“Now come on,” Schneider toyed with them. Slapped down with oil, his hair gleamed, though a small piece was
always upright and vigilant at the apex of his head. “At least one of you useless bastards must be able to write
properly.”
In the distance, there was gunfire.
It triggered a reaction.
“Look,” said Schneider, “this isn’t like the others. It will take all morning, maybe longer.” He couldn’t resist a
smile. “Schlink was polishing that shit house while the rest of you were playing cards, but this time, you’re
going out there.”
Life or pride.
He was clearly hoping that one of his men would have the intelligence to take life.
Erik Vandenburg and Hans Hubermann glanced at each other. If someone stepped forward now, the platoon
would make his life a living hell for the rest of their time together. No one likes a coward. On the other hand, if
someone was to be nominated . . .
Still no one stepped forward, but a voice stooped out and ambled toward the sergeant. It sat at his feet, waiting
for a good kicking. It said, “Hubermann, sir.” The voice belonged to Erik Vandenburg. He obviously thought
that today wasn’t the appropriate time for his friend to die.
The sergeant paced up and down the passage of soldiers.
“Who said that?”
He was a superb pacer, Stephan Schneider—a small man who spoke, moved, and acted in a hurry. As he strode
up and down the two lines, Hans looked on, waiting for the news. Perhaps one of the nurses was sick and they
needed someone to strip and replace bandages on the infected limbs of injured soldiers. Perhaps a thousand
envelopes were to be licked and sealed and sent home with death notices in them.
At that moment, the voice was put forward again, moving a few others to make themselves heard.
“Hubermann,” they echoed. Erik even said, “Immaculate handwriting, sir, immaculate.”
“It’s settled, then.” There was a circular, small-mouthed grin. “Hubermann. You’re it.”
The gangly young soldier made his way forward and asked what his duty might be.
The sergeant sighed. “The captain needs a few dozen letters written for him. He’s got terrible rheumatism in his
fingers. Or arthritis. You’ll be writing them for him.”
This was no time to argue, especially when Schlink was sent to clean the toilets and the other one, Pflegger,
nearly killed himself licking envelopes. His tongue was infection blue.
“Yes, sir.” Hans nodded, and that was the end of it. His writing ability was dubious to say the least, but he
considered himself lucky. He wrote the letters as best he could while the rest of the men went into battle.
None of them came back.That was the first time Hans Hubermann escaped me. The Great War.
A second escape was still to come, in 1943, in Essen.
Two wars for two escapes.
Once young, once middle-aged.
Not many men are lucky enough to cheat me twice.
He carried the accordion with him during the entirety of the war.
When he tracked down the family of Erik Vandenburg in Stuttgart upon his return, Vandenburg’s wife informed
him that he could keep it. Her apartment was littered with them, and it upset her too much to look at that one in
particular. The others were reminder enough, as was her once-shared profession of teaching it.
“He taught me to play,” Hans informed her, as though it might help.
Perhaps it did, for the devastated woman asked if he could play it for her, and she silently wept as he pressed the
buttons and keys of a clumsy “Blue Danube Waltz.” It was her husband’s favorite.
“You know,” Hans explained to her, “he saved my life.” The light in the room was small, and the air restrained.
“He—if there’s anything you ever need.” He slid a piece of paper with his name and address on it across the
table. “I’m a painter by trade. I’ll paint your apartment for free, whenever you like.” He knew it was useless
compensation, but he offered anyway.
The woman took the paper, and not long after, a small child wandered in and sat on her lap.
“This is Max,” the woman said, but the boy was too young and shy to say anything. He was skinny, with soft
hair, and his thick, murky eyes watched as the stranger played one more song in the heavy room. From face to
face, he looked on as the man played and the woman wept. The different notes handled her eyes. Such sadness.
Hans left.
“You never told me,” he said to a dead Erik Vandenburg and the Stuttgart skyline. “You never told me you had
a son.”
After a momentary, head-shaken stoppage, Hans returned to Munich, expecting never to hear from those people
again. What he didn’t know was that his help would most definitely be needed, but not for painting, and not for
another twenty years or so.
There were a few weeks before he started painting. In the good-weather months, he worked vigorously, and
even in winter, he often said to Rosa that business might not be pouring, but it would at least drizzle now and
again.
For more than a decade, it all worked.
Hans Junior and Trudy were born. They grew up making visits to their papa at work, slapping paint on walls
and cleaning brushes.When Hitler rose to power in 1933, though, the painting business fell slightly awry. Hans didn’t join the
NSDAP like the majority of people did. He put a lot of thought into his decision.
THE THOUGHT PROCESS OF
HANS HUBERMANN
He was not well-educated or political, but if
nothing else, he was a man who appreciated
fairness. A Jew had once saved his life and
he couldn’t forget that. He couldn’t join a
party that antagonized people in such a way.
Also, much like Alex Steiner, some of his
most loyal customers were Jewish. Like many
of the Jews believed, he didn’t think the
hatred could last, and it was a conscious
decision not to follow Hitler. On many
levels, it was a disastrous one.
Once the persecution began, his work slowly dried up. It wasn’t too bad to begin with, but soon enough, he was
losing customers. Handfuls of quotes seemed to vanish into the rising Nazi air.
