Mr. Knowle’s pale brow had risen in derision. As principal of the most prestigious public high school in Texas, it was his job to investigate the backgrounds of its teachers, and he had thoroughly examined Chris’s.

Chris knew that Mr. Knowle was dying to demand why an American would wish to go to Germany in these treacherous times, but could not in good form push his curiosity further. So he’d said, “Not to become a Nazi, I hope,” and when Chris did not reply, his brow had rippled further. “I see,” he’d said and from that moment on, Chris knew that he would be under his principal’s scrutiny. He was grateful he’d made the decision to drive back to Austin last night. He’d been able to grab eight hours’ sleep in his apartment and had time to shower, shave, and eat a sustaining breakfast to prepare for the blow to fall.

He was ten minutes early, so he sat in his car and contemplated how honored and lucky he’d felt when, fresh out of college, he’d landed an ideal job. The Austin Board of Education had hired him to teach math and coach track and field at a fine school that was conveniently located near his apartment. He’d been afraid his youth and missing thumb might be a handicap, but within weeks of his first year of teaching, Chris had established rapport with his students (many the children of university professors), members of the track-and-field team, the other coaches, and the teachers who shared the same conference period as he. Mainly, though, from the minute he’d walked into his assigned room, he’d felt at home behind a teacher’s desk, before a blackboard, beside his classroom door as he welcomed his students to class, and on the 340-yard perimeter of a football field, where he coached young men and women in running, jumping, and vaulting events. He’d made no mistake in his choice of careers. He was where he belonged, and he’d never been happier in his life.

But at the beginning of his second year, in the fall of 1941, he’d noticed a slight chill in the faces around him, in his classes, in the teachers’ lounge, on the track. Deeply disturbed, he’d understood its source. The growing atrocities perpetrated by Germany were making world news. In September, the Babi Yar Massacre occurred in which German troops, assisted by Ukrainian police and local collaborators, killed 33,771 Jews in Kiev. That slaughter was preceded earlier in the month by German forces laying siege to Leningrad to starve its citizens into surrender. The first of October, the world was shocked to learn that the Nazis had opened an extermination camp in occupied Poland with the capacity to kill 200,000 people, and October 21, German soldiers went on a rampage in Yugoslavia, killing thousands of civilians, including whole classrooms of schoolboys.