ATHOTS Chapter Seven

Rudolf Obermann was tall and blond and blue-eyed and square-jawed. But he hated Nazism with a passion. On the day he was taken away, he fought against those who believed they were bestowing on him the greatest honor a man could receive.

He was taken anyway regardless. His protests meant nothing. A little of the old world poison... perhaps his parents instilled some of that false doctrine in him... it would soon rub off and Rudolf Obermann would be as proud a Nazi as any of them... perhaps worthy of a place near the Fuhrer himself, eh?

But they were wrong. Not all men in Germany were so eager to become heartless monsters with nerves of steel and eyes filled with hatred. It is a pity, though, that Rudolf rebelled so strongly. Had he been quieter, said less and listened more... he might have made some real resistance against the Nazis. But he openly defied them. They drilled him, questioned him, screamed at him, beat him, threw him into solitary confinement, and after many weeks, dragged him out at last, only to force him into a Wehrmacht uniform and send him packing to the Russian front.

Rudolf Obermann died there, on the Russian front, fighting the Nazis to the last. His last few hours on earth had been spent in helping to lead a Russian attack against the soldiers of Hitler's Third Reich.

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There was a dingy little office in a corner of Solingen with a black swastika in a field of red draped on the door. Inside, on a rickety old desk, lay a list of names. Some of them were crossed out, and many of them were marked with little symbols that meant terrifying things... and no one knew exactly what things but the writers of that list. Twenty-three names down from the top was written "Obermann, Johann and Gretje", and it was circled in red. Beside this, someone had scrawled, in the same red ink, "son a traitor."

The Third Reich had taken the Obermanns' son. But they were not finished with the family yet. And in March of 1943, Nazi boots tramped once again to the door of the Obermanns' home.

The house was ransacked, the family dragged out and made to stand in the front yard and watch... watch as a torch was thrown through the window.

Gretje Obermann screamed in horror as red and orange flames licked at the window frame, her blue chintz curtains vaporizing into black smoke. Bekah and Shonie were in there still... huddled beneath the floor... the floor that would soon be ablaze.

Johann Obermann pushed past the Nazi guard who stood calmly watching the house burn... and leaped through the window, in spite of the flames. When he returned, minutes later, singed and panting, there were two Jewish girls in his arms. In plain view of the hunters of the Jews. 

He had not thought... 

But was there anything he could have done different? Condemn the girls to a death in the flames... or let them be taken by the Nazis? In the end... they were all taken.

And Rachel's message, delivered secretly through the underground by a dozen careful people, reached no one and nothing but a charred and blackened ruin of a home and ghostly memories of the past.

And the message? 

Safe in Monschau, God be thanked... sending love and hugs and prayers. May we meet when the sun shines again.

Dear little sisters...

Will the sun shine again?