Saving Amelie (45 page)

“Never?”

Rivka blushed in the candlelight and shook her head. A moment passed before she whispered hoarsely, “I disobeyed them. It was the only thing I remember doing that rebelled so against their wishes.”

Rachel waited.

“The last night I went to bed early, pretended to sleep. When all was quiet, when I heard
mein Vater
snoring, I slipped through my
bedroom window and climbed down the tree outside. I ran to my friend Anna’s. Jacob was waiting there for me.” Tears trickled down Rivka’s face.

“So your brother’s safe? Do you know where he is now?” Rachel couldn’t believe Rivka had never spoken of him.

But Rivka shook her head, sniffing. “
Nein, nein.
Anna lived just down the street from my family. She is Gentile, but a good friend. It was not the first time she’d arranged for Jacob and me to meet. We were talking—so precious the minutes, they flew—when we heard the truck squeal to a stop at the top of the street. No one should be out that time of night—the curfew. We heard the dogs, snarling, barking. We knew right away. They ran from house to house, pounding on doors, barking orders, searching for Jews, dragging them from their beds.”

Rachel swallowed.

“Anna would have hidden us both, tried to hide us beneath their stairwell. But Jacob pushed me into the hiding place, insisted I stay there until morning. He raced to our home to warn our parents.” Rivka began to cry uncontrollably.

“They took him, too?”

Rivka nodded and repeated, “It never mattered that he’d converted to Christianity.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Rachel whispered, hearing in her mind the hate-filled rants of Hitler, remembering the dogma of her father denigrating every race, every skin color other than those whose papers could “legitimately” be stamped
Aryan
.

“But I think,” Rivka ventured, “that it mattered to Jacob. Saving himself was not why he converted. He believed—with everything in him. I think, in the end, he was glad to be taken with our parents. He’d said that night that he expected to be taken soon, that he wanted to talk with our parents one last time, to share with them what he’d learned about Messiah Yeshua. To urge them to believe.”

“He was very brave to warn them. He could have stayed hidden.”

“For a long time I was angry with him for going, for leaving me, when he was sure to be caught. But now I, too, think he was brave.” She hesitated again. “And I think, though I don’t understand it, that it was his love for this Yeshua, and for our parents, that made him go. I only hope . . . I hope my father forgave him . . . loved him again.”

“Don’t give up on them. Maybe, when this is all over . . .” But Rachel couldn’t finish, didn’t believe her own encouragement.

Rivka didn’t answer, but lay down, turning over. Amelie stirred in her sleep. The candle had burned low.

Rachel lay down too, stroking Amelie’s hair, soothing her brow and staring up at the darkening ceiling, the last of the candle flame’s shadows fading. What it all meant, exactly how everything fit together, she wasn’t sure—only that there was a connection. What Rivka had said about her brother sounded like the same love, the same relationship with this Jesus, that compelled Oma, Friederich, Lea, surely Curate Bauer, and perhaps Jason to help so many—to help her. It was something shut up inside them that filled them until it forced its way out, compelling them to share what they’d experienced, insisting that they help others, even when it meant that they must risk their lives to do it. It was that thing Bonhoeffer wrote about—“costly grace.”

Rachel sighed and closed her eyes. It was beyond her. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t feel what they felt, see what they saw. She certainly didn’t want to buy into any hocus-pocus. That would be as futile as her father’s pseudoscience. But the more she thought about it, the more she read and lived with them and witnessed their lives, their faith, the more she knew there was something real and empowering in it. Whatever it was, it would not let her go.

51

A
PRIL
GAVE
WAY
to May. Jason worried over the photograph of Rachel and Amelie. Every day he wondered if Schlick or one of his cohorts would come across the magazine cover, wondered if he’d return to Oberammergau.

He didn’t have long to stew. Jason was recalled to Berlin, where rumors spun out of control. Tension in Wilhelmstrasse was palpable, every correspondent on edge and packed to be sent out at a moment’s notice. Where would Hitler attack next—Holland, Belgium, the Maginot Line, Switzerland?

After a long and frustrating day pounding pavement, trying to get quotes from the Gestapo for a story nobody wanted to acknowledge, Jason plunked his reporter’s pad and pencil onto his desk and slumped in his chair, only to be ordered to cover a black-tie embassy dinner in an hour’s time. He groaned.

Peterson, the staff photographer, shrugged in sympathy. “Sorry, pal. Chief’s orders.”

“Why me? Covering the dandies is Eldridge’s beat now.”

“You didn’t hear? Eldridge has vamoosed—gone stateside.”

“When?” Jason couldn’t believe it. Eldridge would never leave when the news was this hot.

“Last week. He got an offer from the
Chicago Trib
.”

Jason whistled. “Lucky break. That’s near his hometown.”

Peterson nodded. “Took him all of two minutes to accept.”

“So why’d they come after him?” Jason knew Eldridge was a decent reporter, but he’d not have thought he was sought-after material.

“Some great picture he took, near as I can tell.”

“Something you developed, no doubt.” Jason underlined the irony.

“Nope. He took that one all the way, though I have to say it looked more your style than his—a Bavarian Madonna and child, they called it, along with a sappy feature. Sure got somebody’s attention.”

Jason straightened. It was the first time he’d heard that spin for the photograph, but he could see how it fit. The sleaze. He prayed it was all American attention and that it kept Eldridge over the pond, far from any connection to Oberammergau, Rachel, or him for the duration. He had no desire to share a cell or find themselves dangling on identical ropes when the thief squealed. And squeal he surely would, if interrogated. It was better this way. If caught, Rachel, Amelie, even Curate Bauer and the entire network would line up like dominoes, waiting to fall.

Jason covered the black-tie dinner without complaint.

