Berlin, 1939: The inspiring true story of Libby Schulze-Boysen, a German girl who refused to back down to the Nazis. In the face of evil, she vowed to live by the truth––or die by it.
“Be brave. Don’t run. Fight.” With her eyes tightly shut, tears rolling from under her dark lashes, she felt his lips gently touch her burning cheek. The train on the platform whistled, and he disappeared into the steam.
Nineteen-year-old Libby moves to Berlin to escape her suffocating family––but instead of offering freedom, the city is under siege by the Nazis. Jewish books are burned, storefronts smashed and every day innocent people vanish into thin air. Libby cannot––will not––turn a blind eye.
When Libby meets Harro, she knows there’s more to him than his dazzling smile and cornflower-blue eyes. The whip marks on his back, scars from the SS, tell his true story: he is a resistance fighter.
Libby and Harro fall madly in love, devoted to each other and to tearing down Hitler’s regime. Knowing they can make the greatest difference from the inside, Harro works for the Air Ministry, infiltrating government secrets.
Together, they smuggle classified documents and hold clandestine meetings in the middle of the night, with blackout curtains and a single candle burning. Under the cover of darkness, they distribute leaflets, exposing the Nazis’ hideous lies.
In the frostbitten winter of 1942, Libby is certain the Gestapo is stalking them––their every move watched, their phone calls recorded. In the end, they must decide what is more important: to be free or to be brave? To survive or to stand up for the truth?
Fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Alice Network and The Lilac Girls will be utterly gripped by this heartbreaking page-turner. Based on a true story, this beautiful novel shows that even when our freedom is stolen, we still have a choice…
Readers love Ellie Midwood:
“AMAZING read! I loved this so much!… Sensational… One of the most inspiring love stories of all time… HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMEND. 100% 5 STARS!!” Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“Oh, my heart!… Beautiful, chilling, terrifying, and hopeful… Midwood is a wonder with words––I am so in love… I cried, so have tissues at the ready!… I loved every second!” Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“Soul-wrenching… I have been through boxes of Kleenex… Even writing this review I have tears.” Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“I absolutely loved it!!!… Amazing. It was so beautifully written… Amazingly well done.” Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“One of the few books that have left me reeling for days…
Release date:
October 13, 2021
Publisher:
Bookouture
Print pages:
350
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“Your new desk.” With a somewhat theatrical sweep of his hand, Erich Tischendorf, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios’ publicity department, indicated Libertas’ new workplace.
With mounting horror, Libertas observed stacks of papers towering over the typewriter and not one, but two black telephones buried among magazines and binders.
“Forgive the mess.” Herr Tischendorf—“call me Erich, please”—inclined his meticulously coiffured head to one side. “We have just finished cleaning up the house and certain positions haven’t been attended to in a few days and sometimes even weeks.” He accompanied those last words with a dramatic gaze to the ornate ceiling.
It occurred to Libertas that he belonged on the silver screen rather than a managerial post of the publicity department of the American MGM’s Berlin branch. Everything about him appeared thoroughly rehearsed and even more thoroughly performed. A Clark Gable type—though, sans mustache—he was a polished, refined version of a person, but somehow utterly devoid of personality.
“You ought to dismiss the people in charge of cleaning.” In an effort to lighten the mood, Libertas permitted herself a tentative smile as she motioned her blond head toward the cluttered desk. “If that’s what my desk looks like after their best efforts.”
There was a pause, during which Erich’s expression shifted a few times. He blinked like a confused owl, scowled, blinked again, and at last brightened and burst into relieved laughter. “Ach, you’re such a delight! At long last, a media relations person with a healthy sense of humor. That is precisely what this studio needs. Fresh, sparkling blood to revive this swamp. Marvelous!”
And with that, he grasped Libertas’ palm, gave it a warm parting pressure, and was gone, still chuckling mutely to himself.
It was Libertas’ turn to gaze after him uncomprehendingly.
