Chapter 4

Sophia put in a full day's work at her father's hospital the day they were to leave. She went home after work and changed into hiking clothes, and wore the sturdiest boots she owned. Her father came to say goodbye to her and hugged her close. Theresa had come to see him that afternoon at the clinic, and he held each of his daughters tight before letting them go. They were the only family he had, and he fully understood that he might lose them both. He almost told Sophia not to come back and to stay in Switzerland with Theresa, but they weren't Jewish, and she had no risk. And selfishly, he knew, he wanted her back with him.

A friend of Heinrich's, whom he trusted, picked Sophia up. Heinrich and Theresa were already in the car with him, and he drove them to the restaurant where they were meeting Claus. They ate before they left, and then slipped out a side door and got back in the car. Their papers were in order, and there was nothing unusual about them. They were five friends going on a holiday. And a young couple with a pregnant wife gave them an appearance of wholesome innocence. They drove from Berlin to Munich that night on the Reichsautobahn. It took them six and a half hours, and they arrived at two in the morning. Theresa slept the entire way. They switched drivers then and drove two and a half hours from Munich to Mengen, which was as close to the Swiss border as Claus felt they should get without drawing attention to themselves. It was almost five in the morning, and still dark, and Heinrich's friend left them then to drive back to Berlin. The others walked into a wooded area on foot. They were headed to Blumberg as their journey began in earnest toward the Swiss border, to the town of Schaffhausen on the Swiss side, and from there to Zurich. They walked in silence for three hours, until the air began to get cool, the path was steeper, and the sky turned blue in the morning light. They were still far enough from the border that there were no patrols yet. Claus was confident as he led the way. He had come this same route several times before. They stopped for water and something to eat from their supplies. There were thick bushes all around them, and tall trees. Theresa didn't complain, but Sophia could see that she was tired. It was a rough journey for a heavily pregnant woman, and she had almost tripped several times over tree roots. Each time, Heinrich caught her. He stayed very close to her.

They walked for the next twelve hours, stopping as seldom as possible and never speaking except in whispers, and then Claus finally let them rest for the night in an area of dense trees and vegetation. He cautioned them not to speak, lest there was someone in the woods to hear them. There were no patrols in the area because the trails were so narrow and hard to follow. No vehicles could be used, and even the patrol dogs didn't like to go there. Claus had come this way successfully before. On the second day of their journey, Claus woke them before daybreak, and as they stood in a clearing they could see the Hoher Randen mountain on the German side. They were close to the border and pressed on again. It was only a six-hour hike to Schaffhausen now, and freedom.

Sophia then saw the little cabin Claus had told her about, where he would leave her. They hadn't come across a single patrol. Sophia saw Theresa rub her stomach when the baby kicked her, but she hadn't gone into labor, which seemed miraculous. And she never complained, as Heinrich helped her as best he could. Even Sophia was exhausted by their fifteen-hour march the day before. But they were almost there now. They only had about another six hours left to walk, and Heinrich and Theresa would have made it to safety. They had to leave Sophia now.

The two sisters cried and hugged each other, and Sophia watched them go, as Claus led them through the woods. Sophia sat in the trees and bushes near the cabin, eating sparingly from the supplies that Claus had left her. All she could think of was her sister walking the final miles to safety, and Heinrich with her.

It was nine o'clock that night, after a long, anxious day alone in the woods, when she heard a rustling in the bushes, but there was no sound of patrol dogs as Claus appeared. Sophia cried when she saw Claus walk into the clearing, looking for her. She sprang out of the bushes and burst into tears, as she leapt into his arms.

"They made it?" she asked him, and he smiled as he nodded.

"We never got stopped, no one ever saw us. They'll be all right now. There's a road near where I left them, and the village is nearby. He can call his brother in Zurich to come and get them. The war is over for them. They can wait there until it's over for the rest of us in Germany." Sophia was relieved for Theresa, but it was a strange thought knowing that she and Heinrich would be living in peace and safety while Hitler and his monsters were destroying Germany and invading the rest of Europe.

They rested that night, and left before dawn the next day, taking a faster, steeper, harder route without Theresa to slow them down, and they were back in Mengen that night. They were unscathed, untouched, and as safe as anyone was in Germany. They went to a beer garden for something to eat. Claus called a contact he had in the area, who came to get them. There were a group of soldiers drinking at the beer garden who paid no attention to them. Now they just looked like a young couple out together. Their hiking clothes and hiking boots attracted no attention, and Claus's contact arrived quickly, and drove them to Munich after they ate, where another contact in Claus's network picked them up and drove them back to Berlin on the Reichsautobahn again. This time his contact was a young woman. She drove fast on the way back. They reached Berlin by five A.M. The whole journey had taken three days round trip. Claus picked up his own car and left Sophia at her front gate. When she walked into the house, her father walked out of his bedroom, saw her, and started crying and couldn't stop. He held her and smoothed down her long straight hair and looked at her. She looked like she had gone camping with friends, although her legs were aching. She cried too when she looked at him.

