to let traffic pass. Glancing to her right through the buildings and vehicles, she glimpsed the green of the Tiergarten a few blocks away and realized she was near Herr Panofsky’s beautiful home, where in better days he had hosted lovely parties for his employees and their families. How clever he was to have leased his home to the American ambassador. Even though Panofsky was wealthy, cultured, and powerful, the exact sort of Jew that the Nazis despised most, the Gestapo dared not harass his family, not with such an illustrious tenant there to observe and report on every indignity.
Suddenly, inspiration struck.
All around her, other pedestrians surged forward, carrying her across the street in their current, but her thoughts lingered upon Tiergartenstrasse 27a and the ingenious shield Mr. Panofsky had erected around his home and family. Perhaps she too could contrive a way to convince the Gestapo that even if Natan had committed a crime, it would be in their best interest to leave him alone.
Mildred Harnack would help her. Her influential acquaintance at the American embassy, George Messersmith, had left Germany in May to accept the post of ambassador to Austria, but Ambassador Dodd had hired Mildred to type and edit the manuscript for his history of the Old South and she was close friends with his daughter. Perhaps she could persuade the ambassador to make inquiries on Natan’s behalf, as embassy officials had done for numerous Americans and foreign correspondents whom the Nazis had unjustly arrested. Natan was not an American citizen, but if the Americans took up his cause, perhaps the Nazis would release him rather than risk worsening Germany’s already strained relations with the United States.
As she turned toward Neukölln, Sara felt her spirits rise for the first time since Natan had been arrested. Mildred would convince the ambassador to help them. She would persuade the ambassador, and the ambassador would persuade the Nazis, and Natan would come home to his family, safe and sound. This was Sara’s last hope. What might happen if it failed was too terrible to contemplate.
Chapter Twenty-seven
August–December 1934
Martha
A year and a month into her father’s tenure as ambassador, Martha could not mistake the signs of his increasing pessimism as the United States remained firmly isolationist contrary to the best interests of America and of the world. Time and again he wrote to his superiors at the State Department warning them of Hitler’s ravenous ambitions, but it seemed that all he accomplished was to give his enemies within the diplomatic corps evidence that he was philosophically unsuited for his post and ought to be replaced.
Sometimes Martha suspected her father might welcome that, especially on days when his efforts seemed especially futile and he contemplated asking for leave so he might visit Stoneleigh, his beloved 385-acre farm in Round Hill, Virginia. Although the rest of the family much preferred the comforts and modern conveniences of their Chicago brownstone, rustic Stoneleigh was the home of her father’s heart. As autumn approached, Martha knew he yearned to be harvesting Pippin and Cortland apples from his thriving orchards, or driving his two dozen Guernsey heifers out to graze in the pastures, or riding one of his four horses through the gently rolling Appalachians.
Martha could not give him that, but whenever he sank too far into despondency, she would pull him away from his desk and invite him for a stroll through the Tiergarten. Once or twice a week they walked together, and as they admired the late summer flowers of August and then the first autumnal tints of September, he acknowledged his increasing frustration with his colleagues in Washington and his revulsion for his counterparts in Berlin.
“It’s humiliating to be obliged to shake hands with known and confessed murderers,” he told her. “Murderers, moreover, who are plotting for war.”
Martha’s heart quickened. “Do you really think so?”
Her father nodded soberly. “There’s ample evidence that the Reich government is preparing for a massive struggle. It’s only a question of time. The German military is arming and drilling more than a million and a half men, all of whom are constantly indoctrinated in the belief that continental Europe must be subordinated to them.”
Martha took her father’s arm. “You’re the president’s eyes and ears in Berlin. Why won’t the State Department heed your warnings?”
“They fervently hope I’m wrong and can’t bear to admit I may be right. Congress wants us to stay out of any European conflicts, and so does the majority of the American people. As for me, I’m