wanted blond hair, and the use of peroxide was discouraged.
We passed a mound of canvases and framed pictures. A painting of two men embracing lay on top, the canvas spiked through on a spear from a sculpture below.
“My God, Jew art,” Mutti said. “Can’t they just hang a calendar on the wall like the rest of us?”
On his way home from the pharmacy, Father joined us there by the piles. The creases on his face looked deeper that day. A rough night on the sofa.
I lifted a scrapbook from a table and flipped through the pages, past black-and-white photographs of someone’s beach vacation.
“This is undignified,” Father said. “You two call yourselves Christians?”
Of course he disapproved. Why had he even stopped to speak with us? I tossed the scrapbook on our pile.
“Anton, can you not relax a bit?” Mutti said.
I pulled a painting, one of two of grazing cows, out from under a crush of framed canvases. It was well done, perhaps even a masterwork. Traditional German art. Just what the Propaganda Ministry found suitable, and something every cultured woman should own.
“What do you think, Mutti?”
Mutti pointed at the cows and laughed. “Oh, it’s you, Kleine Kuh.”
Kleine Kuh was Mutti’s nickname for me. Little heifer. As a child she’d had a brown cow that I reminded her of. I had long ago dealt with not being as dainty and blond as my mother, but the name still rankled.
“Don’t call Herta that,” Father said. “No girl should be called a cow.”
It was good to have Father’s support, even if he was a lawbreaker who listened to foreign broadcasts and read every foreign newspaper he could lay hands on. I took the two paintings and set them in our pile.
“Where have the owners of all this gone?” I asked, though I had a general idea.
“To the KZ, I suppose,” Mutti said. “It’s their own fault. They could have stepped aside. Gone to England. They don’t work; that is the problem.”
“Jews have jobs,” Father said.
“Ja, of course, but what jobs? Lawyers? That is not really work. They own the factories, but do they do the work? No. I’d rather do ten jobs than work for them.”
Mutti pulled a dressing gown from the pile and held it up. “Would this fit you, Anton?” Father and I didn’t have to see the silver K on the sleeve to know who the former owner was.
“No, thank you,” he said, and Mutti walked off, scouting the piles.
“Are you sure, Father?” I took the dressing gown and held it out to him. “It’s a nice one.”
He took a step back. “What has happened to you, Herta? Where is my girl with the tender heart, always first to take up the collection can for the neediest? Katz was a man you could have learned from.”
“I haven’t changed.” It was obvious he didn’t support or even like me much, but did he have to broadcast this?
“Katz was compassionate. A doctor without love is like a mechanic.”
“Of course I’m compassionate. Do you know what it’s like to be able to change a person’s life just with these hands?”
“You’ll never be a surgeon with Hitler around. Can’t you see that? Your generation is so pigheaded.”
Much as I hated to admit it, he was right about the surgeon part. As one of a handful of women in my medical school, I’d been lucky to be able to study dermatology, never mind surgery, and had received only basic surgical training.
“We all must sacrifice, but Germany’s changing thanks to my generation. Such poverty yours left us with.”
“Hitler will be the death of all of us, just taking what he wants—”
“Quiet, Father,” I said. How dangerous for him to respond in such a way in public. He even told jokes about Party leaders. “Hitler is our hope. In no time, he’s gotten rid of the slums. And he must take. Germany can’t thrive without room to expand. No one will just give back the land we’ve lost.”
Many parents had grown wary of confronting their children for fear of being denounced by them, but not my father.
“He’s killing Germany to feed his own vanity.”
“This war will be over within weeks. You’ll see,” I said.
He turned with a dismissive wave.
“Go straight home and rest before afternoon coffee, Father.”
He walked away, barely avoiding a passing tram. Father would need a nap. The cancer was having a party in his body. Could Katz have helped him live? It was no good wasting time with such thoughts. I busied myself searching the