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.“It’s fine.We were just leaving.” Eli placed his hand on the small of Rebecca’s back and pushed her in the direction of the car.He lifted the basket of food and towels from the picnic table and wrapped Rebecca in one of the towels.The once rhythmic cadence of the park’s sounds of nature had been disturbed and became like the streets of Munich, ripping the two of them back into the world they tried to hide from if just for a moment.“They can’t do that,” Rebecca declared and she slammed the door shut.“They can and they have.” Eli reasoned with his lawyer tone and laid a towel over the seat before he started the engine.“This isn’t right,” Rebecca insisted as Eli drove them home in silence.The walk up to their apartment felt long and heavy, each step in a direction they had not chosen and did not want.Eli shut his eyes and plopped on top of the bed.Rebecca sighed like the lungs within her constricted and she found it hard to breathe.“Are you alright?” Eli asked and sat up on the foot of the bed, watching her in the living area through the open door.“I’m fine, Eli.Don’t worry about me.” She brushed his concerns off her like she brushed the dust off the objects in her room.She did not want sympathy or unwarranted fret.He was the one in danger, the one whose civil rights were violated every day since the chancellorship of Hitler.He needed her sympathies.She climbed into the bed with him, though it was still afternoon.They snuggled like the couple at the lake in the distance, swirling and twirling and swimming toward the shore.But the bedroom only offered a momentary peace, passing hours that soon fell into the next day when Rebecca needed to report to work and Eli began to feel cooped up inside the apartment.He needed to feel normal again, busy with work for his father.He didn’t graduate University to lie in bed all day and he didn’t enjoy the lack of intellectual stimulation from being absent from the courtroom.He did not want to become a prisoner in the country he was born and raised in.He felt as German as his Aryan neighbors and, with exception to his observance of Jewish Holy days and Shabbos and avoidance of pork, he was very much German.But the days filled with an absence of many things for Eli, an absence of Rebecca, an absence of the courtroom, an absence of his office, and an absence of fresh air.Since the boycott and riots in April, fear and violence escalated with Jews the primary target.Eli swore to Rebecca he would not linger outside for too long in the mornings without her and he would not walk the streets unless necessary.Gestapo, SA, and Hitler’s Youth patrolled the streets now.He spent much of his time reading from banned authors and reviewing the law.This law no longer existed under Nazi control and radical reform, but he grew up with and knew it, and hoped it would return someday.He sipped his morning tea which Rebecca prepared for him before a succulent kiss on the lips and a wave goodbye for the day.He went downstairs, slid his coin into the vender and pulled out the day’s paper, Hamburger Tageblatt newspaper, Friday 31.The Nazis not only controlled parliament, the streets and public opinion, but controlled journalism, too, to ensure no one spoke against them.As Eli read the paper walking back to the apartment, he realized no words were untainted anymore.Nazi propaganda slanted all the news on the radio and in the papers and he ripped the paper in half before tossing it into the waste basket in the corner of the fourth floor.He headed to the room, vowing to never read the paper until the Nazis no longer held power.Monday, June 16, 1933Rebecca drove to the hospital in her car, the Christmas gift from her father, and her mind wandered back to the last Christmas with her papa and mother [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]