The Girl in the Striped Dress: A completely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 page-turner, based on a true story

by Ellie Midwood

  After I didn’t make a motion to pick it up, he opened the lid and almost forced the Thermos into my hands, cupping them with his own. “Do you want to come out of here or not?”

  I regarded him in stupefaction. No one of my kind was leaving this place. Surely he knew it well enough.

  “Things are not going too well for us in Stalingrad. Our entire army group is getting encircled as we speak. The Reds counterattack more and more and their Siberian divisions are aiding their regular army now that the Japanese are busy with the Americans. And speaking of the latter, with them now joining the war and leasing all of those aircraft and transports and food supplies and just about anything to the Russkies, fat chance the affair will turn out victorious for us. It’s a matter of time only, how much longer you’ll have to suffer here. Two, three more years perhaps… Do you not want to come out of here and… live? Because I really want you to live, Leni.”

  “With you?” For some reason, I found it to be the thing of paramount importance to ask him this question. “After the war? Do you want me to live with you?”

  Dahler only shrugged. His long eyelashes were covering his eyes and it was impossible to see anything in them. “With me, without me, with that Sonderkommando pig, if you like. It matters not. I only want you to survive, that’s all.”

  I suddenly choked and could almost persuade myself that it was only the cough. I gulped the broth, fighting nausea, the pain, the guilt until I felt warm once again – from the broth or his words, it also mattered not. I had reached the stage where I could no longer fight him. He watched me breathlessly and with the most tender emotion welling up in his eyes and had forever ceased to be the enemy to me. With tremendous effort, I’d searched for the last shards of resistance in me and had found nothing. I was sick and dying and he was the only person who stood guard between me and death and I loved him for it.

  A warm smile was back on his face once again.

  “I got you something more substantial too.” He dug into his pocket and extracted a thick square wrapped in a newspaper. “Liverwurst sandwich. The real sort, Austrian-made, not this sorry camp stuff from the kitchen. I brought it with me from Drasenhofen. Mutti makes liverwurst herself, so trust me when I say that it’s the goods… And the honey, this too. It’ll help with your cough.” A jar found its way into my hands, which were already overflowing with all the riches. “The carafe with water is over there, on the windowsill, if you need it. I would stay here with you but those new women are hopeless and it appears we’ll all have to watch them all day since they have not the faintest clue what it is they’re doing. I’ll be checking on you from time to time when I get a chance. You rest now, will you? I’ll bring you more food and medicine later. And now, eat. It’s an order, so get on with it. I want nothing left here when I come back.”

  I awoke to someone calling my name and shaking my shoulder. Still heavy with feverish sleep, I tried to unglue my eyes to see Unterscharführer Dahler’s shadowy form against the light of the pocket flashlight he left lying on the floor.

  “Leni? How are you feeling?” His tone was thick with worry.

  “Still alive.” A pitiful croaking came out instead of my regular voice.

  He snorted softly. “I said the same thing to the medic after I crawled back from the battlefield, with my knee shot up before I passed out on his table.” His palm felt cool against my burning forehead. “Your fever is getting higher.”

  I made no reply, only looked around in search of water. My throat was like sandpaper and every breath was a struggle. Dahler quickly handed me a new Thermos, a smaller one. “I made you Glühwein. It should warm you up a bit. Good for your throat, too.”

  I made an effort to lift the Thermos with both hands but it appeared as heavy as a concrete block. Dahler held it to my mouth, much to my relief.

  “Your clothes are all drenched,” he declared after removing his hand from my back. “We ought to change you into something dry and warm. Wait here, I’ll go fetch something.”

  By the time he returned with the clothes, I was barely awake. Just keeping my eyes open seemed like hard work. Dahler hesitated a moment before kneeling in front of me again.

  “Can you change yourself?”

  I didn’t think I could but I still nodded, propped myself up, with his help, and began working on the buttons on my shirt. I only got to the third one when my hands dropped onto my lap of their own volition. I didn’t feel as exhausted after a twelve-hour shift as I felt after undoing those three miserable buttons.

