Sofie
It was Jürgen’s idea to buy a country house, midway between the Peenemünde facility and Berlin. The distance was taking a toll on us all. I agreed we should consider it—but just a few days later, he called to tell me he’d spoken to a Realtor and they’d already found the perfect property: a fully furnished home right on the lake at Tollensesee, ten kilometers from the small city of Neubrandenburg. It would take Jürgen about two hours by car to reach the house—time he felt he could spare as often as twice a month. From Berlin, it would take me just a little longer.
“Could you really take a weekend off that often?” I asked him, skeptically.
“Not the whole weekend,” he admitted. “But if I worked there during the day, I’m certain I could make this work. And when a whole weekend isn’t practical, at the very least, we could have Saturday night together and I could come back here early Sunday morning.”
Just a few weeks later, I made the drive for the first time. Laura had turned ten and, after years of anticipation, was now a member of the Young Girls’ League. She and Georg were both on camps that weekend, so it was just me and Gisela, alone in the car as we traveled out of the city. I still wasn’t convinced by this country-house idea, but we’d gone ahead anyway—purely because Jürgen seemed so desperate to do it.
The house was a simple, half-timbered A-frame. The support beams were left exposed and were painted dark gray, the panels between them a soft cream. The roof was a thick thatching. It was modest but I loved it anyway, and more than that, I loved what the house represented.
Family time. Pure, unburdened family time—something we’d been desperately short on for years.
The house was surrounded by trees, although I’d seen on the drive that there were other homes nearby. There was a small clearing off to one side of the house, but beyond that and the driveway, we could have been in the middle of nowhere. And right in front of the house was a private jetty, stretching out into the water, perfect for fishing or as a platform for launching a boat or even an excited child on a hot summer’s day.
“Well?” Jürgen said, as he opened the front door and approached me. The tension I was by then used to in his face had eased, the tight set of his shoulders relaxed. I had a feeling that miracle had only happened in the last few minutes, since he too had arrived at the lake house.
“I love it,” I said.
That night, I put Gisela to bed while Jürgen set up a fire in the little clearing beside the house. He dragged chairs out from the dining room table and we sat beside one another, enjoying the bottle of wine the Realtor left for us as a housewarming gift.
The house might one day have listening devices, if it didn’t already, and I supposed there was always the possibility of someone in the woods, trying to listen in. But here, by the fire, we were far enough away from the trees and the house that we could be confident no one would hear us.
Despite this, Jürgen remained silent. He sipped his wine, and he sighed, long, contented sighs. And after a while, I started to sigh too—as if we were both breathing out years of tension. I began to enjoy the sounds of owls in the woods and the crackling fire, to breathe it all in, to feel that peace unwinding tension I’d forgotten could be unwound. Beside me, Jürgen’s gaze was focused higher. After a while, I followed it, and found him staring up at the white-blue glow of the full moon.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.
“Many things,” he said, his voice husky.
“Such as?”
He glanced at me and smiled.
“You. The children. Work. The moon.”
“Always the moon,” I said softly.
“When I was a little boy and I went to live with Adele, I promised myself I’d never forget my family,” he said quietly. “I remember sitting in that car with her, utterly terrified, deciding that I’d hold their memories so close that I’d never lose them. Then time began to pass, and one by one, the memories slipped away. Now I only remember a handful of things... How ordinary it was as we ate breakfast together. The air raid siren and the panic as my mother went to get the baby and my father shoved me into the cellar—then nothing, until I woke up in the hospital. I do remember the night before. I stayed up late with my father, staring at the moon with this terrible telescope he’d constructed himself. He was an amateur astronomer, obsessed with the moon. He told me that night that he hoped man would reach it in my lifetime.”
“You’ve never told me any of that,” I said, stunned. “You always said you didn’t remember anything.”
“You’ve always been so much more outgoing than me, Sofie. I’ve had to share parts of myself with you over the years that were hard to expose—but those memories of my family were just too precious, and part of what made them so was that they were only mine.”
“Why tell me now?”
“I’ve been thinking about those memories a lot lately. It brings me comfort that I don’t remember much about my parents. After all, no real sense of who they were means no way to know how they’d have felt about the work I’m doing now.”
He said this casually but I heard the pain behind his words, and it left me stricken.
“Jürgen...”
“Name a European city you love and German rockets may one day wipe it off the face of the earth.”
I gasped. “Are you close to that?”
“The components are all there. In theory—the rest is just a matter of persistence and experimentation to make those components work consistently.” He didn’t sound optimistic or proud. His tone was heavier than ever.
“The Reich is ever expanding. Even if we landed a man on the moon, Hitler would just want to occupy that too. And Otto says that as soon as we can prove the new prototype works, we’ll be asked to produce thousands of them.” Jürgen downed the rest of his wine in one gulp, then threw the glass into the fire. I flinched when it shattered. He kept his voice low, but he did nothing to curtail the fury it contained. “Thousands of them? It’s insanity. Do you know how we’re going to resource that production? It won’t be with paid laborers, that’s for damned sure.”
