The weeks passed. Twice each month Sara and her parents were granted an hour with Natan, and they were permitted to give him one small carton of food and clothing and necessities, carefully inspected at the entrance for contraband. Sara’s father learned to leave a bottle of schnapps or a tin of caviar on top as a bribe for the guard at the gate, swiftly pocketed as the family was waved through.
Weeks turned into months. Natan’s hair was hacked off again, and once he was given a rough, careless shave, leaving him with patches of stubble and skin scraped raw. His cough worsened as winter deepened, and he continued to lose weight, and they soon realized he shared the food they brought him with the other prisoners. “What would you have me do? Watch them starve?” he replied when they begged him to keep more for himself. “In my place, could you?”
One day the family passed the camp commandant in the corridor as the guards escorted them to the small, bare office. He watched them pass, frowning imperiously, and afterward, he intercepted them as they were being led to the exit. “You are Herr Weitz, the banker, are you not?” he inquired crisply.
Sara’s father clasped his hat in front of his chest and offered a small, formal bow. “I am, Herr Kommandant.”
“You served in the Great War?”
“I did, sir. I was wounded at Verdun.”
The commandant’s eyebrows rose. “That was a bad business.”
“Yes, Herr Kommandant, it was.”
“How does your son know Regierungspräsident Diels?”
Sara’s father shrugged deferentially. “I was not aware they were acquainted.”
“You’re regrettably ignorant where your son is concerned. Even so, perhaps you can tell me why the Americans are so interested in one Jew journalist. What is he to them?”
“Who can say why Americans do anything?”
“Quite right.” The commandant nodded to the guards. “Take these Jews away.”
Sara felt a surge of panic, but when the guards merely led them to the exit, she took a deep, shuddering breath and willed her heart to stop racing. In the backseat of Wilhelm’s car, she and Amalie held hands tightly until the driver left her and her parents at home.
Mildred promised that Martha Dodd would not let her father forget Natan, and that Martha’s contact would see to it that he would be well treated. Sara was sickened to imagine what poor treatment looked like if what Natan received was considered better.
As winter passed, Sara saw Dieter only rarely. Business took him out of the country for weeks at a time, but it was almost a relief to have him gone. In recent weeks, their infrequent, tense, and uncomfortable discussions about what their married life would look like retraced the same circular arguments and resolved nothing. “Perhaps this is a sign that as much as you love each other, this marriage is simply not meant to be,” Amalie had gently suggested after Sara had tearfully confessed her frustration. Perhaps Amalie was right, but Sara did not know what to do. If she broke off the engagement, she would lose Dieter forever, and what if all they needed was a little more time to work things out? For now, postponing the wedding while the family focused on obtaining Natan’s release was the most she could do.
For his part, Dieter assured Sara that he understood the reason for her distance and distraction, but she was guiltily certain that he did not know all that she felt and feared. “Tell me how to help Natan and I’ll do it,” he said, but she had no idea what more he could do aside from providing the imported luxuries they used to bribe the guards. His boss often distributed overstocked items or slightly damaged packages unsuitable for store shelves among his employees, and Dieter had always been generous with his share.
Then, in late February, Sara’s parents received a letter from the SS announcing that Natan would be released early on account of good behavior. Since he never would have confessed which of his colleagues at theBerliner Tageblatthad helped him defy the Editors Law, Sara knew that at last Mildred’s American friends had prevailed.
On the appointed day, she feared it was all a cruel Nazi trick, or a mistake in the paperwork, and they would arrive at the prison camp only to discover that it was just another visit, and afterward Natan would be torn from their arms and led back to his cell. When the guards at the front gate stalled before admitting them despite the usual parcel and bribe, she mentally composed arguments, threats, pleas. Only when they had Natan in their car wrapped in warm blankets and they were speeding away from Oranienburg could she breathe deeply, lightheaded, clutching his hand, murmuring assurances that all would be well. He nodded and managed a grin, unable to speak for the deep, wet coughs racking his thin frame.
They went directly to their longtime physician, a Jew who was no longer permitted to practice medicine, but nonetheless saw Jewish patients in secret at his home. After examining Natan thoroughly, the physician reported that he was severely malnourished and suffering from pneumonia. His left arm had been broken three months earlier and had been set badly, but it would do more harm than good to break it again and reset it. A program of strengthening exercises would help him regain full use of the arm in time. He had also contracted skin infections and lice. The doctor provided a cream for the first affliction and recommended Natan shave his head for the second.
Sara and her parents took Natan home—not to his flat, which Sara and Amalie had cleared out months before, but to his childhood bedroom. Sara and her mother prepared him a simple, nourishing meal of potato soup and bread while he bathed and shaved, at first refusing his father’s help, and then admitting he required it. Afterward his cough was worse, but the medicine had eased his fever, and he looked so much better clean, freshly shaven, and even bald that tears came to Sara’s eyes. After he ate—carefully, sparingly, following the doctor’s warning—he dragged himself upstairs and collapsed into bed. He slept for eighteen hours.
When he woke, he was ravenous. Clad in warm flannel pajamas and a dressing gown, he came downstairs to the kitchen, where the cook prepared him a hot breakfast of coffee, oatmeal, and toast. He asked to read theBerliner Tageblattwhile he ate. Sara brought it to him, poured herself a cup of coffee, and seated herself at the table, ready to fetch him anything else he wanted, or to talk if he felt up to it.
Instead he studied the paper with a burning intensity, nodding approval at one article, muttering disparagingly at another. “This is such ingratiating propaganda that Goebbels himself might have written it,” he grumbled once, smacking an article with the back of his fingers. His brow furrowed at the many unfamiliar bylines, and his concern deepened as he realized how many names of former colleagues were absent. Eventually he pushed the paper aside, rested his arms on the table, and regarded Sara as if he expected an argument. “I have to find work.”
“You have to regain your strength.”
“After that. I have to find work. I have to write.”
“Natan, no,” she protested, glancing over her shoulder for their parents. “You can’t. The Gestapo will be watching you. The moment you break the law again, they’ll throw you into a worse camp than Oranienburg. You won’t survive.”
“It’s not against the law for a Jew to write for Jewish newspapers. I’ll convince a Jewish newspaper to hire me, or I’ll start my own.”
“I don’t understand why you have to go looking for trouble.”
“The trouble’s already here. I’m just going to write about it.”
She decided not to tell their parents, in the hope that Natan would change his mind. Still, although she worried, she could not help admiring him for his determination, his undaunted courage. She was just a literature student, her only form of protest her participation in Mildred’s study group. Natan’s work, when he resumed it, would actually make a difference.
