All of us felt the end of Herr Roehm’s stick that day. Fast wasn’t good enough – he wanted the uniforms to fly off the machines at an obscene rate. By midday, when he saw the hope of his shiny new car rolling from view, his voice had reached fever pitch.
‘You bitches! No coffee at lunch until we have over half the order. Faster! Work faster, you bitches. Work for the Reich!’
There were sweat patches on his jacket, and he looked as if he might need a doctor before some of us. Leah had already been prodded once, plus given a crack on her shoulder when she visibly slackened. When it was long past our missed break time, the woman between us shot out a hand to grab my attention.
‘She’s in trouble,’ she mouthed, and we both glanced towards Roehm, occupied on the other side of the room. Leah was slumped forward, head nestling on the material. She wasn’t dead; I could see the bony ladder of her spine through her shift dress, rising and jumping as if she were receiving a gentle jolt of electricity.
We both froze. Rule number one, drummed into us day after day at the five a.m. roll call, barely awake in the grey square, was that we should not help any woman who fell. Weakness was not tolerated, even if it was created by the Reich itself. The instinct to help a fellow human in need earned you a swift beating and time in the solitary confinement block. More effective psychology.
I knew if Roehm spied Leah looking as if she was napping, his cosh would come down hard on her tiny body, maybe even her head, with fatal consequences. One-handed, I continued sewing and waved the other arm in the air, hoping to attract the attention of the duty guard walking the lines of machinists. She was new to the camp and I hoped we might take advantage of what humanity was left inside her. The Kapo talking to Roehm was particularly brutal and, ironically, we had more chance with the guard.
She approached. ‘What is it?’
I pointed at Leah and the guard clomped over, pulling on her shoulders. ‘Come on, girl. Don’t get into trouble.’
One eye was on my rattling machine, the other to my side. Leah’s head lolled heavily, and the guard pulled again. Leah came to sharply, and clutched at her belly. I heard that familiar wail even above the din of the room. Braying, bearing down. Labour. A baby. Unmistakable.
I didn’t think of the consequences, the nights I might spend alone in a dark cell, nursing multiple bruises. I was up and out of my chair, peering under the rim of Leah’s dress, where the shape of a baby’s head was already moulding her skin, ready to show itself any minute.
‘She’s about to have a baby,’ I told the guard.
‘What? Can you see it?’ She looked worriedly for Roehm, but he was still distracted.
‘Not yet, but it won’t be long.’
She looked at me suspiciously, and our eyes met. I pleaded with all my might in that look not to alert Roehm, but to ghost us out of the door before he could wield the cosh. Leah moaned again, and the guard’s eyes flicked towards the nearby door. She may have reasoned the mess of a birth would halt production and earn her a rebuke.
We half pulled and half shuffled Leah from the room, into the small vestibule of the hut.
‘We need to get her to the Revier,’ the guard snapped, looking behind her for Roehm following.
‘She won’t make it,’ I said. ‘The head will be here any minute. Trust me.’
‘What makes you an expert all of a sudden?’
‘A big family, lots of nieces.’ I brushed it away. ‘We need something to wrap the baby in, some material.’
Leah was on the floor now, seemingly unconscious, but brought round by the pain of the contraction. She was straining and pushing down visibly, the stretch of her skin paper-thin as I glimpsed a penny-size circle of black hair. The back of her dress was slightly damp, where the tiny pool of waters surrounding the baby had broken. Malnutrition meant it had been no tidal wave.
The guard appeared again, with a length of off-cut material, her eyes darting uncomfortably. ‘This better happen soon, or Roehm will be out here,’ she barked. Even so, I saw her hands go automatically to Leah’s shoulder and give fleeting support.
‘It will.’ I was talking low to Leah, although she seemed in her own world. ‘It’s all right, Leah, you’re doing fine, nearly there.’ The patter was as much for me as her.
