Lilac Girls

by Martha Hall Kelly

  “A lot of good a book will do us,” Janina said. “We are their laboratory rabbits. Need a picture drawn for you?”

  “I hope we don’t get needles,” Alfreda said.

  Luiza pressed herself closer to me. “I can’t take needles.”

  To calm ourselves, Luiza and I sat on one bed and watched a house wren build a nest outside the window, flitting off, then coming back with more building materials. Then we quizzed each other from the English book. Hello. My name is Kasia. Where might I find a taxicab?

  Soon a nurse came into the room with a thermometer, a metal bowl, and a razor.

  “Why would they shave us?” Luiza whispered.

  “Not sure,” I said. Were they operating on us? There must have been some mistake. How could Matka let this happen?

  Pretty Nurse Gerda bustled in with two other nurses, one holding a tray of needles and vials. Gerda walked straight to Luiza.

  “No, please,” Luiza said, wrapping her arms about my neck. I held her fast around the waist.

  “Please don’t hurt her,” I said. “Take me instead.”

  Zuzanna came to sit next to Luiza on the bed. “Have some mercy. Luiza is only fifteen and afraid of needles.”

  Gerda’s helpers pried Luiza’s arms from my neck.

  “It won’t be so bad,” Gerda said to Luiza with a smile. “Soon you will see flowers and hear bells.”

  They wrestled Luiza onto a wheeled cot and stretched her arm out. I covered my eyes as she cried out at the stab of the needle. At once Luiza grew sleepy and Gerda and the other nurses wheeled her out.

  Zuzanna came to my cot at the far end of the room.

  “I’m afraid they’re…”

  “Operating on us?” I felt a stab of fear just saying the words.

  “They’ll take me next,” she said. “Want to take the difficult ones first.” The sound of the wobbly wheels of another gurney echoed in the hallway.

  “We must get word to Matka,” I said.

  Gerda steered the gurney into the room and beckoned to Zuzanna. “Auf die Bahre,” she said with a smile. Onto the gurney.

  “What is happening here?” Zuzanna sat up straighter. “We have a right to know.”

  Gerda came to Zuzanna and pulled her by the arm.

  “Come now. It’s better you don’t fuss. You must be brave.”

  I held Zuzanna’s other arm as Gerda pulled her toward the gurney.

  “You cannot do this to us,” I said.

  Zuzanna punched Gerda in the arm, causing her to call for a pair of stocky green-triangled kapos. They rushed in, pushed Zuzanna onto the gurney, and tied her down with strips of white cotton.

  “It’s best you don’t struggle,” Gerda said. “Soon this will be over, and you will be released to go home to Poland.”

  Could that possibly be true?

  I stepped up to one kapo. “Where are you taking her?” Janina and Regina watched it all, hugging each other on one of the bottom bunks.

  The kapo pushed me back as Gerda managed to get a needle into Zuzanna’s arm.

  “We are prisoners, not guinea pigs,” I said.

  Zuzanna grew quiet, and Gerda pushed the gurney out of the room.

  “I love you, Kasia,” she said as they wheeled her out.

  Within minutes, Gerda came for me. I fought as her kapos pushed me to the gurney, but once pinned, I shook all over as if covered in ice. She held my arm out straight, and I felt the sting of the injection in the crook of my arm.

  “You girls, you’re worse than the men,” she said with a little laugh.

  Men? What men? Where were they?

  Time melted away. Was it morphine? Someone wheeled me into a room with a round light hanging from the ceiling and draped a towel over my face. I felt an intravenous injection and a woman told me to count backward. I counted in Polish, and she counted in German, and I drifted off.

  Sometime that night I woke. Was I hallucinating? I was lying back in the ward, in my bed, only a dim glow coming from the window. A slice of light flashed into the room as the door opened and closed. I caught my mother’s scent and thought she stood by my bed for a few seconds, and then I felt her tuck me in, lifting the mattress and pulling the sheet extra tight underneath as she always did. Matka! I felt her lips meet my forehead and linger there.

  I tried to reach out but could not. Please stay.

  Soon there was another slice of light, and she was gone.

