“Good to know,” Sara managed to say, clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.
It was the coldest winter in northern Germany for more than a century, but eventually it too, like all things, yielded to the inexorable force of time. In the first week of March, their icebound world began to thaw, flooding gutters with meltwater and creating icicles, some more than a meter in length, hanging precariously from eaves and rooftops. The sunlight on Sara’s face created the illusion of spring even when the temperatures lingered only a few degrees above freezing. She craved fresh vegetables and fruit, and the first time she glimpsed a few scrawny sticks of asparagus and rhubarb at the bottom of a bin when she was permitted to enter the market at the end of the day, she snatched them up and triumphantly handed over her ration cards and Reichsmarks as if the handful of vegetables would suffice for a feast.
She longed for a small patch of earth to cultivate, and although it was risky to draw attention to herself, she considered suggesting to their landlord that the concrete in the sunniest part of their building’s courtyard be removed so that it could be made into a community garden. But before she could, she and Natan returned home from a walk to discover a notice tacked to their apartment door.
Natan snatched it down and read it in silence, his frown deepening.
“What is it?” Sara asked, afraid to know.
He unlocked the door, motioned for her to enter, and waited until they were safely inside before he answered. “We’ve been evicted.” He crumpled the notice into a ball and threw it toward the empty coal scuttle. “Another Aryan family lost their home to Speer’s construction projects. They need our apartment, and we can go to hell.”
“Wherewillwe go, really?” asked Sara, her voice small and anxious like that of a much younger girl. When her brother looked at her bleakly without saying a word, she knew the answer.
Chapter Forty-eight
March–June 1940
Greta
As the harsh winter relented and the icebound city thawed, the oppressive sense that Berlin was under siege began to lift. If not for the blackout, the rationing, the antiaircraft weapons on the rooftops of strategic buildings, and the absence of millions of young men who had been called into military service, one could almost forget that Germany was at war. Or so it felt to Aryans, sighing with relief as they shed layers of clothing and opened windows to fresh spring breezes. Greta suspected Jews felt increasingly tense and frightened as their existence in Germany grew more precarious day by day.
Greta’s trip to London had yielded positive results, not only generous donations to Jewish relief efforts but also the priceless gift of increased support for Jewish immigration to Great Britain. While there, she had visited a favorite bookstore and had been thrilled to discover James Murphy’s translation ofMein Kampfon the shelf. She wondered how Daphne had managed to get the carbon copy of the manuscript out of Germany, and she fervently hoped that the translation would serve as a warning to anyone who still doubted Hitler’s sinister motives. She wished everyone in the American government would study it well.
In the third week of March, when only a few stubborn, ice-crusted snowbanks lingered in the shadiest parts of the Tiergarten, Greta took Ule with her to meet a young couple in Neukölln for an English lesson. They were discouragingly low on the British emigration list, but both husband and wife were apt pupils, grasping idiom as deftly as if they had been studying the language for years. But when she reached their apartment building, their brass nameplate was missing from the list at the entrance, and inside, no one responded when she knocked upon their door.
“Lazar?” she called out, knocking again. “Jutta?” Still nothing.
Uneasy, she considered what to do. The couple had never missed a lesson before, and it was rather late in the morning for them to have overslept, especially since they had an infant son. She pressed her ear to the door, but no one stirred within.
At a sudden sound behind her, she turned to find a woman about ten years older than herself peering out from another apartment farther down the hallway. “Are you looking for the Gittelmans?” she asked, frowning slightly as she eyed Greta and little Ule, who tugged on his mother’s hand in his impatience to go inside and play.
“Yes,” said Greta. “They were expecting me. Would you know if they’ve gone out for the day?”
“They’ve gone for good.” The woman folded her thick arms across her chest. “They moved out two days ago. Scurried out before dawn carrying everything they owned.”
Greta’s heart sank. “Did they leave a forwarding address?”
“Not with me. You could ask around the ghetto. Where else would they have gone?” The woman shrugged. “They weren’t bad neighbors, even though they were Jews. Maybe it’s for the best. This way the boy can grow up among his own kind.”
Greta felt her expression freeze in place. “Thanks for your help.” Before Ule could protest, she led him down the hall and away, ignoring the curious stare the neighbor gave her in passing.
That evening when she told Adam what had happened, he sighed, torn between sympathy and impatience. “I hate to see you break your heart over and over again,” he said.
“What would you have me do, simply stop caring?”
“As if you could,” he said. “Just remember that assisting a few Jews here and there won’t solve the real problem. The only way we’re going to stop the suffering once and for all is to overthrow Hitler and bring down the Reich.”
“I don’t see why we have to abandon one effort to serve the other.” Why must he belittle her work? What she could do, she did. “People need food and hope now. You can’t expect them to wait until the Nazis are brought down. They’ll starve first.”
“I understand that, but we have to stay focused on our main objective. We can’t afford distractions.”
Bristling, she turned away before she said something she regretted. In recent months, Adam and John Sieg had developed the profoundly annoying habit of dismissing her contributions to the resistance as inconsequential, and that was when they acknowledged her at all. For years she had written and edited flyers, translated documents, typed and copied, arranged meetings, and acted as a courier, risking her freedom and her life as much as any man. Yet from the time of Ule’s birth, they had increasingly excluded her, shutting themselves away in Adam’s study instead of holding their meetings in the living room as they once had. When she protested, they explained that they could no longer speak freely in front of Ule, since children often innocently repeated anything they overheard. When she suggested leaving him with a neighbor, they objected, insisting that this would draw attention to their meetings. They had an excuse for everything.
One evening when they were alone, she confronted Adam about his infuriating transformation. “Do you remember what you told me when I returned from London years ago?” she asked. “You said a woman of my intelligence should not be relegated to mere clerical work, but that I could and must contribute more.”
“That was then, but now—” Adam inclined his head toward the room where their son slept. “Now it’s better that you not know too much, for your sake and Ule’s, in case our circle is betrayed.”
“If we’re discovered, the Gestapo would never believe I’m innocent.” Greta gestured to the desk where translations and drafts of flyers were neatly sorted in locked drawers, out of sight but not out of reach, her handwriting on every page. She indicated the bookcases along the walls, where beside Adam’s scripts and novels and her own cherished volumes sat dozens of banned books entrusted to them by nervous friends who had purged their own shelves of illicit literature. “I’m already involved up to my neck. There’s no point in shutting me out.”
