I had no idea what was happening at Kassel over the weeks that followed. I asked everyone I saw if they had any news—occasionally going out just so I could ask the grocer or people on the street. Although she’d never admit it, Lydia was fretting as much as I was, for both Karl and Hans now. To my frustration, she kept arriving unannounced at my house seeking news.

“I’m sure they’ll all be fine,” she told me, but her voice was strained and she was picking at the skin of her fingernails. “Karl and Jürgen are prized assets in the Reich—they’ll be protected no matter what happens. And our boys are soldiers. I mean, they’ve trained for years for this in the Jungvolk and the Hitlerjugend.” She paused suddenly, then looked tearfully into my eyes. “But you will tell me if you hear anything, won’t you, Sofie? Anything at all?”

I had plenty else to worry about on the home front, because Berlin was rapidly descending into chaos. The Allies were bombing day and night, and Laura, Gisela, and I were on edge all the time—ready to run down to the basement at the shrill burst of the air raid sirens. The city was soon cut off, and there was madness in the air that reminded me of Kristallnacht. Homes and stores were ransacked, people were mugged in broad daylight for the simplest of things.

Against this ugly backdrop, the Reich’s delusion of hope continued. Cars drove through the streets with speakers on their roofs, blaring reminders to protect our homes and streets at any cost. New propaganda posters appeared on telegraph poles and in letter boxes. Defiant to the end, Hitler continued to incite us to violence in his name.

Laura held one of these posters in her hand at breakfast one morning.

“What’s the plan, Mama? How shall we defend our home from the enemy?”

She was thirteen years old. The Nazis had been in power since she was a toddler. How would I ever explain to Laura and Georg why we allowed them to become immersed in this world of idol worship and hate?

I again did the calculation—Gestapo. Loyalty. Imprisonment. This time, the city was in such chaos that I felt sure the Gestapo would be busy elsewhere—probably trying to save their own necks. Comforted, I took my first baby step toward a future where Laura and I could connect on honest terms.

“The war is over,” I said gently. “We have lost.”

“But, Mama—” Laura held aloft the poster, as if I might have missed seeing it “—we must defend our street and our home to the last. See? We cannot allow them to simply take our city.”

“Others will fight. This war has taken enough from this family.”

“What on earth do you mean?” She looked around, genuinely bewildered. “We’ve lost nothing!”

I stood abruptly.