The true meaning of his words—we have just finished cleaning up the house—dawned on her much later that week; her very first day was spent in a sort of dreamlike state, wandering the studio’s long corridors smelling of floor wax and expensive perfume and admiring the photos of the MGM’s most celebrated actors, directors, and producers: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Edmund Goulding who’d shot the Oscar-winning hit Grand Hotel, and Irving Thalberg, under whose guidance all of these stars had been born.
In her initial investigation, Libertas noticed that a few of the portraits were missing, only golden nameplates were left, indicating those whose likeness graced the wall not that long ago. A worm of a suspicion stirred somewhere in the back of her mind, but she dismissed the thought with her usual idealistic, youthful nonchalance.
Must be replacing them with newer ones, she decided and felt her breath catch in her throat when her gaze fell on another nameplate under the empty spot: Erich Pommer, producer.
Erich Pommer! Unable to contain her excitement, Libertas traced her fingers across the engraved letters of his name in awe. The legendary trailblazer, the founder of the very first German production studio Decla Film, the face of the Weimar film production as the leading producer of the UFA studios, the man who discovered Fritz Lang himself!
However, Libertas’ exhilaration was abruptly interrupted by a workman’s indifferent, “Beg pardon, Fräulein.”
Moving her out of his way, he set his toolbox on the carpeted floor, produced a screwdriver and began to whistle a nationalistic tune to himself as he worked on the screws.
“What are you doing?” Libertas demanded as soon as she had recovered herself.
The worker regarded her as though she had just asked him something impossibly idiotic. “Removing this nameplate?” He arched a thick, unruly brow.
“I can see that.” Her cheeks reddening—more from annoyance rather than embarrassment—Libertas crossed her arms over her chest, challenge audible in her voice. “What I want to know is why you’re removing it? Do you even know who Erich Pommer is? He’s one of the founders of the entire German cinematic—”
“That may very well be so, Fräulein,” the worker interrupted her, “but his name is on the list and so the nameplate must be removed.”
“What list?” Libertas pressed, growing more and more irate at the man’s indifference.
“This list.” Just as unperturbed, he extracted a folded, oil-smudged piece of paper out of the pocket of his overalls and handed it to her.
Snatching it out of the man’s hands, Libertas swiftly scanned the wrinkled document bearing the stamp of the Ministry of Propaganda. It didn’t explain much, simply enumerated names in alphabetical order—actors, actresses, directors, screenwriters, producers—not a single profession was spared a seemingly random purge that still made not the faintest sense to her. Annoyed, she gave it back and made a mental note to take up the matter with her immediate boss, Tischendorf.
But then sorting out the binders on the desk occupied the next few days, and by Thursday, new portraits filled the empty spots in the gallery, and on Friday, Libertas was to meet her uncle Wend and the issue had slipped from her mind entirely.
The Anhalter Bahnhof, the city’s main railway artery, pumping blood in hundreds of different directions from the country’s heart—Berlin—was unusually silent that evening.
“One sort of an SA parade or another is taking place near the Linden,” the bored-looking ticket seller explained. “Torches, banners, all business as it should be. They say the Führer might make an appearance.”
“Oh, well,” Libertas said, nodding knowingly, “that explains the empty stations and dead streets.”
“People love him,” the ticket seller uttered in a toneless voice and something told Libertas that the ticket seller himself didn’t. Noticing a Party pin on her coat’s lapel, he regarded her over the rim of his glasses as though in silent demand, And why aren’t you there, Fräulein?
“I’m meeting my uncle,” Libertas explained, gesturing toward the platform, embarrassed, for no apparent reason, at being taken for a zealous Nazi proudly displaying her pin to everyone who cared to look.
The truth was much more prosaic: Libertas had only joined the Party because the same uncle Wend—now, he was a zealous Nazi indeed—had insisted that it would be much easier for a Party member to secure herself a job in Berlin, and that was the extent of Libertas’ NSDAP affiliations. An artistic soul at the tender age of nineteen, she wasn’t interested in politics and cared about the current state of German affairs even less. The leading Party in power had never affected her life at any rate—a long, aristocratic Prussian lineage combined with a few recent successful investments of her family had long seen to the fact that Libertas could enjoy a lavish lifestyle without working a day in her entire life. But she soon grew bored of the remote familial mansion, horse rides, and writing half-decent poems, deciding that bohemian Berlin suited her much more. She dreamt of the motion pictures but scoffed at the idea of considering acting herself and set her views on something much more meaningful, something that would immortalize her name for years to come, something that—
“Arriving now at platform two—” The voice of an announcer sliced into the glorious pictures her vivid imagination was painting.
