Lilac Girls

by Martha Hall Kelly

  I woke Sunday, September 17, to Matka telling Papa what she’d heard on the radio. The Russians had also attacked Poland, from the east. Was there no end to the countries attacking us?

  I found my parents in the kitchen peering out the front window. It was a crisp fall morning, a light breeze blowing in through Matka’s curtains. As I drew closer to the window, I saw Jewish men in black suits clearing the rubble from in front of our house.

  Matka wrapped her arms around me, and once the road was cleared, we watched a parade of German soldiers roll in, like new tenants in a boardinghouse with their mountains of luggage. First came trucks, then soldiers on foot, then more soldiers standing tall and haughty in their tanks. At least Zuzanna did not see this sad sight, for she was already at the hospital that morning.

  Matka heated water for Papa’s tea as he watched it all. I did my best to keep us all quiet as could be. Maybe if we were silent, they would not bother us? To calm myself I counted the birds crocheted on Matka’s curtains. One lark. Two swallows. One magpie. Wasn’t the magpie a sign of imminent death? The rumble of a truck grew louder.

  I breathed deep to quell the panic inside me. What was coming?

  “Out, out!” a man shouted. The terrible clatter of hobnail boots on cobblestones. There were lots of them.

  “Stay away from the window, Kasia,” Papa said, stepping back himself. He said it in such an offhand way I knew he was scared.

  “Should we hide?” Matka whispered. She turned her ring around and closed her hand so the stones hid in her palm.

  Papa walked toward the door, and I busied myself with prayer. We heard a good bit of yelling and orders, and soon the truck drove away.

  “I think they’re leaving,” I whispered to Matka.

  I jumped as a rap came at our door, and then a man’s voice. “Open up!”

  Matka froze in place and Papa opened the door.

  “Adalbert Kuzmerick?” said an SS man, who strode in all puffed up and pleased with himself.

  He was two hands taller than Papa, so tall his hat almost hit the top of the door when he entered. He and his underling were dressed in full Sonderdienst uniform, with the black boots and the hat with the horrible skull emblem with two gaping holes for eyes. As he passed, I smelled clove gum on him. He looked well fed too, his chin held so high I could see the blood through a little piece of white paper stuck on his Adam’s apple where he’d cut himself shaving. They even bled Nazi red.

  “Yes,” Papa said, calm as could be.

  “Director of the postal center communications?”

  Papa nodded.

  Two more guards grabbed Papa by the arms and pulled him out without even time for him to look back at us. I tried to follow, but the tall one blocked my way with his nightstick.

  Matka ran to the window, eyes wild. “Where are you taking him?”

  Suddenly I was cold all over. It was getting harder to breathe.

  Another SS man, skinny and shorter than the first, stepped in with a canvas bread bag across his chest.

  “Where does your husband keep his work papers?” asked the tall one.

  “Not here,” Matka said. “Can’t you tell me where they’re taking him?”

  Matka stood, fingers locked at her chest, as the skinny one went about the house opening drawers and stuffing whatever papers we had into his bag.

  “Shortwave radio?” the tall one said.

  Matka shook her head. “No.”

  My stomach hurt as I watched the skinny guard fling our cabinet doors wide and toss what little food we had into his bag.

  “All provisions are the property of the Reich,” the tall one said. “You will be issued ration cards.”

  Tinned peas, two potatoes, and a sad little cabbage went into the skinny one’s bag. Then he grabbed a rolled paper bag that held the last of Matka’s coffee.

  She reached for it.

  “Oh, please—may we keep the coffee? It’s all we have.”

  The tall one turned and looked at Matka for a long second. “Leave it,” he said, and his underling tossed it onto the counter.

  The men stepped through our three little bedrooms and pulled drawers from bureaus, dumping socks and underclothes on the floor.

  “Weapons?” said the tall one as the other searched closets. “Any other food?”

  “No,” Matka said. I’d never seen her lie before.

  He stepped closer to her. “You may have heard that withholding that which is due the Reich is punishable by death.”

