Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(13)

How, she wondered, had this photo album found its way halfway around the world to Saddlestring, Wyoming?

And who was Julius Streicher? That was the one she’d never heard of.



* * *



—

    Marybeth had been so consumed by her research that she hadn’t heard Evelyn Hughes, the front desk librarian, come in, until she asked, “What is that?”

Marybeth looked up, alarmed. It felt like she’d been caught doing something improper, probably because the things she’d learned made her feel dirty.

“It’s apparently a gift to the library,” she said. “Someone left it on the front step this morning.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“He didn’t want to be seen.”

Marybeth described the man as best she could and asked Evelyn if he sounded familiar to her, if maybe he’d tried to donate the album at the front desk and been rebuffed.

Evelyn frowned. “Is it another ranch history?” They got a lot of those.

“Far from it,” Marybeth said. “Come take a look.”

Evelyn approached cautiously. She was a jumpy woman and she loved conspiracy theories. The album was still open to the photo of the Nazi leaders.

Evelyn recoiled and stepped back. “I don’t want to see it,” she said.

“I’m guessing it may be a valuable historical item, although I’m still trying to figure it out. Where did it come from? Who left it?”

“I don’t care.”

“Aren’t you curious at all?”

“No. I don’t want to touch it and I don’t want to see it.”

“That’s not the best attitude for a head librarian,” Marybeth said.

“It is for me,” Evelyn snapped. She bolted through the open door and closed it tightly behind her.



* * *



—

Marybeth turned back to the album:

A tour of Streicher visiting the twelve “Adolf Hitler Schools” across Germany. Apparently, they were boarding schools set up specifically to train future generations of Nazi leaders.

There he was “speaking to the men of the press about the struggle.”

There were many photos of adoring women and children fawning over Streicher, and several particularly disturbing images of him pawing very young girls dressed in taffeta, holding flowers, and gazing upon him in awe. She could not fathom the significance of the photos of him posing with a little dog on a world globe.

There were farmers holding pigs like babies in their arms, offering them to Streicher for his admiration.

The theme of the album was hagiographic—an attempt to portray Streicher as a man much admired by his subjects. There were dozens of photos of him kissing babies, signing autographs, and walking through throngs of worshippers. In several, his very presence seemed to part the crowd like Moses parting the sea.

He seemed inordinately fond of surrounding himself with large-eyed children—mostly girls—and little dogs.

Marybeth almost laughed at the series of images of a shirtless Streicher using a shovel to break ground on a new parade location. He was flaccid, white, and fat, his trousers hitched up nearly to his armpits to disguise his belly and flabby torso. She could tell by the strained look on his face that he was holding in his gut to the point of nearly injuring himself.

The photographers had obviously been instructed to show their subject in the most flattering way possible. He was, she thought, keenly aware of the camera at all times.

Many of the photos were of his apparently official duties, such as greeting foreign officials, marching with “Hungarian Youth” in Nuremberg, touring a new museum display called Terror-Revolt-Death: The Bolshevik Revolution. Meeting with Italian officials as well as “Members of the All-Russian Fascist Party.”

There were dozens of photos of obviously choreographed Nuremberg rallies where the crowds looked both robotic and rapturous at the same time.

Although the album was not fully captioned, Marybeth spent a good deal of time reading and translating the displays on the wall behind Streicher as he spoke to a packed crowd in what looked like a new museum.

The collection was titled The Eternal Jew.

Some of Streicher’s speech had been transcribed by hand:

“If the Jew came to power and influence again from the inside or outside in the land of Stusch, then our heroes at the Feldherrnhalle will have died in vain . . .”

Written on a display of grotesque hook-nosed caricatures of what were obviously supposed to be Jews were the words Their rituals correspond to their depraved Talmud morals . . .



* * *



—

Marybeth hated this man.

So who was he?

A search of his name made her hate him even more.

Julius Streicher had been the publisher of a sensationalistic and low-brow weekly tabloid newspaper called Der Stürmer, meaning “The Stormer” or “Attacker” or “Striker.” He was also one of Hitler’s very few intimate friends. Streicher had declared in 1922 that his destiny was to serve Hitler. His name was mentioned in Mein Kampf.

Der Stürmer was a virulently anti-Semitic publication founded in 1923, a publication so popular with the German public that it made Streicher a multimillionaire. Hitler had called it his favorite newspaper, although it was so over-the-top that other Nazi Party leaders had refused to give it any official sanction or endorsement. In fact, it was removed from Berlin during the 1936 Olympics so visitors from around the world would never see it.