“In theirgardens,” Natan said, raising a finger for emphasis, “not on their roof.”
Sara managed a wan laugh. “I still say your signal is a very bad idea. If the British don’t bomb us, the Luftwaffe will.”
As autumn passed into a winter of long nights, overcast skies, and frigid cold, Berlin’s air raid sirens blared almost every night, interrupting sleep and sending terrified residents scrambling for shelter. In September the RAF bombed the capital about four times every week, but in October the number of raids dropped slightly, and in November Berlin was struck only eight times. But although the frequency of attacks had diminished, they were no less destructive—on both sides, for the German defenses had improved dramatically and had brought down many British planes. By the first snowfall of December, almost every district in Berlin had been struck at least once. The Reichstag building, the Propaganda Ministry, the criminal courts at Moabit, the Berlin Zoo, and the palace at Charlottenburg all had sustained damage. So many factories, military sites, and railroads had been destroyed that Sara sustained a faint hope that the German military would be immobilized and the war would grind to a halt. But it was a small flame, quickly extinguished when she observed how swiftly the Nazis cleared away the rubble and made repairs.
In the last week of December, when Sara stopped by the Harnacks’ apartment on a courier run, Mildred told her that a few days before, Hitler had signed a secret directive officially ordering the attack on the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa called for the German military to crush the Soviet Union in a swift, decisive campaign before the war upon Britain was concluded. Preparations were to be completed by May 15, 1941.
Sara felt a stirring of hope and fear. “Arvid and Harro have said that a two-front war would be disastrous for Hitler.”
“It could be,” said Mildred guardedly, “but if Germany defeats the Soviet Union and assimilates their resources and materiel, it will be disastrous for Great Britain.”
“And for us,” said Sara, meaning the resistance, the Jews, every enemy of the Reich.
“And the United States,” said Mildred. “They’ll be forced to fight in the end. I only wish they would see that and intervene now. The sooner they do, the more lives will be saved, I’m sure of it.”
Sara understood Mildred’s frustration. The Harnacks had been passing military and economic secrets to the U.S. government for years, apparently to no avail. They could only hope that plans were developing behind the scenes, that the risks they took were not for nothing.
In January, as bitter cold enveloped northern Germany, Harro Schulze-Boysen and the rest of the executive staff were transferred to the Luftwaffe’s wartime headquarters in Wildpark-Werder near Potsdam. His new post gave Harro access to confidential information about the Axis air forces as well as secret diplomatic and military reports from German consulates and embassies. Within his first few days, he learned that the Luftwaffe was planning photographic reconnaissance flights over Soviet territory, and he also met several experts on the Soviet Union who had recently been reassigned from the Air Ministry to Göring’s operations planning staff. Soon thereafter, Arvid learned that the German high command had ordered the Military Economic Department to prepare a map of Soviet industrial flights. If Hitler’s secret Directive Number 21 was not evidence enough, these activities proved that Operation Barbarossa was real and under way.
Thanks to the resistance, the Soviet Union would be forewarned. It would have months to prepare, and when the German attack finally came in spring, the Soviet defenses would utterly overwhelm the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. With its military crushed, the Reich would fall.
But spring was months away, and as persecution of Jews made their lives unbearable and food and fuel grew scarce even for Aryans, Sara began to worry that she and Natan might not make it through the winter. Their ghetto apartment was old and poorly insulated, so even though it was small—merely one bedroom where Sara slept, a living room where Natan made his bed on the sofa, and a kitchenette comprised of a sink, an icebox, a small cupboard, and a hot plate—they could never keep it tolerably warm. Real coffee had disappeared from markets long before, but as in the previous winter, meat, fresh vegetables, and even salt and pepper became scarce. Sara spent her days waiting impatiently, stomach growling, for the appointed hour when Jews were permitted to shop, then set off with her shopping basket praying that she would find enough left on the shelves to put together a meal. She went from shop to shop searching for potatoes and carrots and bread, enduring long queues and anxious pushy crowds. There was never enough for everyone. Sara always had more ration coupons left over than there was food to buy.
She was always tired, always thinking of food, of how she might turn yesterday’s potato peelings into a broth that would sustain them through the day. Natan never complained, but his eyes glittered from hunger and his face had become gaunt. She knew from the way her clothes hung loosely upon her that she had become too thin as well. Once Natan brought home a piece of cheese, a gift from a friend, scarcely enough for a sandwich and yet she cried out from joy.
“Enough is enough,” he said, his expression hardening. “Tomorrow I’ll go to Schloss Federle and bring back enough supplies to see us through the winter.”