“How, then?” I asked hesitantly.
“Prisoners,” he said, and his voice broke. It was thick with tears as he whispered, “We are already using them to a lesser extent—we hire them from the SS. They bring busloads from the camps every few weeks.”
“German prisoners?”
“From all over Europe. Mostly Jews.” Jürgen slumped. He lifted a shaking hand to rub his forehead. “If Hitler orders us to go to full-scale production, it will be innocent Jewish men who pay the price.”
I’d seen my husband up and down over the years—but I’d never seen him like this. He was broken and angry and hard and almost oozing shame and guilt. A shiver of fear ran through me.
“We tell ourselves that we’re only protecting our family, but the family is damaged by our decision to protect it,” I blurted. “Georg and Laura are awash in propaganda and we can’t correct them. You’re a part of something you hate, and I can see that it’s killing you.”
Life in Berlin was close to normal, aside from some rationing and, at one point, a series of air raids. The papers painted the Reich as the victim of European aggression, always pushing forward to do good, never to harm. But the war machine was powered by German men, and when they were released on periods of furlough, they brought reality home with them. I’d heard enough rumors of systemic imprisonment of Jews across the expanded Reich to know there was hideous truth there. These whispers circled around me, each one a tiny piece of a puzzle I knew in my heart was dark, even if I couldn’t see the whole picture, and even if, day-to-day, it all seemed so very far away. “Every morning, I wake up and carry on as if this is all acceptable, so I’m complicit too, aren’t I?” I whispered.
We sat in silence for a long time, and I sought that sense of peace again, trying to focus on the sights and sounds and the scents of the lake. But I couldn’t relax—not after hearing the torment in my husband’s voice, and especially not after he turned to me and said quietly, “I would do anything for you and the children. Anything.”
“I know.” He had more than proved that over these years.
“Every day, when it feels like it’s all too much, when I want to scream with the insanity of it all, I think of you and the children and that is all I can do to keep going.”
“But the madness is spiraling all over Europe, and we’re just sitting here drinking wine?” I cried bitterly.
“That’s exactly why I wanted this place. Why we need it. The day might come when we decide that keeping the family safe can’t be our highest priority in the context of what’s happening.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “I realized that if the point comes when we need to draw a line in the sand and say this far and no further...well, so long as we’re meeting here, we can find a way to speak freely. We can work together to make a plan.”
After that weekend, I vowed to make trips to the lake house my highest priority.
Georg had been asking if Hans could join us for a weekend at the lake house from his very first visit, and I’d always discouraged this—wanting to reserve that place for our family. But over the summer of 1942, I finally gave in, and Hans joined us for a week. He was about to turn thirteen, and I sensed he was relieved to have a break from the bustle of his own home. Lydia and Karl achieved their goal of eight children for the Reich, but despite their small team of nannies, it seemed they expected Hans to parent himself. I knew from my own childhood exactly how lonely that could feel.
Despite everything, I liked Hans. He was a lot like my Georg—a good kid, albeit one bent out of shape by Nazi influence. Cut adrift from all of that, I saw the kindness of his heart set free again. If Georg didn’t clear his plate after dinner, Hans would remind him. If Laura felt left out, Hans would encourage Georg to include her.
I barely saw the children during the day—they’d disappear out the front door as soon as they were awake and they’d return only when they were hungry or too sunburned to continue adventuring. At night, they tumbled into bed early, resting up to prepare for the next day.
But when the week was over, Lydia arrived to collect Hans. I was expecting her driver to arrive alone, so I was surprised and a little dismayed when she slipped from the back seat of her silver BMW. She’d left her other children behind with the nannies.
“You’ve been spending so much time down here,” she said, as we sat around the kitchen table. “I wanted to see what the place was like.”
I set a cup of chicory “coffee” in front of her, then took the chair opposite her to drink my own. I scanned the kitchen, trying to see it through her eyes. I’d given her only scant details about the lake house, knowing she’d picture something grander if left to her own imagination.
“It’s been a godsend for us to be able to reconnect while Jürgen is busy with work.”
“And he’s coming today?”
“That’s the plan. He was due last weekend, but something held him up.”
“Did he not tell you? That’s the main reason I wanted to come by. I wanted to congratulate you.” She seemed conflicted, her gaze darting around the room as she gnawed on her lip. “I assumed Jürgen would have told you himself.”
“What happened?” I asked her, bewildered.
“He’s humble, that’s all. That’s why he doesn’t tell you these things. Or maybe he wanted to tell you in person...”
