Radio Messages for Rosa: Installment 4

Rachel Neuwalder

Shanghai, 1932

She had been in Shanghai for something over two years when Johnson told her that it had been decided that she was to go to Moscow for special training, then return to Vienna to complete her education.?

“Psychology is a good choice. When you have your graduate diploma you can establish a private practice.? It’s a respectable profession with a number of advantages; for example, no one will think it odd if many different visitors come to your office. Have you a specialty in mind?”

“If possible I would like to become a Psycho-analyst.”

“Really?? Rather dubious, but a good cover. So you know that movie by Lang, Dr. Mabuse?”

“No, why?”

“It isn’t important.”

“And you?”

“I’ll stay here as long as I can.”

“And then?”

“You know better than to ask.? But since you did, I haven’t been home to Berlin for a long time.”

From the Shanghai North station to Peking main station, then a train to Harbin. In Harbin, at a certain address, she was given tickets and another passport for the week-long journey through the Siberian birch tree forests back to Moscow, to the Yaroslavski station with its steeple and inverted, truncated-funnel roof.

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Rachel Neuwalder

Moscow, 1932

The buildings of the OMS school were surrounded by a double fence patrolled by armed guards and dogs.? The school’s curriculum included languages, geography, history, Morse code and the encoding and decoding of messages.? There were also lessons about how to construct radio transmitters and receivers.

?“We start with an ordinary Marconi shortwave receiver.? These are quite common.? No one will look at it twice. We then turn it around and take off the back cover, like this.? Remember to unplug it. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.? There we are.”

“It looks like a rat’s nest.”

“That’s fine.? Now, this model has five valves: these glass tubes. They make it possible to receive electro-magnetic radiation from the ether and convert it into sound. Now we will modify this rat’s nest, as you call it, to do the opposite: to produce electrical impulses that can be transmitted over great distances.? Perhaps you know that at the beginning of the century the Italian, Marconi, who invented this kind of radio, even then was able to send signals as far as across the Atlantic. What we need to do is build another, smaller, rat’s nest, using just three valves, and attach it to the radio in this place.

“Here are the other valves: a small one for the oscillator, the medium one is for the buffer/driver, and the large one is the final.? We will also need these other parts and a housing.? You should be able to get all these even in small towns.? We assemble them in their housing in such a way that it is easy to attach or take off.? Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

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?Within a few weeks she was able to modify half a dozen types of shortwave receivers to function as transmitters.

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?“Our next task is to use the transmitter to send a message.? Since we use Morse, as does everyone else, we change the letters into numbers in the Morse code. However, if we do just that any child can read it.? Therefore we further conceal the message by changing those numbers into others.? First, we decide on a key word, let us say ‘number’.”?

“Why ‘number’?”

“It’s just an example. After that we arrange all the other letters, in alphabetical order, under the ‘number’ group, omitting the letters already used in the key word, like this:

N???????? U???????? M???????? B????????? E????????? R

A???????? C????????? D???????? F????????? G???????? H

I?????????? J?????????? K???????? L????????? O???????? P

Q???????? S????????? T????????? V???????? W???????? X

Y???????? Z????????? Signal?? ? .???????? -?????????? -

“‘Signal’ means a change in the message from letters to figures, while ‘.’ of course means a full stop.?

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?“Then we assign a number to each of the letters of the key word, like this:

N???????? U???????? M???????? B????????? E????????? R

13??????? 20??????? 12??????? 1????????? 4????????? 17

“Here we’ve numbered the letters in alphabetical order, starting with 0 for A, but in practice we assign the numbers at random.?

“Now we convert each letter to a number, following the example of those in the key word, like this:?

N???????? U???????? M???????? B????????? E????????? R

13??????? 20??????? 12??????? 1????????? 4????????? 17

A???????? C????????? D???????? F????????? G???????? H

0????????? 2????????? 3????????? 5????????? 6????????? 7

I?????????? J?????????? K???????? L????????? O???????? P

8????????? 9????????? 10??????? 11??????? 14??????? 15

Q???????? S????????? T????????? V???????? W???????? X

16??????? 18??????? 19??????? 21??????? 22??????? 23

Y???????? ?? Z?????? ???? .?????? ???? -????? ??? -?????? ??? -

24??????? ? 25????? ? 26????? ??? -?????? ??? -?????? ?? -

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“Let us say we have the word ‘Germany’ in a message.? Using our code, that would be 64171201324, which we would transmit in groups of five, for further security: 6 4 17 12 0?? 1 3 2 4 -.? Coded messages are always sent as groups of five numbers.? Now, we select a page of numbers, known to both the sender and the receiver, say, a page from the Swiss Statistical Handbook of Foreign Trade, or an astronomical handbook, anything with pages of numbers, and we indicate in a way that we will talk about later that we are using page 68, column 3, line 2, which is, say, 94320.? We then take this number and using a special kind of addition, not carrying the extra digits, add it to each group.? The first group becomes 5 8 10 14 0.”

