Chapter 1

Even at eighteen, in 1937, Sophia Alexander knew that things in Germany had changed in the past four years since the Nazis had come to power. There had been many changes in her life too, although her family was not Jewish. They were defined now as "Aryan." These days, with even one Jewish grandparent, whether by faith or origin, a person was considered non-Aryan.

Sophia's life in Berlin had altered dramatically ever since her mother fell ill with tuberculosis when she was sixteen, two years earlier. She had been cared for at home for the first year of her illness and was now in a sanatorium for people with tuberculosis. Sophia visited her several times a week. Her younger sister Theresa, sixteen now, went to see her less often, and her father was so busy he hardly had time to visit. Sophia was the family member who went the most frequently. She was a serious student, but always made time to see her mother, as often as she could. Sophia and Theresa went to the same school. Sophia was in the final months of high school, and Theresa had two more years after this one and hated every moment she spent in class. Sophia was a star student.

Their mother, Monika Alexander, was a gentle person, and had always had fragile health. She was a delicate beauty, and adored her daughters. Sophia had long, serious talks with her, and often read to her, as her mother lay in her bed with her eyes closed until she fell asleep, and then Sophia would leave. As soon as her mother was taken to the sanatorium, Sophia had promised her that she would take care of her sister and father, and she had kept her promise and grown up quickly. When she turned eighteen, she had learned to drive. Her father let her use the car, which made Sophia's visits easier, since the sanatorium was outside the city.

Sophia's father, Thomas Alexander, was a famous surgeon, and had his own private hospital. People came to see him for complicated procedures from all over Europe. He practiced general surgery and was highly skilled. It frustrated him that he couldn't cure his wife, but with rest and the medicines available to them, he was hoping she would have a full recovery. Sophia was worried about her. Her mother seemed so frail. She slept a great deal but awoke with delight when her oldest daughter was visiting her, which she did faithfully.

At home, Sophia had taken full charge of her sister, who needed a strong hand to manage her. Theresa took full advantage of how busy their father was and her mother's absence to flirt with every man who crossed her path. Men seemed to fall at her feet like ripe apples, much to her older sister's amazement. Sophia had always been shy, like her mother. She was a dark-haired beauty with huge green eyes, and always looked serious. The men who pursued Theresa didn't notice Sophia, and she wasn't a flirt. If one looked closely, Sophia was in fact more beautiful. She had perfect aristocratic features, a long, graceful neck, and elegant posture. Theresa's looks were showier and caught one's attention faster. She had almost white blonde hair like their mother, translucent porcelain-white skin, which she dusted with powder, full red lips, and brilliant blue eyes the color of a summer sky. She had a wide, instant smile, perfect teeth, and a sensuous figure. She always looked like she was about to laugh. She teased the boys she knew relentlessly. Her long blonde hair fell in thick waves. Sophia's shining dark hair fell straight past her shoulders. She had a slim build like her father, and she kept a stern eye on her sister, as she had promised their mother. She kept her on a short leash and Theresa complained about it constantly.

Theresa meant no harm with her flirting and enticing laughter, and she had little awareness that her natural sexiness was an aphrodisiac to the men who wanted her. Her father assumed it was all harmless and would come to nothing. Sophia wasn't as sure. Their mother thought that Theresa should marry early before she got into more mischief than she could handle. She would need a strong husband to control her. But at sixteen she was still too young to be considered marriage material, and had to finish school. So Sophia played watchdog at the palace gates, waiting for their mother's return, and she hoped it would be soon.

It had been a long year for all of them without Monika, particularly for Sophia. Theresa was enjoying it, although she missed her mother too. She loved to go dancing, and to parties, but her opportunities were limited due to her age. Their parents had stopped entertaining when Monika got sick. Before that, there had been many elegant dinner parties at their home, filled with women in beautiful evening gowns. Theresa crept into her mother's dressing room sometimes and tried on her mother's gowns. When Sophia found her doing it, she scolded her soundly.

"That's Mama's! Take it off immediately! You'll tear it." Several of their mother's most beautiful dresses had been made for her in Paris, others by dressmakers in Berlin. As the wife of the most important surgeon in Berlin, they were invited everywhere, to the most dazzling events. Thomas Alexander was greatly respected. Sophia had loved watching her parents dance with each other, when they gave formal dinner parties at home for important guests.

