Sofie
Jürgen missed the birth of the baby. Whatever milestone he was working toward was more important even than the birth of our daughter, at least according to Otto, who wouldn’t grant him leave. I left the older children with Adele and went to the hospital alone.
I called him after she arrived. Exhausted but elated, I told him about her delicate features, her barely there eyebrows, her wispy hair. The frustration in his tone was palpable as he promised he’d be home to meet her in a few days.
But the very next morning, Hitler annexed Austria. From my hospital bed I read a newspaper that showed photos of wildly enthusiastic crowds on the streets of Vienna, welcoming Hitler and celebrating the annexation. I stared at those photos for hours, trying to figure out if I could trust the images. Who would welcome Hitler to their nation? Surely this was some artifice invented by the Department of Propaganda.
Jürgen called the hospital to tell me his visit had been delayed again but he was sending a photographer to the hospital as a consolation prize.
“I’ll have to name her myself, won’t I?” I snapped.
“A good German name. A strong German name,” he said cautiously. I huffed impatiently. It wasn’t as though I was about to name the child Mayim, although I might have entertained that thought under different circumstances.
I stared at the baby. She was sleeping in my arms, innocent and pure, but just like Georg and Laura, this baby would soon be the Reich’s hostage, ultimately powerless to choose her own destiny, or even to make her own mind up about the worth of other human beings.
“Sofie? Are you still there?”
Hostage. Geisel, in German.
“Gisela,” I blurted. Despite its linguistic roots, Gisela was a common name and I knew that no one would even question it. But I’d know. Every time I spoke her name, I’d be committing a quiet rebellion in my heart.
“I love it,” Jürgen agreed, sounding relieved.
Eventually, Gisela von Meyer Rhodes would start school, and whatever purity and goodness had existed in her nature would be washed away by hate. Maybe one day I could tell her that from the moment of her birth, I loathed that she was hostage to her country’s ideology. There was just nothing I could do about it, other than to leave a clue in her name to prove my regret.
Georg and Laura were now old enough to walk to school alone, and often after I saw them off, Gisela and I would go next door to visit Adele. Something was changing with Jürgen’s aunt. By the summer, she felt faint when she stood in the heat for too long. I feigned a sudden interest in horticulture so I could take over her courtyard garden.
“I’m worried about her,” Adele’s friend Martha admitted to me one day. Adele was inside making us tea, and Martha and I were picking tomatoes. “She says the new pills the doctor gave her are helping, but she seems frailer.”
“What more can we do for her?” I asked Martha. “How can we make her slow down and rest?”
“Adele isn’t the kind of woman who slows down with age. She’s the kind of fierce warrior who reaches a certain point and realizes she has nothing left to lose. You won’t slow her down, Sofie, and even if you did, you’d be taking something away from her, not buying her more time.”
“What does that mean?” I said, confused. Martha smiled quietly.
“This money trouble she’s having seems to be spiraling, doesn’t it? Poor old dear.”
Adele was constantly borrowing money now—almost every week she asked for some small amount, and from time to time, she asked for larger sums. Sometimes she’d call to ask over the phone, even though I never let a day pass when I didn’t check in on her.
“Why do you ring me to ask me for money?” I asked her one day. She was supervising me as I clumsily deadheaded her small collection of roses. Despite my best efforts, it seemed I was doing a terrible job, because Adele was visibly struggling to bite her tongue.
She came to my side, then whispered, “Even if there are no listening devices in my house, they’re almost certainly listening to your phone. I thought it would be prudent for prying ears to hear me spinning a sob story to you, so hopefully they will believe you had no idea I was supporting the Nussbaums if we ever find ourselves in hot water.”
“It wouldn’t be smart for Jürgen and me to give them money directly, but that’s only because of his job. You’re not breaking any laws. It’s not illegal to support a struggling Jewish family.”
“Not yet,” she whispered grimly. “And I don’t care if they come for me. I’m trying to do two things here, Sofie—I’m trying to help them, and to protect you.”
“After the history Jürgen and I have, I’m not sure a few phone calls are going to convince them I had no idea where that money was going.”
“People see what they want to see. And you two have done an admirable job of falling into line over these past few years and Jürgen is the star of the rocket program. Hopefully if the time ever comes when I fall under suspicion, you will have earned the benefit of the doubt.” She tilted her face toward the sun beneath that wide-brimmed hat and breathed in slowly.Then she looked at me. “Sofie, in these difficult years we’ve lived through together, you’ve become very dear to me. I hope you know that.”
My eyes prickled. I cleared my throat.
“I do. And likewise.”
“It hurts me to say this, but it needs to be said—if I do ever find myself in trouble with the Gestapo, you need to do what’s best for your family.”
