The Girl Who Survived: Based on a true story, an utterly unputdownable and heart-wrenching World War 2 page-turner

by Ellie Midwood

  “Does Liza?” he asked again.

  I said nothing. I didn’t know myself. I thought that she did. As the time of the ultimatum was running out, she began to look more and more anguished, muttered something aloud about the sacrifice and posed questions as to what was more important, a life of an individual or the masses, quoted Marx and Lenin, lost track of her thoughts and ended up looking at me helplessly. I only stared blankly at her much like Schultz was staring at me now. He, too, didn’t seem to have an answer to this question.

  “I don’t know, Ilse. That Boris must be very important for the others if Richter wants him so.”

  “He’s the head of the entire underground. He’s connected with the Minsk Military Counsel as well.”

  “They arrested most of the Counsel.”

  “Yes, I know,” I sighed. “Shall I tell Liza to report Boris then? To save the others from execution, at least?”

  Schultz was quiet for some time. He picked up a spoon and began lining up jam-covered raspberries across his plate. “I don’t think I’m in a position to advise you of anything, Ilse. I’m not the one who will suffer if some Luftwaffe pencil-pusher makes a mistake giving the wrong advice to his brigadier.” He offered me a soft smile. “I only know what Boris Makarsky means to us. I don’t know how important he is to you.”

  “He is.” I lifted my face to his. “He gives us hope.”

  “Don’t report him then. Hope is perhaps the most important thing for you now.”

  I pondered his words, chewing slowly, then washed down the remnants of the sandwich with army-issued ersatz coffee. It tasted divine. I even closed my eyes, drinking in the aroma together with the hot caramel-colored liquid itself; he even had the cream for it. When I opened my eyes again, Schultz was regarding me with the oddest expression on his face.

  We looked at each other for a long time without speaking. A radio was playing softly in the background. Zarah Leander was singing about love. I suddenly recalled an anecdote that women used to discuss with such delight at the parachute factory in Frankfurt. Reportedly, Minister of Propaganda Dr. Goebbels once asked the Swedish actress if Zarah was a Jewish name, to which she wittily replied, And what about Josef? Dr. Josef Goebbels chuckled at the jest and signed her up with the UFA, a major German film company. She became an instant success.

  I smiled dreamily at the memory. I was free then. Free to walk the streets and sneak inside the cinemas even. Free…

  “What is it?” Schultz mirrored my grin.

  He wanted to hear the story that made me smile. He wished to be a part of my world but that part was long gone and dead and there was nothing to tell any longer.

  “Why do you want to kill us all?” I asked him instead.

  He pulled back slowly, blinking at me in astonishment. “Why would you say that? I don’t want to kill anyone.”

  I outstretched my hand. My index finger stopped within centimeters from his Party pin. I’d never touch it. Even the mere thought of it was repulsive. “This… thing; it says that you do.”

  “It’s just a harmless pin.”

  “Yes, it is. It may be harmless on its own but every single person, who took every tiny bit of our rights, wore one. The new headmaster at my school, who made me sit in the back; SA troopers who trashed Papa’s grocery in 1938; Gestapo agents, who came to our apartment and gave Papa an order for our resettlement; the office clerk who gave me the blank in which I had to sign that my German nationality lapses and I become a stateless person.” I shrugged. “It takes a village to kill a Jew,” I finished, purposely distorting the saying.

  I half-expected for him to order me out and never to come back. To start protesting and defending his position perhaps, explain that “certain things that a young girl like myself didn’t understand,” talk politics and what not. Instead, Schultz reached for the pin and slowly undid it, pulled it out of the cloth leaving a narrow hole in its place and lowered it onto the table.

  “Better?”

  When I didn’t reply anything – I really didn’t know what to say – he pulled the top-drawer open, swiped the pin into it and closed it again.

  “Are you planning on taking it off and hiding it every time I come here?” I felt a ghost of a grin growing on my face again.

  “No. I plan never to wear it again. It should make things easier, don’t you think?”

  “Won’t you get in trouble?”

  “I’d rather risk the wrath of my superiors than yours.”

