THE SUBMERGERSA father’s story of escape and hiding from the Nazisby
Dr. Albert Heppner with Max Amichai Heppner
CHAPTER ONE, The Liberators Arrive (An excerpt)
It was late in September 1944, just after my forty-fourth birthday. We had just been liberated by the Allies, and I was taking an afternoon rest on a straw mat in a sheep pen on the Joosten farm. We had been evacuated there to get away from the fire fights raging in our old neighborhood.
My ten-year-old son, Max, was out somewhere on the farm, running about wherever his fancy took him. He was testing out his newfound freedom after two and a half years in hiding. Suddenly I heard his voice—“Da-a-d!”—but I couldn’t see him. I was blinded by light streaming in from the open door to the pen.
Max came closer—then I made him out. He was pulling in someone behind him, a soldier in uniform. They stopped several feet away from me, the soldier obviously holding back so as not to shock me unnecessarily. Nonetheless, I was truly shocked. “Yes,” I said. “What do you—?”
I never finished my sentence. The soldier suddenly hurled himself away from Max, fell about my neck, and cried. I could feel his tears on my face and his sobs against my chest. Then he sunk to his knees and lightly touched my cheek. “You’re real,” he said. “You’re alive.” His voice went hoarse. “You’re so wonderfully, undeniably alive.”
I was dumbfounded at his intense outburst. Where did all this emotion come from? Clearly, he was a man with feelings, a man with soul. But wow, his sudden appearance and impulsive behavior overwhelmed me. I needed some air, and I pushed the two of them outside with me.
I looked at the soldier to get a better idea of who he was. I needed to see him not just as a soldier, but also as an individual. The soldier in him certainly stood out. I had seen troops from the various nations allied against the Germans—Englishmen, Scots, Canadians, Americans. They all looked alike in uniform and no one individual stood out. Not Godfrey Langdon. He was tall, like me—he could look me straight in the eye—and his intense brown eyes dominated his presence. He was older than most of the others. He had a receding hairline and lines around the eyes.
Godfrey cleared his throat to get my attention. “Albert,” he said slowly, “I know your name is Albert—your son told me. I found him wandering near our army camp. He didn’t look like the farm boys I had seen, so I buttonholed him.” He interrupted his talk and introduced himself: “My name is Langdon—Sergeant Godfrey Langdon,” he said. He had been panting from emotion. Now, his breath slowed, and he smiled wanly, silently. We looked at each other wordlessly for long minutes.
Then, urgently, he pushed me to talk. I was amazed how adroitly he got a lot of information out of me in a short time. He cut my replies short so he could quickly put in another question. Then he stopped me, and he lightly touched my cheek. “Albert,” he said dramatically, “I am Jewish, and all the time I was fighting the damn Huns I kept looking for a Jew I had liberated—someone who could make it worthwhile to do all this dirty fighting. You are the first, the one and only Son of Abraham I have encountered in my four months on the continent.”
He started to cry again, but he quickly recovered and, in a more normal tone of voice, he told me more about his life in the army. He had been part of bitter battles in North Africa, and then he had been moved to England for the invasion of Europe. He had fought his way through France and Belgium, and he was with the first troops that liberated our little corner of the Netherlands.
“Finally,” he said again, “finally, I have found a real person who can warrant all that combat, who can validate all that warfare, who can demonstrate that I am saving my own people.”
He wanted to return again to hearing my stories—details now, about how I managed to survive. So I told him about my life on the run—how my family and I finally landed in a chickenhouse in the outback of Holland. I told him how, thanks to the Nazis, I had completely lost my status as a human being, and how losing that status felt worse to me even than losing my home and my work.
“I can tell,” Godfrey said. “Who but a man concerned about status would sit on a straw mat in a sheep pen dressed in a suit and tie? Why do you want to look like a college professor when everyone around here is in farm clothes? What’s so central about looks?”
“It means everything,” I answered. “I want to show my right to be me. I want to be recognized for who I am. I want to proclaim my right to exist.”
“You mean, you don’t want to look the fugitive that you are?” he said. “I’d rather be a bank robber than a fugitive,” I replied. “A bank robber on the run still has his identity, even if it’s not an identity that society approves of. I want to preserve my identity, the identity of a respected member of humanity. But to flee the Nazis, I had to destroy all outward signs of my life—passports, ration cards, licenses, everything. Instead of a respected art authority, I became a submerger.”
“I get your point,” Godfrey said. “Submerger really is a good term to express how you feel. But now that you’ve reemerged, so to speak, how do you feel?” “Exuberant,” I said. “I absolutely can’t wait to get back into the society I know. I hunger to reconnect with the life and work that I had to leave behind in Amsterdam.”
“Not so fast,” Godfrey said. “What you experienced has value. You’re a writer. Write a book about how you and your family managed to survive despite being hounded by the Nazis—for how long, did you say?”
“You could say ever since they became a power to be reckoned with, meaning most of my adult life. I just had my forty-fourth birthday a few days ago.” “So how about that book? People out there need to know,” Godfrey insisted.
“How significant is my story really?” I said. I thought a moment of what was involved. Then I said out loud: “Well, maybe people can understand the eclipse of civilization better if you don’t take them into the full darkness of it. But if so, it would be tough to decide where to begin.”
“You already mentioned a good starting point,” Godfrey said. “Begin where you first felt that loss of status, that slipping away of your identity that you told me about.” I closed my eyes to think the whole thing through. Almost immediately I sensed the starting point: Behind my eyelids, I saw myself departing Berlin.
“Berlin,” I said out loud. Maybe too loud, because Godfrey jumped up a little. “Berlin,” I said again. “I loved that city like a farmer loves his homestead. More. There was so much more to love in that vibrant, majestic metropolis.”
“Yes,” Godfrey said. “And it’s the very place that we’re still busy bombing into rubble. How do you feel about that?”
“Torn,” I said. “Hopelessly torn. I listen to the news like an addict. I hear about the bombing, and my blood turns into ice. I visualize how the streets I wandered as a child are being turned into rubble. What a loss! But then my mind shifts to that seat of institutionalized gangsterism, that same Berlin, and I rejoice. Let them bomb it all into ruins, I think then. I can’t reconcile the two feelings. It’s agony.”