Secrets She Kept

by Cathy Gohlke

  I could have jumped out of my skin. “You—you’re the—yes, yes, I’ll walk with you.”

  She steered me to a side street, and into a small café. The warmth rushed into my face, nearly knocking me over, making my head go light.

  I followed her to a small table near the back. She ordered two hot chocolates. “Amerikaner like Schokolade, ja?”

  “Yes. Oh yes. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you the other day, or if I made things awkward in any way. I just wanted to return . . . what belongs to you.”

  “How did you find me? Where did you get that necklace?”

  Carl had told me to expect such questions from anyone I approached. I should have prepared myself from the beginning. But I’d never been able to formulate an answer that didn’t implicate my family or me. “It came into my possession recently, and I knew I needed to return it to its rightful owner. I had reason to believe that might be you.”

  “You are not German.”

  “No. But tell me, is it yours?”

  “It was my mother’s. I have not seen it since . . . since I was a very young girl.”

  I nodded, hoping she’d go on.

  “My family—my husband and his family, even our children—do not know.” The pain in her eyes, some mixture of fear and despair and betrayal, pierced my heart.

  “Are you afraid? The war’s been over so lo—”

  She sat back as the waiter delivered cups of hot chocolate to our table, nervously nodded her thanks, and warmed her hands round her cup. “The war is over, yes. That does not mean that the enemies of the Jews have gone, or that they will not come for us again.”

  “There are no more Nazis.” It was all I could do not to reach for her arm.

  She shook her head, looking at me so patiently, as if I were a child who didn’t know better. I recognized the expression from Carl’s face.

  “Help me understand.” I leaned forward.

  She pulled back, lifted her cup to her lips, but reconsidered and set it down again. “The Nazis began by making great speeches and announcements that life would be better for everyone, that Adolf Hitler possessed great plans to rebuild Germany. They insisted that everyone must be listed in one category or another. We registered—as soon as the order came. We believed the Führer meant for everyone, all of us, to benefit. We were all Germans, after all. We registered because we were Germans, and we registered as Jews, because we were Jews as well. Practicing Jews, some not, some baptized as Christians.”

  I nodded.

  “Mein Vater was a respected banker in the city. Meine Mutter, a Jewess—from a wealthy family, a family who’d lost their estate during the Depression. One night, in the middle of the night, long after we’d all gone to bed, the Gestapo came to our door. Before mein Vater could rise from his bed they burst into the house, the beams from their torches shining in our eyes, running over our beds. Meine Schwester and I cowered beneath the covers until I heard them screaming at our parents. I crept to the doorway and saw them drag our Mutter from her bed. They barely let her grab her coat or shoes. They made mein Vater kneel on the floor, his hands behind his head, held him at gunpoint, spat on him, called him names—vile names.

  “I followed them into the hallway, shivering in my bare feet and thin nightgown, watching, not saying a word, too terrified to speak. They shoved her in a car and sped away. Mein Vater ran into the street after them. They shot at him. Meine Schwester and I screamed and screamed.” She’d begun breathing faster as she spoke.

  “That had to be so frightening.” I didn’t know what else to say, and I meant it. Such horror for two young girls!

  “Frightening? It was only the beginning. We waited—for days and weeks. Mein Vater walked every day to the prison to ask about our Mutter, but they would tell him nothing, only call him names and spit on him and send him away humiliated for having married a Jewess. He lost his position—” she snapped her fingers—“just like that.

  “One night he said they had asked about meine Schwester and me—half Jews. We must go into hiding, he said. Ever since meine Mutter had been arrested and mein Vater lost his job, he’d been selling off her jewelry to buy food on the black market from a girl—a Gentile girl, but with a good heart. Mein Vater had full rations, you know, because he was Aryan. But meine Schwester and I, we were half Jews. Our rations were . . . not enough.”

  “Your father sold the necklace I showed you to the girl for food?” My heart leapt to my throat.

