BERLIN, GERMANY | SEPTEMBER 2013
Kate glances once more at the map on her mobile, the little pin showing the location of the address she inputted before they left the hotel. It’s a bright, cool Tuesday afternoon in the middle of September, and the sun shines down on them as a soft breeze blows. Kate has never been to Berlin before, and was surprised to travel somewhere foreign with the sense that she was going home.
Audrey had left her the Kaplans’ and Abramses’ addresses so that Kate could do her own research after she was gone. She’d let herself sink into the work after Audrey died, using her spare time in the evenings after they finally opened the Oakwood up to guests in the midsummer. After polishing the memoir, she’d sent it to the German Resistance Memorial Center. They were thrilled to hear about this cell of the Red Orchestra, but warned her that with only one woman’s testimony to go on, they would need to cross-reference Audrey’s account with any other information they could find on the other members of the cell before they could make any sort of official addition to the memorial. Kate kept her expectations low. She wasn’t sure whether Audrey and her comrades’ complex contributions would ever be recognized there, but she was doing right by Audrey to try, and that was enough for her.
“How much farther?” Ian asks her.
“Just around the next corner, I think,” Kate says, with a tingle of anticipation.
There are two row houses sitting right at the curve of the road, tall and proud.
“This is it,” she says quietly.
Ian looks over at her, watching for her reaction, and she’s touched that he wants to know if she’s okay.
She stares up at the house, a large grey-brick structure, and thinks of her father’s birth family, the grandparents and aunts and uncles she would never meet. Kate and Ian will be going to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe later in the week, before they head back home. She wants to see if she can find the Abramses’ and Kaplans’ names. It would soothe her to pay her respects and honour her lost family. She carries their legacy in her veins, and so does the baby girl growing inside her.
She runs her hand over her gently swelling belly now, thinking of her father, left alone somewhere upstairs in this very house, soiled and screaming and orphaned at not even a year old. Her face crumples.
“Come here,” Ian says, pulling her into a tight hug. Kate takes a minute to let it out, but as she buries her head in Ian’s chest, something catches her eye on the pavement below.
“Ian, look.”
She blinks through wet lashes. Inlaid in the cement are six small square brass markers with inscriptions. The names of Ezra, Zelda, Sarah, Samuel, Reuben, and Rebecca Abrams are engraved in capital letters on each of the stones. Beneath the names are birth dates, deportation dates, and death dates.
A tear drips onto Sarah’s name, and Ian rubs soft circles on her back.
“Do you know if your dad ever came here?” he asks.
Kate shakes her head. “Audrey didn’t say, but I think he would have told her if he had. In his letter he just said he’d finally learned they all died, and where. Maybe it was just too much for him to come.”
As Kate stands, Ian snaps a photo of the plaques. The front door of the house opens, and a middle-aged woman walks out onto the step in slippers and a red apron.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
Kate opens her mouth to apologize, then doesn’t. “Hi,” she says instead. “My dad’s family lived here. Before the war. The Abramses,” she says, indicating the plaques near her feet.
“Oh, my,” the woman says, coming down the stairs. “I’m so sorry. Welcome. They’re called stumbling stones,” she explains. “They’re all over the city. Markers for the victims.” Her face is pained. “I knew they were Abramses. Knew they were here, but… which one was your dad?” she asks.
“He’s not here, actually,” Kate says. “His name was Daniel. He was rescued from the house. He was just a baby.”
She leaves it at that. The woman nods, doesn’t press the matter.
“Mazel,” she says, indicating Kate’s belly.
“Thank you.”
“Please stay as long as you like.”
Ian thanks her, and she disappears back into the house.
It takes Kate a while before she’s ready to move on, then they walk a few streets over, to the Kaplans’ large row house.
“There it is,” Kate says.
It looks just like its fellows, lined up like spines on a bookshelf all along the street, but to Kate, it seems to shine with some inexplicable, radiant light.
Birds sing in the trees along the boulevard. A breeze flutters the leaves, and Kate can almost hear the music from Ruth’s piano floating on it, the notes from “Ilse’s Theme” that led Audrey home to her loved ones.
Kate rests her hand on the curved stone railing of the porch, cool beneath her fingers, thinking of all that happened here. It fills her up now, with grief and love and something warm that stings. She runs a hand over her belly again, knowing she’ll want to bring her daughter back here someday, when she’s old enough to learn.
To understand, and remember.