Page 55 of Library of Forbidden Books

Lauralei stuck her foot out to stop the door. “You know that hiding Jews is a serious offense, unless you’re a Jew yourself, or a half-Jew, maybe?”

Helene’s blood froze. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to say goodbye now.”

“I know who you are, Helene Nathan: a Jewish librarian who was locked up in a concentration camp. I’m going to ask the building manager to turn you out like a dog. Decent people don’t live next to Jews.”

Helene shut the door and leaned against it. She was trembling all over. She had to warn Derek. Lauralei was capable of anything.

She called and was relieved he was still at the office. She told him it was an emergency and that he needed to come home as soon as possible.

Derek got home in record time and was breathless, having run up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. “What’s going on?” he asked.

She briefly recounted what had happened with Rabbi Shlomo and his family and then the scene with Lauralei.

Derek ran his hands through his hair. This was the trouble he had been expecting for so long. “We’re going to wait till dawn, and then we’re all leaving by car. I’ll drop you and the kids at my parents’ and will take the rabbi and his family to a train station out of town, so they can get to Poland.”

Derek was so distracted and nervous that he hardly greeted the family when Helene introduced them. The world was coming unhinged. Hitler’s popularity was so universal that he knew he could do whatever he wanted. No one could stand up to him anymore.

At four o’clock in the morning, the two families snuck out. Without a proper goodbye, Derek and Helene shut the door on the apartment that had been their home for so long. The only place to look was ahead to the future. If they turned to glance back, they would join Lot’s wife as a pillar of salt.

Part 3

The Living Library

Chapter 31

Derek Returns

Berlin

February 23, 1940

War had been declared five months before, but it had made little difference in the everyday lives of Berliners. The only ones who seemed concerned about the conflict were the mothers and wives whose men were now far away. In the “Phony War,” the Nazis had taken complete control of Poland, while the Allied countries made no move to attack.

Derek had been sent to Poland. His letters gave very few details, but Helene could tell the months in Warsaw had been terrible for him.

After they had helped Rabbi Shlomo’s family escape on Kristallnacht, Helene and the children had spent a week at Derek’s parents’ house. That was all the time that Blaz’s hostility toward his daughter-in-law allowed. Helene had then moved with Alexander and Matilde into the Secret Library. The building was crowded with books and was not outfitted with living quarters, but there was a fireplace and chimney in one room. Before he’d left for the front, Derek had turned that room into a bedroom and worked on the kitchenette and bathroom plumbing to set up Helene with the essentials. Helene found a way to make it a pleasant home during his absence. When she and the children were not cooped up there, they were at the Neukölln library with Lena and Klaus.

Fortunately, Klaus had not been called to fight, nor had Lena’s husband, Gabor.

Lena, stroking her protruding belly, said, “How did I let this happen? I’m such a planner, but here I am, pregnant in the middle of a war. Could there be a worse time to bring a child into the world?”

Helene smiled. Alexander, now four and a half, was studiously examining the contents of a children’s book on the floor, while nineteen-month-old Matilde was opening the empty bottom drawer of Helene’s former desk, then slamming it closed with glee. Helene did not stop her but deftly slipped in a towel to muffle the noise and keep the girl from accidentally crushing her fingers.

“Alexander is really captivated by books. He doesn’t just flip through them; he’s really trying to make out the words,” Klaus said, nodding to Alexander’s head shifting from side to side as he tried to match the pictures to the words that described them.

“What do you expect? We live in a library, and he sees me with a book in my hand all day. So I guess it’s only natural. But, Lena,” Helene turned to see a grimace on Lena’s face, “it’s always a good time for a child to be born. The nightmare we’re in—it can’t last much longer. Much of the army is opposed to war, and so are the German people.”

“The people,” Lena snorted. She sipped at her tea then said, “People like winning. So as long as Hitler keeps winning, no one will try to stop him. Everything he’s tried has gone in his favor. But anyhow, how are your parents? You haven’t told us about them lately.”

The answer was complex. The Jewish area of Berlin had been dismantled. The Jews remaining in the capital hunkered down at home, hoping that things would get better after the war. Helene’s grandfather had died in January and, oddly, Helene was glad. He had been unhappy for so long and terrified of being sent to a concentration camp.

“Well, they’re all right as far as things go. It’s hard on my mom to not have either of her parents anymore. My dad tried to get a visa to Norway, but the North Sea is on alert, and it was rejected. Most countries have closed their borders to Jews. We’re surrounded by a bunch of hypocrites. They criticize Hitler, but they basically believe the same things he does.”

“Do you know if your Nazi neighbors ever denounced you?”

Helene shrugged, then gently took the paper cutter Matilde had just grabbed and swapped it out with a fabric doll. As long as her children were all right, nothing else mattered very much to Helene. Hitler had been in power for seven years, and nothing was like what it used to be, but at least they were getting by.

The front door opened with a bang and they all looked up to see old Fuchs, who was sporting an SS uniform. Apparently Himmler’s thugs had lowered their standards significantly when choosing the supposed elite of the Aryan race.