  “Nein, not that one. He sold it, and the last of her jewelry, to the girl’s Vater, for our freedom—for new identity cards and passports for us to go to England. Mein Vater said he would come later, as himself, once he divorced our Mutter. My parents had long agreed that if she was ever taken, divorce and sending us away was their only way to save meine Schwester and me.”

  “And the papers? Did the man bring them?” But I knew the answer before she gave it.

  “Nein. We thought they must have been arrested and their underground work exposed. The man never came again, but the Gestapo came. When they pounded on the door, mein Vater slipped with us out through the attic and across the roofs of the building next door.

  “We ran first to our neighbors three houses down, hoping they would hide us. But the man—we’d known him all our lives—ran into the street, shouting to the Nazi pigs that we were there, to come and get us.”

  The drums began rumbling in my stomach, pounding toward my heart.

  “Mein Vater was quick, and so smart. He pulled us through the alley and across stone walls and back gardens. We ran and ran, all the while we heard the commotion in the street. We hid beneath a little bridge until we heard the cars drive away.”

  “And then? You went home?”

  Her face registered incredulity at my words. “We could never return home. We’d have been arrested. The Jews in our neighborhood were rounded up and sent for relocation. We walked all night, out of the town and into the country. When daylight came we hid in a ditch, and Vater covered us with grass.

  “When nighttime came again, we walked—nothing to eat, nothing to drink. We reached farms; if there was a dog to bark, we walked on. If no dog, we stopped and Vater hid us in a ditch or in their barn, then knocked on the door, begging food. This is how I learned to milk a cow—because we were hungry, because we were thirsty. The cow did not care that we were Jews.”

  “How long did you live like this?”

  “For the duration of the war. We hid in ruins, in empty buildings, in barns. Sometimes, someone would take us in for a day, a night. Vater could find day work—sometimes. But it was dangerous. He should have been conscripted when they started taking older men. He pretended to be a cripple, but who would hire a cripple? Such men, if found out, were arrested and often shot. Whatever someone gave us came directly from their own rations. Many days we ate nothing—we grew thin, like scarecrows, which also marked us from far away.”

  A tear trickled down her cheek. I wanted to wipe it away, but I dared not move, dared not break her chain of remembrance.

  “Finally, Vater did the unthinkable. He separated us, saying he had no choice. No one could take us all—no one would. Meine Schwester went to a farmer near Cologne. Vater returned to Berlin and enlisted. He believed he had a better chance of surviving the war that way and finding us again afterward than if he continued to hide. He gave me to a businessman who promised to smuggle me into Switzerland in crates of his product.”

  “Did he?”

  She closed her eyes, suppressing a groan. “I survived the war, in my way. I was fed, and had regained most of my strength by the end. But I paid a different price to that businessman, and to his ‘colleagues.’ Meine Schwester, Miriam, was denounced by the farmer’s neighbor. The farmer was hanged and Miriam was sent to Sachsenhausen, where she was experimented upon—because she had brown eyes. They tried to make them blue. They blinded her, and then they killed her.”

  I swallowed. “And your Vater?”

  “Dead, in the war. I don’
t know where except that he was sent east.”

  “Did you ever hear from your mother?”

  “A neighbor, after the war, told me that my mother was killed in Dachau. But the woman’s sister told me later that Mutti had escaped near the end of the war and returned to Berlin, searching for us. She said that when the Soviets came, Mutti was raped . . . by an entire raiding party.”

  “I’m sorry . . . so very sorry.”

  “I don’t know which told me the truth—or if either did. If they only wanted to be more cruel to a dirty Jew. I do not think of them—I try not to remember. But when you opened the jewelry case, it was as if Mutti stood on my doorstep.”

  “I would like to return it to you—if you want it. And there are other things. Two rings—one a ruby and one with sapphires.”

  She bit her lip. “My grandmother’s. They were to go to Miriam and me when we married.” She searched my face. “Who are you? How did you come by them?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you that. But I can assure you that there is no risk in your accepting them. I just ask that you forgive those who held them so long.”

