Russia, it seemed, offered hope. Lenin’s writings on the need for equality between the sexes brought Mildred to her feet. When students visited the apartment, she’d dash to her bookshelves for his dog-eared books and read passages aloud. Lenin railed against the “old, bourgeois humiliation of women.” How much more enlightened these proclamations were than the Nazi view, which held that women should limit the scope of their activities and concern themselves with only three things: Kinder, Küche, Kirche—children, kitchen, church.