I was so startled I almost dropped the clippers.
“What does that mean? You are my family.”
She shook her head impatiently, waving her hand.
“The only thing I’m doing is slipping as much money as I can get my hands on to the Nussbaums. Things have been so tough for them since Levi’s brother was arrested—”
“Uncle Abrahm was arrested?” I gasped. “What for?”
Adele squinted at me, then frowned.
“I’m sorry, treasure. I thought I told you. Abrahm was perceived to be a threat to public order. No further explanation given, and of course the family tried to find him without success. His wife has taken his children to live with her parents in the country. Between the money you’ve given me and the money my friends and I have scrounged together, we’ve just been covering the rent.”
“How awful,” I whispered. I was as distressed at the thought of Adele finding herself in trouble as I was about the Nussbaums’ situation. She was so frail—and some days now, so weak. If standing in the sun left her faint, what would a 3:00 a.m. visit from the Gestapo do?
“Can’t you feel it in the air, Sofie? It’s not just the talk of war, although of course that’s part of it. The hatred is escalating. Something is coming...” She paused, her features pinched and drawn. “I can sense it, like when I smell a storm on the breeze.”
“I feel it too.” The hatred had become almost self-generating now, infecting every corner of our society. It had grown so big and so dark, it threatened to suffocate us.
“The reason I have friends funneling the money to Mayim’s family is to try to keep layers between you and them, links in a chain that could disconnect if any part were compromised. But we are clumsy old women—hardly masters of espionage. But if this all blows up, don’t you think of it as a problem. Think of it as a chance to assure the Nazis of your loyalty.”
“I would never do that,” I said stiffly.
“Do you remember what I said to you when Mayim went away? It’s not always the strongest trees that survive the storm. Sometimes it’s the trees that bend with the wind. Remember that advice, Sofie. Especially if at some point, you find that the storm threatens to break you.”
In August 1938, Adele called and asked me to help her in the garden. We huddled beneath an umbrella and made a show of hanging frost cloths over her vegetables. Even before I stepped out my back door, I knew why she’d called me.
There were thousands of Poles living in Germany—many of them Jewish. The Polish government had become concerned about a tidal wave of people attempting to return home, so they were making it increasingly difficult to do so. Every Polish citizen who lived abroad for more than five years now had to visit a Polish consulate to have an endorsement stamp added to their passport. It was just announced that those who lacked the stamp after the end of October would lose their Polish citizenship—becoming stateless, just like the German Jews.
“Sidonie is in Krakow,” Adele whispered without preamble. “Moshe recently became a father, and she went to help with the new baby a few weeks ago.”
“Moshe is married?” I asked, startled.
“Last year, apparently.”
“But he’s only—” I did the math and winced. “Oh. He’s nineteen.” Where had those years gone? It had been almost four years since I saw Mayim. I felt a pinch in my chest. “Can Sidonie have her passport endorsed there?”
“Those endorsements are, by design, almost impossible to acquire. She has no choice—she must stay in Krakow.”
Adele was so pale that day. I wanted to get her back inside so that she could rest, but I knew she wouldn’t be standing in the rain pretending to set up frost cloths if there was an alternative.
“But what about Mayim and Levi?”
“Levi’s back has him bedbound these days. He’s still here,” she sighed, shaking her head sadly. “And of course, Mayim could still go to Krakow, but she will not leave without her father.”
“She needs her passport endorsed or she’ll be stateless.”
“Yes. I need whatever money you can easily access without arousing suspicion. Do you have some on hand?”
“I do. In Jürgen’s safe.”
“How much?”
“Maybe a few thousand Reichsmark,” I admitted. For most workers in Berlin, that was many months’ salary. At her look of surprise, I explained, “I started keeping a little extra cash on hand so I didn’t have to make extra trips to the bank when you needed it.”
“Excellent. Good girl,” Adele said, nodding in admiration, and I felt a flush of pleasure. “A thousand will do nicely.”
“What will you do with it?”
“Perhaps Mayim can buy some favor with the consulate staff when she goes to request the endorsement.”
“She and Levi need to leave, don’t they?” I whispered. Adele nodded.
“Mayim will not leave Levi to fend for himself, and I understand that too.”
We waited weeks for news. Every now and again, I’d whisper to Adele for an update, but she would whisper back fiercely, “Don’t you think I’d have told you if I’d heard anything?”
I went to check on Adele one morning and found her waiting at her kitchen table, sipping a cup of tea. We greeted one another as we always would, and then she pointed to a note she’d scrawled on a piece of paper.
Mayim has tried everything without success. There are rumors that those in her position will be deported soon but Poland will not grant them entry. I don’t know what’s going to happen. All we can do is pray.
