Lilac Girls

by Martha Hall Kelly

  “There. Now turn around.” Fast as I could, I braided her dark hair in one fat plait down her back. “Unmarried Catholic girls wear one braid. Do you know the Lord’s Prayer?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Learn the Polish national anthem too. They’re asking for that more now. And remember, if someone offers you vodka, no sipping. Take it in one gulp, or refuse it altogether.”

  “It’s time,” the woman said.

  I admired my handiwork.

  A white Bible lay on the table. “That is a pretty Bible.” I handed it to her. “Just make sure you crack the binding. Make it seem used. And in church, genuflect like this, right knee to the floor, and make the sign of the cross”—I demonstrated—“so. No—the right hand. Yes. Just follow the others. And don’t chew the host. Let it melt in your mouth.”

  She took hold of my arm. “Will I have to eat pork?”

  “Just say you were sick once from it and can’t stand the sight—”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said. “I have nothing to give you.”

  “Iwona, please,” the woman said.

  “Don’t worry about it. And above all, don’t fret. Your Polish is good as anyone’s. One last thing.” I unlatched my silver cross necklace and fastened it around her neck.

  The girl looked down at her chest.

  “This may be hard for you to wear, but every Catholic girl has one.”

  Pietrik would understand.

  I went to the door and stopped for one last look. Hannah stood, Bible in hand, looking much like any Catholic girl on her way to Sunday mass.

  “It has been over five minutes,” the woman said. “Perhaps you should wait until dark?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. Pietrik would be waiting.

  I headed back upstairs, through the pharmacy, and out to the street. It felt good to be out in the fresh air, my job well done. That is my last assignment for a while, I thought as I headed for the cinema. A peek at my watch told me I would be early for my shift. My boss would be happy. All I wanted was to get there safely. Pietrik would be there if I needed help.

  I made good progress, but before I was even out of Old Town, I felt someone following me. I bent to tie Hannah’s boot, the paper package crinkling in my sack, and glanced behind me. There was the brownshirt who’d seen me at Z’s, busy dispersing a group of young people. Had he seen me go into the basement? I shook off the bad thoughts and ran on.

  I made it to the theater, five minutes early for my shift. The theater marquee read THE ETERNAL JEW. Once the theater had been requisitioned by the Nazis, all films were sent from Nazi headquarters, Under the Clock, and no Poles were allowed in, but just from the name we knew this film was Nazi propaganda. The line at the ticket booth was already forming, the German customers queued up, that expectant look of theatergoers on their faces. A new thing the Nazis had forced upon us was patriotic music, played via loudspeaker outside the theater. A loop of the “Horst Wessel Song,” the Nazi Party anthem, a dirge-like march, complete with trumpets, resounded across the cobblestone square all night long, even through the movie!

  “The flag on high!” sang the German choir. “The ranks tightly closed! The SA marches with quiet, steady step.”

  I slipped through the ticket booth door and caught my breath. It was a small room, barely the size of a small bathroom, and featured a paper-shaded ticket window and one high stool. Had anyone followed me? I flipped on the lights and touched the cashbox, cold and smooth, to calm myself. I would need to keep my wits about me, sort the money, and keep the window shade pulled down for now.

  Where was Matka? She was due with the cheese sandwich she’d promised. As a former nurse, she’d been pressed into service in the Old Town Hospital. Why was she late this one time when I was starving? The smell of the German candy bars made me crazy with hunger.

  I moved the shade aside and peeked out the ticket booth window. An electric jolt ran through me. Was it possible? The brownshirt who’d seen me at Z’s stood talking with two older Hausfrauen in the ticket line.

  How glad I was to see Pietrik burst into the ticket booth and take his usual seat on the floor at my feet, under the window, back to the wall. His cheeks, flushed pink, made his eyes seem extra blue. Luiza, his little sister, was close behind. She slid her back down the wall to sit next to him. She was almost the complete opposite of Pietrik: While he had light eyes, hers were dark. He was serious. She laughed a lot. At fifteen, she was half his size.

  “How did your trip to Z’s go?” he asked.