  “I’m not in a position to threaten you with my wrath, as you call it.”

  “Perhaps not openly. But sometimes you give me one of those hateful looks, and I wish for the ground to open up and swallow me. You have very expressive eyes, you know.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “Sometimes you do.”

  “It’s the uniform that I hate, not you.”

  He was suddenly unbuttoning his jacket. Under my uncomprehending gaze, he promptly removed it, folded it inside out to hide the insignia and flattened it over his lap.

  “There. Ordinary civilian shirt. Happy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God. I thought you’d make me strip bare, for a moment there.”

  I almost succeeded in hiding a smile. He almost succeeded at hiding his too… almost.

  “I wasn’t always a soldier, you know.”

  “No?”

  “Believe it or not.”

  “What were you?”

  “A customs officer in Dresden.”

  I lifted my brows. He shook his head. “Yes, I know. Sounds horribly boring. I’m a bureaucrat through and through, I’m afraid. First that, now – this. It’s all paperwork that I do. I didn’t make a good combat pilot, to be honest.”

  “Yes, I somehow concluded that from when you told me that you had to bail out quite a few times over Holland.”

  Instead of taking offense, he beamed at me, positively delighted. “You remembered that!”

  “I remember everything you told me.”

  After I spoke those words, he grew serious for some reason. After a few moments of hesitation, he reached across the table and tentatively connected his fingertips with mine. I didn’t pull away, just sat without movement for some time, deciding what to do. At last, I curled my fingers around his.

  “See? It was the uniform all along,” I tried to joke.

  He was suddenly kissing my hand again, like the last time, only now he turned it over and kissed the palm as well, the wrist. With my heart pounding, I was instantly on my feet. He stepped closer and took my face in his hands.

  “Stop it; you’re mad,” I whispered, or maybe just thought so to myself.

  He pulled me against him and I made a half-hearted effort to push him away but then let him kiss me after all, even raising my face toward him, offering him my lips, my burning cheeks, the neck. Waves of harsh, intoxicating pleasure slowly radiated from my chest and spread down the spine, to the small of my back where one of his hands now rested, burning me with its heat even through all the layers of clothing. It was madness, obviously, and for which people got shot – on both sides. Yet, my arm coiled around his neck of its own accord and for a second, he made me forget what we were to each other. My first kiss, with a soldier…

  I didn’t hear the door open; only heard a voice which startled me back into reality.

  “Schultz, where’s that report that you promised me for—” The newcomer, who’d burst into the room without knocking, did a double-take. His brows climbed higher and higher as he gradually took in the table set for two, Schultz’s jacket on the floor, and Schultz himself in a half-undressed state, his arms still circling the waist of one of the girls from his brigade. “Pardon. I didn’t realize you had company, at this hour…”

  “Have they not taught you how to knock, you miserable numbskull?” Schultz was suddenly furious.

  Before the newcomer would remember himself, I swiftly grabbed my coat from the rack and slid past him into the hallway. I ran down the stai
rs as though the entire German army was chasing me; perhaps, it was worse than that. Who knew who in the blue hell that officer was? I didn’t take my time to make out the insignia on his uniform.

  “Ilse! Ilse Stein!” It was his voice and his steps behind me, not Schultz’s. Gott, please don’t let him be the SS!

  I ran faster, at one point nearly taking some unsuspecting officer off his feet.

  “Ilse! Wait up! Schultz said you forgot the ration cards!”

  I finally stopped, almost at the doors, gasping for air.

  The officer in a blue uniform – Luftwaffe, praise God! – seemed to be also catching his breath as he waved a stack of cards in his hand. He was laughing, I noted, with immense relief.

  “Blast it, can you run!”

  “A habit,” I muttered under my breath.

  He handed me the cards but when I tried to take them from him, he held them tighter, refusing to release them.