“There’s really nothing more we can do?” I mouthed. Adele shook her head sadly and motioned toward her fireplace. I tore up the note and dropped it into the fireplace, watching as the flames curled the strips of paper and turned them into ash.
If you’d asked me before that day, I might have said I was accustomed to hopelessness. But knowing that my friend was in such desperate straits and realizing there was no choice I could make to help her, I discovered there were depths of hopelessness I’d never before experienced.
Gisela was especially unsettled that night in early November. I was up and down trying to nurse her back to sleep, becoming more frustrated with every new cry. Eventually, I gave up on sleep and moved with her to the sitting room.
Just as I settled, I was startled by the sound of breaking glass and shouting on the street. I froze in place, telling myself I had nothing to worry about. If there was any sign of trouble, Dietger would have the Gestapo or the SA here in minutes. If I just waited patiently, I’d hear the fuss die down.
But instead came more shouting, many voices now, and then the sound of screaming in the distance—someone pleading for help, the tinkle and crunch of more glass breaking, and then more and more screaming.
I reached for the light switch, my hands shaking so hard by then that I almost knocked the thing over. The light went out, and now the sitting room was almost dark, the dim glow of the streetlights falling in lines across the room through gaps around the drapes. Gisela grizzled and I shushed her, jiggling her in my arms both to expend some of my anxiety and to rock her back to sleep. The sounds of movement were closer—now heavy boots against the sidewalk, many boots, not just a handful of troublemakers as I’d first imagined.
Then came shouts and cheers, and was that a hint of smoke in the air?
I was alone in the house with the children. I’d resented Jürgen’s absence more times than I could count, but that night, I almost hated him for it, even though I knew that he loathed the distance every bit as much as I did.
I slipped from the sitting room, back up the stairs to settle Gisela in her bedroom, but then returned to the ground floor. I tried peeking around the drapes but couldn’t quite figure out what the activity was—not until my eyes adjusted and I recognized the Brownshirts outside my window. This was government-sanctioned chaos.
I hoped Adele was somehow sleeping through the noise—it was possible; she’d been so exhausted lately. The smoke in the air grew stronger as the crowd expanded and their rowdiness expanded with it. Had our national tinderbox finally been set?
Suddenly I realized that just beyond the low hedge at the front of my house, Dietger was in his coat, talking to an SA officer. I walked briskly to the foyer and pulled a coat over my nightclothes, then quietly opened the front door. Dietger looked up at me in alarm.
“Sofie, tonight is not the night to be out,” he said stiffly, glancing along the street, as if he was keeping watch for danger.
“What’s happening?” I asked, wrapping the coat tighter around myself. Now that I was outside, I could hear the distant sounds of sirens and gunshots. The chaos seemed to be coming from every direction. It sounded like the end of the world.
“Don’t worry,” Dietger assured me calmly. “Aryan homes are perfectly safe—the police will ensure it.”
“Safe from what?”
“The Jews murdered a German diplomat in Paris. What you are hearing is a necessary retaliation.”
Had sleep deprivation driven me insane, or did that make no sense? In the distance, the wail of sirens and the sounds of gunshots and the tinkling of glass crashing to the ground continued.
“Paris,” I repeated, fumbling to make sense of it all. “German Jews murdered someone in Paris?”
“That’s right.”
“But...what’s this all about, then?” I asked numbly.
Dietger waved his arms, vaguely motioning toward the street. His gaze was hard.
“The Führer has decided that extreme measures must be taken.”
Kristallnacht—the night of broken glass—was ostensibly an act of revenge against the Jews by Nazi loyalists. It seemed clear that the death of that young Nazi diplomat in Paris was nothing more than an excuse for the escalation Adele and I sensed coming months earlier. The violence was enacted by the usual suspects, the SS, the Brownshirts, rabidly infused young people who were indoctrinated in school and the Hitler youth program.
The chaos I heard was the sound of the SA smashing every window in the homes of Jewish families. One family was just down the street. They arrested the father and the eldest son and chased the mother and her young children into the street.
Adele had been awake through it all too.
“You should have called me,” she said. “We could have kept one another company while the world burned. Did the children sleep through it at least?”
“The older two did. Gisela had a rough night, but it wasn’t the noise—that’s just how she sleeps these days.”
“Perhaps she’s teething,” Adele said. Then she nodded to herself as she said weakly, “I’ll make her some rock cakes to chew on later.”
“You look so tired,” I said gently. “Have you seen your doctor lately?”
She huffed impatiently.
“He gave me some new pills. Always with the pills. I’m fine, but I’m eighty-six years old. I’m allowed to be tired every now and again.”
