recently been reassigned from the Air Ministry to Göring’s operations planning staff. Soon thereafter, Arvid learned that the German high command had ordered the Military Economic Department to prepare a map of Soviet industrial flights. If Hitler’s secret Directive Number 21 was not evidence enough, these activities proved that Operation Barbarossa was real and under way.
Thanks to the resistance, the Soviet Union would be forewarned. It would have months to prepare, and when the German attack finally came in spring, the Soviet defenses would utterly overwhelm the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. With its military crushed, the Reich would fall.
But spring was months away, and as persecution of Jews made their lives unbearable and food and fuel grew scarce even for Aryans, Sara began to worry that she and Natan might not make it through the winter. Their ghetto apartment was old and poorly insulated, so even though it was small—merely one bedroom where Sara slept, a living room where Natan made his bed on the sofa, and a kitchenette comprised of a sink, an icebox, a small cupboard, and a hot plate—they could never keep it tolerably warm. Real coffee had disappeared from markets long before, but as in the previous winter, meat, fresh vegetables, and even salt and pepper became scarce. Sara spent her days waiting impatiently, stomach growling, for the appointed hour when Jews were permitted to shop, then set off with her shopping basket praying that she would find enough left on the shelves to put together a meal. She went from shop to shop searching for potatoes and carrots and bread, enduring long queues and anxious pushy crowds. There was never enough for everyone. Sara always had more ration coupons left over than there was food to buy.
She was always tired, always thinking of food, of how she might turn yesterday’s potato peelings into a broth that would sustain them through the day. Natan never complained, but his eyes glittered from hunger and his face had become gaunt. She knew from the way her clothes hung loosely upon her that she had become too thin as well. Once Natan brought home a piece of cheese, a gift from a friend, scarcely enough for a sandwich and yet she cried out from joy.
“Enough is enough,” he said, his expression hardening. “Tomorrow I’ll go to Schloss Federle and bring back enough supplies to see us through the winter.”
Sara’s mouth watered at the memory of the sacks of rice and beans, the bottles of oil, the cans of fruits and vegetables and everything else they had put away so carefully in the attic of the west wing. “But what if we have to go into hiding?” she asked, instinctively lowering her voice.
“Once we do, we won’t be able to help the resistance or claim our immigration visas if our turn comes. As long as any hope remains, we’ll take our chances out here. Agreed?”
Wordlessly, Sara nodded. For the same reason, she could not simply disappear into Annemarie Hannemann’s identity and wait out the Reich disguised as an Aryan, as she assumed other Jews who had managed to get false papers had done. Unfortunately, the source who had provided her papers had been arrested before he could make any for Natan.
“We stocked enough supplies to feed two families for several months,” Natan reminded her. “Now that it’s just the two of us, we could stretch that out for a year, maybe two.”
“Or longer,” said Sara. But maybe they would not have to. If Arvid and Harro were right, and Germany attacked the Soviet Union in the spring, the war could be over by summer.
Natan intended to make the trip to Schloss Federle alone, but Sara insisted on accompanying him. Not only that, she would drive. “Annemarie Hannemann still has her license,” she pointed out. “We only need a good excuse for her to be out on the roads using up her fuel ration.”
Early the next morning when they went to the auto repair shop, they discovered that despite the best efforts of Natan’s mechanic friend, their parents’ luxurious car was gone. The previous March, the army had ordered all but a tiny fraction of car owners to surrender their vehicles’ batteries, and a few months later a salvage crew had confiscated the rest for the war effort. Nervous, glancing over his shoulder as he spoke, Natan’s friend offered to let them borrow a tow truck for a few hours, but only that one time.