And so, I wandered around the city from time to time, an invisible civilian who could finally see life, not through the barbed wire. I learned to distinguish the types of the troops and their insignia and knew when to keep walking ahead or quickly turn into a side street, Ausweis or not. Field-gray-clad Wehrmacht officers with their local girlfriends on a stroll never paid me any heed. Ordinary privates, marching in columns along the streets, sometimes called out to me and waved but so they did to all other women and I soon learned to ignore them the same way that those women did. The gray-blue uniforms I greeted with a smile. By now, I knew most of the local Luftwaffe office staff by name; almost all of them reported to Willy. Black-clad tank troops hardly appeared in the streets – their quarters were on the other bank of the river, away from the forest and its inhabitants. They were growing bolder, the partisans; they ventured into the outskirts of Minsk now. The SS, which I tried to avoid like the plague, was growing more annoyed with such a turn of events. All of their efforts, all the pogroms, and massacres were in vain. Survivors slipped through their fingers like sand and much like quicksand, they’d drown them soon, or so they promised in one of their latest leaflets which were published by the underground and circulated around the ghetto up until three weeks ago.
“Richter was grinning like a cat who’s got the canary,” Liza spoke with a snarl after one of our Sunday ‘concerts,’ which have become customary now after the very first one. The band consisted mostly of German Jews, who were allowed to live, solely due to their ability to play classical music and brassy marches – whatever Superintendent Richter fancied hearing that day. He thought such concerts to be a great success. On his good days – the SS had their good and bad days also – he would settle on Austrian waltzes. On his bad days, he took cruel pleasure in forcing the orchestra to play “Heil Hitler Dir” and anti-Semitic songs which were in such favor with the SA not that long ago. He took his mocking even further when he organized a choir out of his former compatriots and made them sing one such song: Put the Jews up against the wall, Throw the Jewish gang out of our German Fatherland, Send them to Palestine, Once there – cut their throats so that they will never come back. Yet, such verbal cruelty was still better than any Aktionen. We learned how to ignore it for the most part. “He thinks he took the last hope from the people by arresting Efim and the rest of the printers.”
“In that case, he succeeded,” I noted broodingly.
Liza translated those leaflets for me since they were mostly in Russian; in her clear, hopeful voice she read to me about the Red Army’s fighting back, of liberated towns near Moscow, of partisans destroying a platoon in Staroselskaya Pusha – so very close to us, a walking distance, really!
“No, he did not.” She squared her shoulders, a proud Soviet woman. “In no time, people will start working that press again. Our people are everywhere. It’s not some Committee now, it’s all of us, the people. And he can’t kill us all at once.”
I wasn’t quite sure about that last part.
With thick curtains blocking out the grim view behind the window, I sat lost in my thoughts with unfinished documents still stacked next to the typewriter. Besides the small circle of light cast by a lamp, the room was shrouded in darkness. My heart thumped heavy in my chest; much too heavy for a young girl who should only know joy in her life. Shadows crept from every corner, threatening, haunting. The clock measured the time far too loudly. Everything around was hostile and frightening, even this room without the light, without Willy in it.
I’ve always been strong, brave, I thought with a shudder. What have they done to me? Afraid of the dark and even more afraid to open the curtains.
There was no getting used to this place. I was forced to live with this fear; it was a part of me now, just as real and tangible as one’s limbs.
I will feel better once they remove the gallows, I told myself, clenching my fists. My palms were cold and clammy. As soon as the gallows is gone, I will be brave again.
I swung round on my seat. The sound of the lock turning in Willy’s office startled me back into reality. He always locked the door whenever he left me.
“So that I wouldn’t run away?” I joked once.
“Everything precious must be kept under lock and key so that other people wouldn’t get to it,” he replied, with an odd note to his voice.
I went to meet him, glad to be finally saved from that unbearable, mortifying solitude, from the invisible gallows behind the window. He’s back, and I can breathe again.
“Why the blackout drapes?” He looked, mystified, at his darkened living quarters. “Are you expecting Soviet Ratas any time soon?”