“I can’t believe you finally told me your age.”
“That settles it, then. I’m definitely losing my marbles,” she said, with a twinkle in her eyes.
As Georg and Laura dressed for school, I told them the bare minimum—there had been some violence the previous night, and they were to go right to school and come straight home. I couldn’t bring myself to explain that the violence had been against the Jews. I was terrified of watching them celebrate if I did.
Later, a sense of morbid curiosity drew me outside for a walk, with Gisela settled safely in her stroller. When I reached the house of the Jewish family at the end of my street, I was startled to see people inside. Through a broken window, I watched a woman cheer as she unhooked a painting from the wall. I recognized her. We’d chatted occasionally at the school gate—about this teacher or that, about the weather, about our children and their achievements.
Had she ever really been a cheerful and friendly acquaintance? Through the frame of that broken window, she was a vicious monster, feeding on hate.
“I had it first!” I heard a man shout. My gaze swung to an upstairs window, where I saw two men wrestling.
“I think you’ll find I did,” another man snapped. I felt a jolt of shock to see that they were fighting over a wireless—an item that any family in our affluent neighborhood could have purchased with ease.
Every window in the house had some new horror to display. An elderly woman was sorting through a wardrobe, trying on someone else’s coats. A child was using a hammer to smash the glass in a display cabinet while his mother urged him on—a senseless act of destruction, given the door on the cabinet was already broken and neither child nor mother seemed to have any interest in the contents.
Almost in slow motion, I raised my hands to rub my eyes. Surely I was imagining this. Surely no force on earth could make otherwise sensible humans behave with such depravity?
An elderly man approached. He and I exchanged a glance, assessing one another. Maybe he saw something in my gaze, because he suddenly took his hat off and held it against his chest. He stood beside me, staring at the house, and a tear slid from his eye to roll into the lines on his cheek.
“They were my friends,” he whispered, his voice thick with tears. “The little girls were terrified. I tried to help them, but there was nothing I could do. Today is the first day in all of my life I have been ashamed to be German.”
The depth of emotion in his voice triggered my own. I turned back toward my home, intending to retreat to the privacy of a bathroom so that I could cry, but the day had not finished delivering its horrors. Walking down the street in perfectly neat lines were dozens of children, flanked by their teachers.
Laura’s class was at the front of that line, and she saw me first—by the time I noticed her, she was already waving excitedly. I approached her teacher slowly, swamped by a rising sense of dread.
“Out for some exercise?” I tried to keep my tone light, but I was unable to keep the tremor from my voice.
“Oh yes, Mrs. von Meyer Rhodes. Today is such an exciting day for our class.”
“Mama, we are going to see the house that has been liberated. A Jewish family had been occupying it,” Laura said sweetly, her blue eyes alight with excitement. “Did you know we had a Jewish family so close to our house? It is scary to think, isn’t it, Mama? But they are gone now, so it’s okay.”
“Yes, Laura. It’s all okay,” I said. A Jewish woman was the second person to hold her when she was born. A Jewish woman was the first person she ever smiled at. Her very first word was May. “I’ll see you at home a bit later.”
I flashed a tight smile at my daughter, then at her teacher, and pushed the stroller forward, walking briskly home. But my footsteps stumbled just a few steps later, when I heard the schoolchildren cheer as they reached the ransacked house.
“The Jews are our misfortune!” they chanted in a singsong, joyous fashion. “They are finally put in their place!”
The violence continued the next night and into the next day. Hundreds of Jews were murdered, still more suicided. Tens of thousands of Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps, the first time arrests were ever openly made on the basis of ethnicity, and the newspapers suggested that all of this had the full support of the German people. But I sensed a different sentiment in the air—that perhaps this time, the Nazi party had gone too far.
But no one said it. No one could say it. We had so long been afraid of the consequences of dissent that even as the nation descended into madness, any moral call to rise up against the chaos went unheeded.
The city was finally quiet after two nights of violence. I went to bed early, Gisela beside me in the hopes that we’d get a little more rest, but woke to the shrill burst of the phone ringing just after eleven o’clock. Jürgen often called late like this if he was especially busy and we hadn’t spoken in a while, so I was certain he would be at the other end.
“Hello?” I asked breathlessly.
“I hope I didn’t wake you, Sofie.”
It was Adele, and she sounded weak. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“What is it?” I asked urgently. She didn’t answer. “Adele—are you sick? I’ll come right over—”
“Yes, I am quite unwell, Sofie,” she said, slow and labored, as if it were an effort to speak.
“I’m coming—”
“Wait,” she interrupted. “Please be sure to bundle up—put your coat on and your warmest winter boots, maybe a nice warm hat too. I really don’t want you to catch a chill.”
