The Plum Tree (53 page)

“Nein,”
she said, shaking her head again.

When she peered through the fifth door, her heart skipped a beat. She nodded. Colonel Hensley said something to Isaac and put the oversized key in the lock. Isaac took Christine’s trembling hand.

“He wants to know if you’re sure,” he said to her.

Christine nodded again.
“Ja,”
she said. “I’m positive.”

Another door screeched open at the end of the long corridor and an American soldier entered, gripping Lagerkommandant Grünstein by the arm. Hands and feet shackled, the
Lagerkommandant
kept his eyes on the concrete floor, gray hair falling across his sweaty brow, gnarled hands shaking. Each time he slowed, the soldier pulled him forward. The
Lagerkommandant
had deteriorated since they’d seen him just days earlier. What if the old man couldn’t do what Christine needed him to do?

Colonel Hensley heaved open the steel door of the interrogation room, motioning for the soldier to lead the
Lagerkommandant
inside. Christine and Isaac watched from the hallway as the prisoner tied to the chair raised his head to look at his captors, scowling as he fought the restraints around his wrists and ankles. His forehead was bruised, his blond hair matted with dirt and blood, his hands scraped and bleeding.

“Traitor!” the prisoner yelled when he saw the
Lagerkommandant,
spittle flying from his lips.

Colonel Hensley signaled Christine and Isaac to come in, then asked the
Lagerkommandant
a question. The soldier translated. “Do you know this man?”

Christine entered the room with Isaac, eyes locked on the
Lagerkommandant,
unable to breathe until he answered.

The
Lagerkommandant
nodded.
“Ja,”
he said.

“You set us up!” the prisoner yelled. “How dare you!”

Colonel Hensley motioned toward the soldier, who wrapped a gag around the prisoner’s mouth. When the man in the chair saw Christine, he stopped struggling, his brows raised in surprise. But his initial shock was quickly replaced by anger, and he glared at her with cold, savage eyes. Fire rose in Christine’s cheeks. She opened her mouth to speak, but suddenly Isaac flew past her and threw himself on top of the prisoner, knocking over the chair and pummeling the man’s face with his fists. The soldier and Colonel Hensley pulled Isaac up, pushed him against the concrete wall, and held him there, their faces red with exertion.

“It’s him!” Isaac yelled, rage knotting the lines around his nose and mouth, giving the illusion he had gone insane. “He’s the guard who shot my father!”

Christine’s heart cramped against her ribcage as if squeezed by a powerful fist. Her eyes burned. The prisoner was still on the floor, gasping and straining to get free. She fought the urge to go over to him, to put her feet on his neck and stand there, her full weight crushing his windpipe, until he lay still, purple veins bulging beneath the red skin of his forehead and throat. Finally, Isaac calmed down, and the Americans released him. He slid down the wall and squatted there, furious eyes locked on the man on the floor. Colonel Hensley and the soldier pulled prisoner and chair upright, then stood in front of him. They asked the
Lagerkommandant
more questions. Blood gushed from the prisoner’s split brow and broken nose, gurgling like a stopped-up drain every time he took a breath. The soldier translated for the
Lagerkommandant
and the colonel, but the
Lagerkommandant
’s answers were all Christine needed.

“Ja,”
the
Lagerkommandant
said. “His name is Sturmscharführer Stefan Eichmann. He was a guard in Dachau, on the men’s side of the camp. He was directly responsible for a number of prisoners’ deaths. Killing Jews was sport to some of them, and he always won.”

C
HAPTER
38

C
hristine lifted the iron latch on the wooden door leading out to the backyard, taking a moment to relish the familiar scents coming up from the cellar stairs: cool cement, vinegar in oak barrels, onions, earth-covered potatoes. She smiled, hearing the chickens on the other side of the door, clucking and scratching in the red dirt and spring grass. Stepping out into the fragrant afternoon, she wound her way between the apple and plum trees, heading toward the back corner of the fenced yard.

And there it was, right where she had planted the pit the day before she and Isaac were sent to Dachau: a leggy, young plum tree, its slender branches filled with clusters of buds and lavender blossoms, its leaves shimmering in the warm breeze.
You survived,
she thought, her throat tight. She reached out to touch the soft petals of an open blossom, her bare toes digging in the soft grass. Suddenly, someone grabbed her from behind and she gasped, playfully fighting off the strong arms around her waist. It was Isaac.

