Lilac Girls (31 page)

“I have two things to tell you, and we must be quick,” Brit said in a soft voice. “One is an SS man, high up, came today inquiring about your mother.”

“What?
Who?
”

“Not sure, but he was very tall.”

Lennart! Here at Ravensbrück? Was Matka here too somewhere?

Brit pulled me closer. “And also, they are hunting Rabbits today.”

Those words gave me gooseflesh all over. “But it's almost dark. A night selection?”

“Binz is on the warpath. Suhren is coming too. They doubled the liquor ration for the guards.”

“We'll have to hide,” I said.

Could I get Zuzanna under the block? Or Anise could hide us with the Hungarian Jews again. The typhus ward?

“They know you've been hiding under the block, Kasia.”

“We'll go up to the Annex.”

“They know that too. And there are new buses here.”

Buses.
A jolt of fear shot through me. There was no time for hysterics.

I hurried back to the block.

An inky blackness settled in around me, for there was no moon that night. The floodlights above clicked on as I ran the best I could despite my bad leg, pushing women aside on the way to my block.

Just don't feel anything.
If you are to live, you cannot feel.

I knew as I entered the block that word of the hunt preceded me, for girls were crying and holding one another. I pushed through women from every country Hitler had plundered, the room a jumble of different languages: Russian, French, Hungarian, Polish. I found Zuzanna on our bunk, knees to her chest, shaking with chills. She barely lifted her head.

“Have you heard?” I said. I sat next to her on the bunk and stroked her forehead. “They are coming for the Rabbits. You need to get up, my darling.”

Zuzanna opened her eyes and then closed them. “No, Kasia.”

Anise pushed through the crowd, calling my name.

“Get out now, Kasia,” Anise said in her calm way. “They are coming. Binz and Suhren and the woman doctor. The Red Cross already took the Swedish girls, and French girls are being taken next. From the linen shop. I'll keep the back window open for you.”

“In buses?” I said.

“Yes. Use the number 9284. It's safe. I could only get one.”

I grabbed her wrist.

“Don't go, Anise. How do you know it's not a death transport?”

How many times had we seen them trick women into buses? Some looked like ambulances, with red crosses painted on the sides. We heard them drive around to the little painter's shack and cut their engines. After that, those prisoners' clothes would come back to the linen shop, smelling of the sweet, unmistakable odor of gas.

“It's the Swedish Red Cross, Kasia, the real thing, and you need to hurry.”

“Girls, we have
Appell,
” said Marzenka, banging a pot with a wooden spoon.

Anise ran out with one last look back.

I pulled Zuzanna by the hand. “We need to—”

“No, Kasia. You go.”

She tried to lie back down on the bunk.

“We need to get under the block,” I said as I pulled her up, held her around the waist, and guided her through the crowd toward the door, her weight light against me, like a dried branch.

Marzenka stood on a dining bench, hoarse from yelling above the din.

“Please. Binz has given me her word no harm will come to any of you.”

That only increased the panic, and many ran for the door, but Binz and her dog appeared there ahead of her
Aufseherinnen.
Just outside the doorway stood Commandant Suhren and Dr. Oberheuser, she with clipboard in hand. I was close enough to see light snow on the shoulders of Binz's gray cape. Her dog nipped at Zuzanna's leg, and we drew back.

“Everyone out here now for
Appell,
” said Binz. “Disobey orders, and you will be shot.”

Dr. Oberheuser at a block selection? We were trapped with no choice but to comply. No time to get to our hiding place. I pulled up my socks. Would the doctor recognize me?

I supported Zuzanna as we all filed out onto Beauty Road in front of the block and stood at attention in the cool night air, the lights above shining bright. What if we ran? Even if we had good legs to run with, the dogs would finish us. Though it was cold, I felt hot all over. This was it. Why had I not been faster?

Binz and Dr. Oberheuser walked up and down our ranks and checked our numbers. Binz stopped in front of me, crop in hand.

“Roll down your stockings,” she said.

So this was how it was to end.

I rolled down one sock. It revealed my good leg. Binz motioned to Dr. Oberheuser.