Torn away from her rosy dreams, Libertas checked the ornate clock hanging on the opposite platform. The typical Prussian militaristic love of order drilled into her by the serving members of the family, Libertas arrived at the station much too early. Growing bored, she strolled into a first-class women’s restroom, powdered her pale skin, pining for the gorgeous tan she’d sport at this time of the year at her former boarding school in Switzerland, drew a dark-cherry lipstick across her lips and fixed her already immaculate platinum curls. Her most recent admirer had claimed she looked like Greta Garbo. The one before him had compared her to Marlene Dietrich. Libertas had only laughed at them both and declared that she wished to be the novelist Erich Remarque, but from the early twenties, when he was still a journalist, and she laughed even harder at their astounded expressions.
Her aspirations were a man’s aspirations. They only saw a doll-like face and a body to die for in her and that was the reason she left them both and hadn’t looked back since.
The restroom attendant pushed the door open for Libertas and thanked gnädige Frau profusely for a generous tip. Outside, the platform was once again empty, the great swarm of arriving passengers already disappearing through the doors where taxicabs were awaiting them, into the underground tunnel leading to the Hotel Excelsior, and into countless high-end shops selling the latest Parisian fashion for exuberant prices. On one of the polished benches, a commuting businessman was studying the economics section of the newspaper with a look of utter concentration about him.
“Scheiße!”
Startled by the crude curse, Libertas looked up at the man hidden almost entirely by the shadow of a tall limestone column. Dressed with great taste but obviously in some sort of distress, he was struggling with a box of matches, which, judging by their abundance at his feet, must have been wet; cursing at the blasted rain the day before, at the man-servant who had misplaced his favorite lighter, at the entire damned world that could very well go to the devil as far as he was concerned—
“Here.” Flicking her silver lighter with the familial crest on it, Libertas brought the flame to the man’s cigarette.
His face obscured by the rim of his elegant felt hat, he took a deep pull and released a sigh full of such inner torment, Libertas thought someone close to him must have died… or that he had just lost a few millions to a bad deal.
“Rotten day?” she probed gently.
“Rotten life.” He finally removed his hat, raked his hand through his dark hair, and gave Libertas a grin she was familiar with from countless magazines and newspapers.
Fritz Lang. The German director; the genius behind the marvel of the cinematography Metropolis; the mad genius behind the serial killer thriller M that shook the entire world; the dreamer who had sent a film rocket to the moon; the Berlin star always surrounded by cheering crowds of awestruck fans… standing alone in the shadows with a single suitcase at his feet.
Something about the picture should have stirred Libertas’ suspicion, but she was much too excited to process it all. A gasp was already threatening to break off her lips, to turn into a full-blown squeal of pure adolescent delight—
“No, please, don’t!” There was such terror in Lang’s voice, such urgency at the manner in which he grasped at her forearm to pull her further into the shadows, Libertas grew all at once silent and concerned. “I have upset you,” the great German director softened his voice at once, his expression growing wistful. Only now did it occur to Libertas that the signature monocle Fritz Lang always wore in his left eye was missing. His face was still too recognizable without it. That must have been why he replaced the felt hat back on his head, pulling its rim low as it had been before. “Forgive me, please, for ruining your first impression of me in such an inconsiderate manner. I assure you, it was never my intention. I’m only…” He searched for the right words. “I’m only trying to make this particular train ride incognito, if the higher powers allow it to be so.”
“I promise not to make a ruckus and won’t tell your wife that you were traveling to see your lady friend if you sign an autograph for me.” Libertas offered only half in jest, in an attempt to lighten his mood. Some very dark shadows lay around him; she glimpsed their reflection in his hazel eyes, tired and lost, with deep half-moons under them as though he hadn’t slept a night, or even longer.