Leah gave one almighty push and the baby’s head was born rapidly, black hair against chalky white skin. The features were still, lips a mottled maroon, and I couldn’t tell if there was life or not. With only a half push, the body slithered out like tiny puppy, flaccid and unmoving, a scrawny cord around his neck spindle. Instinctively, I rubbed at him with the material. ‘Hey, little man; hey, baby, come on,’ and then bent to blow life on him and in him. I didn’t think, I just did it.
With no fat on his rack of ribs, it was easy to see when he breathed, a balloon of life hitting his sternum, and he coughed and whined. Leah came round in that split second, and her eyes registered alarm, and fear, soon joined by a smile. A real one. Several workers from the Revier, the hospital block, arrived and we moved her across the yard, still attached to her baby, drops of blood giving light, life and colour to the grit underfoot.
Inside the medical block, I worked in my own world, encouraging the placenta away with a rub on Leah’s abdomen. Turning to dispose of it, I was met by the hard stare of the Revier Officer.
‘Do you have something to tell me, Prisoner Hoff?’ she said, eyebrows arched. ‘It seems you may have been hiding something from us.’
34
Beginnings
Midnight on the fourth day since Dieter left, and I woke to the squeak of the door handle. His lofty silhouette moved towards the bed, feet tiptoeing in his socks.
‘It’s fine, I’m awake,’ I whispered.
‘Is this too late, do you need to sleep?’
I propped up on my elbows. ‘No, I want to sleep with you – eventually.’
The past week had seen my sex drive – depressed to almost zero since the real conflict began – reawakened, whetted by his presence. Sleepiness subsided at the mere sight of Dieter. His jacket relegated to the furthest corner of the room, he padded towards me and slipped under the covers.
Bright sunlight was pushing through the thin curtains when I woke. It took me several seconds to realise I was still curled in the conch of his long body, that he hadn’t ghosted away as the light rose. He stirred as I stretched.
‘Dieter, it’s quite late. Shouldn’t you go?’
He squinted at his watch, and fought the fog of sleep, squeezing my midriff as he burrowed down again.
‘Dieter?’
‘Huh? Oh, I gave Rainer the car for the night – he visits a woman down in the town. He won’t be back until midday.’
He dozed as I stared at the curtains, dancing a jig in the breeze. My stomach groaned noisily and I would have given anything right then to have been in a Parisian hotel room in peacetime, the smell of coffee and pastries nearby, tempting me to run out from under the warm covers and steal them back to bed to share with Dieter.
Gradually, I felt his breathing rise and he stretched awake. His lashes caught and tickled the back of my shoulders. He lay back and I shifted to fit like the last piece of a jigsaw under his arm.
‘Do you think we’ll ever wake up in a nice hotel room and have breakfast together?’ I mused.
‘Does it matter?’ he murmured. ‘I could go halfway and ask Frau Grunders to bring in a tray, if you’re really that keen.’
I dug him playfully in the ribs. ‘Never hurts to have dreams, Captain.’
He pressed his chin into the top of my head and I felt the warm air of his nostrils.
My curiosity grew with the length of our silence.
‘Dieter, what do you think will happen to us, to Germany?’
He pondered for a few seconds. ‘Us? I have no idea about that. But Germany, I don’t even like to think. It’s ironic that Hitler is probably in some bunker underground trying to manoeuvre a victory and yet we’re digging ourselves deep and d
eeper into a very dark hole.’
‘Is it that bad?’
‘I think so, judging by what comes across my desk. The high command has always been good at putting on a show, but underneath they are scrabbling like mice. I think Hitler has underestimated the Allies hugely. They are tenacious and Churchill is a wily fox.’
Aside from the outburst that had first led us into bed, this was the nearest we had come to discussing the war in detail. Still, he seemed unguarded, as if purging was a comfort.
‘Goebbels still has control of the newspapers, so your average German thinks we’re marching over Europe unabated, heads high. In truth, the Allies are taking key points in Italy, and we’ve suffered major air attacks. German cities are destroyed and we’re limping like a wounded animal. There have been several attempts on Hitler’s life too, from inside his own troops. No wonder he’s not up here playing happy families.’