The doctor paused.

“Well, Doctor?” Binz said.

I held my breath. The doctor seemed frozen in a dream as she stared at me. Was that hatred or pity? She motioned to my other leg.

“The other one,” Binz said. I rolled my other sock down, over the smooth ridges of indentations where my muscles once were. The doctor must have recognized her handiwork, for she nodded a quick yes to Binz, and they moved on to Zuzanna. Zuzanna looked at me.
Be strong,
that look said. Next we would go to the wall. Would I be able to be brave like the others and walk down Beauty Road, head held high?

Dr. Oberheuser seemed puzzled by Zuzanna at first, for her scars were not as obvious as others'. Would she let Zuzanna go? Send me to the wall, I prayed. Let my sister live. Let one of us go home to Papa.

The doctor nodded to Binz.

Yes.

Zuzanna took hold of my hand. We'd go to the shooting wall together as we'd always planned, there for each other until the end.

Then something very strange happened.

The lights went out.

Not just the floodlights but also every light in the camp. It was as if the hand of God had come down and drenched us in the kind of velvety black where you can't see a single thing. Girls called to one another. Suhren, Oberheuser, and Binz barked orders in the darkness. The confused dogs growled. You would not have believed how loud it was in the camp with everyone on Beauty Road, crying and calling out.

“Adelige,
sit,
” said Binz, her tin training clicker chirping in the darkness.

I grabbed Zuzanna by the waist and pulled her away from the group. Would the lights come back on any second? I felt my way along and brushed Dr. Oberheuser in the darkness. A wave of the terrible perfume she wore washed over us. I stepped on Binz's foot and felt her arms windmill.

“Verdammtes Arschloch!”
she said.

I headed for the linen shop, heart beating out of my chest, guessing the direction in the darkness, one arm around Zuzanna, the other outstretched in front of me like the cowcatcher in front of a train, bumping into people in the darkness. The fire from the crematorium in the distance was not bright enough to illuminate the camp, but I navigated by it. I practically dragged Zuzanna, her full weight against me.

I knew we were in the right area when I saw a bus in front of the linen shop, the vehicle lit from within, the only light in the camp. As we drew closer to the shop building, I heard French girls talking. I felt for the back window and helped Zuzanna climb in, then followed her, pulling my bad leg in with great effort. It was warm in the room, and the crowd smelled good as I pushed through, a mix of perspiration and perfume.

Zuzanna leaned against me. “I can't go much farther.”

“We are almost there,” I said. “You can rest soon.”

I saw Anise's friend Claire in the glow of a flashlight.

“Kasia,” she said.

I grabbed her arm. “Binz has us on her list. As soon as the lights come on, Zuzanna and I will be taken.”

“The lights won't come on tonight,” Claire said. “The Russian girls turned them off. Szura flipped the switch at the transformer station once they heard Suhren was coming for the Rabbits. The whole electrical grid is down, and they'll not turn it back on until morning.”

“How do you know these buses are really Red Cross?”

“Suhren has been stalling them, but they threatened to ram the gate. The girls in the office said Himmler himself authorized Count Bernadotte of Sweden to take us.”

Elaborate hoaxes had been made up before to get girls to go peacefully, but it was our only chance.

“Anise gave me a number,” I said.

“Make sure you move along,” said Claire. “This is the last bus. Two have already loaded and are waiting at the gate to go.”

I held Zuzanna and pushed through the crowd in the darkness. From the French I'd learned, I could tell the girls were all excited to be going home. As the last of them loaded, there were few left in the shop.

Once I made it to the front of the line, I saw two men stood at the back of the bus checking numbers. One I did not know. The other was fat Winkelmann, dressed in his long leather coat. The rear door of the bus was swung open wide to reveal French girls packed into the bus, standing, waiting. A blond nurse dressed in a white uniform stood inside, helping people up the few steps. If this was a Nazi hoax, it was an elaborate one, but German guards often wore the uniforms of doctors and nurses in order to fool us.

I breathed easier once I told Winkelmann the number Anise had given me and I helped Zuzanna into the bus. When my turn came to step up into the bus, the nurse bent toward me.

