White Rose Black Forest(80)

“This is it,” she said. “We can do this.”

“I can hack it,” he said, but his voice was weak, as if any step could be his last. He stumbled again, and she reached down to pick him up.

“Come on, John. We’re nearly there. Just a little farther now.” They kept moving along the stream bank, one more step, and then another. His feet began to cross, and he tripped again, bringing her down on top of him. He moaned as she tried to pick him up, but she ignored him, forcing his arm over her shoulder. His grip was slackening, but still they kept walking. Somehow.

“We’re so close. Don’t give up on me.”

Several minutes passed as they trudged forward, until his grip faded and he fell to the ground. The customs building appeared through the trees. It was only thirty yards away.

“We’ve made it!” she cried. “We’re in Switzerland. We’re free.”

“You’re free,” he whispered. “Thank you, Franka, for everything. Take the film.”

“No!” she shouted. “I won’t let you die, not while we’re so close. Now get up. Do you hear me? Get up. I’m not leaving you behind.”

She reached down, put her arm around him, and took his full weight onto her shoulders.

“We can make it. We are going make it. I am not letting you die,” she said over and over as she lumbered toward the small stone-gray customs building, the trees of the Black Forest so thick above her that she couldn’t see the sky.





Chapter 15

The countryside outside the city of Basel, Switzerland, October 1945

The setting sun dabbed the horizon red, orange, and purple. Franka stretched out the muscles in her back while she leaned on the garden hoe in her hand. In the distance the hills and trees of the Black Forest were discernable as dark shapes against the sky. The evenings were cooler now, the heat of summer dispelled by the coming of the autumn air. Neat green rows of potato plants covered the earth for several hundred yards in every direction, their uniformity broken only by the figures of the other farmhands returning from their day’s work. Franka bent to pick up the bucket of weeds she’d pulled and began to make her way back toward the barn. Rosa Goldstein was waiting for her by the tree they often had lunch below and greeted her with a smile.

“I didn’t think you’d still be here, Franka. I thought you were going home.”

“I’m still here,” Franka said. “I don’t know why, but my trip home was delayed. Today is my last day on the farm. It seems ridiculous, but I’m going to miss this place, and all the wonderful people I’ve met here.”

“The war is over. The Nazis are gone. It’s time to get on with our lives, whatever might be left of them.”

The two young women walked together. Others joined them as they went, and by the time they reached the barn, the group numbered more than twenty, each wishing her the best as she said goodbye.

Memories of Hans came to her as she washed up before dinner in the bathroom she shared with the ten other women she knew as sisters now. His words had lived beyond the brevity of his own life. Hans, Sophie, Willi, and the others who’d given their lives in the cause of freedom would soon be held up as the heroes she knew them to be. She went back to her room and sat on her bunk bed. The dorm was empty, all the other women outside enjoying a drink in the evening sun. She pulled out from under her bed the case that constituted her belongings. The leaflet was folded in the side pocket. She took it out, as she did often these days, and read its headline:

THE MANIFESTO OF THE STUDENTS OF MUNICH

It was the sixth leaflet of the White Rose, smuggled out of Germany by a lawyer, and duplicated and dropped in the hundreds of thousands over Germany by Allied bombers. Sylvia Stern, a Jewish refugee from Ulm, had carried it across the border with her and given it to Franka as inspiration when Franka first arrived in the camp in winter 1944. Franka never told her, or anyone else, that she’d been there the night Hans, his sister Sophie, and best friend Willi had penned that leaflet. She didn’t tell her that she’d helped distribute it, or that she’d spent time in jail for the words on that piece of paper. That memory was theirs now. They deserved that honor alone.

She folded the leaflet, tucked it back into her suitcase, and went to the window at the end of the row of bunk beds. Franka peered out at the Black Forest, miles in the distance. What was she going back to? The Nazis had been destroyed, and their Reich, which was to last a thousand years, had too. But what was there for her now? Everyone she’d loved most was dead. Only their memories remained, bathing her in comfort and sorrow, and immersing her in love. She still spoke to her mother, still felt her father’s arms around her, still saw Fredi’s smile in her dreams. They would always be with her, as long as she lived.

She still thought of John. She could still feel the weight of him on her shoulders, the warmth of his blood spread over her, and the look on the customs man’s face—somewhere between pity and incredulity—as she burst through the door with him on her back. The customs man had tried to convince her to give up, that John was dead, but she’d refused to believe it. She forced him at gunpoint to drive them to the hospital three miles away. She was sure they’d lock her up for that. But they didn’t. The US consulate stepped in. The microfilm was smuggled back to the States, and the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She’d never know how much she’d contributed to the horror of those days, but the war was over now. The Americans said that those bombs saved hundreds of thousands of lives. It was best to think of it that way, for the alternative hurt too much. Perhaps the role they’d played in ending the war was the legacy that one day she could come to terms with. It was enough to know they’d contributed.