She knew her father loved his wife very much, but his work kept him from visiting her as often as he wished. Sophia wanted to help him too, and aside from running the house for him now, she worked as a volunteer in his hospital after school and on weekends, after she finished her studies. Her father marveled at how efficient she was, how bright and how dedicated. She had a talent for nursing. Sophia said she would become a nurse one day and work for him in the operating theater. Theresa just wanted to get married and have babies. She hadn't met her future husband yet, but she enjoyed all the attention men lavished on her, as they flew around her like bees approaching a beautiful flower. No one could resist her, and she loved it.

Theresa had no real interest in the boys in school, but flirted with them too. She had an easy way with men, which they found enchanting. Sophia was harder to talk to. She was serious, and spoke to them of important subjects which required them to think rather than just admire her. She spoke of recent medical discoveries, her father's flawless surgical techniques, books she had read on many topics, which usually didn't interest most men, or she spoke of the political unrest in Germany for the past few years. Her father had cautioned her several times not to engage in discussions about politics. It was a sensitive subject in Germany now, with the strengthening of the Nazi party in the last four years. Adolf Hitler had become Führer three years before, in 1934. Privately, Thomas didn't admire his zeal, but he kept his opinions to himself, and was busy with his private clinic. He had operated on several members of the Nazi High Command and had met the Führer himself, but what interested Thomas Alexander was medicine, not politics.

The changes in Germany had troubled Sophia for several years, even before her mother got sick. People with even partial Jewish origins had been singled out and discriminated against. In the beginning, in 1933, when Sophia was fourteen, Jews were suddenly barred from being teachers, professors, judges, or civil servants, and many had lost their jobs. Several of the teachers at her school had quietly disappeared without saying goodbye, which made her suddenly aware of what was going on. Months later, people of Jewish faith or origin were excluded from the arts, then from owning land, and were forbidden from being journalists or newspaper editors. All within a year. And by the end of 1933, homeless and unemployed people were sent to concentration camps that were being opened near Munich. Dachau had opened in 1933, Sachsenhausen, close to Berlin in 1936, and Buchenwald a year later in 1937. No one spoke of it openly, but one heard about it in whispers. A girl in her class had told her. She had heard her journalist uncle talking about it with her father, and they thought the camps were a good idea to get undesirable elements of the population off the streets, which was the Nazis' intention.

By the following year, in 1934, when Sophia was fifteen, she learned that Jews were denied health insurance, and prohibited from becoming lawyers. And the year after Hitler became Führer in 1934, when Sophia was sixteen, Jews were banned from the military. They lost their citizenship and could no longer marry Aryans. A few months before, they had been forbidden to work as accountants or dentists. The list of professions they were not allowed to engage in grew longer every day. Sophia's father had to find the family a new dentist when theirs left Germany, saying that this was only the beginning of worse things to come, which her father thought was an extreme point of view.

Sophia talked to her mother about it at times, and removed from the world, Monika found it shocking. Some of the physicians they knew were Jewish, but Sophia's father said nothing would happen to them, they were respected important men, as he was. In his opinion, doctors would always be exempt from political actions because they were so highly educated, honored, and desperately needed for their skills. Thomas had warned Sophia repeatedly not to talk about such things outside the family, and he scolded her for thinking about it at all. Her mother never scolded her. She shared Sophia's concerns about the ruling party taking such harsh positions.

"How far do you think it will go?" Sophia asked her one day, since they were alone and could talk freely.

"I suppose it's gone as far as it can by now, but I do feel sorry for those people who have lost their jobs and their livelihoods and have families to take care of. The Nazis just want to show people how powerful they are. I'm sure they'll relax the rules in time." Sophia was never as sure, but she didn't want to frighten her mother. She had seen people rounded up in Berlin, and dragged away for deportation, with their children crying and police beating them.

Every year, more people Sophia knew had disappeared, all Jews, and some of her friends' fathers had lost jobs. A dentist, an accountant, a well-known journalist—none of them were dangerous, but all were Jewish. Even some of her classmates said nasty things about the Jews now, when they had been friends before. It seemed so wrong to her, and so hypocritical. How could their friends become their enemies overnight?

"Don't talk to Papa about it," Monika warned Sophia again, and she promised not to. Her father didn't care about anything but his hospital anyway. Medicine was all that interested him. He lived in a rarefied, isolated world, in his operating theater, saving people's lives with surgery. He didn't care what religion they were. If they were sick, he helped them heal. If they needed surgery, he operated on them. Illness was the great equalizer, just as it was for her mother with TB. Sophia's father was a scientist above all, and cared deeply about his patients. Government policies were of no interest to him.

