Tadek looked at the entrance long after her steps disappeared somewhere onto the grand central staircase. He found himself furious and powerless. He wanted to scream and throw things around and weep on all fours on the floor but the camp had long taught him to keep his emotions under control. In the camp, weeping would certainly earn one the lash, not the guards’ sympathy. In the camp, he had learned that the only way to get on the SS’s good side was to make oneself indispensable. In the camp, even the lowliest guard was corrupted and if an inmate could “organize” enough things for any such guard, the mutually-profitable relationship soon flourished, even between the worst Nazis and the Jews, who loathed those Nazis the most.
In Tadek’s mind, Morris’s words kept repeating themselves like a broken record – when pushed to desperation, people befriend even their enemies. She needs a friend, Tadeusz. Someone to trust. Someone to tell things. An ally…
From behind the curtain, the sun changed its position and was now spilling its light onto Tadek’s cocked head, onto the piano’s radiant top and Tadek still stood and thought about the past long and hard. Along with the onyx of the piano, warmed by the golden flood, his eyes lit up as well.
An ally. He knew how to be a friend and an ally. One didn’t survive Auschwitz if one couldn’t make himself such an “ally” to an SS guard.
He looked up, more confident now and walked out of the room, flew up the stairs and, before he’d lost his resolve, knocked on the gray, ornate door.
From behind it, Gerlinde’s muffled voice came. “It’s not eleven yet!”
“It’s me, Tadeusz.”
Silence; his heart beating itself to death in his chest. Then, suddenly, a creak of the bedframe and barely audible steps – not heavy enough to express the anger she’d wished to put into them. He stepped away as soon as the door flew open, half-expecting a slap for such insolence.
“I have something to offer to you.” Hastily, he began the well-oiled speech, dusted-off and almost unchanged from the camp days.
Gerlinde’s room also basked in the light. She stood against the sun, which formed a halo around her blonde head, gilding a few errant strands that had come loose from her, whilst lying in bed. It was neatly made but the duvet still bore the shape of her body; Tadek saw it behind her slim frame. With the best will in the world, he still couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye.
Her ire turned to mild disdain. Leaning against the doorframe, she arched her brow. If it was his former superior Voss in her place, Tadek would expect him to lift a cigarette to his lips and light it with one elegant, languid motion. Gerlinde only snorted softly. “What can you, a displaced person who lives off my household, possibly offer me?”
“Books.” It was important to sound convincing.
The sneer dropped. She narrowed her eyes slightly. “I have a full library downstairs; in case you haven’t noticed.”
“The library, which you aren’t allowed to enter,” he countered, carefully measuring words. “But I am.”
She wasn’t leaning on the doorframe anymore. “Have you come here to rub it in my face?”
“No. I came to say that I can smuggle a couple for you.”
Another long pause. Tadek had long grown used to holding his breath during such pauses.
“The Amis will punish you if they find out.”
The camp Gestapo will skin you alive if they find out about the missing gold, other words rung in his ears.
He gave the same answer he’d given to Voss that day:
“They won’t find out.”
Gerlinde’s gaze fell toward the staircase, calculating the odds.
“What’s in it for you?” Suspicion was back in her voice.
“Nothing. I know how important books are, to keep one’s sanity in circumstances like these. I was in the camp, after all. We were allowed to read, our Kommando. Without books, I would have killed myself a long time ago.”
“If I wanted to kill myself, I would have done it before that lot downstairs showed up.” She was putting on airs for him, to save face but her knuckles, that had turned white on top of the doorknob, told another story. Tadek could tell she was ready to kill for that couple of promised books.
“I only thought you would like to read something between the interrogations.” He shrugged and made a move to leave.
“Wait!”
There it was.
“Yes?”
Almost white with the shame of having to ask a Pole and a former inmate for a favor, she quickly muttered, “Medical Encyclopedia, all three volumes, if you can,” and slammed the door shut.
A rather odd choice, Tadek thought but found the books and brought them to her. Gerlinde snatched them from him and hugged them to her chest. “It doesn’t change anything. You still aren’t allowed to touch the piano.”
“As you say. It’s your house. Thank you for allowing me to live here.” He bowed slightly and walked away, hiding a triumphant smile from her. Gerlinde Neumann didn’t know it yet but he had just won his first little battle.
Upon hearing his report later that day, Morris could not stop smiling and patting his shoulder, congratulating Tadek on his first small victory.
4
It poured that morning. The wall of rain, almost vertical, obscured everything from view. The windows were covered by its streaks, snaking down and washing away the invisible film of the war. Tadek stood still and listened, his head tilted to one side. The drawing-room was empty but the piano was there, forlorn and gray in the melancholic mist of the day, yet familiar like an old friend. With a rush of anguish, he made a move toward its body and nearly succumbed to the mad desire to play once again; to imagine for a few short moments that it was his mother who was listening to the music flowing from under his fingers, with her tender smile and mist in her eyes; to persuade himself that he could almost hear her words as she stood behind him, how well you do play, Tadek! With your heart, not with your hands – that’s the reason it comes out so beautiful…
For a time, Tadek stared at it – the ghost of the past – but then swung around and marched in the opposite direction along the hallway, away from temptation. He could have sat down and played regardless of Gerlinde Neumann’s desires but antagonizing the girl in such a thoughtless manner was counterproductive. After all, Morris had brought him here to get into the girl’s confidence, not to play the piano and pretend that the past hadn’t happened.
