“You’re not going to get anywhere with that old trick,” Stefan said to her, his expression calm while his eyes twisted with savage glee. “These men trust me. I came to them, offering my services as a translator. I’m not the enemy anymore.”
The officer said something to Stefan. She understood SS. Stefan shook his head, then went into a lengthy dialogue in English, gesturing with his hands and pointing at Christine. How ironic that they trusted a murderer just because he could speak their language. She thought she understood the words: Jew, Dachau, family, father, dead. The Americans winced several times, as if parts of Stefan’s story were painful to hear.
“Nein, nein, nein,” Christine insisted, panic twisting in her chest. She pointed at Stefan again, made a stabbing motion with her fist toward her abdomen, and said, “SS. Father.”
Stefan put a finger to his temple, made a circular motion, and whistled. The officer looked at her, eyes filled with pity. All at once, she put it together. He was telling them her family was dead, and that she had gone mad from the loss.
Unable to hold back any longer, Christine lunged at Stefan, swinging at his head, her fists colliding with his jaw, his neck, his temples.
“What did you do to my father?” she screamed. With no more effort than if he were wrestling a small child, Stefan grabbed her flailing arms and held on. She tore at his hands, trying to pry his strong fingers from her wrists. The bristle-faced soldier pulled her away and pushed her down in the chair, then held her there, his hands digging into her shoulders, waiting for her to calm down. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps, the tendons in her neck stretching and pulling as she struggled to get up. She wanted to rip Stefan’s heart from his chest.
“Careful, little Jew lover,” Stefan said, his voice soft, as if trying to calm her. “You’re playing into everything I just told them.”
“Where is my father?” she cried again, the words catching in her throat. Stefan said something to the soldier, and he reluctantly let go. Christine fought the urge to jump out of the chair again, her nails digging into the wooden arms. But Stefan was right; she had to pull herself together or the Americans would never believe her.
“What did you think would happen after your little stunt in church the other day?” Stefan said, kneeling in front of her, his face a mask of feigned kindness. “I told you I’d make you pay.”
“Bitte,” she said. “Just tell me where he is.”
“Let me see,” he said. “I believe he’s being questioned about his involvement in war crimes. Ja, that’s it. I heard someone say he was in trouble.”
“Questioned? Questioned by whom? He hasn’t done anything wrong! The Americans are in charge now! Not you! And not your SS friends!”
Stefan stood and said something to the officer, who nodded, his lips pressed together, as if concerned for her well-being. “You’re right,” Stefan said. “The Americans are in charge now, and they’re holding SS and Wehrmacht alike in Dachau.”
Christine swallowed. “Dachau?”
“Ja, and that’s where your father is headed because you didn’t do as you were told.”
“But they won’t keep him there,” she cried. “They’ll find out he was just a regular soldier and release him!” She looked up at the Americans, who gaped as if listening to a doctor explain a terminal diagnosis to a patient.
Stefan shook his head, as if delivering bad news for a second time, his calm confidence as unmistakable as the steel-blue color of his eyes. “Did I forget to mention my old uniform fit him perfectly? Right down to the boot size? He’s going to have a hard time talking his way out of that.”
“But he hasn’t done anything wrong,” she cried. “I’ll go to Dachau and tell them who the real war criminal is!”
“Go ahead and try. Because right now, all Germans are guilty until proven innocent. They’re holding women in Dachau too. Maybe if I’m lucky, they’ll lock you up and my troubles will be over. Try to remember, I’m the one with the power right now. I’ll throw your mother or little brothers in a hidden room or underground vault somewhere, and the Americans will never find them. This is still our territory, remember? These old villages are full of tunnels, and the alleys and houses are nothing but a maze. Whoever I take next will just rot away. Like you should have.”
Christine glared at him, hatred hardening inside her chest.
“Jake?” she tried again, looking up at the officer. With the mention of an American name, the officer’s face went dark, and he said something to Stefan.