  “I understand,” Matka said. “If I could just visit my husband…”

  We followed the men out to the back garden. The yard, fenced on all sides, suddenly seemed smaller with the SS men standing there. It all looked normal, but the ground where we’d buried our things the week before was still beaten quite flat. It was so obvious something was buried there. I counted the guard’s steps as he walked into the yard. Five…six…seven…Could they see my knees shaking?

  Our chicken, Psina, moved closer to our buried treasure spot, scratching near it, looking for bugs. My God, the shovel was there, leaning against the back of the house, dirt still clinging to the blade. Would they take us to Lublin Castle or just shoot us in the yard and leave us for Papa to find?

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” the tall guard said, walking toward the spot.

  Eight…nine…

  My respiration shut off.

  “Of course not,” Matka said.

  “Get the shovel,” said the tall guard to his underling. “You really thought you’d get away with this?”

  “No, please,” Matka said. She held on to the St. Mary medal she wore on a chain around her neck. “I am from Osnabrück, actually. You know it?”

  The taller guard took the shovel. “Of course I know it. Who hasn’t been to the Christmas market there? Have you registered as Volksdeutsche?”

  Volksdeutsche was the German term for ethnic Germans living in countries other than Germany. The Nazis pressured Polish citizens with German heritage like Matka to register as Volksdeutsche. Once registered, they got extra food, better jobs, and property confiscated from Jews and non-German Poles. Matka would never accept Volksdeutsche status, since that showed allegiance to Germany, but this put her at risk, because she was going against the Reich.

  “No, but I am mostly German. My father was only part Polish.”

  Psina scratched the soil around the smooth spot and pecked something there.

  “If you were German, you’d not be breaking rules, would you? Withholding what is due the Reich?”

  Matka touched his arm. “It is hard dealing with all of this. Can you not understand? Imagine your own family.”

  “My own family would have handed what they had to the Reich.”

  The SS man took the shovel and continued toward the spot.

  Ten…eleven…

  “I’m so terribly sorry,” Matka said, following him.

  The man ignored Matka and took one more step.

  Twelve.

  How far would he dig before he hit the box?

  “Please, give us another chance,” Matka said. “The rules are so new.”

  The guard turned, leaned on the shovel, and gave Matka a thorough looking over. He smiled, and I could see his teeth clearly, like little chewing gum tablets.

  He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. “Maybe you know the rule about curfew?”

  “Yes,” Matka said, a tiny crease between her brows. She shifted in her shoes.

  “That is a rule you can break.” The SS man took Matka’s medal between his thumb and forefinger and rubbed it, watching her the whole time.

  “One needs a pink pass to violate curfew,” Matka said.

  “I have them here in my pocket.” He dropped the medal and put his hand over his heart.

  “I don’t understand,” Matka said.

  “I think you do.”

  “Are you saying you will let this go if I come visit you?”

  “If that is what you he
ard—”

  “The Germans I know are cultured people. I can’t imagine you would ask a mother of two to do that.”

  The man cocked his head to one side, bit his lip, and picked up the shovel. “I am sorry you feel that way.”

  “Wait,” Matka said.

  The man lifted the shovel into the air above his head.

  “My God, no!” Matka cried. She reached for his arm, but it was too late. Once the shovel was in the air, there was no stopping it.

  1939

  At midnight, Father and I walked six blocks from our basement apartment to a nicer part of Düsseldorf, to the white stone townhomes where servants swept the streets and pinched back geraniums in window boxes. It was late September, but the air was warm still, “Führer-weather” they called it, since it permitted Hitler success in his campaigns. It had certainly worked with Poland.

  I climbed the steps to the double doors, inset with filigreed, white-painted ironwork over frosted glass. I pressed the silver button. Was Katz even home? There was a faint glow behind the frosted glass, but the gas lanterns to either side of the door were not lit. Father waited on the street in the darkness, arms hugging his midsection.

