“The Germans are punishing the Allies severely. Hitler is trying to take over all of Europe. Our losses are heavy so far, but so are theirs.”
“Any word about your going overseas?” his father asked with a look of concern, and Robert shook his head.
“Not for now anyway. They’re keeping me pretty busy at my desk. They still need a few of us at home, and I’m no kid, Dad. It’s the young ones, the boys, they’re sending into combat.” The war was being heavily fought from the air, and men were being parachuted into Germany, Italy, and France. As an officer, and at his age, Robert wasn’t likely to be one of them. There had been talk about sending him to England, with a legal corps on loan to the Royal Air Force. But he wasn’t assigned to the unit when they went.
Robert wasn’t shipped to Europe for another two years, and went as part of the D Day operations in 1944. They sent him over in March, and he was with the landing operation of American, Canadian, and British forces on the beaches of Normandy in June. One hundred and fifty-six thousand men were among the Allied forces on D Day, and Robert was one of them. He remained in France afterward, as they liberated the country village by village, and at the end of the year, and into early 1945, he joined one of the units that liberated the concentration camps in Germany, which affected him profoundly. He saw Auschwitz after the Russians had freed it. He had never seen anything as horrendous in his life. And he was part of the unit that had freed Dachau. The prisoners they found, starved and suffering, literally died in their arms. They called for all the medical assistance they could deploy there, but it was too late for most of them. Corpses lay in stacks and littered the ground. Robert and the other men couldn’t hold back their tears as they tried to help them. It brought home as nothing else could have the horrors of the war, and the crimes against humanity Hitler and his men had committed in Germany and all across Europe.
Before Robert returned from Europe, after France was liberated and the Germans had surrendered, he signed up for the legal team that would be prosecuting war criminals in Germany. He explained it to both Janet and his parents when he was back in New York. It was something he felt he had to do, to right the wrongs he had seen. Janet was sympathetic, but his father was somewhat stunned. They missed him at the law firm and Bill McKenzie had just been appointed a federal judge, which meant that no family member would be running the law firm in Robert’s absence. But they had a competent managing partner who had things under control.
“How long do you think you’ll be gone?” his father asked him.
“I don’t know,” Robert said honestly. “A year or two.” Or longer. He couldn’t judge it, and he didn’t receive confirmation of the assignment for another month after he got home. It would mean staying in the army for the duration of the trials, which he didn’t mind. And when he talked to Janet about what he’d seen in Dachau, with tears streaming down his face, she understood what it meant to him and agreed with his decision.
He got his orders to report to Nuremberg, where the trials would open and be held. They already had a prison full of men to bring to trial, with survivors of their atrocities to testify against them. Their crimes were legion and inhuman, the number of people they had killed astounding. Robert was to be part of the International Military Tribunal established by the Americans, British, Russians, and French, who collaborated to set the ground rules of the trial. There were four Allied judges and four main prosecutors. Sir Geoffrey Lawrence was the president of the tribunal. There were numerous attorneys of all four nationalities, and many assistants. Prosecutors and judges were designated. The trials were to be held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. And there was a prison capable of housing twelve hundred prisoners. The American legal team alone consisted of 640 lawyers, researchers, secretaries, and guards. It was assigned the task of proving the conspiracy charges brought against the defendants.
With considerable negotiation, Robert was granted permission to bring his family, and housing would be provided. A number of houses had been rented for the officers, and a few were bringing their wives and children with them, though most members of the tribunal were not. Meredith was shocked when her parents said they were moving to Germany for a year or two, or maybe longer, and she would be joining them. She was nine years old and liked her school and her friends. She attended Marymount, and her grandfather told her that moving would be a wonderful opportunity to learn German, which sounded terrible to her.
“But they’re bad people, Grampa! That’s who Daddy has been fighting,” she reminded him, as though he had forgotten.
“They’re not all bad, Merrie. And many of them suffered at the Nazis’ hands. The men who committed the crimes have to be punished. That’s a very important assignment for your dad. You should be proud of him.”
But for the first time, the war was going to affect her directly, and she was afraid to go there. “Why can’t I stay home with Adelaide?” she begged, about their familiar, comforting housekeeper, who also cooked for them and had worked for them since Meredith was born. She loved sitting in the kitchen with her, helping her shell peas or clean string beans. Adelaide walked her to school in the morning, and had children of her own. Her only son had been killed in the war, and she had two daughters. And Adelaide loved Merrie. It had been decided that she would continue to care for the apartment while they were away, and they assured Meredith that she would be waiting for them when they came home.
“What if I forget how to speak English? And how will I go to school there?” Meredith asked, panicking, and her parents and grandparents reminded her again and again that it was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the world, and for her father to help people, and it was a very special job.
Robert left a month before they did, and was working hard on his German to become fluent before the trials. Meredith and her mother arrived to find a small, tidy house that was simple but immaculately clean. The widow who owned it lived in the basement in an apartment she had created for herself, and was happy to rent her home to Robert and his family. She spoke no English but made delicious cookies, and had recommended a young neighbor girl, Anna, to cook and clean for them and help take care of Meredith. Anna had lost three brothers and her father in the war, was supporting her infirm mother, and was grateful for the wages Robert offered her. And he wanted her to teach Merrie German. If they stayed long enough, he hoped Meredith would transition from the school provided for the children of U.S. Army personnel to a local school, but Meredith didn’t like that idea at all.
She looked at Fraulein Anna with suspicion from the moment they arrived. The pretty young blond woman chatted easily with her in German, pointing to things and telling Meredith the correct word. She wore her hair in braids and was very thin after the rigors of the war, but she was willing and kind. Within six months of their arrival, Janet discovered that she was pregnant, and was relieved that Anna said she would help with the baby too.
Meredith wasn’t happy about it when they told her she was going to have a sister or brother. She was almost ten by then, and she told her parents that if they had to have a baby, she wanted it to be a girl. Robert and Janet discussed the possibility of Janet’s going home to have the baby. Germany was still disrupted and many doctors had been Jewish and had died in the camps. Janet didn’t want to see a German doctor, but the military medical corps provided all the care they needed, and she insisted that she didn’t want to be away from Robert, and Meredith was doing well in school and making friends. The war trials had proven to be so complicated, with so many criminals to prosecute, that she didn’t think Robert would be able to leave anytime soon. So they decided to stay, and the baby would be born in Germany. By then, Meredith and Fraulein Anna were fast friends, and Meredith was fluent in German. She transferred to the local school, as her father had hoped she would.