  “Forgive? Who do I forgive? Meine Mutter and mein Vater, meine Schwester, are long dead. Can rings and a necklace bring them back?”

  “No.” I swallowed. “They can’t. But perhaps they can bring you something—some connection to them. Some peace?”

  “They will not bring me peace . . . only sad remembrance. But I will take them, if only to remember their names on this earth. I would love for my children to know of them. I would love for them to know of Mutti’s stout heart, of Miriam’s sweet laughter. But do I dare tell them they are one-quarter Jewish? Will I sign for them a death warrant in the future?”

  “I hope not. Dear God, I hope not.”

  Carl met me for dinner. It was good to sit down in a restaurant, to look out into the dark street and know I was safe and warm and fed, that nearly thirty years had passed since the last bombs fell on the city.

  “You went there again?”

  “No, she saw me in the marketplace and asked me to walk with her to a café.” I toyed with my soup spoon. “She’s afraid, after all these years, to tell her children—even her husband—that she’s Jewish. She’s afraid it will all happen again.”

  “Can you blame her?”

  “I don’t blame her at all. It just makes me so very sad. I wish the world were a different place.”

  Carl reached for my hand and I clung to his, no words to fill the space.

  “What will you do now?” he asked finally.

  “I’ll visit the next person on the list and try to return what I can.”

  “Even if they do not want to be found?”

  What can I say? That I’ll give up the search because one person is afraid? “I don’t know how to answer that. Maybe I should write them instead?”

  “And have it opened by someone like this woman’s husband—someone who doesn’t yet know? Or traced back to you—to Herr Sommer’s home?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know, Carl. I’ll think about it. It’s all so complicated. I didn’t expect it to be so complicated.”

  “‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave . . .’”

  “‘. . . when first we practice to deceive.’ But I never meant to deceive anyone. I just want to do the right thing, to do the thing my mother would have done.”

  “Ah, Hannah . . . I am sorry you didn’t know her—the person she was as a young woman. Perhaps knowing her actions—whatever they were—would have left you a very different legacy.”

  “I’m sorry too. You have no idea how sorry.”

  34

  LIESELOTTE KIRCHMANN

  SEPTEMBER 1944

  Our train headed north—that’s all we knew, all that those nearest the small window could surmise. Whispers ran through the car. Women sat where their husbands had stood and clung to those they knew, those they trusted. Twice our train pulled to the side and waited—once for an hour, perhaps, and another time for what seemed like several hours. The door did not open.

  It must have been after midnight when we started again. The September night, already cold, penetrated the cattle car. Damp chill set into my bones. I needed to use the toilet, but there was only one bucket in the corner—already filled and overflowing with urine and feces from earlier in the day. I could smell that others suffered the same plight.

  We rattled on. Mutter Kirchmann and I leaned against each other’s shoulders, dozing, waking, starting with the jostle of the train.

  Finally, we pulled to a stop. Doors slid open on their metal grooves in the cars ahead, orders were barked, dogs growled, alert.

  Our door slammed open. “Schnell! Mach schnell! Raus!” guards shouted.

  We pulled feet beneath us, but they’d gone numb, and we groped for the woman before or behind to steady ourselves. Moving forward, women jumped from the train, reaching back for others. Guards grabbed and shoved. One woman, having fallen from the train, cried out that she’d twisted her ankle. The guard shouted obscenities, tried to raise her, but she stumbled again. He swore at her once more. A single shot rang out.

  Mutter Kirchmann grabbed my arm, pulling me forward, weaving our way into the midst of the throng. A blinding light shone in our faces through the graying dawn. In that bizarre light they divided us into groups to march five abreast.

  “Schnell! Schnell!” The order was shouted again and again, as if we could walk any faster.

  Over uneven ground, roughened by stones and exposed forest tree roots, we marched—stumbled—able to see only the five women in front, doing our best not to trample them or be trampled by those behind. Uphill we climbed, and climbed, finally reaching a narrow plateau that opened the vista before us.

