Sofie
The end was coming closer and the mood on the streets of Berlin was tense. Some people were stockpiling food and ammunition, others were collecting timber in piles in their yards—ostensibly for “summer projects.” Few were willing to admit they were actually preparing to barricade their windows once the conflict reached our streets.
Lydia hadn’t spoken to me since my arrest—not until the phone lines at Nordhausen and Mittelwerk went down, at which point she called and acted as if we were still close.
“Have you heard from Jürgen?” she asked pleasantly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “No, not for weeks.”
“The last time I spoke to him, Karl said we have to defend ourselves and our homes at any cost and we must fight to the very last. He and I agreed we would never surrender. But...” Lydia cleared her throat. “If he was captured...well, obviously that would be different.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Lydia.”
“The Soviets and the Americans will want our technology. Our knowledge. And God knows the scientists can’t manage their own way from the lunchroom to their desks. They need people like Karl to help them or they’d never achieve anything. And of course they’d take our families too. The men would insist upon it.”
“I’m not so sure about any of that,” I sighed. I knew from Jürgen that this was Karl’s expectation, but to me it seemed laughably optimistic. “If I hear anything, I’ll call you.”
A few days later, Hans called and asked to speak to Georg, and I didn’t think anything of fetching my son. I left him in the study to talk to his friend and went back to the kitchen, where I had been cataloging supplies. The city was likely to fall within weeks. Aerial bombing kept us up several nights in a row and it seemed clear this was only just beginning. I was moving every scrap of potential sustenance into the makeshift bomb shelter we’d set up in the small cellar below Adele’s building. I was scared, but I’d been scared for so long by then, I’d learned to push through it. The best thing I could do for my family was to be prepared.
The next thing I knew, Georg was in the doorway in his Hitler Youth uniform, a canvas bag hanging from his shoulder. He was fifteen, and a proud, full-fledged member of the senior ranks. His uniform was just a little too large. He inherited Jürgen’s height and needed the next size up, but he didn’t yet have the bulk to fill it out.
“I have orders, Mama,” he told me. His eyes were alight with excitement, as if he’d been summoned to play a particularly thrilling game. It was the happiest I’d seen him since my arrest. “We are deploying immediately.”
“Orders?” I repeated blankly. “Deploying?”
“My Hitler Youth division is being deployed to defend Kassel.”
He let his bag fall to the floor and he stepped toward me, a grave expression on his face. I set down the bag of flour I had been holding and turned toward him, more confused than alarmed.
“You’re fifteen,” I said blankly. “You’re a child, not a soldier. Who told you you’re being deployed?” I dusted off my hands on my apron and took a step toward the door. “You’ve misunderstood, that’s all. I’ll call the captain—”
“He’s on his way to pick me up.”
I hated to call Lydia back, but I couldn’t think of another way to straighten out this mess. Georg waited by the door as I dialed and spoke to the zu Schiller housekeeper, who went to fetch Lydia. After just a moment, she answered the phone breathlessly.
“Sofie! Do you have news about Karl?”
“No, I’m sorry—”
“Then now isn’t a good time. I’m helping Hans pack his bag.”
I turned to look at Georg. He had recently started shaving—probably a little before he needed to. The razor had inflamed the hint of acne along his jawline. He had Jürgen’s coloring and my intellect. He was handsome and proud, his boots shiny, his tie knotted perfectly—all on his own.
But his skin was red, flushed with irritation and probably more than a little embarrassment.
He was a boy. He was just a boy.
“I’ve just talked to Georg. They can’t be deploying children,” I said. I could feel the blood thundering around my body—the pulse sounding in my ears and under my skin.
“The Führer has said that we must defend the Reich to the last,” she said impatiently. “These boys have been training for battle for years.”
“You’re going to let Hans go?”
“I’m worried, of course, but I’m also proud. Hans and Georg are warriors today! It’s not for us to decide if they go. They have orders. They simply must obey them,” she said. Then she dropped her voice and scolded me. “Sofie, you should have learned your lesson last time. We are to be loyal to the Reich, above all else.”