I set one foot on the wooden step stool.

Was this really happening? Going home? To Lublin? To Papa…The nurse smiled and reached her hand to me and I took it.

Winkelmann placed his white stick across my chest.

“Stop. Number?”

The nurse clenched my hand tighter. “Their numbers have all been checked. We don't have time to argue.” She spoke German but with a Swedish accent. We were going home.

Winkelmann pushed me back with his stick, and the nurse released my hand.

“My orders are French
Häftlings
only. If this girl is French, I am Charles de Gaulle.”

“I am indeed French,” I said in German. Did he see my legs shaking?

“Yes?” Winkelmann said. “Say something in your native tongue, French girl.”

Without hesitating, I said in the most forceful French I could, “This dryer is too hot. Can you cut a little more off the sides? May I have a permanent wave, please, with medium curl and extra end papers? And use the boar-bristle brush, for it seems to help with my dandruff.”

Winkelmann looked at the other man. “She's a Pole for sure,” he said.

“Just get on the bus,” the other man said and waved me on.

“We need to move,” said the nurse, pulling me up to join Zuzanna. “Come in quickly.”

As the nurse began to shut the doors, a prisoner ran to the bus with a bundle of clothes. “Wait, your baggage!” she called out, and handed the package up.

“That's mine,” said sweet Pienotte Poirot, a friend of Anise's, from the front of the bus. The girls passed the bundle down to her, and her friends drew near.

The bus jerked forward, and we started on our way toward the open gates. Just a short way to freedom.

Please let this be a real hospital bus.

The white pole at the guard station lifted, the bus driver gunned the gas, and we left the gates behind. Why did I not feel the joy of liberation? We made our way down the road along the lake, and Pienotte opened her bundle.

“My God, it is Guy,” said Claire to me. Pienotte opened the blanket to show a tiny newborn, pink and healthy, with a head of dark hair. “He was born two days ago. Thank God he didn't cry. Smart boy.”

We rumbled down the road, the bus lights showing the way, illuminating the backs of our escorts, three German soldiers on motorcycles.

How strange to be on a bus once again. How I had missed the pleasing pull of it: gears shifting then hesitating, gliding and pushing on,
going
somewhere. The road went from cobblestones to smooth paving made flat by the road crew's concrete roller. What a fine job you did, ladies, I thought. If only you could feel the smoothness of it.

A teakettle cried somewhere close, already at a boil.

A bomb.

The earth shook, rocking the bus, and the lake lit up like a camera flash.

“It's the Allies, bombing,” the nurse said. “They must think we are a German caravan.”

The driver cut the lights, the engine too, as the Germans left us and buzzed back to camp, their taillights growing smaller and smaller in the darkness. The teakettle whined again, and we cried out as the ridge above us split and our faces lit up, as if around a campfire. At least the impact felt like something, like we were alive, and sent us to the rubber floor. I held my sister to me, bone on bone, and we fell against the others. Did she breathe? Did I? I pressed her to my chest, warm against me.

Soon the bus engine came alive, and we lurched on toward Sweden, our two hearts one.

B
y April of 1945, Germany had lost the war, though the news media would not admit this. They clung to their fairy-tale world until the end. I knew the war was lost from listening to foreign broadcasts in my quarters. According to the BBC, the western Allies had pushed past the Rhine, and German casualties soared. Suhren said it was only a matter of time before Germany reclaimed Paris, but I knew we were defeated. On April 18 we heard that American tanks rolled into my hometown of Düsseldorf and easily captured the city. The British and Americans were headed full speed toward Berlin.

One afternoon I left camp and stole along the lakeshore, my steps muffled by humps of moss, suitcase handle slippery in my hand. The lake was angry, and whitecaps whipped across it. Was it stirred by the breeze or by those whose ashes were buried there, settled into silt? How could I be blamed? I had only taken the job of camp doctor out of necessity. It was too late for the lost to raise their bony fingers and give testament against me now.

