“He’s going to be okay,” Becca said gently. I opened my mouth to point out that she had no way of knowing that—but I couldn’t, because Becca’s husband, Kevin, was flying planes somewhere over the Pacific.
If there was one game I’d learned to play well over the years of the war, it was the pretending game. Every woman knew how to play. Whenever we were talking to anyone who had a loved one in the military, we shifted into a mode of forced optimism. The way we spoke to one another sometimes, a casual observer might have thought war wasn’t a dangerous scenario at all.
“And Kevin will be just fine too,” I said firmly.
Christmas loomed, and I was trying to force some cheer. I invited Becca to bring Brianna and Ava around to spend Christmas lunch with me and Cal. They were understandably worried about Kevin, and I knew Becca was worried about getting through Christmas without him.
I needed a project to distract me too. It had been weeks since I’d heard from Henry, and the war seemed to be spiraling out of control.
I’d just hung a string of popcorn around the tree when I heard Cal come home from work. Christmas carols were playing on the wireless, and the scent of pine wafted through the air. Beside me, a little pile of gifts was waiting for our guests—a junior gardener’s set for Ava and Brianna, and some perfume for Becca.
“Sweetheart,” Cal said. I looked up at his grave tone, and my stomach dropped. He was holding a postcard in his hand. He looked ill as he extended it toward me. I scampered to my feet and snatched it from his hand.
Dear Cal and Lizzie,
We are shipping out tomorrow, destined for I-don’t-know-where.
Sis, I know you are going to fret but please don’t. I am serving with some of the finest men alive, and wherever this war takes us and whatever becomes of us, I know that we will represent this country with pride and honor. I’ll write you when I can.
Cal, please take care of my sister, always.
Love,
Henry
42
Sofie
Berlin, Germany
December 1944
They took me to the basement of the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. My cell was only a few feet wide in each direction. As the officer escorting me pushed me inside, he barked an order that I wasn’t to speak to any of the other prisoners. Once the door closed, the cell was completely dark, other than a razor-thin line of yellow light along the top of the door.
There was no bed or toilet, and the walls were lined with bricks. The tiny space seemed impossibly dark and damp and cold, and there was no relief to be found, because all I could do was stand, or sit on that freezing concrete floor and let the moisture seep through my skirt. The space wasn’t even large enough for me to lie down.
Around me, I could hear the sounds of regret and suffering—weeping from a cell nearby, shouting in the far distance. Periodically someone would scream in pain. I thought I heard someone trying to whisper to me from an adjacent cell, but I didn’t dare reply.
I had no sense of time, only the growing awareness that while other cell doors were opening and closing, no one came for me. The sensory deprivation was torture in itself—sometimes I wondered if it had only been a few minutes, other times it felt like days. Eventually, I became so desperate to use the facilities I was crying in pain. I thumped on the door and called for help, but no one answered.
I was trying to figure out the logistics of relieving myself on the floor when the door clicked, and then a sudden flash of light appeared as it swung inward. I squinted, and a burst of pain shot through my skull at the sudden brightness.
“Toilet break,” a guard said. “No speaking.”
As he walked me back to my cell afterward, I gingerly asked for some water. His only answer was the slam of the door as he locked me back inside.
Soon I thought the thirst would kill me, maybe even before the cold. At one point I dozed off, but I woke with a start when a door closed somewhere else in the basement—the echoing vibration of the slam, then the sickening click-click-click of a lock snapping into place. After hours—days?—of darkness, my hearing seemed keener. When my stomach rumbled with hunger, it sounded so loud to me, I wondered if the people in the cells around me could hear it.
Then the door opened again. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that it was the same guard.
“Toilet break,” he said. “No speaking.”
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been in that cell. My body odor was so strong that when I moved, a wave of it washed over me, and sometimes it left me feeling nauseous. With no access to sunlight, not even during toilet breaks, all I could do to judge time was count the interruptions to darkness—the delivery of a bowl of cold oatmeal and a glass of water, periodic toilet breaks. If those things were happening twice a day, I’d been in the cell for ten days—but it felt so much longer. My hips and shoulders were bruised from sleeping curled up on the hard floor. I’d been so cold for so long that my mind felt foggy—like my body was shutting down in slow motion.