I hung up then without a farewell. My ears were ringing—with shock, with terror, with disbelief. I turned back to Georg.
“You can’t go,” I blurted. “You need to stay with me.”
“I can’t refuse orders, Mama. That’s treason!”
“But you can ignore them, Georg, and you must. We’re losing the war,” I said, and I reached for him just as he reached down to scoop up his bag. He shook me off, his expression hardening.
“Losing the war? Don’t tell me the enemy has fooled you with their propaganda! The Führer says we just need to stay the course. Fight house-to-house, he said. That’s how we will be victorious—”
“You have to think for yourself now,” I interrupted him urgently. “It’s only a matter of time before the rest of Germany falls, and when that happens we will be liberated. It is almost over.”
Georg stilled. His gaze sharpened on my face.
“I knew it.”
“Knew what?”
His lip curled in disgust, and he shook his head.
“You’re disloyal to the Reich and they arrested you because someone found out. You and Papa are probably only alive because his rockets are turning the tide of the war.”
A torrent of words waited, boiling in my gut. The time was coming when I would be able to say them.
You were a puppet in the hands of evil men from your childhood, but there is a good person inside of you, and I’m going to help him grow strong again.
But Georg had just inadvertently reminded me why I couldn’t yet say those words. If I were honest with him now, he would walk straight to that car or across the road to Dietger to share the news of my disloyalty. I couldn’t even blame him. He had been raised with the doctrine of country before family. As far as I could tell, the Allies were still weeks away from Berlin. Would the Gestapo arrest me again? Take me back to the prison?
If they did, my girls would be all alone in Berlin as the city fell. I couldn’t risk it. I had to hold my tongue.
All I could do was let Georg go and pray to God that I would get the opportunity to say what needed to be said later, when all of it was over.
“I’m not disloyal,” I said, my tone hollow. “I’m worried for you. You’re a man now, but you’re still my baby.”
At these words or maybe my broken tone, Georg paused.Then he stepped toward me and embraced me.
“Mama,” he scolded softly. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. It’s an honor to serve the Führer. Trust in him and know that I’ll be safe and back home before you know it.”
I threw my arms around his waist and squeezed him tightly.
There were thunderous footsteps on the stairs above us, and Laura and Gisela were there, both beaming with pride through their tears. Georg hugged them both quickly, told them to be brave and to be strong, and then a horn sounded outside. The girls ran to my side, both crying in earnest. I threw an arm around each of them as Georg crossed the foyer quickly to throw open the front door.
“Wait,” I blurted. “Wait...”
But I trailed off because there was nothing more to say, and it was obvious that Georg knew it too. He turned back to face us and he raised his right arm defiantly, in a salute to a man who deserved no such honor, a man who had already lost, even if he and my son were yet to recognize it.
“Sieg heil!” Georg said. Hail victory.
Still crying, my daughters raised their hands to return the gesture. I raised mine too, just as I knew I had to, but it trembled violently above my head.
Georg’s tone spoke of his defiance as he gave that salute, but I did not miss the flash of fear in his eyes.
I had no idea what was happening at Kassel over the weeks that followed. I asked everyone I saw if they had any news—occasionally going out just so I could ask the grocer or people on the street. Although she’d never admit it, Lydia was fretting as much as I was, for both Karl and Hans now. To my frustration, she kept arriving unannounced at my house seeking news.
“I’m sure they’ll all be fine,” she told me, but her voice was strained and she was picking at the skin of her fingernails. “Karl and Jürgen are prized assets in the Reich—they’ll be protected no matter what happens. And our boys are soldiers. I mean, they’ve trained for years for this in the Jungvolk and the Hitlerjugend.” She paused suddenly, then looked tearfully into my eyes. “But you will tell me if you hear anything, won’t you, Sofie? Anything at all?”
I had plenty else to worry about on the home front, because Berlin was rapidly descending into chaos. The Allies were bombing day and night, and Laura, Gisela, and I were on edge all the time—ready to run down to the basement at the shrill burst of the air raid sirens. The city was soon cut off, and there was madness in the air that reminded me of Kristallnacht. Homes and stores were ransacked, people were mugged in broad daylight for the simplest of things.
