Sofie
I was home that night later than I’d expected, and as I let myself inside, I hoped Jürgen would be in bed asleep. I wasn’t ready to face his questions about why my dinner with Lydia lasted six hours.
I knew Mayim would be awake, listening for the children from the sitting room. Georg was almost three, and Laura was eight months old. They both slept poorly, but Mayim often read until the small hours anyway and helped with the children overnight. This was one of the magic aspects to having my best friend living under my roof. Mayim was more than just a houseguest to my children—more even than a quasi aunt. She was almost like a third parent to them, a vital and much-loved part of our family structure.
I found her curled up in one of the armchairs in the formal sitting room, reading by the glow of a lamp. The blanket over her lap was her own creation, a jumble of colors knit from yarn left over from her many other projects. As she often did, she had the fire roaring. I kicked off my pumps as I entered the room and breathed a sigh of relief as my tired feet hit the cool floorboards. The sole of my left shoe was badly worn, and a blister was forming.
I could scarcely believe that I couldn’t even afford to repair a shoe. My whole life changed in a single afternoon three years ago, a few months after my father died of a stroke during a business trip to New York. My brother Heinrich was twenty-six years older, and little more than a stranger. But as the eldest, Heinrich inherited the von Meyer estate, and it fell to him to break the news that my generous monthly stipend would be no more. Father mortgaged every family property to the hilt, including the city villa—the home he’d gifted Jürgen and me for our wedding. Heinrich agreed that we could keep our house—but only on the condition that we assumed the mortgage for it too.
I’d never wanted for any material things, and I assumed that would always be the case. It turned out our father was much better at presenting a facade of extreme wealth than he was at managing the modest wealth he did possess, once upon a time.
“How was it?” Mayim asked, as she closed her book and looked up at me. I dropped into the chair opposite her and struggled to put the right words together.
It had been a shocking few months in Berlin. First came the destruction of our parliament building, the Reichstag—then a series of communist attacks across the nation were only narrowly averted. I’d pored over the details of the planned terror campaign in the newspaper: bombs hidden under bridges and in train stations, women and children used as human shields, the execution of swaths of public officials, poison in the Berlin water supply.
Even through all of that, I had never once been as terrified as I was at the rally I just attended with Lydia.
“There was a lot of passionate analysis of the problems we face as a nation, a lot of hints about who’s to really blame.”
“Who might that be?” Mayim said lightly, but I could hear the tightness in her words.
“They managed to be hateful toward the Jews for hours on end without saying the word Jew even once.”
“They adjust their rhetoric depending on where the rally is being held. In the country, they can say what they really mean. But we’re in the cosmopolitan city, so I suppose here they know to hide their hate beneath a veneer of respectability.”
By the end of the rally, I’d felt physically ill, and that sensation surged all over again as I sat in my living room and thought about what I’d heard.
“A Volksgemeinschaft is possible!” one speaker thundered, as he painted the image of a German people’s community, which sounded almost Utopian until he followed it up with references to the racial purity it would be built upon. Another looked to the past and found a villain he didn’t need to name. “The Treaty of Versailles was designed only to cripple us! We were stabbed in the back by those who agreed to it.” We all knew this was a clear reference to the long-standing conspiracy theory that Germany had not really lost the Great War, but that our brave soldiers were betrayed by those at home, mostly Jews, who fomented unrest and undermined the war effort.
Another man spoke in generalities—rattling off a long list of the challenges we faced as a nation, from economic woes to the ever-increasing political instability—and then he simply shrugged and said, “Germany should be for Germans. We shall bear our national misfortune no longer.” That use of the word misfortune struck an uncomfortable chord. I’d seen it on the Nazi posters around the city, usually beneath a crude, offensive caricature of a Jew.
“People seemed enthralled, Mayim. Like they were under a spell,” I said uneasily. “It was a flashy affair—almost like a concert, with an orchestra and a choir and boundless enthusiasm and passion. I just don’t understand how a bit of music and some theatrical speeches could turn a crowd like that into a bunch of raging anti-Semites.”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed Mayim’s face. We had been best friends since before we even started at elementary school—our families once residing in side-by-side, twin mansions in Potsdam. I knew her well enough to know she had something to say.
“Speak your mind,” I prompted. Mayim sighed impatiently.
“You have no idea how anti-Semitic this country really is, Sofie. You can’t understand it the way my family does.”
“Your family is my family,” I said. I was a late-in-life surprise for my mother, who gave birth to me when she was forty-eight years old. Anna von Meyer had no interest in starting all over again nine years after her fifth son, so she generally left my care to my nannies. My family was cold and formal, so I much preferred spending time at Mayim’s house, with her lovely warm mother and her jovial, kind father. Even Mayim’s little brother, Moshe, had always annoyed and amused me.
