“Perhaps Annika decided to turn Luzi in to the Gestapo,” Sophie says, and even though eighty years have passed, I feel the wounds. Betrayal—one of the worst kinds of pain.
“Was Luzia a Jewish woman?” Sophie asks.
“I believe so.” I glance down at my handbag as if the photocopy of Luzia’s name inscribed in the magic balloon story might talk. As if it would lead me to the truth.
But to what end? If Luzia was Jewish, if the Gestapo sent her away, there was no hope for reconciliation. No healing to be had in the truth of what might have happened to her. Reunion would need to happen on the other side of this life.
I take a picture of the memo before Sophie closes the folder. “I’ve searched everything that is public here. You must rely on the private sources now or the records kept by religious communities in Vienna and perhaps in Hallstatt.”
I reach for my handbag. I don’t want to stop until I’m able to at least link Luzia with Charlotte.
“Many died during the war,” Sophie says, trying to comfort me.
“I know. I’m just holding on to the hope...”
“There’s nothing wrong with grieving your loss.”
But I’m not ready to grieve yet. “I need to search... to see if Luzia died in a camp.”
She nods. “The Holocaust Memorial Museum keeps a record of victims online.”
There’s no WiFi access in the reading room, so I wander back outside and across cobbles of gray stone that wind between buildings and through a park. My thoughts are as flighty as my feet, not certain of exactly which direction to go, but I know, even if Idon’t want to check, that I must search the database to see if the Nazis killed Luzi or Luzia Weiss from Vienna.
A sign in the window of a coffeehouse promises WiFi gratis, so I order a cappuccino and find a marble-covered table. Outside the window is a white statue of a horse and packs of students, professionals, and tourists.
Typing Luzia’s name and birthplace into my iPad is tremendously painful, each letter a hammer to my heart. It’s only a screen in front of me, only words, but words that carry significance far beyond this room.
Nothing is recorded in the database for Luzia Weiss, but when I inputLuzi, the screen flashes, opens to a new window. And I see the truth of what happened to her.
Ravensbrück.
The word slams against my chest, the pieces of my heart splintering.
A hundred thousand women, I read, were killed in that German camp alone, each with a family and perhaps children as well. Inever knew Luzia Weiss, yet for Charlotte’s sake, I feel keenly the pain of losing her. All those years Charlotte searched, Luzia was already gone. Exterminated.
This wasn’t God. Isn’t God. A beautiful young woman dying for who He created her to be. I didn’t know Luzia, but tears, Ithink, are one of the greatest tributes of all. Perhaps that was why Jesus wept for the loss of his friend in the Bible, before He raised him from the grave. Perhaps, even when we know there is life in theafter, we can still grieve for thenow.
I may be the only one left to grieve for Luzia. To remember. And so I cry for her tragic death, mourn in that coffeehouse what might have been.
I’d hoped to be able to bring Charlotte information about what happened to her mother, but this news...
As I walk back to the train station, along the regal lanes with shops and restaurants and houses built for opera, I wonder how many people in Vienna remember what happened in the war. My world of books confronts the realities of life, but the endings—at least the ones I prefer—clean up the mess at the end. Everything is resolved when I close the cover, but the ugly realities of this world—what man does to man—bleeds right off the page.
Tears flow down my cheeks again, and I decide in that moment that Sophie is right—there’s nothing wrong with the sadness. With remembering a dance of life that ended much too soon. Astar captured from the freedom of sky.
Perhaps this woman wasn’t Charlotte’s mother, but even if she was, I don’t have anyplace else to look. The search for Luzia Weiss has ended for me, the final page closing at the gates of Ravensbrück. And I can almost hear the slam of those gates echoing in my head.
CHAPTER 35
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
APRIL 1939
The information Ernst had been waiting for finally arrived. The Salzburg agents hadn’t found anyone except the caretaker’s daughter at Schloss Schwansee, but an agent at Dachau had convinced Herr Fischer, one of Dr. Weiss’s patients, to speak.
When the Gestapo arrested this man in November, they’d searched his lavish home for the jewelry his wife once displayed, but nothing of value remained. They’d interrogated Frau Fischer at length before taking her to jail. She’d seemed shocked at the disappearance of her jewels, but Jews lied about everything, especially their valuables.
The men who’d survived the roundup returned home withdirections to leave Austria immediately, but the Gestapo held a few, like Herr Fischer, who refused to answer the simplest of questions. The Jew had kept his secrets for months, but they’d finally extracted the information they needed. And it was much more valuable than anything they could have found in his house.
