was safe. She hoped they would not run into any storm troopers on their way home.
She was too distracted to enjoy the second act, impatient for it to end so they could return home to Ule. In the lobby, when Adam helped her into her coat and asked her what she thought of the show, she murmured a few compliments for the lead actress and the ensemble, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
They emerged from the theater onto Bismarckstrasse, still bustling despite the late hour. “Do you want to stop for a nightcap on the way home?” Adam asked, but his last words were drowned out by the wail of a siren.
At that same moment, Greta smelled smoke.
Quickly Adam seized her hand and strode off through the crowd, which only then Greta realized was mostly young men, jostling startled bystanders as they jogged along, shouting to one another. Her hand held fast in his, she hurried after Adam toward the Knie, the curve in the junction of five streets between Bismarckstrasse and Hardenburgstrasse. Suddenly just beside her a grinning young man flung a brick through a storefront window, shattering the glass.
Instinctively she turned her head away and raised her free arm to protect her eyes, but Adam was pulling her along, urging her to hurry. The smell of smoke intensified; the air carried shouts of “Juda verrecke!” and strains of the “Horst Wessel Lied.” She glimpsed a yellow Star of David painted on a bookshop window, but as they hurried past, three young men bearing short clubs rushed forward and smashed it, sending a shower of crystal shards over them. Greta’s cheek stung; as Adam quickened their pace, she wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and brought away a smear of blood.
Smoke billowed out of an alley just ahead. “This way,” Adam shouted, turning sharply. Glass shards ground underfoot as she stumbled to keep up with him. They were headed south, she realized, opposite to the direction of home, but before she could urge Adam to turn back, they rounded a corner and discovered a tall building engulfed in flames.
Coughing, disoriented, Greta needed a moment to recognize the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue. Shock brought her to a sudden halt and her hand slipped from Adam’s grasp. On the street before the synagogue, a dozen firefighters stood idle, smoking and laughing with a crowd of onlookers as flames consumed the temple. Others unleashed their hoses full force upon adjoining buildings to keep the fire from spreading, but the synagogue was allowed to burn freely.
The hateful laughter, the jubilant shouts, the roar of the flames, the wail of sirens filled Greta’s ears as she stood and watched, her eyes tearing up from the smoke and the heat of the blaze. She felt Adam’s arm around her shoulders. “We must get home before this gets any worse,” he spoke loudly into her ear.
She nodded, her heart in her throat, a cold rush of fear coursing through her as she imagined the riot in their own neighborhood, fire threatening Ule. Taking Adam’s hand, she ran alongside him for the trolley, but they found it packed full and at a dead stop in the middle of an intersection as a flood of rioters swept around it. Turning again, they glimpsed a sign for the Untergrundbahn and hurried toward it, but the crowd thickened between them and the entrance, forcing them to change direction twice more and work their way against the crowd until they were in the clear. Out of breath, they slowed their pace and went three blocks more until they reached another station. Everywhere they passed broken storefront windows of Jewish shops and businesses. Everywhere shattered glass littered the streets and sidewalks, glittering in the lamplight.
Eventually they made it back to their neighborhood, breathless, their clothes in disarray, their hair smelling of smoke. They found Erika waiting up for them, anxious and alarmed, little Ule slumbering peacefully in the cradle beside her daughter. “Greta, you’re bleeding,” Erika gasped, hurrying off to fetch a damp washcloth. Inspecting Greta’s face, Adam called after Erika to bring a pair of tweezers too, and as he picked small fragments of glass from the narrow cut across her cheekbone, they told their horrified friend what they had witnessed.
When Greta’s wound was cleaned and bandaged, they gathered up Ule and went home. Safe inside their own apartment, Greta laid the baby in his crib and returned to the living room to find Adam at the open window, gazing out