“Come inside, Frau Bauerman,” he said, pulling her hair aside so he could kiss her neck. “Your mother made all your favorites, despite the fact that I think she’s still upset we got married while we were away helping the Americans. I told her we went to the next town over and had a quiet ceremony in a nice church, but she’s making plans for a proper celebration.”

Christine turned and pushed her mouth into his, then drew back. “Let her plan whatever she wants, as long as we get to use the tablecloth on our wedding table.”

“You still have it?”

“It’s been in my room this whole time. After Mutti decided we had to use Herr Weiler’s root cellar for a bomb shelter, I snuck down there in the middle of the night before the first air raid, to get the tablecloth and your lucky stone. I was going to surprise you with them when you were in the attic, but I never got the chance.” She kissed him again. “It’s amazing and wonderful to be home, isn’t it?”

“Ja,”
he said. “But don’t forget, the Americans paid us to testify. They want us to come back to Dachau, for a few more months, until the trials are over.”

“I know. And I would do it again for free.” She laid her head on his chest for a moment, then looked up into his chestnut eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She sighed, then turned and touched the plum blossoms again, Isaac’s arms still around her waist. “Look,” she said. “It’s alive and bearing fruit.” Then she moved his wide, warm hand down to her belly and held it there, smiling. “Just like us.”

He turned her around to face him. “Any ideas for names yet?”

“If it’s a girl,” she said, “I’d like to name her Maria. If it’s a boy, Abraham, after your father.”

He kissed her once on the lips, then gazed down at her, his eyes soft.
“Danke,”
he said.

“For what?” she said, beaming up at him.

“For surviving. I never would have been happy with anyone else. You ruined everyone for me.”

“Christine!” Vater called from the second story kitchen window. “Come and eat!” Beside him, Mutti and Christine’s brothers smiled and waved.

A
UTHOR
’
S
N
OTE

The seeds for
The Plum Tree
were planted in my childhood, during numerous family trips to visit my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in Germany. Somehow, even at an early age, I knew that experiencing another culture and seeing a different side of the world, living for weeks in the half-timbered house where my mother grew up, was a privilege that would make a difference in my life. But I had no idea it would inspire me to write a novel.

My mother’s German village was like a fairy tale, with its rolling hills, tidy orchards, sprawling vineyards, medieval cathedrals, and delicious food, all set against a backdrop of church bells, cobblestone streets, and stepped alleys. Every visit was an adventure, from exploring castle ruins to sleeping beneath a giant
Deckbed
(feather bedcover). Later, as I learned about WWII, it was hard to imagine such horrible things happening in such a beautiful place. I realized my
Oma
was an extraordinary woman, having struggled to keep her children alive while her husband was off fighting and, once the war was over, somehow feeding and clothing a family of seven during continued rationing and extreme food shortages that didn’t improve until 1950. Opa’s stories about the Eastern Front and his escape from two POW camps fascinated me. Above all, I was awed that my Americanized mother, the woman in heels and sunglasses, chief of the firemen’s auxiliary, member of the PTA, who bought her kids bell-bottoms and loved cookouts and boating, had spent her childhood living in poverty and fear in Nazi Germany. She grew up wearing dresses made from bedsheets, bathing in a metal tub with water heated on a woodstove, running and hiding in a bomb shelter for nights on end. Having lived the typical American childhood, I could hardly comprehend what she had endured. I wanted to know everything and would often ask my mother to repeat her stories, hoping she’d remember more details. There are so many I couldn’t fit them all into the manuscript.

Along with my family’s history, there were a great many books that were helpful to me while writing
The Plum Tree
. Among the memoirs that mirrored and expanded on my mother’s stories were:
German Boy
by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel,
The War of Our Childhood: Memories of WWII
by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, and
Memoirs of a 1000-Year-Old Woman
by Gisela R. McBride. I also relied on
Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich
by Alison Owings. To understand the Allied bombing campaign, which had become a deliberate, explicit policy to destroy all German cities with populations over 100,000 using a technique called “carpet bombing”—a strategy that treated whole cities and their civilian populations as targets for attacks by high explosives and incendiary bombs—I read:
To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and Its Human Consequences in WWII
by Hermann Knell,
Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombings of Civilians in Germany and Japan
by A. C. Grayling, and
The Fire
by Jörg Friedrich. Among the many horrific air raid stories in these books were the firebombing of Hamburg in July 1943, dubbed “Operation Gomorrah,” which killed 45,000 civilians, and the firebombing of Dresden in February 1945, which killed 135,000 civilians. All of these books include some of the most haunting scenes I’ve ever read about what it was like to be a German civilian during the war.

