Echoes Page 0,64

knew that if Amadea tried to go to university, they would discover she was half Jewish. The risk was too great. She would have to show not only her birth certificate, which was benign and showed both her parents to be Catholic at the time of her birth in Switzerland, but she would have to show papers as to her parents' racial origins. Antoine was no problem, but that was the only instance in which Beata's birth as a Jew was likely to surface, and Beata couldn't let that happen. She never explained it to Amadea, but Beata was adamant that she didn't want her going to university. It was too dangerous for them all, and the only way in which Beata could imagine their being put at risk. Even as a half-Jew, Amadea would be in serious trouble, as Beata had discussed with her mother. So Beata was intransigent about it. She told Amadea that in troubled times, a university was not the place to be, particularly for a woman. It was full of radicals and Communists and all the people who were getting into trouble with the Nazis, and being sent to work camps. She could even be caught in a riot, and her mother refused to let that happen.

“That's ridiculous, Mama. We're not Communists. I just want to study. No one's going to send me to a work camp.” She couldn't believe her mother was being so stupid. And to her own ears, Beata sounded like the echo of her father.

“Of course not,” Beata said firmly, “but I don't want you tossed in with those kinds of people. You can wait a few years, if that's really what you want, until things settle down. Right now there is too much unrest all over Germany. I don't want you in danger, even indirectly.” And there was no question, applying to college would put her in great danger, but not for any reason she suspected. Her mother didn't intend to tell her she had been born Jewish, and that Amadea and her sister were half Jewish. It was no one's business. Not even theirs. She was adamant that the girls didn't need to know. The fewer people who knew, the safer it kept them, as far as she was concerned. No one in their world knew that Beata had been born Jewish. Her complete isolation and banishment from her family for nineteen years had in effect kept it a secret, and certainly none of them looked it, least of all Amadea, with her tall blond blue-eyed Aryan looks. But even Beata and Daphne looked Christian, although their hair was dark, but their features were delicate and fine and their eyes blue, in just the ways people associated with Christians, given their stereotypical views of Jews.

Amadea had been arguing about the university issue for months, but her mother remained rigid, much to their grandmother's relief. It was bad enough worrying about her other children who were openly Jewish, without agonizing over Beata and her daughters, too. And as was all too evident, without Antoine, Beata and the girls had no one to protect them or take care of them. Beata and her children were alone in the world, in part due to Beata's grief over losing her husband, and their having lost both their families decades before, which in the end had made her reclusive. She had no ties to anyone, except the girls, and the Daubignys whom she saw rarely. It was a lonely life for her. And the strife between her and Amadea over not allowing her to attend university was considerable. It put Amadea and her mother into pitched battle and fierce opposition, but Beata was relentless. There was no way for Amadea to disobey her, since her mother held the purse strings. Beata had suggested that she study on her own, until things calmed down in the schools. She would be finishing her school in June, two months after she turned eighteen. At not quite ten, Daphne had years to go, and still seemed like a baby to her mother and sister. She hated it when Amadea and her mother argued, and complained about it to her Oma, whom she adored. Daphne thought she was pretty, and she loved her jewelry and elegant clothes. She always let Daphne go through her handbags and play with the treasures she found there, like powder and lipstick. She let her wear her jewelry while she was there, and try