  “Now I see what all the fuss was about. ‘Ilse this, Ilse that. An extraordinary girl, Ilse. Ach, Otto, if you’d only seen her!’”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  We both were still holding onto the ration cards. Otto, which as I presumed was his name, was a handsome young man in his early thirties with curly chestnut hair which was smoothed down with pomade to the point where it was just wavy, mischievous hazel eyes and wide, expressive eyebrows. On his chest, quite a few awards gleamed; I noticed that and the absence of the Party pin.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell,” he said at last and let go of the stack. I pulled it to my chest as though afraid that he’d take it away. “He’s mad about you, you know.”

  He clicked his heels, bowed his head slightly and headed back towards the staircase.

  We both must be mad, I thought to myself as I watched him go and such madness never ended well.

  The ultimatum day. The silence of the columns, marching into the ghetto from their respective working places, was tangible, intense. Guarded looks were exchanged among some, the ones who wondered if the SS would go through with the threat; if they should say something. Next to me, Liza walked. In her eyes, with a cold, faraway look in them, I read the same question. She, too, knew where Boris was. She, too, wondered if one life was worth several others.

  An Einsatzkommando squad met us near the Judenrat, rubber truncheons tapping their legs in anticipation. Superintendent Richter strolling along the line of the Judenrat members; checked his watch theatrically.

  “Five forty-five. Time’s almost up,” he announced casually, to no one in particular.

  Condemned men – he’d even gone through the pain of dragging ordinary clerks out – stood looking at their feet, positively refusing to make any eye contact with the crowd. To my right, Liza fidgeted, her anguished gaze riveted on the martyrs living out the last fifteen minutes of their lives. The raven flew low overhead, croaking his death song before setting off in the cemetery’s direction. His kin would have plenty to feast on tonight. I knew that the SS would leave the corpses lying in the snow until the morning.

  “No one knows where Boris Makarsky is,” Superintendent Richter stated, staring derisively into our faces. Brass-colored sunset painted his face with a rusty shade. “Isn’t it amazing? Even his fellow Judenrat members don’t.” In a harsh move, he turned on his heel to face them. “Do you really wish to die for that communist rat?”

  They didn’t deem him a single look. Their proud, noble faces said it all.

  “Ach. That’s correct. I entirely forgot that you’re all communist rats. Fucking musketeers; only instead of a King’s lily, a yellow patch on your capes. One for all and all for one, blast you all, you Bolshevik numbskulls!” He bared his teeth in a snarl as he spat out the words.

  “Why are you so mad, Herr Superintendent?” It was Meir Levin, former Elder Mushkin’s right hand. His head cocked mockingly, hands in pockets, he had reconciled with imminent death it appeared and had decided to spit in its face before he went down with a fanfare. “Because your own praised Kameradened isn’t as tight as we are, the Bolshevik rats? Is that why you never announced the reason for Mushkin’s execution? Because he was hiding your own SS officer, who couldn’t stand looking at your face another day and asked a Jew – a Jew! – for help to join the partisans. How rotten your ranks must be, how rusted the entire system, from inside—”

  The gunshot silenced him at last, but, with immense satisfaction, we all saw that Richter’s hand, with the gun still smoking in it, was trembling slightly. He whipped around, unnerved, but mad with fury, aiming his gun at our workers’ columns this time.

  “What is it?! A revolt; is that what you want?!” We tensed instantly, ready to drop down to the ground at a moment’s notice. “I’ll let you have a revolt you’ll remember, you filthy scum!”

  He began walking towards us, emptying his gun into the thick crowd. A few screams, women’s voices, short; they died right away. We fell down but he walked among us now, replacing the magazine with a fresh one, shooting again at random heads. Richter’s dog, held by one of the SS men, was choking itself as it strained on its leash, smelling blood. My face in the snow, I wondered if he would order to release it on us. It was one of his favorite pastimes, after all, strolling through the ghetto on a fine spring day and letting his Alsatian tear small children apart, who didn’t run fast enough.

  He was behind us now. I looked up at Liza but she had her eyes fixed firmly on the man in a dark coat, tall and distinguished, standing next to his fallen comrade Levin’s body. She lifted her head higher, as though imploring him with her eyes. He was looking at her too; saw her tear-stained, strained face and shook his head ever so slightly. Don’t even consider it, Liza. Boris must live, for with him, our cause will live. I’m only a cog. I’m replaceable. He isn’t.

