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“I was very much a prisoner and the whole project was top secret. I kept requesting permission to write you, and they kept refusing. But after a year or so, I sought out Christopher Newsome, who’s one of the officials from the Office of the Secretary of the Army. I knew he was involved in the plan to bring us here, so I asked him when I’d be sent home to face trial. He told me that there wasno plan to return me to Germany, and I wouldn’t face trial at all because my record had been ‘taken care of.’”
In his early letters, Jürgen simply told me that he was working with the American government. Later, he told me we’d been approved to join him in Huntsville and that he’d purchased us a house, so I assumed he was enjoying some version of freedom. I’d been desperately curious about how that came about—but it hadn’t occurred to me that his situation was as tenuous as this seemed to be.
“But there are other Germans here. Some of them must surely know the truth.”
“Yes,” Jürgen conceded. “But those who know have secrets of their own. I do understand your concerns, Sofie. I was also anxious about this arrangement, so I asked Christopher what would happen if the skeletons in my closet ever were exposed.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that the skeletons have not just been buried—they have been erased,” Jürgen said quietly. “My official files paint a picture of a man who survived the Nazi years unscathed without a single moral compromise. Only a handful of senior officials know that is not the full story.”
“No one survived the Nazi years without moral compromise,” I whispered.
“Maybe the American officials know that too. Maybe that’s why they’ve done this. Christopher said that even Calvin Miller, my boss here at Redstone Arsenal, has no idea my official file is fictional. There’s even talk about citizenship in a few more years.”
“Citizenship...” I repeated. “How do you feel about that?”
Jürgen hesitated.
“I’ll always be German. I just don’t know what that means anymore. America has become home to me, and that will be the case even more now that you and the children are here. I’m grateful. I’m relieved. But...” He shook his head, shadows in his gaze. “I don’t deserve this second chance, but it’s been offered to me. That’s some astounding grace, isn’t it? How else could I respond to that but to work tirelessly to build a life here I can be proud of? It won’t erase what happened at home—nothing can do that. The most I can hope for is to one day again be proud of the man who stares back at me in the mirror.”
“You only ever wanted your work to benefit mankind. To extend our reach and understanding.”
“Exactly.” He smiled sadly. “I have a chance to do that now, and I intend to grab hold of it with both hands.”
“Then that is what I will do too.”
Later that night, I unpacked the last of my clothes into the dresser in our bedroom, and I took a tattered, multicolored blanket from my suitcase and spread it on the end of the bed. That blanket and the little collection of photos I brought from Germany were my most prized possessions.
One was a photo of my first three children. Georg and Laura sat cross-legged on the ground, beaming, with newborn Gisela lying on a rug in front of them. It felt like a moment from someone else’s life, but I adored it anyway. That was how I needed to remember Georg and Laura—innocent, happy, untarnished.
The next photo was of me and Jürgen on our wedding day, young and blissfully in love and so carefree, as if the world had only peace and happiness to offer us. Then there was a photo of Jürgen’s great-aunt Adele, sitting in her courtyard—smiling serenely as she looked past the camera, to the sanctuary she’d built herself over many years.
The final photo was of me with my best friend, Mayim. We were standing arm in arm in the lobby of my family’s mansion in Potsdam, suitcases at our feet, grinning like loons as we stood at the threshold to adulthood—the Star of David on a chain around her neck, stark against her pale skin. My last-ever nanny took that photo when Mayim and I were hours away from embarking on the journey to finishing school in Lausanne.
I knew I’d have nightmares that night—I did most nights since the war, and I expected that Jürgen would too. I kissed each of those photos gently, and then set them on the bedside table to watch over me and Jürgen while we slept. Maybe their presence would bring us peace, because while that pile of photos represented so much loss, they also carried so much love. The sum total of those moments was the woman I had become.