Against this ugly backdrop, the Reich’s delusion of hope continued. Cars drove through the streets with speakers on their roofs, blaring reminders to protect our homes and streets at any cost. New propaganda posters appeared on telegraph poles and in letter boxes. Defiant to the end, Hitler continued to incite us to violence in his name.
Laura held one of these posters in her hand at breakfast one morning.
“What’s the plan, Mama? How shall we defend our home from the enemy?”
She was thirteen years old. The Nazis had been in power since she was a toddler. How would I ever explain to Laura and Georg why we allowed them to become immersed in this world of idol worship and hate?
I again did the calculation—Gestapo. Loyalty. Imprisonment. This time, the city was in such chaos that I felt sure the Gestapo would be busy elsewhere—probably trying to save their own necks. Comforted, I took my first baby step toward a future where Laura and I could connect on honest terms.
“The war is over,” I said gently. “We have lost.”
“But, Mama—” Laura held aloft the poster, as if I might have missed seeing it “—we must defend our street and our home to the last. See? We cannot allow them to simply take our city.”
“Others will fight. This war has taken enough from this family.”
“What on earth do you mean?” She looked around, genuinely bewildered. “We’ve lost nothing!”
I stood abruptly.
“Everything you think you know is untrue. Just like an infant, you are going to have to learn how to interpret the things that you have seen and heard.”
Six-year-old Gisela was seated beside me. She reached to take my hand.
“Don’t fight,” she said. “I’m scared already. Please let’s don’t fight.”
“We aren’t fighting, baby,” I told her softly. “It’s okay to be scared. Laura and I are scared, and wherever they are, I bet Papa and Georg are scared too.”
“I’m going to tell them at my League meeting,” Laura hissed. “They always ask if our families are loyal. The Gestapo will come for you. That’s what you deserve for saying these hateful things.”
“There will be no more League meetings,” I snapped. “They are readying us to fight with our bare hands. If they cared about us at all, they would tell us to prepare our white flags and to welcome the Soviets. All there is left to do is accept the reality that we were on the wrong side and we lost.”
“Why are you talking like this?” Laura cried, her eyes filling with tears. She pushed her chair back and ran from the room, dropping the poster as she left. It fluttered slowly to the ground and drifted under the table. I heard her furious footsteps on the stairs, and then the sound of her door slamming as she ran into her bedroom.
I was tired and worried about Georg and Jürgen and sick of every moment being a battle. I exhaled slowly, dropping my forehead to the table. Gisela squeezed my hand.
“Mama, is everything going to be okay? Do you really promise it will?”
I reached for Gisela, pulling her onto my lap and wrapping my arms around her waist. She turned to rest her head on my shoulder, winding her arms around my neck.
“It is going to be difficult for a little while longer,” I replied. “We just have to be brave until things get better.”
I had just slipped into bed that night when I heard a car parking on the road outside. I assumed it was someone arriving for a neighbor, but then I heard a soft knock at the front door. Thinking it might be Georg, I flew out of bed and down the stairs to open it.
Jürgen was on the doorstep. He desperately needed a shave and, as I discovered when I threw my arms around him, a shower.
“I’m so happy to see you,” I cried. “Where on earth have you been?”
He offered a weary smile.
“The whole team was sent to a ski resort in Bavaria to await further instructions. In the chaos as they were leaving, I stole this car and started making my way back here.”
“Lydia thinks she’s going to America.”
“Well, I’m afraid Lydia may be in for a shock, because Karl surrendered to the Soviets weeks ago,” Jürgen said, as he hung his filthy hat on the coatrack. I gingerly scooped it off and set it near his suitcase on the ground.
“That needs a wash.” I waved my hand vaguely over the general direction of his body. “All of you needs a wash.” But then I paused and gasped. “Did you say Karl surrendered to the Soviets?”
“He tried to convince me to go with him. When I refused, he assembled a group of the other scientists, including Aldo, and fled like a rat on a sinking ship. Karl’s an SS officer and war criminal, for God’s sake, just as I am. Why would anyone pardon us? He’s probably in some miserable Soviet prison right now, just where he belongs.” Jürgen sighed and shook his head. “Even if they did offer him refuge for some unfathomable reason, what good is freedom to Karl? He had to abandon his wife and children to get it.”