As I neared Fürstenberg, I met a sea of German men, women, and children walking, some with luggage, some with only the clothes on their backs. Half of Fürstenberg's civilians had headed south months before, and it seemed the other half was evacuating that day to escape the Red Army. From their posture alone, one read the humiliation of defeat. I joined that great autobahn of the displaced and was swept up in the crowd, half-numb. It was hard to believe it was all over, that I was running away. The shame of it was near debilitating.

“Where are you going?” I asked a German man in a tweed overcoat and mustard yellow hat. He carried a birdcage strapped to his back. The bird swayed, perched on its little wooden trapeze, as the man walked.

“We are taking side roads to avoid Berlin, then south to Munich. There are American troops advancing from the west, Russians from the east.”

I joined a group headed for Düsseldorf, and our passage on foot was long and unremarkable. We avoided main routes and followed wooded trails and field tracks, slept in abandoned cars, eating anything we could find to stay alive.

I imagined how happy Mutti would be to see me. She had been living with a man named Gunther in a nice apartment upstairs from our old place, and I'd stayed with them one holiday break. He was a nice enough magazine salesman. Rich too by the looks of the apartment. I imagined the fried onions and mashed potatoes with applesauce she would make in that kitchen when I got home.

It was drizzling when I reached Düsseldorf, and I had to be careful to keep a low profile, since there were American soldiers everywhere. Not that I was high on the authorities' list of suspects. Did they even care about me? They had bigger fish to fry.

The streets of Düsseldorf were littered with abandoned suitcases and horse and human corpses. I walked by the Düsseldorf train terminus, bombed to rubble. As I neared Mutti's building, I passed a looted wagon tipped on its side as two elderly women tried to strip off its wheels. Along the street, people came and went, some with all their worldly possessions. I tried to blend in with them, to look like just another displaced person.

Once I made it to Mutti's doorstep, I was happy to see the apartment building not only still standing but in perfect order. All I could think of was her bathtub and a hot meal. The smell of fried onions hung in the lobby. Some lucky person had squirreled away some food.

I made it to the third floor and rang Gunther's apartment bell.

“Who is there?” came a voice from behind the closed door. Gunther.

“It is Herta.”

He hesitated. What was that buzzing sound in my head? Was it due to dehydration?

“Is my mother here?” I called through the door.

The lock clicked, and the door swung open.

“Quickly,” Gunther said. “Come in.” He grabbed me by the arm, pulled me inside, and relocked the door.

The apartment was still well furnished, with thick carpets and chairs upholstered in velvet. Someone had removed a portrait of the Führer from the wall, exposing a rectangle of brighter wallpaper behind. That was fast.

“Two looters tried to break the door down this morning. It's anarchy out there.”

“Really, Gunther—”

“Everyone steals from everyone now. Goods belong to those who can hold on to them.”

“I'm starving,” I said.

“
Everyone
is starving, Herta.”

“They were still cooking food at the camp—”

“That's not all you and your friends were doing there. The truth is getting out, you know.”

I walked to the radio. “There must be rations. They will broadcast—”

“No
rations,
Herta. No broadcasts. Women are prostituting themselves for a spoonful of sugar.”

Gunther did not appear to have missed many meals. He'd lost a bit of weight, but his skin was still taut. Just a slight creping at the neck. How had he managed to stay out of military service? Things were not adding up, and the buzzing sound in my head grew louder.

“I'm in need of a bath,” I said.

Gunther lit a cigarette. How was he getting cigarettes? “You can't stay here. They know what you've done, Herta.”

“Where is Mutti?”

“She had to go down to the station. They came looking for you.”

“Me? What for?” I didn't have to ask
who.

“Crimes against humanity, they said.”

How could they be on my trail so quickly?

“You are putting your mother at risk, Herta, just being here. Take your bath, but you need to find other—”

“My mother may feel differently,” I said.

“Take a bath, and then we'll talk.”

I set my suitcase on the sofa. “I may need Mutti's help with some matters.”

He tapped cigarette ash into the ashtray. “Money matters?”

“Among other things. Legal fees maybe.”

“Oh, really? If anything should happen to you, the state pays the fees.”

“Happen?”

Gunther strolled to the hall closet and came back with a towel. “Take your bath while we still have hot water. We'll talk later.”

