CHAPTER 1: His Music Will Save the Jews (November 1938)
CHAPTER 1
HIS MUSIC WILL SAVE THE JEWS
(November 1938)
Peter Weinberg, with the gray, piercing eyes, was eleven when he had to face the truth that the world was filled with evil, and there was nothing he could do about it. The Nazi monster, Adolf Hitler, had risen to power in Germany, and he didn’t like Jews, not even the small ones.
That day in November, 1938, Peter pushed back his sun-streaked blondish-brown hair and swept the butcher shop floor, chasing down even the tiniest speck of dust. “A clean floor shows German pride,” his father Henry said. “If you work hard, you can make your own luck.”
“Yes, Father,” Peter said as he put the broom away. But Peter wasn’t sure luck could be made. Not in Germany anyway.
Peter lived with his father, mother, and two younger sisters in a small cozy apartment above their butcher shop in Berlin. Peter’s father, Henry Weinberg, a tall handsome man who walked with a cane, was a good butcher who only sold the best cuts of meat in his downstairs shop and cared for his customers like his family.
“Watch, Peter. It’s all in the motion and the sharpness of the blade,” his father said. He showed him how to wield the meat cleaver and make perfect cuts of meat, the sharp metal slicing through meat and bone in one swift, precise cut. “Set your mind and focus only on the cut.”
“And keep your fingers out of the way,” Peter teased.
His father smiled. “Yes, a butcher’s first lesson. You will be a fine butcher some day.”
Peter cringed inside but practiced his cleaver technique to please his father. He had become remarkably good. However, he preferred to line up the pieces of meat neatly in the display case to make a symmetrical design. Peter thought quality and presentation were a butcher’s focus.
Peter felt comforted by the order of the meat lined up in precise rows in the spotless glass case, waiting to be sold. He loved the consistency of routine, and although he would much rather be listening to music, he enjoyed being with his father in the butcher shop. He could name the cuts of meats before he was four, and he often quietly recited them to calm himself.
Although the Jewish way of slaughtering animals was banned in Germany back in 1933, Peter knew his father continued to use the shechita method. His father told him that he would rather have Hitler mad at him than God.
The door swung open. Frank Soleman, the balding policeman, walked into the shop. The bell on the shop door tinkled right before Bruno, Frank’s German Shepherd, trotted in behind him and barked at the small swinging bell, like he did every week.
“Good morning, Frank,” Henry called out from behind the counter.
“Hello, Henry,” Frank said, smiling.
Peter walked over to pet Bruno, whose bushy tail swung wildly with anticipation. The big dog nuzzled Peter, almost knocking him over. Bruno was tan, with a black face and a patch of black on his back that made him look like he was wearing a dog-size dinner jacket. “Guten Tag, Bruno,” Peter said and laughed, scratching behind the dog’s pointed ears. “Did you come for your bone today?”
Frank smiled at Peter. “Bruno comes to see you. The bone is just a bonus.”
Peter liked Bruno. The dog didn’t care that Peter was Jewish. To the dog, religion was irrelevant. Peter wasn’t allowed to have a dog in the small apartment with his mother’s oversized furniture, or in his father’s shop filled with meat. So he loved it when Frank brought Bruno with him each week. Peter would play with the good-natured, big dog and pretend Bruno was his pet.
Sylvia Weinberg, Peter’s mother, tucked a loose strand of hair into her swept-up do and hurried over to the meat counter. “Frank, Henry saved you a nice beef loin roast. I’ll get it,” she said, smiling and nodding. It was hard not to be happy around Sylvia. Although Henry was the butcher, the customers were really Sylvia’s.
“Danke, Sylvia. I was hoping you’d say that,” Frank said.
“Of course. We’re only the best butcher shop in Berlin,” Henry said.
“That’s why I come here, and also because I live close by.” Frank laughed.
Peter got a big meaty bone for Bruno, threw in some scraps of meat and fat, and wrapped it in shiny white butcher paper he ripped from the huge roll. He tied it closed with a string and handed the package to Frank. “Here is Bruno’s bone, and a little something extra.”
“Thank you, Peter, and Bruno thanks you,” Frank said. “So, how about a song today?”
Six-year-old Becca, Peter’s sister, skipped around the meat counter, carrying Gina, her doll. A dark-haired girl, Becca had defiant eyes and a sassy walk. As much as Peter sought refuge inside himself, Becca was outgoing, spirited, and unbridled. She rolled her eyes. “All he cares about is his stupid violin, and Bruno.”
“Well, all you care about is your stupid doll,” Peter shot back.
“Violins are stupider.” Becca flipped back her curly hair.
“Play him a song, Peter,” Sylvia coaxed. Baby Lilly, Peter’s rosy-cheeked one-year-old sister, sat in a play area in the corner. The butcher shop was truly a family business.
Peter went into the back of the shop and came back with his beloved violin. Once he placed it under his chin, he felt transformed into another person, a bold person of great confidence and emotion. He could imagine doing great and daring things when he played the violin. His small hands orchestrated the melodies that were born from wood, string, and the depths of his soul. The music gave him a feeling of unfettered freedom and unsurpassed bravery, neither of which he felt like he had in real life.
He played a tune called “You Are Not Alone.” It was a song his mother sang to him at night. It helped him go to sleep, kept away his nightmares of the monsters hiding in the corners, and banished that terrifying feeling of hurtling through darkness with no direction and the fear of what would happen when it stopped.