A breath caught in my throat at the mention of an assassination attempt, and I worked to let the air release slowly. The words almost tipped out – the messages to Christa, the note under the sewing machine, the potential threat to the baby. Something in me, however, held back. I trusted him, I really did. I didn’t think Dieter would hurt or betray me. But, even now, I wasn’t sure how big the threat was, or if it would be very real on the day. I didn’t want to burden him any more, make him choose one side or the other. Too many choices might break us, and right now, he was the only bright thing allowing me to limp through. After Papa, my own propulsion wasn’t enough. I needed a reason to push through into tomorrow.
‘Dieter, are you afraid?’
He took a long breath in and held it there – I felt the taut bellows of his chest against my ear. Finally, he let go.
‘I’m not sure I know what fear is any more. I lost it a good while ago, along with anxiety and worry. It all merges into one – you live every moment expecting to meet death like a long-lost friend around each corner. Even in my world. A drunk Nazi commander with a grudge and a gun is as dangerous as a battlefield sometimes.’
‘Do you have hope?’ was all I could say.
‘I do now,’ he said, squeezing me. A tiny, wet sensation snaked its way through the hairs on the top of my head and hit my scalp, but I didn’t look or feel to see if it was his tear, or the spark of my entire being pushing up to meet him.
He dressed properly while I was in the bathroom, kissing me goodbye before I shut the door. I wandered into the servants’ hall as the table was being cleared, putting the kettle on to boil and busily setting my own breakfast. Cap under his arm, Dieter stepped uneasily into the room.
‘Morning, Fräulein Hoff. I appear to be too late for breakfast upstairs,’ he said, a smile curling at the corners of his mouth.
‘So it seems, Captain. I’m rather late myself.’ I could barely suppress my laughter, in serious danger of giving us away. But I dipped my head and held on, our secret being the best of motivations. ‘I’m just about to make coffee. Can I interest you in some?’
‘I would be very grateful, thank you.’
And so we had our breakfast together, not in an ornate hotel room, naked and smelling of sex, but fully clothed in the midst of the morning bustle, and with a steely, sideways glance from Frau Grunders as she sailed in and out.
I moved towards Eva’s room with a definite spring to my step. Unusually, she was still in bed – it was gone ten by this point – but she called me in and rolled over with a groan. Her face was pale and puffy – telltale signs of a bad night.
‘Eva, how are you? You look tired.’
‘Oh, Anke, is it going to be like this for weeks now? I must have been up until about three. It feels so tight, like everything below is being crushed. But the baby is wriggling a lot, so that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘It is. It’s probably the baby’s head going down and turning, which is also good.’
Just a minute into the check, however, tiny wires pulsed in my brain. As I palmed the bump, it tightened under my fingers and Eva’s face crimped visibly, flushing just under her chin and creeping up her neck, subsiding as the flesh softened again. Her blood pressure was up slightly, and her pulse a little raised. If I wasn’t much mistaken, Eva was in early labour.
The baby’s heart was sound as always, and I played down the tightenings – if she believed it could happen imminently, the whole house would be on high alert. Even if I was right, we could still have days of rumbling and brewing towards the real thing.
‘Well, it all seems fine. I’m sure it will settle down again,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps you ought to go for a walk, and then make sure you catch up on some sleep later.’
Strangely, she seemed satisfied by my advice, and not for the first time I thought Eva Braun was stoical enough to withstand the physical demands that would soon face her.
I found Dieter in the communications room, and gestured for him to talk outside, privately.
‘I can’t be sure but I think Eva is going into labour,’ I said as we came out of earshot.
He looked slightly alarmed. ‘Is it too soon? I understood it would be another three weeks.’
‘Well, that’s women and babies for you. But no, it’s not too soon, she’s thirty-seven weeks and no longer premature. It’s just that I don’t want to say for sure until I really am. I don’t want the troops descending.’
‘What do you need me to do?’
I wanted to kiss him right there and then, for reacting in the way I hoped he would.
‘I want to get Christa up here, but without alerting the Goebbels or Dr Koenig. Is there a way we can send for her with a good excuse?’