  —

  THE NEXT MORNING I woke as if rising from the depths of the ocean floor.

  “Matka?” It was Luiza, calling from her bed next to mine. “I am so thirsty, Matka.”

  “I’m here, Lou,” I said.

  I raised myself up on my elbows and saw every bed was full. All the girls except Zuzanna wore a cast or paper bandages on one leg. Some were moaning and calling out for their mothers or husbands or children. We were all so thirsty. They’d put me in the bed closest to the window, Zuzanna down the row from me, closer to the hallway door.

  “Zuzanna?” I called to her, but she did not answer. She had thrown up on herself and her bedclothes.

  “Matka!” I called as loud as I could. Had she really visited me the night before? Had it been a dream?

  My own nausea and pain were terrible. When I first woke, I wasn’t sure I still had a leg, but then saw it was wrapped in a heavy plaster from the top of my toes to the top of my thigh. I could feel some fuzzy material inside as if it was lined with cotton. Some of us had symbols written on our plasters and bandages down near the ankle: AI, CII, and similar writing. Some had been operated on on their left leg, some on their right, some on both. On my plaster, I found a Roman numeral one was written in black marker. What did it mean?

  How we prayed for water! None was given, except when Dr. Oberheuser gave us a glass with vinegar in it. Undrinkable.

  I was in and out of consciousness. We were all groggy, but Alfreda and Luiza were in especially bad shape. There was a big letter T marked on their plasters. At first Alfreda just cried out in pain, but soon her neck went rigid, and her head arched back. As the morning wore on, her arms and legs grew stiff.

  “Please help me,” Alfreda said. “Water. Please.”

  Janina somehow got up that first day and hopped from bed to bed doing the best she could to comfort us all, straightening our blankets and delivering our one bedpan.

  “Water is coming,” Janina said, suffering from terrible dry heaves herself.

  “Matka, it’s Kasia!” I called out, hoping she would hear me from her desk in the Revier. But we didn’t see a soul, except Dr. Oberheuser and Nurse Gerda, who came to our beds.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, Luiza woke me. How long had we been there? Two days? Two weeks? Hard to tell, for one hour blended into the next.

  “Kasia. Are you awake?” Luiza asked.

  Arcs of light from the tower searchlights crisscrossed the room at regular intervals, lighting up Luiza’s pale face, tight with pain. She shuddered all over from terrible chills.

  “I’m here, Lou,” I said.

  She reached out her arm across the space between our cots, and I held her cold hand.

  “Please tell my mother I was brave.”

  “You’ll tell her yourself.”

  “No, Kasia. I’m so afraid. I may go mad with it.”

  “Tell me a story. Keep your mind busy.”

  “About what?”

  “Anything. The one about Pietrik’s scar.”

  “The baby bottle? I’ve told you one hundred times.”

  I waited for the arc of light to visit my face and gave her my sternest look. “Tell me again.”

  “I can’t, Kasia.”

  “Don’t give up, Lou. Tell me the story.”

  She took a deep breath. “When Pietrik was a baby, my grandmother, God rest her soul, gave him a glass baby bottle of water to drink in his crib.”

  “Was he a good baby, Lou?”

  “You know he was. But somehow he broke the bottle on the ra
ils of the crib and cut himself across the bridge of his nose. Our Matka came running when she heard his cries.”

  “Don’t forget the blood.”

  “So much blood his face was awash with it. My grandmother fainted dead away on the nursery floor. She was a fainter…”

  Luiza drifted off.

  “And then?” I asked.

  “The doctors stitched him up. The glass didn’t hurt his beautiful blue eyes, but now he has that terrible scar across the bridge of his nose.”

  “I don’t think it’s terrible at all,” I said.

  The light caught Luiza’s smile, but it only made her seem sicker somehow. “He could have two heads, and you would still be crazy about him. Am I right?”

  “I suppose. But he loves Nadia. And she him. A girl doesn’t buy all ten of a boy’s dance tickets if she’s not in love.”

  “You can be wrong, you know. Nadia told me she left something for you. In your secret spot.”

  Luiza knew of our secret spot? Nothing was sacred. “You need to get some sleep now.”

  “I will, but only if you tell me first: Is it a sin to break a promise?”