Sophia had always been profoundly disturbed by all forms of injustice, and had compassion for those less fortunate, almost as though she felt guilty for how well she and her family lived and what they had. Theresa thought it was ridiculous and made fun of her for it. "Why don't you give them your clothes then?" she teased her. "They probably wouldn't want them anyway." Sophia dressed in somber colors and simple clothes not to show off. Theresa longed for her mother's Paris gowns and snuck them into her own closets whenever she could, now that her mother was gone. She planned to put them back when her mother returned. Sophia got angry at her sister whenever she caught her wearing something of their mother's. She recognized the items immediately, beautiful alligator handbags, or exquisite French kid gloves, delicately beaded sweaters, or a well-cut coat, which Theresa was too young to wear. But she was dying to be fashionable and grown-up. Their father paid no attention to things like that, and often Theresa got away with it, if Sophia was working at the hospital, visiting their mother, or out, when Theresa raided her mother's closets.

They lived in an extremely comfortable, luxurious home, which Monika had decorated beautifully, with art that she and Thomas had inherited from their families, and things they bought. They had built the house when he had built his hospital many years before. It was large and handsome, and suited his respected position in the community. Sophia was embarrassed by how well they lived, which Theresa thought was ridiculous. Sophia thought the trappings of wealth, which were second nature to them, set them apart from others in a negative way. She had always been drawn to religion even as a child, and this too made her different from her family. Her father openly admitted that he did not believe in God. He believed in science and medicine, and a surgeon's skill, not a higher power. Theresa said that church bored her, and avoided it whenever possible, and only since she had been ill had Monika's beliefs grown stronger. She and Sophia talked about it at times. Sophia had a faith which nothing could shake. Her father blamed it on a nanny they had had when Sophia was very young. He had eventually fired her for filling Sophia's head with ideas that he considered nonsense and beliefs he didn't share and thought were dangerous. Sophia had been sad when she left, but her beliefs remained the same. If anything, they grew stronger. She never spoke of them in the presence of her father and kept them to herself, but they were there, a powerful, comforting force in her life. Sometimes she went to church on her own and prayed for her mother. Monika always seemed better to her after she did. But in spite of occasional brief respites, Monika's health had deteriorated in the last year. Sophia was terrified that she would die. Monika was peaceful and philosophical about it, and always reassured her. Sophia wanted to believe that she would come home soon. Her father said so too, and he never lied. He was an honest man, even if he didn't believe in God.

Sometimes when Sophia finished helping at her father's hospital, doing small tasks to help the nurses, or if her mother had seemed weaker that day, she stopped in at a church not far from their home. It was a short walk which always helped her clear her mind of the pain she'd seen. The church was small and peaceful, and she always found solace there. She told no one that she went. There was a convent attached to it, and the nuns who lived there were always warm and welcoming. She was a familiar figure and they would greet her or nod and smile if they were on their way to vespers, their evening prayers, or walking back to the convent after church. She had told a few of them that her mother was ill, and they had promised to pray for her. The convent belonged to the Sisters of Mercy, and Sophia had always been struck by how peaceful the nuns looked and how kind they were. She had lit candles in the church many times. She was well aware that her father would have been horrified if he knew. He insisted that religion was for fools. It was an argument she never embarked on with her father, nor mentioned to her sister. Once in a while, she told her mother about her visits there, but not often. It was her secret place and a source of strength for her.

Some of the nuns had worked in missions in Africa, which Sophia found fascinating, and she knew that they were nurses and teachers, and were devoted to the poor. Sometimes she felt as though she had more in common with them than with her own family, although she couldn't say that to anyone. She had told one or two of them that her father had a hospital, and that she did menial tasks there. More and more, she was thinking about going to nursing school, so she could work in her father's hospital and be more useful to her mother. It felt like her destiny, and her father liked the idea of her working at his hospital.

She hadn't fully made the decision yet, when her mother's condition worsened and she began a steady decline, which came to a tragic conclusion at the end of the summer. Monika died as Sophia sat next to her and held her hand. Sophia had slept in her mother's room in her final weeks, and Theresa and Thomas were there too when she died. Monika had her loved ones around her. It was as though the bottom had fallen out of their world when she was gone. Theresa had never believed that her mother would die, and Thomas had been so insistent that she would come home again, and had refused to think that she would die. He took it as a personal blow that he couldn't save her. Only Sophia had begun to see it looming, and had prayed for her constantly at the end. But this time her prayers hadn't been answered. After her mother was gone, Sophia had sought out her friends at the convent, and they had comforted her, and assured her that her mother was now at peace, and her spirit would always be with her, which was a very small consolation for having lost the mother she loved so much. She had done everything she could to make Monika comfortable at the end.

