Chapter 20

A TELEPHONE CALL TO EVA

One could safely say that Eva “ate up” everything about Gross Breesen: the heavy work, the study load and the comradery.

She adopted the Gross Breesen motto, “K.S.” (“keep smiling”), and added it to her own time-tested personal motto: “This too shall pass.”⁹⁴ She threw herself into every activity and absorbed the values and goals of Bondy. She simply loved Gross Breesen.

So it was a shock when she received a telephone call from her mother. The message was starkly blunt: “Pack up everything, and as fast as you can, come home.” There was no further explanation.⁹⁵ The Jacobsohns had made a decision now that all Jewish physicians had lost their licenses to practice medicine. In addition, German friends, some Nazi Party members, secretly warned them that life for Jews was deteriorating rapidly, so they needed to flee Germany at once. Now it was time to act.

That August night, Eva went for a walk out in the fields with a few of her friends. She would never forget the sweet smell of the harvested wheat—the very wheat she had planted. Then she walked to the railroad tracks that would take her to Breslau the next day. The open view of the night sky at the tracks was panoramic. She gazed silently. She always half-joked that she talked with the constellations and inhaled their cosmic breath. Just as she nuzzled her face into a sunflower, so she had face-to-face encounters with the Big Dipper.

The girls reminisced about the time when they stood on the tracks and a thunderstorm approached from three sides. The fast-moving storm provided a gray background to the sun-painted, golden wheat fields, and the turbulent winds drove the wheat into wide, waving swathes. Lightning and thunder crashed from far off, and the warm wind bathed them.⁹⁶

The next day, Eva was driven to the Gellendorf railroad station. Gross Breesen was sad to say goodbye. She was a spark plug, an energy source that motivated others. She graced the grand hall of the Schloss when she played the grand piano. She was disheartened to leave her new friends and everything about Gross Breesen, but she was fortified with the knowledge that she was on the Virginia Plan list. She knew something very important was about to take place. Otherwise, her mother would not have called her home so suddenly, though she did not really know what to expect. She arrived home late in the afternoon.