I skimmed my eyes down Jürgen’s body and took it all in—the scratch on his arm that looked like he’d had an encounter with a sharp bush; the mud on his cheek; the crumpled, smelly clothes.
“It hasn’t been easy to get home,” he said, following my gaze. “It won’t be long before Berlin falls. I’m glad I came—things will get worse before they get better. I’ll stay with you and try to keep you and the children safe until it’s over. Then I’ll surrender to whomever takes the city.”
Jürgen was already starting up the stair toward the bathroom. I cleared my throat, and he looked back at me expectantly.
“Georg was sent to Kassel with his Hitler Youth unit,” I blurted. Shock echoed across his features, then an unmistakable terror. “I tried. I promise I tried to convince him to stay. There was no talking sense into him.”
That night, as terrified as I was, as uncertain as the future was—I had an unexpected blessing to be grateful for. For all that was wrong in our past and in our world, at least Jürgen and I were together in our anxiety and our despair.
I was folding laundry the next day when the knock at the door came. I dropped Gisela’s undershirt back into the basket and started walking briskly to answer it, but Jürgen beat me to it.
“...so I decided to come home,” I heard him say, his tone gentle. “But come on inside. We’ll make some tea and I’ll tell you—”
“Just tell me where he is,” Lydia said flatly. After a fraught pause, she asked unevenly, “Is he dead, Jürgen? I’d rather know.”
“He surrendered to the Soviets,” Jürgen said heavily. I had reached the foyer now, and I held my breath as I stared at the doorway. What was she doing there? Did she have news about the boys?
“He wouldn’t,” Lydia breathed, shaking her head. Her gaze seemed unfocused. “No.”
“I’m sure he tried to call you first. The phone lines—”
“The Soviets must have captured him. That would make more sense.”
“No,” Jürgen said, his voice again gentle, but firm. “He was among the first to go and he went north. He wanted to meet the Soviets as they advanced.”
“But...but he said we’d... We were supposed to defend the Reich to the last,” she whispered, brows knitting. Her whole expression twisted, becoming ugly and fierce. “No. Karl would face death before the dishonor of abandoning this country—of abandoning his family. You’re lying.”
Sunlight glinted off a windshield behind Lydia, and I stepped forward, trying to peer around her. Her car was parked behind the Army truck Jürgen stole from Mittelwerk, and Hans was sitting in the back seat.
“Hans is here?” I blurted, running to the doorway. “Where is Georg?”
But closer now, I could see Hans properly, and a sense of dread ran through me when I realized he was rocking gently back and forward. He looked up and met my eyes, and even from a dozen or more feet, I could see that his were red rimmed, his face splotchy. He looked so much younger than his sixteen years. He was a traumatized, terrified child.
I didn’t need him to say it and I didn’t need to hear the details. The minute I saw Hans’s face, I knew that my son was gone.
Lydia suddenly started to cry, her gaze wild and panicked as she looked from Jürgen and me, back to her son in the car. Jürgen ran from the house, down the cobblestone path. He threw open the car door and grabbed Hans by the shoulders, pulling the boy out onto the sidewalk.
“Where is Georg, Hans? Where is my son?”
“He’s gone...” Hans wept.
Jürgen was shouting at Hans. Hans was crying. Lydia was wailing. And across the road, Dietger was holding a paintbrush by his side, white paint dripping down onto the footpath. He’d been painting propaganda slogans onto the wall of his house.
Protect your homes! Every citizen must defend the city from the Red scourge—
I turned to see that, beside us, in the building Adele called home for her whole life, her tenants were hanging out the windows, watching too, and in doorways up and down the street, people were coming out to see what the fuss was. Our dawning grief was a spectacle for the neighborhood.
“He’s lying,” Lydia said behind me. I turned to her, trying to make sense of the words.
“Hans is lying?” I asked hopefully.
“Jürgen is lying!” she shouted desperately, as she tugged at her scalp. “Karl wouldn’t abandon me!”
