“They have a quota to fill. If they’re running short on Jews, they’ll snatch up any they can get their hands on.”
Uneasy, Sara did as her brother asked.
The next morning, Natan shook her awake before dawn. They quickly washed and dressed, gathered the bags holding their own papers and valuables, and silently slipped from the apartment. They spent the day walking the city, observing from a distance as Gestapo agents escorted Jews from their homes into waiting trucks, their suitcases properly labeled. Sara was unsettled by how very calmly and efficiently the events unfolded—except at one house on Linienstrasse, where a woman with streaks of gray in her dark hair wept and moaned as two Gestapo agents carried her from her apartment still clinging tightly to the chair from which she had refused to rise when they had come for her.
Late in the afternoon, Natan and Sara risked a stroll past the Levetzowstrasse synagogue and watched from a distance as military trucks, one after another, parked at the curb and unloaded Jews—men, women, and children, the young and the old, healthy and infirm. Obediently, suitcases in hand, they filed into the building where many of them had worshipped not so long before, their prayers overflowing with peace and love. Sara dreaded to imagine what they found within those walls now.
When Sara and Natan returned home, the Hirsches were gone, with only a few abandoned possessions scattered about to prove that they had ever been there.
On the morning of October 18, Natan again woke Sara early. They set out in the pouring rain to witness as one thousand Jews were marched, carrying their luggage, from the Levetzowstrasse synagogue to the Grunewald train station six kilometers away. The very young and the infirm were allowed to ride in open trucks—a small comfort, although they were no less drenched from the storm. At the station the deportees were loaded onto passenger cars, and once everyone was seated, Sara and Natan watched through the windows as each was served a steaming hot drink and given a small cardboard box, which they surmised contained lunch or other supplies.
“Perhaps Anna is right,” said Sara as the train chugged out of the station. “Perhaps this won’t be so bad.”
“Don’t fool yourself. They’re going into hell.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but it’s the logical conclusion.” He turned and strode off through the rain, hands thrust into his pockets. “This kibbutz in Poland is a fairy tale.”
“Then where do you think they’re going?” she asked, hurrying to catch up to him. “Another ghetto? A work camp, like those horrible places they have for the foreign workers here in Berlin?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. If they’re lucky.”
“Lucky?” Aghast, Sara seized his arm, bringing him to a halt. “You think that’s the best we can hope for?”
His expression softened. “Not you and I, little sister. We can still hope for our visas to Switzerland. Wilhelm and Papa are doing all they can.”
But less than a week later, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issued a decree forbidding Jews to emigrate from the Greater German Reich. The visas to Switzerland Sara and Natan had desperately sought for so long would never come now.
“If the Nazis want us out of Germany,” Sara lamented, heartbroken, “why not let us emigrate as we wish?”
“They want us out of Germany,” said Natan, “but they’ll decide where we go and what happens to us when we get there.”
The Berlin Jewish Organization sent out more letters to Jews selected for deportation. Another transport was arranged for October 24, but again Sara and Natan were omitted from the lists. They had no idea why, whether it was by chance or by some system the Jewish elders had worked out with the Nazis.
When the second train departed for the east, Natan went alone to observe it. Afterward he told Sara that everything had gone as efficiently as before, but this time, although the passengers received the small boxes, no hot beverages had been served. Four days later when another thousand Jews were deported, Sara asked to go with him, hoping to see for herself that all was well. The deportees boarded the trains as calmly and cooperatively as on that first morning, but all the amenities distributed to the first group were absent—no hot drinks, no small boxes.
“At this rate, by February they’ll have gotten rid of every last comfort, including the seats,” said Natan acidly.
The first transports had gone so smoothly that the Nazis agreed to allow the Jewish community to provide their ownOrdner, the auxiliaries who collected the deportees from their homes and saw them to the transit camp and aboard the train. It was better for a sympathetic fellow Jew to knock upon one’s door and tell them it was time to go, the reasoning went, than a grim, unsmiling, impatient Nazi.
With every trainload of Jews that departed the city, Sara knew the likelihood that she and Natan would appear on the next list sharply increased. She wished she knew how best to prepare for resettlement, for the Berlin Jewish Organization’s packing list had provided frustratingly few clues. She received one letter from Anna saying that they had arrived safely in Litzmannstadt, which Sara later learned was the Reich’s new name for the Polish town of Lódz. Sara promptly wrote back, full of questions, but several weeks passed and no reply came. She supposed that Anna was too busy to write, or the censors had not cleared her letter.
“I wish we knew what to expect in Litzmannstadt when our turn comes,” she fretted one crisp, beautiful day in early November. “A kibbutz? A work camp? It would be less frightening if—”
“Our turn is never coming,” Natan interrupted fiercely, taking her by the shoulders. “Listen to me carefully. If our deportation letter comes, we’re going to ignore it. Whatever else happens, we are not getting on one of those trains.”
Chapter Fifty-four
October–December 1941
Greta
Rain pattered on the windows one evening in late autumn as Greta returned to the living room after putting Ule to bed. She spread out papers and books for a new translation project on the table and settled down to work, all the while glancing at the clock and listening for Adam’s key in the door. He had gone out after supper to meet with Arvid, but she had expected him home thirty minutes ago.
She tried not to worry. Usually the men’s weeknight meetings began promptly and ended quickly, but sometimes an especially critical matter came up, requiring a lengthier discussion. But she could not discount more ominous possibilities. Navigating the city safely during the blackout was difficult in fair weather and nearly impossible in a cold, driving rain. Any envious acquaintance could become an informant, and no one realized they were being watched by the Gestapo until it was too late.
Shuddering from a sudden chill, Greta banished her anxious thoughts and forced herself to concentrate on her work. Even so, it took her an hour to plow through a fairly straightforward paragraph, and she was on the verge of quitting in frustration when at last Adam returned. Breathing a sigh of relief, she met him at the door, but to her surprise, he lingered in the hallway, rainwater dripping from his hat and coat.