Lang released a desolate, ghostlike chuckle and shook his head, grateful for the distraction. “I wish my tangled marital affairs were the biggest of my troubles, my darling, but I’m afraid that’s no longer the case. My wife and I have just signed our divorce papers and my lady friend… It’s anyone’s guess if I’ll ever see her again. But enough of my problems. Now, what’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Libertas,” she offered breathlessly, handing him her small leather notebook and a fountain pen.
“Libertas!” Lang exclaimed, regarding her with a renewed interest. “That’s some name. A freedom fighter’s name.”
“My grandfather, Fürst Philipp of Eulenburg, was a composer.”
“Was he now?”
“In his Fairytale of Freedom one of the characters is named Libertas. I’m named after her.”
“And what do you do, with such an artistic genetic pool?” Lang asked teasingly, writing something in her notebook.
“I work for the MGM Studios here, in Berlin,” Libertas announced with pride, itching to see the message Lang was presently inscribing.
“You don’t say?” Lang stopped writing for a moment and looked up at Libertas, this time with a professional interest. “How splendid! You’re not an actress, are you?”
“No. Media Relations department. I haven’t the faintest idea why they hired me in the first place!” Feeling more and more at ease with Lang—he truly did have such a charming personality, Libertas couldn’t help but notice—she began to chatter. “I’m fresh out of boarding school; no work experience; no clue how to do this job whatsoever and they take me on the spot.”
A playful smile slipped off Lang’s face as though someone had just cut the strings from his mask.
Libertas bit her tongue, sensing that she had just said something very wrong at a very wrong time and to a very wrong person, but no matter how much she searched her mind, she failed to come up with a reason.
“They hired you because someone has to do this job.” Even Lang’s tone was tinged with ice now. “So many empty positions. Someone has to fill them.”
“What do you mean?” Libertas searched his face, genuinely at a loss.
He narrowed his eyes at her Nazi Party pin, just now noticing it, then shifted his gaze back to her face. “How old are you, Libertas?”
“Nineteen,” she replied, feeling guilty for no apparent reason.
After that admission, the director’s expression relaxed, the corners of his stern mouth softening, pulled to a rueful smile. “That explains it. Still so young… Do you like this Party business then?” He gestured toward her badge with the pen, as though the very thought of touching it disgusted him.
“This? No!” Libertas tossed her head, covering her pin with a silver fox collar. Persuading him was suddenly a matter of paramount importance. “This was only to obtain a job. My uncle told me that the vetting process… something to do with the Party members… must be of the reliable political status, or some such rot,” she kept grasping at the words in desperation.
When Lang chuckled softly at the final word so unbefitting the well-bred young aristocrat in front of him, Libertas breathed a sigh of relief.
“I assume you know nothing of the recently passed Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service? No, I thought not.” Lang closed the notebook and pressed it gently into Libertas’ hands. For a few moments, his palms were encasing hers while he peered intently into her eyes. “They dismissed all Jews from your studio. From all studios. From all spheres of civil service. Theater, movies, law offices, banks, administrative positions, hospitals. Beautiful, purebred Aryans like yourself must take up their places. This is how you got your job, my darling.”
The whistle of the arriving train pierced Libertas’ chest. Or was it his words that did it? Swaddled in a column of steam, she couldn’t quite tell.
“This is me.” Lang finally released her hands and picked up his suitcase. “Paris, one end, no return ticket… if they don’t arrest me on the border. Never know these days, eh?” He laughed carelessly, but Libertas suddenly felt tears stinging her mascaraed eyes. Lang’s image was swimming in her vision, already dissolving into nothing, just like Erich Pommer’s name, just like so many celebrated names, pried off the walls, deleted from the lists, doomed to oblivion.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, unsure if he heard her behind all the mechanical noise, all the cries of the porters and conductors, all the cacophony of the Bahnhof. “Please, forgive me… I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just be braver than me. Don’t run. Fight.”
With her eyes tightly shut, tears rolling from her dark lashes, Libertas felt his lips gently touching the skin on her burning cheek.
“Little freedom fighter.”