I looked along the hall to the windows above the stairwell. There was ice around the windowpane. Even so, it was unlike Adele to baby me. Something was going on.
I ran back to my bedroom and stared at Gisela on the bed. Georg and Laura were asleep down the hall—but they never woke up when she cried. I couldn’t take her with me. I couldn’t leave her behind. I groaned and ran to Georg’s bedroom.
“Georg? Sweetheart?”
“Hmm?”
He was sleep-rumpled and innocent, and even as I shook his shoulder gently, I felt a tug of love for him in my chest.
“Darling, I have to go next door. Oma needs some help with something. Can you please come and sleep in my bed in case Gisela wakes up?”
He was half-asleep as we walked down the hallway, dragging his feet and squinting his eyes against the light. In my room, he flopped down onto my side of the bed and rested his hand gently on Gisela’s back, as if to console her in advance. I propped a pillow beside her to keep her from rolling off the bed. Adele’s words were ringing in my ears as I pulled on a felt hat and heavy coat, along with a pair of snow boots.
At the last minute, I stopped at the safe in Jürgen’s study and withdrew every Reichsmark, stuffing them into the pockets of my coat.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs, just for a heartbeat, thinking of my children asleep upstairs. If love was the antidote to hate, surely the vastness of the love I felt for them could make some difference, even with everything else they were exposed to. The streets were calm, but it felt like the eye of a storm. I was terrified, but I’d heard the urgency in Adele’s voice. There was no option to refuse her.
The clouds above were low and heavy, and light snow was falling—just enough to make the path icy. I slipped through the courtyard gate and into Adele’s yard, then her apartment. I found her in the kitchen, where she often was. The fire was roaring, and she was slumped at the table, watching the steam rise from a teacup. She looked as weary as I’d ever seen her.
“Oma...” I whispered, rushing to her side.
“Thank you for coming, Sofie... I’m fine. I just... I can’t find my medication. Could you look for me? Perhaps in my bedroom...and I’m going to go take a bath while you look. That sometimes helps too.” Her voice was uncertain, her breaths coming in pants between words. She was so pale her skin had taken on a blue-gray tone, and when I looked at her hands, they were trembling. But even as she spoke, she was pointing—drawing my attention to a scrap of paper on the table.
I’m fine. Go quietly to the bathroom. Run the water to make some noise. I put the wireless in there too—turn it on and whisper just in case.
She watched to make sure I read the note, and when I nodded, she ripped it up and tossed the pieces into the fire.
I hesitated at her side, but her expression became even more impatient as she waved at me and mouthed, “Hurry, Sofie!”
I went briskly toward the bathroom, my footsteps clumsy because of the heavy boots. The bathroom door was closed, the room dark. I reached inside and pulled the string and gasped.
Mayim was sitting on the closed toilet lid. When the light came on, she jumped, clearly startled, and then she burst into tears and pressed her shaking finger over her lips. I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. I turned the bath on as if to fill it, then fumbled for the wireless—trying to fill the air with sound.
Mayim and I threw our arms around each other. All I could do was ramble and all she could do was cry, and we were struggling to be quiet as we did so. Mayim was trembling, and so cold her skin felt like ice. I pulled my coat off and slipped it around her shoulders, then buttoned it for her, right up to her chin. She watched me, silent tears still pouring down her face. Her skin was etched with new lines that did not belong on the face of someone so young.
“What’s happened?” I whispered.
“Papa is gone.”
She was struggling to breathe between her sobs. I pulled her close again, squeezing her tightly, as if I could somehow absorb her pain. But the thing about grief is that even when it’s shared, the weight is not relieved.
“It was the first night of the violence. Papa told me to hide under the kitchen sink. They knew my name...about my passport... They said they were going to deport me. Father wouldn’t give me up and they shot him. When I came out from under the sink there was blood everywhere. Mrs. Elsas next door said they dragged him down the stairs and threw him into the back of the truck and if he wasn’t already dead...”
“Oh, Mayim! I’m so sorry.”
“I went to Adele’s friend’s house and she hid me there, but yesterday someone came to warn her that they were coming for me. She sent me to the next woman in the chain, but the same thing happened—that time there was no warning, and I only just made it out the back door before I heard them at the front. I’m sorry to make trouble for you and Adele, but I don’t know where Martha lives, and there was no one else.”
“Don’t be silly,” I whispered. “You’re my family. You always will be. Is there a plan from here? Can I help?”
“Adele called Martha a little while ago. She asked her to borrow her son’s car and come for a visit early tomorrow to help with errands. When she arrives, Adele is going to ask her to drive me to the Polish border...but I don’t know what happens after I get there. The border is closed and I have no passport. Adele said she has a little money...”
