So she knew as much about what war was like these days as anyone who hadn’t carried a rifle could. Some people cheering Roosevelt would find out just that way. And others would learn when young men they loved came back maimed or didn’t come back at all. Would they still be cheering then?
The truly scary thing was, all the anguish and agony Roosevelt wouldn’t talk about in an inaugural address were going to be needed. The horror Peggy had seen and gone through in Europe made her much too sure of that.
Sarah Goldman eyed the clerk behind the barred window in the Munster Rathaus with nothing but dismay. She’d never faced this fellow before. It wasn’t that he was gray-haired and had a hook where his left hand should have been. No one young and healthy would have sat behind that window. Young, healthy German men wore Feldgrau these days, not a baggy brown suit that reeked of mothballs.
But a button gleamed on the clerk’s left lapel. It wasn’t the ordinary swastika button that proved somebody belonged to the Nazi party. No: The gold rim on this button showed that the clerk was one of the first 100,000 Party members. He’d been a Nazi long before Hitler came to power, in other words. He’d like Jews even less than most National Socialists.
“You wish?” he said as Sarah came to the head of the queue. He sounded polite enough for the moment. Well, why not? She was a pretty girl-not beautiful, but pretty. And, with her light brown hair, hazel eyes, and fair skin, she didn’t look especially Jewish.
“I need…” She had to nerve herself to speak louder than a whisper. “I need to arrange the paperwork for my wedding.” There. She’d said it, and loud enough for him to hear it, too.
“You should be happy when you do that, dear.” The clerk might be graying and mutilated, but he noticed a pretty girl, all right. Behind the reading glasses that magnified them, his own pale eyes seemed enormous as he studied her. He held out his good hand. “Let me have your identity booklet, and we’ll begin.”
“All right,” Sarah said as she took the indispensable document out of her purse. It wasn’t all right, and it wasn’t going to be.
He held the document down with the hook and opened it with the fingers of his meat hand. He was no slower or clumsier than someone who hadn’t got hurt. How many years of practice and repetition lay behind him?
“Oh,” he said in a voice suddenly colder than the nasty weather outside. Of course the booklet bore the big stamp that said Jude. The Nazis had made all German Jews take the first names Moses or Sarah. Since Sarah already owned the one required for women, she’d briefly confused the bureaucracy. She didn’t confuse the clerk now. She just irritated him, or more likely disgusted him. He shook his head. “ You wish to… marry?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. Staying polite wouldn’t hurt, though it might not help, either. “It’s not against the law for two Jews to marry each other, sir.”
That was true-after a fashion. Law for Jews in Germany these days was whatever the Nazis said it was. Jews weren’t even German citizens any more. They were only residents, forced to become strangers in what most of them still thought of as their Vaterland.
“Well…” the clerk said ominously. He pushed back his chair and stood up. He was shorter than Sarah expected; the chair let him look down on the people he was supposed to serve. Shaking his head, he went on, “I must consult with my supervisor.”
The stout middle-aged woman behind Sarah in line groaned. “What’s eating him?” she said.
Sarah only shrugged. She knew, all right, but she didn’t think telling would do her any good. She waited as patiently as she could for the clerk to return. The woman and the people in the queue behind her grumbled louder and louder. Anything that made him leave his post obviously sprang from a plot to throw sand in the system’s gear train.
He came back after three or four minutes that seemed like an hour. With him came another functionary, this one a little older, who also wore an alter Kampfer ’s gold-rimmed Party button on his lapel. The newcomer eyed Sarah as if he’d have to clean her off the bottom of his shoe.
“ You want to get married?” he said, his voice full of even more revolted disbelief than his subordinate’s had held.
“Yes, sir,” Sarah repeated. Whatever she thought of him, she carefully didn’t show.
“And your intended is also of Hebraic blood?”
“That’s right.” Sarah supposed her family had some Aryans in the woodpile. Isidor Bruck looked like what everybody’s idea of looking Jewish looked like. He came by it honestly-so did his father and mother and younger brother.
“What is his name?” the senior bureaucrat asked. She gave it. The senior man sneered. “No, that is not correct. He is Moses Isidor Bruck, and will be so listed in our records.”
“Sorry,” said Sarah, who was anything but. She was mad at herself. She’d just been thinking about the forced name change, but she’d forgotten to use it. Nobody remembered… except people like the ones on the other side of the window.
“I see by your documents that you are twenty years old,” the senior man said. “And what is the age of the other Hebrew?” It was as if he couldn’t even bear to say the word Jew.
“He’s, uh, twenty-two,” Sarah answered.
“Why is he not here to speak for himself?” the bureaucrat demanded.
“He’s working, sir. He’s a baker, like his father.” Bakers never starved. When rations for most German Jews were so miserable, that wasn’t the smallest consideration in the world.
“Mrmp.” The functionary was anything but impressed. He scribbled a note on a form, then glared out through the bars that made him look like a caged animal. But he and his kind were the ones who kept Jews in the enormous cage they’d made of the Third Reich. “And what is your father’s occupation?”
“He’s a laborer,” Sarah said, as steadily as she could. “He used to be a university professor when Jews could still do that.” Both Nazi bureaucrats scowled. To wipe those nasty expressions off their faces, Sarah added, “He’s a wounded war veteran, too. Wounded and decorated.”
Benjamin Goldman’s Iron Cross Second Class and his limp did matter. Nazi laws mandated better treatment for Jews who’d fought at the front and their families. Not good treatment-nowhere near good treatment-but better.
Sarah almost told the clerk and his boss that her father and brother tried to volunteer for the Wehrmacht this time around. But she didn’t want to remind them she was related to Saul Goldman, who was wanted for smashing in a labor gang boss’ head after the other fellow hit him and rode him for being a Jew once too often. On the lam, Saul had stolen papers or got his hands on a forged set, so he was in the army now even though the Nazis didn’t know it. The less they thought about him these days, the better Sarah liked it.
Both men with gold-rimmed Party badges went right on looking unhappy. No matter what Nazi laws said about Jewish frontline veterans, a Jew with a medal and a wound was plainly just another kike to them. “Laborer,” the senior fellow said, and he wrote that down, too.
“When will Isidor-uh, Moses Isidor-and I hear about getting official permission to marry, sir?” Sarah asked. This wasn’t her first trip to the Rathaus. Official policy made everything as difficult as possible for Jews. Marriage was definitely included. The Nazis wished there were no more Jews in Germany (or anywhere else, come to that). No wonder they weren’t enthusiastic about anything that threatened to produce more people they hated.
“When?” the functionary echoed. “When we decide you will, that’s when.”
“All right.” Sarah fought down a sigh. She didn’t want to give the Nazis the satisfaction of knowing they’d annoyed her. They might be pretty sure, but she didn’t aim to show them. She was her father’s daughter-no doubt about it. She even managed a smile of sorts as she said “Thank you very much” and left the window.
“Well! About time!” said the stout gal who’d waited behind her. The woman started pouring out her tale of woe to the bureaucrats. Sarah didn’t hang around to find out how she fared. Any Jew in Germany had plenty of worries of her own.
Theo Hossbach supposed he should have been happy that the Wehrmacht and its Polish, Slovakian, Hungarian, English, and French allies hadn’t lost more ground to the Red Army during this brutal winter. After all, a headlong retreat would have made it more likely for something bad to have happened to the Panzer II in which he served as radioman.
But bad things could happen to the Panzer II all too easily any which way. The lightly armed, lightly armored