“The sun is too bright,” I lied for his sake. He walked in, so warm with sun and smelling of blossoming trees and here I stood grim like a warden of the graveyard. “All that spring business outside…”
“I didn’t know you were so prejudiced again the sun and the spring; else I wouldn’t have gotten you this.” With a conspirator’s smile, he presented me with a bundle wrapped in brown paper and tied with a cord.
“What is it?”
“We’re going for a ride to the airbase. I thought you might want to wear this.”
I looked at the parcel, in hesitation.
“Well, go on, open it up. It’s for you. A present.”
“Too many presents lately.”
“I didn’t give you any presents at all!” he protested at once.
“The food, the Ausweis, my new job, and no more yellow star.”
“Those are not presents. I was just trying to create a semblance of a normal life for you.”
“Those were very dear presents,” I countered. He didn’t argue.
I tugged at the cord and unwrapped the paper. It was a two-piece suit, a jacket, and a skirt, sky-blue and with a German label on the jacket’s collar. I stared at it incomprehensibly. Thoroughly trying to conceal his enthusiasm, Willy held up the sleeve to my eyes.
“A perfect match,” he declared.
“Where did you get it from?”
“The Fatherland. Asked one of my sisters to send it to me.”
“She didn’t ask any questions?”
“She gave me a Gestapo-worthy third-degree if I’m entirely honest but I managed to concoct a story that satisfied her in the end. Spring is here. I thought you could use something new for your wardrobe. Now, what’s with the tears? That’s not the reaction I was expecting. Do you really loathe all that spring business?”
“I don’t. Spring is my favorite season.” I quickly wiped my eyes. “You are too kind to me, that’s all. I’ll go change at once. I don’t want you to be late for your appointment because of my sentiments.”
I closed the door after myself and laid the suit down on his bed, to admire it for a few more moments. Yes, it was obviously a product of Germany, not a local seamstress. I used to see such suits on mannequins in the windows of Frankfurt’s department stores, into which I wasn’t allowed any longer. With bitter irony, I was putting it on now, an Aryan product for Aryans only, bought by a Party member for his Jewish lady friend he liked to kiss.
It hadn’t gotten further than that yet; stolen caresses here and there, his hands on top of my legs but not further than a certain point, his mouth on top of mine that drove me to insanity… Still, he never insisted on anything as soon as I’d press my hands against his chest and push him off, for I could swear that a few more moments and I wouldn’t have the presence of mind to resist him any longer. He’d only look at me with infinite longing and ask, between the small kisses with which he’d cover my fingertips, “Am I frightening you, Ilse?”
“Yes. But not like you think you are.”
And how easy it would have been for him to just take what was now rightfully his, for what he had paid the SS and therefore could do as he pleased… They, for one, never even considered paying for such favors when they would come, drunk and looking for a good time, into the ghetto. They simply took the prettiest girls they could find and left
with them in the direction of the cemetery and the following day the diggers would have a few more bodies to bury. The SS weren’t so racially selective when it came to that and the dead Jewish girls couldn’t quite report anyone, could they? Yes, he could have done just the same, yet, he courted me instead as though it was not wartime, as though I didn’t owe my very life to him, as though it wasn’t me, who was the helpless side in all of this twisted equation.
I opened the door of the bedroom.
“What do you think?” Tentatively, I smoothed out the skirt with my fingers. I didn’t know how to wear all of these beautiful things anymore. I had long lost the habit of being a proper woman.
He didn’t say anything just caressed me with his eyes with unconcealed admiration in them. Finally, he uttered with a sigh, “How I wish…”
He never finished the sentence only shook his head at all this rotten business around us.
“Yes, me too.”
The sunshine outside was outrageous, mocking and grotesque, pouring down its glorious beauty on the corpses, swaying slightly in the wind. Thank God for the curtains; I didn’t have to witness the hanging itself.
