As for Dr. Murphy, he was intelligent, skilled, and as deft with German as he was English, and fluent in French and Italian as well. In conversations over a great many lunches, he revealed an impressive knowledge of science, art, and literature. Sometimes Mrs. Murphy and Daphne joined them for coffee breaks or to help sort documents and organize files, but it was usually just Dr. Murphy and Greta from morning to night in the parlor, in the study, or at the kitchen table, writing, revising drafts, and debating the best phrase for a particular concept.
It was absorbing, grueling, important work, but it did not come without conflict. It took a few weeks, but Greta eventually realized that the cause of Dr. Murphy’s unexplained illness was alcohol. He always appeared perfectly sober when his wife was around, but when she was abroad visiting family and friends in County Cork, Greta would arrive in the morning to find him already intoxicated. And yet he concealed it well, never drinking in front of her and Daphne or producing inferior work. Often Greta and Daphne conferred worriedly about what, if anything, they should do, if they should confront him respectfully, if they should tell Mrs. Murphy. In the end they reluctantly concluded that Mrs. Murphy surely already knew, and if Dr. Murphy could refrain from drinking when she was present, he must still be in control. So they said nothing and pretended not to notice his bloodshot eyes, the faint slurring of his consonants. Greta found silence and pretense deeply unsatisfying, but she did not know what else to do.
Their frequent disagreements about the text, on the other hand, were impossible to ignore. Dr. Murphy prided himself on his eloquence, and with good reason, for Greta herself envied his ability to turn a phrase. But it irritated her when he would return a page to her, one he had written and she had painstakingly edited, with complaints that she had altered it too much.
“You’ve coarsened the language,” he protested, pointing to one phrase and then another.
“No, I restored its original roughness,” she retorted. “You polished it too much, made it too pretty.”
“But this is vulgar!”
“Yes, exactly as it was in Hitler’s original.”
On other occasions, as he read over her drafts, he would shake his head and mutter under his breath until she clenched her teeth in irritation as she awaited his verdict. “You have to do this over,” he would say, indignant. “It borders on incoherence.”
“Just like the source,” she replied sharply. “The readers should see for themselves how convoluted his arguments are. It’s wrong—reprehensible, even—to make him seem more rational than he is. That’s Goebbels’s job, not mine.”
In those moments she knew Dr. Murphy was just as annoyed with her as she was with him. Sometimes he would listen to her and let something that offended his standards for good English stand, but ultimately it was his book and his name that would be on the cover, and he had the last word.
Greta chose her battles wisely and stood firm when she knew the integrity of the work depended upon it. She won more arguments than she lost.
The work continued throughout the autumn and into the winter. As Germany’s Jews found their lives increasingly constricted, as Protestant pastors were arrested for protesting the Aryan Laws, as Jehovah’s Witnesses were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, Greta wrote, edited, and revised with greater urgency. Nothing she would ever write would be more important than this.
They had to make the truth known, the truth that no one in England or America wanted to believe, the truth that Hitler’s Games had obscured. And time was running out.
Chapter Thirty-seven
December 1936–January 1937
Sara
Dieter had played such a small role in what had emerged as the most important aspects of Sara’s life that when he was finally, truly gone, her days passed almost as they always had, unchanged but for the small knot of pain and anger that tightened in her chest whenever a stray thought drifted his way.
It was a small mercy that this happened less often as time went by.
She knew she was better off without someone so ethically malleable. She also knew that she was fortunate to have discovered Dieter’s fatal flaw before they married rather than afterward. The truth was she grieved the loss of her doctorate more.