“Now he thinks you might be here to cause trouble for one of his men,” Stefan told her. “The American soldiers have a strict no fraternization policy with adult German civilians. He wants to know if you’re aware that all Germans aged fourteen to sixty-five in the occupation zone are required to register for compulsory labor, under threat of prison or withdrawal of ration cards.”
Christine nodded, pretending she had complied. It was no use; she wasn’t going to get anywhere with the Americans, especially with Stefan here. The officer went to the wall behind his desk, where he pulled half a dozen cans from a shelf. He put the cans in a cloth sack and held it out to her, like a dead animal hanging between them. On trembling legs she stood and took it, her burning eyes glued on Stefan.
“I don’t know how,” she said to him, “but I will make you pay.”
Stefan made a move to put his arms around her and she shoved him backwards, spitting in his face. The officer stepped between them, scowling and motioning for Christine to leave. The bristle-faced soldier grabbed her by the arm and led her out of the building.
Christine held the sack to her chest as the soldier dragged her across the air base, trying to figure out what to do next. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, wondering if he would help. His face was set, his brows furrowed in determination.
“Help?” Christine said. The soldier ignored her and kept moving. She stopped and yanked her arm from his grasp. “Help,” she tried again, firmly this time. He grabbed her arm and wrenched her forward.
Halfway across the compound, she saw two jeeps at the security checkpoint, one carrying three soldiers, the other carrying two. She squinted, trying to pick out a familiar face, but they were too far away, and the soldiers’ helmeted heads were turned in the other direction; they were talking with the guards. Then the jeeps entered the air base, drawing closer. In the second jeep, Christine saw a white grin and a line of blond hair.
“Jake!” she shouted, pulling away from the soldier. She tried to run but wasn’t fast enough. The soldier caught her by the shoulder and pushed her down in the dirt, the sack of cans colliding like rocks with her chest, knocking the wind from her lungs. She gulped for air and tried to stand, watching the jeeps as they sped past. The soldier yanked her upright and pulled her toward the exit, leaving the cans of food scattered like a child’s building blocks in the yellowed grass. She twisted her shoulders, trying to get away, but he yelled and tightened his grip, his blunt-ended fingers digging deep into her upper arm.
“Christine!” a voice shouted behind them.
She craned her neck and saw Jake sprinting toward her, a rifle in one hand, his forehead crumpled in concern. The bristle-faced soldier stopped and waited for Jake to catch up, his face a sour mixture of irritation and uncertainty. When Jake reached them, he said something to the soldier. They argued for a moment. Jake rolled his eyes and reached into his pocket, pulling out several pieces of folded green paper that looked like money. He slid two bills from the fold and held them out to the soldier, who glanced back at the officer’s building, then took the money and shoved it in his pocket. Scowling, he started walking again, still gripping Christine by the arm.
Jake took Christine’s other arm, and the three of them hurried toward the security checkpoint. When they neared the stone ruins of a small outbuilding, Jake pulled her behind it, glancing around nervously. The bristle-faced soldier kept going. Jake said something she didn’t understand. Then, certain no one was watchin
g, the same German words he had first spoken at the train station: “May I help?”
CHAPTER 35
The creaking train, overflowing with women, children, and either very old or wounded men, shuddered and lurched to a stop, wheels screeching and whistles shrieking, like the dying screams of a giant, tortured animal. Christine woke with a start, her heart thundering beneath her ribs, her neck stiff. Again, she had to remind herself that she was on a real passenger train, with glass windows and cloth seats, nothing more.
The other passengers peered out the windows, wondering why they were stopping in the middle of nowhere again. Not that they’d be able to see the cause of the delay, but it was an automatic reaction every time the train came to an unexpected stop. With each holdup, rumors traveled through the overloaded cars about what had caused the setback. First there was a disabled tank on the tracks, then a group of refugees with a broken wagon. Once, the tracks needed repair; another time, they were out of coal. The passengers had no way of knowing what was true. The last stop had been the longest, when two American soldiers had gone through the cars with their rifles drawn, examining every face as if they were looking for someone. Luckily the problems were always resolved and the train started moving again, but no one had expected the trip to take this long.