There was no avoiding the grim view, even in the staff car. The SS ensured the strategic placement of the gallows so that everyone would come face to face with dead “criminals.” It served two purposes. To demonstrate a job well done, to their German superiors and to warn the locals who were stupid enough to go against them. I turned my face away from the window. Willy drove straight ahead, his mouth pressed into a hard line.
Though there wasn’t any escaping from death, that day. The gallows had been erected on all squares, on most populated intersections, right along the route that we were taking, like a dark premonition of our common destiny.
“Sadistic bastards.”
In spite of myself, I followed Willy’s gaze to the nearby gallows. We stopped at the intersection, letting a column of Wehrmacht trucks pass in the direction of the forest. The gallows stood within twenty steps of us; there was no avoiding seeing it. Now, I saw for myself what he was alluding to – unlike the usual, “We’re the criminals who are guilty of spreading anti-German propaganda,” a new sign sat crookedly on one of the hanged men’s necks – “Happy May Day!”
“It’s nothing new,” I commented, averting my eyes.
I would really rather look at the trucks with soldiers in them, most likely driving to their certain deaths. There was no winning in the forest. They didn’t know the terrain like the locals did; their maps were useless just like the directions given by the peasants, slyly pointing them to a marsh instead of a partisan brigade’s location. There was no fair fighting in the forest; the partisans booby-trapped the trails, placed snipers in the trees, and showered the Germans with the machineguns of their own production, smuggled by the Jews out of the factories. Now, it was more and more such Jews who were shooting at them. I wondered how they liked it.
“Herrgott.” My voice was suddenly hoarse, breath stuck in my throat.
I didn’t hear Willy’s question, just yanked on the door handle and rushed outside, towards the road, charging right between the passing vehicles, one of them nearly crashing into me – the driver slamming his brakes on in time. I didn’t see him and didn’t hear his horn blowing; I was running like mad toward my little sister, who walked along the road as though she had a business to be there. The new dress on her thin frame – the one I gave her for her birthday, a cardigan from someone else’s shoulder, blonde hair in two plaits, no yellow star.
I clasped her arm and pulled her forcefully toward myself.
“Lore…” Words suddenly failed me. I couldn’t get my breath.
She looked at me in stupefaction, then quickly regained her composure and shifted what seemed like a schoolbag on her shoulder. She got involved with something. Someone. How did I fail to notice it?
“Let go of me,” she said through gritted teeth. “You’re making a scene.”
“How did you get out?” That was all I could manage to say. “Did someone give you a special pass?”
Please, say yes, I beg of you. Please, be here on some official business. Please, tell me you are an informant for the Gestapo, whatever it is, just don’t let me be right.
Lore inched away from me, her gaze already darting in the direction of an SS patrolman, making his way towards us. His face and the hand on his holster meant business.
“Let’s try to run,” Lore whispered. Before she could, I grabbed her firmly by the collar of her cardigan and held her tightly despite the withering glances she was throwing my way. Her hands were clenched on the straps of her bag. I instantly guessed why she wanted to run; just being outside the ghetto without a pass would earn one a simple beating in most cases. Whatever she had in that bag was far more serious.
It was too late now. The SS man had just yelled the terrifying “Papiere!” and unfastened his holster. I felt as though the ground had just gone from under my feet.
“It’s all right!” Willy was shouting at the SS man making the same way as I had, in-between the trucks, which had now stopped, the soldiers in them observing the scene, half-curious, half-ready to shoot the participants. “It’s all right; she’s my wife.”
The SS man forgot his gun for a few moments and pulled himself up to salute a superior officer. Willy replied to his enthusiastic Heil Hitler with the same and, still out of breath, turned to Lore instead.
The silence was suddenly grave and threatening. I had to think of something credible and fast but all I could think of was gallows; gallows right across the street from where we stood; gallows from which my sister and I could be swaying mere moments from now.
“She ran away from me again,” I said, unable to keep the tremor out of my voice. Under my new suit, I was wet with sweat. The heat had nothing to do with it; my flesh was creeping with terror.
Willy’s shouting startled me even further. “The first day in a new place and you’re acting out?! Shall I send you back to your grandparents? To work in the fields all summer – is that what you want, young lady?!”