  I sat high on the ticket taker’s stool and arranged my skirt to make the best presentation of my legs. “Well enough, with one loose end—”

  He sent me a quick glance, a warning not to speak of it in front of Luiza.

  “I’m searching for my greatest talent,” Luiza said. “What do you think it is, Kasia?”

  Why did Luiza have to bring up the silliest subjects at such a time? I pulled the shade aside and checked the line out front. The brownshirt was still there, now in an animated conversation with two men. About me?

  “I don’t know, Luiza,” I said. “You’re a good baker…”

  “That’s something anyone can do. I want something unique.”

  I looked outside again. Something was not right. Don’t be paranoid, I thought as I sorted the money and ran through my mental list:

  Candy price cards set? Check.

  Cashbox sorted? Check.

  Now that our movie audience was mostly German, I needed to be extra organized, for my boss would hear a terrible ticking off of complaints about my smallest slipup.

  Zuzanna came into the booth and shut the door behind her.

  “Kasia, why are you so white?”

  “Did you see a brownshirt out there?”

  She tossed her bag in the corner. “That’s a fine hello. I’ve been in the country doctoring the sick in exchange for the eggs for your breakfast, dear sister.”

  I pulled the shade aside, and there he was. He had moved on to speak with a young woman in line.

  “I think he followed me. From Z’s. Leave. Now.” I turned to Pietrik. “You and Luiza too. If they find you here with me, they’ll take us all.”

  Zuzanna laughed. “Last time I heard, there was no law saying Z’s is off-limits. Though there’s a law about everything else these days…”

  I checked the line outside again. The woman nodded and raised a finger in the direction of the ticket booth door. My whole body went cold.

  “He’s asking them about me,” I said, a giant drain sucking me down. “They’re telling him I’m here.”

  My heart contracted with what I saw next: Matka, at the far end of the line, shouldering her way through the crowd toward us, basket in hand.

  Zuzanna pulled the shade from my hand. “Keep looking guilty and you will be in trouble.”

  I could barely breathe.

  Don’t come, Matka. Turn back now, before it’s too late.

  1940

  Fritz was late picking me up at Fürstenberg Station, a fine way for me to start my first day as a camp doctor at Ravensbrück. Would he recognize me? This was doubtful. At university, he’d always had some pretty nursing student on his arm.

  The compact train station was built in the Bavarian style, and I had ample time to admire it, left standing on the platform for five minutes. Would I receive important assignments? Make good friends? It was warm for fall, and my wool dress irritated my skin. I couldn’t wait to slip into a lighter dress and a cool, smooth lab coat.

  Fritz finally came along in a Kübelwagen-82, top down, a green bathtub for four, the Ravensbrück utility vehicle. He stopped, one arm slung over the passenger seatback.

  “You’re late,” I said. “I meet the commandant at quarter past ten.”

  He came to the platform and took my bag. “No handshake, Herta? I’ve gone a whole year without seeing you.”

  He remembered me.

  I stole a glance at him as we drove. He still had the good looks every f
emale at the university had noted. Tall, with well-behaved black hair and Prussian blue eyes. Refined features that reflected his aristocratic parentage. He looked tired, though, especially around the eyes. How stressful could it be to work at a women’s reeducation camp?

  The wind in my short hair felt good as we set off down Fritz-Reuter-Strasse, through the small town of Fürstenberg, where sod-roofed cottages flanked the street. Very old Germany. Like a scene from a Black Forest box.

  “Sometimes Himmler stays here in Fürstenberg when he’s in town, which is often. He sold the Reich the land on which they built Ravensbrück, you know. Made a fortune. Can you see the camp over there across Lake Schwedt? It’s brand-new— Are you crying, Herta?”

  “Just the wind in my eyes,” I said, though he was perceptive. It was hard not to become emotional driving through Fürstenberg, for I’d visited a similar town with my parents as a child, for fishing. This was the essence of Germany, so beautiful and unspoiled. What we were fighting for.

  “What time is it, Fritz?” I said, drying my eyes. Just what I needed, the commandant pegging me as a crier. “I can’t be late.”