“If last week is anything to go by, he might just cancel the trip at the last minute anyway. Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“They are never really sure until they process the results and it seems to take them such a long time. So much math.” When I nodded, impatient for her to continue, she drew in a deep breath and nearly knocked me off my chair in surprise when she blurted, “But Karl says that from what they know so far, it looks like the test launch last week made it all the way to space.”
If this was true, it was remarkable—a world-changing achievement. I was immediately stung that Jürgen hadn’t so much as called to let me know, but hot on the heels of that hurt came concern, and realization.
Jürgen always sheltered me from the worst of his work. That he didn’t call to let me know about the success of his launch likely indicated there was a dark side to it—something he couldn’t talk about over the phone, or maybe something he wasn’t yet ready to talk about at all.
Jürgen arrived later that afternoon and was immediately co-opted by the children.
“Watch us swim, Papa!” they cried, and he laughed and promised he would as soon as he set his briefcase inside. I was on the jetty, where I’d been watching Georg, Laura, and Gisela run along the wooden platform and strike dramatic poses as they launched themselves into the water. Gisela, now five, was not yet a strong swimmer, so the older two were helping her make her way back to the shore after each dive.
Jürgen walked down the jetty to sit behind me, leaving room on the narrow dock for the children to run alongside us. He wrapped his arms around my waist, and I leaned against him. It was golden hour; the perfect red-tinged rays of the sun over the lake left me lazy and dreamy. All the world looked like a postcard, but especially with Jürgen’s strong torso against my back, and his arms around my waist. We watched the children play in silence for a while, sharing only a chuckle here or there as they performed for us. But Lydia’s news this morning hovered at the edges of my consciousness, demanding attention.
“Is it true? Your rocket made it to space?”
“Maybe. Probably.” Jürgen paused. “No one can be sure yet.”
I twisted awkwardly to stare at him in disbelief.
“Isn’t this what you’ve dreamed of your entire life?”
“Not like this.”
He’d been laughing at the children just a moment before, but his gaze grew troubled. I shifted so that I was facing him, intending to give him my full attention.
“Mama! Watch me!” Gisela protested.
“In a minute,” I sighed. “I’m talking with Papa.”
“I’m still watching, treasure,” Jürgen said, glancing at her over my shoulder. I watched the joy on his face as he watched her run the last few steps toward the end of the dock, and saw the amusement in his eyes when she inevitably froze at the last minute and stopped right at the edge to peer down into the water anxiously. I’d been watching her for hours that day, and each launch went the same way, so I knew what came next. Gisela would turn back to make doubly sure she was being supervised, pinch her nose with her fingers, puff her cheeks out with air, and then squeeze her eyes shut before she turned around and jumped blindly from the peer. I saw Jürgen struggling to suppress a chuckle at this ritual—then heard the squeal as Gisela finally jumped and felt the spatter of water on my back as she hit the water. But once Gisela was paddling back to shore with the other children, the smile on Jürgen’s face faded. He gazed into my eyes, growing serious again.
“Otto has requested a meeting with Hitler. He is desperate—clutching at straws trying to save the program.”
“Save the program?” I repeated, alarmed. “Save it from what?”
“I know the papers say the war is going well, but we are struggling against the Soviets,” Jürgen admitted. I’d heard whispers of the same in Berlin. “The way my program has made such rapid progress has been through constant experimentation—that’s an incredibly expensive approach. We used to have an unlimited budget. Then we had a generous budget... Now we’ve had a series of budget cuts. Otto has become worried that the program might shut down if we don’t deliver something war-ready soon.”
“But...if a rocket reached space—” I said, trying to cheer him up, but he shook his head.
“That’s only part of the picture, my love. We fired several rockets over these past few weeks. Most failed. One succeeded. We don’t actually know how to produce these things reliably yet—let alone to mass-produce them, and on a shoestring budget.”
“What are you going to do?” I whispered.
“I fantasize about finding ways to undermine our progress, but I am surrounded by brilliant men. If I attempt sabotage, it will quickly become obvious to them.” His gaze drifted over my shoulder again, to land on the children. “I’m trapped on this path where my work is building to something heinous.”
Otto and Helene threw a party that Christmas at their lavish home in Dresden. He had climbed the ranks of the Nazi party and been invited to join the SS—awarded the prestigious role of Hauptsturmführer.
When we arrived at the party, Otto greeted us in his full SS uniform—the high leather boots, gray jacket and pants, patches on his collar and shoulders that bore his rank. Helene was pregnant yet again. I’d met her a number of times over the years, and every single time I’d seen her, she’d either been pregnant or holding a newborn. That night, she looked exhausted. Her eyes kept drifting to the ceiling, as if she’d rather be upstairs in bed, or anywhere but that bustling holiday party.
“Congratulations,” I said politely, motioning toward her stomach.