“You’re my best friend in the whole world—a sister if not by blood, then by choice. But you can’t know what it’s really like to live your whole life under the shadow of hate. To wake up every morning knowing that there’s a large portion of your own countrymen who would sooner see you gone. You’ve seen the big, openly aggressive moments—but you don’t notice the way people look at me when I’m on the trolley car. You might notice the No Jews sign in the windows of some stores, but don’t hear the undertone in the grocer’s tone when he counts my change, or the casual way people joke about me and my family, sometimes right in front of our faces. You said it was like the crowd tonight had been turned into raging anti-Semites by the rally, yes?” I nodded slowly and she shrugged. “All Hitler and his ilk are doing is connecting with something that has always been there.”
I knew that in other countries, even Poland, where Mayim’s mother was born, many Jews lived in Jewish Quarters or Districts. It was different in Germany. In my country, especially in Berlin, Jews lived and studied and worked alongside everyone else, so much so that I often had no idea if a person was or wasn’t Jewish unless their surname gave it away. For the first time, it occurred to me that perhaps our integrated society also gave cover to subtle incidents of bigotry. Even Lydia sometimes made those silly, casual remarks about the Jews.
“What about people like Lydia and Karl?” I asked hesitantly. “You and Lydia are friends.”
“Lydia and I were friends,” Mayim said quietly. “I hardly see her these days. I highly doubt she or Karl have been spending much time socializing with anyone with a surname like Nussbaum since they joined the Party.”
That was the other great shock, and one I still couldn’t make sense of: Lydia and Karl had joined the Nazi party.
“But why?” I’d blurted when they told me, too surprised to temper my reaction.
“Perhaps there were some less-than-savory aspects to their politics historically,” Lydia admitted. “But the other parties only offer the same tired rhetoric, with no plan to stabilize the nation. We decided to throw our money and our time behind a party we feel sure can win.”
“When the Nazis come to power, they will end all of the madness and things will go back to normal,” Karl added pleasantly.
“But at what cost?” Jürgen asked. He looked as shell-shocked as I felt.
“The Party know they need to clean up those rogue elements to win the election, I can assure you of that,” Karl said, and then came the first of countless invitations. “Why don’t you come to a rally with us one day?”
It was true that Lydia’s coolness toward Mayim had been more pronounced that year, but it was also true that distance had been growing between them for much longer than that. I shifted uncomfortably, and Mayim sighed.
“You think it’s about my family’s financial circumstances, not because we are Jews. Perhaps that is a factor.”
“I know it is a factor!” I said, throwing my hands up in the air in frustration. “If I ever had any doubt about how shallow our social circles are, I’ve had the truth of it well and truly rammed home for me in the last few years.” It wasn’t just Lydia who withdrew from Mayim. One by one, most of her friends had drifted away. Jürgen and I hadn’t purposefully hidden our own circumstances from our friends—but having witnessed Mayim’s increasing isolation, we’d hardly advertised our struggle.
“It would be different if they knew about your situation,” Mayim said, correctly reading my thoughts.
“No, it wouldn’t,” I said, laughing miserably.
“This is exactly what I mean, my friend,” Mayim said gently. “You don’t even see it. The people who no longer invite me to their parties were always looking for an excuse to exclude me. It’s never been socially acceptable to admit you don’t want to invite the Jewish girl to the party, but it’s fine to leave the poor girl out.”
I felt a pinch in my chest. I stared at her for a moment, thinking about the injustice of it all.
“Are you hurt that I went tonight?” I asked her suddenly. Mayim’s gaze softened.
“I know exactly why you went. Did Karl say anything more about the job?”
Like most employers in Germany, Jürgen’s university was struggling with an ever-shrinking budget, and they’d cut staff salaries by more than half. His income no longer covered our living expenses, even though we’d laid off all of our household staff and sold our cars. We were selling my family heirlooms now, but it was a short-term solution. Some rooms were already devoid of all but the most essential furniture.
That was why it seemed like such a miracle when Karl called to ask Jürgen if he was interested in a new job. Karl wouldn’t say much, just that it was an exciting and lucrative new opportunity and he’d be in touch soon. But days turned into weeks, and every time I tried to organize a casual catch-up with the zu Schillers, they were busy campaigning for the Nazis. I caught Lydia on the phone a few times, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me anything.
“Karl will tell you more when he sees you both,” she kept saying.
Every time a significant Nazi event was held in Berlin, Lydia had her staff drop off free rally tickets. I usually threw them into the trash, but when the latest tickets arrived, my impatience got the best of me and I decided to go.
It was a clumsy, flawed plan. Karl was already at the rally when Lydia’s town car arrived to collect me, and although he sat with us during the proceedings, he was busy on official business before and after, and I didn’t have a chance to speak to him.
“Something has to give,” I whispered to Mayim, my throat tight. “We can’t afford this place anymore, but even if we sell it, we won’t clear the mortgage. Where would we even go?”
Mayim rose and came to take the seat beside me, resting her hand over mine on the armrest.
“Go to bed, Sofie,” she said softly. “Things will look better in the morning.”
