War Girl Lotte

by Marion Kummerow

  “I know. I just wasn’t expecting this. Well, no matter. You’re here now. I’m so happy to see you.” Mutter grabbed Lotte into a tight hug.

  Lotte wrapped her arms around Mutter. Something about being in her mother’s arms again peeled so many layers of heartache away. Her mother pulled back from her and stood on her tiptoes to smooth a hand over Lotte’s head, kissing her cheeks and then hugging her once again. It was a rather unusual display of physical affection.

  “Mutter. Alexandra. We should resume this reunion somewhere more private,” Ursula suggested, seeing that they were beginning to draw attention to themselves. Even though Lotte’s fake papers had withstood the scrutiny of an SS man, it wouldn’t do to draw unnecessary attention from the Gestapo or other government officials walking around the train station.

  “Yes, we should go someplace where we can talk.” Lotte broke away from her mother. She needed a chance to convince Mutter that what happened next was for the best of everyone involved.

  At first, she’d fought against Ursula’s suggestion with tooth and nail, but after thinking over the options, she realized there weren’t that many. She couldn’t live with either Mutter or Aunt Lydia, or any relative for that matter, and risk being recognized as Charlotte Klausen.

  The Mother Reverend of the convent in Kaufbeuren had kindly agreed to accept Lotte/Alexandra into her orphanage for as long as she wanted to stay. Of course, the nuns would never openly say so, but their convent played an important role in the underground network Ursula worked for.

  While Ursula wished for Lotte to stay in the safety of the convent until the war was over, Lotte herself had different plans. But her next attempt to oppose the regime would be built on a solid foundation.

  They walked to a small bakery across the street, and Lotte gasped several times at the utter destruction around her. Rubble wherever she looked, gray faces of despairing women and men struggling to clear the streets of debris.

  At the bakery, they ordered pancakes and Ersatzkaffee.

  “That pseudo-coffee is barely drinkable,” Ursula complained.

  Lotte cocked her head. “You should have tasted the putrid dishwater they gave us for coffee.”

  “Sorry,” Ursula said as both she and Mutter gave a sheepish look. “I guess then Ersatzkaffee is a delicacy.”

  After about half an hour, Ursula pointed at her watch and gave Lotte an encouraging nod. Lotte inwardly groaned. Now came the hardest part.

  “Mutter, I don’t have much time,” Lotte began, the words catching in her throat.

  “What? You’re not staying?” Mutter’s eyes darted between her two daughters. “What haven’t you told me?”

  “It’s not safe. We’ve talked about this, Mutter.” Ursula came to Lotte’s aid.

  “Yes. And I understand that with nosy Frau Weber living next to us, Charl…” She shook her head at her slip. “Alexandra can’t come home. But I thought she would at least stay in Berlin, where I can watch over her. The last time I sent her away didn’t work out so well.” Mutter seemed to shrink with every word she spoke.

  “Mutter.” Lotte sidled up to her mother and took her hands into her own. “What happened was entirely my own fault. There’s nothing you could have done to prevent it.”

  Mutter gave a small smile, but her eyes filled with sorrow.

  Lotte’s heart gave a hard squeeze. “My train leaves in twenty minutes.”

  “Where are you going?” Mutter murmured.

  “Someplace safe,” Ursula said. “She’ll stay there until things change. But she’ll be safe. I promise.”

  Lotte squeezed her mother’s hand. “This is for the best. I can be of so much help there while I would just be a liability here. If anyone were to ever discover what Ursula and Anna did…we would all be in hot water.”

  “Will you at least write?”

  “If I can.” Lotte hadn’t discussed communicating with her mother or the ramifications of doing so with Ursula. Because of her sisters, she’d been given a second chance at life, and the foolhardiness of the past was dead and buried. From now on she would always act with purpose and a well thought out plan. The consequences of doing things rashly were too horrific to bear a second time.

  “Godspeed you,” Mutter said and hugged her one last time. “Be well.”

  “I will.”

  More than you can imagine.

  A whistle sounded, and Ursula said, “That’s your train. You need to get on board.”

