After she and her companions were loaded into the green police van, Greta repeated the secretary’s comment, but they regarded it as skeptically as she did. The secretary could have meant it cynically, in that death would be more merciful than their wretched lives. They tried to discern their route from turns and sounds, and from glimpses of pavement visible through a crack in the wheel well, but it was impossible. Only after the van halted and the doors were flung open did they discover that they had been transferred to the women’s prison on Kantstrasse in Charlottenburg.
Greta’s heart raced as they were led inside and processed. She looked about surreptitiously, risking a beating for her curiosity, but desperate for a glimpse of her dearest friend, whom she knew had been held there before and might be there yet. As she was being led off to her cell, something in the matron’s firm but rational manner compelled her to blurt, “Please, Frau Oberin, is Mildred Harnack here?”
Something that might have been sympathy passed over the woman’s expression. “Frau Harnack was executed at Plötzensee in February.”
Greta heard gasps from the other prisoners and a low moan of anguish, but she could scarcely breathe, torn apart by shock and grief. Dazed, she stumbled along in the line of prisoners to her cell, where she sank upon her bunk and wept for her lost friend.
One April morning, moans of pain echoing down the corridor woke her a few hours before dawn. Later that morning, she heard through the prison grapevine that Liane Berkowitz had gone into labor. A frisson of excitement and anticipation circulated throughout the cellblock all day and into the evening. Bets were placed, prayers offered. One of the more lenient guards divulged that Liane was in the prison infirmary and she seemed to be progressing well. Flooded with memories of cradling sweet newborn Ule in her arms, Greta had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from weeping.
Then, during exercise three days later, she spotted Liane shuffling around the courtyard, leaning heavily upon her cellmate’s arm. Greta maneuvered through the ragged circuit of women until she reached the teenager’s side. “I had a baby girl,” Liane told her, her eyes glowing with joy in a pale, wan face. “I named her Irena. She’s beautiful, so beautiful.” Suddenly she grasped Greta’s thin sleeve. “They took her away from me. Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” said Greta, although she knew nothing of the sort.
“Maybe they’ll let my mother take her.” Liane shook her head, frowning thoughtfully. “No, they wouldn’t do that. Maybe they’ll give her to a nice family to adopt. I could find her after the war.”
“I’m sure she’ll be well looked after,” her cellmate soothed. “After the war, or sooner if we’re released, I’ll help you search for her.”
“So will I,” said Greta, thinking of Ule, cherished and protected at her parents’ home, as safe as any child could be in wartime.
Every day after that, she looked for Liane in the corridors and the courtyard, but a week passed without another glimpse of her. Uneasy, Greta asked around and was told that she had been transferred to the Berliner Frauengefängnis Barnimstrasse, a prison that provided slave laborers for the munitions industry. Greta hoped Liane would be given light duties until she had fully recovered from childbirth.
In May, Greta too was given new work—making paper butterflies to be used as decorations at Nazi rallies. She had to choke back laughter at the absurdity of it. Dozens of her friends had been killed, her husband was awaiting execution, and she herself lived in daily expectation of losing her head to the guillotine, and yet there she sat from morning through night, day after day, folding and cutting and pasting colored pieces of paper into the shape of pretty insects. It was surreal. She could not think of anything more poorly suited for one of Hitler’s ugly, hateful speeches than a kaleidoscope of paper butterflies. She was tempted to write to Göring and urge him to stick to the usual black eagle with oak wreath, although anything menacing and cruel would do.
She was adding fuzzy black antennae to a gold-and-black butterfly when a guard entered the workroom and called out her name. Her heart thudded and she stood, keeping her eyes downcast in the usual posture of deference. “Come with me,” the guard ordered. She had no choice