Free The Auslander by Paul Dowswell Page B

lodged exactly in the V of her jacket, as the BDM manual instructed. She pulled out the collar of her white blouse so it lay flat and even either side of her shoulders, and stood up as straight as she could so her black hair was clear of the back of her collar.
    Her grandmother was always complaining about her hair. ‘A bob, it’s too modern. You look like a flapper. Why look like a hussy when you could grow it long and have some lovely plaits? That would be much more Germanic.’
    Anna was fed up with people chiding her about her hair. That morning, that sullen little BDM brat, Gretchen, who wore a home-made uniform and who always had to march in the middle of the squad so no one would notice, had even said to her, ‘You are dark enough to be a Jew. Got Yids in the family, have you?’ Some of the other girls had sniggered, and Anna had had to fall back on cheap insults.
    â€˜And you are scruffy enough to be an old washerwoman. Can’t you afford a proper uniform?’
    The girl had sneered, but she blushed too. Those words had wounded her. Anna hated herself for saying that.
    Then, at the end of the school day, she had had a tricky conversation with Elke, a girl who had always screamed the loudest at rallies when Hitler drove past in his big Mercedes convertible, and who was always talking about marrying an SS officer. She had sidled up to Anna in the changing room after gym and whispered, ‘Why does the Führer wear a swimming costume in the bath?’
    Anna had looked at her with a blank face.
    â€˜Because he does not like to look down on the unemployed.’
    Anna gave a polite smile and tried to muster an air of disapproval. ‘Really, Elke. The Führer has made great sacrifices for us. And not taking a wife so he can commit himself totally to the German Nation deserves our respect not our mockery.’
    Anna felt like a sanctimonious prig. Elke gave a shrug and maybe she went off to the school authorities to report that Anna Reiter had responded with polite disapproval. Or maybe Elke would spend the night too anxious to sleep in case Anna reported her. Pupils in their school had spent a gruelling four weeks’ hard labour in a youth disciplinary camp for showing such disrespect.
    It was a sad, rotten business, not being able to trust people. Anna had always known that she and her family were different. Finding out who else was like them was a dangerous, treacherous game. The Gestapo, they had heard, sent agent provocateurs to catch people out. It was even whispered someone would tell an anti-Hitler joke, and then report you if you laughed, or even report you if you did not report them for telling the joke. Rumours like this were always going around. It was impossible to tell what was true and what was false.
    Anna bore a striking resemblance to her mother, Ula, who was a magazine journalist. Her father, Colonel Otto Reiter, was on the general staff of the Home Army in Bendlerstrasse. Sometimes Anna thought life would be much easier if her family were like the others. Third Reich robots. The Reiters, when they were alone around their dining table, called them ‘the hundred-percenters’. The ones who were completely in thrall to the regime. Most of them seemed to be. But you could never tell. The staunchest Nazis might be putting on an act.
    Anna also wished she had been born in Sweden, like her cousins Lennart and Tilda. Her mother’s sister, Tante Mariel, had married a Swedish diplomat from the Berlin Embassy in 1930 and had gone to live there that very year. Mariel still came to visit, even now, with the war on. She made no secret of her distaste for the Nazi regime and she worried terribly for Ula and her family.
    As well she might , thought Anna. Ula and Otto had always had friends who were Jews. But then Herr Pfister, their hateful block warden, had warned them that such friendships were un-Germanic, and would bring them to the attention of the Gestapo. The