  “You should have left me there, in the chamber, Herr Unterscharführer,” I whispered with my hoarse voice. “I won’t make it anyway.”

  “Rot. You’ll pull through.” He took my face in his hands. I felt his warm breath on my lips as he spoke. “If you remember, I told you just this morning that we decide how long you shall live. You can’t die for one simple reason, Leni; I prohibit it.”

  He got a pained smile out of me. “I doubt that is how it works with typhus, Herr Unterscharführer.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  He began undoing my buttons one by one. I tried helping him by moving my arms out of the sleeves but in the end, it was he who did it for me, just like he had to remove the rest of my garments. I was much too weak to offer him any assistance. My undershirt, all soaked through, joined the heap of clothing on the floor. I thought about covering myself up to preserve at least some of my modesty. After all, it was improper and a horrible sin on top of things, to allow a man – a man who wasn’t my husband – to undress me and touch my bare body but I was too delirious and feeble to dwell on such trifles. Besides, there was nothing sexual about the manner in which he handled the situation. If anything, his hands, his entire thorough, clinical manner resembled much more that of a doctor tending to his patient rather than that of a soldier taking a chance to paw at a naked, defenseless girl.

  He fetched some water, wetted my old shirt with it and began gently wiping the perspiration off of my body.

  “This should bring the fever down a little,” he commented, gently pressing me against his chest to clean my back. I rested my head on his shoulder, hearing my own labored breathing.

  “You shouldn’t be so close to me, Herr Unterscharführer. You’ll get sick too. It’s very contagious.”

  “Lice transmit it, not people. And stop talking. You’re irritating your throat.”

  I waited for him to finish and used the rest of my strength to help him dress me into the new warm shirt and slacks. He also managed to procure warm woolen socks for me, which he dutifully pulled onto my feet.

  “You really ought to be going, Herr Unterscharführer. Your comrades will be looking for you…”

  “My comrades are getting pissed as we speak as they usually do after the shift is over and won’t notice even if the camp goes on fire around them.”

  He rearranged the furs so that they extended from under the desk for the nighttime, gently lowered me down and lay next to me, cradling my head on his arm. “Now, sleep, Leni. You need to rest.”

  Several times during that night, I awoke and each time Unterscharführer Dahler held me through the worst coughing fits, fetched me water with honey in it and wiped my forehead with a wet rag. I tried smiling at him and putting on a brave face but after the stomach pains came, sharp and vicious, each like a knife stab in the gut, I suddenly couldn’t hold myself together any longer and began crying as I clutched onto his clothes in desperation.

  “Hey, old comrade, what’s with the tears?” he tried pacifying me as he stroked my hair. “Are you in that much pain? Shall I go fetch you some morphine?”

  “Yes… No. I’m only scared…”

  “What are you scared of?”

  Death. Wasn’t it an obvious answer?

  “I’m here. You’ll pull through and that’s that.” He wrapped me even tighter in his arms. Strangely enough, I found myself somewhat pacified as though death itself wouldn’t dare touch me as long as I was under his protection.


  “I don’t want to die,” I admitted, at last, hiding my face in his chest.

  “You won’t die.” He was so positively calm about it, so very assured of his own words that even I began believing in them. “Tonight, is the worst night, is all. The fever must break, that’s what the doctor said. In the morning, you shall feel better. Why don’t you rest some more?”

  “I’m afraid to fall asleep. I feel I shall die in my sleep. If I’m awake, it won’t get me…” I grew agitated again, sweating with fear.

  Strangely, he didn’t find such superstitions ridiculous, only regarded me with infinite patience, much like one would a child that was frantic with unfounded worry. “Just lie down then and I’ll hold you and tell you stories so that you stay awake till the morning. What do you say to that?”

  Still unconvinced, I nodded nevertheless. He pulled the sheepskin over us and wrapped his arms around me. “What would you like to hear?”

