In the countryside around the lager, there aren’t any Jews. There is only the ghost of Otto Smeltz. In Ania’s mind, the boy has fused with the story she told. He has become an uncomfortable hybrid that she would rather not think about.
Ania also accepts Hitler’s statement that Poles and Slavs and easterners belong to a lower race, disproportionately represented in civilization’s criminal elements. In her training as a youth leader she learned the science of this: genetics and brain size and forehead measurements, statistics of their incarceration for stealing and rape and murder. The V?lkischer Beobachter runs disturbing stories about their poor hygiene and laziness. They breed like rabbits and live on the best, most arable plots of land, much of which, until the last war, belonged to Germany. They need German order, modernity, and management. And Hitler is just the man to bring this to them—look at what wonders he has done for Germany’s crime rate! It is not just unemployment he has fixed; under his leadership the country has become a much safer, more peaceful, and more orderly place.
Weren’t you alarmed by all the racist talk? Hitler’s rants about the “Jewish virus” and “the noble German” . . . You can’t read more than four sentences by the man without knowing he was a racist fanatic, Ania’s daughter will press.
I didn’t notice is all Ania can say. And it is true, as outlandish as it sounds. She has never been taught that drawing distinctions between races is dangerous. In Germany, there is no great history of equal rights. For thousands of years, the population was divided into an impoverished and disenfranchised peasant class and wealthy, ruling aristocrats. The only teaching that gives her pause is the Christian precept of kindness and tolerance. But the churches themselves are not making much fuss about Hitler’s harsh rhetoric. Christianity is superstition, Hitler says—a palliative against life’s brutal realities.
This is before the war. Before the Jewish star badges, before the roundups and mass deportations and extermination camps.
And, really, Ania is busy with her own life.
This lager is where Ania has her babies: first in 1936, sweet Anselm, an easy infant, content to lie in his cradle while she washes and cleans and cooks. Ania has no mother around to teach her how to swaddle and burp him, how to apply salve to his chapped skin to keep it from splitting, how to add pea soup to his bottles to keep him full. So she has to learn these things herself. But she manages. And she takes pride in this.
In 1937, Ania gives birth to Wolfgang, who is more difficult. In her heart, she blames him for the downgrade in their quality of life. He is jaundiced at birth, and often sick. His stools are thin and endless—she has enough laundry to do without an extra ten diaper cloths a day. And she has Anselm, who is a toddler now, to run after—and all the other boys in the lager. Often she has to let Wolfgang cry himself to sleep.
When the boys are two and three, Germany invades Poland. No one wants war—it has been only twenty-one years since their last one!—but Ania believes the stories she reads in the German papers, which call it a war of self-defense. According to the papers, the Poles have made a number of incursions onto German soil, murdering innocent citizens and taking over their radio station in Gleiwitz. She is an intelligent woman, but she is not a skeptic. It must be true if the paper reports it.
Their next lager is also fine. It is 1940. Germany is at war. Most German papers still call it a war of self-defense. As allies of Poland, France and the United Kingdom have declared war on Germany. No one wanted it to come to this. But so far, for the Germans, it has gone swimmingly. This lager is in Luxembourg, which is now a conquered country, rolled over in the rapid and remarkably successful German invasion of France. But conquered is not how she and Rainer and the rest of the Germans they know think of it. Luxembourg has become “Luxemburg” and been welcomed into the Reich. Its people have little to complain about. Their casualties amounted to all of seventy-five when the German army invaded. And now they have the opportunities afforded to citizens of the Reich, including participation in these lagers. As long as they don’t speak French.
This time, the lager is housed in a modest barracks-like building. It is not as splendid as the one outside Saarbrücken, but it is comfortable. The work is good, life is wholesome, and the war still distant. Suddenly, from Paris, there is an influx of fine things: At Christmas, Rainer gives Ania silk stockings (where is she supposed to wear these?), and also a beautiful, sturdy watch. There is goose liver paté for the boys to taste, and champagne for the adults. Regular food is now rationed more strictly—eggs and pork and milk are set aside exclusively for the troops. But the lager receives a portion of the food they help produce—flour, potatoes, barley, fresh fruit in the summer, carrots, and beets. It is a shame to be at war, of course, but Ania relishes the order and fullness of her life.
They are still in this lager when Germany declares war on Russia in 1941. This is an unsettling turn of events. Ania is not the only one to feel the first real grains of doubt. A preventive war, the Nazis call it. Better to attack than be attacked. But the German army is worn out. Anyone can see that it is dangerous for a country to wage war on two fronts. And the Allies have begun bombing in earnest—air raids are the new measure of urban life.
Ania knows Rainer will be called to the front, but even so, the order comes as a shock. She and her boys are to return home. But where is home? Herr Doktor Fortzmann is dead. Old Herr Brandt is dead. Rainer’s mother is an invalid. And their lager is to be shut.
The following week, Rainer must escort the lager’s boys to the train station, and from there he is to report for duty. On the morning he is scheduled to depart, he rolls over and climbs out of bed without even pausing to look at her. He has never exhibited affection for his wife and young sons in front of his charges, and he doesn’t change this. “Take care of yourself,” he says, nodding. So Ania is left to pack their belongings and find them a new home. Soon, she and the boys are on a train heading toward Dortmund, where her aunt Gudrun has agreed to take them in.