He was so convincing, Lore reddened and lowered her eyes without any effort, the scolded, unruly child.
One of the Wehrmacht officers, one from the truck column, approached us as well, seemingly not pleased with the interruption of their movement.
“Heil Hitler.” After receiving the same greeting from Willy, he inquired, “What’s going on?”
“My apologies, Herr Hauptmann.” Willy lowered his head. I swallowed a lump in my throat. The Wehrmacht officer was a Captain; Willy, just a Leutnant. The SS man wouldn’t dare ask him for any papers; this one could. “My wife was trying to catch our daughter and almost caused you an accident. I apologize again.”
The Wehrmacht Hauptmann looked at me closely, then at Lore.
“Your wife?” he asked again and raised his brow just enough to express a doubt. I looked barely twenty; Lore was a teenager.
“Yes. My wife, Ilse.” He sensed the officer’s hesitation, no doubt, and turned to Lore again. “Do you see the trouble you’re causing me, you ungrateful brat?! Why did you run away from your mother?”
“She’s not my mother,” Lore grumbled back with all the defiance of a typical teenager, the smart girl, and gasped, so very naturally, when Willy slapped her hard on her cheek.
The Hauptmann blinked a few times, then grinned in understanding. Ach, that’s what it is. Herr Leutnant found himself a young wife, the pretty little thing and the daughter is not too happy about it, it read in his eyes. He glanced me over once again. Expensive clothes; he spoils her and the brat is jealous.
“Apologize to Ilse at once,” Willy’s voice was steely.
Still holding her cheek with one hand, Lore turned to me, her eyes still riveted to the ground. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, who?” Willy repeated.
“I’m sorry, Mutti.”
“That’s better. Now, apologize to these two officers as well for causing all this mayhem.�
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“I’m sorry, Officers.”
The SS man grinned, mighty pleased at the address form.
“You shouldn’t be running away from your parents in this city—” The Hauptmann looked at Willy, who supplied him with the name and turned back to the girl, his tone getting more conciliatory. “You shouldn’t be running around here, Lore. It’s not Germany; there are partisans and other criminals here on every corner. You’re putting not only yours but your parents’ lives in danger.”
“I apologize, Herr Hauptmann,” Lore mumbled again, looking thoroughly ashamed.
The officer turned to Willy, who offered him another apologetic smile. “I have four brats myself, all girls.” He rolled his eyes emphatically.
“I don’t know how you manage them all. I can’t manage one.”
“I left my wife and their BDM leaders to the task. I’d rather be here with this riff-raff,” the Hauptmann motioned his head toward the trucks, laughing, “than with those four princesses. I manage a company better than them.”
“Don’t even say—”
“God’s truth! As true as I’m standing here—”
“And one can’t even punish them properly!” Willy spread his arms in a helpless gesture. “They get in veritable trouble but then they give you those eyes, Vati this, Vati that; I didn’t mean to, Vati; it won’t happen again, Vati; Vati, you’re the best Vati in the world—”
“The whole song and dance,” the Wehrmacht officer agreed in a most emphatic way, smiles chasing one another across his face.
Willy’s hand now rested on top of Lore’s blonde head, the same color as his. Vati’s girl. Satisfied with his performance, Willy began patting his pockets.
“Ach, I’m forgetting myself. You wished to see our papers?” An innocent look in the SS man’s direction. “Here’s mine. Leutnant Schultz, Air Supply Unit.” He offered the Hauptmann his hand, which the latter thoroughly shook.
“What papers? Forget the papers.” The Wehrmacht officer protested loudly, clapping Willy on his shoulder and pushing Willy’s Luftwaffe-issued ID away. “I’m Bruckner, with the 67th company.” He turned to me, all smiles and gallantry. “Are you and young Lore staying for long in our God-forsaken parts, Frau Schultz?”
The Girl Who Survived: Based on a true story, an utterly unputdownable and heart-wrenching World War 2 page-turner Page 13