his misused authority, Hitler could not diminish their love or legislate it away.
Chapter Fourteen
April–May 1933
Mildred
Hitler’s new Aryan Laws provoked outrage and indignation not only from Jews but from all Germans who could not abide the oppression of their fellow citizens. With increasing dismay, Mildred encouraged her Jewish students to persevere and bade sad farewells to colleagues who had decided to leave Germany rather than lived in dread of dismissal or arrest.
Not everyone who wanted to emigrate could. One day in late April, Samson Knoll, a student Mildred had known at the University of Berlin, appealed to her on behalf of Alfred Futran, a Jewish bookseller and journalist whose father had been shot by right-wing extremists in 1920 during an attempted coup. “Futran has to leave the country,” said Samson. “You have contacts at the American embassy. Would you help my friend get to America?”
“The U.S. has immigration quotas,” Mildred cautioned, though her heart went out to him. “Your friend might have to wait years until his case comes to the top of the list.”
“It would be enough to help him get out of Germany.” Samson grasped her hand in both of his. “Please. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t urgent.”
Deeply affected, Mildred promised to speak to a friend at the embassy. That friend was U.S. consul George Messersmith, but although he sympathized, he could not expedite Futran’s immigration to the United States. “The best I can do is to get him to Paris,” he said.
Mildred thanked him profusely, and in the days that followed, she made similar requests for other friends. Messersmith always did what he could.
As an American in a country increasingly hostile to foreigners, she sometimes wondered if she too ought to leave Germany. At the end of March, three American men visiting Berlin on business had been confronted by a group of Brownshirts after they had failed to offer the Nazi salute to Hitler’s motorcade. Arrested by the SA, they had been taken to headquarters, stripped, and left to shiver in a cold cell overnight. In the morning they had been beaten into unconsciousness and dumped on the street. Soon thereafter, a United Press International correspondent had been arrested without charge, but after Messersmith made repeated inquiries, he had been released unharmed.
Mildred believed that she did not stand out as a foreigner the way American businessmen and journalists did, but she visited the U.S. embassy frequently and was active in the American Women’s Club, so perhaps she was fooling herself. But even if she were, how could she contemplate leaving Germany, where she had built a life for herself among beloved family and friends? Arvid did not want to emigrate, and she could not bear to go without him. To a casual observer, she appeared German. Surely she would be safe as long as she did nothing to draw the attention of anti-American thugs.
“We need a strong ambassador to deal with these Nazi outrages,” Messersmith confided to Mildred after the UPI correspondent’s release. “Let’s hope the new president sends one soon.”
In the meantime, many of the ambassador’s duties fell to Messersmith and Counselor of Embassy George Gordon, including securing the release of Americans rounded up by the new state secret police, the Geheime Staatspolizei, Gestapo for short. The censored press reported almost nothing about attacks on Americans, but anxious rumors spread swiftly among the small expatriate community. Since it was well known that Mildred and Messersmith were friends, she was often asked to confirm shocking reports of arrests or assaults. Whenever the American Women’s Club met in its comfortable suite on the Bellevuestrasse near the consulate for lunches, lectures, games of bridge, or teas, she endured a barrage of questions for which, over time, it became increasingly difficult to find reassuring answers.
For everyone who opposed the Nazis, discretion became paramount as the government imposed Gleichschaltung on the country, forcibly bringing all aspects of German society into alignment with Nazi ideology. Schools were an essential early target of this “synchronizing.” Throughout Germany, teachers and staff were investigated, and those considered non-Aryan or politically questionable were permanently suspended.
Mildred was not surprised when the Berlin Abendgymnasium, a progressive institution founded by the Social Democrats, came under particular scrutiny. After the Easter recess, she returned to school only to discover that the break would be extended indefinitely while the Nazis conducted a thorough inspection. A secretary confided that the administration was resigned to making whatever distasteful concessions were required to keep the school open.