The German Wife(33)
My voice was thick with emotion as I managed, “As you say, Claudia, things were very difficult during the war.”
“Some of my friends joined the Party or turned a blind eye to the harassment of Jews on the street,” she said stiffly. “These things I can forgive. But I absolutely draw the line at running a—” she looked from me to Felix and then mouthed dramatically “—forced labor camp.”
“He didn’t run a camp!” I exclaimed fiercely, but then I sighed, knowing I’d already lost this battle. “Maybe we can sit down, and the children can play while I tell you the whole story? We didn’t have any choice about what happened.”
I felt sure if Claudia heard me out, she’d understand the impossible position Jürgen and I had found ourselves in. But she had already made up her mind. She stepped back inside and gave me a grim look.
“There’s always a choice, Sofie. Always.”
She moved to shut the door, but I couldn’t let the conversation end like that, so I stuck my foot out to hold the door open.
“As I understand, you and Klaus were living a long way from Berlin during the war,” I said firmly. “And you’re younger than us—I’m assuming Klaus was very junior at his workplace back then. You don’t know what you’d have done if you were in our position.”
Claudia raised her chin. “Actually, we refused to join the Party, and that meant Klaus was passed over for every promotion and pay rise. At times, those people made our life very uncomfortable. But more importantly, we held on to our self-respect.” She flicked a glance down to Felix and added, “I understand that Klaus and Jürgen will work together—that is unavoidable. But I have come a long way to remove my children from the influence of Nazi ideology. I am sure you understand why I do not want them mingling with the family of a man who enforced it.”
“But—”
“Please excuse me. I need to do some housekeeping.”
She pushed the door and I had no choice but to remove my foot. As the latch clicked into place, I looked down at Felix, who was staring up at me with big, sad eyes.
“Am I going to play with Luis today, Mama?”
“Not today,” I said heavily, turning back toward home.
Misery threatened to envelop me, but I shook myself. I had to keep perspective. Things in America were more complicated than I’d expected, but still not as bad as everything we’d already endured.
17
Sofie
Berlin, Germany
1935
Once when I was young, I tagged along on my parents’ resort vacation to étretat, in France. I was fascinated by L’Aiguille, the famous needle rock formation, as well as the archways of rock that looped out over the ocean. But my favorite feature was a little cave, tucked at the other end of the beach opposite the resort. I’d been exploring its nooks and crannies all week. On the last morning I sat with my nanny, side by side at the cave’s mouth, watching the waves roll toward our ankles.
“How did this happen?” I asked her. I stared up at the rock ceiling and enjoyed a shiver of adrenaline as I thought about the weight of the coast’s famous alabaster chalk above us.
“It takes a very long time to carve out a cave like this,” she said. “Millions of years. Every wave washes away just a tiny bit of the rock. Even this week, it’s grown. It’s just happened too slowly for us to see it.”
I thought about that a lot after the Nazis came to power and the trickle of anti-Jewish decrees began. The new laws were so narrow at first that they attracted little outcry. First came the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which mandated that civil servants provide proof of Aryan heritage. Most were easily able to do this. Those who had Jewish heritage, like Mayim’s father, Levi, were quietly dismissed.
Then came limits on the number of Jewish students at certain schools and colleges. Few beyond those directly affected even understood the impact of this. And when restrictions came for Jewish doctors, their licenses weren’t revoked—not at first. They could still practice, only now they could not claim reimbursement from public health insurance funds. Who would protest a minor administrative change? Not the Aryan doctors, that was for sure—they benefited because their Jewish competition soon went out of business. And by then, the rest of us were awash in propaganda that painted Jews as money obsessed and greedy. Few paid any attention when Jewish doctors tried to protest.
Hundreds of these decrees were passed, one by one. This is how polite society gives way to chaos. The collapse that comes at the end of the process is a consequence of the slow erosion over time.
The shift was happening with Lydia and Karl too, long before I recognized it. That polite distance between the zu Schillers and Mayim was once easy to explain away. But ever so slowly, the pattern of inviting Jürgen and me to this outing or that, leaving Mayim out of the equation altogether, became entrenched.
“Maybe Mayim could tag along?” I suggested one day, when Lydia invited us to the opera.
“Oh, I only have four tickets,” she told me. And then a few weeks later, when I wanted to bring Mayim to dinner: “Karl and Jürgen need to talk about rocket business, and you know how secretive all that is.”
After that, Lydia called to plan a trip to the Berlin Zoo for Horst and Ernst’s birthday. I twisted the telephone cord around my hand, feeling strangely nervous as I suggested, “Mayim can join us. She loves the zoo, and she’ll be such a great help with the children.”