"I thought I'd never see you again," he said hoarsely. "Heinrich's brother called yesterday. They're tired, but safe, and she hasn't had the baby." It was a miracle. Claus had saved them. She had infinite respect for him, and they hadn't run into a single German patrol on the way.

"And Heinrich's parents?" she asked, as they went to the kitchen. She dropped into a chair, and her father handed her a cup of tea a few minutes later. "Are they okay?" she asked, and saw the look on her father's face, and knew before he told her.

"They took them yesterday. Their cousin was right, and Heinrich was smart to want to leave immediately. The SS has been looting the house all day. They have trucks in front to load the art into. The neighbors saw his parents being taken away. They'll be treated as common thieves now, Jews who have no right to own property. I drove by but I didn't stop to inquire. It's best to stay away. I heard it from one of their neighbors."

"What will happen to them now?" she asked sadly.

"They'll be sent to a camp like the other Jews. There's nothing we can do for them. At least their sons are safe now in Switzerland, and your sister and the next generation." It was the best they could hope for in the circumstances. Theresa couldn't imagine Heinrich's elegant mother in a concentration camp, or his father. It was unimaginable what had happened to Jews in Germany. Thomas couldn't imagine them living long in the conditions they would be facing.

"Did anyone ask about me?" Sophia asked, nervous about what would happen now.

"A police captain came to speak to you yesterday, looking for Theresa. I told him that we hadn't heard from Theresa and Heinrich in many days, and found it odd, and that you were on your rounds, checking on postsurgical patients at their homes, and wouldn't be back for several hours. He lost interest in less than an hour, and he told me that the von Ernsts had turned out to be Jews, and the Reich had reclaimed their home and its contents. He said that he felt sorry for me that my daughter had married a Jew, and I told him that we didn't know, and it was very unfortunate. Then he left. I don't know if he'll come back, but at least we know Theresa is safe, and they can't do anything to us because they fled. We're still here, doing our jobs. They'll leave us alone."

Sophia told him about the journey then, and how smoothly it had gone with the guide they had. And then she took a long bath, went to bed, and slept until she had to go to work on an afternoon shift.

The next day, it felt odd to be performing ordinary tasks again, assisting her father in surgery, checking on patients, and wearing her uniform as though nothing unusual had happened. The police didn't come again, and there was no further news of Theresa's parents-in-law. Within a week, a colonel had moved into Heinrich and Theresa's beautiful new home, and Thomas heard through the grapevine that one of the generals had moved into the von Ernst mansion and all of the art had been given to the Führer for his private collection. It didn't surprise Thomas. Heinrich's parents had some very fine art and were important collectors.

The day after she came home, Sophia went to the convent and had a private meeting with Mother Regina. They spoke for a long time, and Sophia told her what had happened, and that her sister and her husband had reached safety.

"You were very brave to go with them," the Mother Superior said to her. "You could have been killed if you had run into a patrol at the border."

"I wanted to go with her as far as I could. I was afraid she'd give birth on the way. And I might never see her again."

"Probably not until something changes here, or the war is over."

"We're not at risk because of who my father is, and all the important patients he has. They can't reproach us for anything," Sophia said confidently. "His owning the hospital and being an important surgeon, even to the SS, protects us. Theresa and Heinrich were in danger because his father turned out to be half Jewish," she said simply, and the Mother Superior nodded.

"No one is entirely safe here anymore," she said wisely, which was why Sophia had come to see her. She had made a decision on the long hike to the border and back, that if she was spared, and survived, she wanted to follow the path that had been beckoning her for years. She was sure of it now, that it was the right one for her, although she knew her father wouldn't be happy about it. But in the insanity they lived in now, it was the only thing that made sense to her.

The Mother Superior told her to discuss it with her father, and then they would talk about it some more.

It seemed like an easy decision to Sophia now, and no one was going to talk her out of it. She had felt during all those days in the forest that her mother had been following them and keeping them safe, and that she would approve of her decision, even if her father wouldn't. It was the only way Sophia thought she would find the peace she was seeking and had longed for all her life. It was the only answer that made sense to her now, in a world which no longer made sense in any way.

She went to one of her dissident meetings the next day, to look for Claus, and he was there. They smiled when they saw each other and it struck him again that she was beautiful, but there was always something about her that made her seem out of reach. She thanked him again for what he had done for Heinrich and Theresa. He had saved them, and their baby. If they had stayed in Berlin, they would have been wherever Heinrich's parents were now, and their story would have had a very different ending.

Sophia and Claus left the meeting together that night, friends forever. Claus watched her drive away, and he sensed that she was a woman with a powerful destiny. He didn't know what it was, she had only just begun her journey to find herself, but he was certain it would be something important.

