A downstairs window broke, making them all jump. Their terror, which had been receding, returned with vengeance.
‘They are coming for us!’ wailed her mother.
‘Elsa, comfort your mother,’ said her father, moving towards the stairs.
‘Where are you going?’
His face reddened in shame. ‘To tell them they have the wrong house.’
Elsa listened to her father descend the stairs and open the door, greeting the brick thrower with the obligatory ‘Heil Hitler’. It did much to cool the heated exchange that followed. Within minutes her father had locked the door and called for Otto’s help to drag a large chest across it. They returned to Elsa’s bedroom together.
‘They have Rabbi Rozenblum,’ said Elsa, unable to drag her eyes from the scene. ‘He looks so scared. So fragile.’
‘Don’t watch, Elsa,’ warned her mother.
Her father hurriedly dragged the curtain closed. ‘We should all go to bed. They will not bother us tonight. I have seen to that.’
‘How?’ asked her mother.
Unable to meet their eyes, he cajoled his wife back to their bedroom. ‘I’ve put a sign on our door. They won’t bother us again.’
He did not need to explain. When Elsa had been but a child, signs denouncing the Jewish community had begun to appear. At first they had been alarming, but years of rhetoric had by now dulled people to such hatred. Anyone who dared to voice concerns was quickly silenced. It was second nature, now, to talk of German — ‘Aryan’ — superiority, an idea that had by now crept into every part of their lives. Many had learned to accept the unacceptable. And those who continued to feel uneasy, like Elsa and her family, soon found they were outnumbered... and could be viewed as disloyal. So they had fallen silent many years ago and solemnly watched life change.
Her father’s sign might save them tonight, but the shame of it would burn for ever. They were failing the Rabbi tonight and Elsa felt it more keenly than them all. She retreated from the closed curtain.
Once he was sure their parents were back in their own room, Otto crept back to the curtain and twitched it open again.
‘What is happening?’ Elsa asked, unsure if she wanted to really know.
‘They have cut off the Rabbi’s beard and are taking him somewhere.’ His sad tone told her more than his carefully selected words.
‘Tell me when they have gone.’
She watched her brother’s eyes, his fair brows knotted in deep concern, follow the street towards the river. Finally, he looked at her, a sheen of unshed tears in his eyes. ‘It’s all right. They have gone now.’
Elsa came to stand beside him. The street below had quietened, but the threatening murmur of the mob, led, encouraged and inflamed by the Brownshirts, could still be heard.
Their gazes lifted to a red glow lighting up the sky in the distance. ‘They have set the synagogue on fire,’ she whispered, horrified. She watched the pulsing blaze grow. The scene blurred with her unshed tears, morphing into a brushstroke of blood red reaching high into the night sky. She heard a tortured gasp and realized it had come from her. How could this be happening?
Otto picked up a pencil and paper and began to draw.
Elsa frowned at him. ‘How can you draw at a time like this, Otto?’
His gaze darted from Gollnow’s rooftops to the paper, his pencil feverishly sketching the plume of smoke filtering up from the blaze. ‘That is why I draw. To capture a moment. Tonight I wantthismoment. So we don’t forget.’
‘I’ll never forget.’
‘You will be forced to forget. But we mustn’t.’
More glass broke outside, splintering the air.
‘So many Jews have fled Gollnow already. When will it be enough?’ she whispered. ‘How can people behave this way?’
‘Because they believe in what they are doing.’
Otto was just sixteen, two years younger than her, but he had an old philosopher’s head on his shoulders and an artist’s soul — and despite living with him all her life, knowing how he felt, Elsa was unsure if there would ever come a time he would publicly voice his true beliefs. To the outside world he lived the life of a good German. He had no Jewish friends and she had never heard him say anything against Hitler outside the home. But then, it had not been safe to speak against the Führer for years.
He saw her staring at him. ‘They believe for the same reason we watch and do nothing,’ he said simply.
