 50,000 Slovak troops in three divisions assisted the attack. The army had been mobilized within a few days and had been stationed in the North, under the pretext of regaining the territories that had been lost to Poland at the Munich conference. The campaign did not take very long and shortly after German and Slovak soldiers halted their west and south campaigns, Russia also moved into Poland, from the east. As a consequence, Germany and Slovakia were now at war with Britain and things were escalating.

Greta and a lot of other pe
ople were shocked. Diplomatic actions and political chess moves between the European forces had preceded the military operations for so long that many had started to doubt that anything serious would ever happen at all. History again proved these people wrong. Greta believed that the invasion of Poland could have positive effects. Surely the rest of Europe would have to start an all-out war with Hitler and put him in his place. He could not possibly win against so many opponents; this had to be the beginning of the end.

Johanna and Benedikt left her in this hopeful belief and focused on their work. Compared to their cousin Klaus in Brno they were very lucky. Klaus h
ad been a member of the German Sudeten Party and had immediately chosen to become a full citizen of the Greater German Reich. He had exchanged his old passport for a German one and within weeks of the invasion of Poland he and his sons had been drafted into the German army while the people that had kept their Czech passports were left alone.

The Germans who stayed behind on Klaus
’s farm were bullied and boycotted by the Czech villagers. In comparison to the atrocious climate in Bohemia and Moravia, life in Slovakia was heaven. Demand for farm produce was rising. Hitler had ordered its satellite state Slovakia to increase farm and industrial output to support the troops. With the focus on productivity, it was almost easy to forget about the war itself, especially since after the successful split of Poland between the Soviet
Union, Germany, Lithuania and Slovakia, nothing major actually seemed to happen in Europe in terms of warfare. Everyone was surprised that, as yet, Europe seemed to accept the loss of Poland to Hitler without any actual military retaliation that had been expected immediately following the declaration of war.