  Fritz accelerated and raised his voice over the engine. “Koegel is not a bad sort. He owned a souvenir shop in Munich before this.”

  A dust cloud followed the Kübelwagen as we raced down the road, along the lake toward camp. As we rounded the bend, I looked back across the lake and admired the distant silhouette of the town of Fürstenberg where we’d just come from, with its tall church spire.

  “You’ll have your pick of the doctors here,” Fritz said. “Dr. Rosenthal loves blondes.”

  “I am not blond,” I said, though I was happy he thought so. My mood improved riding with Fritz, about to embark on a new adventure.

  “Close enough. A clean German girl is a rare thing here. They’ve had their fill of Slavs.”

  “I love my men with syphilis.”

  “Just doing my part to repopulate Germany,” Fritz said with a smile.

  “Is this how you woo the girls?”

  He cast a glance at me and lingered a second too long, betraying his carefree tone. How lucky I was to be one of the few female doctors under Hitler. It put me in a whole different class. Fritz Fischer would never flirt like this with a Düsseldorf Hausfrau. Maybe I’d grow my hair long again. No doubt he would be impressed once I became the most accomplished doctor there.

  We sped by a crew of gaunt women in striped dresses, in the advanced stages of muscular atrophy, leaning their full weight against the metal harness of a massive concrete roller like sick oxen. A female guard in a gray wool uniform restrained a lunging Alsatian. Fritz waved to the guard and she scowled as we passed.

  “They love me here,” Fritz said.

  “Looks like it,” I said.

  We stopped in a cloud of dust at the brick administration building, the first thing one saw of the camp, at the end of the road. I exited the Wagen, brushed the dust off my dress, and examined the surroundings. My first impression was of quality. The lawn grew lush and green, and red flowers rose up along the base of the building. To the left, high on a ridge overlooking the camp, sat four leader houses built in Heimatschutzstil, homeland-preserving style, with natural stone columns and half-timbered balconies. A mix of Nordic and German styles, pleasing to the eye. This was a place of superior value—high-class, one might even call it.

  “Up on the ridge, the one overlooking the camp is the commandant’s house,” Fritz said.

  If not for the glimpse of high stone walls topped with barbed wire behind the administration building, one might have mistaken the camp for a convalescent home, not a reeducation camp for prisoners. I was determined to like Commandant Koegel. Those of superior rank can always tell if a subordinate does not like them, and this can be fatal to a career.

  Just inside the camp gates, a caged aviary, which held monkeys and parrots and other exotic birds, stood off to the side of the road, the only incongruous element. Animals reduce stress, certainly, but what was the purpose of such a collection?

  “You waiting for the butler, Herta?” Fritz called to me from the doorway.

  A secretary ushered me across parqueted floors, upstairs and into the commandant’s office, where Koegel sat at his desk, under a rectangular mirror, which reflected the man-sized potted plant in the corner. It was hard not to be intimidated by the grandeur of his office. The wall-to-wall carpeting, the expensive-looking draperies, and the chandelier. He even had his own porcelain sink. All at once I wished I’d shined my shoes.

  Koegel stood, and we exchanged the German salute.

  “You’re late, Dr. Oberheuser,” he said.

  The Black Forest clock on his wall chimed the half hour. Dirndled and lederhosened dancers twirled out of their arched doorways to “Der fröhliche Wanderer,” celebrating my tardiness.

  “Dr. Fischer—” I began.

  “Do you always blame others for your mistakes?”

  “I am sorry to be late, Herr Commandant.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “How was your trip?” He was a fleshy sort, something I ordinarily dislike in a person, but I forced a smile.

  Koegel’s second-floor view offered a wide expanse of the camp and overlooked a vast yard where women prisoners stood at attention, five abreast. A road bisected the camp, covered with black slag, which glittered in the sun. Neat rows of barracks stood perpendicular to this road and extended into the distance. How nice to see immature linden trees, the hallowed “tree of lovers” in German folklore, planted at regular intervals along the road.

  “It was a comfortable trip, Commandant,” I said, doing my best to lose my Rhineland accent. “Thank you for the first-class ticket.”

