shown the slightest indication that he understands good sportsmanship, or that he has any appreciation of sport for its own sake.”
“His sportsmanship is the least of our worries,” said Mildred. “If he’s a child, with a child’s impulsiveness and irrationality, then he’s an extremely dangerous one, powerful and cruel, able to act on any hateful whim with the full force of the German military and millions of devoted fanatics.”
Sobered, Martha made no reply. Of course there was no question that to Hitler the Berlin Games had nothing to do with the Olympic ideals of international friendship, peace, solidarity, and fair play. They were an entirely Germanic affair, pure and simple, meant to demonstrate German superiority, might, and peaceful intentions to the world, regardless of the truth.
And in that, Martha feared, he had triumphed.
Chapter Thirty-six
August–December 1936
Greta
After the Olympics, the international tourists went home impressed by the unprecedented magnificence of the Games and much reassured that Hitler’s intentions were peaceful, that he would make Germany great again without any peril to its neighbors. But as the eyes of the world turned away from Berlin, Greta and her friends braced themselves for the Nazi persecution of the Jews to resume with a vengeance.
Almost immediately, the signs announcing “Juden unerwünscht” returned to the front windows of shops and businesses. Arrests for the slightest offenses, or merely the suspicion of offenses, redoubled. Storm troopers resumed their arbitrary attacks on Jews in the streets of Berlin. The Reich Ministry of Education banned Jewish teachers from the public schools. And two days after the Games concluded, Captain Wolfgang Fürstner, designer of the much-lauded Olympic Village, committed suicide after he was dismissed from the military because of his Jewish ancestry. The Nazis claimed he had died in a car accident and interred him with full military honors, but drawing upon his network of informants, Natan Weitz swiftly uncovered the truth. Unfortunately, even after his report was picked up by the international press, millions of ardent Nazis insisted upon believing the lie.
Greta fumed with anger and frustration that the world could be so easily duped by the spectacle of the Olympics. She understood the yearning to believe that Hitler was a man of peace, that Germany was ready to rejoin the fold of civilized nations after the horrors of the Great War, but wanting desperately for something to be true did not make it so. The flame of the Olympic torch, the fanfare of trumpets, the inspiring display of physical perfection, and the glitter of gold medals had distracted attention away from the battered Treaty of Versailles, ground under the boots of the German military as they marched into the Rhineland. What more evidence of Hitler’s expansionist intentions did world leaders require?
The resistance had to keep writing, keep speaking, keep bearing witness to what was really happening in Germany. They had no arms, no tanks, no storm troopers. Their only weapon was the truth, but Greta had to believe that in the end, the truth would always defeat a lie.
Earlier that year, she had moved from her sublet room in Pichelswerder into a modest flat on Scharnweberstrasse a few blocks north of the Volkspark Rehberge. Her new place was only six kilometers away from Adam’s home on Dortmunder Strasse, more anonymous than the boathouse and more convenient for Adam’s overnight visits.
“You know what would be even easier?” he asked wryly. “If you just moved in with me.”
She demurred, as he must have known she would. Even though he was no longer living with his estranged wife, Greta did not want to share a home with him while he was still married to someone else. She knew she invited mockery for holding this line when she had already crossed so many others, but she did not care. She loved Adam and wanted to be with him, but she would not relinquish her independence for someone who would not fully commit to her and her alone.
Greta’s new landlady, Ruth Levinsohn, was half-Jewish on her father’s side, a widow with two grown daughters, both of whom had recently emigrated to Poland to avoid Nazi persecution. Perhaps it was out of loneliness for them that she took a special interest in Greta, not prying into her affairs, but always ready with a cup of tea, a morsel of something sweet, and news from the neighborhood if they happened to cross paths in the lobby. She was intelligent and well-read, a former rare books librarian who had been forced into early retirement in the