by Anna Schmidt
As she digested the strict procedures for sorting and cataloguing the clothing and other items, Beth could not stop thinking of all she had witnessed that day. She thought of all those people marched off to be disinfected while she—and indeed anyone who had been selected as a volunteer—still wore the clothing they’d arrived in. No one had mentioned shaving her head as a precaution against disease.
“Why was I not taken for a shower?” she asked Anja.
Everyone stopped working and looked first at her, then at Anja. Her friend took hold of her hand as if she were a child who needed to receive some upsetting news. “Where do you think all of this comes from, Beth?” She nodded toward the piles of clothing. “The so-called showers are gas chambers. The stench that permeates the very air we all breathe is from the burning of the bodies,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact.
“But that is…it is beyond comprehension.”
Anja shrugged. “It is horrid, and there is not one thing we can do about it without suffering the same fate.”
Once again a worker signaled the approach of someone. Anja motioned for Beth to sit at the typewriter. She stood close by as Beth rolled a clean sheet of paper into place and began typing the list that Anja placed in front of her. She was grateful that she had excelled in her typing class during high school and had gained plenty of experience typing out her uncle’s notes and lectures.
The same SS officer entered the storeroom and watched Beth for a long moment before nodding approvingly. “Perhaps the Americans are good for something after all, eh?” Again he touched Anja’s face before he left.
“He takes too many liberties with you,” Beth grumbled.
Anja’s eyes widened. “Do you not yet understand, Beth? We are all of us their possessions—their slaves. For now you are safe. The guards are mostly occupied elsewhere throughout the day, and at night they have other avenues for their entertainment. But you need to prepare yourself. You are quite beautiful and…”
If Beth thought she had felt the kind of soul-wrenching fear that she hoped never to endure again before now, she had been mistaken. The unspoken but vivid reality that Anja was painting for her was beyond anything she could ever have imagined. She felt the bile of fear rising in her throat. “I need to…”
“You need to work,” Anja said firmly. “We have quotas that we must achieve or risk being replaced, and we must finish before the next roll call.” She turned to the others. “Ladies, let’s get to work, or we’ll get no rest at all.”
CHAPTER 20
Josef was ashamed to find himself grateful for the relatively easy assignment. Certain that his father’s influence was the cause, he was determined to form a bond with his fellow inmates. But it did not take him long to realize that because he was German and definitely not Jewish, no one in camp was willing to trust him. Clearly they suspected him to be a spy—another trick of their captors to learn whatever they could about the prisoners.
Every afternoon promptly at five, a whistle signaled the end of the workday. All the prisoners except those assigned to Lager III—the so called area for showers—ran to line up outside the prisoners’ kitchen to receive their meager ration of a hunk of stale bread and a cup of ersatz coffee. They then stood in silence in all kinds of weather to be counted for perhaps the second, perhaps the fifth time that day depending on the whims of the commandant. After that they returned to the barracks for the night.
The barracks were crammed with wooden bunks stacked three high with little space between them. The first night he spent there, Josef was surprised at the way the men joked, played games, sang songs, or talked quietly in small groups. It was no different than the nights he’d spent with his fellow soldiers. But he was never included in any of these interactions—until his second week in camp.
That night the old man he worked with in the dispensary sat down next to Josef on his bunk and offered him a tin cup filled with a green watery liquid.
“Dandelion tea,” the man said. “One of the men found a patch today. Try it.”
Josef took a sip as he warily watched several of the others move closer so that they had closed off any possible avenue of escape should he need one.
“I am Rabbi Moshe Weiss.”
“Josef Buch.” Josef nodded to the rabbi and then in general to the men around him. “I see you teaching the younger boys at night,” he added, hoping to gain trust.
“Hebrew lessons—every Jewish boy takes such lessons.”
Josef took another sip of the tea. It wasn’t half-bad. “Thank you for this,” he said.
“Tell us your story, Josef Buch,” the rabbi urged, and then with a wry smile added, “You are our first non-Jewish roommate. We are naturally curious.”
So Josef told them everything—that he was the son of a fairly powerful member of the Gestapo, that he had studied medicine and served on the western front and returned to Munich to complete his medical training, that he had met Beth….
“Ah, the American woman who works with Anja Steinberg in the sorting rooms. You are a fortunate man, my friend. Your wife is not only beautiful, but also kind. Several of the woman and girls have mentioned that.”
“She’s a Quaker—a member of the Religious Society of Friends,” Josef said as if somehow that explained everything there was to know about Beth.
“How did the two of you end up here?” the man occupying the bunk above Josef’s demanded. These were the first words he and Josef had exchanged.
Josef told them about the White Rose. He named no names, but it hardly mattered now. With Hans, Sophie, and Christoph dead and the others arrested or on the run, he saw no reason not to sing the praises of his courageous friends. He told them about the leaflets that he and Beth had distributed, told them about the arrests and how Beth had been led to believe that he had betrayed her and her family. “Not unlike many of you who no doubt also believe that I am not to be trusted, I suspect,” he added, fixing his gaze on each man in turn before continuing.