Sophia was so young to lose her mother at eighteen. What she had seen and learned made her decision to go to nursing school easier, and her father was pleased when she enrolled. Theresa was still in high school, and Thomas had gone back to his own work as soon as possible, and found comfort there. He worked endless hours and his daughters hardly saw him. In September, Sophia began nursing school, and it provided the distraction and purpose she needed, and seemed to be the right direction. The nuns were pleased when she told them. It was a full life for her.

Theresa was pleased that her ever-vigilant sister was busy. It gave her enough time and leeway to engage in her favorite pastimes and usual flirtations. She never did anything too daring, but by the time Theresa turned seventeen, she had several serious suitors, and Sophia guessed that her sister would be married by the time she turned eighteen. The front-runner was a very respectable young man, Baron Heinrich von Ernst. He was madly in love with Theresa, ten years older than she was, and his family owned an important bank in Berlin. Even their father approved of the match, as he told Sophia repeatedly. She knew she couldn't stop it and didn't try. She was deeply engaged in her nursing studies and doing well at them. She did extra work at her father's hospital, and watched many surgeries, as an addendum to her studies, since she wanted to be a surgical nurse and assist her father.

Heinrich and Theresa got engaged a few days after the first anniversary of her mother's death. She was only seventeen. It softened the blow for Thomas and Sophia too, to have something to celebrate only a few days after the painful anniversary. Sophia was nineteen and had completed a year of nursing school by then, and Heinrich told his future father-in-law that he would wait to marry until Theresa turned eighteen. She was still too young, but already seemed more womanly, as she thought about the house they would live in and she would run. She stopped flirting with other men and acted more grown-up, and Sophia was happy for her. It didn't bother her that her sister was engaged and she wasn't, or that she had no romantic prospects or suitors herself. All she wanted was to become a surgical nurse. It filled her days and her thoughts, and she studied hard for her exams.

Heinrich married Theresa on her eighteenth birthday, in the garden of the Alexander home, since neither Theresa nor her father felt a need for a religious ceremony and didn't want one. Heinrich agreed to being married by a famous judge Thomas had operated on and knew well. The judge credited Thomas with saving his life, and was happy to perform the marriage for them. Heinrich was a very amenable and responsible young man, and was clearly besotted with his beautiful bride. It was a very touching ceremony, and Sophia cried when they exchanged their vows, missing their mother. It was a small wedding with only a hundred guests, mostly Thomas and Monika's friends. Sophia had arranged the whole wedding, with white lilies and lily of the valley everywhere. Only two years after their mother's death, they didn't want a big splashy wedding. Her loss was still sorely felt.

"She would be happy for you," Sophia said to Theresa with tears in her eyes right before the wedding ceremony.

"Do you think so?" Theresa said, equally moved as she dabbed at her eyes. "She wouldn't think I'm too young?"

"You've grown up a lot in the past two years," Sophia said.

"We want to have a baby soon," Theresa whispered, and Sophia wasn't surprised. It had always been Theresa's life plan, to marry as soon as possible and have babies. Sophia was sure she would be pregnant soon, and said a silent prayer for her as Thomas walked her down the aisle. Theresa would be a baroness now, which suited her too. Sophia was her only attendant, wearing a simple pale blue satin dress that she had borrowed from her mother's closet. It was one of the gowns from Paris, by Madame Grès. The wedding breakfast was lavish, and it was an elegant wedding. Several of the Nazi High Command were there. They were friends of Heinrich's or patients of her father's. It made Sophia uncomfortable to have them there, but Thomas had invited them, and had operated on a number of them. They spoke of him with glowing praise.

When Heinrich and Theresa married in the spring of 1939, the news in Germany had not improved in the past two years. Austria had been annexed a year before and was part of Germany now. Jews could no longer own businesses, Jewish assets had been seized, and all property and real estate owned by Jews had to be registered. Synagogues had been destroyed and burned to the ground. Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Jewish doctors had been forbidden to treat non-Jewish patients, and a month later were forbidden from practicing at all. Jewish doctors could only act as nurses now. Jews were forbidden to attend cultural events. By the end of 1938, six months before Theresa and Heinrich's wedding, all Jewish lawyers were forbidden to practice. They could only "consult" for fellow Jews.