The further he went, the louder the rustling of the rain was getting. Tadek hastened his steps; someone must have forgotten to lock the window and who knew on which antique armchair the water was pouring now or which gold-embossed, leather-bound first editions it was soaking through. There were enough such luxuries here, lying about just like that, arrogant and taunting in their abundance.
It was not the window but the back door, in the frame of which one of the Americans was smoking. He greeted Tadek with a friendly nod and disappeared with the words, “watch her for a while, will you?” before Tadek even grasped what was needed from him. On the small back porch, shielded from the rain by the roof, Gerlinde was doing gymnastics with a hoop. She was dressed in a gray sport suit and running shoes; however, running, apparently, was out of the question for her for at least some time, due to the rain and the OSS-imposed rules. It didn’t seem to bother her. She stubbornly performed the routine, on the porch, as though to spite the agents by such defiance.
Tadek watched her silently for a while, even though he felt he had no right to even be there. She was tall and athletic; he could see it by the effortless way in which she moved, with the languid grace of a wild, deadly animal. He changed his opinion soon. It was a well-practiced routine, performed not out of spite to the Americans but for the sake of the exercise itself. Tadek realized that she must have been doing it daily.
She noticed him while performing one of her half-turns with the hoop but didn’t acknowledge him in any way until she finished her routine. Only when she dropped the hoop, to switch to a ball that l
ay nearby, did she bark out an unexpected, “Guten Morgen.”
Tadek mumbled back the needed reply and was forgotten once again as Gerlinde flipped her long braid back and resumed her exercise. In the past few days, he’d hardly had any interactions with Neumann’s daughter. Someone had said something to her, during the scheduled interrogation and she had announced a boycott to the occupying forces and all but locked herself in her room, only opening the door to allow Frau Hanke in with her food tray. Morris chewed someone out behind the half-closed door – we were just making progress but you had to go and ruin everything, numbskull! – and huffed and smoked more than usual, leaving Tadek feeling even more useless than ever.
“The sad part is, she’s not a stupid girl,” Morris mused out loud, twisting a cigarette between his fingers during one of their private conversations. “And, believe it or not, she’s not an inherently mean child either. She loathes most of my men because she senses it, that they can barely stand her too but with me, you see, she’s different. Yes, she snaps and acts out but what child doesn’t? I have a daughter of her age at home, so such outbursts are nothing new to me… What is important is that Gerlinde talks to me. Yes, she mostly resorts to taunts and half-jests but she does talk and that’s already something. If only I could get that nonsense out of her head… She’s only sixteen, Tadek. That Nazi garbage is all she knows. That’s all she heard growing up. That’s all she was surrounded with. If only there was a way to pull it out of her…”
Tadek smiled softly, almost pitying the man. “Is that why you brought me here? You thought we could have bonded due to our age, or something of that sort?”
Morris looked at him in surprise.
“No. Of course not. Bonded with her?” He chuckled mirthlessly. “No. I wanted you to become her confidante of sorts and so far, you’re moving in the right direction. The idea with the books was an excellent one. Keep gaining her trust. Pretend to open up to her first, so she can open up to you later. Tell her about your life in the camp. Perhaps, that shall make her see reason. You see, she sincerely believes that concentration camps were much like prisons, only with gardens, theaters, and sports clubs.”
Tadek’s eyebrows shot up in justified astonishment.
Morris snorted softly. “Yes, yes. Her daddy showed her photos of that model camp – what the hell was its name?”
“Theresienstadt?” Tadek supplied.
“That’s the one. Theresienstadt. How do you know about it?”
For a time, Tadek was silent. “We received a transport from there. A so-called Family Camp was established. Six months later, they were all gassed. I helped with burning the bodies.”
Morris turned away, sorry to have asked.
“Anyway,” he continued after a somber pause, “that’s what she heard when she asked Neumann about the camps. He had much to do with them, working for the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps or Amt D of the WVHA, SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, along with Richard Glücks… Gerlinde must have heard something from someone who later got shot for wagging his tongue. Naturally, she went to Neumann and asked him whether it was true. He satisfied her with the official propaganda photos and she must have believed him because why would daddy dearest lie to his little girl, you understand?” He went silent for a while. “They shared a special bond from what I concluded. Neumann was very strict with his sons but he adored his little girl. It put a strain on her relationship with her mother for some reason. I gathered they weren’t very close, Mathilde and her. Gerlinde was, what we Americans call, a daddy’s girl. That’s why we need her.” He looked at Tadek pointedly. “He won’t just leave her. He’ll come back for her but by that time, we ought to make sure that our little Gerlinde is on our side and not his.”
“Impossible.” Tadek tried obliterating the OSS agent’s hopes by that single word but Morris only smiled mysteriously.
“If I thought it was, I wouldn’t have been wasting my time here.”