He told them of his arrest, of the reunion with Beth, of the trial and sentencing and how incredibly brave Beth had been through it all. “And I will not deny that, were it not for my father’s position, certainly I would have been sentenced to death and perhaps Beth as well.”
He fell silent then, drinking the last of the tea, gone tepid now, while the men watched him in the silence of their own thoughts. Finally the rabbi covered Josef’s hand with his. Josef saw that the old man’s fingers were knotted with arthritis. “Thank you, Josef Buch.”
Then he and the others moved back to their own bunks as promptly at ten o’clock the lights went out.
The following day as they performed the morning ritual of making up their bunks, cleaning the barracks, and assembling for the first roll call of the day, it was as if overnight there had been a referendum regarding Josef. Whatever had transpired, there was little doubt that nearly all of the suspicion had been wiped away. Men spoke to him— some calling him Josef, others Buch, and a few calling him Doc. He was one of them now, and the simple pleasure he felt in that was like a gift.
Each evening before lights went out, Beth did her best to make herself presentable and then waited just outside the women’s barracks for Josef. Their time together would be in minutes rather than the hours she longed to spend with him, but she would take what God offered and count her blessings.
They sat side by side on a rough wooden bench under an eave of the barracks in all weather—rain, snow, or mild moonlit nights. He wrapped his arms around her, and she nestled next to him, memorizing the way they fit together like puzzle pieces. They kissed and then talked of the day—what they had seen and heard, who they had encountered, and which of their fellow prisoners were in need of special comfort or attention. Before lights went out and they each had to return to their respective barracks, Beth had persuaded Josef to sit in silence with her, their hands joined, their eyes closed, their breathing steady.
All around them others might also be in the yard outside the barra
cks—often this included other couples seeking a dark corner where they could consummate their love or simply find solace in the body of another. But Beth had asked only one thing of Josef—not here in this place. And he had agreed.
One night about a month after they had first arrived in Sobibor, Rabbi Weiss asked if he could sit with them for a bit. They made room for him on the narrow bench. In a few days, by Josef’s best calculations, March would turn to April. Already the evenings held the promise of spring—even in this place.
The rabbi stared at the orange glow that rose above the treetops in the area they knew was Lager III. “Elizabeth, I am curious. In your faith there is as I understand it no place for war or violence of any kind.”
“That’s right.”
“Yet how do you reconcile your faith with that?” He motioned toward the orange sky where they all knew the fires of the recently completed crematorium were now running round the clock. A train arrived nearly every day, and each one carried more and more men, women, and children—all of them except a precious few walking down the lane that the guards called Himmelstrasse or Road to Heaven.
“It is not my place to explain such things,” Beth replied. “In our faith we believe that God’s spirit dwells in everyone regardless of age, gender, nationality…or faith. We are born with God’s spirit already inside us.”
“Beth often has to remind me that we are all God’s children,” Josef added.
“So this holy spirit—it is like any part of us—heart, brain, muscle?”
“Oh, Rabbi, I am not as educated as you are. You tell me.”
“But what do you think, child?”
Beth could answer this easily, for both her parents had instilled the answer in her from childhood. “I think that if we do not feed and nurture that spirit in the same ways that we care for every other part of our being, then it will wither…and in some cases die.”
The three of them sat for a long time staring at the glow of the fires and barely noticing anymore the stench of burned bodies that permeated the camp day and night. After a while Rabbi Weiss stood up. “You have given me renewed hope, Elizabeth, and I am grateful.” He walked back toward the men’s barracks, and Beth saw that despite his gratitude he still walked as if he carried the burdens of the world on his bony shoulders.
As each day and week passed with stupefying sameness, the man who slept above Josef scratched a mark into the side of his bunk. Using that as his abacus, Josef knew that more than two months had passed since he and Beth had arrived in the camp. The idea that they had been sent to this place to use their skills as doctor and nursemaid had long since been abandoned. Josef worked in the dispensary handing out medicines to their captors while Beth sorted through the mountains of clothing, shoes, purses, and other effects of the dead. Josef spent every waking minute thinking about how he and Beth might get out of this place. He took every opportunity to study the terrain beyond the wire fences. The area behind the barracks for men had been doubly secured with the tall fences and a deep ditch filled with water, but outside of Lager II near the main tower and opposite the main gate was a vegetable garden.
In spite of the fact that—even now that it was May—there was still the possibility of a frost, the onions and radishes and other vegetables the prisoners planted were beginning to flourish. Of course most of the produce went to feed the officers and Ukrainian guards. The prisoners still received their daily ration of bread and coffee, and on special occasions they might get a cup of watery soup. But when the commandant had called for volunteers to tend the garden during roll call a few weeks earlier, Josef had been the first to step forward. As he did, he had nodded to Beth and was relieved when she stepped forward as well. Then so did Anja and finally Rabbi Weiss.
“Well, well, well,” Reichleitner had remarked. “So eager to help. Let me be clear that any one of you caught stealing so much as a kernel of corn will be shot.”