To understand what it was like for civilians and POWs after the war, I read:
Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation
by James Bacque. For information involving persecution of the Jews and the horror of concentration camps, I read:
Night
by Elie Wiesel,
Eyewitness Auschwitz
by Filip Müller, and
I Will Bear Witness
by Victor Klemperer.

Four novels I’ve read and enjoyed have also helped guide me through this period in history:
Those Who Save Us
by Jenna Blum,
Skeletons at the Feast
by Chris Bohjalian,
The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak, and
Sarah’s Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay.

It is important to note that although characters in this novel endure many of the same trials as my mother and her family, Christine is not my mother. Nor are any of the other characters members of my family. But I hope the fictional Christine and Mutti have at least some resemblance to my
Oma’
s and mother’s monumental courage, resilience, and compassion.

Although
The Plum Tree
is a work of fiction, I strove to be as historically accurate as possible. Any mistakes are mine alone. For the purpose of plot, Dachau was portrayed as an extermination camp, while in reality it was categorized as a work camp. Undoubtedly tens of thousands of prisoners were murdered, suffered, and died under horrible conditions at Dachau, but the camp was not set up like Auschwitz and other extermination camps, which had a deliberate “euthanasia” system for killing Jews and other undesirables. Also for the purpose of plot, the attempt on Hitler’s life led by Claus von Stauffenburg was moved from July 1944 to the fall of 1944.

Please turn the page
for a very special Q&A
with Ellen Marie Wiseman!

How did you come up with the idea for this book?

This is not an easy question to answer, but I’ll do my best. My mother came to America alone, by ship, at the age of twenty-one, to marry an American soldier she had met while working at the PX outside her German village. Just over a decade had passed after the war, and Germany was still rebuilding. Her family was dirt poor, and the lure of an ideal life in America was powerful enough to make her leave her family and marry a man she barely knew. Alas, her American dream was no fairy tale. The American soldier turned out to be dishonest and cruel, and my mother had nowhere to go for help, living on an isolated farm twenty minutes from the nearest village and with no car or driver’s license. Somehow she persevered, giving birth in quick succession to my sister, my brother, and me. Eventually my parents divorced, and my mother took me and my siblings back to Germany, hoping to start over. But it wasn’t meant to be. My father insisted she return to the States, even though he had no interest in being part of our lives. Luckily, my mother met and married a caring man who took us in as his own. I grew up traveling to Germany to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, longing to live in their beautiful world full of tradition and culture.

Then, when I was a junior in high school, I learned about the Holocaust. To say it was difficult to wrap my head around those atrocities happening in my amazing, beautiful dreamworld would be an understatement. WWII was our history teacher’s favorite subject, and he was obsessed with teaching us as much as possible about what happened to the Jews. It didn’t take long for some of my classmates to start calling me a Nazi, saluting and shouting “
Heil
Hitler” in the halls. That was when I began to understand the concept of collective guilt. I asked my mother questions about what it was like during the war, about Opa’s role, and about the Jews. I soon realized that in her own quiet way, Oma had tried to help, risking her life to set out food for the passing Jewish prisoners, even though she could barely feed her own children. Opa was drafted, fought on the Russian front, and escaped two POW camps. For over two years my mother and her family had no idea if he was dead or alive until he showed up on their doorstep one day. He was a foot soldier, not SS or a Nazi. My mother took me inside the bomb shelter where she and her family had hid, terrified and hungry, for nights on end. She told me stories about food shortages and ration lines, jumping in a ditch with her pregnant mother to avoid being shot by Allied planes, and developing earaches from the constant wailing of the air raid siren. But I was too young to understand or explain to my peers that being German doesn’t make you a Nazi, that protesting something in America is easy compared to protesting something in the Third Reich, or to ask them what they would have done if they had had to choose between someone else’s life and their own. My American father had taught me that evil has the ability to reside in the heart of any man, regardless of race, nationality, or religion, but I didn’t know how to make those points. I didn’t know how to tell my friends that collective guilt as opposed to individual guilt is senseless; that retrospective condemnation is easy. Most of all, I knew no one wanted to hear that my family had suffered during the war, too.