Lang’s train was long gone when Libertas finally found the strength to open the notebook—and cried anew at the message he wrote for her:
Live up to your name, little Freedom Fighter. Perhaps one day I shall make a film about your bravery.
Good luck!
Fritz Lang.
“It was an idiotic thing he did.” Fürst Friedrich-Wend zu Eulenburg und Hertefeld—Uncle Wend only to Libertas—proclaimed at the family dinner that Sunday. The titled head of the familial estate Schloss Liebenberg, dressed in his Sunday finest, raised a crystal goblet to his lips and sipped his wine, before adding in a tone of chill distaste, “Snubbing Minister Goebbels’ generous offer in such a manner. Minister Goebbels offers that half-breed a position of the head of a new agency that would supervise motion picture production in the entire Reich and even proposes to make Lang an honorary Aryan. And what does Lang go and do? Leaves for Paris the same night.” Wend shook his regal head in disapproval. “A typical Jew. First swears that he loves Germany more than life, but at the sign of the smallest challenge runs away with his tail between his legs.”
This entire time Libertas had sat in silence, pushing a piece of duck from one side of the monogrammed plate to the other, but at those words something flared up in her; some spark of resentment she couldn’t even explain to herself. “Now, I don’t think that’s fair, Onkel,” she protested, dropping the silver fork onto her plate louder than she had intended. “That anti-Jewish law they have just passed cannot, in all good conscience, be called ‘the smallest challenge.’ And neither can Herr Lang be called a coward. He fought for his native Austria in the Great War and was decorated for bravery several times.”
“Lang fought in the war?” Her uncle arched his brow in mild surprise. “Hm… I wasn’t aware of that. Oh!” His expression suddenly brightened as he turned to his fellow officer, changing the subject. “You will not believe whom Minister Goebbels has just appointed to the position of…”
Wasn’t aware or simply didn’t care one way or the other, Libertas mused grimly to herself, losing all interest in the political gossip and resuming pushing her food around the plate. She loved her Onkel Wend, but this was always the case with him—rejecting or dismissing anything that didn’t fit his narrative.
“Perhaps, you’ll get a chance to see your favorite director’s newest motion picture Minister Goebbels has banned,” Wend called out to her teasingly over the gilded candelabra. “He plans to have a private screening for his guests after his birthday dinner. You’re invited as my date. Delighted?”
“On account of Herr Lang’s film, yes,” Libertas grumbled under her breath.
At once, Wend broke into laughter. “A feisty little thing, my Libs, isn’t she?” he demanded from his uniformed audience just to be met with a grumble of approval and subservient chortles from both the army officers and industrialists.
Wend was one of the biggest donors of the Nazi Party. It was one of the NSDAP’s obligations to laugh at his jests. Even his niece’s defiance was regarded with a sense of amused adoration instead of condemnation. They all looked at her as though they found her positively delightful just then, a young girl too pretty to understand what she was saying.
“Libs, be a darling, play accordion for us,” Wend asked and pressed his hand to his decorated chest as he turned to his guests. “You ought to hear her play. She is a wonder with an accordion.”
Suppressing a sigh of resignation, Libertas rose from her chair and went to retrieve her accordion, wondering how it was possible to be so disillusioned in Berlin in a span of a few short days. She had come here hoping to make a difference and a name for herself; now, she saw precisely what she was for the men of the new Reich—a beautiful ornament for a dinner party whose words didn’t matter and whose voice was only valuable when it sang patriotic songs for them.
Freedom Fighter, her foot. A usurper who had unwittingly stolen a position from an unfortunate Jew, who was certainly much more qualified for it than her. That’s all she was.
The commotion outside her office window was certainly unusual that morning, but Libertas was too preoccupied with her duties to pay any heed to the shouts of SA commanders and grumbling of truck engines that appeared to be in constant motion since dawn.
“May I speak with Herr Best, please? Libertas Haas-Heye, MGM publicity department… Certainly, I can hold for a couple of minutes.”
