Jamaica, I told you it made no difference to me whatsoever. A manâs race, his religion or his color has in my life made no difference to me at all. All that I judge people by is their decency.
Best regards, Eric Erickson
âDecencyâ is a very old-fashioned world that conjures up Frank Capra movies and a standard of behavior that has largely disappeared from the world. But it accurately sums up Ericksonâs conduct during the war, along with an offhand, masculine grace and ice-cold nerves at the right moments.
He paid a price for that conduct. The last photo of Anne-Maria to be found in the Stockholm archives is a glamorous studio portrait, showing her in a dark dress, a black Turkish-style hat and a string of pearls. She looks regal and serene, with only a touch of vulnerabilityâor perhaps its apprehensionâin the dark eyes. âI must confess that if she was alive today,â Erickson said after the war, âsheâd undoubtedly be my wife.â On the back of the photo, someone has written in longhand Anne-Mariaâs full name, along with the words, âExecuted by the Gestapo, Moabit prison.â
Erickson carried the picture around with him until his own death, forty years later.
When he toured America for the release of the film, the question that Erickson got most was the one about motivation. Aside from the Hollywood bullshit, why had he really done it, taken all those risks, losing two women he loved in the process? A childhood friend once asked him about it. The spy mulled the question over, his mind eventually returning to the days the two of them had shared in Brooklyn, with the kids of refugees and strivers whoâd arrived on Sterling Place from some of the more prominent hellholes of the world. âIn my particular case, it was based on the way we were all brought up,â he said. âWe were raised to resist tyrants and dictatorsâand against any and all that used brutality and force to gain their goals.â
This was the public answer. There was more to his decision, of course. White-hot shame, ego, a sense of duty, a desire for one last adventure perhaps, something that had the wildness of Beaumont to it. But if not for that letter from his brother, Henry, Ericksonâs mission to Germany and all the rest would never have happened. Those words had shocked the comfortable Erickson into things heâd never imagined himself capable of. They had reminded him of who heâd always been: a beloved brother, an American, a decent man.
Best regards, Eric Erickson
âDecencyâ is a very old-fashioned world that conjures up Frank Capra movies and a standard of behavior that has largely disappeared from the world. But it accurately sums up Ericksonâs conduct during the war, along with an offhand, masculine grace and ice-cold nerves at the right moments.
He paid a price for that conduct. The last photo of Anne-Maria to be found in the Stockholm archives is a glamorous studio portrait, showing her in a dark dress, a black Turkish-style hat and a string of pearls. She looks regal and serene, with only a touch of vulnerabilityâor perhaps its apprehensionâin the dark eyes. âI must confess that if she was alive today,â Erickson said after the war, âsheâd undoubtedly be my wife.â On the back of the photo, someone has written in longhand Anne-Mariaâs full name, along with the words, âExecuted by the Gestapo, Moabit prison.â
Erickson carried the picture around with him until his own death, forty years later.
When he toured America for the release of the film, the question that Erickson got most was the one about motivation. Aside from the Hollywood bullshit, why had he really done it, taken all those risks, losing two women he loved in the process? A childhood friend once asked him about it. The spy mulled the question over, his mind eventually returning to the days the two of them had shared in Brooklyn, with the kids of refugees and strivers whoâd arrived on Sterling Place from some of the more prominent hellholes of the world. âIn my particular case, it was based on the way we were all brought up,â he said. âWe were raised to resist tyrants and dictatorsâand against any and all that used brutality and force to gain their goals.â
This was the public answer. There was more to his decision, of course. White-hot shame, ego, a sense of duty, a desire for one last adventure perhaps, something that had the wildness of Beaumont to it. But if not for that letter from his brother, Henry, Ericksonâs mission to Germany and all the rest would never have happened. Those words had shocked the comfortable Erickson into things heâd never imagined himself capable of. They had reminded him of who heâd always been: a beloved brother, an American, a decent man.
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