  “Comfort is important to you?” Koegel asked.

  The commandant was a stern man with stumpy legs and a sour disposition. Perhaps his unpleasant demeanor was due in part to his regulation brown shirt collar and tie, so tight they squeezed the adipose tissue up around his neck, making it look like a lardy muffler. The friction had produced a bumper crop of skin tags, which hung flaccid along the edges of his collar. He wore a cluster of medals at his chest. At least he was a patriot.

  “Not really, Commandant. I—”

  “I am afraid there has been a mix-up,” he said with a wave of his hand. “We cannot accommodate you here.”

  “But I received a letter from Berlin—”

  “You will be the only woman doctor here. That presents problems.”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “This is a work camp, Doctor. No fancy beauty salons, no coffee klatches. How will men feel about you eating in the officers’ canteen? One woman among so many men spells trouble.”

  I felt the salary floating away as he spoke. Would Fritz take me to the next train back to Berlin? Mutti would have to work full-time again.

  “I am used to living simply, Herr Commandant.”

  I released my clenched fists and saw I’d dug my fingernails into my palms. They left a row of little red smiles, mocking me. I deserved this. When would I learn not to be overconfident? “I assure you I will be fine in any living situation. The Führer himself says simple living is best.”

  Koegel took in my short haircut. Was he weakening?

  “They sent me a dermatologist? That is no use to us here.”

  “And infectious diseases, Commandant.” He mulled that over, one hand on his belly.

  “I see,” he said. He turned to the window and surveyed the camp. “Well, we do sensitive work here, Doctor.”

  As he spoke, the sound of a whip drew my attention to the square below. A female guard lashed one of several prisoners gathered there with a horsewhip.

  “We require complete confidentiality here, Doctor. Are you willing to sign a statement? You can confide in no one. Not even your mother or girlfriends.”

  Nothing to worry about there. I had no girlfriends.

  “Any breach of security, and you’ll face your family’s imprisonment and a pos
sible death penalty for you.”

  “I keep to myself, Herr Commandant.”

  “This work is, well, not for the squeamish. Our medical setup is adequate at best—in a terrible state.”

  Koegel ignored the spectacle below his window. As the prisoner fell to the ground, her hands folded across the top of her head, the guard intensified the punishment. A second guard held back a leashed Alsatian as it sprang forward, teeth bared.

  “Well, it would make Berlin happy,” Koegel said.

  “What will my role in reeducation be, Herr Commandant?”

  The guard in the courtyard kicked the woman in the midsection with her boot, the woman’s screams hard to ignore. This was a violent form of reeducation.

  “You are joining an elite group. You’ll work with some of the best doctors in Germany to accommodate the medical needs of the camp staff and their families and of the women who have been resettled here to do the Führer’s work. Dr. Gebhardt has several projects as well.”

  In the courtyard, the guard rewound her whip and two prisoners dragged their bloodied companion off as the rest stood at attention. “After your three-month training period, a resignation will not be accepted under any circumstances.”

  “I understand, Commandant.”

  Koegel walked back to his desk. “You will share a house with Dorothea Binz, our head of female security personnel. Our hair salon is not fancy but quite good. Right downstairs. The Bible girls operate it. Jehovah’s Witnesses. They’ve dedicated themselves to making my life a living hell, but you can trust them with scissors.”

  “I will keep it in mind, Herr Commandant,” I said and excused myself with a German salute.

  I left Koegel’s office happy he’d relented but unsure I wanted to stay at Ravensbrück. A vague unsettled feeling came over me. What if I just got back on the train for home? I could work three jobs if I had to.

  —

  I WAS ASTOUNDED TO SEE my room in the newly built high-ranking wardresses’ cottage just steps from the entry gate. It was bigger than our whole apartment at home, outfitted with a shared bath complete with shower and tub, a comfortable bed with white eiderdown, and a vanity table. I wore no makeup, per regulations, but the table would make a nice desk. Best of all, the cottage was centrally heated. Such clean, elegant quarters with my own balcony. Mutti would just shake her head in wonder to see me in such a place.