  I was twenty-five that year when Father’s symptoms grew bad enough for him to seek out his favorite old Jewish treater of the sick, a man named Katz. We were not allowed to call Jews doctors. The term “treaters of the sick” was preferred. Nor were Aryans allowed to frequent non-Aryan doctors, but my father seldom followed the rules.

  The doorbell chimed somewhere deep in the house. I’d never set foot in a Jew’s house before and was in no hurry to do so, but Father insisted I accompany him. I wanted to spend as little time there as possible.

  A brighter light appeared behind the frosted glass, and a dark shape moved toward me. The door to my right opened a crack to reveal a former medical school classmate of mine, one of the many Jewish students no longer welcome at the university. He was fully dressed, tucking his shirt into his pants.

  “What do you want this time of night?” he said.

  Behind him Katz descended the stairs, steps soundless on thick carpet, the train of his midnight-blue dressing gown fanned out behind him. He hesitated, hunched like a crone, eyes wide. Expecting the Gestapo?

  Father hobbled up the front steps and stood next to me. “Excuse me, Herr Doktor,” he said, one hand on the doorjamb. “I am sorry to bother you, but the pain is unbearable.”

  Once Katz recognized Father, he smiled and ushered us in. As we passed, the former medical student looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  Katz led us into his paneled study, three times the size of our apartment, the walls lined with shelves of leather-bound books. It had a spiral staircase, which led up to the second level, to a railed balcony lined with more bookshelves. Katz turned a knob on the wall, and the crystal chandelier above us, hung with a thousand icicle pendants, came to life.

  Katz eased Father down into a chair that looked like a king’s throne. I ran the tips of my fingers along the chair’s arm, across the red damask woven with threads of gold, smooth and cool.

  “It’s no bother at all,” Katz said. “I was just reading. My bag, please, and a glass of water for Herr Oberheuser,” he said over his shoulder to the former medical student. The young man pressed his lips together in a hard line and left the room.

  “How long has the pain been like this?” Katz asked.

  I’d never known many Jews, but had read many accounts of them in schoolbooks and in Der Stürmer. Grasping and controlling. Cornering the market on law and medical jobs. But Katz seemed almost happy to see Father—strange, since we’d intruded on him at such an hour. This was a man happy in his work.

  “Since dinner,” Father said, hugging his belly.

  I was almost done with medical school at the time and could have counseled my father, but he insisted on seeing Katz.

  I studied the room as Katz examined him. The black-and-white marble fireplace, the grand piano. The books on the shelves looked oiled and dusted, each one worth more than I made in a year, trimming roasts for Onkel Heinz part-time at his butcher shop. There was no doubt a well-used volume of Freud among them. Several lamps stood about the room throwing down pools of light even when no one was using them. If only Mutti could have seen that wastefulness.

  Katz fingered the sides of Father’s neck. As he turned Father’s hand to take his pulse, the light caught a fat letter K monogrammed in silver thread on Katz’s dressing-gown sleeve.

  “Working at the Horschaft factory may be causing this,” he said to Father. “I would stop working there immediately.”

  Father winced, his skin sallow. “But we can’t live without that job.”

  “Well, at least work in a ventilated area.”

  The former medical student returned with a crystal glass of water and set it on the table next to us. Could he not bring himself to hand it to Father? Little did he know Father was on his side. If he hadn’t been so sick, Father would have hidden a whole tramcar of those people in our back bedroom.

  Katz shook a pill from a bottle into Father’s hand and then smiled. “No charge.”

  Was that how they did it? Got you hooked, then charged more later? Our schoolbooks outlined the various strategies Jews used to undermine hardworking Germans. They were taking over the medical world. My professors said they were stingy with their research results and barely shared findings outside their own circles.

  While Father took his pill, I browsed the titles on the bookshelf: Clinical Surgery. Stages in Embryo Development in Humans and Vertebrates. Whole shelves of green leather tomes with titles such as Atlas of the Outer Eye Diseases and Atlas of Syphilis and Venereal Diseases.

  “You like to read?” Katz asked.

