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And then one of the students asked, "What did you think of Stolle's speech, Professor Weiss?"
"It was interesting," Susa
"But what did youthink of it?" he persisted. "Isn't it wonderful to hear somebody come out and speak his mind like that?"
She didn't say anything for a moment.Who are you? she wondered. All she knew about this enthusiastic undergrad was that his name was Karl Stuckart and he was getting a medium B in the course. What did he do when he wasn't in her class? Did he report to the SS? Lothar Prutzma
One of those students, an auburn-haired girl named Mathilde Burchert, said, "I certainly think it's about time we get moving with reform. We've been in the doldrums forever, and the Gauleiter 's right. The Fuhrer 's not going fast enough."
Several other students smiled and nodded. Susa
She hated mistrusting everyone around her. She hated it, but she couldn't let it go. Were she worried about only her own safety, she thought she would have. But choices she would make for herself she wouldn't for other Jews she might endanger if she turned out to be wrong.
"Whatdo you think, Professor?" another student asked her.
"I think the Fuhrer will go at his own pace regardless of whether anyone tries to jog his elbow," she answered. Hard to go wrong-hard to land in trouble-for backing the Fuhrer. It made her seem safely moderate: not a hard-liner who hated the very idea of change, but not a wild-eyed, bomb-throwing radical, either.
And what's a moderate? Someone who gets shot at from the rightandthe left. She wished she hadn't had that thought.
Karl didn't want to leave things alone. "I wasn't so much talking about what would happen. I was talking about what should happen."
No matter how Susa
I'll never do that now. Hiding is too ingrained in me. Even if I knew they wouldn't kill me, I couldn't reveal myself that way. Easier to walk up the middle of the Kurfurstendamm naked.
"I'd like to vote in an election where I had a real choice," Mathilde said. "I don't know who I'd vote for, but there sure are plenty of people I'd vote against."
Again, several of the youngsters up by the lectern showed they agreed with her. Only a couple of them frowned. But who was more likely to be a spy for the Security Police, someone who pretended to agree or someone who openly didn't?
Susa
Mathilde looked right at her. "How about you, Professor Weiss? Don't you think we'd be better off with real elections than with the ones where everybody just votesja all the time? When Horst says all the Reichstag candidates got elected with 99.78 percent of the vote, don't you wonder how he keeps a straight face? It's such a farce! You must feel the same way, too. You're a sharp person. Anyone can tell from the way you lecture. Tell us!"
"Tell us!" the other students echoed.Tell us you're with it. Tell us you're not a fuddy-duddy. Tell us we don't have to turn into fuddy-duddies when we're your age. Please tell us.
Am I a sharp person?Susa
"But theydon't leave us alone," Mathilde said fiercely. "If you say the wrong thing today, you're liable to get a noodle tomorrow." Camp slang permeated German these days. Often, people didn't even know where it came from. When you were talking about a bullet in the back of the neck, though, there wasn't much doubt.
"Well…" Susa
"You were in London for the BUF convention?" Was that awe or horror in Karl Stuckart's voice? Some of each, probably. Maybe he was wondering ifshe had SS co
"No, no, no." Susa
"It's a shame the British had to remind us of what we should have remembered for ourselves-no, what we never should have forgotten," Mathilde Burchert said. Most of the other students nodded. They didn't seem to fear informers or provocateurs. Maybe they were too young to know better, although in the Greater German Reich you were never too young to learn such lessons. Or did they smell freedom on the wind?
Heinrich Gimpel pulled a copy of the Volkischer Beobachter out of the vending machine in the Stahnsdorf train station. A moment later, Willi Dorsch paid fifteen pfe
Willi saw the same thing at the same time. "Damned Scandinavians are the only ones who can racially embarrass us," he said. "Bastards look more Nordic than we do."
Was Willi kidding? Was he kidding on the square? Or did he really mean it? Heinrich had trouble telling. Willi loved to joke, but race, in the Reich, was as serious a business as Marxism had been in Russia before it fell. Even the Fuhrer hadn't said anything more than that the Nazi founding fathers might not have understood race the right way. Heinrich gave back a grunt and a nod-a minimal answer.
They went up to the platform together, and got there just in time to catch the train to Berlin. Willi grabbed the window seat, then proceeded to unfold his paper and ignore the scenery rolling by. He'd seen it often enough, anyhow. So had Heinrich, who sat down beside him and also buried his nose in the Beobachter. Willi seemed to ignore his troubles with Erika, too, except that every once in a while he would come out with a remark that also left Heinrich wondering how to take it.
The two of them stiffened within thirty seconds of each other. They both pointed to the same article on page three. The headline above it said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. The byline was Konrad Jahnke, not a name Heinrich had seen before. He soon found out why: the author declared himself to be a doctor from