been expelled from Germany and confined to a refugee camp. He had entered the German embassy in Paris and had shot a diplomat, seriously wounding him. At that moment, the diplomat was in critical condition and Grynszpan was in the custody of the French police.
“What did this diplomat have to do with the deportation order?” Greta asked Adam.
“Nothing, as far as I know,” he replied. “Herschel Grynszpan is probably just a desperate, frightened young man, frantic about his parents. Maybe he wanted to draw attention to the plight of the Polish Jews living as refugees in the country of their birth. Maybe he didn’t think it through, but struck back the only way he knew how.”
Greta studied her husband, taken aback by the grim approval in his tone. “I don’t see how any good can come of this. The Nazis will twist this attack to their own purposes as they always do.”
“They might,” Adam acknowledged, gently lifting their sleeping son from her arms. “But at least one Jew struck a blow.”
“But at what cost?” Greta asked softly so she did not wake the baby. If Adam heard, he did not reply.
Two days later, they learned that Grynszpan’s blow had proven fatal. Despite the valiant efforts of Hitler’s personal physician, the German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, had died of his wounds.
Later that evening, Greta and Adam left Ule in the care of a neighbor—Erika von Brockdorff, a countess married to an artist and the mother of a young daughter—so they could attend an important dress rehearsal for a revival of Friedrich Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe at the Schiller Theater in Charlottenburg. For more than a year, the theater had been closed while the building underwent significant renovations, and the first night of Kabale und Liebe would mark the gala reopening. Adolf Hitler was scheduled to attend, and he would view the show from the Führerloge, a luxurious state box constructed especially for him. Under the circumstances, the theater could not be opened for the usual previews, so acquaintances from the theater world, friends who would not mind the construction dust, had been invited for a private showing to help the cast and crew prepare for the important night.
Adam had some misgivings about attending. He was barely on speaking terms with the director—Heinrich George, a former Communist turned Nazi collaborator who worked on several Reich propaganda films—but he had several friends in the cast and he owed the stage manager a favor. At the last minute, Adam accepted the invitation and suggested he and Greta make a night on the town of it.
Although Greta missed little Ule, she enjoyed the indulgence of an evening out with Adam alone, dressing up, savoring a leisurely meal at a fine restaurant rather than gobbling down something quick between feeding the baby and changing his diaper, conversing without interruption, seeing a play rather than collapsing on the sofa and taking turns trying to coax the baby to sleep.
The performance was going quite well, Greta and Adam agreed as they strolled to the lobby during intermission. They both noted only a few stumbles near the end of the first act, nothing the cast could not correct before opening night. But as she sipped a cocktail, Greta realized that most of the conversation around them was not about the show at all but rumors out of Munich.
That night marked the fifteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler’s failed coup attempt that had earned him a charge of high treason and eight months in jail. November 9 had become the Nazi equivalent of a Holy Day of Obligation, and National Socialist party leaders had gathered in Munich to commemorate the occasion. From what Greta and Adam overheard, other members of the audience had heard from friends in Munich that Goebbels had made a tempestuous speech accusing “World Jewry” of conspiracy in Grynszpan’s assassination of Rath. The minister of propaganda had announced to the assembly that the Führer had decided the party should not prepare or organize any protests, but if demonstrations erupted spontaneously, they should not be thwarted.
“That’s a rather poorly disguised call for violence,” said Adam as blinking lights reminded the audience that the second act would begin shortly. As Greta and Adam returned to their seats, her heart sank as she recognized one Jewish friend sitting a few rows behind them, and another across the aisle. It was not a good night for Jews to be out and about in the city, not that any night