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72

March 20, 1933

Munich Police Department

Directorate 22, the Bogenhausen District

“I’M SORRY, FRAU GERLICH,” said the police officer standing behind the desk. “I have no further information.”

“Telling me my husband’s in protective custody tells me nothing!” cried Sophie Gerlich. “Where is he? What is he accused of? How can I see him?”

Sophie turned. Behind her, a line had formed out the door and down the block. Everyone wanting to know the same thing—the location and status and well-being of a loved one, scooped up by SA storm troopers and dragged off into “protective custody” pursuant to the Reichstag Fire Decree.

“Is that what you’re going to tell every single one of us? Protective custody? You have no idea—”

“They tell us nothing, Frau Gerlich. By now, you should know that. You’ve come here every day for almost two weeks—”

“And I will keep coming every day. You’re the police. How could you not know?”

The officer, an older man with a kind face, raised his hands. “We are the police, yes, but we have no control over the SA or the SS. We don’t even—”

“Please.” Sophie grabbed his arm, tears welling in her eyes. “Please. I don’t even know if he’s alive.”

He patted her hand. “If I knew something, I would tell you. All I can tell you is to wait for them to contact you. I’m sure they will.”

73

March 23, 1933

Dachau concentration camp

Dachau, Germany

HE WAS WITH HIS beloved, stroking her hair, gently rubbing her back, taking in her flowery scent, when he heard, off in the distance, the tinny echo of percussion. Then something clicked inside him and ripped him from his dream. The sound was a gong. The gong that signaled the wake-up call at four thirty in the morning.

Fritz Gerlich started awake, sitting up on the rickety bed, screaming pain running up his neck, the top of his head scraping the ceiling overhead. He felt for his glasses, which were buried somewhere in the thin wool blanket in which he was wrapped. Before he could see, he could smell—smell the stench of two hundred men forced into hard labor during the day but not allowed to bathe or even change their clothes at night. In the mornings it felt like waking up inside a barn full of livestock.

“Day fourteen,” he whispered to himself. Keeping track of the days of his confinement was a small way for him to keep his sanity, to remember the world outside this prison.

Below him, his bunkmate groaned. Christian Grotewald was one of the first to arrive here nearly a month ago. He told Gerlich he’d been roused from bed and taken into custody on the night of the Reichstag fire on February 27. While under arrest, he was reelected to a third term in the Reichstag as a Social Democrat. “Welcome to the Hotel Dachau” was how Grotewald had first greeted Gerlich.

A wave of frigid air whooshed into the barracks as the doors burst open, an SS guard marching in and banging a metal spoon against a pan. “Roll call in thirty minutes!” he yelled, moving through the garrison filled with fifty bunks on each side.

Gerlich’s body ached from sleeping on a cushion so thin he could feel the wood logs beneath it, with a wool blanket that did not even reach his toes. He managed to climb down to the floor, where he found his bunkmate with his eyes squeezed shut.

“On your feet, Christian,” said Gerlich. “We haven’t much time.”

“I can’t move.” Eleven-hour days of hard labor, eating next to nothing, and sleeping almost directly on logs every night had more or less broken him.

“You’ll feel better once you get to your feet.” Gerlich grabbed Grotewald’s wrist and pulled. “Let’s get in line for the sink.”

By the time they reached the line, men were stacked forty, fifty strong, hoping for the minimal opportunity to rub a small nub of soap between their fingers and wash some part of their body before roll call. Never before had Gerlich felt so inhuman—his uncleaned teeth covered in a grimy film, a dirty beard formed on his face, his skin itchy and blotchy from this striped coverall through which he had sweated for several days in a row now.

“What day is it?” Grotewald asked as they stood in line.

“Thursday, March twenty-third.”

“The vote is today,” Grotewald said. “The Enabling Act. Or I should say, it was supposed to take place today.”