  She understood it all too well and dropped her head into the dirty melting snow. I only saw her shoulders shaking with soundless sobs.

  A delegation suddenly emerged, hands promptly drawn up, all three gasping for air.

  “He’s dead! Herr Superintendent, Makarsky’s dead!” Their leader, his head uncovered and close-shaven, maneuvered his way through the sea of the bodies – most still alive – and bowed deeply, offering blood-smeared papers to the uniformed, savage God. “We were burying the bodies left over from the latest Aktion, and recovered this passport from one of them.”

  Richter hesitated, turned the passport in his gloved hand this way and that.

  “And you’re certain it was him?” He looked at the man with suspicion.

  The latter nearly rolled his eyes with enthusiasm before breaking into frantic nodding. “On my mother’s grave, it was him, Herr Superintendent. The rats got to his face and hands overnight, but he’s still identifiable. We left him unburied, in case you want to make sure of it yourself but I’d cover your face with something if I were you. It appears, he was sick with typhoid when he got shot. His chest was all covered with—”

  “Go bury him then!” Richter threw the passport back at the man with a mortified look of utter disgust. He dug into his pocket, extracted a handkerchief and thoroughly wiped his gloved hands. It could have been an illusion, a shadow cast by a setting sun but I could swear that the fleeting outline of a coy smile passed over the old man’s face. “Or, better off, burn him! Burn all typhus cases from now on! Filthy scum…” Richter muttered under his breath walking away.

  One of his soldiers stepped forward, saluted, inquired on account of the Judenrat members.

  “Let them all go to the devil for all I care!” Richter barked in response.

  Next to me, beaming, Liza was looking at the equally grinning young man. He winked at her after the SS waved them all off.

  “A fine friend you are,” I grumbled in mock reproach as we stood up, dusting off our clothes from the snow. “Teased me about Schultz till you were blue in the face yet about your own dear friend you kept quiet as though he was a state secret.”

  “You’re picking up mor
e and more Soviet expressions, I see,” she retorted in place of an actual answer.

  “Is it bad?”

  “Good. It’ll help you once you get to the partisans.”

  “You think we’ll get to the partisans one day?”

  “Now, we will. He’s our connection to them. He’ll get us out.”

  She didn’t have to pronounce Boris’s name. Everything was understood without words among us.

  “I almost told,” she whispered in horror.

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. They were hiding him in the hospital. Now that they aren’t looking for him any longer, he’ll be able to leave.”

  Soon, we will follow, his eyes said.

  Chapter Twelve

  April 1942

  The air was thick with thaw that morning – the first warm day of spring. Beads of water dropped from the trees – tears of the land mourning another year of enslavement. With the melting, familiar frames came into view, still in their khaki-brown uniforms, still stiff with ice, still embedded into the dirty whiteness, out of which the digging brigades were working to pull them out. We marched past the frozen corpses, past the fallen statue of Lenin – now, not only his outstretched arm but half of his torso crept into view, much like the dead Red Army soldiers who died in his name and now lay in the eerily same direction in which their leader was pointing. The leader of the dead, also dead and unburied.

  At night, wrapped in layers and layers of clothing and blankets – whatever was possible to procure on the black market – women slept soundly. That morning, however, with the first whiff of spring, they marched with faces lined with worry, cursing the spring that somehow stole past them and caught them unawares.

  “Look at them, Fritzes,” Sima, the only other Soviet woman from my brigade besides Liza, motioned her bundled head in the direction of the SS who supervised the corpse-carriers’ work. Even though that morning ‘supervised’ would be quite too strong of a word to describe what precisely they were doing. Much like schoolchildren on a spring break, they were busy throwing snowballs at each other, using partially-unearthed corpses as barricades. Whenever a snowball missed its gray-clad aim and hit one of the Jews from the digging brigade instead, they would nearly choke with laughter and order him to drop dead for he was now killed. “They’re in a good mood. Faces out in the sun, grinning like cats.”