  “Depends on the promise,” I said.

  Luiza turned her face toward me. Even that small movement seemed to cause her great pain.

  “But I crossed my heart. Will God disapprove?”

  “God owes us one for putting us here.”

  “That’s blasphemy.”

  “You can tell, Lou. Whose promise?”

  “Well, Pietrik’s.”

  Everything quickened. About me?

  “Swear you will never tell him I told. I’ll probably never see him again, but I couldn’t bear him remembering his sister as a loose tongue.”

  “You can’t think that way, Luiza. You’ll see him. You know I can keep a secret.”

  “He said he knew something when you danced at the casino.”

  “What?”

  “Something important.”

  “Luiza. I’m not going to drag it out of—”

  “Well, he told me he loves you. There it is.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. He said he would tell you himself.”

  “I’m afraid I won’t be doing much more dancing after this,” I said.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t care. You love him too. I can tell.”

  “If you must know, yes. But he is crazy for Nadia.”

  “No, he loves you. He would never lie to me. You’re lucky to have my brother, Kasia. You will grow old together and have babies.” She was quiet for a moment. “I will miss him. And my parents. Do tell them I was brave even if I am not in the end?”

  I held Luiza’s hand until she fell asleep. I then drifted off myself, thinking of how good it felt to be loved and of Pietrik as a baby and of how I would never forgive myself if I did not bring Luiza home for him.

  —

  SOON WE WERE ALL running high fevers, and more girls grew sicker. The pain in my leg was terrible, as if a nest of bees were attacking my calf.

  We didn’t see Dr. Oberheuser until the following evening, and by then Alfreda and Luiza were both unable to move, their whole bodies stiff, backs arched. I tried to hold Luiza’s hand, but her fingers were clenched like claws. She could no longer talk, but I saw it in her eyes—she was terrified.

  Zuzanna had spells of wakefulness, but most of the time I was unable to rouse her. The short periods she was awake, she lay curled up and clutched her belly, moaning. What had they done to her?

  Dr. Oberheuser came into the room with Nurse Gerda.

  “Es stinkt hier,” was all Dr. Oberheuser said when she entered.

  Could we help it if the room stank? Rotting flesh will do that.

  “Please, Madame Doctor, may we have some water?” I asked, but she ignored me and went from bed to bed writing on her charts. “Gleiche, Gleiche, Gleiche,” was all she said as she went bed to bed, comparing our operated legs to the healthy ones. “Same, same, same.”

  “Zuzanna!” I called. How could she not answer? She lay sleeping on her side, knees to her chest.

  Dr. Oberheuser stepped over to Luiza, checked her pulse, then gestured to the nurse.

  “You can remove that one,” said the doctor, pointing to Luiza.

  My blood went cold. “Oh no, please, Madame Doctor. Luiza is only fifteen.”

  Nurse Gerda pulled a gurney from the hallway to Luiza’s bed.

  “She just needs more medicine,” I said. “Please.”

  Dr. Oberheuser put one finger to her lips, signaling for me to be still.

  “Please let me keep her.”

  Together, two nurses lifted Luiza onto the gurney.

  I reached out to the doctor. “We’ll be quiet. I promise.”

  Dr. Oberheuser came to my bed and rested her hand on my arm. “You mustn’t wake the other girls.”

  “Where is my mother?” I said. “Halina Kuzmerick.”

  Dr. Oberheuser froze there next to me and slowly pulled her hand away, her face suddenly blank of expression.

  “I need to speak with her,” I said.

  The doctor stepped back. “Your friend will be fine. Don’t worry. We are just moving her.”

  I reached for the doctor’s jacket lapel, but my plaster weighed me down. Nurse Gerda jabbed a needle into my thigh.

  “Tell my mother I need her,” I said.

  The room grew blurry. Where had they taken Luiza? I tried to stay awake. Was that her crying in the other room?

  —

  I THOUGHT I’D GO insane after that. Those of us in casts just lay in the same spot for days listening to classical music played over and over again somewhere in the Revier. Where was my mother? Had she helped Luiza? We’d lost all track of time, but after what seemed like a few months, Zuzanna had improved to the point where she could sit up. She pleaded with Dr. Oberheuser to remove or change our plasters, but the doctor ignored us and went about her work, most days in a foul mood, banging her charts around and handling us roughly.