  “Herta graduates soon from medical school,” Father said. “On an accelerated track. She’s interested in surgery.” I excelled in the few surgery classes I was allowed to take, but being a woman, under national socialism, I was not allowed to specialize in surgery.

  “Ah, the surgeon,” Katz said, smiling. “King of doctors, or at least the surgeons think so.” He pulled one of the green books from the shelf. “Atlas of General Surgery. Have you read it?”

  I said nothing as he pushed the book toward me. It seemed some Jews shared.

  “Once you learn everything in here, bring it back, and I’ll give you another,” he said.

  I did not touch it. What would people say, me taking the book of a Jew?

  “You are too generous, Herr Doktor,” Father said.

  “I insist,” Katz said, still holding the book out.

  It looked heavy, the leather cover soft, embossed in gold. Could I borrow such a thing? I wanted it. Not so much to read it. I had textbooks. Ugly and secondhand, other people’s notes scratched in their margins, breadcrumbs in their gutters. This book was a beautiful thing. It would be nice to be seen with it, to walk into class and drop it casually on my desk. Mutti would rage at Father for allowing me to take it, but that alone was worth it.

  I took the book from Katz and turned away.

  “She’s speechless,” Father said. “And a fast reader. She’ll return it soon.”

  —

  IT WAS A USEFUL BOOK, in some ways more detailed than our medical school textbooks. In less than one week, I read from “Inflammation and Repair of Tissue” through “Cancer of the Lymphatic System.” The text and color plates provided additional insight into my father’s condition. Epithelioma. Sarcoma. Radium treatments.

  Once I made it through the last chapter of Katz’s book, “Amputations and Prosthesis,” and practiced two new surgical knots described there, I walked to the Jew’s house to return it, hoping for another.

  When I arrived, the front doors were wide open, and the SS were carrying cardboard boxes of books, Katz’s black medical bag, and a white wicker baby carriage, its wheels spinning in midair, to the curb. Someone was plunking out a German folk tune on Katz’s piano.

  I held the book tight to my chest
and left for home. Katz would not be coming back for it. Everyone knew of these arrests. Most of the time they happened in the night. It was sad to see someone’s possessions taken in such a way, but the Jews had been warned. They knew the Führer’s requirements. This was unfortunate, but not new, and it was for the good of Germany.

  Less than a week later I spied a new family with five sons and a daughter carrying suitcases and a birdcage into that house.

  —

  MY MOTHER WAS HAPPY to work in her brother Heinz’s meat market, across the bridge in Oberkassel, a wealthy part of town, and she had gotten me a job there too. It was a small shop, but Heinz filled every inch with meat. He hung hams and long ribs of pork outside along the front of the store like socks on a clothesline and displayed whole hogs spread-eagled, bellies slit wide, glistening entrails scooped and saved.

  At first I blanched at the sight, but as a medical student interested in surgery, I gradually grew to see beauty in the most unlikely places. The startling ivory of a splayed rib cage. A calf’s severed head, peaceful as if asleep, a fringe of lashes black against the damp fur.

  “I make good use of every part of an animal,” Heinz often said. “Everything but the squeal.” He boiled pig parts on the stove all day until the windows fogged and the shop somehow smelled both putrid and sweet as only a butcher shop can.

  As greater numbers of Jews left the city, we became one of the few quality meat shops left, and business improved daily. One afternoon Heinz passed along news benefiting the customers lined up two deep at the front counter.

  “You have to get over there to the platz, ladies. They are selling everything from the warehouses. I heard Frau Brandt found a sable coat there with a silk lining. Hurry, now.”

  No one said they were selling items taken from the Jews, but we all knew.

  “How awful they took people’s things away like that,” said Tante Ilsa, Heinz’s wife, who avoided the shop as much as she could. When she did come, she brought me a jar of her strawberry marmalade, which I’d once complimented. Ilsa kept her coat wrapped tight around her even though it was summer and stayed only two minutes. “It’s a sin to pick through someone’s things as if they’re dead.”