Page 129 of The Gathering Storm

‘Well, there’ll be more room at the Boeuf now for a real jazz lover,’ James said, yawning. ‘Is that coffee nearly ready?’

On Tuesday, the 8th of November, Basil was greeted when he arrived in the newsroom by Jimmy Cutler, who said, ‘That embassy chap who was shot in Germany yesterday?’

‘What about him? He wasn’t anyone important, was he? Third secretary, or something.’

’He’s important now. The German government’s using it as an excuse to pass more anti-Jewish laws. Our man in Berlin says they’re banning Jewish children from state schools, banning all Jewish cultural activities, and forbidding them to arm themselves. Twenty years in a concentration camp if they’re caught in possession of any weapon.’

‘More sinister than that,’ said Digbeth, overhearing them, ‘they’ve stopped the publication of all Jewish magazines and newspapers. Cutting off ordinary Jews from their leaders, stopping them finding out what’s going on. Fragmentation, you see. Divide and rule.’

‘It’s going to be the leader article,’ said Cutler. ‘I’ve suggested, “The move is intended to disrupt the Jewish community and rob it of the last frail ties which hold it together.” What d’you think?’

‘Shouldn’t it be “that”, not “which”?’ Basil said.

‘You’re missing the point, sonny,’ said Rosco, from his desk. ‘This won’t be the end of it. A Jew shooting a handsome, firm-jawed, promising young diplomat going about his lawful business? Have you seen the pictures of him? He’s an Aryan sweetheart. And you know what tomorrow is?’

‘The ninth of November,’ Basil said patiently.

Rosco rolled his eyes. ‘God help us! Don’t they teach any history in schools these days?’

‘I left school a long time ago,’ Basil muttered.

‘It’s the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch,’ Rosco enlightened him, ‘and they hold a big Nazi rally in Munich for it every year, with Hitler making a grand speech to round off the evening. Want to put money on what his subject will be this year?’

Vom Rath, who had lingered in hospital for two days, died the next day, the 9th of November. Reports came in on the wire that the news had been brought to Hitler on the platform, that he had spoken briefly to Goebbels and abruptly left the hall, and that Goebbels had then made the closing address on his behalf, a vitriolic speech urging ‘spontaneous demonstrations’ by Party members and the German faithful of their anger against the Jews.

The hatred that had been carefully fed and nurtured for five years came to monstrous flowering. All through the night the news came in to the Messenger; no-one went home; the wires never stopped humming. Across Germany, across Austria, in the Sudetenland, in cities, towns and villages, the windows of Jewish shops and businesses were shattered and their contents looted; the homes of Jews had their windows broken and were ransacked, some set on fire. It was begun by the SA and the Hitler Youth – the uniforms were noted – but in an escalation of horror, the public soon joined in. Synagogues and prayer rooms were invaded; prayer books, scrolls, ceremonial items, artworks and sacred texts were carried out to be burned on bonfires, and the buildings were set on fire. Jewish cemeteries seemed a particular focus of hatred: tombstones were uprooted and smashed, graves violated, the remains dug up and scattered. Warehouses were burned down. Jews unfortunate enough to be caught out on the street were beaten by the mobs, and many died; some were dragged out of their houses and killed. And by a neat reversal of logic, the German authorities blamed the Jews for the riots, and during the night a huge number of Jewish men – it was estimated in the tens of thousands – were arrested and taken to concentration camps.

One English correspondent in Berlin wrote, ‘Racial hatred and hysteria seemed to have taken complete hold of otherwise decent people. I saw fashionably dressed women clapping their hands and screaming with glee, while respectable middle-class mothers held up their babies to see the “fun”.’

In the newsroom at the Messenger they received and collated the reports in unprecedented silence. Outrage had gone beyond expression: there was nothing it was possible to say. Newspapermen were accustomed to reporting on the worst aspects of human life, and grew thick-skinned. But this seemed a different order of horror. Phones rang, wires came in, typewriters rattled, sheets were passed up to be subbed, passed back to be rewritten, approved, sent to the comps for setting, and the individuals avoided each other’s gaze and did not speak.

Basil felt numb. He didn’t understand how people could do such things. Why the Jews? What need did this hatred fill? What was this sump of darkness that existed in men’s hearts? He felt he had aged years in one night. And he sensed the beginning of a clear path ahead of him. He wasn’t sure where it led, but felt he would know when he saw it. It was Duty.

Rosco said, towards dawn, when Basil, passing his desk, accidentally caught his eye: ‘This is not the end.’

Richard and Cynthia had been at the Nevinsons’ for supper when Leah, who had been listening to the wireless in the kitchen, came in, pale and shocked, to tell them to listen. As the first reports were given by clipped, neutral BBC voices, supper was forgotten, and they gathered round the set in grim silence. Samuel sat slumped in his big armchair; Hannah leaned on the back as if her legs would not properly support her; Leah stood by the door, constantly wringing her hands in her apron. Richard and Cynthia stood together, and her hand crept into his.

When the bulletin ended, Samuel leaned forward between his knees as if he was going to be sick. He put his hands over his face and rubbed; Hannah patted helplessly at his shoulder. When he emerged, he said only, as if to no-one in particular, ‘It begins.’

Richard and Cynthia did not go home that night. Leah and Hannah made up a bed for them. They talked quietly in bed for a long time.

‘I don’t know how Papa will stand this,’ Cynthia said. Richard held her close in his arms, so her mouth was by his ear. She felt very cold to him, and he tried to put warmth into her with his body. ‘He hasn’t recovered from what happened two weeks ago. And now this …’

On the 28th of October, some twelve thousand Polish Jews had been expelled from Germany, ordered without notice from their homes in the night, told they could take with them just one suitcase each. What they left behind, reports said, was looted by their neighbours, once any valuables had been seized by the Nazi authorities. They were marched to railway stations and put on trains to the Polish border. But the Polish government had said that Polish Jews who had lived abroad for five years were no longer citizens. The border guards refused to admit them and sent them back to the German side.

So for days in the pouring rain they were stateless, unwanted, trapped at the border, without food or shelter. One British newspaper reported that they were ‘lying about, penniless and deserted, in little villages along the frontier near where they had been driven out by the Gestapo and left’. Four thousand were finally admitted, but the rest were sent to refugee camps, where conditions were so grim that, according to a report, some in desperation tried to escape back into Germany and were shot by frontier guards.

‘Stateless,’ Cynthia said. ‘Nowhere to go. No-one wants them. It could be us next.’

‘No, never,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t happen in this country.’

‘You don’t know, you don’t know,’ she cried softly. ‘Why do they hate us? What’s going to happen to my baby? Condemned before he’s even born to be hated and cast out.’

‘He’s my baby too,’ Richard said. ‘He will never be stateless.’

But she was in the grip of an ancient grief, older than her by centuries, and she rocked against him and moaned softly, as Jewish women had rocked and moaned under the black pall of persecution throughout history. He held her close and murmured to her, and kissed her head helplessly.

When she was quiet, finally, he said, ‘Do you want to go away? Would you feel safer in America? I can arrange it, if you want.’