  The bedsores were awful, but they were nothing compared to the deep pain of the incisions.

  One day Anise Postel-Vinay, Zuzanna’s French friend whom she worked with at the booty piles, tossed a gift she’d organized from the SS kitchen through our high window. It all showered down around me on my bed. Two carrots and an apple. A square of cheese and a sugar cube. Such heavenly rain.

  “That is for the Rabbits,” she said just loud enough for us to hear. She would go to the bunker for sure if she was caught.

  I’d wrapped a note for Matka, written on paper Regina supplied me with, around my soup spoon and tossed it out the window.

  “Can you get that to my mother?”

  “I’ll try,” came Anise’s reply.

  The spoon came flying back into the room, relieved of its letter, and safely landed on my bed.

  “They’ve banned many of the prisoner-nurses from the Revier since the operations,” Anise said.

  Such news! So that was why Matka could not come.

  “Thank you, Anise,” I said. How wonderful to be able to tell Matka we missed her, even by means of a note.

  After that, the name Rabbits stuck, and everyone at the camp called us this. Króliki in Polish. Medical guinea pigs. Lapins in French. Even Dr. Oberheuser called us her Versuchskaninchen. Experimental rabbits.

  —

  FOR WEEKS AFTER THAT, all of us with plaster casts had a terrible time using the bedpans, and the itching from my wound drove me crazy. When I woke from it at night, I lay there feverish, unable to get back to sleep, worrying about Luiza. What would I tell Pietrik? His parents? They would never recover after losing their Lou.

  One day I pulled a long piece of bent wire from the metal frame of my bed and pushed it down inside my cast to scratch the incision.

  That helped.

  We composed a hymn to bread pudding. Regina read to us from her English book and told us stories about her young son, Freddie, who had just started to walk when she was arrested. I spent h
ours watching the bird Luiza and I had seen making its nest on the day we came to the Revier. It was charming until I realized the little wren was feathering her new home with fluffy bits of human hair, blond, auburn, and chestnut, woven in with her reeds.

  One morning the nurses came to get the girls with plasters.

  “It is time to remove your casts,” Nurse Gerda said, as if it were Christmas morning.

  They took me first, and I was overjoyed we would finally be released. A nurse helped me onto a gurney, put a towel over my face, and took me to the operating room. I could hear several people in there, men and women, including Dr. Oberheuser and Nurse Gerda.

  I lay on the gurney, gripping the sheet beneath me, glad I had a towel over my face. Did I even want to see my leg? I prayed I would be able to walk and dance again. Would Pietrik think me hideous? Maybe my leg wouldn’t be so bad once the cast was removed.

  “I will do the honors,” a male voice said, as if he were opening a bottle of fancy champagne. Was that Dr. Gebhardt?

  I felt cold metal run up the side of my leg as some sort of scissors cut through the cast. Air rushed to my skin as the two pieces of the plaster separated, and someone lifted off the top. The stench reached me under the towel. I sat up, the towel falling away, to see the doctors and nurses recoil. Nurse Gerda gasped.

  “God in heaven,” Dr. Gebhardt said.

  I tried to support myself on my elbows so I could see my leg, but Gerda stretched the towel back over my face to keep me down. I managed to push her away, sat up, and saw the horror my leg had become.

  1942

  We Germans were optimistic come the spring of 1942.

  True, there were rumors that Hitler’s two-front war would be our downfall, but every morning at Ravensbrück we woke up to find more good news in Der Stürmer. According to the paper, our führer dominated Europe, or at least the parts of it we needed. The war would certainly be over by summer.

  The end of the previous year had also brought success for our Japanese ally against the Americans at Pearl Harbor, and we celebrated their continued military advances that spring. A Japanese delegation had toured Ravensbrück and had been impressed with the neatness of the Bible girls’ quarters and the window boxes filled with flowers. It was Himmler who’d ordered those window boxes built, since at a show camp such as Ravensbrück, it was essential to make a good impression.