The Sins of the Mothers

“Good Morning, Miss...’ The man on the other side of the grille looks down at a sheet of paper.

Klara is sure that it is blank.

“… ah, of course. You are Fraülein Klara Pölzl?”

The man puts the blank piece of paper to the bottom of a pile of similarly blank pages on his counter. Klara is standing. Behind her in the queue are several strangely dressed people. Most are younger women in immodest clothing, although one or two are dressed in long robes and veils the like Klara has never seen in Braunau am Inn. Come to think of it, Klara is not entirely sure she is still in her home town. The man behind the grille does look like a typical Austrian Beamte. A functionary from the round spectacles to the faded dark suit via his starched wing-collar. The man tilts his head and stares at Klara.

“Well?”

Klara starts, what does this man want? Klara hasn’t been Fraülein anything for a number of years. A woman with 6 confinements and two surviving children is not usually known as Fraülein, unless she is a Hüre in the fleshpots of Graz or Vienna. The woman who was before her in the queue is walking to a door to the side of the counter. The door is marked “Fehlgeburt”. The woman about to pass through it does not look Austrian either. She has the look of a peasant from some country beyond the Urals, although Klara has seen nothing of such places save in books. The woman changes her mind, passes that door and goes through the door beside it. This door has three words written on it “Wer hat Schuld”. The person who is to blame. Klara feels there should be a question mark. Shouldn’t it read “Who is to blame?”

The official is speaking again, “Come now, Klara, you must declare yourself.”

“But I am married… To Alois, I am no longer Pölzl...”

“We prefer your maiden name here. The woman before you, Keke. She will not bear her name of shame. You, however...’

Klara is not awfully sure what the man is talking about.

‘I don’t… Why am I here?’

‘Come now, surely you know?’

But how can Klara know? She is 47.

The official knows what is to come. What Klara’s 18-year-old Liebling will do. Klara, however, cannot possibly know. The official is being needlessly cruel, as officials often are. As they will be, when Klara’s “darling” is the most powerful man in Europe.

Even officials have mothers, Klara thinks, and the man smiles at her.

‘You must read this.’ He slides a blank piece of paper under the grille.

As soon as Klara accepts the paper, writing appears on the sheet as if it has been written in the invisible ink people say that Bolshevik spies use. At the top is her son’s name. Beneath are numbers, many, many numbers. Words are interspersed, Jüden, KonzentrazionLage and Endlösung. “Final Solution”? What on earth does it mean?

Klara asks the man what it does mean. His smile slides off his face, Klara expects it to land on the blank sheets of paper in front of him.

‘I’m afraid I can’t explain further. You must choose a door.’

It must be a dream, Klara thinks. Dr Bloch’s treatment is experimental. He told her son that he was unsure what the outcome would be. That’s it - a dream. Where would you find a pair of doors with such words on?

The man becomes quite brusque. “Choose!”

He points towards the pair of doors. Klara decides. She takes the door on the right. Klara Hitler will not enter a door marked “Miscarriage”, she has suffered enough of those.

Footnotes:

Klara Hitler née Pölzl had two miscarriages and two further children did not reach adulthood. Only two of her children reached majority. We all know the name of one of them.

Today (March 24^th 2017), the Daily Mail has an article about the mother of the Westminster attacker; an article with a prurient and condemnatory tone. Clearly they think the mother should be hounded in this manner. Not so much the sins of the fathers visited on the sons, more the sins of the sons visited on the mothers.