Sara’s mouth watered at the memory of the sacks of rice and beans, the bottles of oil, the cans of fruits and vegetables and everything else they had put away so carefully in the attic of the west wing. “But what if we have to go into hiding?” she asked, instinctively lowering her voice.
“Once we do, we won’t be able to help the resistance or claim our immigration visas if our turn comes. As long as any hope remains, we’ll take our chances out here. Agreed?”
Wordlessly, Sara nodded. For the same reason, she could not simply disappear into Annemarie Hannemann’s identity and wait out the Reich disguised as an Aryan, as she assumed other Jews who had managed to get false papers had done. Unfortunately, the source who had provided her papers had been arrested before he could make any for Natan.
“We stocked enough supplies to feed two families for several months,” Natan reminded her. “Now that it’s just the two of us, we could stretch that out for a year, maybe two.”
“Or longer,” said Sara. But maybe they would not have to. If Arvid and Harro were right, and Germany attacked the Soviet Union in the spring, the war could be over by summer.
Natan intended to make the trip to Schloss Federle alone, but Sara insisted on accompanying him. Not only that, she would drive. “Annemarie Hannemann still has her license,” she pointed out. “We only need a good excuse for her to be out on the roads using up her fuel ration.”
Early the next morning when they went to the auto repair shop, they discovered that despite the best efforts of Natan’s mechanic friend, their parents’ luxurious car was gone. The previous March, the army had ordered all but a tiny fraction of car owners to surrender their vehicles’ batteries, and a few months later a salvage crew had confiscated the rest for the war effort. Nervous, glancing over his shoulder as he spoke, Natan’s friend offered to let them borrow a tow truck for a few hours, but only that one time.
Natan accepted before his friend could change his mind. After pulling a mechanic’s coveralls over her clothes and tucking her long dark hair up into a cap, Sara climbed into the driver’s seat and familiarized herself with the controls. Natan took the seat beside her, slouching low, ready to drop to the floor if a military convoy passed. They should be fine if they kept moving, but if they were stopped and questioned, they would say that Annemarie Hannemann was on a call for her father’s repair shop, and Natan was a conscripted Jewish worker ordered to help her with the heavy lifting. Even as she agreed to her brother’s hastily constructed cover story, Sara knew it would never hold up under questioning.
“Just drive carefully,” said Natan as she steered the truck from the garage onto the street. “Don’t give anyone any reason to pull us over.”
She nodded, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. She had not driven her parents’ car in more than two years and had never driven anything like the tow truck. Her heart pounded as they made their way out of the city, but the roads were clear of snow and there was little traffic thanks to gas rationing. Even so, she did not breathe easily until they reached the countryside, the thick forests and rolling hills covered in soft white snow exactly as she remembered from winters past, beautiful and enduring, untouched by the war.
They reached Minden-Lübbecke without incident. As they approached the Riechmann estate and Sara caught sight of the familiar white stone and golden stucco walls through the bare-limbed trees, she was flooded by such an intense feeling of relief and safe homecoming that she almost wept. None of the servants came out to meet the truck as they crossed the stone bridge over the broad, encircling moat, but Sara and Natan were not surprised. No one was expecting them, and the day was sunny but bitterly cold, with a sharp wind that stung the skin and sent snow ghosting across the roads. Wilhelm had closed down the east and west wings and several rooms in the main building to conserve fuel while the house was unoccupied. He and Amalie had retained the core household staff, but other employees had been dismissed, or had been taken in the draft, or had left for more lucrative jobs in the wartime economy. Natan had a key, so if no one glanced out the windows and spotted the very conspicuous tow truck parked in the circular drive, he and Sara might be able to slip in and out of the west wing with food and supplies without anyone knowing.
“What would you like for supper tonight?” Sara asked Natan as they walked through the ankle-deep drifts covering the cobblestone path that led from the driveway around the west wing to the rear entrance.
Natan groaned and clutched his stomach with one hand as he dug the key from his pocket with the other. “Anything. Everything,” he said, unlocking the door. “Roast potatoes swimming in butter. Fresh bread. Canned peaches. Hot tea with honey.”
Sara’s stomach rumbled as she followed him inside. “The bread will take too long to rise for me to bake a loaf tonight, but I promise you’ll have some for your breakfast tomorrow.”
He sighed in anticipation as they carefully locked the door behind them and wiped their shoes on the mat. The stairwell was cold and dark, and when Natan tested the switch, the overhead light failed to come on. “I guess they’ve shut off the power completely. The water too, probably.”
“They’ll turn them back on if we go into hiding, right?”