“There is more in your pocket,” I said. She reached into the coat pocket, and I knew her hand had closed over the wad of notes when her eyes welled with relief.
I suddenly realized why Adele had gone to such pains to ensure I wore warm clothing. Mayim was already wearing my coat, but now I took my hat and gently pulled it over her hair, and then I undid my boots. She passed me her shoes—worn flats, desperately in need of a new sole. They reminded me of the shoes I’d worn to the Nazi rally in 1933, and how frustrated I’d been that we had been unable to afford to repair them, or even to replace them. Looking back on that time, I saw myself as a foolish, spoiled stranger.
“Go,” she whispered. “Keep the children safe.”
“I’m trying,” I said, and my voice broke. In that instant, Mayim and I stared at one another—each of us completely unashamed of our distress. That was what I’d missed the most. I could always be myself with Mayim. I no longer had that luxury with anyone else, not even with Jürgen, because we could only connect on an insecure phone, and not even with Adele, because of her increasing frailty.
We embraced one last time before I left the bathroom. Mayim closed the door behind me. I heard the bath shut off, and then the wireless, and then finally, the light seeping beneath the bathroom door was gone too. It felt as if she’d disappeared in an instant, or I’d imagined her.
Adele’s tea was still steaming by the time I returned to the kitchen. A bottle of her heart medication was on the table next to it, full to the brim with little white tablets.
“Ah, there’s your medication,” I said lightly, even as I wiped the tears from my face. “Thank you,” I mouthed. Adele shook her head, as if to say, Don’t mention it. She pointed to the notepad in front of her.
If anything happens, there is a letter for you buried in the jar of sweets.
I opened my mouth to protest, but Adele pressed a finger over her lips, then pointed toward the back door, stubbornness in her eyes. “I’m better now and your children are in that house alone.”
I bent and, for the first time in all those years I had known her, kissed her cheek. She caught me as I moved to straighten, held me close for just a heartbeat, and then I felt her lips against my cheek. Up close, I could see a purple tinge to her lips and her eyelids seemed heavy, as if she were struggling to keep them open. Her breathing scared me most. It was ragged, as if every breath were an effort, not a relief. I was gripped by a sudden, terrible fear.
“Oma,” I whispered. “Why don’t you come home with me?”
“I’m needed here. I’ll be fine,” she whispered dismissively. Then she straightened and, for the benefit of an audience that may or may not have even been listening, added loudly, “Thank you for coming over to help me.”
I had just slipped back beneath the covers of my bed with Georg and Gisela when the roar of an engine sounded. A car door opened, and there was a brief moment of silence before I heard shouting outside my villa.
I sprang out of bed, rushing toward the window to crack it open just a little. The icy air rushed in, and so did the sound of the Gestapo at Adele’s front door.
“Open the door, Mrs. Rheinberg!”
How much could she bear?
“Have you got the wrong house, young man?” Adele called from her bedroom window. She sounded stubborn, irritated...and weak. “This is Adele Rheinberg. Mrs. Adele Rheinberg. I am eighty-six years old. Do you really have business waking up an eighty-six-year-old woman in the middle of the night?”
“You’ll need to let us in, Mrs. Rheinberg!”
There was a long pause.
“No,” Adele called back, almost thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think I will.”
Cursing, I ran down the stairs, pulled on a coat, and stepped outside my front door. I made it to the hedge before Dietger came running toward me.
“Sofie, go back inside,” he hissed, pointing to my door. “This isn’t about you.”
“What’s happening with Adele?” I demanded. “She’s an old woman, Dietger! They have no business with her. Please go find out what’s wrong.”
“We need to let this play out, Sofie.” He sighed, shaking his head as he glanced toward her house. He dropped his voice, then admitted, “I don’t even know why they’re here. I didn’t call them.”
“This is your last warning, Mrs. Rheinberg,” someone shouted.
If Adele answered this time, I couldn’t hear her. I took a step past Dietger, out onto the sidewalk, just in time to see Adele’s front door open. It wasn’t her on the other side, but the woman from the studio apartment on the ground floor, looking bewildered and disheveled as the large contingent of Gestapo filed past her. My panic clawed at my throat and left me flushing hot. I took a step toward her house.
“Sofie,” Dietger said. He was much closer than I’d realized, and his voice was low. “Go home. Please. Let them handle this.”
“But she’s a little old lady,” I said, and only then did I realize that I was sobbing, and my feet were so cold they were burning. I looked down and realized I was barefoot, standing in the light dusting of snow. I sobbed again and looked at Dietger—the closest thing I could find to a friendly face on that dark street. “She hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Perhaps she’s suspected of disloyalty to the Reich?” Even he sounded unconvinced. I took another step toward the house. This time, Dietger’s hand caught my elbow. He gripped it firmly.
