in the press was forbidden and that attending his funeral would be considered an offense against the Reich. Adam risked it anyway, although he insisted that Greta stay home. He was among only a handful of family and friends who dare attend, and the description he gave afterward was harrowing—the shocked and grieving mourners, the watchful Gestapo agents lurking about the cemetery, the heartfelt eulogies. But if the Nazis had hoped to keep Hans Otto’s death a secret, they failed. He was too beloved and admired as an actor simply to fade from public memory.
Months had passed since Otto’s horrifying murder. Adam told Greta that if not for their son, he feared Marie might lose her will to live. Her sister was one source of strength and comfort, Adam another. Perhaps the sisters were too preoccupied with their loss to care about petty jealousies, but they welcomed Greta too into their unusual little family without bitterness. Adam had always said that they would, but she had not believed him. She still felt awkward in the sisters’ presence, although Marie and Gertrud both seemed perfectly comfortable around her.
Once Marie and Gertrud had accepted her, their extended family in the theater community had too. Now Greta felt as much a part of the close-knit circle as she had the Friday Niters, so long ago and far away.
They were waiting for her even now. Greta crossed the Gendarmenmarkt, turned down an alley, and entered the theater through the stage door, where the sound of voices drew her to the largest dressing room. She found the props master turning the dial on an old radio, actors distractedly leafing through scripts, dancers with towels draped over their necks working out kinks in sore muscles. Adam was engrossed in an intense discussion with one of the producers, but when he glanced up and spotted Greta in the doorway, he broke off, smiled, and waved her over.
How good it was to be among like-minded friends in such dreadful times, friends who shared her love not only for theater and literature and the arts, but for freedom, liberty, democracy. Sick with anguish for her homeland, which had undergone a tectonic shift into the horrifying and surreal, Greta turned her gaze longingly to the democratic West, to Roosevelt and the New Deal, to Madison, the Friday Niters, and the Wisconsin Idea. She could not comprehend how Germany, a country of great philosophers, artists, and intellectual achievement, could have succumbed to the poisonous allure of populism.
For years Greta, Adam, Mildred, Arvid, and their friends had fought the rise of fascism by resisting Gleichschaltung and educating others about the threat confronting them, but their efforts had failed. Totalitarianism had crept up on them steadily, menacingly, and then, with one swift lunge, it had seized them around the throats. Adolf Hitler controlled every branch of government—and now the military as well, having compelled all military officers to swear personal allegiance to him rather than the country. “I swear before God to give my unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Reich and of the German people, supreme commander of the Wehrmacht,” they were obliged to vow if they wished to keep their posts, “and I pledge my word as a brave soldier to observe this oath always, even at peril of my life.”
It was a nightmare, incomprehensible, and yet it was happening.
Although they knew they must be more circumspect than ever to avoid attracting the attention of the Gestapo, they were resolved not to abandon their resistance activities. If anything, they were determined to redouble them. They would never give up, not while any chance remained that they might prevail.
Chapter Twenty-six
August 1934
Sara
“I have a sworn affidavit from senior editor Karl Meinholz confirming that my brother was not employed by the Berliner Tageblatt after December thirty-first of last year.” Sara took the document from her folder and placed it on the attorney’s desk. The editor had taken a risk by putting his signature to the carefully phrased assertions, and her hopes rose when Herr Mandelbaum picked up the letter and studied it. Of the last six lawyers she had visited, two had recoiled at the sight of the paper, three had ignored it, and one had demanded that she take it away immediately. Four other attorneys had not even let her get that far, but had asked her to leave as soon as she explained that she needed their help securing Natan’s release from a Nazi work camp.