Two days earlier, Christine had stood on the station platform, the hot smell of burning coal, the black engine, the trembling cars making her want to run away screaming. It was all she could do to climb the stairs and find a seat in the crowded car, her thumbnail digging deep into her wrist. She had tried telling herself she was lucky to find a spot when she did, because more and more passengers kept coming, filling the aisle with bodies and boxes and suitcases, until there wasn’t room to walk or move. Except she didn’t feel lucky; she felt trapped and claustrophobic, wishing more than anything she could get off the train and go home.
She’d waited three days for a train heading in the right direction, and it seemed as if the whole of Germany had been waiting too. When the railroad cars pulled away from the station, hordes of displaced persons still lined the platform, elbowing each other for space, their eyes hollow with desperation. Pleading with the boarded passengers, children held out their last crusts of bread, women offered necklaces and earrings previously hidden inside their clothes, all in exchange for one last spot on the cars. One woman ran alongside the tracks, handed her baby to someone on the moving train, then fell in a heap on the cement, screaming as she watched her child disappear.
Once the train was fully underway, Christine had to remind herself to breathe, watching the green and brown patchwork of the Kocher River valley lumber past her window, every mile revealing the battered countryside full of bombed-out towns and ruined cities. Survivors cooked over open fires in the streets and washed in the streams, living in tent cities made of soot-covered rugs and tattered blankets. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she stopped looking, trying instead to figure out how she was going to save Vater and get the Americans to arrest Stefan. Finally, she fell into a mind-numbing pattern of staring out the window and fitful dozing, jerking awake each time a child cried or someone coughed, her heart hammering in her chest until she realized she wasn’t in a filthy boxcar filled with prisoners.
Now, the train started moving again. She clutched her mother’s purse in her lap, her train tickets, the change from Jake’s ten-dollar bill, Vater’s letters and his Soldbuch, identification and service book, stashed inside. Outside, it was pouring, the trees and electric poles smudges of green and brown, blurring past the rain-streaked windows. She closed her eyes and remembered Mutti’s red cheeks, wet with tears as she handed over Vater’s cherished correspondence, a dog-eared stack tied with brown twine like a tattered gift. She remembered the terror in her mother’s eyes when she had first learned her husband had been thrown in jail, and heard Mutti’s words, uneven and high, asking why, what did the Americans think he had done? The look of confusion and helplessness on her mother’s face had burned itself into Christine’s memory.
“It’s my fault,” Christine had said, the words tearing at her throat. “Stefan did this to Vater because of me.” Mutti had begged to go with her, but Christine had insisted she stay home with Oma and the boys. “Besides,” Christine said, “you don’t need to see that awful place. I’ll bring Vater home, I promise.”
She told Mutti to keep the boys home from work, to keep an eye out for Stefan, and, if anyone asked, to say Christine was sick in bed. Because if Stefan found out that Christine was going to Dachau, there was no telling what he might do. Luckily, he had no idea she could afford a train ticket. Jake had understood the words train and money. Back at the base, she’d tried to tell Jake that his superiors trusted a man who used to be SS, but their language barrier was too great. She was wasting precious time. She needed to get to Dachau, and to Vater, as soon as possible. Because if Dachau was being used as a war crimes enclosure, someone there had to speak fluent German, and maybe he would listen to her. In the end, Jake had given her what she needed without question, his eyes sad, as if he’d never see her again.
Now, outside the train windows, red tile roofs and pockmarked stucco came into view, along with the long, brick building of a crowded station. Christine knew, by asking the elderly woman seated next to her, that the train would stop in the village of Dachau, and, from there, she would have to walk. The woman confirmed that the Americans were keeping POWs at the camp, warning that they chased the locals away, especially if they were trying to bring food to the prisoners. When the passengers from the train disembarked, the old woman put a gnarled hand on Christine’s arm, wishing her luck before disappearing into the crowd.