Sara had taken Mildred’s advice and had assembled the necessary documents so she could transfer to a university abroad, eventually, someday. She continued to study and work on her dissertation, which was nearly complete, and she also began a new research project, an analysis of female archetypes in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Increasingly, however, she filled her hours assisting Natan with his investigative journalism, meeting with the study group, and surreptitiously distributing Greta’s leaflets on campus and in nearby cafés and bookshops frequented by students, where thanks to her age she could easily blend in, not only as a student but as an Aryan. No actual living person resembled the caricatures of Jews in Nazi posters, and Sara’s light brown hair and hazel eyes had thus far rendered her immune to the hostile, suspicious, lingering looks her brother often drew with his dark hair and eyes and olive complexion.
Often she felt an ache of loss when she strolled through the University of Berlin campus, the venerated ground that had once felt like home to her but had cast her out. The administrators could prevent her from sitting for her exams and defending her dissertation, but as long as she could pass for a student, she would keep coming back.
She was absolutely certain that the group’s illicit flyers and pamphlets were essential to bringing down the Reich. The uninformed and uncertain people of Germany must be made aware of the horrors of fascism. The ambivalent and reluctant had to be warned that the same tactics used to persecute the Jews, Communists, and Roma could be turned upon them next. The antifascists who felt increasingly isolated and powerless needed to know that they were not alone. And the oppressed must be reassured that they had allies even within the country that had disowned them.
Her parents had no idea how she spent her days. They knew she kept up with her studies and helped Natan, but otherwise they did not ask her to account for her time. Perhaps they respected that she was a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. Perhaps they figured whatever she did was fine, as long as she wasn’t moping around the house weeping over Dieter’s old letters.
Once her mother asked if she had considered finding a job. “I’d take one if I could find anything suitable,” Sara replied truthfully. “Everything I’ve trained for is barred to me.”
She was a Jew and she was a woman. The Reich did not want her in the workforce. In fact, they did not want her anywhere. They wanted her not to be.
Questions about her future plans came almost exclusively from her mother, as well as from Amalie, whose every letter included a heartfelt plea to come for a visit and stay as long as she liked. Sara was tempted. Switzerland was beautiful, she missed her darling nieces, and Geneva boasted an excellent university where she might be able to complete her doctorate. Although she demurred, she held on to that possibility like a gold coin tucked safely away in a pocketbook for emergencies. For now, she had important work to do in Germany.
Sara’s father cared as much as her mother did about her future, but he was distracted by serious matters at work and accepted her assurances that she was fine with a nod and an absentminded pat on the shoulder. SinceGleichschaltunghad begun years before, the Nazis had imposed the Aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses with increasing force. At Jacquier and Securius Bank, one Jewish partner who had been with the firm since 1919 had been forced out, and those who remained had been ordered to accept two Aryan investors as majority stakeholders. Mr. Panofsky retained his title and salary, but he had been barred from performing his managerial duties and had to answer to the Aryan newcomers. “It would be a blow to any man’s pride,” Sara had overheard her father tell her mother, “but what else can he do? His employees and clients depend upon him to keep the bank open.”
In recent months, the struggle to keep the bank solvent had been taking a toll on the partners and managers. Although the economy was improving, many of their employees and customers suffered under the increasing restrictions placed upon Jews, and nervous investors were moving their funds elsewhere. According to Sara’s father, Mr. Panofsky still believed his family would be safe from Nazi persecution as long as Ambassador Dodd’s family remained his tenants, but beyond the gates of Tiergartenstrasse 27a, the ground was steadily eroding beneath them.
Sara understood that the Weitz family depended upon Mr. Panofsky and the bank, not only for her father’s livelihood but for the intangible benefit of his association with the American ambassador. Now, as Mr. Panofsky’s position seemed less tenable day by day, she felt that small measure of protection slipping away. She wondered if it had ever truly existed, or if that was just a story they had told themselves to quell their increasing dread.
As the end of January drew near, Sara’s father suggested they invite the Panofsky family to join them on a holiday at the Riechmann estate in Minden-Lübbecke. “January thirtieth is their son’s eleventh birthday,” Sara’s father said. “What better way to celebrate than with horseback riding, ice skating, snowshoe walks in the forest, and plenty of fresh air and good food?”