I dropped my things in the guest room and ran the bath, one ear to the lavatory door, half-expecting Gunther to call the authorities. There was sure to be some sort of Allied military hierarchy set up. Gunther would never turn me in, I assured myself. Mutti would be livid. But Gunther had never been a real patriot, and the new power shift made almost everyone suspect.

I locked the bathroom door and took my time running the water extra hot. I slipped into the tub, sliding down the enameled cast iron into that glorious burning sea.

I felt every muscle slacken there in the hot water. Where was Fritz? I would ask for my old job back at the skin clinic. If it was still standing, not under a pile of stones. I rehearsed my talk with Mutti as I soaped my legs, feet black with dirt from the walk. She would support me, no matter what Gunther said.

“So what?” she would say when I told her about the camp. “You were doing your job, Herta.” Where was she? Probably out doing her best to find some bread.

I closed my eyes and recalled Mutti's breakfasts: hot rolls and fresh butter, her coffee—

Were those footsteps in the living room?

“
Mutti
?”
I called. “Gunther?”

A rap at the bathroom door.

“Herta Oberheuser?” came the voice through the door. The speaker had a British accent.

Shit. Goddamned Gunther. I had known he was not to be trusted. How much had they paid him to turn me in?

“I am coming!” I said.

I lost control of my limbs there in the tub. Could I make it out the window? Something hard hit the door, and it cracked open. I may have screamed as I reached for the towel. A British officer entered the bathroom, and I sat back in the tub, the diminishing soap bubbles my only protection.

“Herta Oberheuser?” he asked.

I tried to cover myself. “No.”

“I hereby place you under arrest for war crimes against humanity.”

“I am not she,” I said, in shock, like an imbecile. How could Gunther do this to me? Mutti would be furious. “I have done nothing.”

“Step out of the tub, Fräulein,” said the man.

Another British agent came to the bathroom with a canvas raincoat in hand. I motioned for the two to turn their backs.

“I will leave for a moment,” said the first agent, red-faced. He handed me a towel, averting his eyes. “Wrap yourself in this.”

I took the towel, and he left, pulling the door closed. I hoisted myself out of the tub. Goddamned Gunther, I thought as I stepped to the medicine cabinet. I found his razor blades and slid back into the tub, the water cooling.

“Fräulein?” called the first man from outside the door.

“Just a moment,” I said as I pulled a blade from the pack.

I felt for the radial artery and found it easily, since my heart was pumping hard. I drew the blade down my wrist, deep into the artery, and watched it open like a peach. The water grew pink, and I lay back in it as it cooled, light-headed. Would Mutti cry when she saw what I'd done? At least I'd done it in the tub. Cleanup would be easy.

Before I could get to the other wrist, the agent came back in.

“Christ,”
he said when he saw me, the water squid-inked with red by then. “Teddy!” he called to someone somewhere.
“Christ,”
he said again.

After a great deal of shouting in English, they pulled me from the tub.

So much for modesty.

I was losing consciousness, not about to tell them how to treat me, but noted with satisfaction they were doing just fine without me, for some reason elevating my legs. A sure way to make me bleed out. My feet were still filthy black, in each toenail a crescent of dirt.

I lost consciousness, but regained it as they carried me out on a stretcher, my wrist nicely bandaged. Someone knew what he was doing. There was a doctor among them? Was he surprised a German doctor had done such a poor job?

Why did you turn me in?
I tried to say to Gunther as the British agents carried me down the stairs to the street.

They started to load me into an ambulance.

I saw Gunther watching from a window above, his face impassive. More faces came to windows. Old men. Women. They brushed aside curtains and peered down.

Just curious Germans. A girl with yellow braids came to the window, and her mother pushed her away and drew the shade.

“She is only curious,” I said.

“What?” said an Englishman.

“She's in shock,” said another.

Unter schock?
Incomplete diagnosis, English doctor.
Hypovolemic
shock. Rapid breathing. General weakness. Cool, clammy skin.

More faces came to the windows. A full house.

Something wet drifted down to my face. Was that rain?

I hoped no one would mistake it for tears.