On the other side of the station, Christine stopped in her tracks, her stomach twisting. The main thoroughfare was crowded, from one direction to the other, with a throng of horses, carts, and people. They were refugees, some of the millions of ethnic Germans expelled by the Allies from centuries-old communities in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, their only crime that they were German. Now, they were trying to find new homes in what was left of Germany. The massive human procession moved slowly west, like a giant, sluggish serpent. A parade of grim-faced women, skeletal children, and the elderly trudged forward in unison, some with white armbands on one sleeve, others with heads down, pulling their possessions in farm wagons, baby carriages, and hand carts. The only sounds were shuffling footsteps and the creak of dry axles and wooden wheels. Even the children were silent. Remnants of the exiled Germans’ flight littered the trampled edges of the dirt road: fragments of broken stoneware, solitary shoes, the scattered contents of a child’s lost suitcase, the splintered, wooden spokes of wagon wheels, the bloated corpse of a horse. Christine heard her father’s voice in her head.
War makes victims all.
She gritted her teeth and joined the procession. The narrow, one-lane road was nothing but mud and manure, its length marred and rutted by wagon wheels and tank tracks. She kept her eyes straight ahead, ignoring the mist that floated around the trees like swirling spirits. She pretended she was in some other town, far away from the oily black forest that edged the green fields, far away from the place where Isaac was murdered. She crossed her arms over her middle, wishing she were invisible and trying to ignore the lines of refugees trudging along beside her.
Despite her surroundings, it was a relief to be on her feet, after the long days and night on the cramped train. Luckily, the rain had stopped, but her stomach growled with hunger and her lips felt parched. The bread and plums hidden inside her coat were for her father, and even if she had intended to eat them herself, she didn’t dare let anyone slogging along beside her know she had food. Initially, the bread and plums had been part of the provisions her mother had packed for her to eat on the train, because they were certain her father, as a POW, was being fed and taken care of by the Americans. But after talking to the old woman, Christine ate only half of what she’d brought, deciding instead to save the rest. If what the old woman said was tru
e, the Red Cross had not been allowed to inspect the camps; the food supplies had been taken from the civilians of Dachau; the U.S. Army had warned the civilians it was a crime punishable by death to feed German prisoners; and the prisoners were being intentionally starved. Her father would need the nourishment more than she did. Still, she felt bad every time she heard a refugee child wail with hunger.
On the outskirts of the village, she left the crowded road, crossed over a dirt path through farmers’ fields, then took a right on a paved thoroughfare with a sign to Konzentrationslagar Dachau. She stopped and stared at the road sign, a thumbnail digging into her wrist, her breath shallow.
She bit her lip and trudged forward, every now and then stopping to remind herself to breathe, to regain her equilibrium, the wet tarmac and gray sky reeling in front of her. When the watchtowers and barbed wire came into view, she kept her eyes on the road, putting one foot in front of the other, until she came to a wide cobblestone turnoff. There, she stopped, steeled herself, and looked up. At the end of the long driveway, edged on both sides by rows of tall evergreens, was the main entrance to Dachau, a massive cement building the color of gravestones, with a center tower and broad gate.
It looked exactly as it had the day she left, minus the giant eagle and swastika above the entry. Nausea stirred in her stomach. Jeeps and tanks sat on each side of the entrance, and two soldiers smoking cigarettes, their rifles slung over their shoulders, walked slowly back and forth in front of the closed gate. Christine took a deep breath and started toward them, stepping over the train tracks that ran through the wet cobblestones, as if touching them would pull her backwards in time.
When the guards saw her, they tossed their cigarettes on the ground, took their rifles from their shoulders, and blocked her way. One of them, a tall, dark-eyed man with pockmarked cheeks, held up a hand. “Halt!” he said. Then, in German, “Turn around and go back the way you came.” His pronunciation was rough, his words a mixture of high German and some other language, perhaps Dutch or Norwegian, but at least they’d be able to understand each other.
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