He approached an old faithful named Herbert Bollinger—a man with a hemispheric waistline who spoke
Hochdeutsch (he was from Hamburg)—when he saw him on Munich Street. At first, the man looked down, past
his girth, to the ground, but when his eyes returned to the painter, the question clearly made him uncomfortable.
There was no reason for Hans to ask, but he did.
“What’s going on, Herbert? I’m losing customers quicker than I can count.”
Bollinger didn’t flinch anymore. Standing upright, he delivered the fact as a question of his own. “Well, Hans.
Are you a member?”
“Of what?”
But Hans Hubermann knew exactly what the man was talking about.
“Come on, Hansi,” Bollinger persisted. “Don’t make me spell it out.”
The tall painter waved him away and walked on.
As the years passed by, the Jews were being terrorized at random throughout the country, and in the spring of
1937, almost to his shame, Hans Hubermann finally submitted. He made some inquiries and applied to join the
Party.
After lodging his form at the Nazi headquarters on Munich Street, he witnessed four men throw several bricks
into a clothing store named Kleinmann’s. It was one of the few Jewish shops that were still in operation in
Molching. Inside, a small man was stuttering about, crushing the broken glass beneath his feet as he cleaned up.
A star the color of mustard was smeared to the door. In sloppy lettering, the words JEWISH FILTH were
spilling over at their edges. The movement inside tapered from hurried to morose, then stopped altogether.
Hans moved closer and stuck his head inside. “Do you need some help?”Mr. Kleinmann looked up. A dust broom was fixed powerlessly to his hand. “No, Hans. Please. Go away.”
Hans had painted Joel Kleinmann’s house the previous year. He remembered his three children. He could see
their faces but couldn’t recall their names.
“I will come tomorrow,” he said, “and repaint your door.”
Which he did.
It was the second of two mistakes.
The first occurred immediately after the incident.
He returned to where he’d come from and drove his fist onto the door and then the window of the NSDAP. The
glass shuddered but no one replied. Everyone had packed up and gone home. A last member was walking in the
opposite direction. When he heard the rattle of the glass, he noticed the painter.
He came back and asked what was wrong.
“I can no longer join,” Hans stated.
The man was shocked. “Why not?”
Hans looked at the knuckles of his right hand and swallowed. He could already taste the error, like a metal
tablet in his mouth. “Forget it.” He turned and walked home.
Words followed him.
“You just think about it, Herr Hubermann. Let us know what you decide.”
He did not acknowledge them.
The following morning, as promised, he rose earlier than usual, but not early enough. The door at Kleinmann’s
Clothing was still moist with dew. Hans dried it. He managed to match the color as close as humanly possible
and gave it a good solid coat.
Innocuously, a man walked past.
“Heil Hitler,” he said.
“Heil Hitler,” Hans replied.
THREE SMALL BUT
IMPORTANT FACTS
1. The man who walked past was Rolf Fischer, one of
Molching’s greatest Nazis.
1. A new slur was painted on the door within sixteen hours.
2. Hans Hubermann was not granted membership in the Nazi Party.
Not yet, anyway.For the next year, Hans was lucky that he didn’t revoke his membership application officially. While many
people were instantly approved, he was added to a waiting list, regarded with suspicion. Toward the end of
1938, when the Jews were cleared out completely after Kristallnacht, the Gestapo visited. They searched the
house, and when nothing or no one suspicious was found, Hans Hubermann was one of the fortunate:
He was allowed to stay.
What probably saved him was that people knew he was at least waiting for his application to be approved. For
this, he was tolerated, if not endorsed as the competent painter he was.
Then there was his other savior.
It was the accordion that most likely spared him from total ostracism. Painters there were, from all over
Munich, but under the brief tutorage of Erik Vandenburg and nearly two decades of his own steady practice,
there was no one in Molching who could play exactly like him. It was a style not of perfection, but warmth.
Even mistakes had a good feeling about them.
He “heil Hitlered” when it was asked of him and he flew the flag on the right days. There was no apparent
problem.
Then, on June 16, 1939 (the date was like cement now), just over six months after Liesel’s arrival on Himmel
Street, an event occurred that altered the life of Hans Hubermann irreversibly.
It was a day in which he had some work.
He left the house at 7 a.m. sharp.
He towed his paint cart behind him, oblivious to the fact that he was being followed.
When he arrived at the work site, a young stranger walked up to him. He was blond and tall, and serious.
The pair watched each other.
“Would you be Hans Hubermann?”
Hans gave him a single nod. He was reaching for a paintbrush. “Yes, I would.”
“Do you play the accordion, by any chance?”
This time, Hans stopped, leaving the brush where it was. Again, he nodded.
The stranger rubbed his jaw, looked around him, and then spoke with great quietness, yet great clarity. “Are you
a man who likes to keep a promise?”
Hans took out two paint cans and invited him to sit down. Before he accepted the invitation, the young man
extended his hand and introduced himself. “My name’s Kugler. Walter. I come from Stuttgart.”
They sat and talked quietly for fifteen minutes or so, arranging a meeting for later on, in the night