26

LIESELOTTE SOMMER

SEPTEMBER 1944

I came home to find Lukas and Herr Kirchmann leaving my father’s library. The pain and resignation in Herr Kirchmann’s eyes was palpable. The pain and panic in Lukas’s eyes frightened me. But as long as we could go together, that was all that mattered.

“My little Lieselotte.” Herr Kirchmann spoke first, drawing me into his arms. “I am so sorry, so very sorry for this trouble we have brought to your door.”

My head moved from side to side, but it felt no more attached to my neck than my feet. “It can’t be true. Can it?”

He touched my face. “There is so little time. I will leave Lukas to explain. But I swear to you, neither he nor Marta knew —until today. We’d hoped it would never matter so long that we nearly believed it was not so.” He shook his head, disbelieving the moment. “Know, dear girl, that we love you —that you are our family forever.”

My father cleared his throat. Herr Kirchmann closed his eyes and regained his composure. “There is much to do. I’ll go now.” He placed my hand in Lukas’s. Without turning to speak again to Vater, he left by the back door.

“Lieselotte,” my father called. “You saw Fräulein Hilde? You were not gone long.”

“She suspects nothing. I told her I had a terrible headache —not enough sleep last night. It was just as well. She had scheduled a dress fitting and forgotten until this morning.”

“This is good.”

Lukas squeezed my hand. “We must talk.”

We’d walked halfway to Lukas’s house before he found the words. “It’s true —what my father said, that I did not know until today.”

“Vater said your grandmother died giving birth to your mother. But how he would know this, I can’t —”

“Ja, this is true, and she was Jewish —not my grandfather. Grandfather married again within a few months.” Lukas shrugged. “He had a baby, and no one to care for her. So he married their housekeeper —a Gentile —who raised my mother as her own. Mutter always thought of her as her mother —the only mother she ever knew.”

“And so she claimed her lineage as her own.”

“Ja. It was not hard to do at the time —not hard to write her name on the birth certificate. But it was a difficult birth and a doctor was called in. Perhaps it was his record that told the name of her true mother, or the record of the church where she was baptized. I don’t know.”

“Dr. Peterson dug it up. It’s his fault. None of this would —”

“God sees everything, knows everything. There must —”

“Lukas, you speak of ideas, ideals —this is our life. All our lives. I can’t think what made him go looking —what made him suspect.”

Lukas snorted. “He has the memory of an elephant, the slyness of a fox.” He tucked my hand in his pocket as we walked. “It was something Marta said, years ago. Do you remember the Christmas party —the last Christmas party your mother . . .”

I waited.

“Dr. Peterson brought in those candlesticks —silver, ornate, worth a fortune.”

“Ja, I suppose. So, what about them?”

“Marta was excited to see them. She said Mutti had a pair like them —with the fruits and flowers engraved just so. She said her grandmother had given them to Mutti, and that one day they would be hers.”

“Why does that —?”

“Apparently it is tradition in a Jewish household for the mother to pass the Shabbat candleholders to her daughter, from generation to generation. Dr. Peterson suspected they were from a Jewish household because he’d ‘bought,’ or more likely confiscated, the pair he displayed that day from a Jewish house that had just been Aryanized.”

“You mean, all these years, he’s —”

“Bided his time . . . or forgotten until recently —I don’t know. I knew he suspected my lack of enthusiasm from the time I delayed joining the Hitler Youth, that he’s tried to prove me part of the assassination conspiracy, that he’s despised Father because of his connection with the Confessing Church. But I underestimated the depths of his hatred, not to mention his connections. I can’t be certain he is the cause, but my parents’ house was searched last year.”

“I remember. Your mother believed they put in a listening device.”

Lukas sighed. “They found and took the candlesticks. On their own that might mean nothing. They could have been taken by overzealous underlings simply for their value. But with Peterson’s memory of them . . . I must wonder.”

“He says he’s concerned about Vater’s reputation, but there’s something more —I don’t know what.”

“He’s closely aligned with your father in his work and financial dealings. If your father is ruined through connections to my family, Dr. Peterson, too, will perhaps be ruined. Whatever they’re doing, they’ve become extremely wealthy. War creates strange opportunities for the shrewd —ones they will do anything to protect.”

He lifted my hand and kissed my fingers. “To think we’ve been hiding Jews, moving Jews all this time, and we ourselves are Jews!”

“The apple of God’s eye.” I squeezed his hand in return. “I’m proud our children will carry Jewish blood.”

Lukas froze. “Lieselotte. We must go alone —my parents and Marta and I. That is the only deal they would make.”

The chasm that had loomed before me earlier in the day opened at my feet. “Nein,” I whispered. “I talked with them. I told Vater I must go with you —married or not. He understood; he agreed for Dr. Peterson to find five passports —five good passports.”

“Just now he told Father and me he could not do it. Four is all he could get —all he would get. Dr. Peterson said that if you do not stay behind, it will seem that your father knew about us all along, that he hid Jews from the Reich, that he allowed his Aryan daughter to marry a Jew. He will be ruined.”