The most shocking event of the previous year had been Kristallnacht in November of 1938. Sophia was profoundly distressed by it, as was most of the civilized world. Hundreds of synagogues were burned, Jewish homes and businesses were vandalized and looted, Jews were singled out for savage attacks, and many were killed. Twenty-five thousand Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps after Kristallnacht. Jewish businesses were destroyed. Afterward, Jews were barred from public transportation, schools, and hospitals, and forced into ghettos or out of Germany and Austria. Jewish students were expelled from non-Jewish schools. And all gold and silver items owned by Jews had to be turned over. There was savagery and mass destruction without remorse. And two months before Theresa's wedding in 1939, the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia, while in Germany Jews could no longer be tenants and had to move into Jewish-owned houses. Some brave, compassionate neighbors and citizens began hiding Jewish friends, at great danger to themselves if they were caught.

Sophia's heart ached with everything she heard and read about it, while Theresa, her new husband, and even her father seemed oblivious to what was going on, as officers of the Nazi High Command danced at their wedding. Sophia couldn't get out of her mind what she knew now, and could barely bring herself to be civil to the officers she met at the wedding. She refused to dance with any of them. She just couldn't, knowing what their policies were, and how many people had suffered at their hands.

Heinrich and Theresa, the Baron and Baroness von Ernst, went to the south of France for their honeymoon, and returned a month later in June. Sophia had finished two years of her nurse's training by then. She had accelerated her studies, gotten credit for her work at her father's hospital, and only had a few months of classes left before she became a nurse.

The house was painfully empty once Theresa was gone. Their father was always working. Sophia started visiting the Sisters of Mercy more frequently, and even had dinner with them sometimes, at their long refectory tables, so she didn't have to eat alone at home. One of the kitchen help at the hospital made dinner for her father now, because he didn't want to go home to the silent house either. Theresa with her exuberance and big personality had left a major void in their lives when she married. Sophia noticed that her father spent longer and longer days and nights at his clinic, and sometimes slept there if he was concerned about a patient post-surgery. She had seen charts, when she worked there occasionally, that led her to believe her father was still treating Jewish patients from time to time and performing surgeries on them. But she didn't dare to ask him. If so, he was violating all the most stringent laws in Germany, and the most dangerous to break. She even recognized one of the patients, an older man she knew her father had operated on previously, who was Jewish. He had been an important art dealer, and he was sent home almost immediately after surgery. His chart was under another name, and it vanished entirely after he left. It gave her new respect for her father when she realized what he'd done. His dedication to his patients was impartial, regardless of race or religion or political convictions.

She went back to finish the last few remaining months of her nurse's training, wondering just how far the Nazis would go to rid the country of all Jews, even though they were German citizens like everyone else—but not anymore. She never told anyone her suspicions about her father, but she had come to realize he was helping those he could, in the only way he knew how. And he was treating the German High Command and its officers as well. To him, science and the treatments it offered should be available to all, regardless of race or religion, and he practiced accordingly. She only mentioned it to him once.

"It's dangerous for you, Papa," she whispered to him as they left the operating room together. The patient he had just operated on was removed from the surgical theater rapidly, and taken downstairs somewhere in the hospital by two orderlies, moving quickly. She guessed later that he was taken to an unmarked supply room until he left the hospital.

"I don't believe in God, Sophia, and even less so now. But I believe in my fellow man and the oath I swore to care for all those who need my help and to do them no harm." He looked at her intensely and then walked away and disappeared for the rest of the night. She could guess that he was with his patient, hidden somewhere, until he could be transferred to a safe place, as soon as they could move him. She saw her father the next day, and he looked tired. They didn't speak of the incident again, and nothing ever came of it. She assumed the patient had survived and was in hiding somewhere.

It was a frightening time, and on September 3, 1939, Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand declared war on Germany, for invading Poland. No one knew what that meant yet, or how their lives would be affected. The Jews had already been fighting a desperate battle for their survival for more than six years by then. Even their food had been restricted, a week before war was declared. They had to survive on two to three hundred calories a day, regulated by ration cards. Many who could had fled the country, others thought things would calm down again. Close to four hundred thousand Jews had left Germany by then in response to the violence and fear of the future.

The night war was declared, Thomas Alexander operated on his emergency patients as usual. Heinrich and Theresa were in the very luxurious Berlin home his parents had provided for them. Sophia went to the convent of the Sisters of Mercy, to attend mass with them and pray for peace in a very cruel, already shattered world. They all knew that nothing would ever be the same again.