“Sofie, please,” he said flatly. Then he dropped his voice. “I have to report any suspicious activity and even a hint of suspicious activity from you. Putting yourself right in the middle of a Gestapo operation is the very definition of suspicious activity.” He tugged me toward my own house. “Go back inside, Sofie. Go inside. Please. You can’t help her.”
I tugged at his arm but he was gripping me hard, determined to save me from myself.
“Damn you to hell, Dietger,” I choked out. He propelled me toward my house—not with malice, but with determination.
“Surely it would be more comfortable for you in the warm...” It was so cold that when he spoke, his breath escaped as mist. I shook my head, craning my neck toward Adele’s building. Would they drag her out? And Mayim too? Would the two of them go kicking and screaming? Would they go silently defiant?
I wanted to go inside to get some shoes...some socks...something to protect my feet, but I didn’t dare in case I missed something, and I was too anxious to even sit down, to take the pressure off the burning skin of my ice-cold feet. But minutes began to pass, and the street and the building fell completely silent. Time was elastic. In a city that had been on fire for days, the whole world seemed to have fallen asleep.
“How long has it been?” I asked Dietger eventually. My teeth were chattering so violently it was hard to speak. He looked at his watch, then shifted awkwardly.
“Uh...close to fifteen minutes...?”
Just then, we heard boots on the ground, and I looked up to see the Gestapo filing out of Adele’s house—empty-handed. Had she won? For just a moment, I felt a flare of pride and hope—maybe she’d convinced them to leave her be. Maybe she’d even talked them into leaving without searching her house. Maybe...
Dietger held up a hand to me to indicate I should stay on my front porch. Then he jogged quickly over to one of the cars at the curb. He spoke quietly with one of the men. Then his shoulders slumped as if he’d suddenly exhaled. The streetlight above his head brought the shock and the sadness on his face into sharp relief. A feeling of dread hit me so hard, my knees almost buckled.
I ran past Dietger. Past the Gestapo officers, who were sliding back into their black cars. I ran through Adele’s lobby and through the smashed interior door into her apartment.
I found her on the floor in her bedroom, lying on her back by the window. Had the Gestapo seen her collapse? Had they even tried to help her?
“Adele,” I choked out, dropping to my knees beside her. I took her shoulders in my hands and I shook her limp body. “Adele, please. Please wake up.” My breath caught on a sob. “Adele. Oma. I can’t do this without you.”
Should I call an ambulance? A doctor? Should I try to resuscitate her? I didn’t even know how to start, and besides...somewhere deep inside, I knew it was too late. Shaking her body only reminded me how frail she had become in recent times.
I brushed the wispy hair around her face back into place. I touched my shaking fingers to her cheeks and I let my tears rain down over her, anointing her body with my grief and love.
“Sofie?” Dietger was at the door, hovering and uncertain. “Is there someone I can call? Maybe Jürgen? Lydia?”
It took me a few seconds to compose myself enough to speak.
“Did they tell you what happened?”
“They said she’d already collapsed by the time they got inside.”
“And was her alleged crime punishable by death?” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.
“She was suspected of disloyalty to the Reich,” Dietger said, his expression hardening. “She would have been taken to a camp anyway.” He took a step back from the door, shaking his head sadly, then said, so quietly I had to strain to hear the words, “Perhaps this is a blessing.” His footsteps retreated.
I looked from Adele’s face, relaxed and peaceful in death, to her bed, and the photo of Alfred and her sons that she kept beside it. I started to cry again. I couldn’t stay with her body and leave my children alone in the house, but I couldn’t bear to leave it.
“Mrs. von Meyer Rhodes?” Two of Adele’s tenants were in the doorway. The quiet Bavarian couple who lived in that tiny front room in the front of the ground floor. They kept to themselves mostly, and in the shock of the moment, I couldn’t even remember their names. The man walked into the room and extended a hand toward me. I let him help me to my feet.
“Let us take care of her for you tonight,” his wife said gently from the doorway. “In the morning, we will call the mortuary.”
“She was always so good to us,” the husband said gruffly. “When I lost my job, she let us stay anyway, even though it took me months to find work again. It will be an honor for us to sit with her. We will pray over her soul and keep her company until the undertaker comes in the morning.”
When I nodded, the man crouched beside Adele’s body and whispered, “Let’s get you up on the bed, Mrs. Rheinberg.”
He cradled her gently in his arms as if she were a child. Then he stretched her out on her bed and even pulled the blanket over her, right up to her chin. I started to cry again at the kindness of his gesture.
