Lilac Girls

by Martha Hall Kelly

  “I hope he’s not in trouble,” Betty said.

  “I can spare a minute,” David said. “But we do need to get home. Cook has a roast on.”

  I pulled David to a quieter corner, and he smiled. “If this is a last-minute bid for my affections, maybe church isn’t—”

  “Why won’t you return my calls?” I said.

  The war had not impeded David’s ability to dress well—classic, but almost to the edge of fop, his necktie arched, the pockets of his camel-hair coat with perfectly swelled edges.

  “When was the last time you did me a favor?”

  “I just need you to call someone about—”

  “Only Congress can loosen immigration quotas, Caroline. I told you.”

  “You’re in a powerful position, David.”

  “To do what?”

  “Roger had to turn down another boat this morning. Sailing from Le Havre. Half of them children. If you could just ask—”

  “The country doesn’t want more foreigners.”

  “Foreigners? Half this country just got here a generation ago. How can you just let people die, David?”

  David took my hand. “Look, C. I know Paul Rodierre is over there in a bad situation—”

  I pulled my hand away. “It’s not that. How can we just do nothing? It’s appalling.”

  Rector Brooks joined Mother, Betty, and Sally in the narthex. He waved his hand in a sign of the cross over Sally’s belly, which only seemed to cause Sally to fan herself more.

  “We’re at war, Caroline. Winning it is the best thing we can do for those people.”

  “That’s a smoke screen and you know it. Seventy thousand Romanian Jews refused asylum here? The St. Louis turned away? How many innocents sent back to certain death?”

  Rector Brooks turned to look at us, and David pulled me farther into the shadows.

  “It’s a slow process, Caroline. Every visa form must be perfectly vetted. Nazi spies might come here posing as refugees. It’s in the best interests of the United States.”

  “It’s anti-Semitism, David. There was a time when you’d have done the right thing.”

  “Brother dear,” Betty called.

  David held up an index finger to her. “Let’s admit what this is really all about. If you weren’t pining away like a schoolgirl for your lost married boyfriend, you’d be back at the Junior League knitting socks for servicemen.”

  “I’ll forget you said that if you promise to at least try—”

  “David, now,” Betty said.

  “Okay, I’ll ask.”

  “I have your word?”

  “Yes, for God’s sake. Are you happy?”

  “I am,” I said with a smile. For a moment, I thought I caught a flicker of sadness move across David’s face. Regretting our breakup? It was hard to tell, for it retreated as quickly as it had come.

  We turned to see Mother and Betty ease Sally down into a back pew. Rector Brooks watched like an anxious father as Mother dispatched choirboys in search of a basin. Sally’s cries echoed about the church as Mother wadded her coat to cushion the poor thing’s head.

  “My God,” David said, stricken.

  Betty ran to David and pulled his arm. “Get over here. She’s about to erupt. No time to get to St. Luke’s.”

  It seemed David would not be going home for Cook’s roast after all.

  CHRISTMAS 1943

  Christmas of 1943 was an especially grim one for Zuzanna and me. With Matka and Luiza gone and my sister wasted almost to nothing, there was little reason to celebrate. There’d been not one letter or package from Papa in so long. Was he even alive?

  We had off from Appell on Christmas afternoon, so the camp guards could have their celebration. Zuzanna lay next to me, so thin from dysentery one could see the sharp edge of her hip bone jut through the thin blanket as she slept. As a doctor she knew what was happening and tried to instruct me on how to make her well, but even when the girls in the kitchen snuck her salt and clean water, nothing worked. Though many of our fellow prisoners shared their own precious food with all of the Rabbits, without packages of our own from home, we had become living skeletons.

  Zuzanna lay on her side, hands clasped under her chin, and I dozed next to her, my chest to her back, her breath my only happiness. The women in our block had voted to allow us to have a bottom bunk to ourselves in light of our situation as Rabbits. This was an extraordinary gesture, since some bunks hosted more than eight prisoners! The Russian women, many of them doctors and nurses captured on the battlefield, were especially kind to us and had organized the vote. As a Christmas gift, Anise had given us a louse-free scrap of a blanket she’d taken from the booty piles, and I’d wound it around Zuzanna’s bare feet.

