Why You Should Exercise Your Freedom to Read

In my research for The Collector of Banned Books, I came across a fascinating story that ended up both informing and then getting largely cut from the manuscript due to space issues.

My paraphrase-from-memory of the story is as follows:

There was a university professor who was boldly outspoken about his criticisms of the Nazi party. He knew very well he’d been reported, because Gestapo officers audited several of his classes. They didn’t immediately arrest him, which he assumed was because said criticisms were too far over their heads for them to understand, LOL. Even so, he knew it was but a matter of time before he was shut down, arrested, sent off to a camp as a political enemy. He’d had many friends and acquaintances forced from their positions for similar opinions, most of whom had been either forced into outright hiding or at least forced to abandon their tenured positions at prestigious universities and resort to professorships at small, lesser known colleges in small towns.

When he was called in by the Ministry of Education, he thought the game was up. Thought this was it. Thought he’d leave the place in cuffs.

Instead, he learned that they wanted to hire him. Send him to Italy to create a new German translation of Machiavelli. He glanced down at the file they had for him, saw that it was the official Gestapo-created file…and also saw that it was virtually blank.

No notes about his inflammatory lectures.

No notes about his clear political association.

No notes about all the complaints he knew for absolute fact some of his students had filed.

He was baffled. Completely baffled. But of course, he wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass him by. He accepted the job, went to Italy, and used the time there to build contacts with other resistance fighters. Eventually, years later, he was arrested for some of the activities that came about from those connections and sent to a concentration camp. He did survive the war, though. And when interviewed years later about his activities, he was asked why the Nazi government ever sent him to Italy to begin with.

He’d given it a lot of thought over the years. Because the Gestapo was known for their files. They had everything on everybody. More dirt on people than we can rightly fathom. Their files were known to be meticulous. So why were his so inaccurate?

The only conclusion he could come to was that a sympathizer had altered his files. In fact, he had an old friend slaving away in the bureaucracy who likely would have handled his file as it was moving into Ministry of Education hands, and though he never had the chance to ask this friend, it was the only thing that had made sense.

Someone had sanitized his file. Removed anything that would have made him look bad. Made him, in fact, look so nice and shiny that the Nazis trusted him with a state-sponsored trip abroad.

This story absolutely fascinated me. It first showed me the sad reality that most university professors were facing, how they were sanctioned if they refused to teach Nazi propaganda…but also because it showed that there were unknown, unseen, unsung heroes at work within the Nazi bureaucracy. 

These people saved lives. They helped undermine a tyrannical regime. The fed the resistance. 

And we don’t know their names or their stories.

I imagined one, though. In The Collector of Burned Books, Christian is much the professor in this real life account, left to wonder how he was selected for a sensitive position in Paris and given a military rank when he knew he’d been reported for inflammatory lectures. He knew he had a record, and when the Nazis showed up at his door, he thought he was being arrested, not commissioned.

How?

He can only muse, in the version of the story you can read. But in the original manuscript, I in fact had a third point-of-view character. And soon, I’m going to bring you his story as a tie-in novella, complete with read-along instructions if you want to do a side-by-side reading of this short and The Collector of Burned Books.

Erik Reinholdt joined the police force as a young man. Once a bully himself, his life had been changed by a generous family who set out to make him a friend instead of calling him an enemy. The Bauers influenced him to want to protect and defend instead of intimidate and hurt. That’s what led him to become a police officer…and it was why, as the Nazi Party grew in power, he saw the danger.

He knew what it was to be a bully. He recognized the signs in others.

Eventually, Berlin’s police force became the Gestapo. He still hadn’t joined the Party, so he was relegated to a desk job. Eventually, he had to make a decision: either join the Nazi Party or find a new job.

So he made a decision. He made a decision to stay where he was and see if he could work against them from the inside. He did it with a bit of an attitude. A desire to show the bullies what they got for their intimidation. He took joy in undermining them. In altering files. In erasing incriminating evidence against people and replacing it with glowing recommendations.

It was his form of protest. And it had a profound impact on Christian Bauer’s life.

Of course, Reinholdt’s story is more complex that just an eraser and a grudge. He, too, found himself on a tightrope. And soon, I plan to bring you his story in The Guardian of Secret Truth. (What do you think of that title? It’s still in the works, LOL.) It’s in part a fun addition to the story of The Collector of Burned Books.

But in part, it’s a tribute to all the many people in Germany and beyond during WW2 who fought back wherever they were, however they could. Who found quiet ways to save lives. Who never told their stories, because it wasn’t about them. But whose stories we can guess out, because of the lives forever changed by their resistance.