For a moment Natan was rendered speechless, but then he grinned. “I love you too, baby sister,” he said, reaching across the table to ruffle her hair.
One important objective of the nighttime pamphleting raids was to foment the people’s disapproval of the unpopular Soviet war, challenging the infallibility of the Reich, shattering the myth of one GermanVolkunified in support of the Führer. Sara and her comrades realized they were making progress when the Propaganda Ministry launched a campaign to bolster public support. In addition to the usual proclamations and posters, Goebbels arranged a cultural exhibition ironically titled “The Soviet Paradise.” A long, one-story, starkly neoclassical building was constructed on the Lustgarten and filled with dioramas and exhibits meant to educate the German people about the “poverty, misery, depravity, and need” of daily life in the Soviet Union.
On the second day of the exhibition, Sara, as Annamarie Hannemann, attended with Mildred, Greta, and their husbands, joining a vast throng of men and women wandering the aisles, some with children in tow. Each visitor was given a booklet describing the various displays—a full-scale replica of a Russian cobbler’s squalid hovel, or the cramped, filthy flat of a Moscow factory worker. The guidebook began with a lengthy treatise explaining how Marxism and Bolshevism, ideologies devised by Jews, had led to the deaths of millions from political executions and starvation. “Further proof that the Soviet state belongs to the Jews is the fact that the people are ruthlessly sacrificed for the goals of the Jewish world revolution,” the author declared, at which point Sara stopped reading in disgust.
Enormous picture panels lined the walls, depicting life in the Soviet Union as grim, cheerless, and colorless, a miserable existence in muddy, decrepit villages beneath gray, sunless skies. Half-empty bottles of liquor were scattered around images of Stalin and Lenin to emphasize the people’s hopelessness and sloth. In a large, darkened room, a fifteen-minute film played continuously; Libertas, who had seen rough cuts at the Deutsche Kulturfilm-Zentrale, had warned her friends that it was not for the faint of heart, but Sara steeled herself and took a seat in the back between Greta and Mildred. The film claimed to show the gruesome scenes German troops had encountered as they marched into the Soviet Union—filthy, emaciated orphans begging for scraps; desecrated churches; drunkards still clutching their bottles as they sprawled in the dirt beside rusted plows and fallow fields; town squares littered with the bloody corpses of massacred civilians. “Where once stood prosperous villages,” the narrator intoned, “today the gray misery of the collective farm predominates. This is where the Soviet peasant lives as a slave.”
“I’d like hard evidence that those atrocities were committed by the retreating Red Army and not the Germans on their advance,” Greta murmured acidly as they left the room, sickened and angry. “After viewing that, no one will wonder why Germany went to war with the Soviet Union.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Mildred replied in an undertone. “Germany had to betray its erstwhile enemy to save the Soviet people.”
“Yes, to save them so that the Einsatzgruppen could kill them.”
Nervous, Sara glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one had overheard. All around them, curious, interested sightseers looked from guidebooks to displays, wincing sometimes if their gaze fell upon an especially grisly image, but revealing little of the shock and revulsion and skepticism Sara felt. A cold prickle ran down the back of her neck, and she was suddenly aware that she was surrounded by enemies. An impulse to flee seized her, but she fought it, knowing that panic would betray her and bring them all down upon her like hounds cornering a fox.
Taking shallow, steady breaths to calm herself, she stayed close to Mildred and Greta as they rounded a corner and came upon a large display illustrating the SS response to Soviet partisans. Mildred gasped and Sara felt her throat constricting as her gaze traveled from one gruesome image of death to another—blindfolded men before firing squads, knees buckling, smoke forever frozen in midair at the ends of the rifles. Bodies piled in mass graves. Young women dangling limply from ropes knotted about their necks—
Sickened, Sara pressed a hand to her mouth, closed her eyes, and backed away. Her eyes flew open when she bumped into someone and nearly fell, but a man caught her by the elbow and kept her on her feet. “Are you unwell,Fraulein?” he inquired, but she yanked her arm free and hurried away, pushing through the crowd until she reached a quiet aisle almost hidden behind a kiosk displaying the same booklets offered at the front entrance. Blinking away tears, catching her breath, she pretended to browse when suddenly a voice murmured an apology and a hand reached past to grasp a booklet. With a start, Sara turned and discovered a familiar pair of blue eyes staring into hers, shocked and disbelieving.
“My God, Sara,” said Dieter. “I thought it was you, when I saw you in the crowd—I can’t believe you’re here. All this time I haven’t known if you were alive or dead, if you were still in Berlin or if you had been—”
“I’m still here.” Sara clutched her purse tightly to her side and ducked around the kiosk and into the aisle behind it, searching the crowd for her friends. Dieter was wearing a crisp military uniform and he leaned heavily upon a cane, but otherwise he was almost unchanged, except for the strain around his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, lowering his voice, drawing closer. “You know Jews aren’t allowed in the Lustgarten. Do you want to be hauled off and shot?”
“Are you going to turn me in?”
“Of course not.” He spared a quick glance over his shoulder. “Are you all right? I mean, have you been all right?”
“I’m still alive.” She gestured to his uniform. “And you? I see you’ve joined the army.”
“Drafted.” He grimaced and adjusted his stance, leaning heavily upon the cane with both hands. “When they heard what I did for a living, they pulled me from the infantry and sent me to France attached to a procurement division, acquiring food and other goods to ship back to the Reich.”
“Robbing the French to feed the Germans, then.”
“You’re not wrong, but we have plenty of hungry people here at home, and orders are orders.”
With effort, she held back more accusations. “What happened?” she asked instead, indicating his leg.
“Some mad Frenchman drove a truck at high speed through the front wall of our office building. He killed two men, injured four, including me.” He managed a grim smile. “At least I got two weeks’ leave out of it, enough time to visit my mother and check in on the business.”
“What happened to the mad Frenchman?”
Dieter’s smiled faded. “He was killed on impact.” His gaze traveled to the left breast of her sweater, where he surely noted the absence of theJudenstern. “Sara, you’re not safe here. Have you gone underground?”
“Think about how you’re dressed, and then ask yourself why I should trust you enough to tell you anything.”
“Don’t tell me if you don’t want to, but at least—” He dug around in his shirt pocket and brought out a small velvet pouch. “At least let me help you. Take this. It’s yours, it always has been. You can sell it or use it as a bribe.”
As he held out the pouch to her, she clasped her hands behind her back, certain it held the diamond engagement ring she had returned to his mother while he was in Australia. “You’ve been carrying that around all this time?”
“Only when I’m in Berlin.”
They stood there for a long moment in silence, eyes locked, his hand with the ring extended toward her. Finally she sighed and said, “You know I can’t accept it.”
“Don’t be stubborn,” he said, but his hand fell to his side. “It might save your life someday.”
She shook her head, but before she could speak again, Mildred and Greta appeared in the aisle behind Dieter. “There you are,” Mildred cried, relieved. “We thought we’d lost you.”