  Searchlights lit rows of gray buildings, long and narrow—bunkers or barracks of a sort, penned by high fences heaped with roll upon roll of barbed wire. Guard towers surrounded the camp. A towering square building belched a line of steel-gray smoke against an already-smoldering sky.

  “Ravensbrück!” The single word passed from woman to woman.

  Mutter Kirchmann and I clasped hands.

  “Work camp,” said one woman.

  “Death camp,” said another.

  I knew the name, as did every German on the street. This can’t be happening—can’t be real!

  We marched downhill, trudging through a quagmire of black mud, so deep it oozed over the tops of our shoes, sucking them from our feet. Steadying and pulling one another free only broke momentum and tripped us over one another. I remembered Lukas’s admonition about keeping shoes on our feet and stopped to pull them from the mud, caking my hands in sludge. Finally, we labored uphill again, our feet leaden weights and slipping in the squish of our shoes, until we reached looming iron gates. Across the top, huge iron letters read, Arbeit Macht Frei—“work makes you free.”

  “Schnell! Schnell!” the angry order came again.

  We stumbled through. Posts with signs of skulls and crossbones stood as sentinels, indicating the deadly electric wiring that ran round the tops of high concrete walls.

  Someone spied outdoor spigots and shouted, “Water!” Groups of women in threes and fives broke ranks and surged forward, but they were cut off by the guards and beaten back with truncheons.

  Herded to a large, open area—like a giant flock of geese—we trudged; then the order came: “Halt!”

  Guards surrounded our perimeter. An hour went by as we stood, frightened, exhausted from lack of sleep and worry, uncertain what might come next. Another hour passed, and tentatively, we sat down on the cindered ground, unbuttoning our coats and pulling off hats as the sun rose higher.

  For the first time Mutter Kirchmann and I dared whisper, fairly certain no one else would hear. “You must tell them a mistake has been made, that you’re the daughter of an important Nazi Party member. Your father will get you out. I’m sure he will.”

  “I won’t go without you.”

  “There is nothing you can do for
me here. As long as I know you and Marta are safe, I will be all right.”

  I squeezed her hand. I would not leave the only woman who’d mothered me for years, who loved me as her daughter. And how could I face Lukas if I left his mother? What kind of person would that make me? Surely they couldn’t keep us penned like this forever.

  Another hour and another, until the sun rose white-hot above us—welcome and warming us through. But the dust in the area, the cinders that fell like snow from the great smokestack, dried our throats and thickened our tongues—and all the time those spigots in the distance. How easy it would be to fill a pail of water and pass it through the crowd of women!

  “Achtung! Achtung!” A deep voice blared over loudspeakers. We were roused and ordered into a line for a thin turnip soup and a roll, our first food or liquid in more than thirty hours. I gulped the soup down without looking, but the woman beside me vomited, swearing that hers was filled with worms.

  Mutter Kirchmann closed her eyes, and I knew she was praying. I saw her murmur, “Helmeuth” and “Lukas” and “Marta.” Then she whispered, “Lord, keep Lieselotte and me in the hollow of Your hand, in the center of Your will. Spread Your wings over us. Let us see Your presence and the evidence of Your love even here.”

  I could not say amen. If they did this to women, what was happening to Lukas, and to Vater Kirchmann? If God was watching over them as He watched over us, perhaps we’d best change our prayer. But I could not utter such blasphemy aloud.

  Mutter Kirchmann whispered to me, “Our circumstances don’t dictate our reality.”

  I squeezed her hand, assuring her that I loved her and wanted to believe, wanted to understand.

  From that moment we stood at ramrod attention in formation, in complete silence. Not a whisper allowed, and not a trip to the toilet—which beckoned, though it was nothing more than a ditch in the open.

  Night fell. My feet had long since gone numb with standing. I thought that if we could only sit down—lie down—sleeping right there on the ground in the open air would not be so very bad.