Later, Mildred learned that even as she was putting pen to paper, the Nazis were executing a coordinated strike on Social Democrat trade unions throughout the country, breaking into their offices, shutting down their publications, seizing their funds. Union leaders were arrested and held in protective custody in concentration camps—except for those who were killed outright, allegedly for resisting arrest.
“One day the Nazis celebrate the worker,” said Arvid, “and the next they destroy him.”
“Surely the German people see the same pattern we do,” said Mildred. “They can’t be distracted by rallies and entertainments forever. Eventually it’s going to come down to right and wrong, common sense versus nonsense.”
Arvid said nothing.
“Don’t you think so?” Mildred prompted. “Things can’t keep going on this way. Eventually the people are going to say enough is enough.”
“Which people?” said Arvid. “The Communists and labor organizers in prison camps? The German Jews being stripped of their civil rights day by day? The hungry students swept up in Hitler’s enthusiasm because they want easy answers and someone to blame?”
“Rational people,” said Mildred. “People who act out of decency, compassion, and respect for the rule of law rather than hatred and fear. That is the real Germany, not—” Standing in the cupola, she made a sweeping gesture from the street below their window toward the Tempelhof airfield. “Not that frenzy of lies we saw yesterday.”
“Are you sure there are more of us than there are of them?”
“There must be.”
“I once thought so. I’m not so sure anymore. But even if our numbers are small, I can’t jettison my most deeply held convictions just to go along with the majority.”
“I can’t either.”
“Then we won’t.” Arvid took her hands in his. “We’ll remain true to ourselves, but we must be careful.”
Mildred knew this all too well. AsGleichschaltunginexorably took hold all around her, she had begun to feel too anxious to speak freely on political matters except in the private homes of friends and family. In the classroom, she guarded her words even among members of their progressive study group, in case an unsympathetic person lurked within earshot.
The presence of the National Socialist German Students’ Association steadily transformed the character of the Berlin Abendgymnasium. Although Mildred fought to keep the group’s influence out of her classroom, she could not avoid the placards posted in the hallways listing their Twelve Theses for restoring the purity of German language and literature. Most were demands to purge German culture of “Jewish intellectualism” and get back to the “pure and unadulterated” expression of its folk traditions. “Our most dangerous enemy is the Jew and those who are his slaves,” the fourth thesis shrilled, and the fifth began, “A Jew can only think Jewish. If he writes in German, he is lying.”
There was no logic to the Twelve Theses, only hatred and rage, and it sickened Mildred to see students reading the placards and discussing them earnestly as if they were truths meriting intellectual inquiry rather than so much garbage interlaced with invective. Her heart ached to see some of her own students eagerly preparing for the “Action Against the Un-German Spirit” called for by the association’s Main Office for Press and Propaganda. Chapters were encouraged to compile blacklists of “degenerate” authors, write articles denouncing the Jewish influence on German literary culture, and submit the documents to their local press and radio. Their publicity campaign would culminate on May 10 in a vast, nationwideSäuberung—a literary cleansing by fire.
As twilight descended that fateful night, Mildred stood at the cupola windows pensively watching lights come on in windows up and down Hasenheide. Arvid found her there and gently embraced her from behind. “We don’t have to go,” he said, gazing over her shoulder to the scene outside. “Imagining it is bad enough. You don’t have to watch it happen.”
“No, I do.” Mildred inhaled deeply, turned in the circle of his arms, and kissed him. “I have to see with my own eyes just how desperate things have become, or I won’t believe it.”
Pulling on a warm sweater to fend off the cool spring night, she followed Arvid downstairs and outside, where the sweet aromas ofKuchenand vanilla still wafted from the patisserie though it had closed hours before. She took Arvid’s arm as they walked quickly to the University of Berlin, where his cousin Dietrich Bonhoeffer waited for them outside his office building.
“Students have been building the pyre for four days,” he said as they walked toward the Opernplatz, where thousands of students, citizens, and a few professors in robes and caps milled about, jittery with anticipation. “They started by emptying the entire library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, and since then countless other books have followed, works by Freud, Einstein, Mann—”
Dietrich broke off at the sound of shouts and cheers and singing. As they turned to look down the street, Mildred’s heart sank at the sight of the familiar flickering red glare lighting up the elegant buildings along Unter der Linden.
“Yet another parade,” muttered Arvid, taking Mildred’s hand, his gaze fixed on the approaching marchers. “More torches.”
“But this time, the torches that light their way will also plunge them into darkness,” said Dietrich quietly. “The darkness of intolerance and ignorance, more dangerous than the darkest night.”
Students, SA, SS, Hitler Youth—toward the Opernplatz they marched, row after row of them, their faces sinister in the garish light. In their arms were books seized from school libraries, from bookshops, from shelves in homes where Mildred imagined bewildered parents lamenting the strange fanaticism that had transformed their beloved children into frightening strangers. A thunderous roar of voices drew her attention back to the square, where torches were flung upon the pile of books, smoldering, smoking, rising into flame.
As the marchers approached the pyre to throw more books onto the blaze, Mildred felt a cold, sickening shiver run up her spine as tens of thousands of voices began chanting a litany of Fire Oaths—first, the offense against German language and literature; next, what must succeed it; and last, the author to be consigned to oblivion. “Againstclass struggle and materialism,” they chanted. “Fornational community and an idealistic way of life. Marx and Kautsky!”
An earsplitting roar followed as the men’s books were thrown onto the pyre.
“Againstdecadence and moral decay.Fordiscipline and decency in family and state. Mann, Glaeser, and Kästner!”
The acrid smoke stung Mildred’s eyes and her breath caught in her throat. So many works by authors she respected and admired, whose brilliant words she taught to her students. Erich Remarque’s autobiographical novel of the Great War,All Quiet on the Western Front. Works by Theodor Wolff and Georg Bernhard. For their corrupting foreign influence, Ernest Hemingway and Jack London. For pacifism, for advocating for the disabled, for seeking better conditions for workers and women’s rights, Helen Keller.
Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels addressed the crowd from a podium draped with a swastika banner, his usually resonant tenor raspy from smoke or overuse. “The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism has come to an end, and the German revolution has again opened the way for the true essence of being German,” he declaimed, each word precisely enunciated. “Over the past fourteen years, you students have had to suffer in silent shame the humiliations of the Weimar Republic. Your libraries were inundated with the trash and filth of Jewish literati. The old past lies in flames. The new times will arise from the flame that burns in our hearts!”
On and on he went, stirring the crowd into a frenzy of exultant anger. Clasping Arvid’s hand so tightly her fingers ached, Mildred watched, horrified and dismayed, as the most cherished works of some of the world’s most celebrated authors turned to ash and smoke.
Then, a jolt of recognition so sharp it left her breathless.