  I watched a few Polish girls stuff some grass under a piece of cloth. This was a Christmas tradition we’d followed in Poland since we were young where fresh straw is put under a white tablecloth. After supper some maidens pull out blades of the straw from beneath the cloth to predict their future. A green piece predicts marriage, a withered one signifies waiting, a yellow one predicts the dreaded spinsterhood, and a very short one foreshadows an early grave. That day they all looked very short to me.

  With Marzenka away for the moment, some Polish girls sang one of my favorite Christmas songs, “Zdrów bądź Królu Anielski,” “As Fit for the King of Angels,” in low, hushed tones, since singing or speaking in any language except German was forbidden and could land one in the bunker.

  The song took me back to Christmas Eve in Poland, our little tree covered with silver paper icicles and candles. Exchanging gifts with Nadia, always books. Dining on Matka’s clear beetroot soup, hot fish, and sweets. And going to church on Christmas Day, our family there in the same pew as the Bakoskis. All of us crowding in with Pietrik and his gentle mother, like a dark-haired swan. She’d been a ballet dancer before she met Pietrik’s father and always wore her hair gathered in a knot at the nape of her neck. Mr. Bakoski standing tall in his military uniform and Luiza in her new pink coat snuggling close to me. His family smiling as Pietrik pulled me close to share a prayer book. His scent of cloves and cinnamon from helping his mother bake that morning.

  I spent more time in memories then—anything to escape that freezing block—but I could feel the hunger taking the place of any love I had. Most of the day I thought only of bread and ridding Zuzanna and me of our lice. Zuzanna had developed a rigorous delousing routine for us, since she was terrified of typhus. As a doctor, she knew too well the consequences of contracting the disease.

  My thoughts were interrupted when the old electrician from Fürstenberg came to work on the wires in our block. He was a frequent visitor and one whose presence was much anticipated. He stepped into the block, stooped and white-haired, toting his canvas bag of tools and a wooden folding stool, the shoulders and sleeves of his tweed coat dark with wet patches. He shook the rain off his mustard-yellow hat and then did something he always did, something extraordinary.

  He bowed to us.

  Bowed! How long had it been since anyone else had done this for us? He then walked to the center of the room and opened his folding stool. On the way he glanced at Zuzanna, asleep next to me, and smiled. For some reason, he seemed especially fond of Zuzanna. She had that effect on people. Did she remind him of his own child? On a previous visit, he’d snuck her a sugar cube, wrapped in white paper, that we made last for days, waking up at night to take little licks of it. And once, he “accidentally” dropped a headache powder packet near her bunk.

  Why, you ask, would starving girls be happy to see this German man? Because Herr Fenstermacher was no ordinary workman. He was a kind, cultured man with a voice like warm molasses. But this was not the best thing.

  He sang for us. In French.

  But not just any songs. His own songs, made up of the newspaper headlines of the day. Yes, we knew about some war events just by listening to the distant thud of bombs to our south. But Herr Fenstermacher brought us, at great risk to hims
elf, a gift more precious than gold. News of hope. The name Fenstermacher means “window maker” in German, and he was our window to the world.

  He always started the same way: He stepped upon his stool and fiddled with the bare lightbulb and sang: “Recueillir près, les filles, et vous entendrez tout ce qui se passe dans le monde.” Gather near, girls, and you will hear all that is happening in the world.

  That Christmas Day he sang of American troops landing on European soil; of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill meeting in Tehran; and of the British Royal Air Force successfully bombing Berlin. So that was who’d been flying overhead! I pictured handsome, young English pilots in their planes causing the air-raid siren to sound, sending Binz and her Aufseherinnen into panic. Did those pilots even know we were down here waiting to be freed?

  Those who knew French whispered translations to the rest. You can’t know how happy we were to get this gift. The electrician ended with a pretty “Merry Christmas to you, dear ladies. May God help us all soon.”