I shook my head. “I will not live without you; I will not. We can’t trust Dr. Peterson.”

“But I trust your father. He’s helping in every way he can.”

I shook my head again, disbelieving.

“Lieselotte, your father is a hard but honest man —I must believe this. We have no choice. If he was simply going to turn us in, he could have done that by now. We must trust him. And after the war, when this is all over, we’ll find each other. We’ll marry and —”

I could not stop the shaking of my head. I wouldn’t believe there was no other way. I’d plead, I’d beg and grovel —whatever would persuade Vater and Dr. Peterson. There must be something they’d not thought of yet —something we’d not thought of.

What was Lukas saying about valuables?

“I’d hoped to put the stones in a ring for you one day.”

“Stones?”

“The rubies and diamonds my mother had taken from Grandmother’s tiara —three she had not yet sold to buy food. She gave them to me to have made into a ring for you. There’s been no time yet, but I wanted to surprise you with them on our first anniversary. I’m so sorry, my Lieselotte. They must go now for the passports.”

“Of course they must! Your life —our lives —are worth more than anything, as long as we are together.”

“I know what you’re thinking. I begged him too, offered everything —but he refused.”

“And you would go without me?” I stopped walking.

“If I don’t, you will be arrested. I won’t have that, Lieselotte. You don’t know what the camps are like. You would not survive. It would be different if we were married already, if there was no other way, but we’re not. You can’t legally marry me knowing I’m one-quarter —”

“You know that doesn’t matter!”

“But it is the law, and if we break this law, we’ll both be arrested. It will do us no good to be thrown into separate prisons —separate concentration camps. This way, at least you will be safe. I must know you’re safe.”

It was impossible —all of it impossible.

He took me in his arms. “Keep faith, my darling. You must keep faith and, when you can, help those still in hiding. At least we’re getting out alive, thanks to your father. He stood against Dr. Peterson —he’s risking a great deal to help us.”

I was outnumbered.

“Come with me now. It will be best if you carry the payment to your father.”

Frau Kirchmann emptied her savings from all the places a good Hausfrau might hide them —the cookie jar, the foot of a twisted stocking in her drawer, a cloth bag beneath the mattress of her bed, and a tiny pouch of three precious stones hidden in her sewing basket.

“In plain view,” she whispered, dropping the stones one by one into my palm. “These were my mother’s. They were to go to Lukas, for your ring.”

I refused to cry. Their lives were more valuable than any wish I might make, whether or not I went with them. Though I was far from reconciled to my fate.

“I am so sorry, my daughter. So very, very sorry. If I could turn back time —”

“Shh, Mutti,” Lukas whispered. “Lieselotte knows. We’ll find each other when this is over. This is not the end.”

“When the war is over.” I repeated what I’d heard him say, though how could I believe it?

“Ja, ja.” Frau Kirchmann nodded, wiping her tears.

Herr Kirchmann had gone to the bank to withdraw all he could without arousing suspicion and to get someone else from the church to deliver forged papers. Others would have to fill in their portion of relief routes for refugees. Marta had gone to see if Pastor Braun knew who might help.

Lukas paced the floor, praying for a miracle, an inspiration. But an hour passed, and neither Marta nor Herr Kirchmann returned. Lukas said we dared wait no longer lest they think we would not pay.

“Tell Dr. Peterson my Helmeuth will bring the rest as soon as he returns,” Frau Kirchmann ordered. “At least this much will show him our good faith.”

We’d tied handkerchiefs around separate small mounds of precious stones and coins, rings and brooches. Everything small, valuable —what our Jews in hiding called “portable wealth.” Lukas helped me into my coat just as Marta burst through the door, coat half buttoned, panting, terror in her eyes.

“They’ve been arrested! The Eisners were arrested!”

“No!”

“They shot Kurt in the street —” she reached for her mother’s arms —“and dragged Frederich from the house, then Miriam and their baby!”

“Did they see you?”

“Mutti! How can you ask —?”

“Did they see you?” Lukas shook his sister.

“Nein,” Marta sobbed. “I stayed hidden. But I saw that man —that Dr. Peterson —with the Gestapo.”

“Dr. Peterson!”

Marta looked at me, accusing. “Ja, he stood in the street, and showed them where to go —the very house! He watched the raid, then drove away.”

I sat down. “In a black car.”

“Ja,” Marta confirmed.

“How do you know this?” Frau Kirchmann asked.

I moistened my lips. Could I have been the cause?

“Lieselotte?”

I looked at Lukas. “Last week . . . after I made a delivery . . .”

“Ja? What then?” Frau Kirchmann prompted.

“There was a car —a black car. I don’t know if I was followed, but it slowed.”

“It could have been anybody.” Lukas wrapped his arms around me.

I pulled away. “I don’t know. How would —?”

“He waited until the Eisners were taken away; then the remaining Gestapo agent paid him,” Marta said.

“Sudden wealth,” Lukas murmured. “Blood money.”

“Blood money,” I repeated, and the bile rose in my throat.