“They thought I was the housekeeper.”
“Yes, I know. You fooled them.”
“Iwas the fool. How stupid of me. What if they had asked my name, or for proof of my identity? What if they had found my passport? It was in the top desk drawer, right below the papers I told them to examine. What if they had bothered to ask the neighbors who lives here?”
“They didn’t. Your ruse worked. We’re safe.” Suddenly Sara felt hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her. “Next time I’ll be a housemaid and you be the cook.”
“May there never be a next time,” said her mother fervently. “It was only their impatience that spared us. They’re cruel, but they aren’t stupid. If they come to search again, they’ll be more thorough.”
Sara knew her family had to be long gone before then.
When Sara’s father and Natan returned to Berlin after the violence subsided, they embraced Sara and her mother as if they had not expected to find them safe at home. Quickly Sara and her mother finished the little packing that remained while Natan loaded the borrowed truck. They left the house in such haste that Sara had no time for nostalgic farewells, for pausing in doorways and reminiscing about the happy moments she had spent in each room. By suppertime they were unloading their boxes and suitcases in the new flat in Friedenau.
As she prepared for bed that night, Sara tried to shake off the uncomfortable sensation that she was an itinerant guest in a stranger’s home. To clear away the stale air in a room too long closed up, she opened the window and craned her neck to take in the view along the block. Cars passed on the street below. Several young men Sara’s age strolled by, teasing one of their group about a girl who had spurned him at a bar they had just left. Through the windows of a restaurant down the street, she glimpsed couples dining by candlelight. In the gutters and alleyways, a few traces of broken glass glistened in the lamplight.
The mid-November night was too cold to leave the window open long, but before she closed it, Sara thought she detected the faint scent of char. She assumed it came from one of the two restaurants visible from her room, but the next morning Natan told her the source was probably the Synagogue Prinzregentenstrasse two blocks away, now a gutted ruin choked with ashes.
As the Weitzes were unpacking and settling in, the Nazis issued a series of punitive decrees apparently designed to prevent Jews from living anything resembling a normal life. To the mass arrests, deportations, and enormous fines to pay for the destruction ofKristallnacht, the Reich added a new obligation for Jews to keep their businesses shuttered, but to pay their employees nonetheless and make repairs at their own expense. Beginning January 1, Jews would no longer be allowed to run retail, handicraft, or mail-order businesses, nor could they serve in any position in which they managed personnel. Jewish executives within corporations must be given six weeks’ notice and dismissed. And if the Jews wanted to forget their troubles for a while by enjoying some entertainment, they were on their own, for they were banned from theaters, cinemas, concert halls, museums, sports facilities, and similar public places.
The restrictions kept coming, onerous and unrelenting. TheJudenbannwas extended to include restaurants that were not run by Jews. In the first week of December, Jews were prohibited to enter government buildings or even to live nearby. In the same decree, they were forbidden to own or operate automobiles or motorcycles. All German Jews were ordered to turn in their driving permits and automobile registration papers by the last day of the year.
“How will we escape to Schloss Federle if we can’t drive?” Sara asked Natan.
“Our plans haven’t changed,” said Natan. “If the police pull us over while we’re fleeing for our lives, being caught without a driving permit will be the least of our problems.”
“But we’re not even allowed to own a car anymore,” said Sara, struggling to contain her rising panic. “Jews have to turn in their registrations. What reason could there be for the Nazis to collect all that paperwork except to let them know where to confiscate the cars?”
Natan thought for a moment. “I have a friend, an auto mechanic. I’ll ask him to keep our car at his garage. If the Nazis come looking for it, we’ll explain that we sold it.”
But even as he was making arrangements, a worse blow fell.
Effective immediately, Jews would be excluded from most of the west side of Berlin, including the Tiergarten and important thoroughfares such as Unter den Linden, Wilhelmstrasse, Leipzigerstrasse, Kurfürstendamm, and Friedrichstrasse. They would need a police permit to travel through the area, and therefore Jews with homes in the area were encouraged to trade residences with Aryan Germans living elsewhere. The ban would not cover neighborhoods in central and northern Berlin, poorer blocks already heavily populated by Jews, creating a ghetto roughly defined by Linienstrasse and Grenadierstrasse.
The Weitzes found little comfort in knowing that their flat in Friedenau fell just outside theJudenfreizone. A ban, once created, could easily be expanded.
On the last day of the year, the Weitzes relinquished their driving permits, but they entrusted the car registration and ownership papers to Natan’s mechanic friend. There were no more drives through the countryside to admire the snowy landscape, no impromptu trips to Schloss Federle to restore themselves in a remote haven free of swastikas and black-clad SS. The city Sara had always cherished as her modern, sophisticated, intellectual hometown had become steadily more oppressive as her movements were restricted, constraining her tighter and tighter until she felt as if it were a struggle just to breathe. The new apartment felt cramped compared to the comfortable, elegant home they had left behind, but she was so grateful that her family was together and safe that she never complained. The hiding place at Schloss Federle would be smaller yet, and she knew the day might come when she longed for the relative spaciousness of Friedenau.
In January, after Mildred warned her that Arvid had heard rumors that additional housing restrictions for Jews might be issued as early as spring, Sara broke the news to her family with a heavy heart. “Perhaps we should begin looking for an apartment in the ghetto,” her mother suggested, dividing the last of the evening’s supper between her husband’s plate and Natan’s. “This way we can choose for ourselves before the best places are taken, and before the Nazis choose for us.”
Since traversing the city while avoiding areas from which Jews were banned had become an arduous ordeal, Sara and Natan urged their parents to stay home while they looked into a few places Natan’s friends in the area had recommended. Their parents gratefully accepted, relieved to avoid a chance encounter with storm troopers who might demand to see their identity cards and, upon seeing the red Js, publicly humiliate them, or worse.
It took Sara and Natan nearly two hours to navigate the new topography of Berlin between Friedenau in the southwest suburbs and the ghetto in the northeastern part of the city, but to Sara, the destination was worse than the journey. She struggled to hide her dismay as they toured one vacant apartment after another, unable to imagine their family living in any one of them. Wordlessly she noted peeling paint, rusty pipes, water-stained ceilings, lingering odors of cabbage and onions and sometimes urine, stairwells littered with debris, drafty rooms so cold she assumed a window had been left open until a closer look told her otherwise.
Sara was both disappointed and relieved when they left the last apartment on Natan’s list. “You know,” he remarked as they stopped at a small Jewish café to warm themselves with coffee and a piece ofKuchento share, “many people have lived in this neighborhood happily for years, and they didn’t need the Nazis to force them here.”
Sara’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t mean to be a snob,” she said in an undertone, “but can you imagine Mutti being content in any of the places we saw today?”
“My old place wasn’t much better.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Okay, maybe not. But you saw how nicely Mutti fixed up our retreat in the country. She’d do the same with one of these apartments.” Before Sara could argue that the hiding place in Schloss Federle had started out in much better structural condition than the apartments, Natan added, “I’m more worried about Papa. He’ll be crushed to see how far we’ve fallen.”
“It’s not his fault.”
“Of course not, but he’s always provided so well for his family. It’s a blow to a man’s pride when he no longer can. You and I would get along fine here, but our parents?” He shook his head.
They agreed that they could not return home with nothing to show for their search, so they chose the best of the vacant apartments and planned how they would describe it to their parents—honestly, but with optimism, promising that it would be easy to refurbish it themselves. Later, over supper, their parents listened with interest, but Sara doubted they were fooled.
