Maybe it would be all right this time.
With that as a background, fund raising for the Hamburg synagogue had been relatively easy and the square bricked building was completed within a year. Now, twenty months after the project had first been mooted, Rabbi Shamiev was about to open the doors to the outside world. There were to be honoured guests that day. Politicians, religious leaders, captains of industry, social officers of the highest office.
It was truly to be an historic day.
Juliet Shamiev had left the two young children with their grandmother. The family lived in a small house lent to them by the city on the southern outskirts of Hamburg. The children would be brought along later to see the ceremony. As she checked the seating arrangements and made sure the dignitaries' name cards were in the correct places, she turned and watched her husband.
He stood at the arc in his black canonical robes. The arc is the cupboard at the front of the synagogue, where in a Christian Church one would find the altar, and represents the Holy Arc in the temple where the tablets of stone that Moses received were stored. Now the arc is the home for each Synagogue's Sefer Torah, that most holy of Jewish books, their bible, where the five books of Moses are read in one year, with one section to be recited each week from the Bimah. The Bimah is the central podium of the synagogue, with a railing surrounding it and two sets of steps, one to enter the Bimah from and the other to exit it. Juliet watched him prepare the scrolls of the Torah ready for that first historic reading that would take place later in the day, the same Sefer Torah that had only arrived two days earlier from Jerusalem and had been specially prepared and blessed by the Chief Rabbi of Israel.
As he went painstakingly about his work, she smiled, proud of what he had achieved and was about to achieve.
It was when she turned back to the seats, her list in her hand, that she saw the first intruder.
He wore a black sweater and black trousers with a red sash around his waist. Over his head there was a balaclava. In his hand he held a wooden baseball bat that he swung menacingly against his thigh.
'Levi!' she heard herself call, the sudden fear nearly choking the words. 'Levi!' she shouted louder.
The rabbi swung round as more intruders burst in. Some carried baseball bats, others spray cans of paint. One man, out of sight of the Shamievs, hauled a large can of paraffin into the entrance.
'What do you want?' asked the rabbi, running forward to protect his wife. She moved backwards until he was beside her and had put his arm round her shoulder. What is it?'
The leaders of the group rushed forward to confront the Shamievs.
'This is a House of God,' continued the rabbi. 'A House of God and…'
'A House of Jews. A House of Filth,' said the first man who had entered the building.
Then he swung his baseball bat and smashed Levi Shamiev across the skull, smashed him before he had a chance to defend himself, smashed him repeatedly until he was dead.
As the others watched this deadly debacle, one of them laughed. 'Fucking Oven Dodgers,' he crowed as the deadly act continued in front of him. 'Jews in a house of filth.'
Juliet Shamiev tried to scream, but a second intruder battered at her and destroyed her young life just as ruthlessly.
Then the invaders painted red hammer and sickles across the walls, destroyed the arc and the Sefer Torah, threw down the petrol soaked rags they had carried in supermarket plastic bags and set fire to the synagogue.
The whole incident took no longer than four minutes.
When he was satisfied, the leader of the terrorists took off his balaclava. He was a young man, of medium height, blond haired with curls that ran down to his shoulder blades. He was thin faced and thin lipped, not a man given to emotion. Across his left cheek there was a raw looking scar. It was a knife wound he had received ten years earlier when, as a policeman, he had stumbled on four thugs robbing a store in East Berlin.
He signaled the others to remove their masks. When they had done so, he calmly led them out of the building that they had just set fire to and disappeared before morning broke above the commuters flooding into Hamburg.
When the fire brigade arrived fifteen minutes later, the synagogue was a burning inferno. But the firemen could still recognise the red hammer and sickles daubed on the outside walls.
'Poor bastards,' said the fireman who found the charred bodies of the Shamievs inside the remains of the building. He didn't know his father had once been a member of the Hitler Youth movement at the end of the War.
'Fucking Reds,' he said, turning to his compatriots. 'Why the fuck can't they let the Jews live in peace? Fucking bastard communists.'
His colleague said little. He was from Leipzig and had come to work in the West immediately after the Wall came down. He had nothing against the Jews, but remembered his father's words. They were the cancer that had caused Germany to fall, the cause of the pain endeared by all Germans since 1945. He kept his silence. To him, the Jews had only got what they deserved.
They've got Israel, he remembered his father saying. We don't need them back in Germany.
Ch. 34
There were ninety American delegates to the Russians sixty. Gone were the days when the Soviets always sent along an equal number so that they could save face and be on a par with the West. Economics and a new order dictated otherwise.
The scientists covered all aspects of space, ranging from metallurgy and fuel to dietary and public relations. They were the world's best and meeting for a common purpose, to divert the developments of war to the fruits of peace.
They were attending a champagne reception, a social coming together before the hard work started. To most of the scientists this was the ultimate moment, the transfer of science from the use of death to the benefit of peace.
Many of the Russians were excited to meet Von Braun. Eager to be close to the legend.
Adam noticed the grey haired man wasn't present. He'd checked the lists and now knew him as Albert Goodenache and he was the Soviet expert on solid fuels. Trimmler was present, as ever with Trudi, and he stayed near Von Braun for most of the reception.
'Ladies and Gentlemen,' said the smart silver haired American administrator who had already made a play for Billie when she came into the room. Adam had taken an instant dislike to this smoothie, saw him as one of the army of men, useless men, who administered the experts and often claimed the glory for themselves. 'Ladies and Gentlemen. Please,' he said into a microphone at the top end of the hall. He smiled, the winner's smile, and held his hands up for silence. Slowly, the sound in the room quietened as the scientists and their guests turned towards the Smoothie.
'I am honoured to be here,' he said, then paused. Behind, the interpreter repeated his words in Russian into another microphone, the two of them carrying on like two dancers always out of step. 'Honoured and privileged. To be here, amongst some of the greatest scientists in the world… and I mean that, to be here at such an historic time, at the threshold of what will one day be seen as the greatest of man's scientific achievements. From now, we can work together on other things, on medicine…on the environment…on making sure that science gives all people, from the poorest to the most fortunate, the opportunity of a better life…So welcome, my friends and colleagues, to this, the first Joint Space Venture between our two great countries. To put man further into space, to find out about the universe, and to do that together by pooling all our resources, all our talents, all our future…as one great scientific movement. We start work tomorrow, today is so that we can get to know each other… I won't say any more, except please raise your glasses and join me in toasting the Joint Space Venture, in our great opportunity, and our hopeful future. To you all…'