“I’m going to bed,” Miriam said. She kissed Mother’s cheek and gave Abba a hug, then lit a candle from the one in the center of the table and carried it upstairs. She could still hear them arguing, even with her bedroom door closed. A dark curtain of anxiety began to settle over Miriam, wrapping itself around her, snatching her breath, making her queasy. Her battles with this sudden, nameless dread had begun on Kristallnacht as she’d sat with her parents in their darkened apartment near the university, listening to angry shouts and shattering glass in the streets below, the sky lit by the glow of flames. Now she struggled to control this panic attack, knowing it would grow to uncontrollable proportions until she would be gasping for air as if she’d run up a steep hill. The best way to control it, she’d learned, was to lose herself in her music.

Miriam’s hands trembled as she lifted her violin from the case. Her lungs squeezed tighter, but she began to play a Tchaikovsky violin piece by memory, unable to read the music by candlelight. She offered her music as a plea for Saul’s safety and as a prayer that God would end the bickering and show her family what to do. Slowly, slowly, her nausea eased and she could breathe again.

“That’s it,” Abba said. “We are leaving.” He spoke calmly and with great certainty. Two Jewish neighbors on their way to morning prayers had found Miriam’s cousin a few blocks from home. Saul had been beaten and left for dead by a gang of Hitler Youth. The neighbors carried him home. He would live, the doctor said, but his injuries would take a long time to heal. Miriam wondered if his soul would ever heal. And if his crushed fingers would ever play the cello again.

The entire family had gathered in Saul’s bedroom, trying to comprehend what had happened and why. The room grew very still when Abba announced they were leaving. “If any of you wants to join me, you are welcome to come. But I am taking my wife and daughter and we are leaving Germany for good.”

Miriam’s heart stuttered at his words, like a leaf tumbling down the street in the wind. The shroud of anxiety floated around her, threatening to settle over her. She couldn’t imagine leaving Cologne. Yet she couldn’t imagine staying. Who could live in a place where such things happened? “When, Abba?” she asked.

“By the end of the week, if not sooner. I will need a few days to finish making arrangements, then we will go. We must get out.”