  He gathered his tool bag and settled his hat back on his head. Tears pricked at my eyes. Would he catch a chill in this weather? We’d been forgotten by everyone. Did he know he was our only ally? He walked by our bunk and tipped his hat to me. Please take care, I thought. You are our only friend.

  I was happy Zuzanna slept through it all. One day of rest not having to stand in the sleet for hours as Binz and her guards counted us would help her recover. It wasn’t until Herr Fenstermacher was out the door and on his way that I saw what he’d left at the foot of our bunk.

  The most beautiful pair of hand-knitted socks!

  I reached for them and could not believe the softness. I stroked my cheek with them. They felt like Psina’s downy underfeathers. And the color! The palest blue, like an early summer sky. I slid them down under Zuzanna’s chin, between her clasped hands and her chest. A Christmas miracle.

  No sooner had Herr Fenstermacher left than the door to the block opened and Marzenka trudged in, stomping the mud off her boots. How we envied her boots, since bare feet in oversized wooden clogs in the middle of winter is a torture unto itself.

  Marzenka carried an armful of packages. My chest thumped at the sight of them. It was too much to ask for, a package for us on Christmas after waiting so long.

  She walked about the block, called out names, and tossed packages and letters into some bunks. How strange, I thought, that we were allowed parcels, being political prisoners and all. But lucky for us, Commandant Suhren was practical. A prisoner’s family sending her food and clothing saved the camp money. It meant fewer funds were necessary to keep a worker alive.

  By the time Marzenka made it to our bunk, she only held two more parcels.

  Please let one be ours.

  She slowed as she approached our bunk. “Merry Christmas,” she said with a rare crack of a smile. Even she had become sympathetic to the Rabbits.

  Marzenka lobbed a parcel onto our straw mattress, and it landed with a thump. I sat up and snatched it. I was a little dizzy and held the box wrapped in brown paper for a few moments, letting it all sink in. A package. Little splotches of rain had spotted the brown paper, giving it an animal-skin look, and the rain smudged the ink of the return address, but it was from the Lublin Postal Center.

  Papa.

  Had he somehow cracked the code and ironed the letter? Should I wake Zuzanna so we could open it together? The package was already half-open, having been rifled through by the censors, so I went ahead and pulled off the brown paper. I was left with an old candy tin, cold to the touch. I popped off the lid, and the smell of stale chocolate came up to meet me. Oh, chocolate. I’d forgotten about chocolate. Even stale chocolate made my mouth water.

  In the tin were three cloth-wrapped bundles. I unwrapped the first to reveal what was left of a poppy-seed cake. More than half! Ordinarily the censors would take a whole cake. Were they being generous since it was Christmas? I tasted a crumb and thanked God for creating the poppy flower, then wrapped it back up with haste, for I would save it for Zuzanna. Polish cake would be good medicine for her.

  The next bundle I unwrapped was a tube of toothpaste. I almost laughed. Our toothbrushes were long gone, but how wonderful it was to see something so familiar from home. I twisted off the cap and breathed in the cool peppermint. I tucked it under our mattress. With proper bartering, such a treasure would trade for a week’s worth of extra bread.

  The last bundle was small and wrapped in Matka’s little white kitchen towel, the one she’d cross-stitched with two kissing birds. Just seeing that sent me into choking sobs that delayed my progress, but I finally loosened the little bundle, hands shaking so hard I could barely untie the knot. Once the towel fell open and lay in my lap, all I could do was stare at the contents.

  It was a spool of red thread.

  “Joy” is an overused word, but that was what I felt there that day, knowing Papa had understood my secret letter. It was all I could do to keep from standing in the middle of the room and calling out with happiness. Instead, I kissed the little wooden spool and slipped it into my sleeping sister’s clasped hands.

  That was the best Christmas in my life, for I knew we were no longer alone.

  1944

  “Vilmer Hartman is here to see you,” Nurse Marschall said with a knowing look. Why did she continue to enter my office without knocking?

