Her Secret Diary

Her Secret Diary

By

Tamara Dahlberg

Twin sisters Hannah and Emma Shubert sat in the stuffy

office of the law office of Walters and Stanton watching

their family lawyer shuffle papers and sweat profusely. The

weather in New York was suffocatingly hot in August of

1960. They waited to hear the reading of their parents will

after their death in a horrible car accident a month before.

Their parents Elias and Sophia had come to New York with

their grandparents Laura and Lucas during the Holocaust.

They were originally from Bavaria Germany. They had a

large farm. Their grandparents from their mother’s family

were also farmers in the same area of Bavaria. Their names

were Anna and Tobias Bauer. They were killed by German

soldiers for resisting having their farm taken over for

housing their troops. Shortly after that had happened, Elias

had contacted a trusted friend that was helping to get

people safe passage to the United States. The whole family

then came to New York to escape the dangers of the war.

No one was safe, whether you were German or Jewish.

“Thank you for coming into the office today Hannah and

Emma. We will get on with the formal reading of your

parents will shortly. Let me begin by offering my

condolences on your loss of your parents. They were good

and generous and loving people. And very brave for coming

to New York and giving up their home in Germany to keep

you all safe from the horrors of the Holocaust. It was a

horrible time in history that will take everyone that was

affected from it a long time to recover. In short, they

recovered money from that property after the war ended by

selling the place. You will be the sole beneficiaries of that

money as well as the home that you have here in New York,

which amounts to 20,000 dollars each in monetary amount

and your family home and car etc.” Mr. Stanton concluded

before the official reading of the will.

In the days that followed Emma and Hanna’s inheritance,

they talked about that it would be good to take their parents

ashes to Bavaria and put them on the farm. They first

contacted the new owners to get their permission who

generously agreed. The new owners had even kept

everything that had been left behind and said that they could

go through it and keep whatever they wanted. Emma and

Hannah made the travel arrangements with enthusiasm. It

would be so wonderful to see the place that was their family

home before New York.

Upon arrival to the farm in Bavaria they were surprised at

the beauty of the area and how large the farm was. The new

owners were kind and accommodating from the minute they

arrived. They thought that it was a respectful tribute that

the sisters wanted to visit and bring their parents ashes

back home to Germany. Their names were Mia and Paul

Hoffman. They offered the sisters to stay with them and

offered to help with any questions of the area and history of

the area. Emma and Hannah gratefully accepted the offer.

Mia showed them first to their rooms and then took them

up to the attic so they could begin to comb through the

belongings left behind by their parents and grandparents. At

first it was just pictures and clothing and odd and ends.

Then Hannah saw something that caught her eye. It was in

the bottom of her mother’s trunk that was carefully wrapped

up in a scarf. It was an old black book with a lock on the

front and upon closer looking there was a key on the other

bottom corner of the trunk that looked as though it would

unlock the book. They felt like they might be intruding on

their mother’s privacy, but they could not resist reading the

contents. And there was also a picture of a strange man

enclosed. On the back was a name and address written.

The name read, Daniel Liebermann. The address was also a

Bavarian address. This stoked the flame of their curiosity

even further.

“Dear Diary, things have gotten so bad with Hitler and his

army. Everyone must be careful to watch what they say.

Everyone must express support for their agenda of arresting

Jewish people and removing them from Germany. Jewish

farmers had all been removed and banned from agriculture.

And the onset of removing them from being allowed to

practice medicine or law or teaching had further removed

them from German society. And it was rumored that they

were being forced to sell their homes and businesses.

Things were getting very scary since the first day of Hitler’s

rise to power. And it was becoming dangerous for German’s

to express any disapproval of these actions, or to be

associated with any Jewish sympathizing of any sort. It is

hard to predict how bad things would become in the future

of the new Germany.”

Hannah and Emma continued reading the words that their

mother had written for the next few pages. It got

progressively worse with the frightening conditions of life in

Germany. They knew from past conversations with their

parents and grandparents that they had never supported the

actions and events of the Nazi’s, but they did not realize how

dangerous it had been to feel that way while living through

it.

“Dear Diary, things are so awful and getting worse every

day. An event called Kristallnacht brought about the death

of several Jewish people and the arrest of many Jewish

people. It is rumored that they have been put into

Concentration camps and that those camps are horrific. We

cannot say it out loud, but we feel so dismayed by the

actions of the German Army and the Fuhrer Hitler’s

leadership. My parents are becoming terrified of what might

happen next, and who will be affected. Will it begin to affect

German citizens as well?”

The girls were shocked after reading for awhile after that

event. It sounded awful. They felt so grateful that their

family had eventually gotten out of Germany and arrived

safely in New York. They also realized how lucky they were

as babies also lucky to have gotten out and not had to grow

up with these conditions. They had just graduated High

School and returned to Germany after the horror of the

Holocaust. They were so young to have lost their parents,

but now realized they could have all died if they had stayed

in Germany. They came across an entry in the diary then

that shocked them very much. It told the story of how a

Jewish boy named Daniel Liebermann had came to my

mother’s farm one night when she was gathering eggs for

the next days breakfast. He had gotten separated from his

family when they had escaped from their home not far from

the farm which my mother lived. They had almost been

captured by the Nazi’s. He was very frightened. Their

mother agreed to hide him for as long as possible even

though it was extremely dangerous for her and their

grandparents. She had to keep him a secret even from them

or they would have had no choice but to turn him over to the

Nazi’s. To hide a Jewish person would get a German in so

much trouble and possibly death. Their mother hid him for a

long period of time and kept up with the events of the

Holocaust closely. In the time that Sophia and Daniel spent

together they fell deeply in love. Sophia knew the dangers

of loving him, but she could not stop her feelings. One night

Daniel told her that it was time for him to leave and try to

make it safely to the border of Switzerland. He knew that

his family had fled in that direction the night he was

separated from them. It was rumored that an agent of the

War Refugee Board was helping to rescue Jewish people

from the Holocaust in Switzerland.

Daniel and Sophia clung to one another and cried tears of

fear and heartbreak of having to say goodbye. Their feelings

carried them away in an act of passion. After they tore

themselves away from one last embrace and kiss, they

tearfully said goodbye and Daniel disappeared into the night.

In the days that followed, Sophia became so distraught

that it made her physically sick. She realized that weeks

had gone by and she did not have her monthly period and her

middle and breasts were filling out. She confided in her

mother and cried in her arms. After she finished her mother

was in a panic. She quickly came up with a plan to protect

her daughter’s indiscretion. It would get her killed if it came

out. She told Sophia that she must marry Elias Shubert who

was a boy from a neighboring farm that had been in love

with Sophia for some time now and expressed the intention

of wanting to marry Sophia. She would have to keep the

pregnancy a secret until after they married and that she

would have to keep it a secret forever that the child was not

Elias’s child. It was the only way to ensure that Sophia and

the child would not be killed. Shocked and scared, Sophia

agreed. They were married shortly after the plan was set in

motion. Shortly after their marriage her parents were shot

by the Germans for resistance of their home being occupied

by German soldiers. That was when Lucas Shubert made

the arrangements for them all to sail to New York and begin

a new life away from Germany and the dangers of the

Holocaust.

Emma and Hannah were shocked to realize that they had a

different biological father but understood that their mother

had kept the secret for the safety of herself and her

children.

In the end they decided to search for their father. He

was a lawyer in Bavaria and had married and had two kids.

His wife had passed the year before. After they talked of the

past he asked if they would consider living with him and

their new siblings. It was as if their mother had given them

the gift of family to help them heal from the loss of their

family members that they had grown up with.