wasn’t either; she couldn’t stand how the Reich sought to control how people lived, worked, and thought, or the hatred and violence of their ideology. Papa felt the same, but he considered himself a pragmatist. “Hold your nose, open your wallet, and shake their hands.” That was his method of getting on with the regime. It galled her when he spoke at Party functions or chatted with Hitler and Mussolini when they visited Essen before the war, but she understood why he did it, from his perspective at least. In his study, he admitted to her how he despised some of the things he had to do to keep the government pacified. A little playacting on his part, he said, was necessary to protect the mines and factories, her and her brothers, her mother and grandmother too, and the reputation of the family. His primary duty was to preserve this legacy for the next generation. When he said that, he had put his hand on hers, and there was an electric shock as if he was transferring this duty to her.
His playacting was a sensible survival tactic, given the circumstances, even if the hint of cowardice left a bad taste in her mouth. But at least it was better than being a Nazi disciple, fawning over the little men in their uniforms, awed by the führer, eager to die in some twisted idea of glory. In private, she was quite bold about telling her father that a strong and just society had a free press and no political prisoners. He agreed with her with a wave of his hand. “But this is the world we live in.” He tapped the arm of his chair. “This world, here and now. It’s only temporary anyway. The kaiser was still around when you were a baby. He went. Weimar came and went. Now the Nazis are here. In a few years, they’ll be gone too. Don’t put your faith in this or that society. Put it in the only thing that endures.”
The family, of course. It was a good family on the days she could avoid her mother, and she knew that it had sheltered her from the storms that had shaken Germany her whole life. But was there a point at which her father would say or do what he truly believed, despite the risk? Would she? Thyssen had spoken out and was taking the consequences, and now she knew—they all knew—no family was truly safe.
She had longed to talk more to Papa about all of this, but the topic seemed to irritate him lately. He made it clear that Thyssen’s views were not the issue at all. The consequences of dissent were. Exile, confiscations, arrest. Ruin. Papa would not let that happen to this family. Did she understand?
In her attic room, she put the family photograph inside the woodstove. Then she added the magazine’s picture of Papa in the internment camp. She lit the match and let it burn. If her brothers had lived, so much in her life would have been different. If she’d gone into exile. If there hadn’t been a war. If, if, if. Like her father, she had playacted for years to preserve the family, and they had lost everything regardless. Did he see the irony the way she did?
She touched the flame to the paper and watched it consume her family and herself.
ON THE TRAIN station platform, Clara waited with the crowd sitting on their suitcases and bags, an hour when a train was supposed to come and didn’t, another hour when she and many others got up to walk around and keep warm while maneuvering their way to the edge of the tracks. The closer she was, the better chance she had of getting a seat on the train. If it came at all.
When it finally arrived, the Reichsbahn men whistled and pushed the people on the platform back until the passengers had disembarked. Another whistle, and there was a surge forward, Clara kicking and boxing her way to a seat by the window, glassed by some miracle, but useless now because it was dark. People packed the rest of the car, pressing her to the wall, pinning her at the thigh, jamming her knees, stepping on her feet. Passengers hugged suitcases and sacks and backpacks like her own, except theirs looked empty. She guessed some of them were heading to the countryside to scrounge in the fields for a forgotten potato or an edible