  I’d woken that morning in a foul mood and with a strange buzzing sound in my head. Maybe it was due to the fact that the camp was bursting at the seams. Ravensbrück had been built for seven thousand prisoners but by that summer held close to forty-five thousand. Maybe it was the constant air-raid sirens or the ominous war news. In early June word reached camp that the Americans had landed in France. Or maybe it was the fact that the camp was overrun with infectious prisoners, and every other week I had to cleanse the Revier completely of patients not fit for work and send them on black transports. Even after a few cuts to relieve the tension, I still couldn’t sleep.

  To make it all worse, Suhren had made no headway in the case of the Rabbits. The blocks were so overcrowded and mismanaged it would be impossible to find them without a camp-wide lockdown. Gerda told me their friends exchanged numbers with them and hid them everywhere, even in the TB block.

  I was in no mood to visit with old friends.

  Vilmer Hartman, a psychologist I had known at medical school, wanted to tour Uckermark, a nearby former youth camp for girls, where Suhren sent prisoner overflow. I knew psychologists did the rounds of the camps checking the mental health of the camp staff—a waste of time when there were so many more important tasks. I hoped to take him to Uckermark, conduct his tour in five minutes or less, and be on my way without complications. I planned on an early evening and a cool tub, for we were in the middle of a heat wave. It was the hottest July on record.

  I found Vilmer out in front of the administration building, waiting in the passenger side of a Wagen. I took the wheel, started the engine, and switched on the radio to discourage conversation.

  Germany continues to be victorious. Allied supplies continue to dwindle as German troops continue Operation Watch on the Rhine. In other news—

  Vilmer switched the radio off. “Victorious? Such lies. How can we delude ourselves? We’ve already lost the war. It was over back in Stalingrad.”

  “So what brings you to camp, Vilmer? The last time I saw you was in biology class. You were having a hard time with a fetal pig.”

  Vilmer smiled. “That class almost did me in.”

  Vilmer was a good-looking man with a slight wave to his blond hair and a gentle way. He wore civilian clothes, I assumed to gain the trust of the patients he spoke with. His expensive-looking pair of cordovan brogues somehow stayed polished even through the dust of the camp.

  “The medical doctor path is not for everyone,” I said.

  “It certainly pays better,” Vilmer said. “But I’m happy being a psychologist.”

  Once we reached Uckermark, I parked and Vilmer,
a typical German gentleman, opened the Wagen door for me. We surveyed the three newly built blocks and the enormous canvas army tent set up on the platz, under which hundreds of Häftlings stood and sat, still in their civilian clothes.

  Vilmer had excellent manners, typical of a cultured German man, but was a dull sort. He’d asked me for a date once, but I’d been too busy to go.

  “You publish so much, Vilmer. What a career you’ve made for yourself.”

  I brushed the sleeve of my white coat, for black ashes had collected there.

  “It is too warm for long sleeves today, isn’t it?” Vilmer said. “No need to dress formally for me.”

  “Why are you here, Vilmer?”

  “Studying the connection between trauma and psychosis.”

  “Another study? You will have endless subjects here, starting with the officer’s canteen.”

  “I am more interested in the prisoners.”

  “Who cares about them? Don’t touch them unless you want to catch something.”

  “I care very much,” Vilmer said. “It’s only part of my assignment, but through talk therapy with prisoners, I’ve learned a great deal.”

  “What’s your official assignment?” I asked.

  We reached the tent, and Vilmer turned to smile at a Häftling.

  “To evaluate the population’s ability to contribute based on a variety of criteria.”

  What he meant was to cull those mentally unable to work. Before he marked them for special handling, he dabbled in a little research of his own.

  “Observing the rats in the maze,” I said.

  “I like to think it helps them to talk about it. Since when did you become so callous, Herta?”

  “Should I be on a couch for this?”

  “It would do you good. I’m not surprised, really. You have been systematically desensitized for years after all, starting with medical school. I remember a sword fight with human limbs in the dissecting lab.”

  “And you are here to observe only prisoners?”