In Ways Unimagined is the first of two novels comprising Jerome Ostrov’s World War II saga, When Country Calls. The story begins in 1933 Hamburg and follows the life of anthropologist, Anton Sternbloom, as he reels from the depths of loss in Germany and reclaims his life in England. There, he overcomes the obstacles of the day and achieves fulfillment in the halls of academia, the rarified precincts of British intelligence, the code breaking world of Bletchley Park and the unforgiving battlefields of 1942 North Africa.

Though centered on the prejudices and hatreds of the day, the story is about indomitability in a world spiraling toward war. Touching on both sides of the Atlantic, the novel tracks the darkening events on the European continent as it follows Anton’s life and his rediscovery of love, faith and family. Against the backdrop of the 1930s and early 1940s, the reader is introduced to such real and fictional characters as SA Brownshirt lieutenant Wilhelm Velten, elderly war widow and raconteur of Jewish life on the Polish shtetl Selma Zorrofsky, kibbutz Rabbi Chaim Goldston, scorned German General Walther Geitel, Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas, MI6 deputy director Alex Braxton and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Prologue:

Hamburg, Germany

April 1933

n January 30, 1933, Paul von Hindenburg, the respected 84-year-old second president of the Weimar Republic, scarcely concealing his contempt for the unrefined and bad-tempered Adolph Hitler, gave in to a right-wing coalition led by Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and appointed Hitler as chancellor of Germany. Still, Hitler lacked absolute legislative power since his Nazi party controlled only a third of the seats in the Reichstag, the German Parliament.

Then, a remarkable sequence of events launched Hitler into unchallenged control of the country. On February 27, flames rose from the Reichstag building and, before firefighters could arrive, the conflagration engulfed the venerable building’s Chamber of Deputies. The authorities apprehended one man, Marinus van der Lubbe, a disabled Dutch bricklayer and member of the Dutch Communist Party. For Hitler, van der Lubbe’s capture was the call to arms he had long sought—the opportunity to claim the Reichstag fire was a communist plot intended to bring the country to its knees. Forcibly, Hitler again prevailed on Hindenburg to grant him emergency powers to respond to the claimed communist perfidy. Once again, the aged president acquiesced and, under the emergency powers of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, issued the infamous Reichstag Fire Decree.

The decree gave Hitler the power to suspend almost all human rights in light of the perceived national threat. Hitler used this authority to enhance the power of the Nazis by pursuing Communists in the legislature and by bullying opponents from other political persuasions. Ultimately, Hitler’s henchman swept the Reichstag clean of Communist Party deputies, with 81 of them being arrested.

With the Communists out of the way and many other deputies intimidated into leaving, Hitler then used his emergency powers to decree that new national elections would occur on March 5, a mere six days later. When the vote was taken, Hitler’s Nazi Party was clearly ascendant, but it still had not won a majority of the seats in the Reichstag.

Then the Nazi storm troopers went to work. All over Germany, Ernst Rohm’s feared Brownshirts, the Sturmabteilung or SA, and Heinrich Himmler’s smaller but fiercely loyal Leibstandarte, the soon-to-be SS, engaged in intimidation tactics against the other parties. The stage was set for a devastating blow in the Reichstag. Two weeks later, on March 23, the thunderbolt arrived. At the Kroll Opera House, the Hitler-led coalition, buoyed by chanting SA and SS thugs, steamrolled new legislation over a frightened Reichstag assembly. Termed the Ermachtigungsgesetz, or Enabling Act, the newly enacted laws arrogated all authority to the Nazi party. In the wink of an eye, the Reichstag and the Weimar Constitution had been eviscerated.

With the nation struggling under the yoke of wartime reparations and the demoralizing shortages brought on by the worldwide depression, Hitler’s Nazi Party had its choice of issues to pursue. Alarmingly, it chose to go after the Jews. One of Hitler’s first acts was the orchestration of a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses throughout Germany. On April 1, SA troopers stood by threateningly as throngs of ordinary German citizens picketed Jewish establishments, hurled indignities at the storeowners and engaged in vandalism.

Seven days following the boycott, on April 8, the German government passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service—an edict designed to end Jewish involvement in all avenues of public and university life. The law was merely a formalization of Hitler’s unrelenting fulminations against the Jews. Shaken by the barrage of hateful rhetoric, many Jews had already chosen to leave prominent roles in government and academia or had announced their departures. Now, unceremoniously, all of them, no matter their accomplishments and no matter their renown, had been put on notice that their time was short.

*****

The exodus of scholars during Hitler’s rise had the effect of decimating many institutions of higher learning. One such place, the University of Hamburg, saw more than 50 of its finest professors—all of them Jews—leave or signal they intended to leave. As our story begins, the number of academics clinging to their scholarly positions at this estimable institution has dwindled to two.

The first is Anton Sternbloom, the tall, redheaded cultural anthropologist. Anton is a devotee of the work of another German Jewish anthropologist, Franz Boaz, who now teaches at Columbia University in America. Demonstrating great scholarly grit, Boaz had challenged the popular notion that all societies progressed through three hierarchic stages—savagery, barbarism and civilization—with Western Europe, especially Germany, having advanced more rapidly than any other culture because of inherent biological endowments.

Instead, Boaz postulated that human development could be explained by reference to a core set of cultural traits and that these traits were the product of human interaction and the diffusion of ideas. Anton has credited his own work with the primitive peoples of Africa to Boaz’ groundbreaking study of the Eskimos of Baffin Island, entitled The Central Eskimo.

Then there is Gottfried Epstein, the slight-in-stature quantum physicist who trained under Ernst Pauli, the remarkable Viennese scientist of Jewish descent. Pauli’s exclusion principle, that no two particles can occupy the same space, was developed during his five years at the university. Epstein’s follow-up work has brought considerable recognition to the institution and has also attracted a strong student following.

Today, Anton sits at his desk and reflects on the advice of his confidant, Ehrlich Von Stahl, a gentile and a leading light of the university faculty. Even before enactment of the odious Civil Service Act, Von Stahl had been adamant in his insistence that Anton leave Germany or he would be engulfed by the tide of anti-Semitism sweeping the country. Anton has wondered about Von Stahl’s advice and has even pursued an opportunity or two. Anton wonders no more, for today, the number of Jewish faculty members intending to remain at the university has dwindled to just one. Epstein has lost his post, despite his high academic standing. Even worse, he has almost lost his life, a victim of the rabid Hamburg Student Union and its Jew-hating minions.

On this eighth day of April 1933 in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, as it has been known for centuries, Anton now finds himself the only Jewish faculty member who has not announced his intended departure from the university. As he dons his coat, unsettled by the day’s events, he knows what he has to do.

I just finished your book and can’t wait to begin the second one. I’ve told so many people about the book and they can’t wait to read it.

I put you up there with Joel Rosenberg and Ronald Balson. I always enjoy reading their books as well.

Looking forward to many more books by you Jerry.

Sue

Author Jerome Ostrov is a retired attorney and incurable story teller. In writing In Ways Unimagined and its sequel, Someone Waiting for You, Jerry has sought to give his children and grandchildren and readers of all ages an insight into how different the world was not long ago.