Two days later he was sent on assignment to Britain, where Neville Chamberlain resigned as British prime minister and Winston Churchill took up the post. Hitler launched an invasion of the Low Countries.

Unkempt, with three days’ stubble and no shower, Jason shouted his makeshift article through poor telephone lines to New York. “Germany marched at dawn into Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, where Hitler proclaims he is ‘safeguarding the neutrality of the Belgians and the Dutch.’”

A German communiqué delivered to the pressroom read,
From now on, every enemy bombing of German civilians will be answered by five times as many German planes bombing English and French cities.

Lea heard the news, but her problems with the Reich pressed closer to home. Mother’s Day in Germany had long been hard for her,
but never as demeaning as now. The Cross of Honor was publicly awarded to women who had borne four or more healthy children for the Reich. But to have borne none was shameful, an ignominy that could not be ignored, one that members of the Nazi Women’s Party noted. Lea did her best to smile, to hold her head up as women of Oberammergau paraded from church, proudly displaying their medals of honor.

Just outside the church door, Lea looked up to find the eyes of Maximillion Grieser boring into her, uncharacteristically full of compassion. The unexpected sympathy made her misstep. Friederich caught her hand. When they straightened and regained their pacing, Lea glimpsed Maximillion staring at her husband with nothing short of contempt—a thing which unnerved her more.

Friederich kept his hand at the small of her back, as if willing strength into his wife’s spine. But at Oma’s home, alone in their room, Lea gave way and wept.

Lea knew that Oma tried to keep the others in the kitchen, to divert their attention from her granddaughter’s room, and she was grateful.

But later, when a soft knock came at their door and Amelie was gently pushed inside, Lea was even more grateful. No arms around her neck so filled her heart as did Amelie’s. They needed one another, and that made the little girl’s hugs all the sweeter. Lea had no words, and Amelie didn’t need them. Even the few signs they shared seemed extravagant. After a time, the two drew Friederich into their precious circle. And Lea prayed they would have one another always.

52

I
N
MID
-
M
AY
when the First Mountain Division entered French territory, Friederich thanked God for his limitations, that he was considered unfit for service. He could only imagine the cruelty his old unit would be ordered to wreak on the Jews of France. Gratefully, he returned to his woodcarving, thankful that he’d lost only one eye, that he still had the use of both hands.

Lea stopped by the shop from time to time, but she was not Friederich’s most frequent visitor.

Though Heinrich Helphman did not return the Christkind, the little boy haunted Friederich’s shop each afternoon—as regular as the clock over Friederich’s workbench.

Heinrich leaned over the carving table, watching Friederich’s push and pull of the knife. “Did Frau Hartman give you the Christmas wood I brought?”

“
Ja, ja
, she did. That was very kind of you, Heinrich. I appreciate it. Though I must admit, I would like it best if you’d return the image I carved.”

The little boy ignored the hint. “Will you carve another Christkind with it, Herr Hartman? I know you will! You’re the best woodcarver in all of Oberammergau.”

Friederich laughed. “I think you’re prejudiced. There are many more accomplished than I.”

“But you carve the most beautiful faces, the best smiles.”

“Do I?” Friederich smiled at the praise.

“
Ja
, they are the smiles of angels. I think even Herr Hitler could find no fault in them—nor his doctors or nurses either.”

Friederich looked up at the child, turning his head to better see him, and frowned at his strange remark. But Heinrich flushed and stepped back from the woodcarving table, as though he’d said something he ought not.

“Heinrich? What is it?”

The boy shook his head, worry filling his eyes. “I must go, Herr Hartman. I’ll see you tomorrow!” Heinrich grabbed his schoolbooks and tore from the shop.

Friederich followed the boy to the door and watched him race over the streets and out of sight. “Heinrich!” he called. But the child never turned.

Friederich scratched his chin. He was tempted to go after him, to see what was behind this glimpse into the boy’s odd behaviors. But he was late in filling Nativity orders, and a game knee was no match for Heinrich’s young and pumping legs. Friederich closed the shop door, allowing the bell overhead to jingle, and limped to his workbench.

53

B
Y
THE
TIME
yellow daisies and monkshood, large blue harebells, sweet butterfly orchids, and meadowsweet with long white tassels spread across the Alpine meadows, Rachel’s fears of Gerhardt discovering her photograph on the magazine cover began to fade.
Maybe the magazine never reached Berlin. Maybe Gerhardt’s found a new obsession. Maybe we’re safe.
It sounded too good to be true.

It seemed less important when, in May, the BBC reported that old women in Belgium trudged the roads, carrying crying babies in their arms as they followed young mothers burdened down by their families’ belongings—and pursued by relentless German tanks.

When reports followed that German forces were halfway from the French border to Reims, on their way to devour Paris, Rachel left the room. She could listen to no more of the plundering of small French villages, of farmland trampled and livestock shot, of unmilked cows left bellowing beside the roadway, of the raping of women and girls at will.
This in the name of creating a master race, a thousand-year Reich of horror!
She retched in the kitchen sink, then washed the filth away.

In the name of advancing racial purification, the German army relocated elderly Tyrolians to Oberammergau and surrounding villages. The irony of taking those considered inferior and moving them among the “German elite” was not lost on Rachel.

The first week the Tyrolians appeared in the village streets, Rachel, on her way to theatre class, saw the backs of a crowd of children
gathered, jumping up and down, calling and jeering. Such scenes were rare in Oberammergau, and her heart tightened in her chest.

She edged the crowd, keeping her head down. A group of five Hitler Youth had surrounded an old man. They were teasing him, calling him names Rachel couldn’t quite capture—some sort of slang, she supposed—and knocked the hat from the old man’s head. The poor man, doing his best to maintain his dignity, bent down to retrieve his treasure, but the youths kicked his hat farther down the street, swiping the swollen knuckles of his arthritic hand with their boots.