“A trip to Switzerland,” Oma says. “To the city of Geneva. I had never been to Switzerland, and when my uncle asked Father’s permission, I begged him to grant it. In two weeks, we boarded a—”
I see a train now, chugging furiously from village to village in the green of late summer, a small, pinafored girl sipping tea in the dining car. Her attention is torn between the adventure on the inside of the train, the smoke curling past the windows, and the cities they pass. Mannheim. Karlsruhe. Baden-Baden. The long journey makes her tired, but she resists sleep, wanting to take every moment in and hold it. Then, the blue-mirror lakes of Neuchatel and Léman, as the train rolls toward the city of Geneva.
My father interrupts. “Mutti, what does any of this have to do with Elena going to Kansas? I’m sure Geneva was a wonderful trip.” He looks at me pointedly. “And one Sandra and I have heard about before. But—”
Oma quiets him with a raised hand. “Listen to me, Gerhard. And you will understand after I have finished. I am tired now, and my throat hurts me.”
Dad backs down, but he shakes his head at me.
“I met many people during those three days in Geneva. Uncle had meetings each morning, but in the late afternoons he would fetch me from the hotel where I stayed with a hired governess. ‘We are going out now, Maria,’ he would say, and so we did, always to a pretty tearoom with white linens and crystal chandeliers and cream cakes. There were professors from America and doctors from Italy and England, all of whom thought me very charming. But my favorite new person was an American lady. She came each afternoon and was very kind to me. I remember Mrs. Sanger said I would have beautiful, perfect children.”
This time, I interrupt. “Margaret Sanger? What was she doing in Geneva?” Sanger, as far as I knew, had been working on rolling out birth control in the States.
Oma laughs. “Oh, Leni, there were hundreds of people in Geneva that summer. You see, it was the World Population Conference. And Mrs. Sanger, she organized it, and she asked my great-uncle to be a speaker. Father’s uncle was very important. He managed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for fifteen years.”
“What was that? A hospital?” I ask.
This time when Oma laughs she goes into a fit, her body folding in on itself, until my father gently thumps her on the back and my mother replaces the schnapps glass with a tumbler of water. I don’t know which frightens me more—seeing her in obvious pain, or knowing that the laughter is the kind of laughter we do when there’s nothing to laugh at. When she recovers, she explains.
“There were sick people in that place. For the most part, the men and women who worked there. Also the men and women who helped them. Magnussen. Mengele. That American, Charles Davenport. It has always seemed strange to me that a man named Eugen”—she pronounces this “OY-gain”—“would be the director of such an institute. So now you know, Gerhard.” She shrugs slightly when she addresses my father.
Dad shakes his head again. “What do I know?”
Oma, who has been sitting listlessly on the sofa, straightens and leans forward. “That your great-great-uncle was one of the men behind the extermination of millions of humans. His name was Eugen Fischer. Yes, you are wondering now why I kept that name, and that is another story for another time. I must go to bed now.”
The room’s temperature seems to drop. My mother and father exchange confused glances as they help Oma to her feet. I tumble names around in my head—monsters from a not-so-distant past, activists painted as heroes. Solutions that promised fitter families and ended with finality for so many others.
Before Oma closes her bedroom door, I say, “It wouldn’t happen here, Oma. This is the United States.”
“Oh, my darling girl,” she says, sighing. “Where do you think my great-uncle Eugen got the idea?”
When we’re alone, Mom speaks softly. “She’s getting worse, Gerhard, isn’t she? First those stories about her friend Miriam, then that business about the uniform.”