Finding Rebecca: A Novel of Love and the Holocaust by Eoin Dempsey

been
seven years since they had been in Germany, for their grandmother’s funeral.
Christopher watched his father as the train pulled in, his face hardly
betraying any emotion at the return to the city of his birth. Alexandra smiled
as they stepped out onto the platform. “It feels like we’re coming home, truly
it does,” she said turning to Stefan.

    ‚ÄúI love Berlin,‚Äù Stefan answered with
a tiny sigh. “But this isn’t the Berlin that I knew,” he said as a horde of
school children shifted past them across the platform, dressed in the light
brown uniforms of the Hitler Youth.   They stood and watched the children pass and Stefan looked down at
Alexandra again.

    She shrugged her shoulders. ‚ÄúIt‚Äôs no
different than the scouts.” But Stefan didn’t answer and picked up the bags. They
followed beside him as he walked out to a tram, which arrived in a matter of
seconds, and they pushed aboard to make for their hotel. The flags were the
first things Christopher saw. The black swastika, in the white circle on the
red background, lined up to obediently flicker in the wind outside the station
in great 30-foot swathes.

    The tram was packed and they stood
with their bags at their feet, holding onto the straps draped down over the
pole above. Alexandra was still smiling. She hadn’t stopped smiling since
they’d arrived. Everything was fascinating and Christopher looked at the people
around them on the tram, studying the expressionless faces of the commuters.
There was a young man, a little older than he, standing about three feet from
him, leaning casually against the window, reading a newspaper. Christopher saw
the drawing on the front and looked up at his father in disgust. Stefan stared
back at him and then at the picture of the overdrawn, plainly Jewish man,
murdering a screaming child, and at the bottom of the page ran the headline, The Jews are Our Misfortune . Christopher
stood in front of his sister, between her and the newspaper as the tram
continued.

    Uli and Karolina were waiting in the
lobby of the hotel as they arrived. The soon to be married couple stood up to
greet them and Karolina hugged Christopher first. They had never met before.
Christopher had only seen her in faded black and white photographs, and always
with Uli, she and Uli in a restaurant smiling and holding their glasses of beer
and her and Uli on the beach at Wannsee.   She was a small woman, with long blond hair and bright blue eyes. She
was pretty. She was young, only five years older than Christopher himself.
Stefan looked like he could have been her father. Christopher hugged Uli,
roughly bashing his shoulder with an open palm until his uncle let him go and
stood back as Uli grasped Alexandra, lifting her into the air. They all stood
back, facing one another. Karolina was first to speak.

    ‚ÄúIt‚Äôs wonderful to meet you all at
last,” she said, her eyes darting from one person to the next. “I’m sure you’re
tired from your journey, but the bad news is that we have a packed afternoon of
sightseeing ahead of us. No time to be tired, I’m afraid. So drop off your bags
upstairs and get back down here. Is that all right, Stefan?”

    ‚ÄúOf course it is, Karolina. We are
all so eager to get to know you that we don’t want to wait another minute.”

    Christopher heard Karolina‚Äôs laugh as
they walked back down the stairs to the lobby and she greeted them again, as if
she hadn’t seen them in a lot longer than the five minutes they had been gone.
Stefan looked at Christopher and laughed as they walked out onto the street to
where Uli was parked. Stefan sat up front with Uli.

    ‚ÄúI‚Äôve never been to Jersey, I would
love to, it sounds wonderful, but this must all be quite different,” Karolina
said as the car started.

    ‚ÄúVery different,‚Äù Christopher answered.

    ‚ÄúIt‚Äôs absolutely