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passion.
They sprang from his soul. He had uttered them the first time they
lay together in their secret Eden along the banks of the Vlatava.
Inexperienced and clumsy as he was, she had simply held him tightly
to her body, ignoring her own sexual awakening, for which he was
thankful, and whispered softly, “I love you, Erich. I always will.
Forever.”
    Julia watched Erich disappear into the
night, and then felt her father’s comforting arm around her
shoulders.
    “ He is a troubled young
man Julia, troubled and haunted.”
    “ Haunted?”
    “ Yes, haunted, I’m afraid,
by what he sees as the truth now.”
    “ Truth should haunt no one
unless it becomes mixed up with evil,” Julia said, puzzled by her
father’s observation of Erich.
    “ I know, but Dr. Guett’s
lecture shredded Erich’s innocence into a thousand pieces. It’s
difficult to see one’s reality shattered before your eyes as Erich
has.”
    “ His reality?”
    “ Yes, his reality, not the
reality you and I know and live in. I believe he understands now,
for the first time, the futility of the Jews trying to stay alive
in Germany, and perhaps even here in Prague. That is what Dr. Guett
was telling all of the German students today.”
    “ Oh Papa, how horrible,”
Julia cried, using the pet name she used to call her father as a
young girl.
    “ We must be patient with
Erich. Truth can become so fragile when one’s existence depends on
it. Now go to bed. We will talk some more tomorrow when the sun is
shining and the day is bright.”
    Julia went to bed, but would not
sleep. The terrible dream that she might lose Erich was there,
waiting somewhere in the room for her eyes to close, and she would
not let that happen.
     
     
    ***
     
     
    FIVE
     
    W e are all equal at
our beginnings. But only for a moment. Then we become what history
has long promised we must be. A few do escape, though, grabbed at
birth by other gods promising a different destiny. The rest remain
to struggle with what awaits them. Such was Julia and her family’s
promises given by history. The ancient Hebrew blood of her
ancestors flowed through every vein in Julia’s body, leaving no
other course but that which was about to come.
    Standing next to Julia, Erich’s eyes
focused on the official announcement recently posted by the
university barring all Jewish students henceforth from the
university, including the medical school. Before Julia could finish
reading the devastating news herself, derisive cheers began to
break out from the Sudeten students when they saw her with
Erich.
    “ Get out, go, Jew, back to
your filthy hole where you belong.”
    Erich quickly took Julia’s hand,
leading her outside into a small courtyard and then away from the
campus. The German university’s decision to dismiss all Jewish
students was not unexpected. During the hot summer months, he had
huddled almost nightly with Julia and her family around their
radio, listening to the growing thunder of the Third Reich, now no
longer distant, demanding autonomy for the Sudetenland. Nothing
changed, though, until the following spring, when the Austrian Anschluss fell from the darkening clouds gathering over
Prague like a thunderbolt hurled by Ares, the Greek god of war. No
one spoke. There was nothing to discuss. But Julia glanced
hurriedly at Erich to capture his face, as if it would be the last
time they would be together.
    At first, Erich refused to return to
the university without Julia, insisting that were he to do so, it
would be tantamount to accepting the newly adopted anti-Semitic
policies. Instead, Dr. Kaufmann urged, he must become a voice of
reason within the university, crying out at every opportunity
against the rising sea of hatred now threatening to engulf all of
Prague as it had Germany. He would do so, Erich promised Dr.
Kaufmann, and do it well.
    Monday morning at the university came
slowly to Erich and the other students, as if history had decided
to sit down and rest, perhaps to catch