People could still be good.
I told the couple I needed to wash my face before I went home and saw my children. I let myself into Adele’s bathroom and closed the door before I turned on the light—just in case Mayim was still there. I was relieved to find she wasn’t—although I had no idea if she was hiding elsewhere. It was too risky to search for her. All I could do was pray.
There was no answer the first time I called Jürgen’s lodgings. The second time, he answered on the third ring, sounding dazed and sleepy. Without preamble, I told him that Adele had passed. I didn’t mention the Gestapo or the circumstances of her death. At first, he didn’t even react.
“Jürgen, did you hear me?”
“Did she die at home?” he asked stiffly. I was trying to be brave—for him, for Adele, for the children—but that question broke me. In a strange way, Adele had gone to meet her maker on her own terms.
“She did,” I said, and then I choked on a sob. “She died at home.”
There was another long silence over the phone. Then Jürgen said, “I’m coming home. Right away.”
“Will you be allowed to?” I whispered, a sharp edge of bitterness in my voice.
“She was a mother to me,” Jürgen said, his voice breaking midsentence. “Of course I’ll be allowed to.”
He hung up quickly after that. I’d never seen my husband cry, but I understood that he needed to, and I understood his need for privacy.
I was on the sofa later that afternoon, wrapped in Mayim’s knit blanket, waiting impatiently for Jürgen to arrive. I had a crumpled, tearstained letter in my hand. I’d fished it out of Adele’s sweets jar early that morning before the children woke.
Dearest Jürgen and Sofie,
Jürgen, you were a gift from God to me during the worst period of my life, living proof that no matter how dark the night, the dawn will always come. Raising you and being a part of your life was one of the great privileges of mine. And, Sofie, I have treasured your friendship in these past few years. Do not underestimate yourself. You are stronger than you know.
My loves, these monsters who rule our country are taking us all to uncharted territory, and if you’re reading this, it seems I have run out of days to be by your side supporting you through it. Be courageous, but also be smart.
I am grateful for every single minute I spent with you. Please tell the children their Oma adored them.
Love always,
Aunt Adele
Ultimately, we would have to burn it. But until Jürgen had a chance to read it, I could cling to it, as much a comfort object as Mayim’s blanket had become.
It had been an impossibly hard day. I’d broken the news to the children on my own, consoled them on my own. I’d tried to convince Georg to stay home, but he was adamant he needed to go to school, and although his eyes were red rimmed as he walked out the door, he hadn’t shed a tear. Even after he left, Gisela and Laura were both so demanding—I felt I’d been attending to their needs every minute of the day.
The knock at the door was unexpected, and at the same time, irritating. I just wanted to sit with my grief for a few minutes. I stuffed Adele’s letter into my pocket and dragged myself to the door, and was startled to find Lydia there.
She was holding a Crock-Pot in her hands, her expression one of intense sympathy, mixed in with some awkwardness.
“I heard about Adele and I just—Sofie, I’m so sorry. I know she was important to your family.” She extended the Crock-Pot toward me. “Soup. So you don’t have to cook your children dinner tonight.”
I took the Crock-Pot and set it on a little table inside the foyer, and then I turned back to her.
“When did you change your mind about the Jews?” I blurted. Her eyebrows rose in surprise and alarm. I was a long way past thinking straight, and that Crock-Pot reminded me that at her best, Lydia was a great friend—a woman of true kindness. But something ugly had emerged in her, and I desperately wanted to understand what had changed.
“I always knew,” she said quietly. “Don’t you remember at finishing school? I was polite to...that girl...because that was the way, but I never understood why you couldn’t see that she wasn’t like us. We had to pretend for a long time, so it was a relief to me and Karl when right-minded Germans came to power in this country.”
I never once noticed her reticence toward Mayim. Maybe I saw what I wanted to see. In any case, she’d proved Mayim right. The Nazis didn’t make people like Lydia anti-Semitic, not really. They had only uncovered what already existed.
“What about you?” she said gently. “When did you change your mind about the Jews?”
“Deep down, I always knew the truth,” I said. “What you say is true. Sometimes you have to do and say certain things for acceptance.”
She nodded sadly, misunderstanding me as I knew she would. Adele had been right about so many things—people heard what they wanted to hear. Lydia’s expression grew somber.
“And...Adele? Do you know what she was mixed up in?”
I raised my chin, and just as Adele had told me to, I spoke harshly, as if I were handing down a judgment, and not breaking my own heart.
“The Gestapo suspected her of disloyalty to the Reich. I have no idea what the details were.”
“I’m so sorry, Sofie,” she said again, shaking her head.
“Me too,” I said flatly, and then I thanked her and closed the door before I could say something I would regret.