The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

early summer I had held out hope that he had not killed himself, or been killed, and that he was a prisoner of war somewhere, but some sort of word should have gotten out, so the longer we did not hear anything, the more certain I was that he was dead. Mama had quizzed the few released prisoners who came through Colditz and asked any ex-colleagues of Papa’s she encountered for news, but nobody knew anything.

Theodor finally looked up from the letters. He shook his head slowly and wiped his eyes.

“I don’t believe it,” he said. “And I wouldn’t believe it if it weren’t his writing. It’s weird how much detail he writes about the battle in Leipzig compared to everything else. Maybe he’s trying to justify why he didn’t commit suicide without directly referring to it.”

“I remember Erich,” I said. “He met Mama and me that day the front wall of our Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse apartment was blown off. Do you think he saved Papa’s life with what he said?”

“I don’t know. Papa does seem to hint at that. And maybe seeing those other horrible suicides changed his mind too.”

We both paused for a moment and looked at the letters again. We could hear Mama crying in the next room.

“Why are those sentences blacked out?” I asked.

“He must have written something that the British censored.”

“Something secret?”

“I don’t know. I suppose secret or just something he’s not allowed to say.”

“And what’s denazification? And what is Category II?”

“I don’t know any of that either. I’m guessing that it is some way to make him not be a Nazi anymore, and the category is how bad he was. I don’t know whether a lower number is better or worse.”

There was another pause as I tried to picture what that would entail. The only image that came to my mind was Papa writing lines on the blackboard. “I will not be a Nazi” thousands and thousands of times. This was silly of course.

“And what or who is ‘Auguste’?”

Theodor laughed. “Your aunt, you dummy! She’s Papa’s sister. She married an artist in Worpswede. That’s near Bremen in the north.”

“Oh.” If I was honest with myself, I really was not that interested in distant family and did not pay very much attention when they were discussed. I knew Papa had sisters, but who exactly they were did not register deeply enough to be memorable.

We wanted to discuss the letters with Mama, but she was still in her room and we felt it better not to disturb her. We also thought that the little ones should be told by her and only when the time was right and only when the story had been carefully prepared. But we did want to discuss it with someone, so we decided to go see if Herr Rittmann was home. He might know something about censorship and denazification. He was home and he was pleased to see us. He lived alone and seemed bored a lot of the time.

“Come in, boys,” he said. “I can make tea? Would you like tea?”

“No, no thank you, Herr Rittmann,” Theodor said. I had decided to let him do the talking, which he probably would have done anyway.

“Well then, please have a seat and tell me what brings you here.” He smiled and indicated to a wooden bench on the far side of his dining table. He sat in a rickety wooden chair opposite us. It was very warm, especially near his stove. I noted that there was no smoke.

Theodor cleared his throat and then put the letters on the table, turning them towards Herr Rittmann and smoothing the creases. “Papa is alive,” he said quietly.

Herr Rittmann looked up, astonished, and then fished in a vest pocket for his glasses. He read the letters quickly and then let out a low whistle. “Wilhelm, alive. Well, I don’t know whether I’m surprised or not. I didn’t know him that well, but it was always clear that he was a clever man. In any case, I’m very happy for you children and for your poor mother.”

“Thank you,” Theodor said. “We have some questions we thought you might be able to help us with.”

“Yes, please ask.”

“Do you know what they might have censored?”

“Naturally I can’t be certain, but my nephew Matthias in Rochlitz was released by the Americans in June and he described horrible conditions in the prisoner-of-war camps. Men died of exposure and of starvation. Many men. There were also beatings and arbitrary shootings. I’m sure the Allies don’t want to advertise any of that.”

“Oh.”

“But the Allied camps have improved a lot. Your papa will be fine now. You know what those first months were like. It was mass chaos everywhere, and there was hardly any food, for prisoners or civilians. Also the Allies were very angry at all Germans with what they saw in the concentration camps.”

“Concentration camps?” I asked.

Herr Rittmann took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead. Then he put them back on and looked at us. “It’s not for me to tell you what went on there. You’ll find out more than you ever wanted to know soon enough. For now it’s enough to just know that we Germans committed horrible crimes against millions of innocent people. Unspeakable crimes.”

I stayed quiet, and I could see that Theodor was struggling to formulate his next question. Mama had warned us that Herr Rittmann was prone to exaggeration, but something in his manner told me that he was speaking from a basis of fact.

Herr Rittmann smiled warmly. “I know what you’re thinking. I can’t be sure, but I don’t think your papa committed any of these crimes I speak of, at least not directly. I don’t say this because I particularly liked him — I didn’t know him well enough and in fact we certainly did not see eye to eye politically — but I say it because of the classification he lists.”

“Class II?”

“Yes. They use a five-class scale with Class V meaning exonerated or