She had a way of soothing me, without saying much at all.
“What would I do without you?” Mayim flashed me a soft smile.
“I really have no idea. Lucky for you, I’m not going anywhere.”
I crawled into bed soon after, so drained I could barely keep my eyes open, but the minute my head hit the pillow, my anxiety resurged. Even the very real threat of losing my home suddenly paled in comparison to the fear that the men I’d heard speak at that rally might soon be in power. I thought about Mayim and shivered with fear.
“You weren’t at dinner with Lydia tonight, were you?” Jürgen said, startling me. I turned toward him guiltily. He was lying on his back, wide-awake and staring up at the ceiling.
“I did have dinner with her...” I admitted. “Then I went with her to the rally.”
“Sofie, what on earth were you thinking?”
He was annoyed, but when tears filled my eyes, he sighed heavily and reached for me. I relaxed immediately, sinking into the comfort of his arms.
“I thought you felt the same way I do about the Nazis,” he said.
“I do. I was just hoping that if I engineered a chance to see Karl, he would tell me more about this job.”
“Well, did he?”
“I never got the chance to speak to him.”
“I’ve tried to call him a few times.”
“You did?” He hadn’t mentioned this, but I knew Jürgen felt guilty that he couldn’t support us, so I hated to force him to talk about it.
“Young people are looking for work to try to support their families—no one has the capacity to study these days. What happens if there’s no work for me in the new academic year?”
“I can’t even let myself think about that,” I said. Jürgen had been working toward his doctorate when my brother broke the news that we needed to generate our own income, and although he’d been forced to abandon his studies, he was quickly employed to teach. Just a few years later, though, things were different. Six million Germans were out of work in a severely depressed economy. If Jürgen lost that job, he’d be unlikely to find another.
“Karl has been so busy that I haven’t managed to catch him on the phone, and he no longer has time to attend our meetings,” Jürgen admitted. Karl and Jürgen were both founding members of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt, the Society for Space Travel, and they spent their Saturday mornings tinkering with homemade rockets at an abandoned dump outside of Berlin. Their dream was to design a rocket that would take man to the moon, a prospect so absurd I struggled to understand why Jürgen even entertained it. “That’s what concerns me, Sofie. Karl is consumed by his work with the Party these days. I can’t imagine any position he knows of would be one I’d be interested in.”
“You think the job is with the Nazis?” I said, heart sinking.
“I fear it is, yes.”
“The fervor tonight shocked me. I don’t know what happens to this country if those men find their way to power.”
“There are some who believe the Nazis set that fire in the Reichstag, you know.”
“Wasn’t it the Dutchman?”
“A mentally unwell Dutchman, with a loose association to an independent communist party in his home country, was somehow able to single-handedly destroy Germany’s parliament building?” Jürgen asked wryly.
“To think that the only thing standing between those dreadful terror attacks planned against this city was the SA.” The Sturmabteilung was one of the Nazi party’s paramilitary wings. They were also known as Brownshirts, named for their uniform, and they’d been instrumental in uncovering a mass terrorist threat the previous week. It terrified me to think we were days away from catastrophe and the only thing that saved us was one of the Nazi paramilitary organizations.
“The Nazis have yet to release a single shred of evidence about those terror attacks, even though they promised they would immediately. I think we have to at least consider the possibility that the terror plot wasn’t real.”
“But the papers say—”
“This is my point, my love,” Jürgen interrupted me. “The papers say what the Nazis want them to say, now that the Reichstag Fire decree enables them to control what’s published. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that some unstable man supposedly commits an act of terrorism and by sunset the next day the government has discovered some fantastic plot to upend life as we know it, arrested most of their opponents, and passed a decree overriding our constitutional protections? If they really do have this overwhelming evidence, why would they need a right to arrest and detain their opposition indefinitely, without so much as a trial? And why would they need to end the free press or end our right to personal privacy? In the context of some of the things those men have said in the past, this Nazi power grab leaves me feeling anxious.”
“Surely even the Nazis wouldn’t lie about such serious, world-changing events,” I said uncertainly. “If those reports were fiction, how could we trust anything politicians say ever again? We couldn’t.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Sofie. What worries me most is that in fraught economic times like these, with men starving to death on the streets, people cast their votes impulsively, out of desperation instead of reason and compassion. The Nazis know this, and they purposefully present a powerful front—that’s why they love to hold military parades. That’s what I fear the announcements about the terror plots were designed to do—to stir up more uncertainty and then to paint themselves as the only solution.”
I’d been feeling anxious about the future for a long while, but that was the first night my worries kept me awake until dawn. And I was right to worry. A few weeks later, when the election results were announced, we learned that 44 percent of Germans had voted for the Nazi party. Joining forces with the Workers’ Party, they easily formed a majority in the parliament.
The Nazis were no longer a fringe party, no longer hovering on the edge of the German political system. Now they were at the very center of it, and from there, they could shape it as they pleased.