“Number eight,” she said, and although this was clearly intended as a boast, her exhausted tone, coupled with the way she sighed as she said it, suggested eight was perhaps a few more children than she’d have preferred.
“Still only the three children?” Otto asked me pointedly. At Lydia’s suggestion, I’d left Georg, Laura, and Gisela back in Berlin with her children and staff of nannies. “No chance of Mother’s Cross for you, then. That must be very disappointing for you both.” The Mother’s Cross was a medal given to encourage fecundity. The gold rank was the most prestigious, reserved for women with more than seven children. Both Helene and Lydia were awarded theirs the previous August. Otto’s gaze slid to Jürgen. “Perhaps we are keeping you away from your bride too much?”
My cheeks heated, and I glanced anxiously at Jürgen, but was surprised to find him nonchalant.
“We have been trying to ensure we have more time together. Given I can’t spare the time to come home much, we have purchased a country house at Tollensesee. The work is important, but obviously, so is Sofie’s duty to the Reich.”
Otto nodded, pleased with this response. I, on the other hand, was startled by it. Jürgen had said everything he should have said in response to this challenge, but there was a superiority to his tone, not toward Otto—toward me. Women in the Reich were expected to be submissive to their husbands, but my marriage had never operated that way. I forced myself to smile politely.
“Are you prepared for our trip in the New Year?” Otto asked Jürgen. He motioned toward the bar, and Jürgen shot me a quietly apologetic glance, then fell into step beside Otto as he made a beeline for the bar on the other side of the room, staffed by men in crisp uniforms.
“If I can manage to give my husband eight children with all of the travel we do now, you can surely manage at least a few more,” Helene remarked.
“You travel with Otto?” I asked, surprised. She pursed her lips.
“If you want to climb the ranks of the Party, Sofie, you need to find a way to support the work. I won’t be joining him and Jürgen for this trip in the New Year because the baby will come soon, but I’ve been with him to the camps plenty of times before.”
“To the camps?” I repeated, startled. She gave me a confused look.
“We need many more prisoners for the factory.” I was so bewildered, I was struggling to keep my expression neutral. “While Otto and Jürgen find new workers, I’ve been inspecting each facility. There’s groundbreaking research happening at Auschwitz, Dachau has a delightful herb garden—oh, and of course, there’s the zoological gardens at Buchenwald. You should come along for a trip. It’s so important for wives to support their husbands in this work.”
“I’ll talk to Jürgen about it,” I managed.
Later that night when we were alone in our hotel room, I motioned toward the covers as Jürgen went to turn out the lights, indicating we should pull them over our heads and whisper, but he yawned and shook his head. I shot him a forceful look and he sighed and complied.
“You’ve been to some of the camps?”
“I’m tired. I don’t want to talk about this,” he said.
“Helene said she goes with you.”
“She’s tagged along with Otto a few times.”
“She said—”
“I don’t want you to come with me, Sofie,” he whispered sharply. “Not now. Not ever.”
“But—”
“Otto did the deal with the SS—we rent the prisoners off them at a discount. We had the first shipment of workers from the camps a few weeks ago, but they were...” He trailed off, then stopped. I was startled by his choice of words—shipment, as if the prisoners were a resource one could send around the country in boxes. The silence stretched, and all I could hear was my pulse in my ears.
“What?” I prompted him urgently.
“I don’t want to talk about this with you,” Jürgen whispered.
“Tell me,” I pressed. “Tell me what was wrong with them.”
All of those rumors I’d heard on the streets of Berlin were flying through my mind. I’d suspected all along that the Jews in those places were in terrible danger. Did Jürgen know for sure?
“The prisoners are not being well cared for and that’s all you need to know.”
The point of pulling the blankets over our heads was to muffle our conversation, but we didn’t need to bother that night. Jürgen’s voice was so faint that even right beside him, I had to strain to make out each word. It was clear that he was deeply troubled by this development but wanted to protect me from the worst of what he knew and what he’d seen, as he always did.
I couldn’t bury my head in the sand. Whatever he was involved in, I was a part of too.
“Just men?” I asked. I shifted closer to him, suddenly feeling very cold, despite the suffocating blanket over our faces.
“No.”
I closed my eyes and an image of Mayim flashed before me, her face vivid, as if I’d only seen her that morning.
“You haven’t seen Mayim, though?” I had to know.
“The camps are huge, Sofie. Tens of thousands of prisoners in some.”
“Do you think she’s in one of those camps?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. Jürgen folded the blanket back down, exposing our faces to the cool air in the hotel room. I turned toward him.
“Tell me the truth,” I whispered.
“I would only be guessing.”
“I don’t care.”
I pulled the blanket up again, and Jürgen whispered, “Most of the Jews are imprisoned in ghettos now.”
“That’s better than a camp, I suppose. She would be okay there?”
“Of course, my love.”