With a black phone squeezed between her ear and shoulder, Libertas was writing a memo from her last conversation: Die Dame magazine agreed to review Dancing Lady as well; requested an interview with Joan Crawford—see if it’s possible to organize; Frankfurter Zeitung wants new photos of Gable and Astaire from the shoot itself—call Hollywood pub. dep. and request to send some for their June issue. Organize a reception for Hardy—
A familiar voice on the phone interrupted her train of thought. At once, Libertas’ face blossomed into a well-rehearsed smile. “Herr Best!” Glimpsing the time on her golden wristwatch, Libertas noted with a sense of surprise that scarcely a minute had passed. All of the celebrated editors of the glossiest periodicals, who used to make her wait on the phone for twenty minutes and force her to call back multiple times a day pretending to be thoroughly busy and utterly unavailable, now snatched up the phone from their assistants within moments of her name being announced. “How are you today? It is such a pleasure to be talking to you again. Oh, the flowers?”
The editor was gushing about the bouquet Libertas had sent to the editor for the glowing review his team had written for MGM’s latest sensation, Dancing Lady. A small personal touch that caused discontent and grumbling among the publicity department’s accountant, but which Libertas’ immediate superior Erich Tischendorf found perfectly ingenious.
“That was the least we could do to express our utmost gratitude, Herr Best.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “Promise not to tell anyone, but—and I’m saying it on the most reliable authority—Film Kurier is MGM’s favorite magazine. You have my word! Ha-ha, Herr Best, you are such a darling…”
If only Herr Best knew that Libertas repeated the exact same words and heaped the exact same praises on every editor she dealt with, no matter how big or small, he would most certainly lose the smug expression Libertas strongly suspected he was wearing. But it was precisely such flattery and well-rehearsed intimacy she had cultivated with the press in the course of one short month that had shot Libertas’ star straight into the Berlin MGM’s stratosphere. Erich Tischendorf wouldn’t stop singing her praises to everyone who agreed to listen and ran to Libertas for “expert advice” whenever an issue with one periodical or another arose or a stubborn star refused to be bothered with another interview.
The studio’s head himself, Frits Strengholt, was known to pop into Libertas’ office for a cup of coffee—an unimaginable occurrence for a man who usually ignored the greetings of his employees as though they were invisible and unworthy of his attention.
“Naturally, Herr Best. I’m quite certain an exclusive can be arranged with the director.”
Libertas cringed at the particularly loud series of shouts filling her office through an opened window and silently cursed an SA blockhead issuing them. Pulling the cord after herself, she took the phone to the window and, after placing it on the sill, pulled the window closed. Behind the glass, ant-like men in SA uniforms were running to and fro, building a pyre of sorts as their commanders looked on. In the distance, a great number of trucks covered by tarpaulin were lined up.
“Oh no, he’ll agree to it all right. Don’t fret, I know how to talk to him.” Almost genuinely, she laughed at the editor’s, I have no doubts in your abilities, Fräulein Haas-Heye. “I know, I know; he imagines himself God’s gift to mankind, but what can you do? You know those directors, and particularly gifted ones. They’re all a bit full of themselves. He won’t say no to me though, I can personally guarantee you that… Oh, Herr Best, you’re such a flatterer! It’s all settled then. All right. I know how busy you are and won’t take up any more of your precious time. I’ll contact you as soon as I set up the meeting with him… Of course! You too… Always my pleasure. Good day.”
Libertas had just returned the phone back in its place when one of the studio’s photographers, Inge Bissen, burst into the office, camera at the ready.
“Libs, I need a photo for tomorrow’s special issue of the Beobachter. Sit at your desk, give me your widest smile, and make it snappy! They never bother to warn us, which means I’ll be developing these all night again. There go my date-night plans…”
At those words, Libertas’ smile emerged genuine and bright, reaching the corners of her pale blue eyes. Fixing the white lace collar of her otherwise professional black woolen dress, she sat in her chair and folded her hands over the countless memos and glossy magazines.
“What is it for?” Libertas inquired after Inge finished snapping a few shots.
The photographer widened her eyes at her MGM colleague. “I told you, for the special issue, dedicated to tonight’s burning of the books.”
“Burning of the…?” Libertas blinked a few times, drawing a complete blank.
“Oh,. . .
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