Silence Read Online Free PDF

facade of the town hall was almost completely overgrown by a wild grapevine. The young leaves lay against the masonry as if they had been waxed in place, glowing with the rich green of spring. The young woman at the residents’ registration counter greeted her pleasantly. A plaque on her desk read, “You are being served by Frau Yvonne Jäckel.” Frau Jäckel frowned with irritation when Rita introduced herself as a journalist and told her she was researching an old missing-persons case.
    “Well, I don’t really know. Such old dates. We have everything after 1950 in the computer, but before that . . .” She looked helplessly at Albers. “What were the names again?”
    Rita smiled winningly. “Therese Peters, née Pohl, and Wilhelm Peters. If I’ve understood correctly, Wilhelm Peters was killed at the end of the war, and Therese left town shortly afterward.”
    The young woman shook her head. She entered the names into her computer, as if by force of habit, and Rita rolled her eyes.
    “Look, the war ended in 1945. Do you have an archive, maybe? I mean, could I have a look?”
    Frau Jäckel was fully occupied with her screen and asked, without looking up, “Do you have the birth dates?”
    “Yes, Wilhelm Peters’s.” Rita took out the copy of the SS card. “Born June 22, 1920.”
    The young woman looked back and forth between the document and the screen. “I don’t understand this,” she said pensively. “I have Wilhelm Peters here, but he wasn’t killed in the war. He was removed from the register in 1951, with the comment, ‘missing.’ ”
    Rita sat absolutely still for a moment. She asked, “Does it say when he went missing?”
    The young woman turned the screen toward Rita. “Look here. Wilhelm Peters, born June 22, 1920, removed from the register March 18, 1951. And down here there’s a comment: ‘Reported missing August 15, 1950.’ ” She scrolled down a little. “And then here. Therese Peters, née Pohl, marriage certificate dated August 25, 1944. Likewise taken off the register March 18, 1951, this time with the comment, ‘Moved to unknown destination.’ ”
    Rita’s thoughts came thick and fast. What was this? The journalist in her scented something. The story that Robert Lubisch had told her could not be true. Had he lied to her? Why would he do that? No, that was unlikely.
    “What does that mean? I mean, why were they both taken off the register on March 18, 1951?”
    Yvonne Jäckel leaned back in her chair, visibly pleased with herself and her database. “There’s an official procedure. They wait a few months, try to find out where the woman has moved, or in case she deregisters in the proper way so that she can register somewhere else. As far as missing people are concerned, I don’t have any personal experience, but I think the procedure is similar.”
    “Can you check for parents or siblings?”
    The young woman tapped at her keyboard. When another visitor, a woman, came into the office, she hurriedly swiveled the screen back into its proper position and gave Rita Albers a brief, apologetic smile.
    “I’ll have another look later if I have time,” she said, almost conspiratorially, “but I don’t think I’ll find anything here. The records of immediate relatives are linked, but I don’t have any more entries here. If the people died first, or deregistered . . .” She shrugged helplessly. “You’d have to get in touch with the municipal archives, or ask at the church. The trouble is, Kranenburg was almost completely destroyed at the end of the war.”
    Rita pointed at the printer sitting on a filing cabinet behind Yvonne Jäckel. “Could you print out the data on Wilhelm and Therese Peters?”
    Equipped with two further documents on the Peterses’ life, she stepped out into the square. She pushed her bicycle down the main street and stopped at an ice-cream stand on an impulse. Four small tables had been put out on the cobblestones for the first time that