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Rachel Neuwalder

Moscow, 1932

“Osip Aaronovitch sends his greetings and regrets that other responsibilities prevent him from meeting you personally. You will have some tea?”

“Thank you.”

“Here is your new passport.? Here are some supporting documents, some pocket money in rubles for the journey.? Destroy those that are left over before you cross the border.? Here is a first installment in kroner for your initial expenses in Vienna and the details for a bank account that has been opened in your name.? Deposits will be made on the first of the month.”

“Thank you. What is the assignment?”

“Nothing at the moment. You will be contacted if necessary.? In the meantime, do well with your studies, stay away from known members of the Party, watch and listen.”

She took the mainline trains from Moscow to Warsaw and from there to Vienna, where she found a student flat in the ninth district and re-enrolled in the university. The nightmares gradually became less frequent. One morning she realized that she had not felt it necessary to wedge a chair against the door of her room before going to bed.

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Rachel Neuwalder

Vienna, 1933

A Communist approaches each task as if it were a vital link in the chain of actions that would bring the revolution.? That is what she had been taught. That is how she now went about the tasks at hand.? That attitude, and the patience that came with it, were useful for her in Vienna, as they also would be useful for her later, elsewhere.

?She walked through Vienna with eyes that had learned again to see in Shanghai, noticing what she had not seen in Vienna before she had gone to Shanghai, which she now saw in Vienna: the street musicians with their carefully polished instruments, some of those instruments dented or otherwise damaged; the fruit sellers with their half dozen lemons; the war-crippled men, on crutches, playing tricks with toys on strings, or other war-crippled men in their cripple carts the size of children’s wagons, the small spoked wheels substituting for their missing legs, simply sitting; the gypsy women, inevitably holding one or two small children:? all these quietly waiting through the hours of the day for a few coins.

?She went first to the Qu?stur’s office to pay in advance for her courses at the University. While many other officials in Vienna compensated for the loss of their share of Imperial status with increased arrogance, the arrogance of the Qu?stur had not changed, as it would not have been possible for him to be more arrogant than he had been before the war. Rachel Neuwalder approached him with all due deference—perhaps a bit more than was strictly speaking his due. While filling out the required questionnaire—address, age, sex, nationality and religion—she briefly hesitated between Konfessionslos, which might expose her to political questioning, and Mosaisch, which would certainly mark her out as a target for Anti-Semitic attitudes and actions. She chose the latter as bringing with it less immediate attention, less immediate danger.

?Her next task was to register for graduate classes in the Psychological Institute. In order to enroll there, she had to ask its head, Professor Karl Bühler, to sign her Meldungsbuch, indicating his agreement that she could take courses in the Institute.? She also had his wife and collaborator, Professor Charlotte Bühler, sign the Meldungsbuch for the course she taught on methods of philosophical and psychological research. Rachel Neulander needed a doctorate and the Bühlers seemed to her to be the least bad option.? In any case, attendance at lectures was not required.? It was sufficient to pass an examination on her knowledge of the content, which she could acquire from Professor Charlotte Bühler’s publications.

For her secondary examination Rachel chose the history of art with Ernst Kris, an art historian who was also a psychoanalyst. Marx had said that a well-developed person should not be developed in only one direction: a scientist should not devote all her time to science.

By the end of the day she was properly enrolled in the University and had secured places in the necessary courses in the Psychological Institute. She was equipped with her Meldungsbuch and a stack of stamped documents to display to anyone who wished to inquire. The next day the Vienna Psycho-analytic Institute informed her that she might be certified as an analyst if she first went through a successful personal analysis at a cost of 31 schillings per session, five days a week, for two years minimum, which she could do in parallel with her studies for the doctorate in psychology. She performed the necessary calculations and registered for those studies as well.

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?She was invisible in Vienna, just another Jewish student, sitting all afternoon and evening in a coffee house with her books and notebooks and one or two cups of coffee.

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#historicalfiction #1930s #Moscow #Vienna