Edda recited the ballads that she had learned, and a famous
poem containing the lines, “Above all, child, be loyal and true /
And never, lips, be sullied by a lie.” Göring tapped the glass and
softly interrupted, “Yes, remember that, Edda: all your life
long.”
“Papa,” she squeaked, “when you come home, will you
please put on your rubber medals in the bath like people say you
do?”
He never saw Edda again. When the world speculated how he
had obtained the poison, later, she clasped her mother’s hand
and said, “I know! A window opened in the ceiling of his cell,
and an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and gave it to
him.”
Since sentencing was postponed, the daily half-hour visits
were continued. So near and yet, with the glass plate separating
them, so far: He asked Emmy once what she did all day long
(she was staying with the Stahmers) and she smiled. “For
twenty-three and a half hours each day,” she replied, “I look
forward to seeing you.” On September , the wives were or-
dered to leave Nuremberg. “Don’t you believe,” she pleaded at
their last meeting now, “that we three shall, one day, be together
in freedom?”
“I beg of you,” Göring replied fervently, bending close to
the glass, “give up hope.”
As the sentinel led him away, he turned and called out,
“Don’t write anymore. I shan’t either.”
Judgment day, Tuesday, October , came. The execution
team four generals had demanded privileged seats in the
courtroom that day, but Jackson primly refused, arguing that it
was always possible that there would be no death sentences what-
ever. More realistically, the world’s newspapers published pho-