But it was not the bounty of the garden that interested Josef. It was its position close to the fence. It was the fact that the space was partially blocked by the shoe warehouse and the stables. It was his observation that if he and Beth could somehow make it from the garden past the stables and on to the trees that ran along one side of Himmelstrasse, they might be able to cut through the three wire fences and make it to the woods beyond.
One evening as he took his time setting up a small trellis for the beans to climb, he stared at the trees beyond the fence, trying to estimate the distance they would have to run to take cover.
“Don’t,” a voice said softly. “Others have tried. You’ll never make it, and others will pay the price.”
Josef glanced sideways and saw that his counselor was a Kapo— one of the few that he knew the other prisoners trusted. The Kapo walked on, pacing around the perimeter of the garden, occasionally reprimanding the rabbi or Anja in a loud voice meant to assure the guard watching from the tower that he had everything under control.
The next day as they went off to their assigned jobs, the prisoners noticed a flurry of activity outside the triple fence on three sides of the camp. Earlier that week the train had arrived, but the passengers had not cooperated when ordered to assemble in two groups. Instead they had panicked and begun running in all directions, throwing themselves against the gates and fencing, crawling beneath the cars of the train, only to face more fencing.
Those working in the various shops and storerooms were ordered to remain at their posts away from windows. Outside they heard the staccato firing of multiple machine guns punctuated by the pop of individual bullets fired from a handgun or rifle and the shrieks of the newly arrived prisoners. It took less than an hour to restore order. Afterward the battered and wounded prisoners were shuttled through the usual routine and ordered to leave their belongings with no pretense that these items would be returned to them later.
That night the glow coming from Lager III had appeared brighter than ever, taunting them. As he now did every evening, Rabbi Weiss gathered the other prisoners together in the yard to say kaddish or the prayer of mourning.
“They are mining the fields around the camp with explosives,” Josef’s bunkmate told him that night. “Three sides.”
“What about the fourth?” Josef whispered.
“I don’t know—too close to the main railroad tracks and the road to the village maybe.”
“I heard there were partisans in the woods, and that worries them,” another voice added from the dark. “They don’t want those who might come to our rescue to get close enough to do anything.”
The next day, ordered to put on the blue coveralls of a railway worker and stand at the track for the next shipment of Jews to arrive, Josef focused all of his attention on the area that lay beyond the siding. He saw there were only two fences and a guard tower positioned at either end. Beyond that was the main track and the road. And beyond that lay farmland and woods…and freedom.
When Josef told Beth of his plan, she felt a fresh wave of fear. The stories of what happened to those who tried to escape were legend throughout the camp. Even if someone succeeded, the others paid a heavy price.
“Josef, even if we could do this, what of the others?”
“We can’t save everyone,” Josef argued.
“Then we cannot do this.”
“Beth, we are prisoners of war—a war we had nothing to do with starting. A war we did what we could to stop, but nevertheless here we are. This is the price we all pay.”
“And so it is all right that others should die so that I can be free?”
She knew that Josef did not understand her. She knew that he had thought she would be as excited as he was that he had come up with a plan.
She heard him take a breath, and then he tried again. “If one of the women you work with were to make it out, would you deny her that freedom? What if that woman were Anja?”
“It does not matter who the person is, Josef. I would be thankful for the deliverance from this horrid place. But I cannot do anything th
at I know will endanger the lives of others. Such an action would go against everything I believe, and other than you and my love for you, the only thing I have left is my faith.”
“You would die here?”
“Josef, how do we know what God’s plan is for any of us? Was there some purpose in the deaths of Sophie and Hans and the others? I believe that we live out our lives as a tiny part of a greater plan. I will not question that.”
“I know that. It’s just that if it had not been for me, you wouldn’t be here. You could be home with your family safe in America. You should be,” he added as his voice broke.
“And I had no say in this at all? What a short and selective memory you have, my husband.”
“Some husband,” he grumbled, and she understood that for the first time since she’d met him that Josef doubted himself. He was a man of action—a man dedicated to doing whatever it took to make things right.
From the open door of the women’s barracks she heard Anja laughing. She took Josef’s hand and stood. “Come with me.”
She led him to the doorway where inside Anja and some of the other women were dancing to the music provided by one woman playing a battered violin. The dance was a Jewish folk dance—one that Anja and the others had taught Beth. They danced with abandon, their heads thrown back, their arms raised, their laughter only adding to the music.
“You did that,” Beth reminded Josef. “Anja would not be alive today if you had not found her and Benjamin and the children.”
“Benjamin and the baby are dead,” he reminded her.
“But Anja and hopefully Daniel are alive.”
“This is not living,” Josef told her as he walked away. She shuddered at the bitterness in his tone.
Together they walked back into the darkness and took their places on the bench they had come to think of as theirs. Beth curled into the hollow of his side, inviting him to put his arm around her. When he did, she closed her eyes and waited for words that might reassure him, that might steer him from this dangerous path.