‘I can, if you think of one that’s credible. I do know Frau Goebbels is away at the moment, so her suspicions won’t be aroused.’
The news was a profound relief, and we settled on calling up Christa on the pretence of keeping an eye on Eva at night, as she was up and down to the toilet a lot, and to put the finishing touches to the baby’s layette. Questions were bound to be asked, but we could easily counter those. More important was protecting the space around Eva, so she could and would labour with this baby.
The Camp, North of Berlin, November 1942
‘So, you are a midwife?’ Gerta Mencken squinted at my file. ‘And yet you are in the sewing room?’
‘I thought I would be of more use there,’ I said in a deadpan tone. I had become adept at lying, stripping all emotion from my voice, features flat and my eyes seemingly sightless.
Mencken had a reputation for being a loyal Nazi, but one who maintained her ethos as a nurse in pre-war Germany. Looking at the top of her bleach-blonde hair, cropped into a masculine style, I wondered how the two even began to mesh.
‘Yes … well.’ She wasn’t convinced. ‘You’re here now, and we could benefit from your skills. We have more women than first anticipated.’ She looked at me and softened her mouth purposefully, though that wasn’t convincing either. ‘The women will benefit from your experience.’
Like every true Nazi, Frau Mencken knew how to elicit the best from her prison-workers, using a subtle form of moral blackmail. I could help to make the experience more tolerable for them, she was saying, and serve the Reich at the same time.
‘Report here tomorrow morning, six a.m. We’ll take you through the procedures.’
I’d had an itch since arriving at the camp. Unlike the numerous bugs and lice resident on my body, causing me to scratch wildly until I was raw, this barb was on the inside, pricking away at my brain. It was the knowledge that babies were being born in the camp. Naively, I’d imagined all pregnant women were screened out before boarding the transports, since this was no place to grow or birth a baby. It was a labour camp, only children aged twelve and above – those who could do a day’s work – were permitted. But most of my new clientele hadn’t been obviously pregnant when they became separated from their husbands and some had been brutally raped by German soldiers on capture. Even so, as the camp opened, the numbers of births were small.
&n
bsp; Elke, an inmate since 1939, told me the first babies were treated with real reverence in the Revier – clean sheets, baths for the mothers, even a glass of milk after the birth. For all the fussing, though, the newborns didn’t survive camp life, succumbing to malnutrition at days and weeks old when the mothers had no milk in their breasts, or transported at a day old and ‘Germanised’ if they were lucky enough to be born with blue eyes. Most babies were sons and daughters of the political prisoners, German or non-Jew at least, and therefore just tolerated. The few Jewish babies didn’t make it past a day, even then.
As the war raged on, the camp population increased and, with it, the amount of Jewish women arriving already pregnant. Scores had been raped with the invasion of Warsaw, and their numbers swelled along with their bellies. Yet the Nazis were shrewd. The camp provided essential supplies for the troops and labour for the engineering factories around us, and Poles were good workers, Jews especially. I overheard Mencken one day telling her chief Kapo that pregnant women ‘were like mules – if they’re strong enough to carry the child, they have more stamina. One week after the birth they’re back on their feet and we need that strength. They’re worth more to us then.’
Her thinking didn’t stop the enforced abortions. Any woman thought to be under twenty weeks was taken to a separate block and a certain end to either one or two lives. Their screams could be heard at intervals as junior Nazi doctors arrived to hone their skills without anaesthetic. If the women bled out, it was put down to experience and collateral damage – although I often saw Mencken stomping through the corridors, cursing the medics for reducing the numbers of ‘her girls’. But she was thinking only of the figures, and not the sorry corpses lying on the slabs.
Women can be equally determined, though, and their zeal to preserve life in the womb easily outstripped the Nazi will. Some women knew of a baby only once they felt a telling tickle inside, since monthly periods – through stress or malnutrition – stopped almost on arrival. A baby’s movements and a slightly rounded abdomen were often the first signs of a pregnancy. Even then, the loose woollen dresses hid the tiny bumps well, and some women concealed it to all but their barrack mates until the birth itself.
A Woman of War Page 21