on walls, windows, street signs, and any other highly visible surface, taking special care to lavish them upon posters advertising the exhibition.
Dawn was still several hours away when Sara and Liane placed the last of their stickers in the area between Kurfürstendamm and Uhlandstrasse, checked in with their team leader, and bade each other farewell and good luck. Sara hurried home, a rush of excitement and accomplishment hastening her steps. Exhaustion overcame her only after she slipped quietly through the front door and found Natan sleeping on the living room sofa. He had planned to meet with a journalist from Zürich earlier that evening, she recalled, someone with contacts in the Swiss government who might be able to get them out of Germany. Perhaps he would have good news to share in the morning.
“You were busy last night,” Natan remarked when Sara finally emerged from her bedroom just after ten o’clock. “The police are so overwhelmed that they’re rounding up Jews to help scrape stickers off a square mile of the city around the Lustgarten.”
“Is that why you’re still home?” Sara teased as she poured herself a cup of ersatz coffee. After many failed attempts, Natan had hit upon a concoction that was surprisingly palatable. “You didn’t want to find yourself in a crew and undo all my hard work?”
“That, and I wanted to see your face when you sat down to breakfast.” He gestured to a chair. “So sit.”
Bemused, she obeyed. Turning his back to shield the cupboard from her view, Natan withdrew a plate and set it before her with a flourish. Upon it were a half a loaf of rye bread and a gorgeous red apple.
“Natan!” Sara gasped. “Where did you—how—”
“A gift from my Swiss friend.” Grinning, he sat down across from her and rested his arms on the table. “Just a taste of things to come.”
With a moan of pleasure, Sara tore off a chunk of the bread and devoured it. “You mean—”
“He promises to have false papers and train tickets to Zurich for us by the end of June.”
“Oh, Natan, that’s wonderful!”
“So we just have to hold on a little while longer.” He nudged the plate closer to her. “That’s all yours, by the way. I already had mine.”
It was the best morning Sara had known in a very long time.
That night she stayed in, unwilling to test her luck two nights in a row, certain that the SS would be on alert and eager to make examples of any Jews caught out after curfew. The next morning, Natan again woke first, but when Sara joined him for a meager breakfast of ersatz coffee and rye bread saved from the previous day’s generous loaf, his expression was grave. “Someone bombed the exhibition last night.”
“What?”
“They’ve kept it out of the papers, but a friend of a friend heard the explosions go off. Was this Schulze-Boysen’s work?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “He’s reckless, but if he were going to blow something up, he’d discuss it with the group first, and choose a more valuable target. How badly was it damaged?”
Natan did not know. They agreed to check their separate sources and meet later to share what they learned. Sara hoped that the loathsome exhibition had been completely destroyed.
Unfortunately, Greta and Mildred soon informed her that this was not so. An incendiary device had been set off at the entrance and cloth soaked in phosphorus had been set aflame elsewhere in an attempt to burn down the building, but although a few people had been injured and part of the exhibit had been burned, the fire had not spread, the damage was quickly repaired, and the exhibition had opened on time that morning as if nothing had happened. Greta and Adam had been among the first to enter, and they had noted only a few faint scorch marks on the walls. “People are speculating that the Jews attacked the exhibit because they can’t stand the truth,” said Greta, disgusted.
“Was it someone from our circle?” Sara asked.
“We have no idea who was responsible,” said Mildred. “Let’s hope the Gestapo doesn’t either.”
Four days after the bombing, Natan’s sources warned him that the Gestapo had raided several locations in the city and had arrested five Jews, three half-Jews, and four Aryans suspected of carrying out the plot. Investigators had determined that the bombs had been manufactured at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, which led them to Herbert Baum, an engineer at Siemens accused of being the cell’s ringleader. “A conspiracy of