but to obey, and as she followed him through corridors and down stairs, with every step she became more afraid and more certain that he was escorting her to Oberin Weider’s office, who would inform her that she was being transferred to Plötzensee for her execution.
But suddenly the guard halted in front of another door, unlocked it, and gestured for her to enter. “You have twenty minutes.” When she merely stood there, bewildered, he gestured again impatiently. Quickly she entered the sparsely furnished chamber, much longer than it was wide, with four high, barred windows on the long wall casting light upon a few scattered tables and chairs. A man and a woman seated beneath the farthest window rose stiffly from one of the tables, and when the faint sunlight shone on the man’s silver hair, recognition struck her with almost physical force.
“Papa?” she said, voice breaking. “Mutti?”
A moment later they were in one another’s arms.
Twenty minutes was too brief a reunion for all they had to say, but a fortnight later Greta’s parents were permitted to visit her again, and at the end of June they returned, bringing Ule with them. Greta wept as she embraced her son, anxious that he might have forgotten her but reassured by his shy, delighted smile that he knew her on sight. How her parents had managed to get permission for these family visits, she did not know; when she asked, they made evasive replies about a favor from a friend, and she knew not to pursue it. Whoever was responsible, however it had come about, she was profoundly grateful.
Her parents promised her they would come whenever they could, but she saw them only once in July and not again until early August, and on both occasions, Ule was not permitted to come. One day at the end of the month, she was reading in her cell when she heard a key in the lock, and her heart leapt with anticipation. She quickly rose, hoping she was being summoned to the visiting room, but whereas the guards always opened the door quickly with a sharp clang of metal, this time the door opened slowly. When the prison chaplain entered, her heart went into her throat and she sank back into her chair.
“Now they are all dead,” the priest said hollowly. “Your husband and the girls. All of them.”
She stared at him in silence for a long moment. “When?”
“August fifth.” The priest paused to clear his throat and mop his forehead with a handkerchief. “Your husband was hanged at a few minutes past five o’clock. Marie Terweil, Hilde Coppi, Cato Bontjes van Beek, and Liane Berkowitz soon followed.”
She felt something inside her chest crumple, like a sere brown autumn leaf crushed in a fist. “Do you know what will become of their children?” she asked, her voice sounding strangely distant over the roaring in her ears.
He did not know, but he offered to make inquiries. Nodding her thanks, she forced herself to rise and stumble to her bunk, where she lay down as gingerly as if she were broken and bruised and might shatter on impact.
Adam was gone. Mildred was gone. Arvid, Libertas, Harro, Elizabeth, Cato, Liane—they were all gone. Dead. Surely she would be next. But when? Why was she still among the living?
What a cruel punishment it was to be the last of her friends alive, knowing her own death was imminent.
A few weeks later, she was called to Oberin Weider’s office and handed a summons to return to court on September 27 for a new trial. Full of dread, suspecting a trap, Greta would have torn the notice into tiny shreds if the matron had not been observing her so closely.
“We need a sympathetic librarian here,” Oberin Weider remarked, an odd non sequitur, or so Greta thought. “Maybe also a medical assistant. Work like that would make the time pass more swiftly. See if you can stay in Charlottenburg. We—that is, all of us, including the sergeants—hope that your new sentence will not be more than three years, in which case we can keep you here.”
Greta nodded respectfully, hiding her confusion. The matron spoke as if Greta could choose her verdict and where she served her time. And when in the history of Nazi justice had a death sentence been overturned in favor of a three-year prison term? Perhaps Oberin Weider was trying to soothe her so she would be easier to manage, but babbling nonsense at her was not the