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Carla started to cry, then stopped herself.
She thought of hiding under the desk, but hesitated. She did not want to show them how scared she was. Something inside her wanted to defy them.
But what should she do? She decided to warn Mother.
She stepped to the doorway and looked along the corridor. The Brownshirts were going in and out of the offices but had not reached the far end. Carla did not know whether the people in the conference room could hear the commotion. She ran along the corridor as fast as she could, but a scream stopped her. She looked into a room and saw Schwab shaking the typist with the red beret, yelling: "Where's the key?"
"I don't know, I swear I'm telling the truth!" the typist cried.
Carla was outraged. Schwab had no right to treat a woman that way. She shouted: "Leave her alone, Schwab, you thief!"
Schwab looked at her with hatred in his eyes, and suddenly she was ten times more frightened. Then his gaze shifted to someone behind her, and he said: "Get the kid out of the damn way."
She was picked up from behind. "Are you a little Jew?" said a man's voice. "You look it, with all that dark hair."
That terrified her. "I'm not Jewish!" she screamed.
The Brownshirt carried her back along the corridor and put her down in Mother's office. She stumbled and fell to the floor. "Stay in here," he said, and he went away.
Carla got to her feet. She was not hurt. The corridor was full of Brownshirts now, and she could not get to her mother. But she had to summon help.
She looked out of the smashed window. A small crowd was gathering on the street. Two policemen stood among the onlookers, chatting. Carla shouted at them: "Help! Help, police!"
They saw her and laughed.
That infuriated her, and anger made her less frightened. She looked outside the office again. Her gaze lit on the fire alarm on the wall. She reached up and grasped the handle.
She hesitated. You were not supposed to sound the alarm unless there was a fire, and a notice on the wall warned of dire penalties.
She pulled the handle anyway.
For a moment nothing happened. Perhaps the mechanism was not working.
Then there came a loud, harsh klaxon sound, rising and falling, that filled the building.
Almost immediately the people from the conference room appeared at the far end of the corridor. Jochmann was first. "What the devil is going on?" he said angrily, shouting over the noise of the alarm.
One of the Brownshirts said: "This Jew Communist rag has insulted our leader, and we're closing it down."
"Get out of my office!"
The Brownshirt ignored him and went into a side room. A moment later there was a female scream and a crash that sounded like a steel desk being overturned.
Jochmann turned to one of his staff. "Schneider--call the police immediately!"
Carla knew that would be no good. The police were there already, doing nothing.
Mother pushed through the knot of people and came running along the corridor. "Are you all right?" she cried. She threw her arms around Carla.
Carla did not want to be comforted like a child. Pushing her mother away, she said: "I'm fine, don't worry."
Mother looked around. "My typewriter!"
"They threw it through the window." Carla realized that now she would not get into trouble for jamming the mechanism.
"We must get out of here." Mother snatched up the desk photo, then took Carla's hand, and they hurried out of the room.
No one tried to stop them running down the stairs. Ahead of them, a well-built young man who might have been one of the reporters had a Brownshirt in a head lock and was dragging him out of the building. Carla and her mother followed the pair out. Another Brownshirt came up behind them.
