Werner left the bakery in a very sour mood. Marlene had called him a despicable beast and a coward, but that wasn’t the worst. What really got to him was that she was right. In a dozen years in the Soviet Union he’d learned to always toe the party line, never utter an independent or – God forbid – critical thought.
He’d looked away when his parents had fallen victim to the purge, had defended Stalin’s regime when some of his best friends ended up in gulags for minor transgressions, had empathized with veterans of the Spanish Civil War and Lenin’s comrades in arms who’d fallen in disgrace with Stalin.
He sighed. It wasn’t something he was especially proud of, but sometimes the greater good required sacrifices. Individual hardships were inevitable during the transitional period until a tru