Tadek recalled the recent conversation with the American and stepped forward almost in spite of himself. He didn’t know how to speak to this girl; he hardly spoke properly with women in the camp and only when they needed to “organize” something from his grisly depot. However, the prospect of bringing the perpetrator, who was in part guilty of Tadek’s entire family’s fate, to justice, outweighed his anxiety.
“Do you exercise here every morning?” he asked, his voice nearly drowning in the torrents of the rain.
She still heard him. “Twice a day,” came a brisk reply.
“Do they allow you to run? At least around the house?”
“Could you please not talk to me?” She threw an irritated gaze over her shoulder but softened her voice, almost at once, as though cringing at her own rudeness. “I don’t want to lose my breath.”
He patiently waited for her to finish her routine.
“They don’t,” she finally spoke, collecting her equipment from the floor. “Not because they’re afraid that I’ll run away. They just don’t, because they can. This is how they exercise their authority over us, the Amis. So much for ‘we come as conquerors but not as oppressors,’ cock-and-bull. I heard, in the Ivans’ zone, it’s better than here. Those Eastern savages can be coaxed surprisingly easily.”
Tadek honestly doubted that this was the case. He, himself, had nothing to fear from the Russki fellows. They liberated him and allowed him to fight along with them and for that, he would be eternally grateful. He even made quite a few friends among them and considered them good comrades. Some teased him with good-natured disdain and called him our Jew boy but most made him feel at home and among equals. Yet, while he was slowly fighting his way west along with their armies, certain things couldn’t quite be ignored – the rape, the looting, the pure savagery of their revenge.
In Russians, two opposites appeared to be constantly at war – blind, animalistic violence and instant forgiveness that went beyond all comprehension. They obliterated entire army positions at one moment and distributed food from their own field kitchen to the freshly captured POWs right after. They raped women without a second thought and offered chocolate to their crying children afterward to console them. They looted everything they could get their hands on and yet, invariably brought their own food and drink to the table of the civilian who had the fortune – or misfortune – to host such guests that evening. A truly paradoxical nation, if Tadek ever saw one.
“Perhaps, they just fear for your safety,” he suggested.
A mocking snort came before the proper reply. “I was here, in Berlin, when they were showering us with bombs. I was here, volunteering at the Charité hospital when the Ivans entered the city. Now they wish to worry about my well-being?”
He trailed after her, along the hallway, not even sure why. Morris was right about one thing. She wasn’t rude enough not to reply altogether but neither did she display any friendliness beyond that point. What could he, a former camp inmate, do to win her trust, if the trained secret service agents couldn’t?
But then an endless sea of faces stood before him – the former Family camp inmates, men, women, and children alike – and pleaded with him as he was escorting them inside the gas chamber, the Nazis’ slave just like them, alive only because they didn’t wish to dirty their own hands with such work. Avenge us… One day, avenge us all.
With a sudden rush of blood to his head, Tadek caught up with Gerlinde and blurted out before he knew what he was doing, “what if I ask them to? They may listen to reason if asked nicely. And I’ll tell them that I’ll run with you to watch you. They’ll agree to that, no doubt.”
She stopped and regarded him with suspicion. “Why would you do that?”
“I just happen to like to run, too.”
He hated running. Running was all they did in Auschwitz because the guards were never satisfied with inmates walking at a normal pace. But he’d run again if needed. He’d run alongside the Nazi’s daughter three times a day if that would help catch that Nazi.
After a moment’s consideration, Gerlinde shrugged. “You can ask them, I suppose. There’s no harm in asking.”
The photo album was bound in leather and thick with memories and faces of people, now all gone and much too soon. Here’s Vati in his new gray uniform – a welcome change from the mourning black, which she had always detested – smiling at the camera and raising his beer stein in a playful salute. Gerlinde found herself smiling back at the black-and-white likeness of his. It was her, who took the picture. In all the official ones, he was invariably stern and aloof. His smiles were only for her, his little Maus, who begged that Leica out of him for her tenth birthday, which caused yet another argument between her parents. She still remembered how her mother insisted that it wasn’t a suitable present for a little girl by any means; that it was much too expensive and that she’d only break it and that he, Otto, shouldn’t be encouraging the girl’s silly dreams of becoming a second Leni Riefenstahl or that harlot, Margot von Steinhoff, whom Gerlinde idolized and who was even worse than Riefenstahl and that he was spoiling the girl far too much at any rate and that—
Then came her father’s abrupt shout that put an end to the discussion, the firm steps of the tall boots, her mother’s stifled sob and the sound of the door to his study being slammed shut. Later, after ensuring that her mother had gone to sleep – alone – Gerlinde tip-toed out of her bedroom and noiselessly made her way down to her father’s study. She pushed the door open and paused there, waiting for permission to come in. It was not needed; unlike her brothers or even mother, she was always welcome here, amid the warmth of the fireplace and the cigarette smoke and the faint smell of cognac and countless papers marked “Top Secret” that littered her father’s desk. He opened his arms to her and she nestled on his chest, burying her face in the folds of the gray wool. “I love you more than anyone, Vati.”
The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII Page 18