  I considered for a few moments. “Tell me about your native town.”

  “Drasenhofen?” he asked, somewhat surprised. “I wouldn’t call it a town. A village is more like it.” He laughed somewhere into my hair. “It’s in Lower Austria and it actually stands right on the border with Czechoslovakia.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. We’re neighbors, old comrade.”

  He kept his word and not once did he let go of me or stop talking. Through my delirium, I heard him speak about his mother and about his father, who had perished on the Eastern Front, about his childhood friends and his love for horses and about the SS recruiters who came into their town right after the Austrian Anschluss. He spoke of the war and his comrades, of the Ukrainian steppes and his dog Prinz who he missed dearly and of the house in which we were going to live after the war. Perhaps I dreamt that last part and he never said anything of the sort; one couldn’t rely on their hearing in such a feverish state.

  He touched my forehead from time to time and reached for the wet rag whenever he felt the fever climbing too high for his liking. But not once did he let go of me and at last, I fell asleep in his arms. In the morning, when I opened my eyes to the sound of a roll call fanfare and made a motion to get up – sheer camp instinct – I indeed felt slightly better. Still extremely weak but the void was gone, along with the strange darkness that was threatening to consume me just a few hours ago. I still clutched at Dahler’s uniform when he made a motion to get up – a gesture, which seemed to please him immensely judging by the look on his face. I kept him up all night with my coughing and all that storytelling and yet he was smiling as though he didn’t mind one bit.

  “I have to be there for the Appell,” he said, gently removing my fingers from his sleeve. “But I’ll be back with breakfast soon. Sleep some more. The morning has come. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  I stuck the hand under my shirt and began feeling for the red spots. “It’s still there, the rash,” I announced, disappointed.

  “It’ll stay there for some time. It spreads all over the body, too.”

  I touched my face self-consciously.

  That got a chuckle out of him. “Don’t fret about your pretty face. It doesn’t spread there. It’s not measles.”

  “You should have been a doctor.”

  “I should have,” he agreed surprisingly easily and kissed me softly on my forehead. “I love you, Leni.”

  “I love you too, Herr Unterscharführer,” I muttered without thinking.

  “Franz.”

  “Franz,” I repeated.

  With visible reluctance, he rose to his feet. As soon as the door locked after him, I fell asleep once again, dreaming of the border-town between Austria and Czechoslovakia, about the dog named Prinz and the house in which we were going to live someday.

  21

  Helena

  The nightly routine didn’t change. He would come to the office with his pockets stuffed with goods commandeered from the SS canteen, leave the flashlight on the floor so that the overhead electric light wouldn’t attract any unwanted attention and spoon-feed me until I regained enough strength to hold my own spoon again. He would sit cross-legged and dark against the meager amber light and entertain me with army anecdotes until my eyelids would grow heavy with sleep after all the food and warm tea that he’d give me. Then, he would arrange the fur coats around us and hold me as he did on the very first night and breathe softly into my hair, sending shivers down my spine.

  More than a week had passed, perhaps more than that and I had grown so used to sleeping in his embrace that I wanted to know nothing different from that time on. With him, I feared nothing.

  “How come your comrades never question your staying out every night?” I asked as we shared our small supper consisting of an SS-canteen-issued stew and sausage with bread.

  Dahler’s face pulled to a wry smile. “After the camp administration raised the rations for schnapps, they’ve been getting pissed nightly. I doubt they even notice whether I’m in my cot in the barrack or not. Do you know that we used to get back to our quarters in such a state that if we couldn’t get our behinds off the cot to turn off the light, we would shoot at the bulb instead?”

  “You’re joking, most certainly.” I even stopped chewing for a moment.

  “It’s true. As true as I’m sitting here. Nobody checks on us. We can do as we please for the most part. That includes all the comings and goings at night.”

  “You’re not the only one who sneaks out?”