Sylvia smiled and nodded. “That’s my Peter. His music will change the world someday,” she bragged to Frank.
Peter turned away, hiding his face as he continued to play. His face flushed with embarrassment, but he couldn’t hide his smile or the dance of his nimble fingers over the strings.
Frank nodded at the small maestro. Bruno, entranced, thumped down on his hind legs, with his huge tongue hanging out, and watched Peter’s bow seesaw across the violin. The dog’s ears, which always looked like they were saluting, twitched. He was a dog in a dinner jacket that appreciated good music and meaty bones.
Henry, in his white butcher’s apron, leaned on his meat counter. “Maybe your music will save the Jews from Hitler,” he said, smiling at Peter.
A shadow crossed the storefront window where the weekly meat specials were advertised. Frank looked over.
Policeman Karl Radley stood looming in the store window, blocking the sun as he glared at them. Radley, a tall man, about the same age as Henry and Frank, had short blond hair and a very small, thin, turned-up nose that always made him look like he smelled something foul.
As Radley stared through the window, he pointed at Henry and made a slashing gesture across his throat. He turned abruptly and stomped away.
Frank stiffened. He quickly paid for his meat and hustled Bruno out, without waiting for the song to end. Peter, who swayed with the music seeping from his pores, didn’t even notice their abrupt departure. The door bounced shut from Frank’s hasty retreat, and the bell tinkled. Peter kept on playing, locked in his own world where he was in control.
“You shouldn’t have mentioned Hitler,” Sylvia scolded Henry.
Henry waved his hand at her. “Ah, I’ve known Frank for years.”
“I know, but Hitler doesn’t care if you served in the Great War together,” Sylvia pointed out.
Peter’s father was a veteran of the Great War, when the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria had fought the Allies of France, Russia, Italy, the British Empire, Belgium, Japan, and the United States, ending in 1918. Shrapnel from a land mine during the war had left Henry’s strong athletic legs scarred and weak. He had told Peter that wars were started by people in offices and ended by soldiers on the front lines.
Henry was a German hero, but his wobbly legs had drained his spirit. Peter could sense his father’s growing fear of the bold, abusive German soldiers, the same ones he had fought beside as patriots for Germany.
Peter had often heard his parents and their friends discussing the dark and devious tales of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany, had appointed himself Fuhrer. All the armed forces now answered to him. As a dictator, his power had grown, along with his hatred of Jews. His laws had taken rights away from the Jewish people. Hitler was a name whispered when the lights went out, like stories of the Bogeyman: something dark and scary, yet so enormously cruel it could not be real. But Policeman Karl Radley was part of Hitler’s force and Peter could not ignore that Radley was real, and to Peter, much scarier.
Radley was a man of high ambition, but from a loving family of low means. His career options had always been limited, because he wanted power without having to work for it. Although he was strong and determined, he had been refused admittance to the military because one of his legs was a tiny bit longer than the other, and he walked with a slight limp. He had the cobbler make special shoes to hide his imperfection.
Radley’s father had finally helped him secure a job in a bank where his father’s childhood friend was the president, and Jewish. Radley swept, mopped, and emptied the trash. To the arrogant Radley, this was a humiliation he had not been able to accept. In order to compensate for the insult, Radley had done as little work as possible, just to even things out.
One day, before the war had made his legs not work, Henry had entered the bank in his military uniform. The bank president had been confronting Radley, who had been leaning on his mop and bucket instead of cleaning up the snow melted from customers’ shoes. “You do not seem to want to give the effort this job requires. Perhaps you would be happier at another job,” the president had quietly suggested to Radley.
Radley’s slightly trembling hands had balled up in fists. With all the fury and power he had held in for so long, he had attacked the bank president. Henry had defended the bank president, taking a few blows from Radley, but eventually knocking a bloodied Radley to the floor. “Go, before you are arrested,” Henry had ordered.
Radley had wiped the blood from his mouth, and looked at all the customers staring at him. He had kicked the bucket of water and thrown the mop, then stomped out of the bank, promising himself that a Jewish man would never again determine his fate.
A few months later he had taken a job as a messenger for the police, who did not know about the slight difference in his legs because of his special shoes. It had paid less money than the bank job, but Radley had seen an opportunity for advancement and power, something he strongly desired. Radley had been willing to sacrifice anything to move up the ranks.
He had found his first opportunity when he had discovered two high-ranking on-duty officers smoking cigarettes and drinking with women who were not their wives late at night in the police station basement, where the important records were kept. Soon after, those same officers had gladly helped him gain a position as an officer, in exchange for his silence. His special shoes thudded heavily as he walked, and he used it to intimidate. In this manner, he had stomped his way to the top over many years. His proclivity to hatred was primed for the rise of Hitler, and he had eagerly become a Nazi as soon as the opportunity had presented itself.
Peter’s father had known Karl Radley would never be his customer, but he had never imagined that Radley’s grudge against him would last a long time and cause so much trouble.
In the butcher shop that day, Peter put Radley out of his mind, and concentrated on making the music flow from his violin. The violin was his best friend, his escape. When he played the violin, he was happy, and the world was safe. When the music burst into the air, he felt his worries about this man named Hitler, and about Radley, his father’s enemy, melt away, as the melody surrounded him, soothing his fears. He was lost in the songs of his Germany, his home.