“Karl thought he had a chance to save his own neck and he took it. I know it’s not what you want to hear but it’s the truth,” I said numbly. I couldn’t deal with her breakdown—I had my own to attend to. I walked slowly down the path toward the curb, closer to Hans and Jürgen.
“We didn’t have enough guns. The SS gave us grenades and told us to climb under the tanks and to hold on to them while they detonated. But me and Georg didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die, Mr. Rhodes...” Hans was babbling now, weeping and talking at a million miles an hour, drawing shuddering breaths only when he had to. Jürgen still held him by the shoulders, but now I could see that if he released him, Hans would collapse to the ground. He looked behind us, toward Lydia, and between heaving sobs he choked out, “Mama, I can’t do it. Help me, Mama. Please.”
Hans said the words, but it was Georg’s voice I heard. I imagined that as he took his last breaths, scared and alone, he had called for me just like that. My knees went weak, and I reached for Jürgen’s shoulder to hold myself up. Hans fumbled for the car door and threw himself into the back seat.
“He was shot defending his country,” Lydia said numbly. She walked past us, leaned into the car to murmur something to Hans, then turned to face me one last time. “Georg died for the Reich, in service of the Führer. He is a hero and you should be proud.”
“A hero?” I blurted. Then I laughed bitterly. “He was a child, Lydia! A brainwashed, broken child.” Lydia gasped, her hand covering her mouth. “Hitler was never worthy of our loyalty and he sure as hell wasn’t worthy of the sacrifice of my son’s life.”
Lydia stared at me, and then she turned to slip back into the car. Her gaze was sharp as she looked at me one last time and said, “The boys were safe—hiding. Georg tried to run away and the Americans shot him in the back. The truth was, if Georg hadn’t been a coward, he would have made it out like Hans did.”
With that, Lydia slid into the car and her driver took them away.
As the city crumbled around us, I could think of nothing but Georg. Several days passed and I stayed in bed. Jürgen provided the emotional support the girls needed, boarded up windows, and moved the rest of the food down into the cellar beneath Adele’s building.
“Sofie,” Jürgen said softly. I was sitting on Georg’s bed, wrapped in Mayim’s blanket. The corners of it were soaked in tears, and I looked at him through bleary eyes. “Come with me.”
I let him lead me to the study. He positioned me, blanket and all, in one of the armchairs in front of his desk. I watched as he crouched awkwardly behind his bookshelf, then pressed his shoulder into the side, trying to push it forward. A letter opener and a pair of tweezers were on the floor beside him.
“What on earth are you doing?” I asked, confused.
Jürgen gave a grunt and an extra shove, and the shelf slid forward just a little. He dropped to his hands and knees, then picked up the letter opener and slid it between two floorboards. He pried one up just a little, then reached for the tweezers.
“Just after we married, I was in this study and I dropped a page out of an early draft of my dissertation. It was such a fluke—it floated down from my hand and then slipped right between these floorboards. I got it out just like this,” he muttered, jiggling the letter opener and the tweezers. “I thought if I ever had to really hide something, this would be the perfect spot.”
He made a sudden sound of triumph, then ever so gently pulled a small envelope from the gap. He blew the dust off, gently wiped it on his shirt, then held it out to me in both hands, as if it were made of glass.
“What is it?”
“Open it, my love,” he said softly.
I gently tore open the seal, and my heart started to pound as I saw the black-and-white image inside. It was me and Mayim, arms around one another, suitcases by our ankles, beaming at my nanny the morning we were leaving for finishing school.
“My God,” I choked out, looking up at him through my tears. I forgot how bright her eyes were and how wide her smile was that day. We were two hopeful kids with the world at our feet, blissfully oblivious to how cruel the journey ahead would be.
“She was here and she mattered,” Jürgen said quietly. “The same with Georg. They are gone, but you are still here. The girls are still here. I hope this photo helps you stay strong through whatever the future looks like.”
I had always loved Jürgen Rhodes, but I’d never loved him more than in this moment—the darkest of my life—when he knew how to bring back in a sliver of light.