  “Oh, no. But the others…” He squirmed uncomfortably. “Well, let’s just say, they pursue not such noble goals, as tending to their sick lady friends.”

  I kept looking at him, mystified until he rolled his eyes in desperation at having to explain it to me. “They’re all young men, and there are very few female guards here. So, they barge into barracks, pull a few girls of their choosing and… Do you understand?”

  I suddenly wished I hadn’t asked.

  “I never did any such thing,” he added quickly.

  “I wouldn’t think you would.”

  “I’m serious. Not even at the front.”

  “I believe you.”

  He was quiet for some time, immersed in his memories. “There were fellows who would though… at the front. But we had a good Untersturmführer. He saw to it that such men were prosecuted for their crimes. There were two friends there, both from München, sons of some Party functionaries or some such… Arrogant swine, both of them, if I ever saw such! Always drunk, always up to no good but when the attack would come, we never saw them. One time, they caught a girl, some ordinary peasant’s daughter and… well, no need for you to know the details of that nasty business but after our Untersturmführer learned about it from the locals who came to him to complain, he told those two bosom friends to shoot themselves if they didn’t want to get shot by a firing squad on his orders. He didn’t care one way or another about their fathers’ getting upset about such justice. They did get quite upset, to tell you the truth, those Party bigwigs. He was quickly transferred somewhere, our commander. I don’t know what happened to him after that. The new one that replaced him was a bastard. Fortunately, I was wounded soon after so I didn’t have to serve under his charge for too long. Yes, there are different men everywhere, I suppose.” He reflected for a long time before adding in a soft voice, “Wolff is one such example. Sometimes he can’t be bothered to go into town and pay for it, so… he finds it elsewhere.”

  “In Birkenau?” I had difficulty believing such a thing.

  Franz shook his head slowly. “Here, in the Kanada,” he whispered almost without moving his lips. “Kanada women still look like real women. They wear perfume and have hair and breasts. Birkenau ones, he wouldn’t touch. He finds them disgusting.”

  I put my food away, suddenly losing all appetite for it. How many of the women that I knew did he abuse in such a despicable way? Lashing, that I could still understand and forgive. This was a different matter entirely.

  “He doesn’t actua
lly force himself on them; he gives them money and all sorts of favors for it,” Dahler added, visibly embarrassed, “but…”

  “But, despite the illusion of choice they can’t exactly say no to him, can they?” I said what he couldn’t.

  “I don’t know how exactly he conducts his affairs,” he replied quietly and lowered his eyes.

  “Why are you still friends with him if you know that he does such things to people?”

  “I’m not friends with him. We’re comrades. It’s different.”

  “Just how is it different?” I almost laughed at such ridiculous logic.

  “It’s hard to explain.” His brow clouded as he desperately groped for the right words. One could see how it was a difficult task to rationalize something of this sort. “We were conditioned this way from the very beginning. The Führer and the SS brotherhood are above all. An SS man must obey orders without questioning them. It’s our sacred duty to follow our leaders. Thinking is harmful to us – Obergruppenführer Eicke’s famous words. An SS man must only follow orders. Doubts are harmful. There’s no place for doubts among SS ranks. Our SS brothers are above our own blood ones. Our leaders know what is best for us. We must follow them. Unconditional loyalty is above all.”

  As his voice slowly gathered conviction, as though finding the foundation on which he could finally stand, his eyes had suddenly grown dark and unblinking. There was a mechanical quality in his speech when he was repeating all of those postulates. They came much too easy out of him, the poisonous, hateful untruths repeated far too many times.

  I swallowed with difficulty, suddenly afraid that it was too late for him to untangle them from his own thoughts. They had penetrated too deeply.

  “Even against your better judgment?” I probed him cautiously.

  He rubbed his forehead. “An order is an order. An SS man’s duty is to obey without question,” he repeated, once again.

  “Even if you know that you’re doing something wrong?” I looked at him closely. “Something that goes against your conscience?”