Lilly burst into tears and nodded to Mrs. Baumann, who didn’t need to explain further: Edith had succeeded in getting Lilly to safety.
She didn’t know how, or what Edith had done, but Lilly knew that it was their sacrifice that made this possible. They had stood up against a wicked regime, stared it in the face, and proudly accepted the fate handed down to them.
Looking again to heaven, Lilly searched the clouds for her mother, but she was nowhere to be seen. Still, despite the absence of signs, Lilly felt that her mother wasn’t distant, but rather, expectant.
Leaning over slightly, Lilly looked at her father who, she realized, was looking back at her with a sorrowful yet proud smile. Without words, they nodded at each other, each explaining through their glances that everything was going to be alright.
Looking again at Wilhelm, Lilly quoted a line from the journal, “But if the while, I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restor’d, and all sorrows end.”
“Then, I will think only on you.” Wilhelm swallowed, and Lilly noticed that his bravery was wearing thin.
Suddenly, Guenther kicked out Mr. Sommer’s crate, and he fell with a thud that vibrated throughout the gallows and ran down Lilly’s noose.
Still, Wilhelm stared at Lilly as he began to panic and exhaled quickly before his crate was also kicked out by Guenther.
Lilly began to hyperventilate as she watched Wilhelm and her father struggling. The seconds stretched into minutes as Lilly again turned her face to heaven and closed her eyes while the snow fell gently on her face.
Remembering Wilhelm’s instructions, she breathed out, voiding her lungs and hastening death. The rise of the Valkyrie tune began reverberating through her mind, and Lilly understood, in that instant, where her soul was destined.
Lilly’s heart rose into her throat when her crate was kicked out from underneath her, and she suddenly fell. The noose tightened around her neck, but she didn’t permit herself to struggle. She remained defiant as she stared out at the red jacket until, eventually, darkness overtook her.
THE END
This book is dedicated to the approximately seventy-seven thousand Germans who were executed for resistance against the Nazi regime.
One such resistance member was Sophie Scholl, who was involved with the White Rose movement. She was executed at the age of twenty-one, alongside her brother, Hans Scholl, by guillotine.
Another woman was Hannie Schaft, who resisted the Nazi invasion of her home country, the Netherlands. She, along with another group of fighters, would actively liquidate Nazi officials. She was twenty-four when she was executed.
This book is also dedicated to the Jewish lives lost or permanently altered by the Nazi pogroms.
In Marburg, at the start of 1933, the Jewish population was numbered around three hundred and fifty.
Of the Jews who remained and did not escape after the Night of Broken Glass, twenty-three were deported to Riga, and fifty-four were sent to Theresienstadt. Another eighteen Jewish patients at the Marburg mental institution were murdered.
At the beginning of 1945, only seven Jews remained in Marburg.
The following was attributed to Winston Churchill. Although he advised that he doesn’t remember making this statement, he did advise that he agreed with the sentiment:
“In Germany, there lived an opposition which was weakened by their losses and an enervating international policy, but which belongs to the noblest and greatest that the political history of any nation has ever produced. These men fought without help from within or from abroad, driven forward only by the restlessness of their conscience. As long as they lived, they were invisible and unrecognizable to us because they had to camouflage themselves. But their death made the resistance visible.”
The Daughters of Marburg Page 34
