attempt at high treason and was sentenced to three years hard labor.
Afterward, they gathered one last time in the waiting room as the police van was made ready. Greta was too furious to speak to Grimme, who stood abashedly cleaning his glasses so he would not have to look Adam in the eye. Once Adam released her hand so that he could shake Grimme’s, and she burned with resentment that he had squandered even those few of their last precious moments together. She wanted to shake him, to scream at him that Grimme would live but she would die, and she, his loyal and loving wife, deserved every second of his time.
But she did not want to part from Adam with anger or resentment lingering between them. With an apologetic frown for Grimme, she pulled Adam aside, knowing she would probably never see him again. They embraced, they kissed, they spoke words of love and encouragement. They talked about Ule, their hearts aching even as they reassured each other that he would be brought up well by Greta’s parents. One day he would know that his mother and father had given their lives to a righteous cause.
Then they were separated. Greta returned to Alexanderplatz and prepared to die. She wrote letters to her parents, to Ule, to Adam’s mother, letters full of fond reminiscences of their lives together and of her love and her hopes for their futures. She filed an appeal for clemency, as her friends and comrades had done before her, knowing that it was almost certainly futile but refusing to give up without at least making the attempt.
She had always been that way, from her impoverished childhood through her student days and into her ill-fated years as a woman of the resistance, stubbornly persisting long after wiser people acquiesced. That quirk of her nature that endeared her to some and made rivals of others had served her well for forty years, and she would not forsake it now.
Chapter Sixty-one
February 15–16, 1943
Mildred
On the evening of February 15, a guard unlocked the door to Mildred’s cell and ordered her to gather her belongings.
Mildred’s heart plummeted. “May I ask why?” It was after nine o’clock, almost time for lights-out, too late for an interrogation or a meeting with the matron.
“You’re being transferred to Plötzensee,” the guard replied. “You have five minutes.”
“No!” her cellmate cried out. “Not so soon!”
Every prisoner knew that Plötzensee was where the condemned went to die.
Lightheaded with fear, Mildred rose and mechanically collected her few books, her sweater, the letters from Arvid’s family, her precious stub of a pencil. She had already entrusted Arvid’s last letter to Gertrud, believing that it would be safer with her in Ravensbrück. She already knew every word by heart, and she knew that Mutti Clara would cherish it. Gertrud had promised to get it to her somehow, even if it took years.
As Mildred’s cellmate began to sob, Mildred wrapped her belongings in the soft flannel blanket Inge had sent.
“One minute,” said the guard.
Mildred and her cellmate embraced, and for a moment, as her friend’s tears fell upon her shoulder, Mildred’s legs gave out and she would have collapsed if her cellmate had not held her upright.
The guard pulled them apart, cuffed Mildred’s hands behind her back, tucked her bundle under one arm, and led her down corridors and outside. An icy, driving rain soaked her hair and dress as she boarded a green police van parked in the courtyard. The doors closed and the van pulled away from the Charlottenburg prison, rumbling over cobblestones and around bomb craters, jolting her roughly as it sped through the blackout.
When the van halted at Plötzensee, she descended with some difficulty and was taken inside to a small office, where another guard removed her handcuffs, gestured to a chair pulled up to a narrow desk, and ordered her to sit. As soon as she was seated, he placed a questionnaire on the desk, set a sharpened pencil above it, and told her to fill it out, honestly and completely.
She obeyed, but as she finished the simple biographical questions and moved on to others asking about her financial assets, career, health, criminal history, and relationships, she began to wonder if it was all a cruel joke. To the query “Are you single? Married? With whom?” she took a deep breath and responded, It can be assumed that I am widowed. I haven’t however received an official letter informing me of the death of my husband, who