In October of 1935, her father ordered Fredi’s wheelchair as a temporary measure, although they both knew that he’d likely never walk again. Fredi delighted in his new mode of transport, seeing it as a game. Franka often pushed him through the town, where he waved to everyone he saw on the street. Almost everyone returned his smiles. The party members were the only exception, strutting along with their chests out, brandishing their armbands and pins on their lapels. They seemed annoyed by his cheerful demeanor. Franka grew to despise their glares.
Later that fall her father came to her. They had just finished dinner and cleared the plates away. Evening meals were not the same now. Franka’s father insisted on preparing the same recipes her mother had, but he cut corners and had no flair for cooking. She was reading to Fredi, one of those fairy tales he loved so much. The book was dog-eared and frayed, yet he never grew tired of hearing those same stories, over and over. Her father put on the radio and tuned it to one of the Swiss stations that reported the news with some semblance of accuracy. He sat down beside his children.
“Thank you for not reporting me for listening to the foreign stations.”
Franka felt her cheeks flush. “Oh, Father, I would never report you.”
“I know they put pressure on you to tell them what I’m doing, and since Daniel is preparing for life in the Gestapo . . . I realize the strain you’re under.”
Franka sat there, remembering Daniel’s words from just a week before. “The German people are your family,” he had said. “And your loyalty should be to them.”
Franka knew that he wanted her to report something, to give him a crumb of information to feed his new masters with, but she didn’t say a word. She knew that her father could be jailed for listening to the foreign radio stations, or for reading the books he’d insisted on keeping despite the new laws, or for the casual remarks he made about the regime. There were so many things. Several girls she knew had already reported their parents. Gilda Schmidt’s father had spent weeks in jail for a derogatory comment he’d made about the Nazis and was being monitored by the Gestapo now. Gilda had reported him for saying that Hitler was a dangerous warmonger.
“The führer is eager to have everyone support his brave intentions,” Franka said, hearing the words of her instructors coming out of her own mouth. “He is determined that enemies of the state be identified so that they can be educated in the correct ways of serving the German nation.”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” her father said.
“What are you talking about?”
“That sounds like Daniel or one of the Nazis who stomp about downtown speaking. Remember who you are, Franka.”
“I do, Father.”
“I have something I want to show you.” He placed the newspaper, the People’s Observer, on the table in front of her. The headline spoke of the heroic new laws created to subjugate the threat of the Jews in Germany. “The Nazis have said that Jews cannot be German citizens. They’ve had their citizenship stripped from them and are not allowed to intermarry with Germans any longer. This is the brave revolution to which you’re so committed.”
It took her a few seconds to answer. “I’m sure that the führer knows what’s best for Germany. I asked some of the local leaders of the league just the other day. They assured me that it was better to focus on the bigger picture and to leave the details to the führer.”
“And that satisfied you?”
Franka didn’t answer. She picked up another book to read to her brother.
Her father interrupted her before she had a chance to begin. “I have something else to show you.” He took another newspaper out. “This paper is called The Striker. It’s controlled and published by the Nazi Party, just like the People’s Observer, but this one is less surreptitious with its intentions.”
Franka took the paper. She’d seen it on newsstands but had never picked it up before. The pencil-drawn picture on the front cover was of a caricatured Jewish man, his long curls hanging down over his dark suit, strings of saliva dripping from his razor-sharp teeth. He held a curved dagger in his claw as he bent over a beautiful Aryan-looking woman asleep in bed. The headline read “The Jews Are Our Misfortune.” Franka could feel tears welling up in her eyes. She turned to Fredi, but he was playing with a toy train he’d found.
“This is a rag,” she said. “This is a ridiculous rag.”
“This newspaper has a circulation of several hundred thousand. Hitler has spoken many times of its journalistic integrity.”
“I don’t know what to say. The system isn’t perfect, but . . .”
The words fell away. She had nothing.
“We didn’t raise you to turn your head away from injustice. We always taught you to—”
“Remember who I am.”
“Exactly. I think the reason you’ve taken to this regime so readily is that you’re eager to change the world, just like many children of your generation. But you have to realize what you’re subscribing to.”
“I don’t agree with the policies toward the Jews, but I’m sure the führer has a reasonable plan for them.”
“Reasonable? Is that what you call denying their citizenship? Have you heard of a place called Dachau, Franka?”
She shook her head.
“I hadn’t either. It’s a little market town, fifteen miles from Munich, not far from where your mother was born. I had a business meeting with a man from there last week. He told me of a camp the Nazis founded there.”
“What kind of camp?”
“A place that is a crime against the German people. The man I met with supplied some of the materials for the new buildings there, back in ’33, and has been back several times. The camp is the first front in the war that the Nazis are already waging against their own people. Dachau is where they house the political enemies of the system. Socialists, and communists, leaders from the unions the Nazis outlawed, pacifists, and some dissident clergymen and priests. There are thousands there, being worked and starved to death, guarded behind wire fences by SS men with death’s-head insignia on their helmets.”
“This can’t be. Does the führer know about this?” Franka felt the repulsion rising in her but still wondered what Daniel and the other group leaders would make of this.
“How could he not know? Herr Hitler makes every decision that the country is run by. He could abolish it any time he wants to. My guess is that there are many more camps coming.”
“Who is this man you met from Dachau? Why is he spreading these vicious lies?”
“They’re not lies. Open your eyes, Franka. See who you’re pledging your loyalty to.”
Franka closed her eyes. She felt as if her head were about to explode. Hot tears ran down her face as she stood up. “I can’t believe you’d spread these disgusting lies in front of Fredi, who can’t possibly see through them. We have a responsibility to him, Father. We have to be better than this.”
She stormed out of the kitchen and up to her room, the poison of doubt swirling inside her.