I reached to pick the next one up,Children, What Do You Know about the Führer?I leafed through the pages, watching a fiction unfold about a benevolent Hitler who was restoring the Fatherland to glory. The second book was calledThe Crossbreed, and while the cover was of a cute puppy, I only had to skim the first few pages to realize it was a simplistic parable discouraging relationships between Aryans and Jews.
By the time I picked up the third picture book, my hands were shaking.
It was calledNever Trust a Fox on the Green Heath and Never Trust a Jew by His Oath.On the first page, a handsome Aryan man was depicted beside a rotund, coarse man ostensibly representing the Jews.
When I looked up, Mayim was weeping.
“Please tell me you didn’t read these to him, Mayim,” I whispered sickly.
“He wanted that one,” she choked out, pointing to the last book. “He liked the cover best. I managed to convince him we should read one of his own books and he was easily distracted, but that won’t last forever. Sooner or later, he’s going to realize that the Jews he’s learning about are the same as the Jew in his house.”
“I’ll talk to him—” I started to say, but her eyes widened in alarm.
“And tell himwhat?” she said. Then she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Tell him that the Führer is wrong? That Jews aren’t the enemy? You can’t say those things to him. If he repeats them at school, you’ll have a visit from the Gestapo.”
“But I can’t just let him think that this is okay,” I whispered back.
Mayim choked on a sob. “He must have spoken about me in class. His teacher told him to make sure I read them with him. She was trying to make a point.”
I was only grateful that Jürgen was coming home that night. He’d warned me he would be late, but I waited up for him.
“What is it?” he asked, taking one look at my face.
“We need to talk,” I said grimly.
“Can we talk as I take a bath?” he asked tiredly. He waved a hand down over his rumpled suit, and then scrubbed his palm over the bristly growth on his cheeks. “It’s hot as hell out there and it’s been days since I washed. It’s been a long week.”
I followed him into the bathroom and explained what had happened.
“We can’t say anything,” Jürgen said abruptly.
I stopped pacing and frowned at him, surprised by his tone.
“But—maybe we just need to look at other schools? Maybe—”
“Almost every schoolteacher is now a member of the National Socialist Teachers League. The newspaper said it’s over 95 percent.”
“The paperslie!” I hissed. I knew that better than anyone. The press was an arm of the Department of Propaganda—controlled down to the font the newspapers were printed in.
“Maybe the papers lie about some things, but not about this. The curriculum has been standardized across public and private schools. We could move Georg to any school in the country but this isn’t going away.”
“So we’re supposed to accept that he’ll be brainwashed by this nonsense?”
Jürgen sighed as he stepped into the bath. He scooped water up to wash his face, then rested his head against the tiled wall behind him.
“All right-minded German parents are trapped, just as we are,” Jürgen said tiredly. “I don’t even think we have a right to complain. The cage we’retrapped in is at least a gilded one.”
“Sooner or later, he’s going to realize that Mayim is Jewish. His teacher is going to make sure of it.”
We stared at one another in the harsh light of the bathroom. Jürgen closed his eyes again.
“I know,” he whispered, shaking his head. “I just don’t know what to do about it.”
Later, I stretched out on my luxurious mattress in the beautiful house I’d been so desperate to keep, but I had never felt less comfortable.
Just a few weeks later, Georg seemed to sink into a funk, and he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. After several days of trying to cheer him up, I called Lydia to see if she or Hans could shed any light.
“It’s to be expected,” she said sadly.