INTO ENEMY TERRITORY

This extract is Hans Neumann’s first-hand account of his journey from Prague to Berlin in 1943. Ariana found it in the box of papers her father left her, among the pages of a memoir he began to write but never completed.

There were five others in my compartment, their faces hidden, like mine. The darkness is why I chose this train, this hour. It must have been close to dawn, four hours since we had left Prague… The others might have slept, but I couldn’t. I was too afraid…

I prayed the identity check would be quick in this compartment – a swift formality. I owed

Míla (my girlfriend) the passport also. She was the one who finally convinced Zdeněk. Things were awful enough, no one wanted to take unnecessary risks, so to have this passport was a miracle. On arrival, I was to post the passport back to Prague so that Zdeněk could use it to travel back to Berlin in three days. Helping me meant that they were both risking their lives. Zdeněk had not wanted to let me down but he was terrified for his sake and mine. He was scared that I couldn’t pull it off. My main worry was the photo in Zdeněk’s passport.

Zdeněk’s face was much thinner and more angular than mine. His eyes, like clever piercing darts, were unlike my large green ones. ‘You have the dreamy eyes of an artist,’ my mother had always said.

The train stopped.

I heard voices that I assumed to be the conductor and the border police. I took the thin glass vial covered in brown rubber from my pocket and placed it at the back of my mouth. I held it between the lower back left molars and the side of my mouth. I was told it would take only a few seconds, a minute at most. Cyanide poisons your nerves so the brain dies first, then the heart.

Would death be easy, or would I feel unspeakable pain?

‘Passports,’ a German voice said.

They were not asking for other papers, just passports. Not the papers with the other name. I took a breath. In the darkened carriage, the handheld beam lit up each passport held by every extended hand. Three men had the light flash in their faces, two remained obscured under their hanging coats. I pretended to be asleep. The guard shook me. I kept my face hidden beneath the coat, my eyes half closed. My hand moved the coat a few centimetres to show deference and offered him the passport. He looked at it for a few seconds. I was certain that he must be able to see my heart pounding in my chest.

‘Danke schoen, mein herr,’ he muttered as he closed it and handed it back. I waited a few minutes to make sure they were gone. The train heaved forward and I was able to breathe again. I coughed and spat the ampoule into my hand. I placed it carefully back in my pocket. I could need it again.

I slept until we pulled into the station in Berlin. It was mid- morning. I placed the passport in an envelope which I addressed to Zdeněk at the Central Post Office in Prague and sent it through the Reichspost. If I was caught now there would be no more danger to Zdeněk. The warming sunlight shone in between the buildings as I stepped outside. Suddenly my briefcase felt very light. It was a beautiful spring day in Berlin in May 1943, the fourth year of the Second World War.

Berlin. There I was now Jan Šebesta, a Czech chemist looking for a job and a room to rent.©

When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains, by Ariana Neumann, is published on Thursday (Scribner, £16.99)

Hans – living as Jan Šebesta – in Berlin in 1943 with his friend and protector Zdenek