my grandfather as a plant manager. He was not an educated man but a shrewd and ambitious one. At first he acted as if he were honored by my grandfather’s trust in him. Because, after all, it was all based on trust. Dieter, Albrecht, and I may have been the legal owners, but the understanding was that three-quarters of the profits were to go to Grandfather in the Netherlands, for further distribution to our exiled family. Look at it: The Gerstners received our magnificent house and one-quarter of our esteemed and very profitable firm, and for nothing, making them richer than they ever could have imagined in their dreams.
But Grandfather did not realize the hatred the Gerstners had nurtured over the years. And most of all, he underestimated the effects the Nazis were having on even the most moderate of anti-Semites. Dieter Gerstner, under all his pretenses of faithful service, was a nascent Jew hater who came to full bloom, shall we say, under National Socialism. He resented our family’s wealth. The wealth had been honorably earned. Mein Gott, Rothman Textiles made fabric for the Kaiser during the war of fourteen-eighteen! Nonetheless, as soon as my family was gone, that rat Gerstner began making comments about “Jewish theft” of Germany’s resources, about “Jewish cunning” and “Jewish pollution of the race.” Each time he would look at me accusingly, as if I had polluted him, despite the fact that he was the thief.
There came a long pause.
But I did not see all this from the outset. A strange kind of normalcy reigned in the household. Each Sunday, I covered my head with lace and knelt down before the great crucifix. I listened to the prayers intoned in Latin and the sermons thundered in German. I endured the incense. I took communion. I went to confession and lied.
After six months had gone by, Herr Gerstner proudly bought tickets for a performance at the Deutsches Opernhaus Berlin—the opera house.
By then all the Jewish players had been banished. And Goebbels, that puny propaganda minister, had forbidden the staging of any works by Jews. Most of the talented conductors refused to participate and left the country. But that traitor von Karajan stayed—he later went on to world renown, as if he had never collaborated, the hands that held the baton now cleansed. He was conducting that night, Mozart, Die Zauberflöte. Officials of the Reich marched in and filled the first row. As one, the audience stood, thrust out their arms, and roared: Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!
It was at that moment that I understood the life that lay ahead of me. There I was, standing in the balcony, my arm out, feebly, covertly resisting, I thought. My dear father-in-law watched me closely from the corner of his shrewd little eye, and I had to mouth the words and hum softly to add some sound: Sieg heil! Then I sat through the performance. In the end, I stood and applauded with everyone else.
So began my double life.
Then she called out: Gerda! Mehr Tee!
Und whiskey? asked Gerda.
Ja, mit whiskey.
Again Gerda stood above us, said the patient after stopping the tape, that apple-cheeked young woman cheerfully bringing the teapot, the cups, the sugar, the creamer. Michal didn’t say anything, prolonging the rituals of sugar and cream and stirring, it seemed. Once she had a teacup cradled in her hands, she looked at me and went on:
I should tell you that Albrecht truly loved me. He was a kind and good man, and I could be myself only with him. He was very brave; he withstood the great danger that he would be declared a Rassenschande, a race defiler. He defended me against the barely disguised slurs from the extended Gerstner family. We both agreed we would just let them talk, not answer back. We decided I would behave like a good Catholic: go to church with a headscarf, kneel and cross myself. And like a good German, heartily shouting Sieg heil! when the occasion called for it.
She was silent for several seconds, drinking her tea, then said:
All right. Time goes by. I pretend to be Maria Gerstner, and my family is still thriving in Amsterdam. I don’t know if Dieter sent all the funds he was supposed to send, but whatever it was, it was evidently enough.
Then … then. May 10, 1940, Germany invades the Netherlands. Hitler bombs the hell out of Rotterdam and threatens to do the same to Amsterdam. The Dutch surrender in five days.