  “I love you, Mutter. Take care and don’t worry about me. I’m going to be fine.” Lotte picked up the small bag Ursula had given her. It contained a few changes of clothing, none of which fit her, but Ursula had assured her the nuns would have everything she needed to alter them when she arrived at the convent.

  The next day, she arrived at the train station in Kaufbeuren. A slight worry entered her mind as she tried to remember how to get to the convent. But much to her delight, two nuns were waiting for her on the platform. Lotte smiled hesitantly and then followed them as they walked the few blocks to their destination.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” she said as they walked down a nearly deserted street.

  “No thanks are necessary,” one of the nuns replied. Several minutes later, they arrived at the convent where two young boys rushed down the stairwell to meet her.

  “Hello!” they called out.

  “How are you?” Rachel’s brothers had grown quite a bit during the past months and seemed to cope considerably well with the loss of their parents and sisters.

  “We are good. You’ve been sick?” Israel asked.

  Lotte started to shake her head, then nodded instead. There was no reason for these young children to know the atrocities that were taking place in Germany. Let them keep whatever innocence they still possessed. “I am getting better. I’ve come to stay with you for a while.”

  “Good. That is good,” Israel said, pulling his brother by the arm, “The girls’ rooms are this way.”

  “Thank you.” Lotte followed the nun to the girls’ quarters with a smile on her face. The two boys wandered off to play in the gardens.

  Her new home was a rather large room on the upper floor of a side building of the convent. It was equipped with twenty-four bunk beds and several cribs. Lotte wouldn’t have much privacy here either, but she had an entire bed with a mattress, bed sheets, pillow, and a blanket all to herself.

  Attached to the dormitory was a bathroom with six showers and six lavatories. And to the other side were the toilets. Every girl was assigned a small drawer to store her belongings.

  The nun broke into Lotte’s appreciation of the room. “Those two have adapted quite well. They seem to have come to terms with their situation. God be blessed.”

  “They look happy.”

  “They are during the day, but at night, we often hear them cry.” The nun turned to leave. “Take your time getting settled, you’ll be introduced to everyone during lunch.”

  Lotte decided there was no time like the present to take care of her hardest task. “Sister, could you please tell me where I might find Sister Margarete?”

  A brow lifted. “You know her?”

  “We met several months ago, and I would like to greet her.”

  The nun smiled and pointed out the window. “She is in the prayer garden at this time every day. If you go back down the stairs and go to your left, you’ll find a door leading you to the garden.”

  “Thank you, Sister.”

  “You are most welcome.”

  Lotte inhaled deeply a few more times and stowed her few belongings in the drawer she’d been assigned before setting off down the stairwell, searching for the entrance to the prayer garden.

  Sister Margarete was sitting in silence before a large fountain, dry now because it was still winter, but nonetheless beautiful. Lotte turned up her collar as a chilly gust swept through, grateful for the protection her winter coat offered.

  “Sister Margarete?” she asked softly.

 
; The nun raised her head, and her eyes opened wide as she recognized her. “Charlotte, right? Uwe’s friend. The one who recommended Peter and Klaus to us.”

  Peter and Klaus? Lotte frowned. “Actually, my name is Alexandra.” Oh yes, Israel and Aron have new names, too. I completely forgot.

  “Please sit.” Sister Margarete invited her without any further comment, but her bright blue eyes made it clear she knew. Knew that Peter and Klaus weren’t the real names of the two boys. Knew the reason why their sisters hadn’t made it to the convent. Knew why Charlotte was Alexandra.

  Lotte cleared her throat. “I wanted to come and tell you in person how sorry I am about Uwe.”

  “He is with God now.” Sister Margarete’s voice softened at the memory of her nephew.

  “Yes, but…but it was my fault. They killed him because he was helping me.” Lotte’s eyes filled with tears. She hadn’t had the opportunity to grieve. In the camp, tears meant weakness and weakness meant death, so she’d pushed thoughts of Uwe away whenever they entered her mind. But here, so near to where they’d experienced sweet love, she couldn’t hold her tears back.

  “Alexandra, know this…it wasn’t your fault.” Sister Margarete looked at her with compassion in her eyes. “We do not always understand God’s plans, but everything happens for a reason. Uwe made his own decisions, and I have faith that he did what he thought was right. He wouldn’t want you to feel guilty for actions he took of his own free will. He would want you to forgive yourself. There is nothing to be gained from carrying around guilt over something you cannot change or rectify. Be at peace and know that he is also at peace.”

