Prisoner of the Gestapo:Layout 1 10/08/2009 11:45 Page 56
56 Prisoner of the Gestapo wished to see my mother. This was, of course, an exciting moment for her, and what he had to say was equally so. One has to imagine the atmosphere prevailing in Berlin in those tense war days, the distrust as well as the secrecy which must have pervaded foreign diplomatic circles in that city, and if the position of the Americans there was already tenuous, then surprisingly neither, it seems, did the Japanese escape suspicion, as ‘close’ as they were to the Germans. Having decided that the American embassy was indeed to be the target of his mission, our faithful Japanese proceeded to reconnoitre the territory surrounding it, in order to find out how best to deal with his mission. However, after three abortive trips he concluded that it was not possible for him to take that risk. Firstly, he explained, he was too well known to the German security service, and secondly, the American embassy was too well guarded. Undaunted, he then persuaded the caretaker in the Japanese embassy to take the letter and try to deliver it. Under the cover of darkness and looking quite inconspicuous, the Japanese caretaker circled the building and then, seizing his chance, approached an unguarded door at the rear of the building and deposited it in the letter box. Some time later my father received a letter from the Foreign Office in London to say that a communication had been received via the American embassy in London, addressed to him, and in order to claim it he should call at the US embassy. The letter depressed him intensely, added to which Mother’s change of name was misunderstood, for he somehow concluded that she had remarried. Mother had not explained the situation regarding her faked marriage due to an oversight, although I believe this was primarily because she was being cautious lest the letter fell into the wrong hands and gave the game away. This illuminating episode served to show, that even in times like those, one could never tell who one’s friends were. Whilst this was happening, other events were now gathering momentum which, for me, were to have far-reaching consequences. I have already mentioned Kathleen Smith, the lady who, because of her Irish nationality, had enjoyed immunity from the German authorities. This however did not mean that she did not have to take great care, and because of this our meetings with her were rare. Her ‘immunity’, however, totally belied her sentiments because on the day she decided to pay us a visit, she had already become involved in activities which would have qualified her for instant imprisonment. There were, she explained, a number of escaped British prisoners of war in hiding, in and around the Warsaw area, desperately in need of food and shelter. Some were already taken care of, but more volunteers were required to take them in on a rota system, so that they did not stay in one place for too long.