The day Lena and Karl married was a warm, breezy day in June, 1937. The tiny wedding at KAM Isaiah Israel synagogue in Hyde Park included less than a dozen guests: Ursula and Reinhard, the graduate students in the Physics Department, a secretary, Bonnie, from the Math Department with whom Lena was friends, and Professor Compton and his wife. Lena had bought a white dress on sale at Marshall Field’s, and Bonnie had helped her make a veil. But what she loved most were her white sandals with rhinestone bows, which sparkled in the light, making her feel as though she was floating above the ground.
After the ceremony, Ursula and Reinhard invited everyone to their house for wedding cake and champagne. Ursula surprised Lena with a marzipan cake from Lutz’s, the German bakery; her aunt had gone all the way to the North side to pick it up. Later that evening, Karl’s friends took them to a special performance of the Benny Goodman Trio at the Congress Hotel, and they kicked up their heels until the wee hours. Lena couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. If only her parents had been there to see it.
* * *
A few months later, as they walked to the quad from their apartment near 57th and Dorchester, Lena—now Mrs. Stern—held up her hand, watching her wedding ring flash this way and that in the morning sun. She did that a lot now. To most people, it was just a modest gold band, but to her it was as valuable as the whole of the recently built Fort Knox.
She turned to her husband. “Thank you, Karl.”
“For what?”
“For everything. You made me whole again. I finally belong.”
He smiled and reached for her hand. They walked a few steps in silence. Then, “I have a confession to make,” she said.
“What, my darling?”
“I wish…” she hesitated. “Sometimes I just want to forget what’s going on in Europe. I just want to think about our life here. Does that make me a terrible person?”
He squeezed her hand. “I do not think so. I do it as well sometimes.”
“Doesn’t it make you feel guilty?”
“I don’t let it. And, I take heart that I am working in a field that could end the suffering there.”
“But that’s so far in the future… and so unsure, given how powerful the Nazis have become.”
He took her arm. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. And, don’t forget, Lena my darling, you are helping, too.”
“I’m not doing anything except typing and filing and writing letters.”
He touched her lips with his index finger. “Don’t say that. Your work allows us to concentrate on our research. And that research might well give America a valuable tool one day.” He leaned over and kissed her. Lena wanted to collect moments like this, if only to store them in life’s album of happy times.
So Lena tried to ignore the steady drip of bad news from Europe. It worked for a while, but like a leaky faucet, the bad news was unrelenting. Hungary was pressured to join the Axis; reportedly, Jews outside Budapest were being rounded up. Lena prayed that Josef stayed safe. She wouldn’t let herself think about her parents, trying to persuade herself that whether they were at a labor camp, or had been sent to what were now called concentration camps, she was in America, and America was interested in America, not Europe.
America was focused on rebuilding its economy and staying out of the war. Of course, people like Henry Ford disparaged Jews, as did Father Coughlin, a Catholic priest whose weekly radio program drew millions of listeners. She would turn off the radio when his show began.
* * *
In March 1938, the Nazis overran Austria and annexed it to Germany. By October they had invaded the Sudetenland, and November brought Krystallnacht. It was no longer possible to ignore what was happening. Europe was an ugly carcass filled with violence and death.
But the physics community of which she was now a part celebrated good news. Enrico Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize for his work in neutron bombardment, and that made everyone optimistic about the future of nuclear research.
By December Lena had missed a period, and her breasts had grown tender. She knew from repeated discussions with Bonnie that she was pregnant. She wasn’t sure how Karl would take it—he had been working such long hours—so she surprised him one evening and took him to the restaurant with the Budweiser menu. It had become their “spot.”
“I have news,” she said after they’d ordered beers.
Karl cocked his head. “About your parents?”
She shook her head. “No. Nothing like that.”
His brow furrowed. “Then what?”
She reached for his hand. “We’re going to have a baby.”
Karl blinked as if he hadn’t understood.
“You. And me. We’re going to have a child.”
A glorious smile unfolded across his face.
* * *
Just before Christmas, two scientists announced they had replicated Fermi’s experiments. They had bombarded uranium atoms that threw off neutrons and energy. Under the right circumstances, they claimed, these “boiled off” neutrons might collide with other atoms in a chain reaction and release even more neutrons and energy. They called it “fission.”
The scientists were from Berlin.