Sophia missed her sister every day now. They were very different and hadn't seen each other often since her marriage, but it had been comforting to know that Theresa was somewhere nearby. Now she wasn't, and wouldn't be for a long time, if ever. All that socializing with the High Command, and his father's contributions to the Reich, had brought them nothing in the end except danger and misery, and the loss of all the material things that had been so important to them.

Sophia turned twenty-one the week after she got back. The police had come to see her that day, to ask about her sister, and Sophia told them she knew nothing, except that Heinrich had a brother in Switzerland, and they had enough money to pay someone to get them there, but she had heard nothing since they disappeared, which was credible enough that they left her alone after that. And they had been polite and respectful to her.

The night she turned twenty-one Sophia told her father her plans, and he was as shocked as she had expected him to be. She said that she was going to enter the convent to join the Sisters of Mercy. She told him about Edith Stein, and how she had always been an inspiration to her, and more so than ever now, after what she'd seen for the past few years. Sophia said she was going to be a nursing nun, and work in whatever Catholic hospital they assigned her to.

"How am I going to manage without you?" he said. "With one daughter maybe gone forever, or for years until the war ends, and now you disappearing into the convent to be a nun. You're too young to make a decision like that." He was deeply unhappy about it.

"I'm happy there, Papa. It suits me. It's a good life for me."

"Don't you want to have a husband and children one day?" he asked her, and she shook her head with a quiet smile.

"Being in the convent makes me feel peaceful." Peace wasn't easy to find anymore. He didn't want to argue with her, but he was profoundly saddened by her decision.

"Can I come to visit you?"

"Of course." She smiled at him. "You're busy anyway. You won't even notice that I'm gone."

"Yes, I will. Especially in surgery. You're a very fine nurse, Sophia." But the world offered her no lures she wanted. She had no attachment to material things, and never did. What she cared about ran much deeper, working with the poor, saving children from the Nazis now. It was all the things that Edith Stein personified. She had been an activist and a dissident and still was, and Sophia didn't intend to give those things up either. She was just going to live differently than she did now. She knew her sister wouldn't have approved of it either. But it was right for her. She had no doubt in her mind. And she had a feeling her mother would have approved. Her mother had understood her.

She told Mother Regina the next day that she had spoken to her father, and they made plans for her to move to the convent.

She moved in the day that the Germans locked a hundred and sixty-five thousand Jews into the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. The Sisters of Mercy prayed for them. She officially became a postulant ten days later, on May 10, 1940, when Germany invaded France, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg, and Winston Churchill became the British Prime Minister. The Reich had just devoured another big hunk of Europe, and Sophia had begun her life as Sister Anne. It was exactly the life she wanted. The first time her father saw her in her habit, he cried.

They walked around the convent garden together and talked about the war and all the countries that were occupied by the Nazis now, and they wondered where Heinrich's parents were. There had been no news from them to anyone. Sophia wondered if they were dead. They wouldn't be useful for hard labor in the camps. Thomas wondered if they had been euthanized at one of the killing centers, or just murdered more crudely like so many others. They had no status or useful connections to protect them now. They would just be considered Jews, with no privileges and no rights, all of their possessions and money taken from them. There was no way to know or find out where Heinrich's parents were, and whether dead or alive.

Thomas worked harder than ever once Sophia moved to the convent and became a postulant. Mother Regina had assigned her to St. Joseph's Hospital to work in the children's ward, and she loved the work. The hospital was modern and only twelve years old. Twice a week on her way back to the convent after work, she went to the same meeting of dissidents she had attended for years. She justified it to herself knowing that she hadn't taken a vow of obedience yet. The other nuns didn't know she went there, but it meant too much to her to give up, and she was sure God didn't want her to.

The first time Claus saw her in her habit, he was shocked.

"When did that happen and why?" he asked her, and she laughed.

"I started thinking about it when my mother got sick five years ago. I always knew this life would suit me and I was right. I made the decision finally on the walk to Switzerland with you."

"Well, don't sign your life away yet, you might change your mind one day, when the right man comes along." He knew that he wasn't it, but they were friends and he worried about her, and admired her. She had more courage than anyone he knew. And was faithful to her principles. "I wish you'd told me. I'd have tried to talk you out of it."

"I don't think a man could change my mind," she said.

"You're too independent to be a nun," he said, and she laughed again. "Do the nuns know you come to these meetings? Do they know you're here tonight?"

"No," she said. "But I'm sure God does, and thinks it's all right. It's our secret." She was smiling and looked happier than he'd ever seen her before. But he still wasn't convinced that she had made the right choice, even if she did look happy and at peace now.

"Can we still be friends?" he asked cautiously.

"Of course. You can come and visit me on Sundays. I have to ask permission, but they'll let you. It's not a cloistered order."

He smiled as he looked at her, wondering where their respective paths would lead them next. Just knowing her was interesting. All he had to do now was get used to calling her Sister Anne, and he thought that he could do that. For however long she stayed a nun. He wasn't convinced it would be forever, but it was a safe place for her now. Sophia was convinced it was the right choice for her, even if Claus wasn't.