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.
2. A new slur was painted on the door within sixteen hours.
3. 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.
A GOOD GIRL
In November 1940, when Max Vandenburg arrived in the kitchen of 33 Himmel Street, he was twenty-four years old. His clothes seemed to weigh him down, and his tiredness was such that an itch could break him in two. He stood shaking and shaken in the doorway.