She and Mildred tried again after supper, but eventually, too exhausted to continue, they gave up and went to bed. Sara slept well on the sofa in the spare bedroom the Harnacks used as an office, but she rose early and set out for home as soon as she finished helping Mildred wash and dry the breakfast dishes.
It was not yet eight o’clock as she quickly made her way through the city toward the ghetto. The morning air was cool and misty, fragrant with the scents of cut grass and dew and fresh blossoms. Shopkeepers swept the sidewalks in front of their stores, clerks and secretaries hurried past on the way to their offices, and paperboys called out the headlines of the morning editions. There had been no air raids the night before, so the mood on the streets was one of relief and thankfulness beneath the routine of the start of another workday.
The mood shifted the closer Sara came to the ghetto. It always did, as the buildings grew more crowded and decrepit and theJudensternappeared in greater numbers, but this morning she sensed something else, as if an alarm pealed just beyond the range of her hearing. Quickening her pace, she turned onto her own street and discovered trucks parked to block the alleys and intersections, and SS officers pounding on front doors and forcing their way inside and hauling out men wearing theJudenstern. She heard women screaming and men shouting and children wailing, and without breaking stride she turned left to cross the street and left again to go back the way she had come and did not stop until she was back among the shopkeepers and clerks preparing for another ordinary day.
Lightheaded and terrified, she boarded a streetcar and rode toward Friedenau, her thoughts racing as she made her way to the Kuckhoffs’ flat. Greta answered her knock, took one look at her face, and settled her on the sofa, and before Sara knew it she was holding a hot cup of tea. The rattle of the cup against the saucer told her she was shaking.
After Sara described what she had seen, Greta told her that she must not go home until whatever was happening was over.
“I didn’t see Natan,” Sara said, her voice breaking.
“Did you see any SS going into your building?” Greta asked, her gaze intent.
Sara shook her head.
“Then for now let’s hope for the best. Your brother is exceptionally clever. He probably slipped out the back door five minutes before the SS trucks arrived on the block.”
Sara allowed a small smile. “He is rather wily.”
She stayed at the Kuckhoffs’ apartment all day, trying to make herself useful by playing with Ule so Greta could work on a translation project. In the late afternoon, when Adam returned from a meeting at Kulturfilm that Libertas had set up with some film producers, he insisted upon accompanying her home.
When they reached the ghetto, the trucks were gone, the streets subdued. Adam escorted her into the tenement and upstairs to her flat, where they found the door hanging ajar, a chair overturned, books and papers scattered on the living room floor. The rooms were silent.
Sara pressed a hand to her mouth to hold back a sob. Adam left for a moment, and distantly she heard him knock on a neighbor’s door. She walked through the tiny flat again in a daze, searching even though she knew her brother was not there, could not be there, or she would have seen him, he would have called out to her and asked her where she had been.
Adam soon returned. “The woman across the hall says the Gestapo raided the entire block,” he said. “They arrested more than two hundred men. Your brother was among them.”
Sara nodded, set the chair upright, and sank down upon it.
“Come home with me,” Adam urged. “You shouldn’t be alone. Arvid and Harro can work their contacts and we’ll find out where Natan was taken.”
“I can’t go. Natan might come back. Someone might send word and I might need to go to him.”
“You could leave a note.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t leave your name and address for the SS to find.”
“Just say you went to consult the dramaturge about the Beethoven play. Natan will understand, but no one else will.”
She hesitated, but again she refused. She had to stay in case Natan needed her. When Adam persisted, she agreed to come see him and Greta first thing in the morning, to let them know she was all right and to hear whatever Arvid and Harro had learned from their contacts.
Natan did not come home that night, nor did she receive any word from him. In the morning she washed and dressed, head throbbing from worry. She would have crawled back into bed in despair except for her promise to Adam.
When she reached the Kuckhoffs’ flat, she found Mildred and Arvid waiting for her with Greta and Adam, and she was suddenly very afraid.
Greta led her to the sofa. Mildred sat beside her and took her hand. Greta offered her tea and breakfast. The thought of food made her feel faintly ill, but she accepted the tea—real tea, sweetened with sugar. She sipped it gingerly, as if it might suddenly vanish.
Arvid pulled up a chair and gently explained that in response to Heydrich’s assassination and the bombing of the exhibition, Goebbels had convinced Hitler to increase the pace of deportations as a preventative measure. The Gestapo had immediately ordered the arrests of somewhere between 250 and 500 Jewish men. Natan’s name had been on the list.
“The men were transported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin,” said Arvid.
Sara nodded. She knew the name. Sachsenhausen had replaced KZ Oranienburg, where Natan had served his sentence for violating the Editors Law. As dreadful as Sachsenhausen surely was, at least Natan had not returned to the horrible place that still haunted his nightmares.
“Do you think I’ll be permitted to visit him?” she asked, looking around the circle of friends regarding her so gravely. Mildred’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “If not, could I send him food or clothing or blankets?” She had no food to send, but she would get some, somehow.
“Sara.” Arvid leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, his expression grim and sorrowful. “Upon their arrival, half of the prisoners were shot. The others were transported to other camps, Auschwitz or Mauthausen.”
Sara pressed a hand to her stomach. Auschwitz was in Poland, Mauthausen in Austria. Both were hundreds of kilometers from Berlin. “Do you know where Natan went?”