  A flood of tears rushed down Lotte’s face. “I’m sorry, Sister. It seems all I do these days is cry.”

  The nun wrapped an arm around her shoulders and took her hands with her free one. “For what you’ve suffered, you have every right to cry. Weep as often as you like, and then let the emotions that created the tears help you to right what wrongs you can. We can’t let this war destroy all that is godly, decent, and human within us. We have to be stronger than the evil sent to tempt us.”

  Lotte appreciated the nun’s words, and she closed her eyes, offering up a prayer for the souls of the dead and for those who were still suffering.

  The Nazis had tried to annihilate her, but she had survived.

  ***

  Thank you so much for taking the time to read WAR GIRL LOTTE.

  If you enjoyed the book would you do me a huge favor and leave me a review? I’d really, really appreciate it:

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072VJN3Z4/

  The next book in the series is WAR GIRL ANNA. Anna is left in an awful situation as the mistress of a man she despises. Will she be able to find a way to save herself without endangering her sister and the entire resistance network?

  Sign up to my newsletter to be the first one to know when it’s released, or pre-order here: http://getbook.at/WargirlAnna

  As a subscriber you’ll receive my free short story DOWNED OVER GERMANY, the prequel to the War Girl Series.

  Tom Westlake, a British RAF pilot survives when his plane is shot down. But being stranded behind enemy lines is only the beginning of his adventures.

  http://kummerow.info/newsletter-2

  Author’s Notes

  Dear Reader,

  Thanks so much for reading WAR GIRL LOTTE.

  If you’ve read War Girl Ursula, you probably knew that Lotte was a disaster waiting to happen. Her love of justice and outspokenness would sooner or later get her into trouble.

  Ravensbrück was the only concentration camp exclusively for women (although in 1941 a small section for men was added), and at the same time it is the most forgotten camp in history, since it was “only” a concentration camp, meant to punish the inmates, not a death camp like Auschwitz or Treblinka. It was also one of the few camps, where the majority of the inmates wasn’t Jewish, for the simple reason that Jews were sent to Auschwitz to be gassed.

  “Ravensbrück was an abomination that the world has resolved to forget.” (Francois Mauriac).

  War Girl Lotte wants to help remember the unfortunate women who were forced to live and die there.

  Unfortunately the heinous medical experiments on the Króliki, or rabbits, 86 mostly Polish women, did really happen. Dr. Karl Gebhardt, who was not only the Chief Surgeon of the Reich Physician SS and Police, but also the President of the German Red Cross and Heinrich Himmler’s personal physician, oversaw these horrific experiments that happened in Ravensbrück from July 1942 to August 1943.

  I did bend the timeline slightly to extend the medical experiments to the end of 1943 when Lotte’s story takes place.

  You can read more here: http://ahrp.org/ravensbruck-young-girls-subjected-to-grotesque-medical-atrocities/

  Another true event that I used for my storyline was the typhus vaccine. Eugeniusz Sławomir Łazowski, a Polish physician, managed to save 8,000 Jews from being deported to one of the concentration camps. His trick was to inject them with dead typhus cells (a vaccine), that would make them immune to the sickness, but when a blood sample was taken, they would test positive for the dreaded disease.

  The Nazis were deathly afraid of an epidemic of typhus fever (transmitted by lice), because it was difficult to contain and had killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians during WW1. Rather than risk being contaminated while handling the transport to extermination camps, they preferred to quarantine the infected and let the disease do their ghastly work.

  https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/polish-doctor-created-fake-typhus-epidemic-saved-8000-jews-wwii-xb.html

  Contact Me & Other Books

  I truly appreciate you taking the time to read (and enjoy) my books. And I'd be thrilled to hear from you!

  If you'd like to get in touch with me, you can do so via

  Twitter:

  http://twitter.com/MarionKummerow

  Facebook:

  http://www.facebook.com/AutorinKummerow

  Website

  http://www.kummerow.info

  Other books written by Marion Kummerow:

  http://kummerow.info/my-books