The Gathering Storm by Bodie Thoene, Brock Thoene

to share it.
    Even so, a wide gulf seemed to separate us that holiday.
    Elisa had returned to a Germany almost unrecognizable from that of her childhood. The strain was palpable on their family.
    Elisa's father, Theo Lindheim, was a decorated war hero who had flown aeroplanes in the Great War. He was also the owner of a much-admired Berlin department store.
    But my uncle Theo was also a Jew, and Elisa was half-Jewish. By reason of the Aryan laws about racial purity, my dear cousin was among the second tier of those most hated by the Nazis. Her father, being both wealthy and a Jew, was in the highest category of those slated for arrest. The Lindheim family was watched by the Gestapo. Without changing one bit, without committing any crime, they had become enemies of Hitler's Third Reich.
    I had not suspected that uncle Theo and Aunt Anna had been preparing for the worst for some time. Elisa's passport was Czech, not German. She performed in Vienna under the Aryan stage-name of Elisa Linder.
    I never imagined that the worst could actually come to pass in my own family as madness gripped Germany by the throat.
    Elisa was distant and very quiet at our family gathering. She played her violin for us as we opened gifts several days early before the Christmas tree, but I noticed the light of joy was gone from her beautiful face. Blue eyes, so much like those of my aunt Anna, were downcast.
    That Christmas Lindheim's Department Store was bursting with holiday cheer. The birch-paneled walls and the mirrored columns of the hall dedicated to scarves and shawls were festooned with greenery. Bright red holly berries and sprays of mistletoe denned the archways.
    Only the red-and-black banners of Nazi supremacy, which state ordinance decreed must drape the outside facade of the building, spoke of how things had changed. The shining electric lights of the Christmas star on Lindheim's roof seemed in danger of being swallowed up in a swarm of creeping spiders.
    The day she and I went Christmas shopping in her father's store, she was constantly glancing from side to side. I must admit, I was startled when I followed her gaze and spotted a Gestapo agent trailing behind us. He smiled in a tight-lipped, arrogant way when she noticed him.
    He wanted her to know she was being watched.
    Over lunch in the elegant Tea Room, with its pale blue and silver brocade carpet and its art deco brushed-chrome wall sconces, I confessed to Elisa that I was in love with Eben Golah. Her expression was one of pity for me.
    Elisa replied, simply, in a barely audible whisper, "Oh, Lora, but Eben is a Jew...as I am, as my father is. Eben must be leaving Germany forever."
    I nodded in agreement that this was the plan, never thinking that perhaps Uncle Theo had also made plans for a desperate escape for his family. Elisa knew what was about to transpire, but she never spoke one word to me.
    Who among us would live and who would die was something I pondered when I climbed into my bed at night. The pink floral wallpaper and row of stuffed teddy bears on my shelf seemed suddenly too childish for the terror raging around us.
    Varrick was still recovering from the beating and did not come to church all through Advent. Many whom we had counted as faithful parishioners stayed away that year. I wrote Christmas cards to my Texas cousins and dreamed of holidays in America.
    Papa and Mama and I called on the Keplers at their beautiful three-story home on Christmas Eve. Swastikas and foul epithets were scrawled on the hewn stone exterior.
    Servants who had worked for many years in the Kepler home had quit at the "suggestion" of Nazi party members. Mrs. Kepler, a petite, elegant woman in her late thirties, peeked out from behind the lace curtains and then answered the door herself. Her doe-eyes brimmed with tears when my mother stepped into the foyer and embraced her. The aroma of cinnamon and apples filled my senses.
    "Happy Christmas," Mama greeted Mrs. Kepler, though we all knew it