She disappeared through the door and came back a minute later, two dog-eared photos in her hands. She held them as if they were an injured bird she’d found. He took them between two fingers. The first photo was of the four of them posing together on the steps of what he assumed was their house. Franka was younger, perhaps sixteen at the time. She had short blond curls and was wearing a white dress. She had her arm around her father, a stout, handsome man with a brown beard and smiling eyes. Her mother’s long blond hair was carefree about her shoulders, her smile radiant and her eyes sparkling even in the colorless old photo. She had her arms draped around Fredi, who was nestling into her. He looked about eight. His weak, lank arms and legs protruded through his T-shirt and shorts. He was looking up at her lovingly. He turned over the photo to reveal the date—June 1933. Franka handed him the next picture, taken outside the cabin on a warm summer day in 1935, just the three of them. Fredi still smiled as he sat on his father’s lap, but it seemed for the benefit of the camera. Thomas was gazing at his son, the adoration clear. Franka sat beside them, staring with a seriousness uncommon in a girl that age. He handed the photos back to her.
“Thank you for showing me.”
She nodded and left, taking the pictures with her. He’d almost finished the meat and vegetables she’d served him when she came back into the room. She had a chair with her and sat down beside the bed, waiting for him to finish eating.
“I wanted to thank you for sharing your story with me last night,” he said as he finished. He took a drink of water as he waited for her to answer.
“I haven’t spoken about my family for some time. It opened up some wounds that had barely begun to heal.”
Restrain yourself. Let her be. She’ll tell you in her own time. He put the empty glass down on the tray she’d brought, nodding his head. She took it from him and left without speaking.
Hours later, he sat listening to the wind as it rattled the windowpanes. It was dark outside now, and she came back to light the oil lamp beside his bed. She sat down beside him. He didn’t speak, waiting for her to begin.
“I want to tell you the rest of my story. I’ve been debating back and forth, wondering what I should say, what I should censor, and if you really are who I think you are. But then it came to me. I realized I don’t have anything left to lose. If you’re not who I think you are, and telling you my story costs me my miserable life, then so be it, but I’m not holding back. Not anymore. I don’t care. You can kill me. Your side killed my father. The others killed almost everyone else I love.”
It was all too easy to forget the reason he was here. Best to stay quiet, let her reveal her true self if that’s what she was so determined to do. He had enough food to last a week or more. If she were to leave, he could survive on his own. It wasn’t his job to save this German woman from the demons of her past. There simply wasn’t time for attachment or sentimentality.
He lay back as she began to speak. The wind died outside, and darkness fell. The room filled with golden light from the oil lamp burning on the table. She stared out into nothing as if the past were all around her and she had only to reach out to touch it.
Berlin was the capital, and where Hitler resided, but it was a city he never liked. Munich was Hitler’s heartland. He often spoke of his boundless love for the place where he’d arrived as a penniless artist, sketching picture postcards to sell on the street. This was where the National Socialist revolution had begun with the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch in 1923—where the bodies of the men who died that day were encased in massive stone sarcophagi, guarded by granite-faced SS men in black uniforms. Munich was where Hitler had found his first supporters—disenfranchised soldiers, rejects, and castoffs of a society scarred by war. In those early days, they marched in step, dressed in coats and windbreakers, not able to afford uniforms. His followers multiplied until he was known as the “King of Munich” just a few short years after his arrival. It was something Hitler never forgot. Munich was his.
The Nazi takeover had tempered the luminosity and charm of Munich by 1941. There was even less escape from the ubiquitous Nazi flags than in Freiburg. The Nazi bullyboys controlled the city, as they did everywhere in Germany now, and the lack of freedom felt like a vise. But the Nazis could not snuff out all life and beauty from this vibrant place. Franka found refuge in the arts and attended concerts regularly. She found the ultimate escape in music, and that in itself was a protest. Music gave life to the part of her that the Nazis could never touch. She found peace in this subtle form of protest, for to declare an interest in the arts was to be anti-Nazi without declaring it. Hitler scorned the intellectual and the pursuit of the aesthetic. Showing love for such things was a sign of weakness, not the iron-willed toughness that the National Socialists demanded. The concert hall offered a sanctuary, and Franka felt at one with the others in the seats as the ambrosia of sound swept over her.
The hospital where she worked was filled with joy and dread, horror and beauty. The soldiers from the front filled the beds, their wounds a glimpse into a hell she could never have envisioned before the war. Young boys lay broken all around her, their futures stubbed out by bullets and bombs, their eyes or legs missing, their faces burned to cinder, their lifeblood leaking onto the marble floors. So much waste. She sat with boys whose only wish was that she hold their hands and smile. They showed her pictures of wives and girlfriends, who’d come to visit with flowers in their hands and wet eyes. Going from bed to bed, being there for them, imbued her with a happiness she’d thought impossible. Those soldiers lit a candle in the darkness inside her. Sometimes they spoke of the Reich, and their hopes for the future once the final, great victory was won. Through broken teeth and torn lips they spoke of magnificent glory on the battlefield. Their loyalty to the regime that had destroyed them was unwavering. So few of them realized they had been chewed up and spat out in the service of a lie. Few seemed to recognize the vilification that lay in wait for them once the history was written. They remained convinced that they were doing right, even at the end. She didn’t have the heart to tell them any different. Nothing could have been crueler.
Hans Scholl wore the gray uniform of the Wehrmacht, but with a lively charisma that was all too rare in those days. He was a year younger than she, with dark blond hair and a face that could have graced the movies he loved. The other nurses nudged each other to look up as he strutted past. He was a student medic taking classes at the university. He didn’t use the Nazi salute, instead proffering a handshake. He asked her out thirty seconds after meeting her. She was powerless in the face of his charm and gave an almost-immediate yes. They went to a concert together the next night. He held her hand as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony boomed, and she knew he was different. She knew he was like her. The moon shone bright over the city that night, and they sat in the park after the concert, sipping red wine in the warm summer air. It was almost enough to forget. Hans made her laugh, made her feel beautiful. His eyes sparkled in the silver light. Tyranny and terror were forgotten. The barbs of the past melted away. And she knew something had begun.