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Minki’s heart began to thump inside her chest.
‘Really, anyone with any mental infirmity,’ Goebbels added. ‘Manic depression, for example, or alcoholism. The blind would be included, naturally, and the deaf. We need to purge our population of these undesirables, if we are ever to achieve our goal of a pure Aryan race.’
Minki struggled to sound dispassionate. ‘How do you propose to go about it?’
‘Compulsory sterilisation,’ answered Staemmler, matter-of-factly. ‘With women – a hysterectomy, ideally when they’re young…aged ten or eleven. With men – castration. Quite simple really.’
Minki felt bile rising in her mouth, and began to choke. ‘Will you excuse me, gentlemen,’ she said, abruptly pushing her chair back from the table. ‘I must just go and check on things in the kitchen.’
As her chair scraped across the oak floor, Max glanced up from his end of the table with a puzzled expression. Minki wiped her mouth on her napkin, almost threw it down on the table, and left the room.
She ran upstairs to Clara’s nursery, where to her relief she found the child sleeping peacefully in her bed, her arms thrown up above her head, the covers kicked away. Minki touched her forehead, checked her temperature and pulled the covers back over her. Then, sitting beside her bed, she listened to her child’s even breathing. Gradually, Minki began to calm down, aware of her own heartbeat slowing.
The thought that her child might be classed as an ‘undesirable’ seemed unimaginable. ‘The wickedness…’ she murmured.
Clara stirred in her sleep and opened her eyes. ‘Mama…’ she whispered.
‘Mama’s here, darling. Go back to sleep.’
Clara’s eyelids closed and her breathing became slow and easy once again.
Minki leaned over the bed and stroked her child’s forehead. ‘No one will ever hurt you, my angel, I can promise that. I will protect you with every fibre of my being.’
27
MUNICH
June 1934
Leila was sitting at her desk in the window of her parents’ sitting room. Although Viktor was still in prison, and her job as a journalist was finished, the urge to write was as compelling as ever. She had embarked on a new project and had begun to assemble notes and ideas for a book about the plight of women in Germany, and how they were being manipulated by the National Socialist regime.
Although she was quite alone in the apartment, she was struggling to concentrate. Her mother had taken the children to school, and her father was at work. But this morning, even the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece intruded on her thoughts.
She stood up to stretch and, looking out of the window, noticed the postboy running up the steps to the apartment building. Leila rarely left the apartment now, fearing for her safety, but she decided to go downstairs and collect the mail. Opening the postbox in the hall, she took out the bundle of letters. Most were for her parents, but near the bottom was a letter addressed to her with a Dachau postmark. Hoping it might be from Viktor, she ran back upstairs, laid her parents’ mail on the hall table, and eagerly ripped open the envelope.
With regret, we have to inform you of the death of Viktor Labowski. Cause of death: Tuberculosis.
Leila let out a gasp and began to wail. She sank down onto the parquet flooring of the hall and wept, railing against the loss of the only man she had ever loved, and the wicked regime that had caused his untimely death. The anger she felt at the injustice of her beloved husband dying – alone – in that awful place was unbearable.
Her mother found her an hour later, still prostrate on the hall floor. ‘Leila…whatever is the matter, darling?’
Leila pointed to the letter lying abandoned on the floor.
Hannah quickly skimmed it. ‘Oh, my God,’ she breathed. ‘Let me help you up. Come into the sitting room and I’ll make tea.’
Her mother settled Leila on the sofa but, as she turned to leave, Leila reached for her mother’s hand and pulled her down next to her. ‘Don’t go…stay with me.’
Hannah sat down, holding Leila’s hand.
‘I just keep thinking of that last time I saw him – last winter – you remember?’
Hannah nodded.
‘I wonder if he knew then that he was ill?’
‘Possibly.’
‘He begged me to leave Germany, you know.’
